relationships

Guyside: Being a good man without being a dad

Posted by Bob LeDrew on Nov 12, 2014 in Guyside, men, relationships | 0 comments

I’m not a father. It’s not gonna happen. It’s not a question of “waiting for the right woman” — I found her over 20 years ago, and that’s that — or of some unfortunate biological malfunction. When my partner and I were together a while, we started to talk about children, and we decided together that we would not have any. And quite a number of years ago, we took permanent steps to ensure that we weren’t going to have children.

But there are kids in my life — lots of them. Friends’ children; neighbours’; nieces; nephews. And having been around other people’s kids has made me think a lot over the years about what kind of man I need to be, not just for myself but for them.

Your columnist with “Kate”, from a few years ago. I keep this photo on my desk.

First off, there’s the sensitivities that any man sometimes feels about being around kids. You find yourself, at times, in strange situations. A few years ago, friends — let’s call them Dick and Jane — separated. My partner and I were at Jane’s house for dinner, and their daughter “Kate” asked if we could go to her track meet the next day. I could, so I showed up at a school field the next morning, wandering around looking for Kate or Jane. I saw Kate first, and she ran over to hug me, and as she competed, I took some pictures. Then I realized that I was just a random guy with no “real” ties to this event, taking pictures of children. And I also realized that she needed the support of people there rooting for her, and I was proud to do it.

Second, there’s the changing role that happens when you’re around kids for the long term. I’ve been around some kids since their first or second day on the planet who are now teenagers. And the role of “family friend” changes over that time. There’s less disciplining, more talking. You go from seeing them at dinners before they go to bed to having them ping you on Facebook for a chat; from making pizzas to having a pastry chef friend come over to do a lesson on making macarons. And your relationship with them becomes something less tied to your relationship with their parents. It becomes more complex, as they go from extensions of their parents to independent human beings. For me, part of that learning has been to be as open with them as they are with me, to tell them that if they have something to tell me that is a secret, that it will be kept (unless it is something that will harm them or put them in danger.) Kids today seem to be more open emotionally than I remember being, to hug, to express love. And for me, it’s been a learning process to actually respond in kind. It’s easy to hug a four-year-old and tell them you love them. But when it’s a teenager, it’s a leap on their part and one that deserves a response in kind.

It’s the gift of being shown childhood again. Just because you don’t have kids of your own doesn’t mean you have to be excluded from the things that childhood can show you. Snowballs, diving off floats, baking together, singing together. These are things that are precious and filled with joy. Someone once told me that babies cry so hard when they’re hurt because it’s the first hurt. The first skinned knee, the first burned finger, the first black eye. It’s good to remember those things. It’s good to feel the parallel between their experiences stimulate the memories of your own.

And finally, it’s the gift of being given someone who thinks so highly enough of you that you want to live up to that billing. I’d like to be the kind of man that deserves to be looked up to by kids.

Is pillow talk the key to a better relationship?

Posted by Liz on Jul 11, 2014 in relationships | 0 comments

You can find today’s post over at Medium…

Guyside: what the Michael Sam backlash teaches us about us

Posted by Bob LeDrew on May 14, 2014 in Guyside, men, relationships, sexual desire, Uncategorized | 0 comments

If it hadn’t been for two men kissing, I doubt I would have taken any notice at all of the NFL draft last week. While there are lots of people in Canada who are big NFL fans, I’m not; frankly, if I’m watching football, I’m watching the Canadian game, with its bigger field, fewer downs, and more freewheeling style. But I’m not here to talk about our superior game.

The big story out of this year’s NFL draft was the selection of Texan Michael Sam by the St. Louis Rams. Or, more precisely, the big story was the video of Sam sharing a celebratory kiss and hug with his boyfriend Vito Cammisano (who, Wikipedia tells me, is also an accomplished athlete.)

Miami Dolphins safety Don Jones tweeted the word “horrible.” Others criticized ESPN for broadcasting the display of affection, saying “kids are watching.” A former Ole Miss basketball player tweeted that he was boycotting ESPN because his 7 and 11-year-old brothers were exposed to the video clip, then after being subject to a large backlash, said that his tweets had been part of a friend’s psychology project.

Suffice it to say that there was a lot of shock and horror that this athlete would engage in a display of same-sex affection on camera, and that it would be broadcast.

My friend Joe wrote about how he talked with his daughter about this, and it got me thinking about us heterosexual guys and our complicated relationship with gayness. When I was a kid, the worst thing that you could call another guy was one of the pejorative terms for “gay:” fruit, faggot, fairy. And certainly in my world of popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s, there were very few examples of gay men. It was known that Elton John was gay. There were rumours about David Bowie. But certainly there were no out gay men in my world, and I never met someone who was out until I went to university in 1983.

