On male fragility: I want to see it
The Muse Letter No. 55
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“I almost cried.”
– “Why didn’t you?”
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I have never seen my dad cry.
I remember once he did but secretly on a very rare occasion while we were watching American History X, just me and him sitting in the living room, waiting for my mum to come home, I must have been seventeen or eighteen and all of my three siblings had moved out already and somehow this movie was on TV that night and because my dad is a serious man and this is a serious movie I thought the two would match.
I did not quite anticipate the explicit brutality that would be displayed in the film, the horrors of white supremacy, that one scene, if you’ve watched the movie, you know exactly what I am talking about, a pavement, a kick, a crack. But the last thing I expected was my dad’s reaction.
„Your dad was completely destroyed last night.“ My mum told me the next morning over breakfast. „It really hit him. What kind of movie were you watching?“ she added with an accusing tone, as if I should have known:„Your dad is a very sensitive man.“
– This was news to me.