Men are not trash.

February 5, 2026February 6, 2026 / Hilary Agro / 2 Comments

Men are not trash. Perpetuating that narrative helps normalize rape culture by making it seem like it’s just inherent to their nature. It’s not, and we’ve gotta stop saying it.

I know why a lot of women and enbies say this, and I share their frustration, rage and pain. And yet, we still have to contend with the situation if we want to fix it: men are full human beings deserving of care and understanding, even the ones who do the most harm. The social system of patriarchal masculinity is what’s trash, and it hurts men too. But thankfully, systems made by humans can always be unmade. We can change anything that we collectively want to change.

If you’re a women or non-binary person and what I’ve said so far is creating a response in your body that feels really bad—if you feel defensive or angry thoughts bubbling to the surface—I invite you to read something else that makes you feel powerful and uplifted instead. I write from an abolitionist perspective focused on collective liberation, and it’s not my intention to fuel more disconnection. But I also have enough respect for the fellow working-class people I am writing for that I have a commitment to communicating from an honest place, even when I know it cannot be received by everyone at all times. Anyone who feels mostly okay, or who is up for a bit of challenge, a bit of stretching: please read on.

Humans are all born prosocial creatures, it’s how we’re wired to survive. We are primates who live in groups because we die if we’re on our own. We are literally not biologically equipped for individualism. That means that every member of our species, Homo sapiens, is born with instincts that guide them towards relationality as a core survival mode. We need other people, and we need a healthy environment to provide us with water, air, food and shelter. Acknowledging our place in this ecosystem is the core of relationality.

It takes a lot to program a human to hate, fear and dominate others, but several thousand years of internal and then external European colonization managed to do it, and now children in the settler colonies of North America on Turtle Island are raised with experiences that enforce those unnatural values on them from day one: blind obedience to authority, chronically ignoring our bodies, strict gender role enforcement. We are told, over and over, to ignore the signs our bodies are telling us in favour of external control: get up, eat what you’re given, sit still, listen, don’t whine, don’t cry, stop running so much, stop laughing so loud, don’t play with that, go to bed right now. You’re tired when it’s time to wake up? Too bad. You’re energetic when it’s time for bed? Too bad. You’re hungry or sad at the wrong time? The adults around you are too stressed to have space for that. And they are genuinely doing the absolute best that they can with the limited financial and/or emotional resources that they have.

“Men,” as in the flesh-and-blood human beings that are our brothers in the world, are not the problem. I will keep saying this until my dying breath, because we will not fix these problems until we start seeing them as systemic more than individual. If we change the system, and reconnect to ourselves and others, men—and all of us—will heal.

Our ancestors knew that systems were the danger, and knew the power and potential that humans have to harm and destroy, and had many different cultural strategies in place for managing it (many of which are explored in the excellent podcast The Emerald). Colonialism replaced collective ritual with authoritarian religions, schools, money, screens. There is a reason men are not okay.

I work with people to help them set up solo psychedelic healing journeys, and my clients are mostly men. It’s so jarring coming from sessions where men are pouring their hearts out, working so hard to heal for the sake of themselves and their loved ones, and then go online and see the discourse just dump shit all over them.

Generational trauma runs very, very deep. Things have been awry for a long time. We subject boys, literal children, to the most unimaginably dehumanizing conditions at a massive cultural scale in the imperial core, and then we participate in the same dehumanizing dynamics that are hurting us all by calling them pieces of shit for not fighting off structural forces when they were 7.

Men can and do heal, including men who’ve done severe harm. The rest of us (who all, in the imperial core, participate in harmful systems) can as well, and when we do, all of this becomes easier. It feels so much better in my body to practice loving everyone than it did to selectively fear, resent and hate people. It makes me a better organizer, a better teacher, a better parent, a better friend.

Decolonial animist spirituality, for the brave

Here, I am compelled to nudge us towards rediscovering the animist worldviews of our European (and African, and Asian) ancestors, and of almost all Indigenous cultures throughout history and still today. I don’t talk about this as much as I want to, especially considering how profoundly it’s changed my own well-being for the better, because I know a lot of people aren’t ready for it. But it is the missing piece that allows for a more holistic embrace of systems thinking at the level of the body, not just the mind.

