Thread by @RemakingManhood

THREAD: Where men need to get to on #MeToo
In the The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that “Approximately 1 in 5 (21.3% or an estimated 25.5 million) women in the U.S. reported completed or attempted rape at some point in their lifetime.” /1

Globally, that number is much higher.
There are some men who will insist that these numbers are inflated. Some among us will debate how many millions of rapes are actually taking place. Is it actually fifteen million? Ten million? /2

What kind of culture of masculinity is capable of hosting a debate on rape framed in terms of how many millions are actually being raped, instead of how to stop it?

Ours is. /3

Imagine ten women you know personally. Statistically, two of them are likely to be rape survivors. Which two? We don’t know, do we? /4

Now imagine your child’s or any child’s classroom. Picture any ten of those little girls. Which two of them will be rape survivors?
Are we there, yet? Are we feeling a little sick?
Because this is the place men need to get to on the question of #MeToo. /5

If men want to really and truly change this, the central challenge we must collectively address is how we are trained from an early age to normalize a whole range of “lesser” acts of sexual harassment and abuse against girls and women. /6

These abusive acts include cat calling, rape jokes and locker room talk. In constantly asserting their right to abuse women, some men have bullied the rest of us into silently accepting, for example, that all women will have to deal with cat calling on the street. /7

And this is just one example of the normalization of abuse. Our dominance-based culture of masculinity actively normalizes abusive behavior in all facets of women’s personal and professional lives. /8

When a man at the office says to a group of men around him, “She has a real nice ass,” it’s important to understand this kind of public statement for what it is, for the function it serves in reinforcing a masculine culture of dominance. /9

Of course, good guys like us are rolling our eyes or walking away thinking, “Some guys are jerks and will say stuff about women, but what the hell, I’m not going to get into it.” /10

And in our silence, we allow to remain in place the ongoing assertion that the denigration of women is just part of manhood. “Some men are just that way.” /11

A while back, a guy posted this on my Facebook feed: “Locker-room talk is just that. It is all talk and does not make you a predator.” The idea being, that locker-room talk is harmless. It’s just what men do. /12

Engaging in locker-room talk doesn’t make us predators, but it most certainly perpetuates a culture in which predators can hide. /13

The term “locker-room talk” is literally designed to grant permission, even encourage men to speak in this way, as if locker rooms are somehow magical man-only spaces. /14

Every male social space that exists has an impact on women’s lives because our words as men go with us, change us, inform what we do next. /15

Our denigration of women, or our choice to remain silent when others do so, takes place in a world populated by the women and girls who must coexist with us, along with the words, ideas, and predators we grant refuge to. /16

From The Little #MeToo Book for Men, available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble online.

Barnes & Noble: bit.ly/36xCZhB

Amazon: amzn.to/39v0U31 /17