Toxic Masculainity...harms us all..

[shadowkat]

I tried various titles on for size, but nothing quite works...

So, for the most part, I've been staying away from social media and the news, just jumping in here and there. And it's been wonderful, bit like leaving a dark dank tunnel and emerging into the light.
Because if anything major happens, people will tell you.

The Weinstein mess, I've watched from the corner of my eye, sneaking peeks at it...but for the most part avoiding it. I'd seen the "#MeToo" on FB. That is until Wed... when a woman told me a story about how she'd posted about being raped on Face-Book, and then the ensuing fall-out over it. After she told the story, a male friend said something that gave us pause -- he said her story and others scared him. We asked how so. He said that he found it frightening to think he may have done this himself, that he may have sexually assaulted, or harassed women, and not realized it -- because he was just doing what everyone else did. That he felt for some reason he was entitled to do. This resulted in a discussion about how our rape culture affects everyone and is male privilege/entitlement is toxic to men and women, to all genders.

One man asked, not the same one as above, slightly older, if rape and sexual harassment could be linked to bullying? And maybe the bully doesn't realize he's doing it?

To which, a black man, responded -- no the oppressor always knows what they are doing. The bully knows. Weinstein knew. But the oppressed also...have a tendency to mimic the behavior of the oppressor -- Bill Cosby visited the Playboy mansion in the 1960s and 70s. There's pictures of him there...along with other male celebs at the time. He mimicked the behavior of those in power.

Another man stated how different things were now than before...or had we forgotten the Anita Hill Case? Where people made office jokes, crude ones at Anita's expense? And Thomas was voted onto the Supreme Court regardless of his behavior towards Hill? Now, years later -- Weinstein has been fired and people are no longer making jokes.

And I...I find myself seeing patterns. Repetitions.

* Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas
* Bill Clinton -- Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky
* JFK and Marilyn Monroe
* Woody Allen
* Roman Polanski
* Donald Trump
* Anthony Weiner and Weinergate -- where he texted images of his penis to underage women
* Joss Whedon -- his wife's allegations that he slept with women actresses on his shows, blamed them for his infidelity and held her hostage
* Mel Gibson and his treatment of his wife
* Alec Baldwin and his fights with Kim Basinger
* George Carlin who played spin the bottle in a closet with a teenage Carrie Fisher at her home
* James Woods...
* Bernie Bros attacks on Clinton and her female supporters

Now Weinstein, and Louis CK.

Are we enabling this behavior? Have we enabled it? And if so, how do we stop?

The #MeToo social media event shows how every woman has her own story. And I read a few, and then read a post in which people responded to #notme, where many women were condemning those who had stood up as victims or not being strong enough to fight it off, or drawing attention to themselves. Some in fact even excuse this behavior as normal. Or are turned on by it.

Is this also enabling, I wondered? Is supporting the oppressor, supporting him, hurting us all?

And what is the relationship between audience and artist, anyhow? Can you be supporting or enabling Weinstein merely by watching a movie he produced? Most likely not. Although watching and enjoying Louis CK...maybe??

I wasn't going to participate in the #MeToo event until I read THIS ARTICLE about it, and thought maybe I should.

On the scale of convenient self-delusion, "We didn't know that every industry on earth was riddled with sexual violence" falls somewhere between, “That guy will never make it to the White House” and, “It’s just a rash." I’m sure that a lot of us, on some level, didn’t really know. Not really knowing is the favorite hobby of almost every citizen of an oppressive society. I'm reminded of a passage in They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer’s devastating account of the lives of former Nazi party members in small town Germany. To a man, none of them had known what was being done to the Jews. They’d heard rumors, sure. They’d noticed their neighbors disappearing. But nobody knew. And at the same time, everybody knew. They did not know because they chose not to know, because it was convenient not to connect the dots, and then, as one former Nazi told Mayer, “One day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy… Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done, for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing.”

This is exactly the type of not knowing that allows powerful predators like Weinstein to get away with hurting anyone whose humanity seems to matter less than theirs. Hollywood didn't really know, just like Silicon Valley didn’t really know, just like everyone in the Trump administration doesn’t really know. Really knowing would have required everyone to act according to their consciences.

