[We join mid-conversation, as I, Roboseyo, discuss the implications of the Bear In The Woods meme with Rocco, the Fictional Person Who Argues With Me.]
For context, read part one of my Bear In The Woods Manifesto
Rocco: “Okay. I get it. [See explanation in previous blog post] But I’d just like to point out that any persuadable person would have already been persuaded 400 words ago, Rob.”
So you admit you don’t want to be persuaded?
Rocco: “I admit no such thing. I just want to know why you are really still going on about this?”
I’m glad you asked.
Rocco: “Oh, no. That’s your ‘pontification’ face.”
It is.
Rocco: “What have I done?”
Let's travel back in time a bit, to see the bigger picture:
When #MeToo went super-viral in 2017, part of the conversation went underplayed. We got distracted by gleefully watching a few horrible men like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein finally get their long-delayed desserts (both walk free at the time of writing, but that’s a different rant). However, one thread of the conversation kind of fell to the wayside: the threads discussing what part ordinary, non-rapist, well-meaning men could play.
The lone facebook post I saw on the topic, by some social media user now lost in the sands of time, had some choice words:
“Now that it has been successfully impressed upon us how common and far-reaching harassment and assault are, the next step is to reflect on the ways our society has … failed to notice or correct the attitudes and actions that led to [#metoo].
But real talk: using "as a society" and collective language is dangerous too. It is yet another way of absconding personal responsibility, of distancing myself from what is happening. No mincing words: I individually have participated in excusing, ignoring, tolerating, enabling, and otherwise failing to notice or correct attitudes and actions of sexual harassment and assault.
I want you to know that I don't just believe you, I'm acknowledging that I've exhibited some pretty unsavory behavior in my past. I've been looking at this for a long time now, and I've definitely been the guy who…
Here the poster lists some ways that he’s added to the environment where so much bad stuff is ignored, brushed off, or tolerated, that worse stuff happens too, and he finishes with this line, which I want to pull out of 2017 and bring it back to 2024.
“It does us no good if all the men think that every "me too" was somebody else's fault.”
Sometimes I teach the “self serving bias,” in class. It's the bias we use to re-interpret a situation, make ourselves an exception, and somehow let ourselves off the hook. #NotAllMen is an example of this "exceptional" thinking. "I'm one of the good ones, so #MeToo doesn't concern me!"
But one more time with emphasis: “It does us no good if all the men think that every "me too" was somebody else's fault.” ...and what are the protestations against the bear in the woods thought experiment, except men continuing to point fingers, and say that #MeToo was #NotMeThough, and seeing that it was #DefinitelySomeoneElse, #WhatDoYouThinkICanDoAboutItAnyway? Well, lots.
And now, years later, The Bear Discourse is as good an opportunity as any to circle back to big ideas from 2017, and talk about the way even well-meaning men who Hold the Right Opinions can still contribute to the background radiation of sexist pain-in-the-assery that makes women feel a tiny bit unsafe most of the time. Sure, there’s no-brainer bad stuff going on: there'll always be somewhere to point fingers if I really want to wiggle out of my own culpability or pose on a moral high ground, but beyond the "call the cops or alert HR" stuff, there’s a lot of “death by a thousand paper cuts” stuff to discuss. Conversations about racism led to inventing the term “micro-aggressions” for these.
You know what I'm talking about. Mechanic shops assuming a woman knows nothing about cars. Asking only the female coworkers if they’ve thought about marrying or starting a family. Paying extra attention to the most attractive woman in a group, while ignoring older or unattractive women. That kind of stuff can be corrected with a little work. There’s even smaller stuff (call them "nano-aggressions"?) that could be a micro-aggression, but might not even be noticed — either by the woman it targeted, or by the man who might have done it unconsciously. Stuff like giving women the up-and-down with the eyes as she walks by. Not catcalling, not whistling... but still eyeballing. Stuff that the culture just does, that we take for granted, might fit here -- like movie trailers and ads putting women's bodies on display. Movies pairing up a man over fifty with a woman under thirty. Maybe a particular woman doesn't consciously notice it all, but if she does, such tiny things all send the same message: “being a woman is the most important thing about you,” “being young and attractive is more important than any other thing about being a woman,” and, ultimately, “This is a man’s world.”
But that still doesn’t cover it, because it’s not even just the tiny things we do, the micro-aggressions. There are also what I’m calling micro-elisions -- the tiny things we don't do -- that make women unsure if a guy, even that guy who loudly announces he's a feminist and wears the t-shirt and writes multi-part blog posts, would believe her if she told him something.
Here’s a little text image meme that made the rounds a while ago that encapsulates the idea of micro-elisions better than pages of explanation, in a simple story:
I'm just gonna write that out for anyone who's using a voice reader, or some other visual assistance for reading. Skip if you already read it.
