THE PLAYBOY SYMPOSIUM

Growing up, I didn’t think much about my gender and the effect it had on my life. How things have changed: As I sit here writing this just after turning 33, I’m able to look back and see the many ways who I am has been shaped by what was expected of me, as a boy and then as a man. A lifetime of striving to fit into society’s expectations of manhood had stripped me of so much of my humanity that I couldn’t even recognize it at the time. I signed a bad contract. And now I’m lighting that shit on fire.

Until five years ago, I’d never read the fine print of this contract. I signed it, like most of us do, without considering the negative impact of everything deemed “just the way things are.” Unfortunately, people following patterns they see as the norm have been the cause of many of the world’s greatest injustices. Going with the flow can grant us power and social standing, but at what cost to ourselves and others?

It didn’t take long for me to realize that having 17.5-inch arms and an almost 600-pound dead lift caused people to look at me in a way that made me feel powerful—not just physically but socially as well. In a culture that teaches men to be dominant, I found myself building a body and a persona that would demand respect by being “better” than others. I did this often at the expense of my humanity and integrity. For all the time many of us men spend trying to be “good enough” or “better than,” when was the last time we saw a man apply the same effort to becoming more honest and compassionate? At the root of these extraordinary human qualities is the ability to be vulnerable, a quality too often seen as weak and “unmanly,” something most of us are taught to avoid at all costs. Going against the grain can be costly, but not nearly as costly as slowly bludgeoning our own humanity into submission.

We all know the rules in the bold-type section of the male contract. I, like many of you, had learned them so well that they just felt natural. Being respectful of women doesn’t necessarily give us the same social power as hooking up as often as possible and then feeling the affirmation of the head nods we get when telling other guys about it. Like most boys, I was taught we should get as far as girls would let us. I was taught our worth depended on our ability to deliver. Not knowing about sex, not being confident about it and not wanting it were never options. And so, in making our sexual relationships a determinant of our social value, we learned to dehumanize women to fulfill what was expected of us. Many of us lied to our friends about getting to third base, boasted about whom we’d hooked up with and never actually asked for permission to go further. We didn’t ask because we didn’t want to be seen as unsure, or perhaps because we didn’t know or didn’t care how hard it is for most women to have to say no. Our expectations of women and our own drive to “conquer” led us to give them the culturally recognizable labels of “tease” and “prude” when they didn’t do what we wanted. And then we would shame them by calling them “sluts” and “hos” for doing the same things boys and men did—things that made us “players” and “pimps.”

Once I began to recognize the double standards of sexism, I entered the fight for gender equity, thinking I was doing it for women. I soon realized I was doing it for myself and other men. The roles we’re expected to play based on our gender are damaging to everyone. Patriarchy is a social system of male domination that harms women and those who identify as gender nonconforming. But it also hurts men: It forces our allegiance to a system that will never allow us to be truly free, that insists we remain dominant and in control. The contract requires that we cut off and numb integral parts of ourselves so we’re incapable of fully knowing and expressing our emotions, or of being whole. How can we have integrity and be true to our values if we’re expected to uphold our end of this oppressive bargain?

I’ve succeeded in many of the ways men in our culture are taught to aspire to. I’ve had success in my career as an actor, earning fame and a decent paycheck. I was a nationally ranked powerlifter. And yet I was left with profound insecurity and a sense of emptiness. How could it be any other way when my self-worth relied on having to prove myself over and over again?

Mutual liberation was the antidote to my despair. I wholeheartedly believe that when we’re our best selves, we fight for what is right even when we know we’ll get pushback. Courage and integrity require this of us. I have gone through a reorientation of my heart and soul, and I know that the work of growing to understand myself better, and to effect positive change, will never be complete. Reclaiming my humanity is dependent on resisting societal pressures that tell me to conform to the status quo, that tell me to be silent about injustice and to normalize oppression, hate and even my own deep-seated biases.

Take a moment to picture the “all-American man.” If you’re like most people, you visualize someone who looks like me: a straight, white, cisgender man with a “strong build.” Over time, I learned how this default image had impacted my life and given me false confidence in my ability to be objective. If, while growing up, I never had to think much about what it meant to be a man, I certainly didn’t think much about what it meant to be white. When we’re in the dominant group, we rarely have to examine how our identities impact our survival, the way LGBTQ people, women, people of color, poor people and disabled people do.

