It’s time for men to get onboard

David Slack reflects on humanity’s journey from cave art to ... the comments section.

It’s been one of the best summers I can ever remember and yet some of my fellow New Zealanders seem to have come back from holidays quite out of sorts.

Onto their Facebook pages they head, and bash-bash-bash they go on their keyboard. So much apoplexy. So much dyspepsia. So much cold fury about so many things.

You’re no longer allowed to fondle a woman if she’s passing by without a top on, and they think that’s dopey because what did she expect, she took her top off. I can’t explain why they stop short of asserting their right to club her and drag her back to their cave, having already asserted their right to decide who gets to touch her, and on what terms.

But maybe that’s what happens to a caveman when you give him car keys. He bashes at the keyboard like one of Stanley Kubrick’s man-monkeys biffing sticks at the monolith that’s inexplicably appeared outside his cave, but even as he bashes and throws sticks, he has a glimmer of a The Sunday Star-Times’ Matt Shand was on the scene when a summer snowstorm hit the beach at Mt Maunganui yesterday. Sixty tonnes of the white stuff was brought from Mt Ruapehu as a publicity stunt for the ski resort. Mt Ruapehu marketing manager Matt McIvor said the resort wanted to give Bay of Plenty residents a taste of snow in the height of summer. sense that the world is changing and one day he may have to change with it.

But not right away, because look! There’s much, much more to throw sticks at! Look at the dopey Auckland Council ripping out pohutukawa to make room for cyclists!

Dopey old Auckland Council, prostrating itself before cyclists again, and get a load of those cyclists: aren’t they supposed to be tree-huggers? Where do they get the gall?

Never mind that the trees are being moved to a different location, and the whole thing was publicly debated at length and this was the best compromise they thought they could find for making cycleways and still leaving as much room as possible for sacred cars.

But don’t try and tell a keyboard warrior any of that: sorry mate, can’t hear you over the bashing.

Not that they’re all like that. Some of them brush the keyboard with a velvet glove. Look, here’s Judith Collins come to give a masterclass in serene belittlement, as she sweetly puts down the idea of a better system of public transport by calling it a pet trolley scheme and and urges us to drag our thinking back into the 20th century where roads still have national significance.

What does she want? Petitions! When does she want them? Every sitting day of Parliament, probably. Petitions for great big lovely roads full of trucks and SUVs! The way it used to be. The way God planned it.

That should fit together very nicely with her colleagues’ great plan for serving as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition by going bash-bash-bash as they jam up the system with thousands upon thousands of Parliamentary questions. Some might call it vigorous opposition. Some might call it petulant. Some might call it sore losing. If you want to call them dogs in a manger, that’s your right. That’s the marvellous thing about democracy. You can be any quality of person you choose to be.

And still bash-bash-bash go the menfolk on their keyboards, steaming away at the Time’s Up campaign for having the temerity to take a stand against mistreatment of women.

Meanwhile, a parent on Twitter shares this conversation she’s just had with her 15-year-old daughter who is texting from a Go Wellington bus and has just described her driver as a creep.

‘‘I get on the bus, he looks me up and down and licks his lips. I say ‘hi there’ like I always do when I get on the bus. Nothing.’’

‘‘Got the bus number?’’ Her mother texts back.

She replies: ‘‘Can’t do anything about it. Oh he looked at me funny. And didn’t say hi back.’’

A friend ruefully this week described patriarchy as a malignant cancer. ‘‘You treat the first symptom and the tumour goes away,’’ she wrote, ‘‘but just when you feel better ... bang. The thing’s metastasised and again you’re under attack’’.

Bashers, it’s a free country. You have an inalienable democratic right to object, to be reactionary, to be bloody-minded. Perhaps you even have a point, and perhaps treehugging snowflakes like me need to learn a thing or two.

But you might want to consider the possibility that you’re really just throwing sticks.

@DavidSlack

Idon’t usually pay much attention to Hollywood awards shows. The inane red-carpet chat, and the speeches - where everyone starts thanking their legs for supporting them and their arms for always being by their side make my eyes glaze over.

This week’s Golden Globes, however, provided plenty of reasons to be transfixed. Fashion choices that meant something, red carpet chat that meant something, speeches that meant everything.

But while the world was obsessing over Oprah’s stirring speech and whether it meant she might run for president, it was another speech that stopped me in my tracks.

It was Alexander Skarsgard’s speech, who won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Big Little Lies. With half the audience dressed in black in solidarity with the ‘‘Time’s Up’’ movement against sexual assault, a man who’d just won an award for depicting a rapist in a story written by a woman and brought to the screen by women, who wanted to create more satisfying roles for women, thanked the Academy, the network and his mum.

The silence on the topic of the hour was deafening.

It was his moment to say whatever he wanted, so why does it matter that he said nothing at all? It matters because what #metoo and #timesup can achieve is limited until men get behind it, too.

A few years back the United Nations launched ‘‘He For She’’ to encourage men to be agents of change in the drive for gender equality. Actress and ambassador Emma Watson made a speech asking ‘‘How can we affect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation? Men... gender equality is your issue too’’. Because men can also be hamstrung by gender stereotypes.

But some believe the whole #metoo and #timesup thing itself is what’s hamstringing men. French actress Catherine Deneuve is among the signatories to an open letter arguing it ‘‘really only serves the enemies of sexual freedom’’, and is a ‘witch hunt’ which threatens a man’s right to ‘persistently’ hit on a woman.

The letter appears to confuse sexual violence with seduction, when only one of those things has a woman’s desires at heart. There is nothing puritanical about being the boss of your own body.

Like Deneuve and co, maybe you’re growing tired of the constant stream of revelations about Hollywood heavyweights’ behaviour. But consider the fatigue of those it keeps happening to. Imagine how exhausting it must be to finally confess what’s happened to you only to get a telling-off from a bunch of French women for ‘going too far’, accompanied by the suggestion it’s your responsibility to look after yourself, anyway.

That wariness, on both sides, could be cured in one fell swoop – if we stop the behaviour, we stop the complaints. Men, you’re not being attacked, you’re being recruited. Time’s up – and it’s time to get on board.

He bashes at the keyboard like one of Stanley Kubrick's man-monkeys biffing sticks at the monolith that's inexplicably appeared outside his cave

Some believe the whole #metoo and #timesup thing itself is what's hamstringing men.