In The Age Of #metoo, Tradition Under Assault

A CURSORY LOOK AT SOME OF THE CASUALTIES

At the risk of over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, it seems to me that men will sim­ply have to have what they say to women looked over by their lawyers before say­ing them.
Let me has­ten to say that women have been on the wrong end of sex­u­al devian­cy by some men who sim­ply do not know how to act and some who don’t care about act­ing right.
Even as we con­tem­plate how to be bet­ter exam­ples of our­selves it is impor­tant to ensure that we do not throw out the baby with the bath water.
It is nev­er­the­less impor­tant that even with the glee of (#metoo) inno­cent lives are not destroyed by false accu­sa­tions and fake equiv­a­lences to make up for past trans­gres­sions.
We have a real pro­cliv­i­ty to tilt­ing too far to the oth­er side to com­pen­sate for past errors that we over­turn the whole thing.

Over the last cou­ple of years, many pow­er­ful men have been brought down on alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al abuse, sex­u­al assaults, and even sex­u­al harass­ment.
Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, are only a few to have been reduced to neg­a­tive car­i­ca­tures of their for­mer selves.
Bill Cosby is serv­ing a lengthy prison sen­tence for sex­u­al assaults alleged­ly com­mit­ted many years ago out­side the statute of lim­i­ta­tions.
The man who pros­e­cut­ed him ran for the office sole­ly on his desire to bring Bill Cosby down. So much for blind jus­tice.
Now Cosby may very well be a mon­ster who is deserv­ing of where he finds him­self but it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the pha­lanx of over 50 women who made alle­ga­tions about inci­dents of abuse spanned a wide swath of Cosby’s career, from Kristina Ruehli (1965) to Chloe Goins (2008).

Whether we are talk­ing about alle­ga­tions of improp­er con­duct between grownups, or the sor­did inde­fen­si­ble alle­ga­tions against R Kelly the R&b artiste who is alleged to have had a decades-long affin­i­ty for sex­u­al­ly assault­ing under­age girls, or even a man mak­ing improp­er sex­u­al com­ments to a co-work­er, it is all viewed in the same light.
And there­in lies the prob­lem because what is hap­pen­ing now it seems, is an esca­lat­ing fight and a grow­ing chasm between the sex­es, made worse dai­ly by indi­vid­ual occur­rences of mis­con­duct which are processed as part of a larg­er con­spir­a­cy by the evil male[sic].

In the days since the life­time docuseries “sur­viv­ing R Kelly” aired in which music Journalist “Toure” appeared and con­demned R Kelly for the alle­ga­tions against him by a long list of teenage girls includ­ing one to which he was mar­ried, Toure is him­self fac­ing alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al harass­ment.
In the alle­ga­tions, a woman iden­ti­fied only as “Dani” a make­up artist accused Touré of sex­u­al­ly harass­ing her when she worked with him on a Time Inc. show.
“He couldn’t stop ask­ing me to do anal, how I looked naked, if I had sex over the week­end, what it would be like to fuck me …” Dani wrote in the com­ments. “I had to have the crew stay in the room with me while I got him ready.”

Nothing in these alle­ga­tions can be con­doned or sup­port­ed. Simply put, men have to be bet­ter stew­ards of their sex­u­al urges.
As men, we have to reassess how we respond to women and not do to them what we would not want any­one doing to our daugh­ters, moth­ers, sis­ters, and friends.
As men, we also know that sex­u­al harass­ment is hard­ly a male prob­lem, but men look at sex­u­al harass­ment and even sex­u­al assaults in a pure­ly dif­fer­ent light.
For the most part, even when a man is a vic­tim of unwant­ed sex­u­al attention/​assault, he gen­er­al­ly wears it as a badge of hon­or. And so we do not have a cor­rect rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pling of data in which men are the victims.

Far too often we fail to process infor­ma­tion prop­er­ly. We have a pre­dis­po­si­tion to always hav­ing to com­part­men­tal­ize the infor­ma­tion to which we are exposed and place it into neat lit­tle box­es.
This type of desire to always label and tuck away infor­ma­tion neat­ly in the recess­es of our minds does not always lend itself to under­stand­ing the con­text in which things hap­pen and the way we receive infor­ma­tion today ver­sus just two decades ago.
The loads of data to which we are now exposed as a result of social media and ²⁴⁄₇ cable news can some­times make it seem like the sky is falling.
We get over­whelmed into think­ing that every­thing we once held dear, has been uproot­ed and we are slid­ing into an abyss.
But is this kind of think­ing real­ly true?