In order for us to stand a chance at claiming our full humanity and embodying an expansive and inclusive worldview, we must be willing to go out of our way. We’ve grown up in a culture that teaches us to devalue the perspectives of the most marginalized. I did this for most of my life without even realizing it. But if we’re ever to create a world where everyone is truly valued, safe and free, we must learn to listen to the voices from the farthest margins. We must assume the same, if not higher, levels of competency and objectivity in those who don’t fit the image of the “all-American man.”

It is my honor to bring in four leaders whose voices, perspectives and brilliance need to be heard. By listening, with open hearts and open minds, we will grow to better understand others, the world we live in and, ultimately, ourselves.

In the words of one of my sheroes, Angela Davis, “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

Matt McGorry is an activist and actor known for roles on Orange Is the New Black and How to Get Away With Murder.

A FAT BLACK POLITICS OF DESIRE

BY SONYA RENEE TAYLOR

When the Australian reporter called to ask me my thoughts on the article and photos in PLAYBOY featuring pop singer Lizzo, I promptly put the journalist on hold and googled the pics. I love Lizzo, but the thought of perusing a PLAYBOY magazine had not occurred to me since 1991, when I “found” a decade’s worth of old issues stacked in my uncle’s dresser drawers like bars of gold. Snooping through his things when he lived in our basement was a regular activity of mine, particularly because he had so much porn. Thumbing through those pages, I learned everything and nothing about my own sexuality, my own desirability.

Desire, according to my uncle’s magazines, was blonde, clean-shaven, thin and white. Desire was red lips and a pouting mouth, and desire appeared to always be posing suggestively…with fruit. Uncle had other magazines. They were explicit and crass: black girls with pendulous breasts squirting milk or sprawling spread-eagle with their fingers rambling through thick black pubic hair. Every running joke I’d ever heard about PLAYBOY seemed to focus on how people read it “for the articles,” an allusion to the supposedly more sophisticated palate the magazine was said to cater to. Erudite people read PLAYBOY. Those tasteful people (read: men) didn’t want smut; they wanted beauty and class. They wanted thin, white, clean-shaven visions of desire. If the women in PLAYBOY were classy and beautiful, by default the women in the other magazines, the women with skin and hair like mine, must be smut. Dark girls were carnal but not desired. They were indeed objects of lust but not of beauty. If what I deduced about desire and beauty from these magazines was true, then what would I, could I, be as a sexual being in this body?

The fat black woman’s body has always been a marvel—even when the world found it grotesque, it found it spectacular. When Sarah “Saartjie” Baartman was abducted and enslaved by European colonizers to be exhibited naked in a cage beside a baby rhinoceros, it was the epic swell of her butt and thighs, her pronounced labia and deep brown complexion that induced white folks to pay their money to gawk at her. This is what fat black girls like me came to expect for our bodies. I knew men might watch my ass sway beneath a sundress when I walked to the corner store in July. Men would spit their hunger toward me, spectators graciously detailing the myriad ways they would consume this prey set in motion before them. Of course it was my duty to appreciate that someone might want to devour me, that someone might want this undesirable body.

Not until I saw myself reflected in the brilliant tapestry of other black women—women I desired—did I begin to see desire and beauty as possible in my own being. But those women were not in magazine spreads. They were in kitchens in Oakland and Baltimore. I met them in mediation circles and at marches. Black women pouring into the streets to protest the murders of unarmed black bodies—it was in these sacred spaces that I saw how we are lovers and healers, desired and wholly beautiful. It was black women who told me I was a being of magnificence and sumptuous delight, and it wasn’t until I began believing them that I was truly liberated into the fullness of a sexuality formed of my own definitions. Lizzo is gorgeous in her spread, but she is we—fat black girls have always been worthy of desire and respect, and we never needed a magazine to tell us that.

Sonya Renee Taylor is founder of the Body Is Not an Apology movement and author of The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love.

ON NONTOXIC MASCULINITY

BY RICHIE RESEDA

By the time most of us are 12, we’ve punched someone for pride, lied about sex for cool cred and called another boy “gay” for not being “man enough.” This is what toxic masculinity teaches us—that we’re measured by our physical prowess, by how much money we make and how many womxn we “have.” (Womxn is a spelling many feminists use instead of women, to recognize the independence of womxn from men.) But what do we do when we’re ready to ditch these chains?

