The Audacity of Men

If you’ve seen the Barbie movie, you heard America Ferrara perform her monologue on the absolute paradox of womanhood. After what seems like an endless list of conflicting requirements for women, she is at a loss for what to do about it. It’s difficult to know where to land on the spectrum of accepted and rejected ideas of femininity. Who decides my female traits that are accepted or rejected? Isn’t it me? Is there are hard problem of feminism?  

One of these paradoxes is our day-to-day emotional state. Often emotion is treated as the largest difference among the genders. Women are defined by their emotional quality and are expected to never diverge. Imagine a damsel locked in a tower fearfully awaiting a knight to save her. Now, imagine that same damsel is uninterested in the knight after he’s freed her from the tower. Does our opinion of her change? Suddenly, she’s a different character.

We all have our paradoxical qualities, and this is mine (who am I kidding, this is one of mine): I both expect my partner to protect me from any situations that might cause an uncomfortable emotional outburst, and I resent his assumption that I can’t control myself. Or, more to the point, an assumption that I desire to be controlled at all. Can’t a woman just lose it occasionally? Without being entirely discredited? In those moments with my partner, I am the damsel in a panic and the knight who’s drawn their sword. I am both the damsel and the knight, then I expect him to save me.

When I was in high school, I attracted the attention of a peculiar range of boys. There was one boy, a grade ahead of myself, who would come to my lunch table and stand over me as I ate. His name was Craig and I got the sense that he was neurodivergent, although that is not the term I would have used at the time. I was always polite to Craig, but our conversations would frequently end on the subject of my feet. He would ask questions about my socks and shoes, or he would ponder out loud about my level of foot fatigue. I was mentally and physically uncomfortable with these conversations, but I felt that I couldn’t voice it in case it upset the boy whose attention I had not asked for. Even if I had enough pluck to stand up for myself, what would I have said? And to whom? One day, I wore a pair of strappy heels for a mock interview with my guidance counselor. Craig knelt alongside my chair and attempted to unbuckle the small buckle on my left foot. I can still feel his fingertips at my ankle. I sheepishly pulled my foot out of his reach and hoped that no one else had seen what happened. His ego bruised, he left angry. He did not call me a b*tch, but he may as well have. How dare I eat in my public school cafeteria while wearing shoes? It strikes me now that it wasn’t until he physically touched me that I felt I had any right to resist him. Looking back, I want to scream for my high school self. I want to pick up a sword and swing without any regard for the so-called knight kneeling at her feet.

Of course, wielding swords isn’t allowed in public school, so I should have solved the problem earlier in the game. Theoretically, with words. I don’t know what I could have said or done to make Craig understand the way I felt in the moment. I don’t know that I understood it myself. I was no more than 16 years old, and I was not used to this kind of attention. I can imagine it felt a little like a compliment, and a little like I was an unwitting sex kitten covered in sh*t. Ashamed to shine.

For nearly every instance of offense, there is a gray area between two ends of a spectrum. The spectrum for sexual violence could start at Craig’s verbal compliment of my feet and end at violent rape of a minor. That’s a broad expanse. How do we decide what falls in between? Who is qualified to make the distinctions? In the animal world, we see song and chase as displays of interest. When does cat-calling switch from a display of interest to a microaggression? How many blocks does a woman have to be followed before she can consider herself properly stalked? What recourse does she have if the line is crossed? At least in the animal kingdom, she is permitted use of her teeth.

My father likes to argue. He is very easy to argue with. He uses this tactic where he controls the point being argued at any given time while never actually addressing the root of the argument. It’s masterful. The contended point becomes the argument itself. How dare I feel angry about his angry email. Of course, his anger is always allowed, but my past anger (the anger deemed dramatic hysteria) is disrupting the present moment here and how could I be so selfish?

This is what it feels like to discuss sexual violence with men. It feels like arguing about the argument. Back when doom scrolling was all the rage, my partner and I got caught up in one of these argument arguments when Aziz Ansari’s date turned sour. My partner was focused on the punitive measures; don’t waste time on the peons, start by locking up the worst of the worst offenders. Which, yes… AND discuss cases like Mr. Ansari’s date. It was on the metaphorical line where everything is suddenly fuzzy and it gets harder to make a call. Around that line is where we have to spend the most attention, not only that, it’s where everyone needs to show up to learn. Listen to the experience of the other party and believe what they are saying is true for them. Collect feedback.

Even if its negative.
You can handle it.
I promise the pearl is worth the dive.

We can argue about the argument forever. We can waste time debating the semantics instead of solving the problem. What we need to do is snap a line to move forward. We need to trust that women can make the distinctions on the line of violence. And as women, we are responsible for clearly declaring that line, speaking up even when it is difficult to do so, and keeping faith that the other party will want to learn. Above all, we support victims of sexual violence in the way they ask to be supported without assumptions and character judgements.

Substitute women here with any marginalized group. The people on the receiving end of the violence get to say when it hurts. Listening, without also projecting your own desire for world domination, will bring understanding. I’m the last person to advocate for a normative society, but I do think we threw out the ground rules for social engagement with the bathwater. Men need to be open to hearing that some actions that seem innocent to them can be threatening to a woman. Inversely, some actions that seem threatening are welcomed. The words are just words without their meaning. And you can’t know the meaning until you ask.

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