"When my daughter was 15 we went for lunch at an upscale steakhouse. As she was walking to the ladies room a table full of men were staring at her. I saw, but could not hear, one of the men say something to her. She clenched her fists, her shoulders stiffened, and she speed walked away from them. 6 men at the table. One of them made a sexually suggestive comment to a child. Not one of them called him out on it.
I got up from our table and went up to them. I looked the creep right in the eyes and told him that I didn't know what he said but I knew it made my child uncomfortable. I then told them all that when she walked back from the table if even one of them made eye contact with her, let alone said a single word to her, I would create a scene that they'd never forget.
Six men at the table, meaning five men who heard Chad’s lewd comment could have said, “That was disgusting, bro. Don’t ever talk to women like that around me again. Especially minors.” Five men, who probably all think of themselves as good men, said nothing. “Well, it wasn’t ME making the comment.” If one of them had spoken up, Chad might think twice before being so disrespectful again. And next time, a second guy might agree that Chad was out of line. Called out by TWO buddies? That would change the color of that entire social group. Doing nothing IS a moral choice when something wrong is happening, and that’s why we need to talk about micro-elisions. Most of our lives don’t have moments where the time to take a moral stand is obvious, cut-and-dried, clear and signposted. If you wait for your August Landmesser moment, life will pass you by, and who knows how you'll feel looking back on those times you calculated it was better to go along to get along.Five men watched another man sexually harass a teenager and said not one f**king word. What the man said to my kid? "Are you my dessert? I'd eat you in a second."
She wasn't protected by the men who stayed silent.
She was protected by me.
It. Is. All. Men. Period.
Micro-elisions aren’t the crime itself, but because of them, the crime becomes that much more possible. Less
| still my favorite picture of sharks. from memebase/cheezburger.com |
unthinkable. It's like shark attacks. Shark attacks happen. They happen under certain conditions, but all those other conditions depend on this: there needs to be salt-water, because sharks can’t survive in fresh water. Imagine these micro-aggressions and micro-elisions are the salt that turns fresh water into salt water. After you've got salt water instead of fresh, those other conditions for shark attacks start to appear, and sometimes stack up, and from there it’s scary game of odds. That is the effect micro-aggressions and micro-elisions have. They aren’t the crimes, they don’t directly cause the crimes, they're so pervasive it's hard to measure them, and on its own, each one is far too insignificant to report, but added up together, well, now we’re swimming in water where shark attacks are possible, instead of water where they’re impossible. It’s the same color, but the water is no longer safe to drink. A little whisper says, "I bet you could get away with it." The unthinkable becomes thinkable.
This is basically a fish-intensive way of explaining another phrase that always gets people’s backs up… the way fresh water becomes the type of water that can sustain the creatures responsible for shark attacks? That’s what people are trying to describe when they talk about “rape culture.” The R word is pretty shocking. This is the point for some people who use it. And the shock-value of the R word leads to a lot of defensive responses, but when someone starts talking about rape culture, fellas... try to cool it, and just think about Shark Week, ok? Please trust me on this, my put-upon-feeling brothers: the goal of using that word is to startle you out of complacency, not to accuse you, personally, of being a rapist or a would-be rapist. Promise. People who use that phrase want to talk about the process that takes something unthinkable, and makes it thinkable, that’s all.
I’m not a rapist. Far from it, but the whole point of having this conversation is to reckon with the fact all of us (even women) are tossing salt in the water, contributing to that atmosphere that makes the unthinkable thinkable.
So… rape attempts? Nah. I’m not responsible for that one in six. But I’ve done my share of micro-aggressions - staring when I thought she didn't notice (maybe she didn't notice, but maybe she did), trying to make eye contact with someone who clearly wanted to be left alone, trying to turn a conversation into a flirtation, or a flirtation into whatever comes after a flirtation… that time at the club when we were dancing and I accidentally brushed a body part, and she might not have even noticed, or she might have taken it as flirting, so I tried to accidentally brush that body part again. Micro-aggressions, and some stuff that was bigger than micro, too, if you come right down to it.
I’ve certainly done my share of micro-elisions, too. I should have said, “That’s disrespectful, dude,” but instead I laughed at the joke. Didn’t want to be a stick in the mud. But my laugh might have sent a message to someone else who was also uncomfortable, “don’t be a stick in the mud; nobody else minds.” That micro-elision turned us both into bystanders. The time the couple was arguing, and the boyfriend — taller and much heavier — started looming. You know the way big boys sometimes loom, put their hand on their girlfriend’s neck with that faux-tenderness that is part threat. I moved down the subway platform, instead of staying close enough that the girlfriend knew there were witnesses nearby. “Don’t get involved.” Micro-elision.
