I woke up pretty cold in the RV. It’s hard to get moving when you wake up so cold. I had a conversation yesterday about considering spending the winter in Montana. I definitely couldn’t do it in an RV, and I’m not renting. That’s the whole point of why I bought the RV. I have to be in it for at least 2 years for it to make financial sense. And I try not to do things that don’t make financial sense.

I had a really potent conversation with a friend last night. He’s a friend I used to live with, in a group house full of boys (yes, of course I lived in a group home full of boys). We were all in some kind of becoming back then. I was doing a stint in AmeriCorps as a Blockchain Researcher (it’s what launched me into crypto). One roommate was a ski bum, another worked at the firehouse (we used to hit golf balls in the backyard), and the guy I talked to last night was finishing his computer science degree.

Loving your brothers

We’ve stayed close. He’s one of those friends you talk about everything with. And I mean everything.

We talk about all the stuff your politically correct friend tells you to shut up about. We talk about why the divorce rate is so high and why women are the majority of those initiating them. We talk about transhood and the trans-experience a lot. There are few people who can articulate like I can. We talk about what the sexual revolution did for the Western world. We talk about voting rights, the family unit, marriage, what that means, relationships, why people struggle, and the current dating world (how atrocious it is). A lot about God (or me ranting on and him listening). He’s a deep-feeler and a sharp thinker. We agree on a lot, disagree on some, and neither of us is afraid to go there.

I love when we share advice back and forth (typically me getting on him about something), and he reminds me of how I said I was gonna marry the last guy (and how ridiculous that was).

It’s the kind of conversation I wish more men and women were having. One that requires curiosity, humility, and the willingness to listen to things you might not want to hear. I’m still learning to listen better. But I can say this: healing the divide between men and women starts with a willingness to hear what’s hard to hear, on both sides.

These kinds of conversations touch the most sensitive parts of the human experience. As a woman, it requires accepting parts of the male experience of being alive and in a male body that a lot of society (especially liberal women, sorry, it’s just true) is not willing to accept.

And there are some things I’ve come to see, over years of friendship with men, and deep friendship, not romantic or sexual, that most men aren’t really allowed to say out loud. I have grown up around a lot of men as friends. I have truly, brothers, in this lifetime. This is one of them.

I wasn’t always open to seeing the things my brothers were experiencing either. It took time. It took being willing to be wrong. It took being willing to sit with my defensiveness and dig deeper. And I don’t claim to have it all figured out, but I want to share what I am seeing, in case it helps anyone else who’s been quietly questioning things, too.

Is it hard yet

Here are a few of the hard pills to swallow. Or, you tell me how hard they really are:

1. There is a “double standard” sexually that is less ideology and more natural truth. Meaning you’ve been told it can be changed, and it can’t. We’ve been told that we can liberate ourselves from biology, but I don’t think that’s fully true. Men will fuck you (they love whores), but they won’t marry you if you give it up easily. They’re not likely to choose her for a long-term partnership because the kind of value they assign to the pursuit, to the woman who takes her time, who makes him earn her, supports the kind of qualities he wants for his children (slow, nurturing, safe). You might think that’s archaic or patriarchal. But I’ve come to see it as deeply natural. Not moral, not “good” or “bad” — just the way the masculine and feminine dance. And when you stop fighting it, it can actually feel really good to live by.
   

2. The boys are not okay. The “feminist” movement has hurt men and boys in more ways than one. The feminist movement did a lot for women. And it also did some real damage to men. We’re allowed to hold both. Because somewhere along the way, men stopped being seen as worthy of care (unless they were behaving exactly the way we wanted them to). Men today are isolated, lonely, addicted to porn, spiritually shut down, and emotionally infantilized. They’ve been mocked, belittled, blamed, and disempowered, and then expected to still lead. If we really want partnership, strong, healthy, masculine men, we have to let men be seen in their pain, too. Not just as oppressors, but as humans.
   

3. Men and boys actually want to be in their masculine roles, but society won’t let them. They might not even know what “masculine” means anymore, because we’ve blurred everything, but something in them knows. They may be aware of what this is, or they may not. And yet, the only version of masculinity we’ve accepted is the tame, self-sacrificing kind. The kind that doesn’t upset anyone. They’re kept weak and infantilized because that keeps them “safe” and in relationship with women. All the while, women are screaming for the real men to stand up (they’re not here, babe, you literally castrated them).
    

4. Men refuse to deny the differences between men and women, and rightfully so. They can see, with their own eyes, there are beautiful, radiant, God-given differences that want to be celebrated. Where equality means a “Yes, and”, not a flattening. Not sameness. Not pretending we’re interchangeable. They’re confused because the message they’re getting is that if they acknowledge these differences (in desire, in drive, in instinct, in longing) they’re dangerous. Or outdated. Or sexist. But many men are asking good questions: What does equality actually mean if I’m not allowed to show up as a man? If I lead, provide, or pursue, am I oppressive? If I desire polarity, does that make me wrong? They’re looking around at a culture that celebrates women’s freedom, sexuality, and empowerment, but where men are often shamed for wanting traditional roles, for craving depth, for being selective, or for saying no to certain dynamics. They’re told to "do better," but not offered a vision of what that actually looks like besides being less. And the ones who are still trying (the ones who want love, want family, want to lead and be chosen) are starting to wonder if there’s any space left for them in this world.

I don’t actually think this is too hard to hear (and is really soft from my first draft). But, if you made it this far, thank you. Maybe this was spicy, maybe it was confirming your own experience. The next steps to healing just have to start with openness, with letting the thing even be in the space. Then it can shift and change, it can grow and evolve. There is a world, I feel it deeply, where everyone is free and whole. But we don’t get there by pretending everything is fine and by avoiding what we don’t allow to be said.

Love,
Val