If you’re in tech and you’ve visited social media or read any news sites in the past week, you’ve probably familiarized yourself with a certain sad and lonely manifesto that’s been making the rounds. (If you’re a woman in tech and you’ve somehow avoided reading it thus far, it’s probably a good idea to continue skipping it; nary a new idea to be found.)

As anyone with the intellect that the author of that misguided rant ascribes principally to men could predict, the author was fired by Google. The explanation for this is well worth a read.

Now, of course, comes the next part; the caterwauling of scolded children citing censorship they’ve never felt and a first amendment they’ve never understood.

“Surely,” they’ll claim, “we are being treated poorly because we are men, and because we are white!”

Then, because they’ve collectively never seen anything like struggle in their first-world lives, they’ll continue.

“We are members of the only unprotected class! Where are the feminists now when someone is being punished for wrong think and thought crime,” they’ll whine before taking a sip of their five-dollar latte and wheeling away on their ironic scooter.

It won’t bother them that they’re misusing terms from a book they did not quite understand fully when they skimmed it for a book report in their advanced English class. It won’t bother them because they are unaware.

And honestly, that’s what this all comes down to…a keenly honed lack of awareness that has been refined through generations of ‘struggle’ that could best be summarized by that one B+ that really should have been an A.

The same lack of awareness that prevents then from seeing that they’ve spent a lifetime being told “you can’t be this” until it’s so internalized that they really can’t see it. An unawareness that can look at all of the rules on a “man card” and not see what a farce it all is.

No being afraid, no crying, no jobs that someone else associates with women, no pain, no softness, no care, be the bread winner, be tall, be strong, be athletic.

Be a man. Man up. Get some balls. Nut up. Don’t be a pussy. Don’t be a bitch. What are you, a girl?

These unaware children laugh and say “you don’t see us crying about inequity” without even a glimmer of recognition that not crying about these things is evidence that we are just swallowing them whole.

Like men!

The manifesto actually had some fair points that are worth investigating, but much like anything else in life, the possibility of having a real conversation was occluded the message itself…by toxic masculinity…by gross unawareness.

The author, caught up in his lack of awareness, was appropriately handled.