How To Build A Better Boy
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How To Build A Better Boy
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Perspectives:
Words By: Kai-Isaiah Jamal
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We are immensely proud to have been selected as one of 30 global youth platform partners in the launch of an initiative by @ChimeForChange (founded by Gucci in 2013) and Irregular Labs to explore the role of gender today, and our fluid future of tomorrow. We present this contribution from Kai-Isaiah Jamal, whose words below are both touching and tragic, and serve to reinforce the imminent need for a new conceptualisation of Masculinity. One that includes instead of marginalises, one that protects instead of harms, and one that we can all, regardless of gender, race or religion be proud of.
Please check out the other content and partner platforms selected to share this message in the link below, and enjoy these words from Kai-Isaiah Jamal on How to build a better boy:
https://www.irregularlabs.com/gender
We live in a time where we recycle our plastics; we find new ways to wear our parent’s clothes. We buy vintage jeans and jumpers in kilo sales, but we are still struggling to unlearn and relearn our ideas of masculinity. We have not found a way to tell our boys they can be something new. As a trans man of color I am constantly questioning what it means to “be a man”, what the expectations of black men are and how toxic masculinity filters through masculine presenting folk all over.
The poem below titled Chairs explores the urgency to give the space for boys to evolve into a variety of narratives. The future of masculinity is unlearning what we have been taught it should be for years. To transform means to turn into something else, I have spent my entire life doing that. Now we Build A Better Boy by allowing him to be something separate to what we have known before. We encourage him to become a new version. We let him grow, make him aware of his privilege and how to use it but also in turn help him in helping himself to reimagine what the future of masculinity is.
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"The future of masculinity is unlearning what we have been taught it should be for years"
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Chairs
Mozambique suffered for sixteen years of civil unrest.
Men with guns longer than their spines and enough privilege in their groins.
Goncalo Mabunda is an artist, who makes chairs out of war weapons,
usually AK47’s.
Gonçalo was also the name of my friend,
a boy with skin like red wine and a smile like the width of the river.
You see my friend, Gons introduced me to Mabunda’s work,
told me he was the ‘black Picasso with more history’.
Gons used to kiss me, twice on the cheek on arrival and departure.
The only boy who didn’t utter ‘no homo’ or something offensive,
Who was relentless in his kisses,
did not care if we were in the middle of the street.
He would say ‘I greet how I greet’.
The boys on blocks also suffered a somewhat civil unrest,
where post codes would test your pride.
Knives and guns were pulled from waistbands,
stuck on a wasteland of concrete,
whilst those who could would eat on thrones.
I haven’t been home for a while,
I fear I am not ‘man enough’.
Though I don’t believe in man enough.
I do believe in making something out of something else.
Like poetry out of bad mental health -
or love out of anger, like the fragility that can be found in a fist.
Where bones are thin enough and too worthy to fracture.
You see Mabunda made something regal,
from something deadly.
Made throne from machine gun,
stopped telling the metal it was ammunition
and instead support.
And watched it hold a whole seat.
Gons would listen to my poetry all the time,
He would repeat his favourite lines
‘if a girl is a gun, a boy is a murder’
‘but what about the boys who just want to be soft’
Gons taught me softness.
How any boy can be made of the fibres he wants.
How any boy can turn into liquid and be fluid.
How any body can turn into something else.
‘You are living proof’ he’d say,
as the day waved its goodbye.
If we could teach the generation,
to teach the generation below them,
that we are all as soft as baby hairs and pulled hems.
That fragility has no room for shame,
For these chairs have their fame.
Thrones for the kings that know that they to can do something,
something different to what they brand you as.
Damn to the hands that mould the stereotypes,
you are more flower and less gun,
less shout and more hum,
more light and less spark,
more discussion and less bark.
In building a better boy,
I remember how we build a better seat.
How we take something unfree and give it a new way to be seen.
We take a gun,
take away its triggers,
take away its bullets,
give it another three friends.
Call it a leg.
Teach it to stand, knowing it is now a leg,
with a responsibility to support its other friends.
It is no longer a gun, it is no longer deadly,
it’s a medley of objects that make something better.
We take a boy,
show him his triggers,
take away his need to shoot,
give him three friends.
Call him the future.
Teach him to stand, knowing he is now a vital part of this world.
He is no longer a boy, but a man,
knowing he is a harmony of voices,
that are the new choir of men.
It is time to transform our boys into thrones they deserve,
The pistols are a sign of peace.
Of civil rest, finally resting.
Of the guns being put down.
Not held on a pedestal of power.
Because the new hours of the future sound like,
flowers sprouting from bullets.
Somewhere, where boys are allowed to be chairs.
Not made to be guns.
We must say thanks again to Chime For Change for including us in this years irregularity report, and of course a thousand thanks to Kai for those beautiful words, you can check out more from Kai by following the links below:
Instagram: @Kai_Isaiah_Jamal
Previous work: Dazed, Where Are You From, Broadly
Peace
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