Yes, he went and did it, you know who I’m talking about. He said it was consensual, she said it wasn’t. In the 21’st century with all the things that have been happening, with all the changes that have happened, too few and too slowly certainly, this geezer thinks it’s still ok and cool to kiss someone fully on the lips ‘in order to celebrate the victory’ when a handshake would have sufficed. It makes you wonder where some people have been hiding, do they follow the news with their brains engaged? Do they at least try and keep up with social change? It seems not and once again some bloke comes along and ****’s all over the people celebrating their achievement. For what? To show that he is really happy with what they did? To participate in their celebration? Probably not, stealing someone’s limelight is an old and pathetic way to behave, a nice little power trip that backfired and then of course the bloke in question followed the usual path of denial, indignation, finding someone else to blame, refusal followed by resignation and then spending time with his mates complaining how he was mistreated and is so terribly misunderstood.
Moving away from the bloke who can’t seem to control his urges nor his ego, the bigger question is how to kill off this and all the other toxic forms of behavior? Each new generation inherits norms and structures from the preceding ones, many of these were never healthy and others worked for a while but are no longer appropriate yet they continue to survive and each new generation has to rebel against them. The English philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote about this. Statues, monuments, artworks, music but perhaps more importantly political, economic and social structures, norms, and laws. The mid 70’S saw the arrival of the Punk culture and it’s anti-establishment, anti-consumerist and ‘do it yourself, DIY’ ethos. All the latter influenced the development of the Permaculture movement, in particular the idea that governments and industry won’t act effectively, even with the boat sinking the response from them is to clamber over others to get higher up the mast, it’s up to each of us to get on with the job and not passively wait for someone else to sort things out.
Punk parenting continues the original Punk ethos and parents try as much as possible to avoid passing on anything that is toxic to the next generation. I like the image of a person waist deep in a river facing upstream and catching all the socially and individually contaminating rubbish flowing down from one generation to the next and throwing it onto the bank thus protecting their children and those of others.
Back to masculine toxicity, one of the most remarkable things is the passivity of many men when confronted with a situation when someone is being abused. They stand by and watch it happen and don’t act, others participate or defend the abuser. How, faced with such clear injustice and bullying is this even possible?
Power and social status. A man, and this is pretty sick, can still improve his social standing and reputation by abusing and bullying someone else. A politician thinks it’s funny to breathe down the neck of the woman politician in front of him and so do his mates, a surgeon thinks it’s funny to wipe his forehead on a woman surgeons chest and so do his mates, ‘I’m a naughty Tory’ shouted a politician whilst chasing a woman around a room which made his mates laugh hahaha. Judges, surgeons, politicians, lawyers, ok I’ll stop there because basically it’s everywhere in all corners of our society. Of course it’s not only women who are subject to this kind of abuse and bullying but they are the major targets.
Little by little the cover gets pulled off one toxic pool after another, footballers, judges, factory workers, domestic employees, revealing the scale of abuse theretofore hidden. Each time there is a # moment which leads on, in a little way, to some positive change which of course provokes a backlash. Yet there seems to be such a strong feeling of immunity amongst the abusers that even whilst watching someone like Harvey Weinstein get sent down for a 23 year stretch, and all the others before and after, they feel they can carry on abusing within their own sector. Then they get upset and scared when their particular toxic pond is exposed to the light of day, ‘oh drat the wokists have found us, I hope I’ll be ok after all I haven’t done anything wrong, squeezing that woman’s buttock was just being friendly, calling that other woman “sugar tits” was just being flattering, I’m sure it was consensual when I told that interviewee that if she (he) spent the night with me she’d get the job, I’m sure I’ll be ok.’
What can we do to bring about a radical change that would make all these, and all the other, forms of abuse and bullying absolutely unthinkable? Men have to stop admiring sexual predators and bullies. They must make it plain to them that such behaviour destroys reputations and degrades social status, it doesn’t enhance them. They must stop standing by and start facing up to the bullies and abusers, They must tell the bloke catcalling from the scaffolding that their behaviour is stupid and toxic, the same with that person who presses their groin against someone on the train, the same with …. well the list would be difficult to fit on this page.
We need to move away from the existing situation where people are considered to be prey, to be exploitable. Whether this is about getting rich on the backs of others or any other form of abusive and toxic behaviour. At a wider scale it also means stopping abusing our planet and it’s biosphere, at an individual level it means broadening our minds and being more compassionate and prosocial. It means being able to see things from someone else’s point of view, the woman asking you to stop groping her isn’t being ‘wokist’ she is standing up against abuse and defending her right to go through life unmolested, something she shouldn’t have to do. #justbloodywellstopityouidiot. If someone says ‘no’ then accept it with good heart, get your ego out of the way, your reputation will be enhanced and you’ll have a much healthier social life, one not based on ‘power over’ but on kindness, compassion and cooperation.
All of this type of change can happen in our individual social groups, in our local communities, and it can happen fast, in parallel to resisting government and industrial abuse. As a Punk would say let’s DIY the whole thing. It’s no good waiting for a politician to act, he might be too busy watching porn in the houses of Parliament.