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I am a beta male.

Sometimes, I’m apt to forget that. 

In the course of my ordinary days, I rarely question whether I’m masculine enough.

I usually move through the world thinking I’m a reasonably normal adult human man, believing I’m adequately meeting the job description: doing my work with care, being a loving and emotionally available husband, showing up faithfully for my kids, helping the people in my path as best I can. 

Thankfully, I have Conservative, self-identified alpha males to remind me otherwise.

Like self-appointed testosterone police, they fly into my mentions to make sure I know just how deficient in being a dude I actually am.

They relentlessly ridicule me for protesting a pedophile president, for calling out Evangelical misogyny, and for condemning frat boy college rape culture; these things all supposedly revealing my shortcomings as a card-carrying man. 

They deride me for being afflicted with toxic empathy as I advocate for survivors of sexual assault, openly grieve children being blown apart by bombs my taxes paid for, and call out the monstrous violence of masked thugs brutalizing my neighbors

I try to explain that I can’t help it, that I was raised this way, that I am a product of my upbringing.

Looking back, I can see that my parents and mentors apparently all failed to make me into a “real man.”

I grew up believing that a woman’s consent trumped anything; that I should yield to her will regarding her body, no matter what the circumstances.

I was taught that I was solely responsible for my choices, that it wasn’t a woman’s job to dress or act in a way that ensured that she would be safe in my presence; that my presence should guarantee her safety.

I was raised to believe that real men have the courage to stand alone and speak out when every other man around them is devolving into the worst of themselves.

I was indoctrinated by leftist propaganda into thinking that the true measure of a man is whether he can hold on to his convictions when no one else shares them.

By his example, my father told me that a man wasn’t ashamed to show emotion around his children, was easy with his affection, and made sure no one around him felt alone or unloved.

And it seems in all of these cases, I was duped and lied to, led astray down the path to becoming the sad, sorry, unmanly wuss I apparently now am. 

Maybe there’s still time for me. Perhaps if I were stronger and worked harder, I could be like the alpha men who mock me. 

Maybe like them, I could completely subjugate my identity and my voice to a lift-wearing, makeup-caked serial predator.

Like them, I could also stay silent while thousands of rapists and pedophiles are being protected from accountability by the leaders I chose. 

Maybe I too could blame the survivors of sexual assault, instead of the monsters who desecrated them.

If I were as rightly manly as my conservative critics, perhaps I could be as comfortable as they are with the government taking away a woman’s autonomy or disregarding her elemental freedoms.

Given a proper manosphere deprogramming, perhaps I could join the sprawling ranks of perpetually insecure man-children who’ve never been able to find a fully formed understanding of what it means to be a gentle man and a loving human being. 

Immerse myself in the Evangelical ecosystem long enough, and I might evolve into a knuckle-dragging amber-trapped caveman who is terrified of strong women and intimidated by any expression of sexuality that doesn’t fit my brittle Old Testament sensibilities.

Spend enough time in Republican politics and I too may one day be tough enough to fall prostrate before a man who has verbally, emotionally, or physically violated nearly every woman in his path, and to still pretend I’m strong.

I’m pretty sure too late for me, though.

At this age, I might be resigned to my soft, swishy sissified state: just another weak, soy boy, leftist cuck of a man striving to live with decency, self-control, and compassion; to be someone a woman doesn’t need to fear being around when alone or vulnerable.

I might just have to settle for being a father whose son would never be silent when anyone else was in danger.

I might be doomed to be a dad whose daughter feels respected and loved by him because she’s watched him respect and love her mom as an equal.

I may be resigned to being a husband whose partner in life has never felt the pressure to be any other kind of woman than the woman she is.

Yeah, I’d like to fight it, but I confess that the overcompensating alphas are right; I’m a beta male.

Guess I’ll just have to live with that.

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