Humans are fundamentally pro-social, but our actions and potential are shaped by spiritual forces (or systems if you’re nasty*). Once you understand this, it becomes much easier to blame the forces that are feeding off our disconnection and hatred, rather than individual humans, or lumped-together groups of people like men, themselves. (Important side note: you can absolutely view this as a metaphor if the idea of spirits makes you uncomfortable. I encourage you to free yourself from the objectivist trap of focusing on the materialist scientific “truth” of this worldview, and instead think about it as a framework through which to view social dynamics. I come from a deeply skeptical, evidence-based mindset, and animism is just as compatible with that as other philosophical frameworks, such as Marxist theory or feminism, that rely on material evidence but are not testable and universally replicable using the scientific method. The scientific method is an essential tool for many problems, but it is limited in its scope, and it cannot be the only tool in our collective toolbox. In sum, I use sage and have an altar, and I am also abundantly vaccinated.)

I will expand on decolonial animist spirituality in future writing and videos, but all I’ll say for now is: When you have 200,000+ years of our ancestors thriving and saying “this is how the world works and these are the things that must be done to ensure the well-being of our people and all living beings,” how are you gonna say “no actually, YOU’RE the ignorant morons” with a straight face as our environment collapses around us and everyone is miserable?

“All beings have an innate spiritual aliveness that connects us? Haha, no, I think me as a white lady from the most fucked up society that’s ever existed knows more than you, thank you very much.” – Me before plant medicines and serious engagement with Indigenous philosophy humbled my colonized ass.

Before I keep going, I just want to encourage you to share this article with someone else if it has felt insightful (maybe even keep it handy for the next time you see someone call men trash), because I’m an independent educator who lives at the whim of billionaire-funded algorithms and it’s hard to break through that shit, okay thank you I love you, on we go.

What to do?

So, what can we do about this situation we’re in?

If you do feel ready to do this deep, difficult, rewarding work of movement-building without individualism and shaming, here are my suggestions. But first, I want to express my gratitude to you, because it’s really, really hard to push past the anger we’ve been trained to target at our fellow human beings enough to do this. Most people are not resourced enough for it. I struggle with it all the time!

Step one is to figure out which of your identities makes you best suited to talk to other people with that same identity. As much as it sucks, I have to accept that white people are more likely to listen to me than the Black and Indigenous people I have learned from, so I talk to them. It’s a responsibility, but also an opportunity. Men, talk to other men. Straight people, talk to other heteros. Religious people, talk to others in your faith. Non-Indigenous people, talk to other settlers. Most of all, working class people, talk to each other about class issues! (Class is generally the most productive place to focus your efforts in my opinion, because it’s the great uniter, and the reason we were divided against each other by capitalists in the first place. But it has to be grounded in decolonization as well.)

Encouraging men to start a men’s group, or starting one yourself, is a hugely beneficial thing to do. Make sure the stated and practiced values of the group are decolonial, feminist and anti-oppressive.

Here are five resources I suggest to start with to build these communication and organizing skills. None are perfect, all are just tools in a toolbox. Pick whichever interests you, leave anything you don’t feel aligned with.

1) Nonviolent communication training: an incredible resource for learning how to talk to and connect with people using a non-authoritarian approach. (This is where I learned to identify how often people interpret suggestions and requests as demands, a quick way to see how unresolved trauma functions to hamstring our movements.) The intro training is free on Spotify.

2) Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba: practical advice for organizing and activism, and how to make hope something that you build with others.

3) Maybe I’m cheating by calling this one a single resource, but it’s just too good! Interrupting Criminalization has got so much! Use it all, share it all! They are amazing!

4) Shaun does amazing work speaking to and about young white men from a critical but also humanizing perspective. Here’s another of his videos, and more resources I’ve compiled for fostering positive masculinity. I have also started making videos about this!

5) If the stuff about animist spirituality above intrigued you and you’re ready to go deeper and see how spirituality is an essential component to integrate in order to combat the appeal of fundamentalist cults, then listen to The Emerald podcast. “Oh Justice” is a relevant episode, but listen to any that pique your interest. My favourite is “Snail Juice.”

Be well, keep up the good work, rest and find joy. I love you, we’re all in this together.

