As a heterosexual,
white, cis-gendered, public school educated bloke it is a difficult
thing to write progressive and, dare I say it, feminist literature in
the 21st century without being called a patronising
wanker. Nevertheless, I try – because I am a patronising wanker.
There are a million excuses of history and upbringing and
conditioning that #allmen can use to try and get out of behaving like
total bastards, and, if I'm totally honest, it takes serious effort
to break your programming and not be a default mansplaining,
bum-groping, calm-down-dearing cunt of a man.
This is absolutely
no excuse to be one though.
Not even to use a
historic female genitalia based insult to make a point.
I still did though.
Sorry.
There's
really no good excuse to use pictures of Dave Lee Roth
and
a load of girls in bikinis either, but I thought it would illustrate the kind of thing
I thought was cool when I was twelve.
Which is kind of where the problems start right?
I am not writing to
excuse the behaviour of Weinstein, Spacey, Fallon, Green and all the
other blokes being rightfully called out for their behaviour. I am
not even trying to do a #notallmen type right-on liberal mansplain.
But since all this misogyny went centre stage I've been thinking a
lot, about my own behaviour, about the behaviour of people I know, my
family, my friends, my colleagues. And whether it is more to do with
society than being an actual twat. And if I too am awful, or if we're
all just twats. #NotAllTwats.
Before all of this
began, I was (and still am) up to my ears writing my third novel,
which I think of as an exploration of modern gender identities, a
look at what it is to be a man – with all the historic baggage that
goes with it – interacting with LGBTQ characters and modern women
in the 21st century, told through the eyes of a teenager
and his dad. Anybody actually reading it will almost certainly think
of it as a string of dirty jokes, some comic deaths and a
disappointing conclusion (am fixing that though), but underneath all
the bollocks there is a study of how to wield a pair in modern
Britain.
I may have mentioned
that I am a heterosexual, white, cis-gendered, public school educated
bloke once or twice. Yet I have still been a victim of misogyny. Not
in any way as seriously as genuine victims, the closest I came to
being assaulted was when a bloke bought me a rum and coke and then
shoved his tongue down my throat. Had I been that way inclined I
probably wouldn't have minded, I was more surprised than upset if I
recall correctly, but we're not all so hedonistic and other people
would be traumatised by it (a fact that Julia Hartley-Brewer seems
incapable of understanding). However, as a skinny geeky kid with no
interest in sports, an inexplicable obsession with his sister's doll
house (which I am still thoroughly envious of to this day, it had
more rooms than Castle Greyskull, and a garage) who preferred to hang
out with girls, I was called a few choice names and beaten up in the
changing rooms enough. As a long-haired man with a penchant for
dressing flamboyantly (and not averse to wearing dresses sometimes) I
still get similar treatment from proper blokes. Though I don't get
beaten up in changing rooms anymore.
Despite all that, I
have almost certainly been a dick to women without even realising it.
We are conditioned by society to see them as lesser, as decorative,
as either mothers or whores. This is not a healthy state of affairs.
We are bombarded on all sides with movies, books and songs where the
stalker eventually gets the girl. She said no, don't stand on her
lawn playing Peter Gabriel on your wet boom box you creepy dickhead,
move on to one that does like you.
Conditioning happens
on both sides, and neither version is healthy. Girls are brought up
to not seem easy, not be tarts, not take control of their own
sexuality. While blokes are encouraged to sow their wild oats, set
out on a quest, drag them back to the cave by their hair, faint heart
never won fair maiden, etc. etc. Having been brought up to respect
their decisions, my teenage self walked away from girls who said no.
Feeling like a right-on progressive 90s dude. Occasionally, a few
nights later the same girls would ask me why I had left them alone,
and that they didn't mean no, they just didn't want to seem easy. A
different type of bloke could easily have taken this to mean that no
doesn't always mean no. I didn't want to take the risk thanks, so I
kept leaving them alone. Regrets, I've had a few...
This is not putting
the blame on the girls, the anti-teases, the exact opposite of the
ones that kept saying yes right up until they said no. Who I also
left alone, and walked away from (and on one memorably friend-zoned
night, sat next to, stroked the hair of and read Shelley to). They
are completely within their rights to act so. I changed my mind on
enough occasions and could happily walk away without being grabbed
and made to carry on (except for that one time, and it turned out she
was right). Most girls I know didn't get that choice. I genuinely do
not know any women who have never been assaulted in one way or
another. Up until the #MeToo hashtag started trending I assumed the
scale of this shit was no secret. The surprise expressed over it was
the most surprising thing about it for me.
I do not think I
have ever been guilty of it, but I don't remember a lot of the 90s, I
was drinking a lot, I was the lead guitar player, and I was living in
the aggressively macho-culture of the 'New Lad'. This meant that we
could neck pints of lager and shout 'Wahey! Look at the tits on
that!' ironically. It was a pretty fucking thin veneer. I do recall
once grabbing the bottom of a girl that I thought was the same girl
whose bottom I had been grabbing totally consensually a few nights
before only to look round and see somebody else's face. Mortified, I
left before either she or her friends pulled me up for it with no
more explanation than 'oops, sorry'. In retrospect I may have come
off more aggressive than coward, whatever the truth of it. I'm sorry
if it was you. So yeah, #MeToo and #YesAllMen I suppose.
The toxic legacy of
outdated attitudes will take a long time to dissipate. I am still
shocked every time a co-worker refers to an occasional tech-engineer
that visits as 'that he-she thing'. More often than not it's those I
would least expect it from: just because you're educated it doesn't
make you enlightened. She is a woman now, and deserves to at least be
referred to as such. I am more shocked though, at my own inability to
stand up for her in her absence. Inside I am clearly still a twelve
year old boy, scared of being called a gaylord by the rugby team if
he sticks up for the girl they're calling Tucgoals (the ugly cow who
gets on at Locky's stop) on the bus. I got buried in bags for that. I
need to realise that isn't going to happen now, man up (fucking awful
expression) and tell the dickheads to stop being dickheads. It is no
longer acceptable to be a misogynistic dickhead just because you are
scared of having the piss ripped out of you by the other misogynistic
dickheads for not being a misogynistic dickhead. It might turn out
that all of you are secret feminists and are filled with
self-loathing at your behaviour.
Break your
conditioning, and don't be a dick.
