“Oh look, another cishet male with thoughts about the #MeToo movement! Make a wish, sweetheart.”
[If you get through all 1,200 words without being offended by something, let me know and I’ll revise.]
I’m not a Men Right’s Activist, and I’m not a Male Feminist™ [‘cause Male Feminists™ are the worst! AmIright, ladies?] I’m just a guy who tries really hard to respect women, sucked at it for the first 20-odd years of my life and has been trying to make up for it ever since. And I’m here to tell you what you already know: Men Are Garbage.
And again, I’m not some Male Feminist™ telling you what you want to hear in order to get into your pants. I’m just straight up telling you: men are garbage. And I’m not talking exclusively about our actions, I’m talking about the way our minds work. You think you know the depths of the male mind? I’m telling you there’s a chasm deeper still. All the posts you see on “Straight White Boys Texting,” the worst messages you’ve gotten on OKCupid, the most cringe-worthy times he slid into your DM’s [Am I the only Gen Xer for whom that phrase is nails on a chalkboard?], those were just the tip of an iceberg. Those were a test. A trial balloon to see if you were open to the real stuff. Unless he’s really a psychopath, when you ignored him, let him down easy, or dragged him to church, he immediately resorted to insults and threats of physical violence. You probably didn’t remain in his good graces long enough to really know the scope of his sexual fantasies. Ask a phone sex operator. Or a prostitute.
If you ever have had a conversation with a sex worker that prompted you to say, “They pay you to do THAT?!” The answer is, “yes, we do,” and trust me, if we could get it for free, we would.
So, again, I’m telling you, you’re right: men are garbage. I’m saying that, and I [at least like to think that] I’m one of the good ones. Yes, men are garbage, and it’s not our fault.
[If you’ve made it this far, you might as well keep going until the end, cause you know I’m gonna flip it.]
Yeah, you read that right, it’s not our fault. I don’t know if you believe in God or Darwin, I happen to believe in both, and I honestly believe that men are designed [by divine creation or natural selection] to be garbage so that, first and foremost, the planet stays populated. Meanwhile, women are designed to be practical and pragmatic to ensure that said population survives. So men are walking around all horned-up, trying to get in dem draw’s, and before we even speak, women have already sized us up by our shoulder-to-waist ratio, clothing, grooming, and posture, decided that our offspring would have less than optimal chances for survival, and disqualified us completely.
[My stepdaughter is an evolutionary biologist and is probably already calculating all the ways I’m full of shit, but admit it, it sounds true.]
Senator Al Franken speaking at the Hart Building, Washington DC, by Lorie Shaull
It’s not our fault, but it is our responsibility. Just ‘cause we’re designed to be assholes doesn’t mean we have to be assholes. Our ability to control our base urges [along with opposable thumbs and video games] is what separates us from mere beasts.
Cry liberal tears into your beers all you want over Al Franken. What are you gonna do when an actual innocent man suffers from a sexual assault allegation in the current moment? It could happen. And if it does, I will feel for the innocent man who became collateral damage.
You know who else I feel for? The millions of survivors whose stories weren’t believed and the millions more who never told their stories for that very reason. The women who suffered because it’s easier for us to accept that women are liars than that men are garbage. And yes, I know that men are sexually assaulted too [it’s happened to me], but let’s keep it all the way funky: part of the reason male survivors are not believed is because we see men who claim to have been sexually violated as less manly and therefore closer to women on the credibility scale than a manly man who would never let that happen to him [or at the very least, sho nuff would never admit to it.]
To all the guys calling the Me Too movement a witch hunt, know this, when the pendulum swings, it often swings too far. It will most likely self-correct over time if it doesn’t swing all the way back to the status quo ante.
In the meantime, while you’re mansplaining to the internet how these situations should be handled, let me ask you this; what were you doing to dismantle Rape Culture before Harvey Weinstein got dragged? Don’t worry. I’ll wait. If you weren’t being part of the solution, you were, to some degree, being part of the problem.
Harvey Weinstein, former Chairman, The Weinstein Company | by Thomas Hawk
And if you don’t like the phrase, “Rape Culture,” check the statistics. What would you call it? A rape culture by any other name would still stink.
When I apply Occam’s Razor to the Black Lives Matter movement, I ask myself what’s more believable: that police officers are human beings capable of the same levels of violence, corruption, and racism as the general population [but deserve more scrutiny because being armed and empowered by the state makes them more likely to engage in these behaviors, not less]? Or… that the majority of black Americans have been engaged in a generational smear campaign against the police [to some unknown end] since the Civil War ended?
When I apply this logic to the Me Too movement, I ask, what’s more likely: That men will rape and harass women exactly as much as society will let us get away with [which is a lot], or that… women be lyin’?
If you answered the latter, I suspect you have two things: a wicked case of confirmation bias, and a penis.
So, you’re worried that from now on men will have to walk on eggshells around women to avoid giving the wrong impression? “Wow! That sounds rough,” said women, people of color, queer folks, and religious minorities.
I’m not just talking about rape, here. Sometimes men, even good men, even white, heterosexual, cisgender men, have to lose graciously for the good of society. Trouble is, as men, society has taught us to win at all costs. We have to learn to take “the L.”
Al Franken and John Conyers are taking the L for the collective good [added to which, they must have done at least some of that shit.] Meanwhile, Roy Moore and Donald Trump are digging their heels in. In the tribal mind, if a member of the rival tribe admits to wrongdoing, he deserves the worst possible penalty, but as long as your fellow tribesman sticks to his lie, he’s ostensibly innocent.
Guys, do better. If you don’t like the way your brethren are being treated right now, do better and encourage them to do better. Maybe in a generation or two, we won’t have this problem.
It’s not our fault, but it is our responsibility.
And, to all the guys lining up to call me a “cuck” and a “beta-male,” find me in St. Louis and suck my dick from the back, cause ten’ll get you twenty I get laid more than you.
After all of my wisdom and my theory, I add toxic masculinity so you ignant niggas hear me.