The rate at which the sexual assaults of men in positions of power are coming to light seems to be increasing. Victims coming forth with their stories are giving strength to other victims, and modern methods of communication both offer avenues of attack for these predators and further evidence of their actions. The rate of these incidents is not increasing, just that we are hearing about it more.
The “Me, Too” campaign on social media prompted women who have been victims of sexual assault to write “Me, Too” as their status update to give the world at large a sense of how pervasive this problem is. I have seen miserable stories told bravely in the course of this, and have also read rebuttals claiming that it should not, again, be the responsibility of women to remind men to be actual human beings. And spare me your “not all men” nonsense because it is as misguided as crying out “all lives matter”, as though anyone was saying otherwise.
Men, the collective, have a long way to go. It’s our fault — where “it” can be substituted with almost any negative thing you want. Of course sentiment like that can be subverted into absurdity but, again, spare me your reductive nonsense. Not everything is the fault of the male gender, but there’s enough that is that you sound like an asshole trying to defend it. The same ego that causes us to take any comment about men on the whole as a direct attack on us personally is probably the root cause of all this anyway.
There are, no doubt, opportunities for me to get out into the world and speak as a man on behalf of women, to promote the idea that men need to take action and help guide their fellow man towards treating everyone around them like actual people. I am not much of an activist, however. I feel confident that were I witness to, or had knowledge of, another man involved in a form of harassment or assault that I would speak up about it — but I haven’t found myself in that scenario (yet).
My avenue for contribution is my boys.
It is possible to raise young boys and teach them the importance of consent and empathy and equality and to do it in a way that isn’t forced or overwrought. It starts by respecting their wishes and their words and leading by example. Tickle fights are a staple of playtime with children. And a staple of tickle fights is that you keep tickling even when your kid is screeching and giggling and saying “Stop it stop it” which they may not entirely mean because if you stop they’ll ask you to start up again. What’s important is that when they say stop, you stop. I can feel people wanting to roll their eyes about this, but these are the little things that stick in a child’s mind — stop doesn’t really mean stop; keep going if you believe what is happening is fun for everyone involved. It’s not some huge leap in logic to see how this can transform itself into something ugly, intentionally or not.
Then you need to extend that to their recognizing that what they want doesn’t dictate what others need to do. “Okay, it’s great that you want to hug your little sister, but you can’t just run at her and hug her by surprise because she’s a baby and she falls over when you do that.” Or, “it’s super nice that you want to hug your friends goodbye when you leave school, but hugging people from behind around the neck is more like choking them. Why don’t you try asking people if they want a hug?” And now we have boys that (when they aren’t amped out of their minds like little kids can be) follow their sister around incessantly going “Maya. Want a hug, Maya? Maya? Want a hug?” It can get annoying as shit, but the lesson is there. Be clear with your intention, and be sure what you are getting back is reciprocation. Otherwise, drop it and move on. If Maya doesn’t want a hug she doesn’t need to hug you. If your friend would rather have a high-five, go with the high-five.
Speaking of being owed hugs, that’s another thing. If they don’t want to hug a relative or friend or teacher or whoever (read: a person in a position of power and influence), they don’t need to. Oh sure, it would be nice if kiddos were excited to see and interact with the important folks in their life, but let’s give them a little agency. You have relatives that you are related to and that’s about it — let’s allow them the leeway to not be thrilled about someone. In the process, you are teaching them in a small way that there is no requisite level of physical intimacy with someone.
We talk a lot about empathy in the house, too. When someone hurts a friend or a sibling, we ask how they think the other party feels. Would they like it if someone yanked on their shirt and knocked them over? No? Then why would you do that to your friend? It’s easy to just scold in these instances and leave it at that. But without the “why not”, it’s just noise to a kid.
Equality is important as well, and is again easier to teach than you would think. Both boys will refer to girl toys or boy toys from time to time and while we’re not militant about it or something, we just always point out that there are just “toys”. Matthew likes princesses and dresses. Joshua likes Plants vs. Zombies and Pokémon. Neither is more correct, neither is encouraged more than the other. Matthew gets nervous from time to time that someone will say something to him about his Barbie dolls, but I just give him a shrug and tell him that I like Barbie, too. They’re going to get all sorts of pressure from plenty of sources that tell them that things for girls are not for boys and this sets up a hierarchy. These things are better than those things — more important. We push back against that, just a bit, but enough that it is understood that while people may believe these things, there’s no rule that makes it so.
I feel as though people dismiss thinking about parenting in this fashion because it seems all hippy-dippy or something. I am not some Kumbaya Pinterest Dad who wants to have drum circles where we dance our feelings. My parenting style, more than I would prefer, tends to just involve “more volume”. All this I’m discussing here is just little things I say and do. Little actions or inactions that over time frame a clear ethos. I don’t need to sit down and say “Look, don’t rape anyone and also don’t ask me what rape means for another 7 years at least.” That’s because at its core this issue isn’t about sexual politics, it is about the recognition of others, of any gender, as thinking, feeling beings that deserve respect and compassion.
Leave a Reply