In my earliest memory, I’m not yet a man, but a boy. I’m five or six years old and on the way home from a gathering with relatives; my father pulls into the petrol station to fill up the car. I slide down the window as he kills the engine, and he offers me that broad smile of his, which always touches his eyes.
It’s one of those early-spring days – pretty and full of promise. My dad isn’t halfway through filling the tank when raised voices reach us. We both follow the noise, gazing in the direction of the commotion, where a young man is leaning against the hood of a car, arms folded. In front of him, two policemen. The young man is trying to reason with them.
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From a distance, I can see their insistence. Others around the petrol station are beginning to stare, too. Another police car pulls up. More policemen join the scene, forming a crowd around the young man, who has unfolded his arms, in a gesture I now know to be pleading. At the time, I think he looks just like me when I’m asking for something and approaching desperation, knowing I might not get it. I look away from the scene for a moment, back at my father, and when I look again, somehow, the young man is on the ground.
On this beautiful day, the group of policemen, maybe six of them now, hover over the young man like a cloud and rain down blows all over his body. Dad hurriedly pays for the petrol; in seconds, we’re in the car, driving away. Even at that age, I want to understand, why? Even then, I could see that the young man, this young Black man who I thought looked just like me, was undeserving of such treatment. But my father only said: ‘We must be good. We must be good and that won’t happen to us.’
My father was the earliest example I had of being a man. Before my mother became a midwife, she worked as an office secretary. Her hours were long, so Dad would often pick me up from school, feed me and make sure I had the space to do homework and read. Then we would go to pick Mum up from work. We spent a lot of time together in those early years, and he often spoke about growing up properly, that what I did then would set me up as I grew, that I should always be aiming to be a good man.
And I would come to realise that, just like at the petrol station, for my father and, in turn, for me, being a good man was all about survival. My father came to the UK in his late teens, and survival was the game. It was necessary to assimilate. To fit in. To not bring attention onto oneself. To morally align with the majority and go against the bad of the world. To be good.
I was mostly brought up by my grandmother, who moved to London to help raise me and my younger brother and sister. I witnessed first-hand how my grandma was clearly the head of the household, among my nuclear family and my mother’s eight siblings, too. In this private familial space, where a matriarchal structure formed the shape of our community, there was a great deal of power held by the women: my mum and aunties.
This power took the form of considered communion, of distribution of knowledge, of care and grace. Of love. Their idea of strength was of vulnerability: it was in the capacity for emotion and the expression of feelings. From them I did not hear, ‘Be a man’ or, ‘Be a good man’ but, ‘Be yourself – be your full, honest self’.
In those long summer holidays, I would spend endless days with Grandma, often doing nothing more than walking the south-London streets I grew up on. She’d love the feeling of the sunshine on her face, but what she loved even more was stopping for a chat with neighbours or locals. More often than not, these would be older women in the neighbourhood. Sometimes, the conversation might go on and the ice-cream van I had been eyeing would drive away but, even then, I knew what my grandma was doing was important. I understood from a young age that the women in my life weren’t heard or seen in the way they wanted to be in the world.
Outside of my family sphere, they weren’t given the same sort of consideration or space. At work, they had to be a smaller version of themselves; in the late Nineties, like today, the night-time streets were not a place a woman might find safety. But my grandma would always make space for the women she met, friends or otherwise, to stand, to speak, to be seen and heard. Therefore, it meant that my instinct was to treat women outside of my family with kindness and consideration, to make a little space, even if that was only meeting their eyes with a gentle gaze, to say: ‘I see you’.
In public spheres, it’s a different story. The world in 2025 is functioning as it was built: with capital not only in mind but at the fore; with people being unmade and rendered as property, as anything but their whole selves. The rise of an outward expression of right-leaning politics is not merely alarming but disastrous. At the centre of this are men who wield the wealth and power they have amassed with the intention of continuing to accrue more and more, with little to no consideration for others who don’t align with their conservative – and, often, bordering on extreme views.
It spells danger for those in the world who are different, be it through race, gender or sexuality. It creates a dichotomy in a world of complexities, returning us to a simplistic notion of good and bad. It creates division at a time when we should be closer than ever. From my perspective, this accruing of power has resulted in a world that continues to be less safe for women, a society that encourages men to feel entitlement over women’s bodies, personhoods and space.
The notion of being a good man doesn’t consider the inherent power that comes with being a man in the way our world is currently constructed. Nor does it account for the way the behaviour of survival might manifest: suppression, silence and withdrawal.
I came to understand that one could be hurt if they weren’t present, if they were not at the fore of their own lives. But at what cost, to yourself and those around you? Survival operates from a place of fear, and using this fear as the ground from which one’s life springs chokes and stunts all that might blossom and bloom.
As I grew older, through my late teens and early twenties, it felt necessary to dismantle and critique this notion of the good man. It felt essential to afford the idea of goodness a sense of complexity. Badness feels easier to point towards: war, bad; genocide, bad; abuse in any and every form, bad. But goodness is more intricate, more nuanced. And while it can be concrete, it is often more about a feeling.
With that in mind, the questions I often find myself asking – and still do ask – are: Am I being good to myself? And how can I extend that goodness to others? How can I treat the qualities that are often deemed weaknesses in the realms of masculinity – honesty, vulnerability and outward, considerate expressions of love and desire – as virtues? How might I not only acknowledge the beauty and embrace the ugliness – in myself, in others, in my life – but also accept both as a whole? How might we abandon some of the repressive binaries the world is built on and afford ourselves some more freedom?
I often speak with family members and friends about the toll the world takes on Black women, and in that case the goodness might take the form of a listening ear, giving them the space to commune and be themselves, their whole honest selves – softness in a world that only offers them hardness. As an artist, one who holds some stead in the world, the action can be more concrete: support, mentorship and offering employment when possible.
These days, I still hold hope. I still believe there’s a better world we can build together, which reimagines power not as wealth and shows of strength. Now, knowing that there’s an inherent influence I hold in the world as a man – particularly as an artist who has been fortunate enough to enjoy a level of success – and realising that I derive much of this power from my capacity for honesty and expression, for vulnerability and love, the question is how can I make space for myself and others in this world with the power I have?
It has been years since I have asked myself, ‘Am I a good man?’ But I’m still asking: ‘Am I being good to myself?’ The answer is that I’m still working on it. But within this work comes the extension of that goodness – of creating space for others and myself, to make ourselves whole – to my community and strangers alike.
It’s been almost a decade since my grandma passed, but if there’s one lesson I will always hold on to from her, it is to stop and listen to women, because to be heard is to be seen, and to be seen is all we can ask for in this world. And now, at a time when the divide between the genders is an ever-growing chasm, men taking the time to see women – to really see them for their whole selves – might begin to close this gap.
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