Controversial title, but I have really been depressed about the variety of news this week, all about a preponderance of bad male behaviour that has been accepted and normalised. This is sort of a TAAT (lots of them). In the past few days I've read about
- Harvey W and the resulting discussions that make it clear most, if not all workplaces, have a creepy male who may or may not cross lines, but certainly makes women feel very uncomfortable and that most people are aware of it, but for some reason it's never dealt with, and if women do speak out, usually it harms their career.
The way, if women behaved, they would be sacked and there would be outrage (rightly so), but managements across the world shrug their collective shoulders and say "that's just how he is". As though that makes it ok.
- 2 separate cases where young women have been molested several times BY DIFFERENT MEN in one night. The awful one in Birmingham, where a young woman suffered 3 sexual assaults in an hour whilst walking home, the last one possibly by a group of men. Then another, older case, where a woman was being molested on a train and moved, only for the man she moved next to to do the same thing.
The resulting discussions, and the thread a while back that made it depressingly clear that for a majority of women, unwanted advances, gropes, and sexual innuendo are the norm, let alone sexual assault. That most men, regardless of how PC they are towards women (especially their own female friends and family) will subconsciously consider women to need their support and approbation - whether that's through positive reassurance (I'll protect you and walk you home - protect from whom? Men?) or through casual demeaning comments - giving women marks out of 10, commenting on their dress (see all the press comments about Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon photo op - if it were 2 men it would have been all about the political history they were making, as it was 2 women in skirts, it was all about their legs and the length of their skirts), commenting on what the new office worker would be like in bed, always bringing everything back to appearance and sex, as if that's the best and only thing women have to offer.
Then discussions on same sex v mixed education - the comments that the boys detract from the girls as they dominate lessons with silly behaviour, meaning the girls get less time and attention, the constant comments about attractiveness or not of the girls (I know this happens to boys too, but not to the same extent - how many teenage girls go "whoah, look at the package on that"), again, the casual sex offences - undoing bra straps, brushing genitals against girls' bodies, looking up their skirts.
Any women that speak up are deemed men haters, angry feminists, lesbians etc and their careers are harmed.
I am not a man hater, I am happily married, and have a lovely dad and a young son (as well as 2 daughters). Yet I hear it around me all the time, the casual comments that diminish females (oh he's so clever, she's so pretty), the implication that women need protecting from men (my husband always walks our female babysitter home, which I'm happy about but think why should it be necessary - it's never occurred to us to offer to walk our male babysitter - same age - home ever)
America has appointed a known sexual predator as a president - how was he even allowed to stand for public office with his track record (regardless of his totally inability to be a president)
There was that study done in 2015 that showed 1/3 of college professionals would rape if they could get away with it. College Men Commit Rape
Discussions with male colleagues in the pub where they're clearly angry that they should consider if the drunk woman they want to shag is sober enough to consent.
All the women across all walks of life, high profile or not, for whom casual and everyday sexist behaviour is an unchallengeable reality.
I've just become really sad and angry about the world I'm bringing my daughters up in, and wonder what we can do, men and women, to stop this intrinsic indoctrination that it's ok for males to behave like this, wherever on the scale they fall, and for females just to accept it.
How can we draw a firm line that says "no, whoever you are, however powerful, this is not ok".
How can we get the men who are appalled by this behaviour to call their colleagues out on it, not to wait to be the protector of little women, but to say - "no, when George, the new office manager, started last week you didn't feel the need to comment on how handsome he was or speculate on the size of his cock, so why, when Jane, the new head of PR, started yesterday did you comment on her tits and how you would't mind giving her one".
Why don't the decent men in society stick their heads above the parapet and say "NO. It's not ok. Don't do it".
Not to protect the women. But because they are appalled. And don't want it to happen any more.