Maybe men aren’t trash?
Becoming a good feminist made me a bad sister
All men are trash… even my brother, the lazy failure.
He was the kid that my family worries about, and I could see why. He rarely left his bedroom, tethered to Monster Hunter on his MSI gaming laptop. The blinds looking out to our front garden are always closed, and an empty pizza box could be found next to his bed. We didn’t really interact, but when I flew back in the summer of 2016 and my mother was too busy to pick him up, I took the car keys and drove to his school.
I parked five minutes away from the school gates, the flurry of cars jamming the two-way road. He sauntered to our silver Nissan Grand Livina, and it took a second to register how big he was. In the puberty burst he had when I was away, he grew to be half a head taller than me. The running joke is that he’s the big brother and I’m the elder sister.
He slid in the passenger seat, with a happy, “Hi, Sis!” before throwing his bag to the back seats and angling the car’s AC to face him. He turned the fan to full blast and slumped into his seat.
“Rough day?” I asked, restarting the car.
“You know how it is. Class is boring and I’ve got loads of homework,” he sighed. “Plus, I’m hungry.”
“Wanna get burgers on the way home?” I asked. He nodded. We turned into a McDonald’s drive through and he ordered a cheeseburger meal and a large coke. I paid with whatever money I earned from my summer internship in a finance magazine. He riffed about the comic One Piece in between bites. I feigned interest. I had no idea who the characters Luffy and Chopper were, but we had to fill in the silence somehow. I secretly tuned into the Hilary Duff CD I put in earlier instead of his anime talk. Once we got home, he scurried into his bedroom. I wouldn’t see him until the next day.
I struggle to have any conversation with him. We just lived very different lives. I moved out when he was only fourteen. I missed his high school days, prom, and admission tests for university. I was a 5-hour flight away and lived in Hong Kong, a city that embraced my ambitions and rewarded me with more work for it. While I was thriving, he went through puberty, heartbreak, and scrutiny from our parents. In 2019, he left for school in Germany, but my parents’ worries remained.
“Can you talk to your brother, please?” my dad would plead on the phone with me. “He doesn’t listen to us. You know what boys are like. But he’s been living in Germany for years and he still doesn’t have a job. What kind of man is incapable of earning a living?”
“Sure,” I said, with no intention of doing so. I didn’t want to be the third parent, especially when he’s already annoyed with ours. Maybe he’s just not ready for a job yet, I told myself. He’ll make a move when he’s ready for it.
“If he wants to be a bum, he should just do it here,” my dad said. “I don’t know why we’re paying his rent in Germany for him to be locked into the internet.”
I cringed. A third of young men live with their parents. My brother was going to add to that statistic if he didn’t get a job.
This Monday, my brother messaged “How are you?” over Discord, like a true kid from the 2000s. He told me he got a job. Finally, after four years. This should keep our parents off his back for a while. He didn’t share any more details, which is how our conversations always go. Curt. Brief. Ends in 3-4 lines of exchanged texts.
He’s living his life, I’m living mine. In Hong Kong, I surrounded myself with proclaimed feminists that love to hate on masculinity, equating it to be toxic. We quoted Dua Lipa, boys will be boys, but girls will be women. Men have the upper hand anyway, so I don’t have to care about them. I’ve witnessed their average ideas being credited in monthly strategy team meetings, saying the opening remarks for a movie night I organized, and being picked by the professor to speak in our business consulting class.
So when men are indecisive about dating my friends, or fail to call, or are being sexist, I just brush them off. I say “men are trash”, automatically diminishing half the human species into an invisible corner. I pay more attention to women’s issues, I tell myself, because we are the marginalized group in society.
But when my brother reached out, I realized I don’t know much about his life at all. I never really asked about what stopped him from finding a job. I learned recently that laziness doesn’t exist. Does that mean that something bigger is going on?
I don’t know if he’s okay. I never asked if he’s happy. In being a “progressive”, I have become a neglectful sister.
I’ve rewired myself to treat women with more empathy, having experienced the disadvantages we encounter day-to-day. I’d assume the best and focus on positive encouragement, uttering phrases like “You’re slaying it, queen!” and “I am so inspired by you” to lift other women up. How come I don’t extend the same courtesy to men? How come I don’t ask my brother these things?
In writing this essay, my dear friend Steven Foster encouraged me to call my brother.
“Do you remember when we used to grab McDonald’s after school?” I asked.
“Man, I haven’t had McDonald’s in a while,” he said. “I liked their cheeseburgers.”
“Was it a happy memory, us grabbing drive through together?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Can… you say more?” I prodded.
He laughed nervously. Then he fumbled for some words. “I liked McDonald’s. It was happy food.” He stuttered some more. “I thought Mom and Dad didn’t know we were grabbing junk food so it felt like this was something we got away with.”
I figured that he didn’t have anything else to share, so I told him that I just called him because I had this memory. And that I hope he’s doing well.
“It’s nice to hear your voice,” he said before hanging up. “We should probably call more often.”
And we probably should. I’ve been dismissing him far too frequently to give him a listening chance. So now that the invite to more conversations has come, it’s time to show up for my little brother.
Thank you to Write of Passage friends who lent their time and comments for this essay: , , , , , , , , , and .
Update log:
⏩️ I recommend these Substacks for more on masculinity:
and .📩 Changed my Substack name to Brave Brevities. In our Write of Passage breakout rooms, many friends have called my writing “brave”. I wonder if this resonates with you?
🍧 Had a fun time in Taipei meeting WOP alum
and . Nothing beats a great conversation over boba, stroller walks, and shaved ice dessert.💃🏻 Saw what was probably the most life-changing drag show of my life. Did a meet-and-greet with Pangina Heals and am on the strong lookout for Nymphia Wind.
🚲 Friends can be so kind.
, whom I just met thanks to WOP, lent me his bike card so that I can experience Taipei in a very novel way. (It was an awesome way to see the city). I aspire to be as generous to my friends.📖 Reading Joan Didion - Let Me Tell You What I Mean (page 44/149) and trying to
-ify it.
Hey Becky, this is a really honest piece, thanks for sharing it with the world. As a white, straight, English man who's lived a pretty charmed life so far, I'm always afraid to enter any conversations about these issues for fear of being shot down and told I have no place. But your piece is the first one I'm dipping my toe in to say, as you've so eloquently written, that there are lots of boys and men who want to realise their potential and become everything they can be, whilst also making room for others, treating others kindly, and having difficult conversations about inequality and injustice. I've been worried for a long time now that some men (or any person with masculine energy) will be made to equate their ambition and assertive energies with patriarchal tyranny. There's obvs a fine line between being assertive and being overbearing and in our culture it's becoming harder to have that conversation. We need more women (or any people with feminine energy) to write more things like your piece. Because it opens the door to having those conversations and helping us see that we're all just humans who need the same things: to feel certainty, uncertainty, significance, and connection. I'm rambling now but just to say, thank you for writing so honestly and bravely. I think it's fantastic you're choosing to connect more with your bro. No doubt he wants to be closer to you too but he's currently unsure how to proceed. Your maturity, courage and decisiveness is a gift to both of you
My dear friend, you have moved me with not only your words but your action.
Encouragement is the reminder one has a heart for the ages.
Well done. 🥲