Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity

by Justin Baldoni

Unfortunately, the list is much longer, and I’m sure that I will add to it as I continue to learn, unlearn, and relearn what it means to be a man, and specifically what it means to...

Some of those statements that I listed above are subconsciously said to make it clear that I am not a racist. “My first friend was a Black girl.” “Some of my best friends are Black.” When I stop to critically think about why I make statements like these, it becomes apparent that I am trying to make it clear that I don’t fall on the bad side of the binary and I’m defending myself preemptively.

Along those same lines, when I make statements like “He was a great athlete, as are many young Black kids,” I am committing a microaggression and perpetuating stereotypes that disregard the individuality of each person while expressing the false universality of an entire group of people. The same could be said when people make statements about Asian people being smarter, loving homework, etc.

Microaggressions and stereotypes aren’t always overtly “negative,” and yet their impact adds up. Simply by generalizing and talking about race in that way lumps an entire group of people together based on a false identity; it creates and perpetuates the same problems that we are trying to address in masculinity.

When I have made a statement like that, even if it’s done with the intention to celebrate a kid’s athletic ability, it perpetuates a stereotype that all Black people are athletic and therefore disregards the unique talents and gifts of not only the Black people who are not athletic, but even the athletes themselves. It robs people of their individualism.

In some ways I think I have done it to make myself feel better for not being as good an athlete as those who were better than I was.

In other words, I was propping myself up to incorrectly believe I’m at a disadvantage because I’m white so that getting beaten in a race by a Black kid is more of an expected outcome in a race ...

Going down that rabbit hole, it also creates a false sense of accomplishment if I then beat a Black person in a race and makes me the underdog as a white person because I overca...

Now, this isn’t something that I think I, or many of my other white friends, are aware of when we make comments like that, but that’s also part of the problem. Our unaware...

I’ve learned that it’s a common experience for a Black person on a college campus to be assumed to be a member of a sports team and to be at the school on...

The implication of that assumption is that the student was admitted because of their athletic ability, not because of their academic ability or their leadership skills ...

Jamey has experienced the bee stings almost every day of his life, and so his relationship to bees is different from mine. It was as if he were telling me that he was stung by a bee and hurting, but because I failed to see the bee, I chose to say, “I don’t know, man, are you sure? Maybe you weren’t stung?”

Meanwhile, he has a stinger in his damn arm and his skin is beginning to swell. What matters more in that moment, my intention or the impact of the sting?

How ridiculous would it be if we as a society said the same kinds of statements about gender? What if I said, “My first friend was a girl so of course I don’t objectify women”? Or “I am married to a woman and have a daughter and my mom is a woman and I have a sister who is a woman, so therefore I can’t be sexist”? Or even “I don’t see gender; I treat everyone equally”?

When I first started leaning into the idea of male privilege, I felt like I was being told that I didn’t work hard, that I didn’t actually earn the job or promotion, that my sacrifice and hard work were invisible and I was being told I only got whatever it is I got because I am male. I said things like, “I worked my ass off to get here; nobody gave me anything.” And “I earned all that I have.” I felt like anytime someone said the word “privilege” or insinuated that I had it, I would become annoyed or angry. It felt like I was being robbed of my individual story and struggle (hmmm, sound familiar?). I felt the same way when white privilege came up. But my defensiveness was a sign of my ignorance.

There are many forms of privilege that honestly deserve their own book.

Every day I learn something and have a newfound appreciation not just for where I sit in society but also the privilege that something as simple a...

I mean, how often do I wake up and feel grateful for my health or my arms or my ability to see or walk? It’s generally not until our physical abilities are injured or taken away that we actually appreciate the benefits and privileges our bodies give us. As an able-bodied person I can b...

I can travel and eat out without having to think about how I will navigate public transportation or the security terminal at the airport. But at the same time, when my able-bodied privilege is brought up, I am not defensive or deflective, and it is not uncomfortable for me to talk about. Why? There’s part of me...

But I understand that having able-bodied privilege doesn’t mean that I did not and don’t have struggles or hardships; it simply means that I don’t have those particular struggles or hardships.

Based on the most recent survey in 2018, for every dollar earned by white men, white women earn only seventy-nine cents, Black women earn sixty-two cents, Hispanic or Latino women earn fifty-four cents, and Indigenous women earn fifty-four cents.

anti-sexism educator Jackson Katz has asked men and women the same question for decades in his trainings: what steps do you take daily to prevent sexual assaults? Katz explains that nearly every woman in the room raises her hand when he asks this question and can immediately list countless steps they take—not jogging at night, carrying pepper spray or Mace, locking car doors as soon as they get in the car, parking in well-lit areas, ensuring that a friend or family member knows their location and itinerary,

As for the men, what do we say we do daily to prevent sexual assault? Nothing. Not one hand goes up. It’s hard to believe the world we live in as men, and especially those of us white men, can look and feel so different just because of the body we are born into. That difference is simply privilege.

