"I Refuse To Give Up On Men"
Premiered Friday May 30th, 2025 at The Future of Art in America Live at Disco Market in The French Quarter.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard “that man is just a narcissist”
I’d be a self-made millionaire already
If I had a nickel for every time, a man or a woman threw a man under the bus
We’d end world hunger
Last night someone said, “The truth is all men are dogs.”
Why do we keep saying that?
Women learn emotional regulation. It’s essential to our survival. Why don’t men?
Men are not slaves to their sexuality.
If they were, happily married men wouldn’t exist.
Why do we keep going around making excuses?
Why are so many people convinced men know exactly what they’re doing and are just trying to get away with it?
Every time I hear “that man is a just a narcissist”, I think to myself,
Why hasn’t that man been shoved out of “the nest”? How has he had the luxury of only thinking about himself up to this point?
Who coddled him? Who kept him protected?
How do we burst his bubble now so that people no longer just say that about him.
“He’s just a narcissist.”
The amount of times I have tried to be the honest person in the room, and it’s met with, “Why are you so mean?” makes me roll my eyes.
We’ve really not wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings as a culture.
Underneath whatever narcissistic affectation is perceived on these men is a person who’s just trying to do their best.
They do their best with what they know.
They don’t really know what they’re missing out on. They’re trying to learn. I imagine they’re attempting to challenge themselves and grow, but we’ve all just checked out on them. We handle them with kid gloves. They’re all probably desperately trying to connect but are met with pats on the head and ‘keep up the good work now, son’.
On top of that, do we ever compliment these people? Do they ever feel the good repercussions of their actions?
Before I moved to New Orleans, I barely felt my own, especially since the pandemic.
Everybody in Chicago always seemed to be concerned with ‘doing their job’ and ‘just getting by’.
I stood in front of my classrooms hoping to change lives, but sometimes, the kids would arrive two hours late and eat sandwiches while looking at their phone. Sometimes someone would interpret my passionate rants on the concrete problems with our industry on my Evals as ‘unorganized’ and ‘unprofessional’.
I did my best to communicate what I was trying to get across.
This is why I have so much empathy for men
I read my male students essays
All of them were trying
Trying to understand themselves
Trying to understand each other
Trying to figure out what they actually wanted
Female students would often dismiss these trying people as ‘film bros’ as if talking in class automatically made you uncool
But honestly being ostracized simply for raising your hand feels like fucking communist China or something
I heard, working on a play about what it was like, that sometimes teachers were beaten by their students for their opinions
Don’t get me wrong
There’s many men who have talked down to me
Underestimated me
Tried to seduce me and tried to pinpoint my insecurities and prey on them when they were rejected
There's many men who have lorded money over my head
There’s many men who have told me to my face that they’re offended by how much I disrespected them with my demeanor
I do not hate these men
I feel sorry for them
They don’t know that there are other ways to behave
They don’t know what they could discover if they asked more questions
They don’t know the amount of people dismissing them as narcissists behind their back
When you call someone a narcissist, it’s basically the same as calling them a child
You can’t reason with a child
You can’t be in relationship with a child
You simply observe one and go awww
That’s nice
And then you go somewhere else
Away from them
A lot of men are just children
They are not dogs but immature young people
They’re more immature than some of our actual young people
If I had a nickel for every time I heard “that man is just a narcissist”
I’d start a nonprofit with the funds to educate every person who lets a narcissist get away with it
Who gives up on a man
Simply because he doesn’t get it the first time
We can’t just let all men turn to blowup dolls to fulfill yet another escapist addiction
We have to stand our ground and explain
Here’s why you’ve alienated yourself
Here’s why no one likes you
Here’s why no one’s told you about what’s been going on behind your back
We have to do that while we also build the world we want
They’re just gonna feel more and more left out until they realize
They have to change
It’s now a matter of their survival