Things have changed since then. I now count many GLBT people as both casual and deep friends, and I’m part of one of  city’s major events for the GLBTQ community. So what have I learned? First off, none of that has led me towards changing my sexual orientation. I’m as straight as I was in my teens, or even back further than that (if you can have a sexual orientation at that age.)

Second, I can’t imagine a set of circumstances that would turn me from a guy who likes women to a guy who likes other guys. And that lack of imagination has led me to believe that it’s unlikely circumstances exist that would change a woman who loves other women to a woman who loves men, etc. So I can’t get behind the idea that someone (child or adult) seeing two men kiss on television is going to be “twisted,” “scarred,” etc. I also don’t see how it’s difficult to explain that behaviour to a kid — “Those guys? They love each other, so they’re kissing. Some guys love other guys.” Apparently, I’m not the only one.

Third, objecting to something does not mean you get to be insulated from that’s thing’s existence. Nobody has the right to tell you that your opinion on gay men is wrong. But you don’t have a right to never see or be exposed to gay men in your life, and it would be a lot easier for everyone if you can say to yourself and others “The Bible tells me that homosexuality is wrong.”

Finally, we straight guys have to get past the double standard that seems to exist around gay men. I don’t think I need to tell you that there’s a lot of attention paid to women kissing women — and men watching them. But when it comes to men kissing men, there’s what many would say is a visceral reaction of revulsion. I believe that reaction is learned and reinforced by society.  (And to be clear, I have no evidence to support that beyond that of my own life.) We are taught to be revolted by it. We then write scripts to justify it, that often involve either direct damage (based on the broadly-debunked belief that homosexuality and pedophilia are related) or psychological damage or scarring (based on the broadly-debunked belief that gayness can be “taught.”)

We need to accept people and things and behaviour at face value. Two guys kiss? Yup, they kissed. No more than that. A guy likes guys? Yup. As men, let’s get past the taunts and the immaturity that we grew up with around this stuff.

Guyside: An honorable man

Posted by Bob LeDrew on Apr 23, 2014 in Guyside, men, musings, politics, relationships, Uncategorized | 0 comments

If I needed proof I was getting older, it came when I started into a level of crankiness that gradually built to the point where all I needed was a pair of reading glasses on the end of my nose and a walking stick to shake while inveighing against “those kids.”

Whether it’s bad luck, the randomness of the universe, or some sign of an actual trend, I’ve been seeing a lot of things lately about sexual assault in online or “geek” culture recently, and it’s getting me angry. There seems a predictable pattern to it: first, a woman writes or says something about … well, it could be almost anything. One example is Janelle Asselin’s critique of a comic book called Teen Titans.  Then, a dense cloud of misogyny and ad feminem attacks follows like a cloud of gnats around a hiker. In this case, here’s an essay about what happened to Asselin after she wrote the critique.What happens after that? Usually, we all (we being neither the woman it’s happening to, nor her friends, nor the misogynists who are being misogynist) forget about it.

This hasn’t come out of nowhere. I remember when one of my favorite bloggers went underground after truly horrifying threats and comments were rained down upon her. But as the years go by, I’m finding it more and more difficult to forget about this stuff, to “get past it.” The words and threats that pop up online exist in the “real world.” There’s no shortage of men who seem to hate and fear women. But when you combine these attitudes with the anonymity that can be offered up by the online world, it can be utterly heinous.

So what is to be done? A few things, I think. The first is to not propagate these attitudes. To think about the way in which you as a man interact with women, how you agree, how you disagree, and how you debate. I disagree with women all the time, and I have a remarkable range of ways I can do that without reducing them to their genitalia or threatening them with sexual assault.

The second thing you can do is support women in your life who are subjected to this behavior. At the very least, those of us who are not trolls need to be there for our friends when they are being threatened and harassed.

The third step is the one that seems more difficult for many people: speak out. When you see this happening, tell the person that what they’re doing is wrong. If a woman is being threatened with rape for having the temerity to voice an opinion — that’s wrong. Say so. Publicly.

There are lots of attitudes that I would prefer didn’t exist at all in this world. But that can’t happen with the snap of a finger. If our society is going to become more egalitarian, laws won’t do it; changing minds will. One step in that is telling the trolls that we see them and we won’t tolerate their behavior. Edmund Burke wrote “When bad men combine, the good must associate.”

When I was a younger man, I suspect I was a bit more reticent about my views. But now? I give much less of a shit. I plan on being as vocal as I can when I see women being silenced by threats of rape and violence. I hope you will too.

Friday Folly: He Said. She Said.

Posted by Liz on Apr 18, 2014 in relationships, Uncategorized | 0 comments

Now that we’ve got some guys sharing their side of the midlife equation, it’s time to focus on some communication between the sexes. I’ll be putting Bob LeDrew and Danny Brown and possibly a few more good men to the task in the coming weeks. In the interim? Let’s not bite of the heads of those who feed us!

Cheers for a Friday!