Our polarized nation is collectively taking turns, first from the left and now from the right, gleefully cutting the throat of another beloved icon of the opposition, and banishing that Azazel (scapegoat) into the wilderness of obscurity. We breathe a collective sigh of relief that comes when we have convinced ourselves that our sins have vanished into the woods with the goat. At the same time, prompted by this misplaced outrage, much more interesting and productive reflection is being done by men, most privately, recalling past interactions with women that may have felt only vaguely wrong at the time but have pricked at their consciences for years or decades, reevaluating those experiences through a new and sobering lens.
Like watching a magician’s clever misdirection, we’ve all been watching the wrong hand.
In this case, the hand we need to be paying attention to is ourselves. At the time of his transgression, Al Franken was a comedian on a USO tour. As a comedian, it was his job to know where the line is drawn, what people will object to as offensive and what is just the other side of that line that people will laugh at, albeit uncomfortably. In posing for that picture, Franken sensed, accurately at that time, that we would not only approve of this behavior, we would think it was funny.
Donald Trump is another powerful man who has an uncanny ability to sense where the line is, when he can get away with things that no one thought he could. When candidate Donald Trump was caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting woman, he didn’t recant and apologize because he accurately sensed that his behavior was just this side of the line. Instead, he and his supporters excused the behavior as “locker room talk,” just the way men talk to each other. Whether or not men actually do talk this way to one and other, in locker rooms or boardrooms, is beside the point. It is more important to ask why so many of us thought that behavior fell just short of the line.
Men brag to each other about our power over women, even though every man in the locker room knows that your bragging is just that. We are not talking about things we have actually done, but are bragging about things we feel entitled to do (although in the President’s case, that line is at least blurred). Whether or not our president actually did grab women by the pussy, he believed that bragging about it would add to his status, and that no apology was required. As men, we condone bragging about assaults on women, real or fictional, to assert our masculinity, to reassure ourselves and others that we are not controlled by women. One of the worst things a man can accuse another man of is being controlled by a woman— “pussy whipped.” Of course, the insatiability of our need to assert our independence and invulnerability reflects our deep seated fears of dependency and vulnerability with women.
Certainly, much good has come from our enforced confrontation with the prevalence of sexual exploitation and abuse by powerful men. However, we have to be careful not to simply scapegoat these men with our collective outrage, and avoid the work of looking at these same issues in our own lives. Over 800 college and universities around the country have adopted policies of what is called affirmative consent, or “yes means yes.” These policies recognize that saying “no” is not always easy or even possible, and so require “an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity.”
I think these policies are well intentioned and will help many young men who are confused about what sexual behavior is appropriate for them as men in the 21st century. However, trying to legislate sexual relationships and reducing them to a set of rules misses an important point. It is my understanding that it is common for gay men to talk openly about their sexual likes and dislikes before initiating a sexual relationship. I believe this happens because these are conversations between two men, both of whom are presumed to have sexual desires. In straight couples, we are still holding on to the very outmoded notion that only men have sexual desires, not women, so sex is something that men want or need and women don’t, and only use in a transactional way to get other things they want, like fidelity and commitment. If you don’t believe that’s still true, for men, how is it for you if your female partner pursues you sexually, makes her desire unmistakably clear? Do you get turned on or turned off? Do you enjoy intercourse in the female-superior positon, are you able to climax?
What we need to be doing is not just teaching our young people rules, but teaching them how to talk to each other about their sexual feelings, as equal partners, talking about what they like and don’t like, talking about what’s okay and what’s not. We need to be teaching our young people about behavior that is relationally responsible, behavior undertaken with a careful consideration of what the impact on the other person is likely to be, and an eagerness to listen and learn about what the actual impact of your behavior has been. Eventually, we need to move towards a position of the curiosity born of mutual respect for each other, rather than fear of transgressing.
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