I don’t think so. Fewer peo­ple are dying from wars, dis­eases, and crime over­all, than say 50 years ago.
Many issues which were once dirty lit­tle secrets, pedophil­ia, sex-traf­fick­ing, sex­u­al assaults, and sex­u­al harass­ment are now out in the open.
Technology has brought every­thing into sharp­er focus and as a con­se­quence what we may be deal­ing with is a lit­tle bit of infor­ma­tion over­load.
Excessive Internet and social media use can impact your men­tal health? While it’s a help­ful tool for edu­ca­tion, work, social inter­ac­tion, and enter­tain­ment, overuse can take a toll on your health, says Saju Mathew, M.D., a pri­ma­ry care physi­cian at Piedmont. 
Reading too much neg­a­tive news and too much com­put­er time can increase your anx­i­ety.
Is that caus­ing this anx­i­ety between the sex­es?
Are the anx­i­ety and anger jus­ti­fied at a time when women are appear­ing in larg­er num­bers in the work­force and once cov­ered up secrets are now out in the open?
Or is there a larg­er push to dri­ve a wedge between the gen­ders and our for­mer way of life?

We are now being told that we should not refer to young chil­dren as girls and boys because they are too young to decide what they want to be.
Businesses are being required to pro­vide sep­a­rate ablu­tion areas for trans peo­ple and mar­riage between same-sex cou­ples is now the law of the land.
Does that play into the sense of anger around how the issues of sex­u­al harass­ment and sex­u­al assaults are viewed?
In the world of hyper-polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and gen­der equal­i­ty, there are seem­ing­ly no longer any clear­ly defined bound­aries.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of new­ly mint­ed California Governor Gavin Newsom has decid­ed that in the name of gen­der equal­i­ty she will not take on the title of “first lady” of California but instead will go with “first-part­ner.
“The work I do real­ly par­al­lels and com­ple­ments Gavin’s work because it’s about awak­en­ing people’s con­scious­ness, shift­ing hearts and minds, atti­tudes and behav­iors,” Siebel Newsom said in a Los Angeles Times pro­file pub­lished in November. 
The gov­er­nor has been an advo­cate for gen­der issues, includ­ing women’s and LGBTQ rights.”https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​j​e​n​n​i​f​e​r​-​s​i​e​b​e​l​-​n​e​w​s​o​m​-​g​a​v​i​n​-​n​e​w​s​o​n​_​u​s​_​5​c​3​7​5​2​8​6​e​4​b​0​c​4​6​9​d​7​6​b​9​9a7

There should be zero tol­er­ance for sex­u­al assaults, sex­u­al harass­ment or even sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion. Yet I won­der whether we are doing our­selves any favors when we lump sex­u­al assaults and or harass­ment into the same cat­e­go­ry as a man telling a co-work­er she looks great?
Because if we are, I sense that the work­place will become a place where nei­ther gen­der will want to be.
A while back I wrote an arti­cle speak­ing to faith and the LGBT, (Queer and Trans com­mu­ni­ty ). I argued then that as far as those com­mu­ni­ties are con­cerned, it was not just a mat­ter of get­ting the straight com­mu­ni­ty to see their com­mu­ni­ty as equals.
There is a far more sin­is­ter motive behind their push . The idea seems to be designed to bend the straight com­mu­ni­ty’s way of think­ing and yes it’s about awak­en­ing people’s con­scious­ness, shift­ing hearts and minds, atti­tudes and behav­iors.
Not in the way you are think­ing. Not toward equal­i­ty and jus­tice but toward sub­ju­ga­tion and total feal­ty to their way of thinking.

Much of the #metoo move­ment is jus­ti­fi­able come­up­pance for too many men who believe/​d that women are dis­pos­able crea­tures cre­at­ed only for their plea­sure and con­ve­nience.
Nevertheless, there is much lump­ing of indi­vid­ual cas­es designed to cre­ate the impres­sion that men are on a sex­u­al tear against women.
It is a strat­e­gy which is result­ing in even more dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for men, many of whom are inno­cent.
People will use what­ev­er weapons they have to inflict harm. Allegations of sex­u­al mis­con­duct have real and far-reach­ing con­se­quences against those they are lev­eled against.
Unfortunately, some women are no more less inclined to using sex­u­al alle­ga­tions as a weapon against men than some men are inclined to abuse women.
The ques­tion then becomes ‚who ben­e­fits from a dis­cor­dant divide between the sexes?

If you ever raised your voice in objec­tion to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, under­stand that you may very well be the poten­tial tar­get of an evil smear cam­paign.
If they can­not find some­thing on which to dis­cred­it you they will find a way to dredge up some­thing that sounds believ­able.
Over the years as the debate raged about the need for greater soci­etal accep­tance of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty I argued that there was no soci­etal refusal to accept­ing homosexuality/​Lesbianism.
Potential employ­ers were not in the busi­ness of ask­ing whether one was gay or straight.
People lived their lives the way they chose to. It was the gay com­mu­ni­ty which insist­ed that the way we looked at mar­riage across the globe was out­dat­ed, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and was like lava which need­ed to under­go a metamorphosis.

