I see…

 the pain, the suffering, the loss of innocence, of dignity, of safety, of life.  

I see…

that whether by direct action or a lifetime of indifference, all men (myself included) are complicit in perpetuating a culture of exploitation; complicit in allowing a world that denies women – who bear the image of God as fully as men and who are worthy of dignity and respect – their full worth and freedom.  

I see…

the trauma, the wounds, the scars, the fears women have had to endure. How for centuries empires have colluded to treat women as less than equal, less than human. How deep are the roots of our wrongdoing, and how inequity is propped up by bad theology and politics, how power is leveraged to maintain the status quo, how violence is unquestioned, unchallenged, unchanged; and how long it’s been this way. 

I grieve…

when I consider what men have done to women; how we’ve minimized, trivialized, vilified, ignored, ridiculed, dismissed, objectified, exploited, abused, beaten, raped, tortured and killed women. How history, culture, traditions, and even religion have conspired to keep women “in their place,” which is to say…lower than men. How we presume to know a “woman’s place” whether we dare say it out loud or not. 

The pious condescension as we rationalize our actions because women are the “weaker” sex; never stopping to consider that maybe women are weakened by injustice and not by inherent design. How we confine a woman’s freedom and potential in a corral of shoddy theology and tired tragic cultural norms as if it was God’s will.

I grieve…

the violence women have endured not just from our hands, but from our mouths and minds. The unrelenting innuendo; how we call women “hot” like they’re a pepper or a pizza but never a person. How we hold them to an impossible standard of “beauty” then mock them when they don’t meet it. How we reduce the person to her parts.

I grieve…

how easy it all is. 

How acceptable and normal our language, jokes and metaphors have become. How easily we can pass off both our thoughts and behavior as boys-being-boys, and then hide like cowards behind culture, custom and history. It’s always been this way they tell us. It always will be…

I confess…

The savage language; we call them…bitch…whore…or worse and our words echo and linger like a poisonous cloud.  

My own cooperation in commodification; how I stumble from a wanton lust that takes pleasure in the form of a woman but denies her the respect and dignity she deserves, and stumble towards a pious resolve to “stay pure” and “keep myself accountable,” yet never giving a second thought to the object of my appetite – to the human being I’m using to satisfy my hunger whether she be on a screen, a street, in my mind or in my bed. 

I confess…

my ambivalence as I claim to respect women and yet refuse to seriously consider, much less challenge a culture that makes victims out of the vulnerable; ambivalence reflected most clearly in my tolerance of porn. And though I never told the dirty jokes, I never called out the ones that did. And though I never abused  women, I ignored the ones right in front of me who did. 

I confess…

my indifference, my insensitivity to a world that affords me privilege and deference because I’m a man, and not just a man, a white man, an educated man, a big man, while at the same time, denies women the equality, dignity and opportunity they deserve. 

I wait…

for wisdom. for strength and the grace to become a different kind of man.

I’m a sucker for war stories. Neither my father or I served in the military yet we shared a fondness for those old, mostly black and white World War II movies. If there was a good one on TV, there was a good chance we’d hunker down in the family room to watch it, no matter how late. There’s something in our collective male consciousness that I think is drawn to the idea of a brave soldier, and Hollywood knows just how lucrative this narrative is. A quick Google search shows that the top 10 most profitable war movies to date accounted for nearly 4 billion dollars in sales. Clearly I’m not the only sucker. 

But something changed near the end of my cross country bicycle ride in 2020. It was the last clear day before the smoke from the fires that raged up and down the West Coast reached the inland Northwest. I was riding across the Blackfoot Indian reservation from Browning to Choteau, Montana along the Rocky Mountain front when I passed a roadside monument; a sculpture made of random pieces of metal welded together to reveal an abstract but stunning picture of a giant Indian warrior on horseback. It was a convenient place to rest in a sea of rolling prairie that seemed to go on forever, so I stopped to rest and take it all in. 

Based on history and culture, you would assume that this monument represented men. So it got me thinking, why? Why are men taught to assume the role of the warrior? Why are we drawn instinctively to that image? Men are taught implicitly and explicitly that this is their identity. From early on, we’re told that we are the protectors, the providers, the defenders. We fight for what’s right, fall on our swords, take the hill, storm the castle, invade and conquer, fight and die. This is who we are; who God made us to be. I’m not so sure anymore.  

