Between Thoughts -Intellectual Musings

The Father’s Internal Monologue – About “Softness”

To follow the story – Read Part I and II – “Softness Series ”

EDITOR’S NOTE
This is not an essay. It is a confession. It is the voice most fathers carry in silence — the one that shapes a son before a single word is spoken. Read it slowly. Some of it will be uncomfortable. That is the point.

The Father :
I don’t say everything out loud.
That’s the first thing you should know about me.

Men like me — we carry things quietly.
That’s how we were raised.
You don’t complain. You don’t over-explain.
You just… adjust. Endure. Provide.

So when I say, “I hope my son is not soft,”
it sounds simple.
It isn’t.

I have seen what the world does to boys who are different.
I’ve seen how quickly respect disappears.
How laughter turns into mockery.
How a room can decide, silently, who matters and who doesn’t.

No one sat me down and taught me this.
I learned it the hard way.

Where I come from, being a man was not a theory.
It was survival.

You don’t cry
You don’t flinch
You don’t show weakness

Because weakness attracts something.
Not sympathy.
Not understanding.

It attracts pressure.
It attracts tests.
It attracts pain.

So I learned to harden.

Not because I wanted to —
because I had to.


Now I have a son.
And I watch him.
Not in a controlling way —
in a measuring way.

I notice the small things:
The softness in his voice sometimes.
The way he hesitates.
The way he feels things deeply.
And something in me tightens.

Not anger.
Fear.

Because I know this world.

It is not kind to softness in men.
It doesn’t reward it.
It doesn’t protect it.
It exposes it.

“Projection is just memory looking for a future.”

People will say I am projecting.
Maybe I am.

I don’t want him to go through what I went through.
The humiliation.
The testing.
The quiet ways men size you up and decide your worth.


And then there’s something else.

Something harder to admit.
Status.

Am I gay?
Did he inherit gay from me?
What will XYZ say and think about me?
What does my wife silently think about me?


Let’s not pretend it doesn’t matter.
I know how men are ranked.
I know how quickly a boy can fall outside the circle of “acceptable masculinity.”

And once you’re out —

You don’t just lose approval.
You lose protection.

Sometimes I hear myself speak and I don’t like it.

“Don’t be soft.”
“Man up.”
“Why are you acting like that?”

It sounds harsh.

But in my mind, I’m not attacking him.
I’m preparing him.

Or at least — that’s what I tell myself.

Then there’s religion.
I was raised to believe certain things.
Right. Wrong. Heaven. Hell. Sin. Salvation.
I don’t pretend to understand everything.
But I carry the fear of getting it wrong.

What if I say nothing — and I fail him religiously?

What if love, in my silence, becomes neglect?

And then there are voices — pastors, elders — so certain, so confident.
They make it sound simple.


Fix it. Pray it away. Correct it early.

Certainty is seductive when you’re afraid.

“What if I’m not protecting him… what if I’m teaching him to hide?”

Because I see it.
The way he adjusts around me.
The way he edits himself mid-sentence.
The way he checks my face before he finishes a thought.

I recognise that behaviour.
I’ve done it myself.

And that’s when it hits me.
This is not just about him.
This is about me.


About the boy I had to become
to survive the world I grew up in.

Maybe I don’t fear him being soft.
Maybe I fear that softness has no place
in the world I understand.

But what if I’m wrong?
What if the world is changing —
and I’m still raising him for a version of it that no longer exists?

Or worse —
What if the world is still hard…
but I’ve made his home just as hard?

I don’t have the language for all of this.
Men like me weren’t given that.

But I feel it.
The conflict.
The gap between loving my son
and fearing for him.

I want him to be safe.
I want him to be respected.
I want him to be whole.

I just don’t know
if the way I learned to survive
is the way he should live.

And that terrifies me.


End of Part III

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Between Thoughts – Intellectual Musings| Dr. Mzamo Masito.

Where the uncomfortable questions get a seat at the table.