So nobody knew. And at the same time, everyone knew. Speaking out was too painful, and the risk was too great, so everyone looked away. Until they couldn’t look away anymore.

Let me put this another way. Think about this moment in Hollywood terms. There’s a moment toward the end of every classic protest movie when — just as it looks like the baddies have won, that they’ve finally crushed that secret part inside our hero that wants the world to be different — suddenly, one ordinary person stands up and says, no, this is not right. They say: "I am Spartacus." They say: "Oh, captain, my captain." They put down their tools. They drop their guns. The camera closes in on this person’s terrified face as they realize the consequences of the crazy, stupid thing they just did.

So I did. I posted about my trip to Wales in 1988.

I had competed for and won a literary grant from my college to collect stories in Wales. My mother chose to send my younger brother with me. I was 21, he was 18. Somewhere early in the journey we parted ways for a bit. I was in Northwester Wales, somewhere near Bala, and staying with a friendly B&B owner and his wife. They were in their fifties.
With kids. I felt safe. When I told them about my grant to collect Welsh ghost stories, the husband agreed to take me around to various elderly friends of his, who shared their stories. One story was about a haunted ruin of a house out on the Denby Moors, they wanted to know if I wanted to see the house. I did. So the hubby or male owner of the B&B drove me there. We got out. I took photos. And suddenly he was hugging me, which I thought okay...but then he was kissing me and mauling my breasts..and I freaked. I jumped back and ...you have to understand, I was in the middle of nowhere. In another country. My passport was at his house. My things were at his house. My purse and money were in his car. So I started talking non-stop about his wife, about the ghosts, about anything that came into my head. Nervous chatter. Anything that had nothing to do with sex or what just happened.
I got into the car with him and just kept talking. He was deathly silent. When we got back I rushed upstairs and took two hot showers, scrubbing myself. And I kept wondering what did I do wrong? Did I say something? Did I do something to lead him on? I remember leaving the next day after an awkward breakfast that his wife kindly forced on me. And wondering if I could continue collecting stories or even these travels. I no longer felt safe. Was I over-reacting? Luckily, my mother's foresight in sending my brother with me, finally paid off -- because he tracked me down in Aberwysth, at a small B&B owned by a kind elderly woman. And he asked if I'd like to take a break and just travel with him for a bit. I leaped at the chance. Also told him about what happened, which he sort of pushed off as not being that big a deal, but listened to all the same...regardless, I felt safe with him. He was six foot tall, lean and strong, and the Welsh tend to be five foot four. Not a tall group. We clearly don't take after that side of our family. I remember talking to other people about it, including my mother much later, and they all said, well, you were wandering in and out of pubs -- and women don't do that in Wales. He probably saw you as a loose "American" woman. (As if being American made one loose? And made it okay for someone to molest or rape you, because hello, American.) It wasn't until I went back to school, and started attending a lot of date-rape seminars, that I began to realize he thought he was "entitled" to something based solely on his gender. But he's not. No one is. So, yes, this is me, standing up, and saying loudly, #MeToo.

Then, after posting this, I read an article about those people who did not feel comfortable posting their stories. HERE.
And acts as a counterpoint to the article above...

The intense blast of #MeToo messages has made it all too clear that sexual assault and harassment are as pervasive in American society as the flag itself. It's also devastating.

It feels like a gut punch every time I see another friend post her story. I find myself reliving all the instances in which it happened to me, instances that are worse — unbelievably — than that day at the rest stop.

A campaign that's supposed to be empowering, and it clearly is for some, to me feels like revictimization. It feels a little like pushing women who might not yet be mentally ready to tell their stories to tell.

Just because a woman has not posted #MeToo to her social media pages doesn't mean she hasn't also lived through some really awful things. Just because a woman isn't telling her story of sexual harassment or assault doesn't mean she's doesn't have one (or many). Nor does it mean she doesn't care.

Survivors have precious little power over their assaults. Often, the only power they wield is when — or whether — to tell. We should respect their silence.