FEMINISM

The way they see it is that we are liv­ing in a hor­ri­ble patri­ar­chal world which needs dis­man­tling.
For some rea­son or oth­er, some black women seem to think that fem­i­nism is their fight to wage, their hill to die on.
My ques­tion to them, includ­ing the black intel­lec­tu­als who sub­scribe to the fem­i­nist ide­ol­o­gy, is this, where is the fem­i­nist com­mu­ni­ty as you strug­gle to under­stand why police just shot and killed your black son?
Lesbian black women seem to go to excep­tion­al lengths to demon­strate that they have larg­er tes­ti­cles than men.
They dress and try to look hard­er than the tough­est thug on the streets and their hatred of men seem to take on a par­tic­u­lar­ly insid­i­ous tinge.
The web­site ( every​dayfem​i​nism​.com) while beg­ging for mon­ey to stay on the inter­net , argues for 5 Reasons Our ‘Sons’ Need Feminism, Too.
*Boys can seem insu­lat­ed from the harm done by the patri­archy, and that makes it eas­i­er to neglect shar­ing our fem­i­nism with our sons. After all, they have an advan­tage in this crap­py patri­ar­chal sys­tem. It seems like they’ll, more or less, be okay.
I’m a work­ing-class mom strug­gling to make ends meet while bring­ing up a tod­dler, so I get how hard this stuff is.

I beg your par­don, I would wager that you were not a fem­i­nist before you had that tod­dler.
I would also wager that fem­i­nism was not a thought when you were decid­ing on the man with whom you made that tod­dler.
Now all of a sud­den you are a rabid fem­i­nist because you are left to raise a kid on your own, most like­ly because of your crap­py deci­sion mak­ing?
The writer went on.
*The truth is, you don’t and can’t know the gen­der of a baby, or even most young tod­dlers. No mat­ter how we par­ents feel about it, there is always a chance that our kids won’t turn out to iden­ti­fy with the gen­ders assigned to them at birth.
I’m cis­gen­der (mean­ing that I iden­ti­fy with the gen­der that was assigned to me at birth) but not every­one is, and there is no guar­an­tee that any one par­tic­u­lar child will be.
Any child born could turn out to be trans­gen­der, and you (and the kid) might not know right away! It’s also a real­i­ty that some chil­dren are born inter­sex and doc­tors may or may not notice this upon birth.
The fact is that when we say a new­born baby is a boy or a girl, what we’re real­ly doing is pre­dict­ing their gen­der, and while some­times our pre­dic­tions are right, they’re also some­times very wrong.
And if your child turns out to be trans­gen­der, you also have no way of know­ing when your child will know that about them­selves and feel ready to talk to you about it. 

Although you may find the fore­gone laugh­able, it is cer­tain­ly not a par­o­dy. This is the kind of infor­ma­tion which is dom­i­nat­ing the inter­net and cable tele­vi­sion, even­tu­al­ly shap­ing how peo­ple see them­selves and oth­ers.
They are lit­er­al­ly ques­tion­ing even bio­log­i­cal facts, by that stan­dard, a baby boy is not a baby boy until the boy decides it wants to be a boy.
And oh by the way, an apple is not an apple unless the apple decides it is an apple.
If you some­times won­der how come so many peo­ple in the Evangelical move­ment could move so far afield that they would sup­port a can­di­date like Donald Trump a ser­i­al phi­lan­der­er for President, you may have just hap­pened upon some of those answers here.
That is not to say that Trump was a moral alter­na­tive to the dystopi­an real­i­ties we are being asked to embrace, but at least he believes fun­da­men­tal­ly in the same things in which they believe.
He shares some of the broad­er ideas they share.
Even though he is inher­ent­ly flawed, in their eyes he is not a rev­o­lu­tion­ary depar­ture from the val­ues they have held all their lives.

My col­lege sopho­more son jok­ing­ly used the term “Toxic mas­culin­i­ty” in a light fam­i­ly con­ver­sa­tion recent­ly.
We all laughed and jok­ing­ly chid­ed him that col­lege was turn­ing him against men as the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion (“tox­ic”) used in any con­text to define men was a pejo­ra­tive label designed to cre­ate anger, mis­trust, and even hatred of all things male.(https://​fem​magazine​.com) explains “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty”) this way.
Toxic mas­culin­i­ty enforces the soci­etal ide­ol­o­gy that males must attain con­trol in rela­tion­ships, the house­hold, and in most pub­lic sit­u­a­tions. This atti­tude pro­motes aver­sion towards express­ing emo­tions that would be deemed as fem­i­nine for fear of emas­cu­la­tion. This is direct­ly linked to the misog­y­nis­tic men­tal­i­ty that male qual­i­ties are supe­ri­or to fem­i­nine qual­i­ties.

So if a man ever believed in a social order in which he is the head of the house­hold. And if he is sup­posed to lead in love, and pro­vide for , and pro­tect his fam­i­ly as God com­mands him to ‚he is indulging in poi­so­nous male behav­ior.
It is impor­tant to note that this philo­soph­i­cal posi­tion is a 180 degree diver­gence from the struc­tures on which Christian soci­eties are built.
If the new prin­ci­ples are anti­thet­i­cal and dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to our foun­da­tion­al Christian prin­ci­ples, whose philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tives do they advance?