Before They Were Men: Essays on Manhood, Compassion, and What Went Wrong

Gender nonconforming thought leader and bestselling author Jacob Tobia offers a paradigm-shifting argument for fundamentally reframing how we think about men. The conversation about masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny has never been so prominent or heated. Alarmed by a new generation of angry, broken young men, genderqueer writer Jacob Tobia sets out to explore what's going on and comes to a shocking conclusion: Emotionally and spiritually speaking, men and boys may be the ones suffering the most under the gender binary right now. Tobia should know. For their gender-defying adolescent heart, the nonconsensual process of being "made a man" was crushing. After spending a lifetime fleeing manhood and masculinity, they dare to ask the question: What happens if we stop understanding men as categorical beneficiaries of patriarchal institutions and start understanding them for what they are--co-survivors of patriarchy itself? In a series of personal and revolutionary essays, Before They Wer