After I processed this...then wondered if I should have shared, I read this In a Post Weinstein World - Louis CK's Movie is a Total Disaster

Now, a couple of things, I have always had mixed feelings about Louis CK. Sometimes he says things I really like and some episodes of his series, I actually found funny. But they are those episodes that do not focus on women or sex. I tried to watch his stand-up routine, and got irritated, I gave up. His sexual humor is rather crude. I also had to give up on his series, for the same reasons. I don't like broad or crude sexual humor that objectifies people, particularly women. (The Hang Over did not amuse me, actually the only thing I found funny about is that my mother accidentally went and saw it in a movie theater with a friend of hers...thinking of my mother watching that movie for some reason makes me burst out in laughter, because it's just so absurd.)

People are admittedly not just one thing. But, the article brings up some interesting issues as does Louis CK's film. The film is about a writer, based loosely on Louis CK who is a huge fan of film auteur loosely based on Woody Allen, who is trying to deal with the fact that his favorite filmmaker may well be a pedophile and a sexual predator, and he, Louis, has a daughter. Also Louis likes to masturbate in front of female assistants and employees and associates...it turns him on. (In the film and in real life.) The film is in a way, Louis' way of excusing his feelings for Woody, Woody's films and his own behavior...well, we are all perverts in a way, and no one should dig into someone's personal private life.

By making a movie about the struggle to reconcile accusations against Louis CK’s Blue Jasmine director, Woody Allen, CK has also made a movie about the audience’s struggle with himself. This is a film that’s aware of its creator’s reputation. Lest that layer be lost on viewers, one scene finds Charlie Day’s wily sidekick miming masturbation (to completion!) in front of Edie Falco. (Another scene has Topher apologizing to “Women,” as in the entire gender.) All of this may have been intended as a boiling hot gumbo of catharsis, reckoning, and trolling–a playful way to comment on the allegations against him without actually commenting–but it no longer feels that way. Now that sexual harassment and sexism have dominated the discourse for two weeks–spilling out into every facet of the entertainment industry–Louis CK’s intentions look more self-serving. The film now plays like an ambiguous moral inventory of and excuse for everything that allows sexual predators to thrive: open secrets, toxic masculinity, and powerful people getting the benefit of the doubt.

The article asks the question to what degree are we enabling these predators?

Now, you may think what Louis is doing is harmless. But I've been in a situation is which a man masturbated in front of me -- on various subway trains, where it was just me and about four other people in the train at the time, and it's not fun. When I was working in the Bronx, a co-worker begged me to take the 4 train home with her, because she kept being sexually harassed by a passenger on the train and was afraid to take it.

So where do we draw the line? Is it okay to enjoy this sort of comedy? Or by doing so, are we excusing the behavior?

From the discussions I've had with men and women this week -- I think it affects everyone and not in a good way. It's toxic. And the fact that it has been going for far longer than anyone has been alive doesn't make it right. But how do we change the behavior? Not to mention the thinking behind it? For so long now, people have felt that men are entitled to use women for their own benefit. It's even written in some legal books, believe it or not. (Shocked me when I discovered it in the 1990s).

It's more than privilege...it's the entitlement that goes with it, I think. I had an interesting discussion with my mother regarding the topic. She said that when petting or make-out sessions went on too long, many men felt entitled to finish it any way they wanted to. They had a right to get their release. (Or it was painful for them and since the woman made them feel this way, she had to make them feel better - they were entitled to that, and many women still think that, many men do. I know, I've read it in various romance novels). I remember saying that to a college boyfriend in the 1980s, and he responded, "No, I have a hand and there's a bathroom, I can get my own release. I am not entitled." (I was lucky -- I didn't date assholes or rapists, many of my friends haven't been so lucky.)

So, I think awareness may be key, also working to change the conversation. But mainly I think what will work is demonstrating that this air of entitlement, this behavior, will no longer be tolerated by any of us. It's not about being a feminist, it's about being a human, and not wanting to inflict harm on other humans.

That said, I'm not sure boycotting Miramax films, now he's been fired, are going to do much. Mainly because I watch them on television now and they don't make any off of me, or even know I'm doing it.