I quit academia to educate without gatekeeping. I’ve compiled a ton of free resources here. If you REALLY want to get down and dirty with that decolonial life, join my Patreοn to get access to exclusive patrons-only writing and videos, including my PhD dissertation, which was embargoed by my university for being too politically spicy. If you’re on a healing journey, you can consult with me about psychedelic use.

If you appreciate this article, please share it with others! Here are three ways to say thank you, and support me doing more of it:

❤️ Join my Patreon

💲 Send me a straight-up cash tip if you’re baller like that

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Dr. Hilary Agro is an anthropologist, community organizer and mother of two young children.

*this is a queer culture joke, just disregard if it makes no sense lol

Big tents: Normies joining the movement for liberation

October 20, 2025February 14, 2026 / Hilary Agro / Leave a comment

Liberals—defined as people with progressive social beliefs who generally support capitalism implicitly because they don’t know what it is or because they have a poor understanding of it, ie. those who believe “sexism and homophobia are bad but land ownership is good”—are not going to save us. No movement against fascism will ever succeed if it’s not led by the left, because fascism is capitalism in crisis. Yes, it is our job on the left to help people see this. No, we cannot sit back and let liberals call the shots.

But, can we let liberals into the movement for liberation? The question itself, though I see it discussed a lot, is misleading: in the end, no one is in charge. There’s no lineup with a broad-chested trans masc аntifа supersoldier holding a velvet rope making sure no one who’s ever said “well people taking advantage of welfare is a problem” gets in (believe me, I wish it were that easy). This is a decentralized, often organic movement. Libs are finding their way into it by being radicalized by what they’re seeing in their communities, thanks to the repulsive buffoons that run the American Gеstapο. And that’s great! That’s what we want! We should be excited by all the newly energized soccer moms and Formula 1 dads taking to the streets. But wait… They’re bringing with them some beliefs and practices that are counterproductive to the fight for liberation. Some have questions about trans women in sports, some believe that certain settler colonies have a right to exist. Not great! But also, inevitable, because we were all raised in a shitty, settler colonial system that kept us hidden from the truth of our interconnectedness at all costs.

The tent should be big. It has to be, in order to build enough working class power to challenge capitalism. But we must use this big tent to shelter people while we help them see that all our struggles are connected. Liberalism cannot be anything more than a temporary stepping stone that people go through in their journey towards anti-capitalism, guided by those who understand class, race, gender, and other intersections of oppression.

There are many critiques of the rigid purity politics on the left, where we put extremely strict ideological demands on others in order to be willing to work with them, and are quick to label anyone who doesn’t live up to our standards as problematic, sexist, racist etc, and thus not welcome in our revolution. Some of those critiques are in bad faith, coming from loud centrist political pundits who actually just want to browbeat the left into submission to make us vote for capitalist political candidates who will perform civility and throw our most vulnerable neighbours under the bus to hold onto the crumbling fantasy of peace that our white supremacist nations are built on. However, just because some of the critiques are in bad faith does not make it a non-issue. Demanding ideological purity is a problem on the left. And it’s because we don’t want to take on the responsibility of teaching and helping propagandized but well-meaning people. It’s hard and we’re tired, so instead we want people to show up already educated. That’s not a path to winning.

We don’t have enough conversations about who is going to take on the work of deprogramming well-meaning working class people who’ve been conned into prejudice. We don’t even like to admit that that work is necessary, because it’s scary to confront how complex and imperfect your average fellow human is. People can be really kind, and believe in the value and dignity of other humans, and also believe that “if you work hard you’ll succeed” or “things were fine before Тrump, he’s the problem,” both obviously false statements. Very few people are actually fixed in their beliefs and committed to their bigotry, but since that category of people provides an easy out from doing the work of helping them, we broadly lump everyone who’s remotely frustrating into that category, call it a day, and go rot in doomerism.

I do understand why people respond to those Big Tent “purity politics” critiques with “oh so you want us to let racists/transphobes into the movement,” because for a lot of liberal pundits who specialize in punching left, that essentially is what they want. They want to think of themselves as progressive, they want to be seen as one of the cool kids who’s against the status quo, but they also want to keep their cushy positions within the status quo. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They don’t understand that the climate crisis is coming for all of us, and they are stuck in a constructed reality of denial where they believe America, or Canada, or England, or wherever state they’re from that’s built on a foundation of genocide and upheld by militarized borders and imperialism abroad, is fundamentally good and all we need is the right people at the top of this house of cards and we can all go back to brunch. They don’t realize that the only reason they have positions of influence at all is that they’re useful idiots for the people in power.

