Once there was a Tweet thread that said, “If men had a 9 pm curfew, what would you do? Men, read the comments.” What followed was a long list of comments from women, saying things like, “I would be able to walk down the street by myself,” “rollerskating in the park,” “going for a midnight stroll,” etc.. These comments enlightened me but made me feel so sad, like a collection of wistful, elegiac haiku, a long-buried, near-forgotten litany of singular desires for a world that never was.
“I don’t want women to live like this,” was my initial reaction. I remarked sadly, “I want them to be free!”
How so? Let’s consider this.
If you are a man reading this, how is it you can walk down the street, never worrying that you will be sexually assaulted? Why don’t you get wolf-whistles, guys giving you the once-over, glares, and stares, or get followed?
The fact is, the only time you ever need to worry about being raped is when you’re in prison. You’ve heard, no doubt, dark tales of big, beefy, scary dudes, killers and thieves, accosting guys in the showers, forcing themselves on guys as punishment for infractions to their rule, for your refusal to toe the line, your ignorance of who’s the boss and your presumption in thinking the bars of your cell keep you safe. Nobody cares what you think; complaining invites further punishment; the outside world couldn’t care less what happens behind the high walls; nobody pays attention to your tears at night; in prison, no one can hear you scream. Feeling scared yet?
The reason why you don’t get raped in public is because YOU’RE FREE. The reason why it happens to you in prison and your perpetrator gets away with it is because in there, you’re not free.
Logically, then, the reason why women get raped in public is because THEY’RE NOT FREE. When you’re female, everywhere’s a prison. The street is a prison. Her workplace is a prison. That Uber cab is a prison. That creepy guy in Starbucks is a prison. The sentence is never-ending and there’s no escape.
Don’t get me started on your shaggy dog tales of some guy who got falsely accused of rape by some random female somewhere, these urban myths passed from man to man but never woman to woman, even though any other woman worth her salt would kick her butt for letting down the side. Don’t tell me that because of this mythical creature, all other women must, therefore, get punished now and forever and that you are unwilling to unlock the door of their cells. Don’t want to help? Going to stand there making your lame excuses and half-baked theories of patriarchal misogyny? OK, fine – give me the keys. HAND THEM OVER NOW! I’ll do it myself. I’m happy to unlock the door and let them out and give them the freedom to walk the streets in peace. We feminist men and women are moving on and out and up and guys like you are going to get left behind.
I guess at this point I should give you some background. I was rejected by the boys in my class at 11, spent three years in comparative isolation and loneliness at school, then from 14 onwards, after some preliminary confusion about my sexuality, embarked on my great love of women which has continued to the present day.
There was always tension between my sexual desire for women and my need for their friendship in the early days and I had never heard of nor seen the patriarchy or any anti-female attitudes. Back then, friendship won out over desire. The loneliness I felt when I wasn’t with women was relieved, I found, by physical touch. It didn’t work with men, only with women, so I have always maintained that my sexuality is straight because I love women. Nevertheless, I didn’t want women to see me as “that creepy, touchy-feely guy who goes around touching women.” I got considerable relief from my anxiety when I touched them, so I felt a lot better when, after a few initial fumbles, I realized that a non-sexual touch was also effective. So I decided to learn how to touch properly and embarked on a career as a massage therapist.
Eventually, I found myself being invited to women’s houses, making some great friends, overhearing private, sexy, girls-only conversations and basically being surrounded by women. Even though I got no sex from these women (in fact, I was a virgin throughout that whole time) my life was a-buzz with women and I felt totally satisfied with the level of female attention I was getting and I never felt deprived. Since then, I have got married and my commitment to feminism has largely replaced massage therapy as my way to connect with women.
So I have been thinking for some time now how this life experience can enlighten other men on how to relate to women and, in so doing, perhaps make women walking down the street feel more free.
I still don’t understand exactly what happened when I was 11 but I often feel that the rejection I received from boys then and the subsequent three years of social isolation I experienced was pivotal in why I skipped the patriarchy and love women so much. While giving massages to women in their underwear was fun in my twenties, those three years from 11-14 were grim. There was social isolation, ostracizing, teasing, bullying, some physical abuse, anxiety, depression, mild suicidal ideation – all caused by the boys. Meanwhile, my mother, sisters and other women in my life were towers of strength, stability, and reliability.
I believe this created a perfect storm of conditions to develop a lifelong love of women. Nevertheless, this love of women was weak, initially. Most of the impetus to be around women back then was an intense desire to get away from these negative things, knowing I could never return to the boys. So loving women pulled me forward and escaping that fear pushed me forward. Since then, the fear has eased and the love has grown. How can my experience be replicated for all men everywhere, without forcing them to go through all that negativity, especially if the women in their past were not as rock-solid reliable as mine?
I think the answer lies in the physical touch. Even today, if I just touch my wife’s hand normally, I experience this sudden release of tension, muscles relax, tubes in my chest cavity that I didn’t know were tense suddenly open wider. All this is good for my health but these physical reactions tell me that, if my wife’s hand was unavailable, I would eventually end up in the hospital with a heart attack. LOVE WOMEN OR DIE is the message and gives you some sense of the scale of the fear. So when I hear of a misogynist raping women, I’m like, “Oh, my goodness, IS HE NUTS?” If I did that in the morning, I would be in the morgue by the afternoon!
However, wouldn’t it have been better though, if I had learned some social skills? Could all this have been avoided if, instead of embarking on an entire massage therapy career, I had developed my emotional literacy?
Wouldn’t my life have been better if I had been taught a wider range of emotional expression than “get angry or have sex?” Serious crimes like rape and sexual assault have no justification and hating women is no excuse.
However, a lot of patriarchal behaviour could be explained by the fact that they’re a bunch of clueless men who were never taught how to adequately express their emotions and thus feel entitled to create power structures that allow them to treat women as second-class citizens in order to extract emotional connection and sex from them without their permission. If their toxic masculinity was removed, then women could walk down the street in safety.
The stupid thing is, emotionally speaking, the one in prison is him and the one who is free is her. Therefore, if we commit to teaching men healthy emotional expression, men will see women as allies rather than rivals. Then misogyny will disappear and women everywhere will be able to walk around after 9 pm whenever they want and experience the exhilarating winds of true freedom in safety.
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