White Guy Chill: How men weaponise their wellbeing to hold back social justice

He's just got a lot going on right now.

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“I just want to be chill,” my ex said, exasperated, whenever I suggested going to a protest at the weekend for an hour, or checking out an exhibition, or even meeting up with friends.

You’re always doing so much, men have told me, multiple times in my life. It would be good for you to just chill sometimes.

And I shrug, self-conscious and doubting myself. Haven’t I written extensively about burnout and the struggle to switch off and the importance of rest?

Maybe I am doing too much. I have a full-time job and run The Green Fix for free, I check in on friends, I read about the economy and try new independent coffee places and join protests and take my clothes to the secondhand shops and sign petitions and think about the supply chains of my bananas.

I never felt like this was too much. These things matter to me. And that was the problem, according to them. When I was sad about news from Gaza or fired up with rage about the backsliding on women's rights in the US, they would say you care too much. You’re stressing yourself out.

Not being chill at the Climate Drinks last week in Brussels. Credit: Nastya Dmitrieva

This isn’t about my exes. Well it is, but it’s also about your exes, your current partners, and well-intentioned male friends, housemates, previous course-mates, and all the (mainly) white, (mainly) male people out there who are enthusiastic about uprooting the system as long as it doesn’t disrupt their ultimate goal of Being Chill.

And if it does interfere with his chill - you best bet he will try to shut you down and absolve himself of any responsibility to the outside world. Usually whilst complaining that you’re Too Much and he’s Overwhelmed.

I have, for some time now, been on a mission to disrupt what I call ‘White Guy Chill.’

It’s the wide lens version of what we already know is happening at the household level: where women repeatedly take on the majority of housework, emotional labour and mental load while men reap the benefits of their stubborn refusal to act like adults.

Source: @vulgadrawings

The Gender Equity Institute estimates that US women spend twice as much time on average than men on childcare and household work. Unofficial polls by writer Zawn Villines estimate that women might be doing up to 80% of housework.

Women also make up the majority of care-based sectors like healthcare, education and social work - not because we are intrinsically ‘better’ at giving a shit about other people, but because someone has to fill the care deficit created by men.

This dynamic doesn’t stop at the front door. On the global level, women are also leading climate and human rights movements - while men are still grappling with whether a reusable bag will make them ‘seem gay’.

White Guy Chill

Chill, in the world of the Chill Guy, is being unengaged and unaware. It involves putting his peace of mind as the ultimate goal and his comfort as the baseline standard for all activities – including his support for feminism and parity in the household, racial justice, or climate action.

Rather than join a protest, the Chill Guy would rather explain that he’s not One Of Those Guys. You know, not one of The Actual Bad Guys who pour oil into the ocean or rape women in an alleyway or dodge taxes, so I guess we should show some “fucking gratitude”.

He truly and honestly believes that the world would be better if everyone was more chill. More like him. More like a Privileged White Guy. He’s “mastered the art of chilling the fuck out - you should try it sometime,” as a guy I used to live with once told me. (I was upset after reading a climate report).

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He doesn’t worry about the feelings of others or protest against genocide. He stays out of it because it’s Not His Problem. He will tell you, (cue defensive tone) it’s not that he doesn’t care, obviously he cares, it’s that there’s no point stressing about it because what can he really do? (Cue carefree shrug of the guy who thinks he’s the first person to realise that our political system is rigged).

In fact, men can do a lot - because it’s their mess we’re cleaning up.

Men make up the majority of the world’s most polluting individuals (read: billionaires), and also make up the majority of policymakers negotiating our climate and justice laws.

Men emit more carbon than women – 26 per cent more on average in France, one study found. Driving polluting SUVs and eating red meat is often associated with male identity.

Men are less likely to go vegetarian or take a reusable shopping bag. They are much more likely to be climate deniers – a view that is strongly associated with holding right-wing and misogynistic beliefs.