For my micro-aggressions and regular aggressions, for my micro-elisions and regular elisions, I have my excuses lined up: “I was young, I was in a bad place at the time, I thought I was being funny, we were both drunk, or tired, or both. We started out just being playful! I thought she was into it!” The excuses come to mind effortlessly, even years later. I’ve pushed a few lines when I knew better, or said nothing as someone around me pushed lines. I’ve gotten into situations I shouldn’t have, or stood by while someone engineered an unsafe situation, and instead of getting someone out of an unsafe situation, I lined up my excuses, putting my own conscience above someone’s safety. By ignoring, or never teaching myself to notice certain things, I could maintain my self-image as a good guy, while still getting away with some stuff, never suffering the discomfort or paying the social cost of being the stick in the mud. Did anyone else notice my action, or inaction? I'm not sure. Would anyone blame me? Probably not. There were other bystanders, too. Were there other incidents where I didn't even notice what I'd done, or what was going on? I'm absolutely sure of that. There were times I went far enough that I have made some apologies to some people. I've played my part.
It was easy to focus on the Weinsteins and the Cosbys. But that much subtler, much harder and more inward-looking work has to happen too if we want a real cultural change. Stuff like the bear meme will keep going around until one of them brings home the fact everyone plays a part, however small, and even well-meaning good guys who showed up at the rally can probably find ways to become better.
And it’d be a better world if part of some men doing better was by challenging other men to become better, too. Because if all we get is pick-me posturing, without self-reflection and accountability from man to man, the fact “one of the good ones” is doing less than he could is the other thing that makes women feel like no man is entirely safe, and the bear is a better pick.
“If the bear attacked me, people would believe me.” That women feel they won’t be believed shows that ALL of us have failed, not just the predators.
When #MeToo first broke, a friend suggested I write something like what I just wrote above — about the part men need to play now that women have pulled the worst moments of their lives out and set them on display in order to plead with us to finally, at long last, believe them. It’s sad, and kind of gross, the scale of display that it took to get some men to snap out of denial and gaslighting, even for a short time. My friend suggested I talk about the little stuff, and the stuff even #GoodGuys do when they think no one’s looking, stuff I did, which she knew about, as a call for everyone to do better, not just to externalize the finger-pointing and claim an easy moral high-ground over the Cosbys of the world.
My friend suggested the hashtag, “#ItWasMe” – I was part of the background radiation that sets women slightly on edge about their safety at all times. And a few times, I was more than just the background radiation. To my shame, I didn’t have the courage to stand up with such a challenging position at the time, because I was worried about confessing some of my own actions and failures, those things I apologized for in the past, those apologies I made to others, and promises I made to myself.
When I look back on my life?
I’ve held and expressed opinions that didn’t respect women. I might still be wrong about some stuff.
I’ve participated in a broad spectrum of shaming. I’ve held and passed on stereotypes and sexist judgments about a few women I’ve known. I’ve worked on this a lot.
Around other men, I’ve definitely laughed at that joke, or said nothing when I should have called out a gross word or attitude.
For all I know, one of those times, I sent somebody the message that it was okay, or cool, or acceptable even for people like me to hold such views or laugh at such jokes. That guy had lots of his own choices to make on his own personal path toward misogyny, and he’s responsible for himself in the end, but on his path, I could have been a roadblock, and instead, I stepped aside. For all I know, my choice to go along nudged someone else into becoming a bystander, too. Even trying to be mindful, I probably still miss some opportunities to be better. Maybe lots.
Back in my single days especially, I know I’ve pushed lines where I knew better, and I’ve been pushed away, had a line drawn, and tried again anyway. That's stuff I am ashamed of now, and sometimes stuff I was ashamed of then, too, but in the moment, I had my excuses lined up. I made some hard apologies to some people after a few such incidents. Twenty-plus years later, it’s hard even now to write this and hit “publish.” The temptation to make this paragraph even more vague than it already is, or delete it, or publish it as is, or add more details, is creating a little whirlpool of back-and-forth in my mind.
But without flinching, every man needs to reckon with their part in that background radiation making things crappy for women, with those times they pushed a line, or let it slide when a guy friend talked about pushing a line. The times they lined up excuses, and the things they did while hiding behind them. Men can’t fix sexism on their own, but there’s a lot of stuff men can do, and there’s stuff men are best positioned to do — like talking to other men. Maybe not even to change their mind, but just to plant a seed. Men can be there in the locker room to shut down “locker room talk” that creates the permission structure for further disrespect. Or maybe not shut it down, but take most of the fun out of it. The more of us do it, the easier it is for each of us. Many hands make light work.
To be less passive about that, men need to look in the mirror… be honest about why she chose the bear, and go about changing the conditions — one locker room and restaurant table at a time — that keep creating men who are scarier to women than a wild animal. The first step, men taking a look inside, accounting for their own thoughts, words, and behavior, and being honest about their own worst points and weakest moments, is pretty damn hard, but without it, all the other steps are just posturing.
