"These blood red eyes
Don't see so good
But what's worse is if they could
Would I change my ways?"
When the trailers hit for movie The Dark Knight Rises, there was this great quote that Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) whispers in Bruce Wayne's ear: "There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us." It stuck in my head back then. I really looked forward to the movie. It's been stuck in my head again recently, but for a very different reason.
A few weeks ago, we saw the #MeToo hashtag movement begin. And there's been plenty of it. For many men (especially the cis straight white middle class ones like myself), I expect there was some disillusionment as to just how much. There were cracks in the dam, and now it's a downright flood.
If you're a man who prefers the company of men, and who has never taken the time to really get to know and listen to women, you may not have realized just how pervasive it is. If, on the other hand, you're someone who enjoys getting to know women, and have gotten close to some, and sat and listened, then it likely came as no surprise. I made a post about statistics on Facebook, and how when I would teach it in a class the facial expressions made its accuracy clear to me, but that was only half the story. The rest is this: of the women I've gotten to really know in my lifetime - lovers, close friends - who reached a point where they felt they could truly confide in me... those numbers were a heart-breaking truth that left zero room for doubt. Each story (after story, after story...) was a harrowing experience just to hear; I can't imagine living them.
And so at long last, this dark secret about ourselves as a society that we've been denying and pushing aside for years has come crashing irreversibly forward, and we - and by we I mean mostly men - are being forced to come to terms with the guilt of our crimes, whether explicit or simply complicit. And one way or the other, my brothers, we are all guilty. You may put your hands in the air and cry foul and say how you've never assaulted, or perhaps never even harassed, but in the very least, I expect, you would have to admit you've ignored, disbelieved, laughed along, or otherwise participated and therefore contributed to a culture that doesn't simply permit, but promotes.
When I posted #MeToo, I did so very reluctantly. I'm well-aware that my experiences are trivial compared to those of women around me. Was I ever sexually harassed by an employer? Sure, but not routinely, not all my life, and not in a way that left me wondering if it was safe to be alone with them in the stock room. Was I ever sexually assaulted? Sort of, in a complicated, drunken tale, but not in a way that left me feeling violated and traumatized, and not in a way that would make me fearful of drinking or even make me end that relationship. I was reluctant to say anything because I don't deserve to. If someone is talking about their cancer, you don't tell them about your broken toe.
The next day I saw a post by a woman suggesting that men posting #MeToo is just one more example of the irrepressible white male voice, co-opting even this to somehow make it about themselves.
And she was right.
Us white men suck at shutting up. I'm very, very bad at it. (He wrote...)
Following #MeToo came #ItWasMe, as men, feeling the weight of that guilt, thought the best way they could support women in the moment was to acknowledge their own roles in the culture we've built and must now work toward correcting. I began soul-searching, rifling through my hazy memory banks of many moons ago.
What a complete-and-utter asshole I was through my childhood. For a pencil-neck geek, struggling to survive in an all-boys Catholic school and neighbourhood rife with knuckle-dragging neanderthals, I was surrounded on all sides by toxic masculinity, and I drank it up. I drank it up. And what I didn't agree with I got very good at smiling along with anyway. So despite my own constant struggle for survival, I managed to somehow find time and ways to be a real pain to half the species. We didn't know, back then, just what tools we were being, of course, but that doesn't excuse it. Our blissful ignorance does not reduce the trauma of our victims. I comb through my memories, finding those "laugh along" moments where the victim was clearly not at all 'cool' with what was happening... There are a few in particular that leave me thinking "damn, she must have been traumatized by that". In my preteens, our two favorite games were "guns" and "CCK" (chase, catch, kiss). A telling indictment of our culture, isn't it? Make war. Take sex.
I wonder where things began to turn for me. Perhaps when I started having girlfriends in my late teens I began to finally see them as equals. Or maybe when I got away from "da hood" or out of high school I started to see the light. I don't know. Maybe it was much later. It certainly wasn't overnight. It was bit by bit. I know I am not now the person I was at 20, or at 30, or at 40, or hell, even a couple of years ago. I also know there are things about me that have changed considerably for the better, but I also know there are things left I can change. I will change. I must change.
I will become better. And to my brothers I say:
We can and must all do better.
Along with #MeToo and #ItWasMe came a handful of posts asking and answering the question of "what can we do?" I read them with much interest. I've spent some time and given it considerable thought. I've started making a list for myself - starting with one item many men won't much like - but which they need to hear (and, sadly, from another cis, straight, white, middle-class male), so I offer it nonetheless. And when you read the first item, you might think this whole post self-contradictory, but press on, it will make sense in the end.
Below is the start of my list. It's for me. Other men are welcome to adopt it or adapt it. They're welcome to write their own. They're welcome to put their heads in the sand and "ostrich" on past, too, but when I get to my #3 they shouldn't be surprised if I come find them, if they're any friend or acquaintance of mine.
So without further adieu, here's the start of my plan:
#1 SHUT THE FUCK UP.
This is something I suck at, and as a collective group that cis, straight, white, middle-class males all truly, truly, TRULY suck at. We drone on and on and have opinions on everything and how to fix everything and are always very cocksure that our solutions are the right solutions and drown out everyone else's. We're "fixers". We're raised to believe we have not just the power but the responsibility. How cliche is it that in our relationships we constantly find ourselves hearing our wives or girlfriends complain about something, looking simply for emotional support, only for us to meet them with suggested courses of action instead. They walk away upset and disappointed and angry. We walk away confused and frustrated.
Because we suck at shutting up. We suck at listening. We never learned how to do those things.