The rest of the day was reasonably quiet with little traffic or headwind, so I was able to reflect on that image and the ideas perpetuated by it. I came to the conclusion that while this notion – I call it the “Warrior Mythology,” is a formative story for men, isn’t’ the final word. Myths, in the sense in which I’m using them here are simply are the stories that shape us. They don’t have to be true, but they do have to contain truth. The most powerful myths speak to the deepest parts of our existence, to our deepest hopes and fears. In the healthiest sense, myths are aspirational narratives that speak to the best of who we want to become; fictionalized characters that are human enough so that we can identify with them, yet imbued with nearly divine qualities that point us towards something greater.

William Wallace (a.k.a. Braveheart)is a common warrior myth. He’s brave, women love him, the enemy fears him he’s got killer hair and looks damn good in a kilt. But rather than being aspirational, I think common warrior myths like this are actually a debilitating narrative for both men and women. These kind of stories exalt the twisted idea of masculine strength while simultaneously diminishing the inherent strength of women. Let’s be honest, how many times can the same ten guys lead the charge against the English army before they’re all slaughtered? Second, by diminishing women, it reduces them “damsels” that have to be rescued. Third, it substitutes the idea a protective role for a core identity. Fighting, protecting, defending and all the other stuff warriors do is not gender specific. If you’ve ever watched a youth soccer game or a parent night at the local high school, you can’t tell me that women aren’t equally protective. The label “momma bear” isn’t code for a benign cuddly forest creature. 

That last point is perhaps the most insidious problem here. Myths become toxic when they tell a story that diverges from deep and transcendent truth. The warrior myth is no exception to this rule. If our identity is “man-as-warrior”, then everything is a battle to be fought. It us-vs-them in everything we do; a zero-sum game of winners and losers. Anyone not on our side is the other, the enemy. The warrior mythology glorifies violence but not always true strength. And I think the most damming thing about this mythology is that it perpetuates a deep, systemic inequity between men and women. Men are the “knights in shinning armor” full of agency and the power to save the world while women are the “damsels in distress” perpetually in need of rescuing. The myth substitutes the temporary and very limited idea of rescuing someone with the hard but enduring work of true advocacy. 

The stories we hear as young boys have predisposed us to believe these myths. And not only that, their power often lead us to “read” these messages back into relationships, circumstances and even, in the case of Christians, Scripture itself. Men, how many times have we heard (and believed) statements like “men are supposed to lead,” or, “its the mans job to protect and provide for his family,” or, “the man is the head of the household.” These are heavy, myth-infused burdens and for so many years I did my best to carry them because I believed them to be true. When I got married I did my best to lead my wife until I realized that she’s a gifted leader in her own right. When it was time to have children, being the “head” that I was, I exerted my authority in ways that were often less than perfect and did more harm than good. As our kids grew, I leaned more and more on my wife; sharing the leadership burden more and more with the one person in the world capable of co-leading our family. Our kids are now in their late 20’s and mid thirties. We’ve got grandkids too and if you were to ask them who was the “head” of the Perez house, they would say, “mom and dad.” 

The point of all this is that the warrior mythology tells men that roles like protector, defender, provider are our core identity, when in actuality these are roles that we can and must assume when situations demand, but they do not and should not define us as men. Our myths tell us (men) that we should be brave warriors on horseback winning the battle by virtue of our inherent strength, courage and wisdom; we’re William Wallace in jeans and a sweatshirt. But the truth of the Gospel story suggests that we should be more like the horse; anonymous, disciplined, powerful and surrendered. 

Like most cyclists, I favor smooth flat roads free of debris and annoying traffic. Throw in some sweeping downhill grades and a tailwind and riding a bike is nothing but enjoyable. Riding 1000 miles from Washington to Montana in 2020 gave me no assurances that this would be my experience. Along the way I did experience some pretty sweet stretches of asphalt though. Cruising through the Columbia River Gorge with a 20-30 mph sustained tailwind was sublime. Climbing a hill to greet the sun on a cloudless, calm morning in the desert is truly awe inspiring. But it wasn’t always that way. Some days the wind blew…the wrong way…and it sucked. Sucked the breath from my lungs, the strength from my legs and the resolve from my heart. Some days I had to choose between broken glass and bloated road kill on the shoulder and tandem FEDEX trucks in the inside lane. Some days there were no shoulders, just narrow country roads with tired hay truck drivers and (based on what I could tell by their driving skill) drunk drivers in 4×4’s hauling obscenely large boats. Some days the road disappeared altogether and was replaced with deep soft sand and sagebrush. 

