Why #MeToo has made men afraid
From the very start of the #MeToo campaign, one glaring result has been — and continues to be — the sense of threat many men now feel. Rather than embracing the discussion among women about their abuse and harassment, after 12 months of #MeToo, men have largely retreated from it to their own detriment as well as women’s.
There is a nervousness among men that I haven’t ever witnessed before. The dating landscape has completely changed. At 44 years old, I’m regularly surprised by a supposedly more relaxed younger generation asking my advice on how to make the first move.
One thirty-something, a brilliant, handsome star in his industry, goes into panic when sexual possibilities arise. A year ago, the same man was boasting of the three beautiful women he was juggling. Now, he’s so nervous that, when after an evening of drinking and suggestive dancing, a curvaceous peer took him home and leant into him on the couch in her low-cut top, bringing the conversation repeatedly to the subject of her breasts, he couldn’t close the deal. He stayed rigid and silent — as if under sniper fire — embarrassing them both.
Post #MeToo, I am also noticing how women are taking charge much more and doing the romantic legwork, as men worry about making a first approach. As women continue to assert themselves, I’m witnessing two types of male response. There is, like my friend illustrates, a wider male withdrawal from women, many choosing the uncomplicated release of pornography that often leads to compulsive isolation, a phenomenon that increasingly afflicts couples, turning healthy relationships sexually dead, with the man offering no more explanation than “I don’t feel like it”.
The slimiest response, however, has been the emergence of the outspoken male feminist: a politicised version of the creepy, approvalseeking Mr-Nice-Guy routine that has always been the ruse of a sexual cretin, and often the mask of underhanded abuser, adept at undermining women in myriad snide and plausibly deniable ways.
Spouting about “toxic masculinity”, he is loud and quick in his judgment of society while his own activity is never in question. Lest we forget, Harvey Weinstein himself went on the Women’s March in the same year that he was alleged to be a serial abuser.
I won’t pretend to be a feminist. My genital configuration is the closest thing I have to privilege, and I’m very wary of losing that. But my flaws are open to painful discussion and correction.
And this is what I think women really want from men: authentic honesty, not vapid, often sinister, sloganeering.
Taking a searching inventory of one’s own behaviour, to recognise misconduct with the intention of not repeating it, is the most pro-woman thing a man can do.
In the past year, I’ve reflected on my own relationships as #MeToo has shown how differently two people can feel about the same event. Looking back on bad dates and bad sex I’ve had, I am confident that we both knew it wasn’t working.
Some male friends don’t feel so comfortable and worry how their past encounters may have been experienced by women; a few complain that #MeToo has become a dragnet and a witch-hunt. There’s also a great anxiety at seeing men vilified for actions that haven’t been proven, but that, I think, is just anxiety, the counter-swing to the pain of the many women who were not believed when they complained of their abuse, or stayed silent for fear of the public shaming they risked if they did.
People use the recent accusations of historical abuse that Brett Kavanaugh and Cristiano Ronaldo have faced as examples of how these can damage lives and reputations, but, the last time I checked, Kavanaugh was still awarded a lifetime seat on the US Supreme Court and Ronaldo continues to play for Juventus with millions in the bank.
Women have to own and express their fury simply to save their mental health, let alone change the world. And men need to be okay with that — even if we don’t like talking about it very much.