Lean on Me

He ain’t heavy. He’s my brother

Take Good Care of Yourself

Today I’m taking a dive into ‘violence’. Not in a gratuitous way but I just want to talk about how it’s crossed my path during my lifetime.

How does violence or the threat of violence manifest in this world we all share.

I think it’s important we take a real honest look at the world and talk about the sad realities if we’re in any hope of changing it for the better.

I’ll do my best to tread carefully.

That said, if you’re not feeling well resourced or if you’re in need of sanctuary & soothing then this probably isn’t the read for you today. You could always come back to it another day if you felt you were missing out.

Brother Love

I’ve always looked up to my 3 brothers.

As the youngest sibling, ‘looking up to folks’, is your allocated lot in life. And whilst you’re looking up in admiration the good news is, you’re being over-looked for chores!

Nobody expects you to take charge of anything when you’re the youngest.

Of course parenting changes all that. Nothing like looking after small people to shake loose the patterns you’ve grown up with.

That said, even as an adult and a father myself, this natural order still wants to exert itself.

Im the youngest of 4 brothers but there’s only 3 of us left.

My oldest brother, wor Ray, is the level-headed one. My father always trusted him with the banking, finances and property administration stuff. He’s 100% the guy you can rely on and I love him dearly.

The second eldest, our Geoff, couldn’t be any more different. He’s chaotic, unreliable and lives for the day… I love him dearly

I idolised him as a young lad. When I was navigating that tricky teen period and trying to establish a secure foothold on what it means to be a man, it would be Geoff I’d have looked towards.

Geoff was regarded as a hard case by his peers but he was the one who taught me not to swear in public because it can come across as threatening and to always say hello to old folks as they might be intimidated by a hoody wearing teenager.

Locker Room Chat

Out in the world you go as a young man.

One day I walked into a spit & sawdust gym in an unfamiliar town. It had a real old school bodybuilder gym feel to it I noted as I made my way to the changing rooms

Guess what happened when I opened the changing room door?

The gym was more red & black than this stock photo but very masculine starkness just the same.

Nothing…Nothing happened.

No one looked up, nobody stopped what they were doing. I might as well have been a gust of wind blowing the door open.

I was 44yrs old and I might as well have been a ghost in that space.

Im not saying it’s weird that no one reacted. I’m saying… no one reacted, and it was weird that I found this weird.

Does that make sense?

Let me put it this way, for twenty-odd years previously, I had been walking into gyms all over the world and never ever had I thought ‘Oh, these dudes are weighing me up!’

But I had a sense of it that day…simply because it wasn’t there. It was somehow made all the more prominent in its absence.

Basically I got old and I got into yoga… whatever energy I was carrying into that gym locker room translated to being a nobody in that space.

What I realised in that moment was, just by circumstance of being a male in my twenties or thirties, there’s a pervasive undercurrent of the possibility of a violent confrontation.

When a twenty-thirty year old male enters a room. Especially a room as highly charged as a gym. The males (subconsciously) look for signs of dominance and weakness. They want to know where they stand in relation to this unknown rival male.

A Violent World

It was a sad realisation to find myself living in such a violent world. Violence unspoken or unacknowledged but there it was plain as day, nonetheless.

Bizarre that I’d never felt this way before. History was painted as violent but not the present.

• I never felt like I lived in a violent world…

• despite the fact that I’ve had at least 2 knives pulled on me…

• despite the fact I’ve been jumped on by random men…

• despite knowing my closest mates have had bottles broken over their heads, one had a full pint glass thrust in his face (he says chicks dig the scar), and another had half his ear bitten off in a fight.

• And despite the fact that I’d joined the Royal Marines and seen war firsthand.

These are not extraordinary tales, these are just standard stories of growing up as a male in the UK (actually also Switzerland…yes it was a Swiss Army knife - I still have it somewhere).

Even just recently my mate was jumped by a gang who threatened violence if he didn’t hand over his skateboard.