Activist Danielle Muscato posed the question on Twitter. “What would you [women] do if all m...

The responses poured in by the thousands and were frankly heartbreaking to read. Instead of being wildly adventurous with what they would do, most women said they would do things such as grocery shop, go for a run, listen to music with headphones on, walk to the car without their keys between their fingers ready to be used...

In other words, things that should be very normal for people to do without fear, and quite frankly things that most men like myself feel extremely comforta...

People who look like me are largely represented in media, entertainment, leadership positions, Congress, the Oval Office, and education. In fact, my entire education was centered around people who looked like me. I didn’t have one Black or Indigenous teacher over the course of my education from kindergarten through high school, and it wasn’t until I typed those lines that I even stopped to think about it.

I can easily find children’s books that have characters who look like my children and that have a family structure like ours, but I have to go out of my way to find books that feature diverse characters and stories.

I can also (generally) have a positive relationship...

fact, there was a time in the fall of 2014, after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, that I was driving home and saw a Black man being pulled over by police. I decided in that moment to pull over on the opposite side of the street. I didn’t know exactly what I was planning on doing other than readying myself to take a video or potentially intervene if things took a turn for the worst, and by the way, who th...

See, when that Black man was pulled over, even before he stopped he rolled his window down and he threw his hands out of his window and waved his ID like a peace flag. I had never seen an...

Do you know what I think about when I get pulled over? My first thought every time is I hope I can get out of this. Meaning I hope I can get myself out of this ticket, even thou...

In that moment, I realized that while I think about getting out of a traffic stop without a ticket, a Black person is hoping that the...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”

My idea of peace, as a white man, has often been focused on having an absence of conflict or tension, even in issues outside of race. Jamey then very lovingly and patiently explained that when there is a fund-raiser or event focused on breast cancer, when sports teams rock pink jerseys for breast cancer awareness, we don’t show up with signs and argue that prostate cancer matters too!

And when our neighbor’s house is on fire and the fire department shows up to help, we don’t run from our house that is not on fire and exclaim that we need the resources our neighbor is getting. We need the fire hose! We need the firefig...

As I have learned the hard way, when we say that Black lives matter, we are not saying that Black lives matter more than anyone else’s; we are not saying that the lives of police officers don’t matter or that all lives don’t matter. We are simply saying that all lives cannot matter until Black lives finally do.

Our textbooks have sanitized the truth of our country’s history and the mass violence that has been committed against Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color by white colonizers.

It’s why Columbus Day is still a federally recognized holiday, while Indigenous Peoples’ Day is an official holiday in only six states.

It’s why Juneteenth goes largely unnoticed by anyone outside of ...

In fact, it was just recently that I learned that our country’s true independence day is June 19, as it represents the emancipation of Black people who had been enslaved. It was just this year, after learning this, that our company ...

how the beauty industry lightens the skin tone of people of color in their advertisements and how the powers that be in Hollywood have long been casting white men to play characters that are not white.

a Black actor would share about how he was able to book more roles than his girlfriend because even though he knew she was a better actor, he was light-skinned and she had darker skin.

As I have begun to learn these nuances, I can feel my white privilege rearing its head and telling me “but I’ve worked hard” and “I’ve been rejected too” and “I deserve roles too.” Again, recognizing my white privilege doesn’t negate my efforts and worth, nor does it negate my struggle.

Just because I am white it does not mean my life is easy and that everything is just given to me. White privilege is not a free pass by any means.

At the same time, I can no longer ignore that, overarchingly, white people are not oppressed in the same way that Black people are, we are not judged, pulled over, en...

I don’t have the additional hurdles that have been placed in the lanes of Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color. And, like in the situation of getting the Iraqi prince role, it means that in some situations, no...

In Jordan Flaherty’s No More Heroes, he takes us back to 1979, when boxing legend Muhammad Ali, one of my personal heroes, invited film critic Roger Ebert to his home to watch Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky II. In the film, which I have to admit is also one of my all-time favorites, Stallone’s white boxer beats Carl Weathers’s Apollo Creed, who was widely thought to be based on Ali.

During the commentary, as the credits rolled, Ali went on to say, “For the Black man to come out as superior would be against America’s teachings. I have been so great in boxing that they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them.

Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan, ...