Consent doesn’t start in the bedroom—it starts with the first glance. Feeling attracted to someone doesn’t entitle me to stare, linger or look them up and down. Contrary to what music videos and middle school taught me, it’s not sexy—it’s creepy. Just like it’s not okay to express sexuality with my body to people who aren’t down, it’s not okay to express it with my face either.

The same goes for my mouth. Toxic masculinity dictates that I verbally express sexualized appraisal at all times, that these are “compliments.” But they’re not. Rather than assume people want to talk at all, I’ve found it’s best to ask for permission and start with regular conversation. “Hi, can I talk to you?” works great. And if they say no, well, that means no.

I sometimes struggle with the idea that my manhood, and therefore my value, doesn’t originate in my wallet. I drive a 1992 Acura Integra that looks like it once decorated a telephone pole. It gets me where I need to go without problems, but I feel embarrassed.

The toxic devil on my shoulder tells me that I should be in a Model S, that driving a more expensive car would make me bigger, more powerful, more “manly.” To escape this mythology, I remember that I’m not valued by what I make but by what I give. Driving a sensible car gives me the freedom to support friends and family financially when need be, and to donate to causes I believe in. This reminds me that my purpose is to help, not to ball out.

Getting man points for physically dominating others with athleticism or violence is another tough one to shake. It’s insidious, because I know choosing not to play this domination game can get me hurt, or at least ridiculed with insults that liken me to “weak” people like womxn and queer folks.

Combating this takes courage, dedication and tolerance for discomfort. When someone “disrespects” me or the people I’m with, I must have the confidence to resist the urge to bark back, get revenge or “come out on top.” I instead seek resolution and prioritize safety. This doesn’t guarantee I’ll be safe, but neither does violence.

Today, this is revolutionary—to pursue solutions instead of domination. But it’s vital. Violence escalates when I fight fire with fire rather than with water. Fighting with water doesn’t mean allowing myself to be victimized; it means the opposite. The nontoxic way to deal with conflict is to solve problems rather than to “prove myself.”

This is why toxic masculinity is easy. It means going with the flow and being cool with it when the river cascades off a mountain. Nontoxic masculinity is hard. It means swimming upstream…but it beats falling off a cliff.

Richie Reseda is a formerly incarcerated feminist, organizer and producer of Indigo Mateo’s 2019 album, Intuition.

ON PRIVILEGE AND FREEDOM

BY MUNROE BERGDORF

We are living in a time of social recalibration. Our understanding of oppressive structures has never been as widely acknowledged, discussed or deconstructed within the mainstream as it is today. The language we use for this is expanding, thanks to decades of thought put to paper, largely by womxn, people of color and the LGBTQ community, about what it means to be seen as “less than” by those who hold social power.

Discussions surrounding race, gender identity, sexual orientation and other factors have helped us identify which cross-sections of society are most likely to be placed at a social disadvantage. These conversations have benefited greatly from the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, a leading American scholar of critical race theory who coined the term intersectionality in the late 1980s; today, intersectional feminism recognizes the political and social disparities that impact our identities. The experience of an upper-class, white, cisgender, heterosexual woman will differ from that of a working-class, black, transgender, queer woman. And in understanding that difference in experience, we can understand and pinpoint systems of oppression such as racism, transphobia and sexism in a more nuanced way.

It wasn’t until I discovered Crenshaw’s work that I felt truly close to feminism—I found so much of the feminist theory I had been exposed to either dismissive of womxn who hadn’t been assigned female at birth, or focused primarily on the needs and experiences of Western white womxn. I craved a branch of feminism that took into consideration the fact that womxn don’t come in one form. We all have different stories, different struggles and different lessons to teach one another, so it’s vital that the womxn’s liberation movement reflect that.

Intersectional feminism allows us to see who holds power within society through the lens of privilege—a word often used in discussions of social justice today. Privilege is the recognition that some of us are afforded a head start by virtue of our identity. Privilege doesn’t mean your life has been easy; it just means it would have been harder had you also been born X. It’s important to recognize that privilege isn’t fixed, just as our identities aren’t fixed—we change as human beings throughout our lives, and so may our social privilege.