Every road has something to teach you. On one particular stretch near the east end of the Columbia Gorge, I was overcome with joy at the beauty that was unfolding in front of me. It helped that I had a tailwind on a long downhill stretch with the river on my left and a giant cliff on my right sheltering me from the near 100 degree heat. But I felt gratitude. And I said so…to myself, and I think God heard me. Another stretch of pavement taught me how to focus. The road was narrow and heavily traveled by large trucks. The shoulder was marginal at best and littered with rocks, some the size of softballs. For what seemed hours, I slalomed through the debris on the shoulder and when I couldn’t avoid it, swerved out into the lane between approaching vehicles. On another particularly difficult day, the road provided headwinds so strong that trees were coming down across the road as I passed by. 

I think the most valuable thing I learned traversing all these different roads was to simply take what the road gave me. If it was a tailwind and a long downhill, I smiled and let gravity do the work. If it was 4 mile climb in 100 degree heat, I drank a lot of water, found a gear that kept me moving forward and leaned into the struggle. 

Mind you, I didn’t always approach the challenge this way. Early on, I tried to conquer every hill by standing out of the saddle and grinding as hard and fast as I could, but some hills are simply too long, some winds are just too strong to sustain that kind of effort. That doesn’t mean you can’t conquer the hill, but you have to be willing to slow down, settle in for a long struggle, find a rhythm. When I did that, I learned that stroke by pedal stroke I could climb any hill. I really did. Some hills were short; maybe a couple hundred yards. Others were longer; a mile, 5 miles. The toughest was 99 miles. But I learned to take what the road gave me and I made it. 

A year ago I accomplished a lifelong dream; a solo, long distance bicycle tour. Half way through the journey, dehydration and dangerous roads forced me to alter my route. The redirect had me crossing the Flathead Indian Reservation in Northwest Montana, along the Mission Mountains around the southern corner of Flathead lake to the west gate of Glacier National Park. Any one of these sights is stunning, but the way they’re piled up in one spot is absolutely breathtaking. On the day I rode there the weather was crystal clear, cloudless and calm.

Initially, the beauty of the scenery was all but obscured by the traffic. Pandemic be damned, the narrow mountain road was clogged with pickups, logging trucks, SUV’s and giant motorhomes. As was the case for most of my trip, motorists did their best to give me space, but I was following the Flathead River through the mountains which meant the road was winding and sometimes the shoulder would all but disappear. I probably don’t want to know just how close some of these vehicles actually came to me. As I pedaled on, a profound irony came to mind. Surrounded by the treeless, razor sharp peaks of Glacier Park, I couldn’t help but feel the tension between the beauty around me and the ugliness of the world and the work I do. The ugliness became clear to me years ago when, early into my journey in the anti-sex trafficking effort, I sat down with my friend Esther. She is a national expert on the trauma inflicted on sex trafficking victims. I asked her to help me better understand this issue. So with great detail and carefully chosen words, she began to unpack the nuances and systemic roots of this heinous evil. At one point I stopped her to ask for clarification. I said, “…so you’re telling me that all across the country men are paying to rape (that’s what non-consensual sex is even when there’s money involved) and abuse young women, boys and girls, and other men are profiting from these transactions?” She looked at me with the satisfaction any good teacher knows when a student gets it and said, “Yes. That’s what this is.” Ugly. That’s what it is. And in the ten or so years since that conversation, I’ve seen a lot of it. I’ve heard the stories of countless survivors who were bought, sold, beaten and abused. Even uglier are the stories of the men who consider it their right and privilege to buy sex and thereby fuel the demand that drives this evil market. Myself and the men I work with have been on the receiving end of obscene text messages, images and not-so-veiled threats of violence including death. The work is ugly. But that day while pedaling along the Flathead river, I recognized a deep and mysterious irony hidden within all this ugliness and it is simply this: beauty is has a restorative effect in the face of evil. There’s so much ugliness in our world today and it’s way too easy to focus on it. True beauty isn’t an escape from ugliness as much as it is a tool that helps you navigate your way through it; and for reasons I don’t fully understand yet, it makes you stronger, and more resilient.

