The first thing that grabbed me about the Rapture’s 2011 song It Takes Time to be a Man
was the warbly, analogue fuzz of its recurring guitar and piano riff. Once that drew me in, what kept me listening were the lyrics’ hard-marriage of masculinity and empathy. In the final verse, Luke Jenner tells us that: “Well there’s room in your heart now / for excellence to take a stand / And there’s tears that need shedding / it’s all part of the plan”.
For the past year, rightwing voices have waged war on empathy. According to Elon Musk, empathy is “the fundamental weakness of western civilisation”. Others go further, calling it “toxic”, “suicidal” and even “sinful”. Certainly, the macho wing of the Maga right sees no place for it amid its (mis)appropriation of medieval history and imagery that is visible everywhere from the face paint and horned headdress of the “QAnon shaman”, convicted for his role in the US Capitol siege,
to the tattooed arms and body of Donald Trump’s secretary of war, Pete Hegseth.
And yet, consider the ideal of chivalry held by medieval knights: generosity and suspicion of profit, courtesy, honesty and the bind of your word, hospitality, abiding by the rules of combat and granting mercy to your adversary – whose life a knight takes only as a last resort. I say this not because I think the medieval knight should be the new standard for modern men, but to point out that Maga men would fail, miserably so, to live up to their own ideals.
But on 24 January, near the frozen kerb of Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, a different understanding of manliness was on display. This was a vision of masculinity that is the domain of men who have taken the time to understand that manhood lives in the deep empathy of the person who, like Alex Pretti, places his body in front of a bully’s repression, rather than in the service of it.
I have no idea what, if anything, Pretti believed about nonviolence. That he carried a gun implies that if it was his ethic, then it was so only up to a certain point. Minnesota is a state where “concealed carry” gun laws apply, and you could argue that a person in Pretti’s situation might reasonably conclude they were under assault from an armed militia, and draw their legally held weapon.
Indeed, US gun lobbyists have loudly defended Pretti’s right to carry a firearm against the Trump administration’s suggestions that bringing a gun to a protest implied violent intent. Had he drawn his weapon, a predictable logic would have played out. The Insurrection Act might have been invoked and the repression that followed would have been swift, brutal and complete.
Instead, his response resulted in a sacrifice that may have bent history and changed the course of resistance. Whether or not he made that calculation in his head at the time or not, he denied authorities any excuse for great repression.
In the end, out of empathy for the other protester, who had been pushed to the ground, rather than from a place of aggression towards federal immigration agents, he risked his life (or, simply, life ) in an act of care rather than an act of violence. The French psychoanalyst and philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle wrote about this kind of voracious acceptance of risk in a 2011 book Éloge du risque (In Praise of Risk). “Perhaps risking ‘one’s’ life lies in realising that it is absolutely singular and nevertheless not one’s own,” writes Dufourmantelle, who died tragically six years later while risking her life to save two drowning children on the southern coast of France. “Perhaps it’s life that risks itself on us.”
There is a common misconception that nonviolence means passivity. I know this is not the case because I grew up surrounded by people who believed deeply in an ethic of active, nonviolent resistance. These were people who arranged their lives around the consequences – the sacrifices – that came from their commitment to see others as we see ourselves, to a moral community beyond an identity community. As an adolescent, I claimed that this was my commitment as well. As an adult, I think nonviolence might only be an active choice when the balance of power between different parties is equal. And I don’t know if, faced with Pretti’s choice, I would have the courage to risk harm to myself. But this is the kind of courage that needs to be taught; that takes time to embody.
Years ago, it dawned on me that what drives so many atomised, disaffected young men to turn towards far-right charlatans peddling fake, puffed-up versions of what it means to be a man, is that society – US society, in particular – has only ever showed them one conception of what it means to be powerful in the world.
As a result they are, as French anthropologist Philippe Bourgois wrote about young men who joined Harlem street drug gangs in the 1980s, in search of respect, in search of being seen.
I was lucky enough to be served a different image. My childhood was full of potluck dinners at the Catholic Worker House, teach-ins about social injustice and anti-war protests. I heard my mom praying “Our father, our mother, who art in heaven” next to me at mass. I had close friendships with women and men, who taught me to be emotionally vulnerable. I gained familiarity with open doors and open hearts and the willingness to sacrifice that defines real community, rather than its thin approximations found online.
We, as a society, have to loudly shift the stories we tell boys and young men about just what type of man it takes time to become. Alex Pretti had courage and all the things the myths and tales say men should aspire to. He had them because of his empathy, because of his ethic of care. His executioners had the performance of masculinity, the kind won by meting out violence and terrorising communities.
On a street in Minneapolis, two versions of masculinity clashed. One anchored in fear, the other in care. To the young men hesitating over what kind of man to become, in the words of the Rapture: “Well take it slow and take my hand.”
