Until now--other than private conversations with friends and family--I’ve stayed out of the #metoo movement, but as a mother to both boys and a girl coming up in this volitile environment, I feel there is something to be said that isn’t really being addressed. This is no surprise. As with so many large, politically charged topics, we (men and women alike) are being fed a false dichotomy. On the right pundits are decrying the end of the species because how on earth will anyone ever be able to procreate if they have to get “enthusiastic affirmative consent” at every step of the way. On the left they are demanding that every accusation be treated as sufficient evidence to convict someone in a court of law (unless the accused is Bill Clinton, of course).
Today, Emily Yoffe published a piece in Politico under the headline, Why the #MeToo Moment Should Be Ready for a Backlash (random headline capitalization is taken from the original), in which she questions the damage that has been wrought on the accused side of these stories, particularly on college campuses.
Following Joe Biden’s (a creepy groper himself) initiative to end sexual assault on campus, some institutions have taken to penalizing the accused with little to no due process. This is admittedly a problem. It is not, however, a problem that should take away the focus of this transformative moment in our society. As a woman I am sick to death of the “But what abouts” that crop up every time I try to address a topic important to just women in general. It’s as though we cannot discuss women without also being certain to include men, gay women, black women, men who want to be women, women who have become men, and every other red herring you can imagine. Believe it or not, there are certain topics that generally affect your average woman in a way they do not generally affect your average man, and in ways that also affect all of the subgroups of women without us having to name every single intersectional label out there.
Nevertheless, I will be addressing these very concerns for the accused simply because they are a part of the problem with the direction #metoo is taking. Whether the direction is intentional or simply being capitalized upon by vote-hungry political beasts is up for debate and really immaterial to the facts. And the facts are these:
- Sexual assault is generally difficult to prove, especially in the case of acquaintances
- It is unjust to lower the standards of evidence for criminal prosecution or conviction in the case of sexual assault
So what do we do with these seemingly irreconcilable issues? Must we sacrifice the presumption of innocence for the protection of the vulnerable? Or must we simply accept that the vulnerable will be victimized and their victimizers will go unpunished? I say neither. Let me clarify at this point, I am not talking about stranger rape, but the spectrum of offenses ranging from unwanted sexual talk to unwanted sexual contact or display (groping, masturbation, etc.). And in the case of these issues what we need is not a political or legal solution, but a shifting of mindset.
Let me illustrate with my own #metoo.
When I was thirteen, a popular classmate took out his penis and showed it to me in the middle of a class. I responded with disdain, asking if I was “supposed to be impressed” and turned away. Multiple students witnessed this exchange. None “ratted” on him. Years of bullying had taught me that the best defense was to “fake it till you make it.” To project fearlessness, bravado, and be prepared to inflict physical violence when the need arose. So despite my outward calm, I was humiliated and frightened by the act.
That summer I started “going out” with a seventeen-year-old guy who was vacationing in the campground where my friends and I hung out. I wasn’t all that interested in boys, but all my friends were and I didn’t want to be the only one without a boyfriend. The fact that I was barely sprouting boobs, while he was a grown man with a car didn’t seem to bother anyone. I ended the relationship when he took the opportunity of a secluded and empty area of the campground to pin me to a picnic table and dry hump me to his completion despite my clear protestations. None of my friends saw this as a big deal, so I figured that’s just “how it was.”
Pictured: The face every single adult in my life
should have made at the news I was dating a 17 y/o
When I was fifteen and started hitting a local college bar with my best friend (who was eighteen), it was pretty much understood that the goal of a guy was to get you drunk enough to have sex with him even if you wouldn’t have done so sober. I want to be clear that this was accepted widely by both men and women, not as a predatory act but as legitimate game plan. Watch an eighties movie. No one bats an eye at this. The bartender there used to drive my friend and I back to her dorm after hours of imbibing and he never once “tried anything,” which--in the context of our treatment by other men there--we saw as nearly heroic restraint rather than the kind of simple human courtesy one should be able to expect from a fellow member of the species. Because that’s not how it was.
When I was sixteen, in the back seat of a car with four other passengers including my boyfriend at the time, a male “friend” sitting next to me repeatedly groped my breast despite my quiet (how embarrassing it would have been to make a “scene”) insistence that he stop.
When I was seventeen, in the library at school, I heard a popular football player one table away telling his three friends how he had anally raped his longtime girlfriend. “She was like ‘No, no!’ but I flipped her over and went to town. It was like fucking an earring hole. Afterward she was crying and asking [here he mimicked her in a whining squeal] ‘Is my asshole bleeding? Is my asshole bleeding?’ [insert much raucous laughter here].” All four of them found this tale hilarious. Not one stopped to question these actions. And the girl was right there on his arm at prom. Does that make it not rape? Not assault? Does Rose McGowan’s acceptance of a settlement in lieu of almost certainly unattainable legal justice against a powerful man for a crime nearly impossible to prove in a time when “that’s just the way it was” make her less a victim as the Alec Baldwins of the world seem to imply?
