Do we carry the weight of our past selves? Should we? And what is that weight, in light of others' own journeys? Such are the questions that float through my mind as I scour the news, moving through this whole Russell Brand debacle. Brand, who's currently a critic of the MSM and a wellness personality, has been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault, rape, and other such monstrosities, which immediately got people divided. Naturally. Yet both reactions seem monstrous to me.
To think there's a segment of the population who immediately reviled and despised Brand over accusations in a tabloid (as opposed to a court of law) is staggering in its own right. Or rather, the speed with which we're willing to believe everything the media tells us, is.
At the same time, there's no shortage on Brand's social media of loyal supporters saying it couldn't be true, and that they'll stand by this man regardless. And surely, that can't be right either. Personally, I like Brand, I'm a fan of his podcasts and his style, I feel he's an interesting person with healthy ideas worth entertaining in my mental space.
But is that enough for me to disregard allegations that are foreign to me? I can't understand how some people get to say "no, that's not true" or "no, that didn't happen" about a person they've never met, and a situation they were not privy to. It seems to me, as long as you and I were not in the room when he supposedly raped that woman, or assaulted his underage lover, neither of us gets to say what did and didn't happen. Feels like an obvious one to me.
Photo:James Manning/PA
We tend to define ourselves by our likes, and prize our own perception of people and events above everything, even sometimes, above truth. So it's easy to see where these people denying the allegations (or automatically trusting them 100%) are coming from.
How a conspiracy theory limits the narrative.
Even as the news broke out, Russell Brand was quick to issue a video of himself denying the accusations, and suggesting it's an orchestrated attack on him (most likely for speaking out against the MSM, the pandemic, etc.). It very probably is. It stands to reason that this is a choreographed attack on an anti-establishment voice getting too loud and prominent.
And yet...
That doesn't speak as to the truth behind the allegations, does it? I've noticed a tendency in people who are sound of mind and see this as an orchestrated attack, to automatically dismiss both the allegations and the so-called victims. To me, that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater, though.
I get it. I like Brand. I'm no fan of this BS cancel culture. And I'm frankly terrified that anyone who speaks against the establishment is dragged through the mud and destroyed. Those are signs of a dictatorship that chills one to the bone. But we can't know that this dictatorship of ours is fabricating skeletons in everyone's closet.
What these women are saying about Brand may very likely be true. By his own admission, he was heavily drugged, drunk, and promiscuous at the time. Is it so far-fetched that he behaved inappropriately towards some of the women around him? That, in his addled state, he was unable to read his partner's signals? I don't think so.
While the dictatorship we live in scares me, so does some people's readiness to dismiss all of these #MeToo stories right out of the gate. It's not an either/or situation. It may well be the case that Brand abused these women and that these skeletons are now carefully dragged out of his closet to shame and punish him for speaking out against the establishment.
It can be both a punishment, and a true accusation. One does not exclude the other. And you need to be able to see both sides. It's not good if you automatically believe the victims, without waiting for legal proof, and dismiss the idea that this is a classic cancel culture witch hunt move. It's also not good if, seeing this witch hunt, you automatically dismiss potential victims of sexual abuse, either.
Can our society balance itself out?
That's another aspect of the story that's been bugging me. I've talked to (and on behalf of, ironically) a lot of men decrying and bemoaning their present condition. I've said it often, I don't think it's easy being a man in the 21st century, in our pristine Western world. I don't think it's a good thing (neither for the individual, nor for our future as a species) that men can't approach women without automatically fearing a sexual abuse/assault charge. And I imagine it must be terrifying knowing that anything you do with a woman in the bedroom can come back to have some very serious consequences, should you go through a bad break-up, cheat on her, or just run into the occasional psycho.
Photo: Alexander Krivitskiy
I've got a lot of sympathy for men's plight in our modern world. That being said, I can't help but recognize that women have also had a pretty shitty plight for centuries, and even millennia.
And no, I don't think it's "men's turn". Some so-called feminists seem to want to punish men for the abuse their forefathers perpetrated on our gender. I think that's bullshit, and it's not what I'm arguing here. I do, however, wonder if we're not going through a period of social redress at the moment.
For a very long time, rape victims coming forward were dismissed and ridiculed. For an even longer time before that, being a "rape victim" wasn't even a thing. So maybe it's natural to have now swung towards the other extreme. If our society believed no woman before, maybe it now needs to believe all women, by default. To redress the gender imbalance, and hopefully build a more equal playing field for the future.
There's danger in that, though. Because, as this case makes clear, there are those in the shadows who'd gladly use a woman's voice, and a woman's suffering, to manipulate and bully the narrative. I think as women we should be really worried that our voices and our pain is used in a public witch hunt of this nature, since it takes away from the severity of our suffering, and discredits the offence itself.
Much like the boy who cried wolf, if enough of these #MeToo stories are revealed to be falsehoods, eventually, no one will believe actual rape victims. Women crying "assault" will be written off as attention-seekers, gold-diggers, or merely pawns in someone else's propagandistic witch hunt. It will, in some senses, be worse than being back at square one, and I really think we should be wary of that.
Scratch that. I think we should be vigilant, both of men looking to exploit women's voices, but also of women who, eyes on the prize, will diminish the seriousness of sexual assault by levelling accusations at consensual partners.
Are we redressing? I'd like to hope so, but I'm much more inclined to believe in what I just said above. That if we're not careful, this will come back to bite us in the ass.
As for Russell, I don't know. I think it's possible, in a hazed state, to cross the line between consent and assault pretty easily. Then again, the women in his company couldn't have been nuns. I think it's possible, as a woman, to engage in sexual behaviors you later come to regret, and that it takes a great deal of fortitude to own those bad behaviors, rather than blame them on a partner, which these women might be lacking. I think that's possible, too. It might be a money thing, entirely. It might also be the case that this charming, gregarious man might've, at times, donned the robe of a sexual predator.
I don't know. And that's the point. None of us can know, so we should dose our cynicism and our trust appropriately.
Should he be forgiven, simply because he's grown and changed? If the interactions were consensual, definitely. If not, however, I think we still carry the weight of our past selves, even as we've shed them.
Speaking of, I think it's infuriating how these tabloids are dredging up Brand's past history with substance abuse, because that's got to be an obvious clue, right? That move alone should disqualify some of these rags from the conversation.