Posts

Manners Maketh Man: What We Have Forgotten About Masculinity

-
Image
  Modern masculinity is caught between conflicting messages. At one extreme, men are offered a loud, performative version of manhood built around aggression, dominance, wealth, physical appearance and the need to be seen as powerful. At the other, traditionally masculine qualities are treated with such suspicion that strength is confused with aggression, restraint with emotional repression, authority with oppression and protectiveness with control. Neither extreme offers men, particularly young men, a useful model by which to live. One tells them that manhood must be constantly proved. The other can leave them wondering whether manhood itself is something for which they should apologise. Perhaps that is why an old saying continues to carry so much weight: Manners maketh man. The language belongs to another age. The principle does not. The wisdom behind old words Many traditional sayings contain ideas that remain relevant even when their wording needs updating. “A man’s word is his ...
Post a Comment
Read more

While Disability Becomes an Identity Online, Disabled People Are Being Pushed Further Aside

-
Image
  There is a contradiction developing around disability. On social media, diagnoses are increasingly displayed as identities. They appear in usernames, biographies, clothing, tattoos and carefully constructed online personas. Some people describe themselves through a medical condition before telling us anything else about who they are. At the same time, those of us living with serious disability repeatedly have to insist that we are more than our diagnoses. We are told not to let disability define us. We are encouraged to work, contribute, remain independent and participate fully in society. Yet the same society places barriers in front of almost every one of those ambitions. That contradiction deserves examination. A diagnosis should explain something, not become everything I understand marking a difficult period of life with a tattoo. I understand wanting something that represents survival, adaptation or personal strength. Illness and disability can divide a life into b...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Disability Becomes Content: Who Gets to Tell the Truth?

-
Image
  When Disability Becomes Content: Who Gets to Tell the Truth? I am not a disability creator. I am a writer who happens to be disabled, lives with chronic illness and pain, and uses a wheelchair. That distinction matters to me. Disability informs much of my writing because it affects almost every area of my life. It influences how I travel, work, spend money, access public spaces and plan even the most ordinary day. But it is not the entirety of who I am, nor do I want everything I produce to be reduced to symptoms, seizures and suffering. My blog allows me to explore the complexity that social media often strips away. It is now read in 47 countries across six continents. My articles have also been published elsewhere, including in The Male Psychology Magazine . That is where I do the heavy lifting. Social media is primarily how I publicise that writing. It also gives me a way to share shorter pieces of honest lived experience, particularly for people trying to understand a new dia...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Brain Injury Takes Away Your Emotions

-
Image
  When Brain Injury Takes Away Your Emotions People often assume the hardest part of a brain injury is the physical damage. The speech difficulties. The wheelchair. The things other people can see. For me, it’s none of those things. The hardest part is that I no longer experience emotion. I understand emotions intellectually, but I can no longer feel them in the way I once did. For a long time, I thought my greatest challenge was memory loss. Following a ruptured brain aneurysm in April 2024, I lost more than 14 years of my life. When I first woke after surgery, I told my wife, “It’s all right. I’ll just make new memories.” It sounded logical. What I didn’t understand was that memories aren’t simply facts stored inside our heads. They help construct our identity. Our experiences, relationships, successes, failures, joys and losses gradually shape the person we become. Without those memories, and without the emotional threads connecting me to those that remain, waking up felt like b...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Public Loves Resilience Because It Costs Them Nothing

-
Image
  The Public Loves Resilience Because It Costs Them Nothing Resilience is one of those words people like to use about disabled people. They say it with admiration. They say it with warmth. They say it as though it is always a compliment. But I have become wary of the word. Not because resilience is false. Disabled people are often resilient. Chronically ill people are often resilient. People living with pain, trauma, neurological conditions, fatigue, mobility loss, and bodies that no longer obey instruction often have to adapt in ways most people never see. The problem is not resilience itself. The problem is how easily society praises it while refusing to ask why so much of it is necessary in the first place. Resilience is praised most loudly by people who do not have to pay the cost of it. That is the uncomfortable truth. When a disabled person manages to leave the house, people see determination. They do not see the planning behind it. They do not see the medication, the pacing,...
Post a Comment
Read more