It’s easy to find men who don’t think of themselves as misogynists. It’s not difficult to find men who will argue that misogyny is all but eradicated in America. You’d be hard pressed, however, to find a female-identified person whose life is not impacted by that thing that doesn’t really exist anymore.
That such a massive discrepancy could happen in the age of
communication is why we need the #YesAllWomen campaign. The idea behind
#YesAllWomen is that sexism in all its forms (notably the sense of entitlement
to women’s bodies and attention) is alive and well and affecting all women
everywhere all the time. It is a gesture of support, as well as a wake up call
to well-intentioned men who have been complacently patting themselves on the
back for not being part of the problem.
It was a wake up call for me, too. Reading through the
tweets and articles, I have run into a lot of what I’ll call “Oh yeah, what the
fuck?” moments, where something that
I’ve come to accept as normal suddenly hits me as the bullshit that it is.
I had a big OYWTF moment while reading Amanda Hess’s article
in Slate, “Why It’s So Hard For Men to See Misogyny“. She describes a man who
had recently barged in on a conversation she was having with a friend at a
party. Taking their politeness as encouragement (as people who barge into conversations
often do) he asked for the friend’s phone number. She declined, explaining that
she had a husband, even though that was (as Hess later observed) “like the
sixth most pressing reason she wouldn’t go out with him”.
This is a strategy that many women – single or spoken for,
straight or gay – have employed at one time or another. The old, “I have a
boyfriend” maneuver. Why? Because it’s fucking effective. “I’m not interested”
tends to inspire follow up questions, or denial, or even anger. But “I have a
boyfriend” sends them on their merry way. Because, as Hess says, “aggressive
men are more likely to defer to another man’s domain than accept a woman’s
autonomous rejection of him.”
There’s no denying that “I have a boyfriend” gets results.
But this quick fix deepens the bigger problem. To tell a man that he is
trespassing gives credence to the notion of women as property. Furthermore, it
contributes to the idea that “no” coming from a woman, is not a red light, but
a yellow one. Not “go away,” but “stick around, and maybe I’ll change my mind.”
A woman doesn’t need a reason to not want to date, or sleep
with, or even talk to someone. But these reasons are demanded of them, and flat
out rejection does not always suffice. On a certain level, I understand why
guys would get the impression that a bare “no” is negotiable. We are surrounded
by assurances that rejection from a woman is really just a playful invitation
to try harder.
First off, there’s the cool guy cred that comes from being able
to win a girl over. The more fervently she refuses, the more awesome a guy is
for convincing her to go back on her word. It’s a major ego boost. Like when
Richard III yells victoriously “Was ever woman in this humor won?” after
convincing Lady Anne to marry him shortly after he’s murdered her husband and
brother. Or when Pitbull boasts in the 2013 hit 'Timber' “I’m slicker than an oil
spill. She says she won’t but I bet she will.” A no from a woman is an
opportunity to prove oneself. If you’re really
smooth, she’ll come around eventually.
Of course, it’s not always about proving how worthy a guy
is. It’s also about proving how worth it
a girl is. There’s the episode of “How I Met Your Mother” when Ted
gets a crush on Stella the dermatologist. She says no. He asks the early
rejection trifecta: Husband? Boyfriend? Lesbian? And upon receiving three more
no’s, he demands to know why she won't at least try going out with him. The rest of
the episode then revolves around his efforts to “turn a no into a yes.” He
eventually does, through creativity and persistence. Because Ted is a romantic.
The kind of guy who will really go the extra mile to score the girl of his
dreams.
That’s
the guy who won't take no for an answer in romantic movies. He’s not
menacing at all. He’s John Cusack holding a boom box. He’s Ryan Gosling in the Notebook, hanging one-handed from a
ferris wheel until Rachel McAdams agrees to go out with him. Imagine if men
always took “no” at face value. We’d be robbed of some of the greatest movie
romances of all time.
So there’s the “cool guy” reason to reject rejection, and
then there’s the “nice guy” reason. This is where it gets murky. Because
persistence is romantic in real life just like it is onscreen. And playing hard
to get is a real thing. But I do think we should be careful about what kinds of
“nice guy” mythologies we build in TV and movies. Some of the most sexist
statements I’ve ever heard have come from the mouths of self-proclaimed “nice
guys.” You know, nice guys. As in “women are crazy, why don’t they just want a
nice guy like me?” kind of guys.
With this in mind, perhaps its time to re-think hard-to-get.
Not that we should do away with this old courtship chestnut altogether, just
that we should make a clear distinction between “no” and “not yet” so that the
authority of the former is not undermined.
Someone inclined to take rejection badly will probably take
it even worse if persistence doesn’t pay off. There are two ways to take
rejection badly: to internalize it, and allow an isolated incident to diminish
one’s entire self worth. Or to externalize it, and direct the negative feeling
towards another person. Generally the person doing the rejecting. A certain
type of man will lash out at a woman who has spurned his advances. A certain type
of that type will do so in a way that
is violent or threatening. No, this is not all men. Not even close. But a woman
turning a random guy down at a bar has no way of knowing whether he fits into
this category or not.
Which brings us back to why a woman indulges her overly
aggressive suitor. Why she answers his questions, laughs at his jokes, and
assures him that she’s only turning him down because another man has already
claimed her. She’s protecting herself, just in case.
The #YesAllWomen campaign was sparked by the May 23rd
Isla Vista killings. While the terrible crimes of Elliot Rodger demand a
discussion of everyday misogyny, I am hesitant to link the issues too closely. Rodger
believed that women deserved violent retribution for rejecting him all his
life. And although he was a member of society, and influenced by the same cultural
mores as everyone else, he was also profoundly disturbed. I do believe that the
behaviors glorified by the entertainment industry can sometimes bring out the
worst in normal people. But the worst in normal people is not Elliott Rodger.
He was a severely sick person, living in a country where mental illness is
stigmatized and guns are easy to acquire. To suggest that his actions were the
natural end result of popular culture, to scramble for a scapegoat to rationalize
a privileged white kid’s brutality, is missing the point.
Washington Post film critic Anne Hornaday wrote a piece in
response to the massacre stating that Rodger’s mindset was “influenced, if not
created, by the entertainment industry”. The article, which specifically called
out filmmaker Judd Apatow, received a lot of well-deserved criticism. First of
all, I personally think that Apatow should be commended for bringing nuanced
female characters to the cro-magnon stoner comedy genre. And I don’t even know
if Rodger was a fan of those movies. But even if the movies were sexist, and if Rodger was obsessed
with them, artists cannot be held responsible
for how psychotics interpret their work.
While she should not have carried it into the mind of a
murderer, I agree with Hornaday’s observation that movies “powerfully condition
what we desire”. We’re surrounded by media. Of course it’s influencing us. It
can do so most effectively when we don’t even notice it happening. For example:
if a TV character uses the words “woman” and “kitchen” in the same sentence,
our sexism alarm goes off, but a male character undermining a woman’s decision
to reject him might go unnoticed.
#YesAllWomen puts our warped culture of “no” in the
spotlight. Hopefully, it will inspire more “oh yeah what the fuck” moments in
daily life. And when they occur, we can all (men and women) make the decision
to acknowledge them, and speak up.
