“Stop the rhetoric that a woman is crazy or difficult,” Portman advised, […] “If a man says a woman is crazy or difficult, ask him, ‘What bad thing did you do to her?’ That’s a code word. He is trying to discredit her reputation.”
J'aime Natalie Portman d'amour.
Je crois qu’on enseigne avec soin aux Blancs à ne pas reconnaître le privilège blanc, tout comme on enseigne aux hommes à ne pas reconnaître le privilège masculin.
Over the past 20 years, the mainstream media has failed to properly contextualize the Columbine shooting as part of a cultural narrative of exceptionalism that protects would-be killers and abusers. The misleading portrait of “outcast” white boys, which is still applied to shooters like Dylann Roof, positions these dominators as far outside the norm, maintains an illusion of white innocence, and argues for the legitimacy of patriarchal power.
The virtue of strength invites abuse. Adamance enables intransigence. Restraint devolves to disengagement, and fraternity yields exclusion. The veneration of those traits is poison to young men. It offers an easy escape from the necessary struggle of self-reflection and replaces the work of interior discovery with a menu of prefabricated identities.
[CW: graphic descriptions of sexual assaults seen in TV and films]
Toxic masculinity would have us believe that the idea of a male rape victim is absurd. Rare, even. Men are supposed to be hungry for sex always—so they can’t be raped. Men should be strong enough to fight off attackers—so they can’t be raped. Both of those myths, rooted in traditional concepts of masculinity, contribute to a culture in which male rape is dismissed, ignored, and woefully underreported. The tragic and dangerous idea that male rape is a joke comes through loud and clear in our pop culture. When men are sexually assaulted in TV and films, the assaults are often not named for what they are, and the characters are portrayed quickly picking up and moving on. They are stoic dudes who exact swift, violent revenge and then have no lasting trauma.
Why didn't she just get out of there as soon as she felt uncomfortable? many people explicitly or implicitly asked.
It's a rich question, and there are plenty of possible answers. But if you're asking in good faith, if you really want to think through why someone might have acted as she did, the most important one is this: Women are enculturated to be uncomfortable most of the time. And to ignore their discomfort.
This is so baked into our society I feel like we forget it's there.
In the current social climate of the #MeToo movement, men are under siege. We really have it rough; all of a sudden we have to think about, like, what we say, how we’re perceived, and if we’re safe. Who lives like that?! At this point we’re lucky if we dominate just 99% of corporate culture, politics, and the world at large. It’s like we’re barely running everything anymore.
Every day I’m trying to counter the flood of messaging my sons are receiving from television, music, movies, books, friends, and our own government that says that they have a right to a woman’s body. Every day I’m trying to counter the flood of messaging that my sons are receiving that says that overcoming a woman’s objections is romantic. Every day I’m trying to counter the flood of messaging that tells them that their manhood is defined by how many women they can have sex with. […] And every day I’m reminding them that they are responsible for their actions.