With all this language being adopted into the mainstream consciousness, it’s important to note that this expanded terminology isn’t necessarily new. It originated largely from conversations that have been going on within marginalized communities for a long time. The fact that you may not have heard them until now is due largely to the historic lack of diverse voices within the mainstream, and limited discussion of racism and prejudice in a real, nuanced way from the perspective of those who experience them. Terms such as mansplaining, cultural appropriation, white guilt, heteronormativity and cisgender help us disestablish certain behaviors and identities as “normal,” thus allowing those who are marginalized not to be seen as “other.” Being straight and cisgender may be common, but common isn’t the same as normal. There’s power in the language we choose, and there’s freedom in our willingness to understand how it affects others who don’t have what we have.

It would have been hard to imagine even 10 years ago the conversations we’re now having about our different experiences in society. Maybe we got too comfortable within the boundaries of our privilege, or numb within our oppression. But if we’ve learned anything since the start of the #MeToo movement, it’s that we must never be complacent, because those who would wind back our freedom of choice, expression and identity are anything but. We must stay active, we must stay vocal, we must stay informed. In the quest for equality, we must be conscious of what we’re striving to be equal with and certain that we don’t repeat the oppressive behavior of some privileged communities. Freedom must come from reconfiguring society in a way that’s inclusive and not reliant on the exploitation, suppression or ostracism of any societal cross-sections. Freedom has to be a consistent and sustainable goal—freedom for all, not just power for some.

Munroe Bergdorf is a London-based activist and model.

SOME OF THE MEN ARE VICTIMS. SOME OF THE MEN ARE HARM DOERS

BY DARNELL L. MOORE

I returned to my friend’s house to let him know I’d made a decision to move on. What we’d shared had complicated our bond—especially the best parts we’d hidden and feared others would discover.

We were two men in our mid-20s who were not yet free. We were broken and often demonstrated our love by breaking each other with ease. I knew as much and had readied myself to leave the man who had been, at times, my best friend, my brother, my confidant, my colleague, my sex partner, my secret, my nightmare and my only desire.

I sat opposite him on the couch in his bedroom. I didn’t sit on the bed, because positioning myself too close to him, in the very spot where we’d broken the rules that real men are taught to follow, would have signaled an invitation to return to where we once were.

His eyes were fixed on me. My eyes were locked onto my hands. His words were precise—there would be no ending to the friendship whose very beginning was complicated because of our secret. I knew I needed to leave, however.

And then he grabbed and pulled and held and pushed me down and resisted my resistance and took off my clothes. I pulled away and removed his hands and clenched my lips and resisted his insistence until I finally stopped and froze and lay there while he broke the rule that real men are taught is okay to break.

Seven years we shared a friendship, and that is how it ended. It would take another seven years after that ending before I was able to put a name to what had transpired.

I wanted to be wrong. I wanted to believe that love was enough, that our long history of sexual intimacy was enough and that the realities of our complicated friendship were enough to reconsider that what had occurred was rape.

I did not want to believe I was a victim; I am a man. And before I was a man, I was a boy who was forced to have sex with an older female relative who tried to convince me that my body was not mine. And real men can’t be victims because real men fight back.

No real man would allow his body to be pillaged. But I didn’t fight back because I was in shock. I loved my friend. Real men take; they’re never taken. I’d had sex many times throughout my life not realizing that fact.

Men are taught to ignore every “no” offered because our “yes” is the final word. And even now, as I reckon with the confusion left from that moment, I’m clear that I was taught the same lesson.

An intimate’s “yes” is an invitation. Like so many men, I was not taught to be welcomed into another’s space. I was not explicitly told that I needed permission to touch the body of another. I was not encouraged to take the time to ask about another’s desire. But I know that if I’m to land on the other side of violence and in a place where my humanity is left intact, I have to refuse all the lies about manhood that I’ve been taught are true. I have to move beyond all I’ve learned and aim to be a better lover, a better intimate, a better human—for the sake of others and myself.

And I must not forget that intimacy, in its various forms, can be a safe horizon to which we men ascend if we aren’t led to believe we’re at our best when we leave behind the broken pieces of those with whom we engage. The consequence of our respect—of others’ bodies, of others’ needs, of others’ spirits—is wholeness.

Darnell L. Moore is head of U.S. strategy and programs at Breakthrough, a human rights organization, and author of No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America.