Racial tension, hostile-even lethal political divisions, pandemics, suffering of all kinds; there’s no shortage of ugly to focus on. And I’m guilty of prolonged and obsessive focus on the ugly. I’m a news junkie and over the course of 2020 I feel as if I’ve devolved into a moth drawn to the incessant flame of 24/7 news. But what I’ve learned since that day near Glacier Park is that beauty acts like a vaccine against the the withering effect of the ugliness around us. It doesn’t make the ugliness go away, but it can inoculate us against its most debilitating effects. Beauty is incomprehensibly diverse. Culture and tradition have taught us that things like paintings, sculptures and other more classical styles of art are “beautiful.” This is certainly true, but there’s so much more. We know that nature itself abounds in beauty; sunrise, sunset, storms, wildlife, plant life cry “look at me and find beauty!” If you can learn how to recognize it, you’ll begin to see it everywhere. After 10 years of full time work in the anti-trafficking movement, I began to realize just how desperately I needed beauty.

A couple years ago my organization was asked by the director of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to host an awareness event in the middle of the largest gathering of bikers in the world. Even if you don’t ride, you’ve probably heard or seen stories about this notorious spectacle. Part of our plans for this event was a motorcycle raffle made possible by the generous donation of a brand new bike from Indian Motorcycle. The bike was a stunning piece of machinery made even more so by a one off custom paint job and thousands of dollars of custom parts. The colors, the lines, the design of the motor and the execution of that design reflected all the key elements of beauty; design, craftsmanship, aesthetics. And the beauty was even more evident by its proximity to some genuine ugliness. The Sturgis Rally attracts more than 1/2 million bikers from all over the world. The atmosphere is not unlike a frat party on steroids…only the frat boys are mostly middle aged men pretending to be outlaws. The streets are filled with overweight, older men wearing leather in 100 degree South Dakota heat. Much of their time is spent drinking and leering at young women wearing next to nothing. The women are there to make money. Bartenders can make several month’s worth of wages during the Rally, but it comes at a cost. They’re required to dress like Victoria Secret models and endure endless corse come-on’s from men. And many of these women (some are even teenagers) are forced to do more. I met one who spent one entire Rally locked in a dark hotel room where she was sold for sex multiple times a day, all day. She was back that year for a much different purpose; to assist in the identification and rescue of victims. I stood at booth on the West end of Lazelle St. with a group founded by a husband and wife who were by all appearances, bikers. Leathers, tattoos and all. They were also licensed therapists and victims themselves of sexual abuse and exploitation. The banner flying over their booth read “Bikers Against Trafficking” and as I stood there talking with “Doc” about their work, he told me that earlier that same day the street was clogged with bikers headed out of town. They were stopped at the light right in front of the booth when he noticed an overweight, weathered old biker. On the back of his bike was a young girl about 16 years old. She looked at Doc, read the sign and mouthed the words, “Help Me!” Before he had time to even write down a license plate number, the light turned green and they roared away. There was nothing he could do to help her. Ugly.

Does the aesthetic beauty of a well engineered motorcycle make up for the hellish abuse inflicted on vulnerable people by privileged men who believe they’re entitled to rent others bodies? Absolutely not. But I can tell you after more than ten years in this work that learning to recognize, name and dwell on true beauty in all its forms acts like a vaccine against the withering effect of chronic ugliness.

In 2011 I got involved in the anti-sex trafficking movement. When I began, I envisioned an army of well equipped and passionate men who would rise up and…you know,  save the children. These men would fight for the safety and security of our communities. And the evils of sex trafficking would become a thing of the past. It’s not an oversimplification to say that this was the story I had in my head when I began my journey in this work. Now, I’m not a cop, celebrity, or mental health worker who brings technical expertise to this work. In most respects I’m just a guy like a lot of other guys who care about this issue. Those who know me often describe me as a “guys-guy;” I ride motorcycles, work out a lot and enjoy many of the things our culture would associate with manliness. 

So when I saw what was happening, I did what you would expect a normal guy to do; I got angry; and that anger motivated me to act. So I organized motorcycle rallies, I told everyone I met about what was going on. Eventually I started a nonprofit organization and called it EPIK which originally meant “Everyman Protecting Innocent Kids;”catchy, but not a great idea. More about that later. I recruited like minded guys and I called them to be real men and challenged them to fight and save and rescue and defend victims of exploitation. I believed that if men only knew what was going on, they would surely rise up in response. My approach during these early years was to tap into what I call the masculine nerve. I repeatedly appealed to the notions of defending and protecting because that’s how men typically think. That’s how I thought. I used battle metaphors to communicate a sense of urgency. I spoke of our effort to engage this issue as a “fight.” In my mind, this made sense and would obviously lead to real solutions and real change.

