- A Book Excerpt from Consent Is Not Enough: What Men Need to Know in a #MeToo World
by Anthony Signorelli
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“I have consented to sex to avoid a man’s rage,” she said. And with that, I began to question the standard terminology of the #MeToo discussion. Until that point, most of what I heard men and women saying advocated consent as the prescription that could solve everything. Consent was the antidote to patriarchy, privilege, entitlement, and objectification. Yet, this comment by this woman made it clear that consent had solved nothing for her. Many other women echoed her experience. Consent is not enough.
The end game here is simple: Men need to stop harassing, abusing, and being violent with women. To get men to stop these behaviors, we need to start with a keen understanding of men’s experience and the driving forces that affect how they behave. Over the last year, I and Tom Esch, my colleague and expert facilitator, had the privilege to sit in circles of men who are concerned about what they are hearing from the women in #MeToo. Increasingly, I see men nod in agreement when the key words come up. Consent, patriarchy, privilege, entitlement, objectification, and toxic masculinity function as the intellectual framework for the discussion. Everyone seems to understand the words… We nod in agreement. We seem to know what each other is talking about.
But there is a problem.
While many men agree with this framing, most do not use these terms to describe their own experience. Instead, I see many men react to them — sometimes defensively, sometimes angrily, often thoughtlessly. What’s apparent is that thought and discussion stops as men retreat into fear, anger, or defensiveness. Or sometimes, it stops as men retreat into shame. In any case, these responses don’t serve insight; they are primarily defensive. When men are defensive, insight and change are impossible. My hope in these essays is to expand and illuminate these terms so as to complete their fuller meaning, which would be useful to men who are working to gain the inner awareness needed to bring the scourge of sexual harassment to an end — both in themselves and in society. I am convinced that psychologically healthy, vital men don’t engage in these kinds of behaviors, and I seek to guide men in finding that deeper, more vital sense of self. The first step is to see into the terminology in which the discussion is immersed. Only then can we begin to see our way toward a solution.
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Anthony Signorelli authors books and articles on men, #MeToo, postcapitalism, climate, green energy, political history, poetry, and books.Email list announces new books, events, and publications.This article is excerpted from Consent Is Not Enough.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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