Yes, All Men
We should examine our own behaviour before condemning other men.
I used to work in a police station with men who had abused women. Nothing has burned me out more quickly in 15 years of front-line mental health work than listening to their stories every day. What hit me hardest was the relentless banality. Life-changing events processed and tagged before the next one came in. Each story was horrific but the sheer number made them normal.
I used to think I was different from those men. I’ve never been violent to women. Women are my good friends, respected colleagues, people I love, i.e. the “I have black friends” defense. I think most men think similarly, but all men are like those men. We might not act the same way but on some level, we feel the same.
Men are born into a society that hates women. We internalise all the rage, power, shame, humiliation and it sits there inside us. We know it’s there and we ignore it because it scares us. But we need to connect with and acknowledge our misogyny. Right now the only people we’re hiding it from are ourselves. It isn’t like women don’t already know.
We need to recognise that even if we are not violent, our innate hatred comes out in other ways. The decisions we make at work, the media we consume, how we act out our roles as friend, father, husband, and boyfriend. The porn we watch, the texts we send, the looks we give. How we vote, the issues we protest and the ones we don’t. The behaviour we ignore, excuse, or justify.
You can’t travel to work listening to songs about women being sexually dominated, spend your day appraising your colleague’s bodies, watch a TV show about a man dismembering teenage girls, masturbate to footage of a woman being violated, and then sleep soundly thinking “I’m nothing like those rapists and murderers”.
It isn’t our fault we were born into a misogynistic society. But it is our fault that we continue to perpetuate harm to women. We might not be on the metaphorical front line firing the bullets, but we aren’t passive bystanders either. Most of us are back home in the factory making guns, telling ourselves it’s ok because we’re not soldiers.
We might not act like the men I used to see in the police station, but we pave the way for them every day. It is no one’s responsibility but ours to change that.