After more than 10 years into this journey I’ve realized that while you can frame this issue in military terms, it’s actually better to confront it head on as a business. Less William Wallace and more Wall Street if you will. The reality is that I’m never going to carry a badge and gun. I’m not Liam Neesom with a “special set of skills” capable of single handedly dismantling this crime and the systems that enable it.  I do however, understand supply and demand. Sexual exploitation is a supply and demand business model. Men are the source of that demand. If there were no buyers, there would be no business…no exploitation…no trauma inflicted on the most vulnerable among us. You see, the smart phone in your pocket is the brothel of the 21st Century, so we began our work nearly 10 years ago by attempting to disrupt the online sex market. We posted fake ads selling sex and attempted to intercept active sex buyers at the point of sale. The original goal of our interaction was to deter buyers by exposing their activity and reminding them of the threats that activity posed. Along the way, we’ve helped law enforcement by identifying traffickers and predatory buyers. We’ve even had conversations with suicidal men contemplating sex buying as their final act. We’ve seen up close the ugly reality that sex buying is enabled and legitimized by a cultural narrative about masculinity. It’s a narrative that so thoroughly normalizes sexual entitlement for men and the corresponding pressure on women to comply, it’s hard to envision things working differently. 

But they can and must work differently because we cannot arrest or legislate our way out of this problem. The long term hope for eradicating exploitation ultimately lies not in arrests, prosecution or policy, but in creating a healthier masculine culture. While these things were dawning on me a few years into my journey, an unexpected change started happening in me and the guys I work with. We correctly assumed that if we simply disrupted the transaction – the attempts of men to purchase vulnerable people’s bodies – we might do some good. We weren’t trying to be cops, we were trying to speak candidly to men about what their behavior was doing to the victims, their communities and even to themselves as buyers. And we got really good at doing this, but while we were becoming experts on disrupting the commercial sex market, we realized that a deeper disruption needed to take place. It was becoming increasingly clear that behind the transactional reality of sexual exploitation was a deeply rooted narrative that has shaped generations of men to believe that they were entitled to rent another person’s body for their own sexual gratification.  This hit home the night I listened in on a conversation between one of our volunteers and an active sex buyer. Our volunteer was carefully attempting to steer the conversation away from the transaction and put the focus on the damage being done to vulnerable people. His words were thoughtful and measured, but in the middle of his explanation about the trauma victims endured, the buyer interrupted by saying, “…whatever dude, I just want to get laid” then promptly hung up. 

If we’re serious about eradicating sex trafficking and disrupting the market that fuels it, we must first disrupt this narrative and ultimately offer a better vision of what it means to be a man. Disrupting the market requires disrupting the narrative that enables and empowers the market. And this kind of disruptive action inevitably leads to a different and unexpected kind of disruption; it becomes personal. Our unexamined and potentially toxic views of masculinity are disrupted and we’re faced with a choice: deliberately perpetuate the same old masculine paradigm with its lust for power, privilege and violence, or embrace something better. I call it, a better ManStory. 

After more than twelve years of full time effort in this work, I’m convinced that lasting change will only be fueled by a large scale movement away from toxic masculinity towards something better.  By definition, “toxic” refers to something that breaks down the bonds that create health and life. Toxic substances destroy life and connection. Likewise, toxic thinking among men does the same thing. Think for example, about how men leverage power. Victims will tell you that sex trafficking is as much about the abuse of power as it is about sex; perhaps more so. If men are serious about making a lasting difference, it is vital that we understand this nuance.  This means, that when men try to help, they tend to do so from a position of power and influence which is less than helpful. You see when men approach engagement in the anti-trafficking effort from our position of gendered power we run the risk that our well-intentioned efforts will be perceived by the very people we’re trying to help as simply men trying to dominate and exert control over the situation. And rather than being helpful, we end up triggering the very people we’re trying to serve. 

