A Step in the World Without Men
The quiet extinction of the vernacular man
Men Don’t Just Die First — They Disappear First.
Not from war. Not from heart failure. From something slower.
They’re erased — one word at a time. One job at a time. One shrug at a time.
And when they disappear, nobody notices.
Nobody cares — because we’ve taught the world not to look down.
We see male chauvinism with a biased eye, so we fail to recognize its fractured humanity.
But feminism? That’s a song we sing without guilt.
The Vernacular Vanishing
What is vernacular?
It has a two-way definition.
One:
It’s the barefoot version of life.
What you say when you’re not trying to impress.
It’s the laugh at the kiosk. The grunt at the garage.
The stare on a dusty bench when there’s nothing to say, but too much to feel.
It’s the shameless tear.
Women fight their way into formal spaces — the tech firm, the firm handshake, the clean desk —
and many still carry this kind of vernacular with them.
They call their mothers. They whisper prayers.
They cry and don’t apologize.
They smuggle softness into steel.
Two:
Vernacular as undesirable.
And men are pushed into this kind — as punishment.
Here, the man becomes the porter. The night guard. The bodaboda rider.
The one fixing wires barefoot under the sun.
He carries bags of cement.
The vernacular man.
Working jobs with no status, no story, no sympathy — because he’s a man.
When he fails, when he falls, when the grammar breaks —he isn’t welcomed home. He’s mocked. Ignored. Rejected.
He rots. He stinks. We laugh.
We walk away. And when he dies?
“He had no self-love,” we say.
We say?
Even the woman engineer — polished, empowered — glances past him with scorn, not solidarity. And he knows it. He keeps quiet.
He dies that way.
The Curse of the Untranslatable Man
Masculinity was never designed for stillness.
Not for silence.
Not for untimely death.
If a man stops moving, we nickname him “irresponsible.”
But the former vernacular — the one embraced by women —
doesn’t reward performance. It asks for presence.
To simply exist is its own language.
Most men never get to learn that tongue.
They’re taught:
“Be strong.”
“Earn respect.”
“Don’t complain.”
And when they stumble back into the harsher vernacular — jobs with dust and diesel —their silence hardens into shame. Into death.
And we say,
“Men die first. It’s natural.”
He doesn’t say:
“I’m tired.”
“I’m scared.”
“I miss being wanted.”
Because no one’s listening. Or worse — they are, and they laugh.
So he stops trying.
He drinks. He scrolls. He stiffens.
Until one day, even his shadow leaves the room before he does.
Jokes and Ghosts
We make fun of him.
The broke guy.
The deadbeat dad.
We throw memes like stones in a public square:
“Men are trash.”
“Can’t even afford feelings.”
“Real men provide.”
But trash doesn’t remember being a boy.
Trash doesn’t dream.
Men do.
And when their dreams turn into dead ends, they don’t explode —
they evaporate.
Quietly. Tragically. Invisibly.
To graves.
How Do We Let Them Live Again?
You don’t have to save them.
But maybe — just maybe — let them be heard.
Let them speak badly.
Let them laugh at the wrong moment.
Let them cry in public and owe no one an apology.
We let women become astronauts.
Can we let men become human?
Can we let them live vernacularly —in the former vernacular — without shame?
Can we see them even when they’re not climbing, not winning, not proving?
Because this isn’t just a crisis of health.
It’s a crisis of soul fluency.
And every time a man forgets how to speak himself —the world loses a language.
A step in the world without men is easy to miss.
A voice not heard — sometimes laughed at.
A chair somewhere not filled.
A story that ends mid-sentence.
But you’ll feel it.
In the silence.
In the scorn.
In the breaking mirror.
With purpose and love,
The Enjoy it Vernacular Team
Raise the Word, Rise the World.