Unfortunately for the gang, when he’s not skateboarding my mate is practicing crushing the life out of people as a very skilful and athletic Brazilian Jui Jitsu competitor. He didn’t hurt any of them but he showed them that he could hurt them if they continued with their nonesense.

Not All Men

When yet another high profile case of violence features on the news media and filters through to social media, women quite rightly say, ‘That’s it, we’re done…we’ve fucking had enough’. Men, on the other hand, seem to be blind to it. It goes unnoticed or If they have anything to say at all it’s the unhelpful #notallmen rally cry.

That day I walked into the changing room, a shadow of my former self, I realised it was all men…including me.

Woods & Trees

We’re just so close to the violence that we don’t actually see it. It might even be us. Dormant but still with us.

Judging by outraged protests from men online it clearly triggers that part of the male subconscious that does see it.

War What is it Good For

I can give you clear examples where I personally didn’t choose violence and yet I can’t conclude I won’t always.

One of my oldest friends from school still laughs at me because of the one night we got jumped on in town and I refused to throw any punches despite being given a black eye. I just overpowered the guy and threw him to the floor and luckily he didn’t come back for more.

More disturbing was the time my commanding officer called me a “Beefer” (which is to say he was questioning my sexuality) when I told him I hadn’t shot at anyone. I have photos somewhere (on an old school digital camera) of this incident. An innocent family standing (mum/dad 2kids) outside of the mud building they called home. A building we’d (collectively) riddled with machine gun fire only moments before. Incredibly they were unhurt but I think it was the day my belief in the British armed forces being a protective force in the world died.

Edit: Originally posted without a caption but I managed to find the journal again! My little girl (Luna 2yrs) managed to drag this Critical Military Studies journal out of the bottom of a wardrobe…reminding me of it’s existence…which means she’s at least partially responsible for this essay. It’s reassuring to know academics like Audrey Reeves think about these issues in a professional capacity.

On another patrol I found myself in conversation with an Afghan ‘elder’.

Any man older than you is respected by referring to them as Kaka (Uncle) which is how I addressed him.

He didn’t have much but he brought me his best food as is Pashto custom.

Turns out, he had been a fierce warrior himself. He had been part of the Mujahideen that repelled the powerful Russians out of Afghanistan (1979-1989).

Speaking through a translator he pointed to the horizon on the near hills that dominated the town. He spoke of the fear felt by his family members and townspeople the day the ‘tank people’ arrived.

I looked up at the hills to where our vehicles were now stationed and I imagined the dark silhouette of Russian tanks looming into view. I felt a shiver down my neck as I sensed how domineering their presence both in position and stature must have felt. I also felt really small and vulnerable like a sitting duck down here on the valley floor.

I was just thinking how terrifying it must be having a foreign army rocking up on your doorstep…when it dawned on me…he was no longer talking about the Russians.

…OMG I thought “It’s us?! We’re the tank people!”

Like this still from a TV skit shows, nobody likes to think of themselves as the bad guy. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the bad guys are always over there. That’s the rule.

I think it could be time to consider, yes, me might just be the bad guys.

As men, and as my commanding officer clearly demonstrated, we’re only ever a hair’s breadth from shifting from protector to persecuter.

We live in a violent world.

Our leaders are violent.

Maybe violence is part of the human condition, a legacy from our evolutionary past, and not just a male problem but it is clearly men who pursue violence so wholeheartedly.

Our whole modern infrastructure is shored up by violence. The fuel that warms our homes and delivers our food.

As I told my son’s headteacher the other week…the whole premise of him attending school is secured through violence -First there is a fine which if I refuse to pay will lead to a court case and further fines which if unpaid will lead to my eventual imprisonment. Prison clearly isn’t voluntary, it means being taken against your will by force.

That’s a system based on violence wether we care to admit it or not.

if we can’t educate our children or feed ourselves without the silent threat of violence what can we do?