But hey, calm down. Why are you attacking him?

Sleep is chill. Netflix is chill. Netflix and chill is chill. And the world - the underpaid gig workers delivering their food, the women cleaning up the house and playing 20 questions to figure out what he wants to do and what he needs, the Global Majority manufacturing his home comforts and working far more for far less - have to tiptoe around his peace of mind.

And don’t you dare bring up that he hasn’t planned a date in months or read the antiracism article you sent (or wrote), or that he bought an electric guitar when he was ‘too broke’ to get you a birthday gift - that’s not chill. Why are you nagging him? He told you he’s got a lot on right now. Why are you making a Big Thing out of it?

Chill across gender, race and class

I’ve named it White Guy Chill because they are the worst offenders, the greatest polluters and the main hurdle between us and any major political change that centres social justice over their private gain. But this weaponised disconnect can transcend race, gender and class.

Men of all races can and do shut down women and maintain their privilege of doing the least and reaping the most benefits. From the extremes of banning women from speaking in Afghanistan, to the endless flavours of weaponised incompetence men find to avoid Doing Anything (Your tone was hurtful! You’re better at this stuff! He’s got different standards!), this brand of Chill disproportionately holds back women.

In much of the world - if not all of it - calling out the men runs the risk of emotional, physical, or verbal abuse, assault or murder. The UN found that the most dangerous place for a woman is in her own home.

White Guy Chill is also racial: white women can take part too, both victims and oppressors. There’s a flavour of WGC in the way white people place their feelings first when discussing racism and decolonialism, tone police black and racialised people for getting ‘aggressive’ when they disagree or even speak.

White women, even those who claim to be feminists, will dismiss or even deny the existence racial micro-aggressions with a polite and condescending smile. You just misunderstood. It really hurts that you would think I would be racist!

White Guy Chill is also classist, used by the rich and privileged. Although the richest 1 percent are responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 50 percent of the world combined, and hold the most financial and political power to address this, they run instead. They’re ‘so overwhelmed’ by life that they can’t fit any activism in or possibly read the news (what John Pavlovitz calls the white privilege of news avoidance), and that’s why they’ve booked a three week detox retreat in Bali. To get away from it all. And leave you behind to sort their mess out.

The ultimate impact of White Guy Chill, whether done consciously or not, done by white men or not, is to maintain the status quo and make you feel like you’re Too Much, too radical, too pushy, too aggressive, for actively pushing for positive change in the world or questioning injustice.

White Guy Chill is the epitome of privilege - which is why I’ve named it after its main culprits, white privileged men. The fuckboy tools of fascism.

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Chill Guys think all these activists glueing themselves to pipes and throwing paint, women leaving them over ‘the dishes by the sink,’ feminist marches and Black Lives Matter protests are all just… A Bit Much. It’s a bit aggressive, don’t you think?

They explain to me that this direct action and shouting in the streets is just going to put ‘people’ off. Because our rage at injustice is not friendly and inviting and sexy enough. It isn’t Chill.

Anyway, they say, look at this funny video from when I got drunk with my friends at the weekend.

Chilling effect

It’s around this point in my rant that men interrupt me to tell me that I have to understand they’re disconnected from politics for their mental health. Sometimes they even use me and my rage about injustice as an example of ‘what happens’ when you read the news. They place the problem in my outrage and not in the source of it. If the world is burning, they want to close the curtains and play videogames. Fires are not their thing.

But despite what they will argue, White Guy Chill is not related to the concept of rest as an anticapitalist tool - which was popularised and linked to Black liberation by poet Tricia Hersey’s Nap Ministry.

WGC’s concern for mental health begins and ends with his inaction. White men are not rushing to help build community networks, go to therapy, advocate for wellbeing-based economies, or even talk to each other - in short, any of the actions that would really help his mental health in the long-term.

In fact, sometimes the alleged ‘chill’ is just masking deeper psychological barriers that men face stigma in talking about - social anxiety, depression and fear of not fitting in.

