A Journey into Patriarchal Whiteness

Guest Post by Tim “xrugger”Stebbins

If I tell you a story, will you listen for a moment? Will you put aside the chaotic noise that surrounds you for just a moment? Will you open your mind just a tiny bit to allow for the possibility of truth to enter in? Will you brush aside the scales from your eyes long enough to hear my tale? You may replace them later if you choose, but in the meantime, will you listen?

My story is a tale of hypocrisy and evil. It has a beginning, a middle, and it will have an end. It is a litany of debauchery, moral blindness, and willful ignorance. It is also a story of redemption, and change, and a turning away from evil. It is, above all, a human story and is therefore, by nature, an imperfect and unfinished one. It continues to unfold in all its glorious uncertainty.

My story’s end is unknown, though its beginning was as certain as anything can be since I was conceived and born a human boy. I could be conceived and born as nothing else. I was not conceived a kitten and born a human boy, nor was I conceived a human boy and born a kitten. The birth flowed as surely from the conception as any river seeks the sea and the flow was always and only that of a human boy. How could it be anything other? Those were gentler days in many ways. Had the flow of my humanity began in today’s America, I may not have survived at all. Had my Mother been prone to the narcissistic whims of modern convenience, the flow of my humanity might have been sponged off the clinic floor. Because she believed what her Faith taught her, my Mother did not seek to dam or divert the flow of my humanity at its source. Neither did it ever occur to her to stop it after the fact. She understood that my humanity was separate from hers from the moment of its beginning. That knowledge made me her human son…perfectly unique, perfectly whole, perfectly hers.

I grew in the normal span of years, from a human boy to a human man. In those years of growth, I, of course, had boundaries. A human woman and a human man who loved me and raised me as best they knew how set those boundaries for me. Within them, I was as free as any human boy in the long span of history had ever been. As I grew, I wandered freely and safely with others of my kind. I went to school and was taught how, not what, to think. What restrictions I lived under were for my safety and happiness. I knew my family loved me and I knew where I needed to be going when the streetlights came on. I fought, forgave, and learned what it was to have my feelings hurt and to inflict that pain on others, but when I fought and forgave and had my feelings hurt, it did not define me. When I wronged someone, I was expected to apologize and make things right. I did not clasp wrongs to my breast to nurture and feed them so they could later blossom into resentment and self-pity. My story’s beginning was simply life as life had always been. I did nothing, and nothing was done to me that had not been done by and to other human boys before me. Certainly, I was special in my parent’s eyes, but in the great sweep of life, I was no different from any child of my ancestors.

So, as the years passed, I grew, and learned, and adjusted, and changed. I became a human man with human memories of triumphs and defeats, with a heart hardened to one thing or softened to another. I discriminated, as we all do, between what I liked and what I did not. Generally, I lived, worked, and played with others who thought and looked much as I did. This was not so much deliberate on my part as it was the natural order of things. It was not a wrong or a right consciously chosen. It was just life as a human man. Through it all, freedom was the one constant, though I did not consciously know it in my youth. Freedom was the very air I breathed and through which I moved, but as a fish is unaware of the water through which it swims, freedom for me just was. I was a boy birthed in freedom. With others of my kindred, I was marinated in the abundance of everyday life, soaked in the joys of a childhood mostly free from want and fear. Want and fear would come later, but in my human childhood, they were temporary and passing things, smoothed away by a Mother’s touch, kept at bay by a Father’s strength.

Little did I know that my kind and I were indeed special, though I did not find this out until much, much later. I was, though I did not know it at the time, privileged because of the paleness of my skin. I grew and matured in freedom, not because of the sacrifices or hard work of those who came before me, but simply because my skin lacks melanin. I spent my boyhood in safety and security, not because of the love and care of my parents, but because of the oppression and brutality visited upon others by my forefathers. How could I have known that the happiness of my early life was built on the bowed backs and broken dreams of others of a darker hue? I was just a human boy, living a human boy’s life.

No one told me that my very existence would, one day, become an affront to anyone who had not procured an equal portion of the happiness that I knew as a human boy. This zero-sum result was not because of anything I did, or did not do. It was not because of any sins of commission or omission on my part. The unfairness of it was simply a function of my “whiteness.” This focus on the color of my skin and the tyranny it exercises over others is, I am repeatedly told, not racist. In fact, the color of my skin, oddly enough, is a sure sign of my own racism towards others. I do not know how this can be. I am just a human man now, not much different from other human men.

When did I become the oppressor of my colored brethren? It is an impossible question to answer. Did my skin leap off my body as I slept, travel back in time, and go on a moonlight ride robed in white? Did it wield torch, and rope against the newly freed black man? Did I look the other way as my skin oppressed and subjugated the red man? I have no memory of it, though today many hate me for the color of my skin and they have memories much longer than mine. Their memories extend back and back and back through ages in which neither they nor their fathers lived. Their hatred of me is a product of a past they never knew and yet they demand payment in kind from me and mine.

I am told as well that I am an oppressor of women. My penis is apparently as much a problem as the color of my skin. I am a member of something called the “patriarchy,” though I never signed a membership list, pay no dues, and receive no monthly newsletter. This “patriarchy” is quite a bad thing I am told and I am a member of it simply because I possess external genitalia. Again, I remain unsure of when exactly I became the oppressor of human females. I am married to one and she cannot recall it. It must have been once again, when my disembodied erection left the rest of me sleeping and went out to rape some hapless girl. My tumescent organ apparently commits “penis violence” in much the same way that ownerless and disembodied pistols commit “gun violence.” I am much confused by all this since it seems so one-sided and illogical, but after all, I am just a human man of normal intelligence and these are much deeper mysteries than I can fathom.

Trust me when I tell you that my sins never were, never have been, nor ever will be, a function of my “whiteness,” or “patriarchic…ness.” They are, as I hope you will see, a function of my humanness. This is the first truth I offer you, dear reader. I do not offer it as a mea culpa for my failings or the failings of others, but simply as a truth. Accept it or reject it as you choose, but know this: If your kith and kin are the same color and sex as mine, this truth cannot be ignored, because in the world that is coming; their skin and genitals may indeed leap from their bodies…under the tender touch of the flaying knife. In that world, hands of another color or sex will take you to places you do not wish to go, not for anything you have done, but because you were born your Mother’s son.

End of Part 1

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