Men should think about their relationships
There are very few things that keep me awake at night. As a selfconfessed news junkie, I have to say that one of them is what I hear in the news.
I don’t just mean the gruesome variety. For me, the effect is magnified by the commentary, some in traditional media, much of it on social media and the entire process affects how I view the issue.
The recent spate of disclosures of sexual assault, sexual abuse and sexually inappropriate behaviour falls into that category.
On the one hand, it is just and applause- worthy that sexual predators with a well- known, welldocumented history of abuse, like Harvey Weinstein or Woody Allen or gymnastics coach Dr. Nasser, are finally being held to account. It is admirable that the # MeToo movement has encouraged and empowered women to come forward and disclose the abuse that has happened to them and affected them for the rest of their lives.
When high- profile politicians have a political career swept aside in an evening, it is hard to put one’s political feelings aside, to make some judgment call on the integrity of the victim or the media or the alleged abuser and recognize that at a minimum, these men engaged in highly questionable and inappropriate behaviour and likely abused their political power with vulnerable women in alcoholfuelled circumstances.
I find it hardest to suspend my judgment when the allegations involve respected media personalities. The alleged behaviour might be worthy of condemnation, but reputations and careers have now been destroyed. Again, we are expected to make a judgment call on this primarily based on what we have heard in the media.
There is so much about all this that gives me pause.
As a man, I have felt this personally. At the SAG awards a month or so ago, it was all about women speaking out, and many of them did so with great passion and eloquence. Conspicuous by their silence, and indeed seeming embarrassed were the men present in the room. At the height of # MeToo a few months back, I saw suggestions on social media that if men weren’t speaking out about these issues, they were somehow complicit.
What I think is missing is an account of the fact that a huge number of men live their lives as they have been taught, to respect women. This includes treating women as equals in their relationships, being faithful to their partner raising sons and daughters who learn the respect for all that they have seen modelled by their parents, including enough selfrespect to avoid getting trapped or coerced into doing things they know are inappropriate, regardless of what the avoidance might cost.
Western civilization has gone through a great cultural shift since the ’ 60s.
These have given us all freedoms previously unheard of, to govern our behaviour and our relationships, including sexual, in ways that we choose. This freedom comes at some cost. The standard for sexual encounters has been set as “consent.” In so many of the recent cases that have gone public, the issue of consent is fuzzy, especially when alcohol is involved. Sexual abuse clearly breaks the law. Sexually inappropriate behaviour, on which some of the highprofile cases turn, seems to be a grey area.
And on the subject of grey, popular media is sometimes the worst enemy of society. The Fifty Shades of Grey franchise and pornography normalizes and romanticizes abuse. Porn ignores consent, promotes violence, encourages coercion, advertises objectification, and sells exploitation, yet rarely in mainstream media do we hear condemnation.
So many “celebrities” have fallen because of their past pecadillos, and yet the current American president, as well as a previous one ( Clinton) clearly engaged in the same activities and are allowed to continue in their roles and maintain the respect of their followers. This indicates to me a huge societal double- standard. In order to maintain political power and favour, many are perfectly willing to look the other way.
In all of this, is there hope? The huge boost to the awareness of abusive and inappropriate relationships, and a sympathetic understanding of what victims have gone through is I think a positive. I would expect that political parties ( at least in Canada) must be looking in all the corners of their candidates’ past to make sure those with a past don’t get through their screening. Many organizations, public and private already have anti- harassment and anti- abuse policies in place for their employees. No doubt, many will be reviewing these and perhaps strengthening them.
Hopefully, men will be given pause to think about their own relationships, behaviour and attitudes and how they affect the women they work with.