Apparently, all it takes for people to forget what
a pig you are is to make fun of another pig
When I was eighteen, my thirty-one-year-old supervisor took me out to a bar on a date. Leaving, I was so drunk I could barely walk. He took me to his place where I vaguely remember him having sex with me while I tried not to throw up because that would have been so humiliating. We wound up staying together for over a year, and it never occurred to me until recently, that what he did was not right. I don’t believe he believed what he was doing was wrong or harmful in any way.
Because that’s just how it was.
The number of times I have had my body groped by a stranger without any prompting or prelude is without possible calculation. As an anarchist who believes all just interactions between people arise from the principle of self-ownership, I am shocked by the number of libertarians and anarchists who defend this behavior. Who will parse the words of our president, “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything...Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything,” and find the most important words in the this drivel to be “they let you do it” rather than “I don’t even wait.”
The idea that women are an open buffet for groping unless and until they put a stop to it, is reprehensible and anathema to the principle of self-ownership and the property rights that spring therefrom. What if we treated all property this way? That the owner has a positive obligation to prevent the theft or molestation of his belongings? That if he fails to prevent it, tough shit, I guess he wanted that guy to have his car. And forgive me for speaking in generalities again, but women are generally at a physical disadvantage. In the workplace they are often at a power disadvantage.
I am not saying there should be laws to try and rectify this so please don’t bother getting in the comments to bitch about Title IX to me. I am saying that both men and women in--power positions and not--should be aware of and respectful of these differences and the pressure they can bring to bear. As a woman, when a man you find repulsive but who could end your career grabs you by the pussy and you “don’t stop him,” it feels no different in that moment than if a huge-ass motherfucker gets in your car and drives away and you don’t stop him. In both cases, fear prevents the victim from acting.
Pictured: Someone 'letting' their car be taken
Not Pictured: Consent
The difference is that everyone, left, right, man, and woman alike would agree the latter was wrong. Many of those same people think the former is equal to consent. And so I’m not asking that anyone “make a law” or that there be “a war on groping” or anything of the sort. I’m just asking that we recognize “the way it was” is not okay and move on to a better way. When you live in a society where the greatest love story on daytime television began with a violent, drunken, rape (Luke and Laura of General Hospital), and the trope of a woman not really knowing what she wants until she’s brought down a peg by the magical kiss (or hey, even rape) of an insistent pursuer (Han and Leia, Indiana Jones and… well every woman in the series, practically every Bond film, Zorro, the list goes on), you almost can’t fault the gropers of the world. They, too, have been told it’s okay. And there are women who will defend that stance (I’m looking at you, Donna Karan), but they’re like your old, racist grandpa trying to explain that the “n-word” is really no big deal because “freedom of speech.”
Body language that clearly says, "Try harder"
according to Hollywood
Just because something isn’t illegal or is hard to prove in a court of law, doesn’t make it right. Just because something used to be a certain way, doesn’t mean we should wax nostalgic over it. The things I shared as my #metoo are not rare among women. They are common to varying degrees. Many of us never considered until recently that they were even wrong because they just were. Some of you are going to read these honest accounts and focus on those times I admittedly was drunk. You’ll say I put myself in danger. I say, “Fuck you.”
Is it reality that I chose at times to behave in a way that heightened my vulnerability? Yes. So what? That has absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand, which is that good people, good men who aren’t sociopaths incapable of considering the feelings of others, should behave the way that bartender did. Men like the one I dated for over a year and nearly married--who was in every other way a kind and generous man--should recognize that fucking a girl who is weaving in and out of consciousness, whose job depends on his approval, is not ethically acceptable. We don’t need more laws or easier punishment, we just need a different outlook.
Some will say this is the fault of feminazis, who want to claim they are “the same” as men in every other way, but then cry vulnerability in the sexual assault category. What that sounds like to me is, “You wanted your liberation, you deserve what you get.” It sounds like the bitter glee of men who believe what a woman should really do is choose one of them to be her keeper and protector as soon as possible, and if she fails to do so, she asked for whatever happens to her in the wild.
It’s not easy to change a societal view of something as ingrained as the roles of the sexes and how they can and should relate to one another. It won’t happen overnight. Passing laws won’t change hearts or minds. Aggressive prosecution in cases with little evidence will only create a backlash, not to mention injustice and a fresh new set of victims. What’s needed is a conversation respectful of the experiences of women and open to the idea that perhaps those experiences have been pretty shitty at the hands of men who truly didn’t even realize how shitty they were being. What’s needed is emotional growth and change away from the “conquerer/prize” model that films and romance novels have ingrained in us.
We don’t need written sexual consent contracts. The idea that a man should face imprisonment without such a contract is ludicrous and such demands only stymie the progress we really need, which is toward simply respecting women as fellow human beings rather than as conquests to be made. It will take time. Undoubtedly women will suffer assault that goes unpunished. Many crimes go unpunished. But if “the way it was” can just be recognized as archaic and immoral, the way it will be will be safer for the vulnerable and better for us as both male and female members of the human race.
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