Fuck Ron DeSantis.
I mean, not literally. But yeah, fuck that guy.
While signing anti-DEI legislation that would let “individuals sue local governments that implement DEI programs,” Florida Gov. DeSantis said, “I would think with DEI the disfavored groups, number one obviously, would be white males and I think they’ve been discriminated against.”
Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.
The entire Republican Party, from the president to state legislatures to local governments, is an affirmative action program for white men. White, straight, cisgender men, more specifically.
At a time when this country is rounding up people who aren’t white and putting them in concentration camps, transgender people are fighting against being legislated out of existence, marriage equality is firmly in the sights of a right-wing Supreme Court and the right to an abortion is wildly different from state to state, Republicans seriously see white, straight, cisgender men as victims.
Mind you, no one else is allowed to see themselves as victims. Republicans love to rail against “victim mentality” whenever the policies they support hurt people. To them, it’s weak to be a victim. Unless you’re a white, straight, cisgender male. Then it’s alpha, I guess?
Now, look. I have a son who is a white, straight, cisgender male. So it isn’t like I have no sympathy here. In fact, I would argue that white, straight, cisgender men are, indeed, oppressed, but not because a Black woman sits on the U.S. Supreme Court or because of preferred pronouns.
No, white guys are being oppressed by the very people who are cutting DEI programs and rooting Black men and women out of military leadership positions. The Trump administration and the Republican Party are telling people like my son that they have a god-given duty to be violent and misogynistic and dismissive of anyone who doesn’t look like them. Toxic masculinity is at the helm in this country, and we’re headed straight for a tiny fishing vessel that we’re going to blow up just for fun because we think it’s cool to kill people.
Masculinity doesn’t have to be toxic. Cruelty is not strength. Empathy is not weakness. I’ve been doing my best to teach this to my son despite the fact that he can see the most powerful men in the world are soulless creeps who think kindness and love are beta shit.
As any human with a heart and soul knows, living a life void of love, compassion and care for others is not a happy life. Yet the message in this country being fed to white, heterosexual, cisgender men is that the key to a good life is seizing power from wherever you can get it, especially from people who have less power than you. Fuck love and other sissy shit.
Unsurprisingly, this makes these men very unhappy. And their unhappiness is blamed on immigrants and drag queens and women who wear pants and complain about being called “honey” in the workplace.
And so they must oppress them. It’s literally a cycle of abuse.
According to Florida Politics, Republican Rep. Dean Black sponsored the anti-DEI bill. And his reasoning is some bullshit.
“For more than a decade, we have seen the philosophy popularly known as diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, used to divide our society into competing factions,” Black said. “Not only have millions and millions of taxpayer dollars been wasted in the name of DEI, this philosophy has fostered resentment instead of goodwill, mediocrity instead of merit. And it has divided our society against itself.”
The audacity.
The words diversity, equity and inclusion are not fighting words to most people. The people who think they are? White supremacists. Who conveniently hate women and LGBTQ+ people as well.
DEI is definitely imperfect. And there are definitely DEI programs that are basically window dressing that don’t translate into any real change. But that’s not what guys like DeSantis and Black are upset about.
DEI as a whole is a tool for dismantling structural inequality. The very inequality that DeSantis and Black benefit from. DEI threatens their ill-gotten gains.
Of course they don’t think they’re ill-gotten. They believe that they really are superior and that they only way, say, a Black woman could become a CEO or a brigadier general or a senator is at the expense of a more qualified, whiter, maler candidate. They rail against mediocrity whenever mediocre men aren’t handed accolades and power.
The entire Trump administration is the perfect encapsulation of this. A collection of mediocre, mostly white males engaged in a never-ending dick measuring contest. That’s literally all they know how to do.
It’s pathetic. They are pathetic. And they are dangerous.
With toxic masculinity running the country, no one is safe.