I Am Responsible for the Man I Am

I read Gordon McLean’s “Yes All Men” with a mixture of agreement and frustration. I hear what he is saying about harassment, intimidation, and the ways people excuse behavior that should be challenged. I particularly appreciate his concern about the example he sets for his son. Children learn from what we do, how we treat people, and what we allow to pass without comment. But I struggle with the way he takes those reasonable concerns and turns them into a judgment about men generally. This sentence, in particular, stopped me: “The sheer audacity that most men possess in thinking the way they do needs to be constantly challenged.” Most men? That is a considerable claim to make about people whose thoughts, circumstances, and conduct you do not know. He describes particular misconduct, then moves into treating men broadly as people in need of correction. Somewhere in that transition, the distinction between a man who mistreats women and a man who lives his life treating people decently…

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