White Guy Chill, funnily enough, has a chilling effect, at both the personal and political level. How many girlfriends and wives and sisters and daughters give up trying to get their male relatives to care, deciding it’s quicker just to do things themselves than plead with adult men to get out of their comfort zone? The comfort zone we provided.

It’s quicker just to pick up their empty mugs than ask ten times and live in dust. It’s quicker to just let them finish their monologue than interrupt and have to apologise for being ‘rude.’ It’s easier to just go to the protest with a friend or a coworker than have another conversation about how protests are not really his thing.

But they will assure you that they do care. They’re a feminist! They’re anti-fascist! Just trust me. They shouldn’t have to prove it, they just told you.

In romantic and family relationships, White Guy Chill also has the impact of placing pressure on their partners to give up their ‘overwhelming’ activities and devote more time to being chill with him. When will you be done saving the world so you can go fuck him?

Because it doesn’t stop with one weekend when he just wants to take it easy. As if all reading from the same playbook, each of my male exes, who were first so impressed with my dedication to my career, my busy social life and my love of activism and solo travel, eventually became irritated by that same busy-ness.

Even when I made the time to see them two, three times a week, they became concerned I was doing ‘too much’ (the same amount as before, but now their impatience was my problem to solve).

I would point out that they could join me at protests, exhibitions, the talks I attended. They could find their own social circle, their own hobbies and activities. I would forward them events for running clubs, gigs in their favourite genre, put them in contact with friends who they might get on with when they complained about having nobody to hang out with.

When I would ask about it later - did they reach out? Did they check out the event? - they shrugged. They’re just not sure. It seems like a lot. They just want to be chill. (If this word is sounding repetitive by now, imagine hearing it for a lifetime).

And so it would land on me to maintain the busy lifestyle that I enjoy and that they once idolised - she works! She runs a newsletter! She does stand up comedy! So cool! So quirky! - and also keep them entertained. Not talking too much about my day because why do I have to be so political all the time and not talking about how tired I felt because I knew it would lead to the concerned expression and the phrase you’re doing too much.

But all the things I am busy with - my job, activism, events, friends, travel - they energise me. What exhausts me is adding on the second job of managing another man’s feelings and filling in his absence in the climate justice movement.

Chill does not drive social revolution. Chill did not get women the vote or end apartheid. The people with the most power and privilege weaponise their peace of mind to enforce a non-disruptive status quo while claiming to support the cause.

I almost find these guys more dangerous than the outright malicious fossil fuel executives and misogynists and aspiring fascists, because Chill Dudes make you believe that they’re caring for your wellbeing and that you are the difficult one. And half of them have no idea they’re even doing this despite being the ones creating the mess you’re cleaning up.

I guess some of you are men I know personally, who are reading this and wondering if I’m writing about you. You’ve answered your own question. If you see yourself in this description, then yes, it’s about you. And you will say damn lol, fair enough and start constructing your self-defense argument about how this doesn’t apply to you.

If Chill Dudes decided to give a shit about fixing the mess they’ve created - in the kitchen and in politics -, their impact could be enormous. But while they chill, we must scream and cry and be hysterical to achieve change - from picking up their dirty clothes to getting them to change the law.

I am not interested in chill. I am not chill at all. I care a lot, and I do a lot because I care. I prefer to be outraged and disappointed than disengaged and resigned, because without disappointment I don’t have capacity to feel hope, and without outrage I cannot truly experience joy and relief. Care lets me live fully and feel my mutual interdependency on the people around me.

Care has already kept society running since humans have existed: washing the dishes and raising the kids and tending to the sick and standing up for those who cannot do it themselves. Caring is the backbone of revolution and it’s what keeps us alive. Chill changes nothing. Care changes the world.

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This article is co-published by the Green European Journal and The Green Fix.

Cover image credit: Daniel Garcia.

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