Whenever an incident of rape or sexual harassment triggers widespread public anger and discussion, many men tend to respond in one of two ways:
(a) Join in with narrowly focused outrage directed just at the specific perpetrators of the incident, call for extreme punishments such as hanging them or shooting them, often suggesting that the proper judicial process be bypassed.
(b) Get into conspiracy theory mode, dig up some small inconsistency or incompleteness with the narrative of the incident being discussed, or dig up some parallel incident where a woman supposedly made a fake accusation, and use this to discredit the entire narrative and suggest that it is all some kind of media/feminist/leftist conspiracy.
Note that (a) and (b) are quite contradictory kinds of response. While (b) is ostensibly seeking to resist a rush to judgement, and warn against the dangers of trusting the mainstream narrative, (a) is seeking to promote and intensify such a rush to judgement, and take the mainstream narrative as sufficient grounds to invoke severe penalties against the accused, without even giving them a chance to defend themselves as per the law. So why is it that men are prone to both these kinds of reactions? And why is it that many men even seem to rapidly switch from (a) to (b), the moment some bait to construct a conspiracy around emerges?
I think what this suggests is that the real reason behind the temptation to respond in one of these two ways, which are otherwise starkly opposed, is the one feature they have in common - they are both ways of avoiding a discussion on the broader culpability of men and male privilege, and of redirecting the focus of discussion elsewhere. So if, as a man, you find yourself inclined to join in with either (a) or (b), you should ask yourself whether those responses are really rational, or whether they are arising from this desire to avoid facing up to the broader social problem.
Whenever an incident of this kind comes to light, it goes without saying that it ought to be properly investigated as per law, and every effort made to do justice to all involved, both the accused and the victim. But it is important to remember that the wider social reaction and conversation which emerges is not about any one specific incident, though it has been triggered by such. One just has to read and listen to what women are saying to see that what lies behind the reaction is the fact that the incident in question resonates deeply with the personal experiences of so many. So the reaction is about a consistent and recurrent pattern of behaviour, a pattern where women experience objectification and harassment on a regular basis, and a particular event just happens to have illustrated that very starkly.
Thus, my plea to all men would be to resist the tendency to just focus on the particular incident as some kind of outlier and respond either as in (a) or in (b). If we recognise that the social reaction is not about a single incident, but about the deeper patterns and structures it symbolises, then hopefully we can be more rational and self-critical in reflecting on what our role might be in sustaining those patterns and structures, and what needs to be done to begin dismantling them.
(a) Join in with narrowly focused outrage directed just at the specific perpetrators of the incident, call for extreme punishments such as hanging them or shooting them, often suggesting that the proper judicial process be bypassed.
(b) Get into conspiracy theory mode, dig up some small inconsistency or incompleteness with the narrative of the incident being discussed, or dig up some parallel incident where a woman supposedly made a fake accusation, and use this to discredit the entire narrative and suggest that it is all some kind of media/feminist/leftist conspiracy.
Note that (a) and (b) are quite contradictory kinds of response. While (b) is ostensibly seeking to resist a rush to judgement, and warn against the dangers of trusting the mainstream narrative, (a) is seeking to promote and intensify such a rush to judgement, and take the mainstream narrative as sufficient grounds to invoke severe penalties against the accused, without even giving them a chance to defend themselves as per the law. So why is it that men are prone to both these kinds of reactions? And why is it that many men even seem to rapidly switch from (a) to (b), the moment some bait to construct a conspiracy around emerges?
I think what this suggests is that the real reason behind the temptation to respond in one of these two ways, which are otherwise starkly opposed, is the one feature they have in common - they are both ways of avoiding a discussion on the broader culpability of men and male privilege, and of redirecting the focus of discussion elsewhere. So if, as a man, you find yourself inclined to join in with either (a) or (b), you should ask yourself whether those responses are really rational, or whether they are arising from this desire to avoid facing up to the broader social problem.
Whenever an incident of this kind comes to light, it goes without saying that it ought to be properly investigated as per law, and every effort made to do justice to all involved, both the accused and the victim. But it is important to remember that the wider social reaction and conversation which emerges is not about any one specific incident, though it has been triggered by such. One just has to read and listen to what women are saying to see that what lies behind the reaction is the fact that the incident in question resonates deeply with the personal experiences of so many. So the reaction is about a consistent and recurrent pattern of behaviour, a pattern where women experience objectification and harassment on a regular basis, and a particular event just happens to have illustrated that very starkly.
Thus, my plea to all men would be to resist the tendency to just focus on the particular incident as some kind of outlier and respond either as in (a) or in (b). If we recognise that the social reaction is not about a single incident, but about the deeper patterns and structures it symbolises, then hopefully we can be more rational and self-critical in reflecting on what our role might be in sustaining those patterns and structures, and what needs to be done to begin dismantling them.
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