Or think about the words we use. You see, words matter; this is especially true when men come into this work. Our words expose the truth about how we view our role. Here’s what I’m talking about; trafficking victims have been conditioned and coerced by the calculating and insidious use of words their traffickers utilize. Therefore, the degree to which our language mirrors that of traffickers can either help or harm those we seek to serve. So it is incumbent upon us as sincere men who want to make a difference that we choose our words carefully. The word “protector” is a case in point. At first glance, protection seems like a normal human response to the exploitation of vulnerable people. But when men identify this way and use this kind of language, it’s fraught with problems. The reason this word  is problematic is that traffickers often use the label of “protector” with their victims as a manipulation tactic to enforce compliance. So when well-intentioned men show up and insist on being “protectors,” they can be perceived as reinforcing this same abuse of power. Perhaps more importantly, when we insist on assuming the role of protector, we devalue the power and resilience of the survivor herself. Unless you are law enforcement, a trafficking victim doesn’t need someone to protect them. In fact, I would argue that anyone who’s endured the trauma of sexual exploitation should be respected for their strength and not kept in a state of perpetual vulnerability by well meaning men who think the only thing they can do is continue to “protect” women. Seeing ourselves as the protectors of sexual exploitation victims is a stubborn habit that is hard for men to overcome. That’s because we’re told stories, from early on, that reinforce a particular image of “what a man is supposed to be.” These stories paint a picture of bravery, physical strength, and against-all-odds victory. Ask any guy to name his favorite movie and its likely it will contain this kind of plot line.

This habit is fueled by the myths that define us. A myth can simply be the stories we tell to explain how the world is supposed to work. But they can also be untruthful; like a man’s identity is that of a protector…a defender…a warrior. Because masculine culture is so steeped in this warrior mythology where men are taught that their fundamental identity is that of a protector, rescuer, defender etc, the suggestion that men are not here to stand over women as protectors, but to stand alongside them as partners can sound like a rejection of men’s core identity. But here’s my point: protection is an action…a role we’re called upon from time to time to fulfill. Protecting someone is the healthy and appropriate action any human should take when called upon. A protector is someone who wields power; ostensibly for the benefit of others. But the use of that power is circumstantial and when those circumstances no longer exist, there is no need to continue functioning in that protective role. Partnership, on the other hand, is an identity. Viewing our identity as equal partners with women more accurately reflects how we (both women and men) function in normal life.

So after more than 10 years in this work, the Story has changed. We’ve come to believe differently about what a real solution looks like. You see, we believe that women and men are made to flourish and that they share a fundamental right to equality. Consequently, commercial sex in all its forms is antithetical to human flourishing. Furthermore, we believe that the systems, structures and narratives that dominate our culture often favor men at the cost of women’s right to equality. And most importantly, we believe that the way of change is for men to learn to work alongside women as partners in building a world where everyone can flourish. These beliefs will bear fruit only as men develop the capacity to see themselves for who they truly are; when humility becomes a defining mark of authentic masculinity. That humility gives birth to empathy whereby men increase their capacity to see the world for the way it is and empowers them to respond appropriately. That response is shaped by a genuine appreciation of our unique masculine strength and a sincere desire to use that strength for the benefit of others. And all of this is sustained by an ongoing appetite for a more just world; a proven commitment to doing what we can to make the world the way it ought to be. 

When we began this work, “EPIK” was chosen as an acronym for “Everyman Protecting Innocent Kids.” It doesn’t mean that anymore. It means something bigger, deeper, more difficult and yet hopeful. And “epic” is a story of sweeping change extending beyond the usual or ordinary, especially in size or scope. Changing the dominant masculine culture that normalizes and enables things like sex trafficking is a HUGE challenge. And achieving this kind of change will be THE story of our lifetimes. Within this story, like in all great epics, there are smaller, connected stories. The first is about men who believe they’re entitled to rent another person’s body for sex. The second is about men who think they’re called to protect the vulnerable from the men in the first story. And that’s all that’s required of them. The third story is about men who believe their role is to create – alongside women –  a safe world where everyone can flourish. And to invite the men of the first two stories to join them; to look at the world around them with open eyes – well aware of their own weakness and failure. To do it with broken hearts; with a genuine empathy for the suffering of others. To do it with bent shoulders; giving away what strength they have for the benefit of others.  And to know that come tomorrow, they will have to get up and do it all over again because while evil is relentless, their appetite for justice is insatiable. 

That’s the better ManStory we need to tell.