So fuck that, obviously. But at the same time, when we zoom out on the purity politics issue and stop using labels as a way to dehumanize people… A broad working class movement is going to necessarily include people who haven’t deprogrammed all their prejudices.

You and I haven’t deprogrammed all of ours! How can we expect more of others than ourselves?

You likely have some fatphobia rattling around in there. Maybe some drug user stigma, some sanism, prejudice against children, probably lots of ableism. Almost certainly, unless you’re Indigenous or have been working HARD at decolonizing, you’ve got anthropocentrism.

You’re also still whole and valued. You are as essential to the movement for liberation as every other working class person. You’re a good person who cares, who was harmed and misled by the systems that hid these issues and others’ experiences from you. Just like the Resist lib who reveres the founding fathers or thinks we need cοps.

As someone who has been working for nearly two decades on building coalitions among different liberation-minded groups, and who wrote my PhD dissertation on this exact topic, it always feels very ironic and frustrating to see the impatience leftists have for some forms of ignorance and prejudice, while openly displaying others themselves. Sometimes literally at the same time! “That politician must be crazy/smoking crack.” “Put that person in prison for life!” Like, come on man, you’re killing me here.

But I understand that people are always doing their best, and the propaganda system is more well-funded than we can even imagine. That’s how good people are at heart and how oriented we naturally are towards each other; it takes billions of dollars and a vast, massive system to try to convince us otherwise, and it still hasn’t fully worked!

So we could all benefit from practicing way, way more humility and grace in movement-building work, and seeing others as propagandized and in need of guidance, rather than bad and deserving punishment/ostracism. If they mean well, help them do better.

Also, it’s highkey super useful to have pussy hat libs walking around calling themselves antifa. It takes the heat off of us! We need them muddying the waters of who the target for suppression should be!

So, what can we do?

If you do feel ready to do this deep, difficult, rewarding work of movement-building, here are my suggestions. But first, I want to express my gratitude to you, because it’s honestly REALLY fucking hard to push past the anger enough to do this. Most people are not resourced enough for it. I struggle with it all the time!

Identify which of your identities makes you best suited to talk to other people with that same identity. As much as it sucks, I have to talk to white people because they are more likely to listen to me than the Black and Indigenous people I have learned from. It’s a responsibility, but also an opportunity. Men, talk to other men. Straight people, talk to other heteros. Religious people, talk to others in your faith. Non-Indigenous people, talk to other settlers. Most of all, working class people, talk to each other about class issues! (Class is generally the most productive place to focus your efforts in my opinion, because it’s the great uniter, and the reason we were divided against each other by capitalists in the first place.)

1) Nonviolent communication training: an incredibly resource for learning how to talk to and connect with people using a non-authoritarian approach. (This is where I learned to identify how often people interpret suggestions and requests as demands, a quick way to see how unresolved trauma functions to hamstring our movements.)

2) Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba: practical advice for organizing and activism, and how to make hope something that you build with others.

3) Maybe I’m cheating by calling this one a single resource, but it’s just too good! Interrupting Criminalization has got so much! Use it all, share it all! They are amazing!

5) This one is a bit of a spicier recommendation, but if you’re ready to go even deeper and see how spirituality is an essential component we need to integrate in order to combat the appeal of fundamentalist cults, then listen to The Emerald podcast. “Oh Justice” is a relevant episode, but listen to any that pique your interest. My favourite is “Snail Juice.”

Be well, keep up the good work, rest and find joy. I love you, we’re all in this together.

Hi, I quit academia to educate without gatekeeping. It makes me very little money, but if I get enough supporters, I can do it full time. If you appreciate this article, please share it with others! Here are three ways to say thank you, and support me doing more of it:

❤️ Join my Patreon

💲 Send me some cash I can use to pay rent

👧 Buy my kids supplies like toothpaste and sunscreen!

Dr. Hilary Agro is an anthropologist, community organizer and mother of two young children.