It's time to learn. We can't listen while we're talking, and right now ours are not the stories that need to be told and heard. The stories that need to be told and heard right now belong to those who've had their voices quashed or ignored for the eons that have led us to this place. "But I still have an opinion!" Sure, but it's not our turn to talk. It's our turn to shut up and listen. All our lives, we have lived with the privilege of having opportunities to speak and be heard, while around us others were not afforded these chances. It was so dreadfully commonplace we didn't notice. Swing a dead cat and you'll hit someone with the audacity to complain about things like "Black History Month", oblivious to the fact that portioning out 1/12th of the year still left the other 11/12ths to the white, eurocentric history we've been retelling ourselves for decades. It's time to wake up and sacrifice what our privilege has afforded us in the interest of helping others.
Instead of sharing my opinion on everything, I will endeavor to find and share the voices that need to be heard. I will take my voice (Facebook feed, blog, whatever), and lend it to them instead. How about a TED talk on domestic violence from the perspective of a woman who suffered domestic violence? How about bathroom bills from the perspective of transgender persons most affected?
My voice is a privilege, and that brings me to my second point:
#2 I need to learn to recognize and acknowledge what privilege I have.
Privilege comes in many layers. I'm cis, straight, white, male, and white-collar middle class. That's a lot of steps on the ladder of privilege. Shy of running for office, returning to Christianity, or becoming much wealthier (none of which I desire), there's little I could do to be in a more advantageous position than I am already.
We live in a culture where men like me enjoy an enormous amount of privilege and if they can't see that they really haven't been paying attention. I park at the back of the parking garage and walk across it without once thinking to myself "Will I get beaten for being black? For being gay?" When a stranger I'm doing business with needs to meet me to pick up or drop something off I wouldn't hesitate to give them my home or work address, or go to theirs. I don't stop to think "Will I get raped? Best meet in a crowded, well-lit, public place..."
In my late teens and early 20s, I used to walk home alone at every hour of night, past one of the worst neighbourhoods in the city, into another of the worst neighbourhoods in the city. (Something no young girl's parents would let her do, obviously.) I did this despite a childhood filled with the fear of "getting jumped" by kids from the rival school on the walk home (which proved true on several occasions). Because until I was actually mugged as an adult, I was not conditioned to fear. Society didn't tell me "learn to be afraid, and learn to live with it" the way it does others. Society told me the world was my oyster (and "man up" and take it). And when I wrote a friend and told her about what had happened, she wrote me back and told me I might now understand the fear that every woman has constantly that the man following her might have a "gun/knife/fist" in his pocket. That last word stopped me in my tracks: "fist". A fist in his pocket? Of course he has a fist in his pocket. Fist. Fist? What a strange thing to say!
Between 8 and 13 I'd been in enough street- and school-yard fights I'd probably not have been able to recall them all. I'd been punched in the face and punched faces past counting. The idea of fearing a simple fist was incomprehensible, because for me, the fist was likely the ending of a horrible encounter, not the beginning. In my mind, it wasn't the prelude to a rape or mutilation or broken bones or life-long trauma. It was just a fist...
I stopped walking home alone at night after that encounter. Instead, I always have cab fare handy. It's a privilege my rise to white-collar middle class affords me. I'm now privileged enough to afford living without that fear.
In fact, I live nowadays with the privilege of thinking (hoping) that the fist (and worse) is behind me, in the past. It's not a part of my day-to-day. There are an enormous number of people for whom this is not true in our society, and likely won't be in the entirety of their lifetime. The only thing they've "done to deserve it" was being born the "wrong" colour, gender, or sex.
We can't understand, appreciate, and sympathize with the plight of others until we recognize how good we've had it, and then, once we understand the power we've been given, once we've learned to hold it in check, we can learn to use it at the right time and in the right ways.
Namely:
#3 When the time is right, I have to open to my mouth.
I need to ask for the opinions of the ones not being heard in the meetings. I have to challenge why a crucial task was entrusted the male coworker and not the female. I can't laugh along with the misogynistic joke, but I must instead be clear that it wasn't funny. I need to make people aware that their choice of language is discriminatory, in case they weren't aware. ("I got gyped" is racist. Did you know?) And some language is actually very gendered and misogynist. (Why is my nastiest swear word a body part I'm rather fond of? Doesn't even make sense.)
I needn't be overly aggressive about it; that's kind of defeating the point, in a way. I will simply ask. I will suggest. I will politely address the elephant in the room. I will make people think about all the things they do and say and put out into the world.
Because that world is being shared by a lot more people than them.
And for those cis, straight, white, middle-class males who haven't yet learned to STFU and listen, they're going to need to hear it from one of their own. We may be the only ones they can hear. We're the only ones they're accustomed to hearing. And that's part of why I wrote this, despite point #1 above.
This is a culture evolution.
This is men telling men: "Not cool, bro."
I can do better. We can do better. It's time to do better. And this list of mine? These are only the beginning.
Many years ago, when I was a teen, there was this crazy thunderstorm that happened one night when I was in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. It was a massive, massive downpour with bolt lightning crashing across the sky, the likes of which I'd never before seen. Everyone ran indoors and shut windows.
I went outside, briefly, to stand in it, awestruck. I wanted to feel the warm rain pound down on me and wash over me, and hear the crashing thunder. I wanted to catch a glimpse of Mother Nature in all her unstoppable fury. When days and days of oppressive humidity finally "broke", I wanted to experience it.
"Wasted times and broken dreams
Violent colors so obscene
It's all I see these days
These days"
Violent colors so obscene
It's all I see these days
These days"
