A person can say all the right things and fly their words as if they are banners attached to a blimp in the sky, declaring everything you stand for. But if you truly don’t feel that way, the truth will eventually seep through your pores in every single thing you do and say. If you have any hateful bias – racism, misogyny, homophobia – it will eventually come through in something you say or do.

Yes, actions do speak far louder than words, but words are words and thus, they too speak.

It all started regarding my life when I met my former boss, one who now will go down in history as being the worst boss I have ever had. We met, we shook hands, we interviewed each other respectively. The job was mine. It wasn’t an important job, but it was a necessary job. I had not broached the topic of sexual harassment or anything of that nature (because it should be implied). Rather, he did. He spoke of how he didn’t understand how men could do such despicable things and offered me his superior’s contact information. If he ever made me feel uncomfortable, I was to reach out to someone higher up than him.

Work was unbearable at times, more so with each passing day. Did I ever fear for my safety? No. What made me uncomfortable as time went by were his words. Those little things we all use on a daily basis. The indirectness of what seemed to be his carefully chosen words spilled the beans on his thoughts and beliefs. He didn’t know I was always listening to him and I can’t blame him for that. Nothing he said was very significant. He informed me that I sucked at taking phone calls, to which I must say, I do not. But, when your boss tells you that repeatedly, it might make you self-conscious while speaking on the phone in front of that boss who’s also five feet away from you at his desk, playing video games on his phone. He offered me his Adderall and talked smack about his wife. Anytime I had something to say, whether it be about a personal win or a past accomplishment, he usually shot me down. He only had room to pump up his own ego. His-self importance reeked; it filled up the room.

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The murmuring of intolerance to his buddy’s wife voicing her support of the show “The Handmaid’s Tale,” sentences carelessly strewn together with nothing but foundations of ignorance towards the LGBTQ+ community and remarks that fed directly into the patriarchal ways of viewing every breathing being under the sun, were all he could talk about. Toxic masculinity took up the air in the small office. Like poisonous gas slowly killing us all, the harm his words could potentially cause were clear as day.

As the days went on and we became more familiar with each other, the receptive nature of words leading to hurtful and stereotypical male behavior became apparent. As a father, he loved his children, but as a man, he told his children their household was a “no-crying” zone. He loved to say how women were totally free and how we had nothing at all to dislike or vent about. He thought woman had it all, declaring how if he were a woman he would “capitalize on that shit” and “sell his eggs for money.” Apparently, all of us are sitting on piles of money and we didn’t even know it. Well, I’ll be damned. So proud he was when he declared that he couldn’t remember that last time he cried and his spouting off about how crying is weak and that only strong, tough men can withstand everything life can throw at them – without crying.

Soon, there was another person in the office for him to go to bat with: a new employee. Not surprisingly, one male who shared similar beliefs and gave him a run for his ego. They would go at it verbally, playfully. This boss would tell me on multiple occasions to leave the room so he could do “100 push-ups.” He would feel too self conscious to do them in front of me. To this demand, I refused. But perhaps the last straw was this boss of mine outright directing me to not vote for Elizabeth Warren. Why?

According to him, she was nothing but an “Angry menopausal woman who would ruin everything.” The air was running out. There was no fresh air to breathe in the office of competitive male ego. There had to be better. I believe there is.

Multiple studies have shown that violence occurs more frequently in men because of the societal pressures we indirectly force and push onto men. Just as women have faced that harsh scrutiny over the decades, men are now facing it, too, and have been for some while now. Though it is 2019 and we are living in a modern world where feelings and metal health are acknowledged as being real even though we cannot see them, this idea of what men should be is still out there. I used to believe this type of thinking only belonged to and died with a certain generation, but working for my former boss taught me differently. It lives in modern society and if I was ignorant in thinking that stereotypical ideas attached to genders were dead, well, I was dead wrong.

As we seek to understand where violent actions start to gestate within a person, we cannot help but see the statistical evidence that most mass shootings happen at the hands of men and that most domestic violence occurrences do, too. If you were to browse the internet for such topics and facts, you would be inundated and overwhelmed.

The importance of our words is no longer a wussy thing to worry about. We must pay attention to the power words have. Not only do they provoke hatred, but they are harmful.

They can harm the youth who struggle with their sexuality and they can harm the small boy who feels repressed in his own “no-crying” home and has no outlet for his feelings.

They can spur actions – actions of violence and harm, if not to physical bodies, then certainly to young children whose minds are delicately forming thoughts about everything. It should not be OK to tell a small child that crying is weak and that they suck it up and be a man. There is no such thing! That sentence is nothing but weakness in the form of words. In fact, being a man is open for interpretation. So too is being woman and so too is being anything else. But first we have to learn how to be a person.

That’s real strength.

And real strength is acknowledging equality, differences, the struggles of others and throwing away destructive stereotypes.

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Photo courtesy Jules D. via Unsplash