Foreword: I was looking for a nice photo of Nixon doing his famous speech to illustrate the title of the article and have found out that this phrase - "the silent majority"- seems to have been "re-purposed" by Trump supporters. What an interesting twist of history.
On March the 3rd, a young woman by the name of Sarah Everard had gone missing, sparking an information campaign on social media that urged anyone who has any knowledge of her current whereabouts to come forward and share them with the worried family and friends. Just seven days later, on March the 10th, it has been made known that the Metropolitan Police has found human remains in Kent, which, it was suspected, could shed some light on Sarah's disapperance. To great saddness of her family, friends and hundreds of people engaged into the search operation, it is now confirmed that Sarah has been kidnapped and murdered by a police officer.
Since then, the news, social media posts and even Stories on Instagram has been a mixture of grief and fury. People are mourning the loss of the Everards' family and stand with them, holding vigils and wakes. However, the significance of the tragedy goes beyond that: since the moment the investigation managed to produce a suspect, the subject of debate in the civil society, as well as in the political circles was the question of whether we are doing enough to ensure a woman's safety in the city and on its streets.
It is quite hard to believe that even in countries and societies that like to parade themselves as modern, progressive and liberal, variying levels of misoginy - ranging from disrespectful treatment to harassment and outright violence - are still extremely common. In fact, as demonstrated by the tragic abundance of cases like Sarah's, not a single layer of society, not a single industry can be absolved of blame, and even those, to whom we entrust our safety, have psychopaths walking amidst them, dressed in sheep's clothing. A corrupted individual does not always represent the corruption of an entite societal institute, but this defence does not hold when there are so many vile individuals that if every person who has ever harassed or violated a woman in any way was a dot, by connecting them we would produce a sickening diagramme to our collective failure.
Now, notice how in the paragraph above I said "person". This is not quite the term which the aforementioned articles, social media posts and stories use. The blame for being absolute douchebags to women lands on one specific social layer - men. Personally, I would like to agree with this observation. I think men do a lot of shit, from just "stupid" shit to shit that is so abhorrent and disgusting that sometimes you think "how the f*ck can you live with yourself you f*cking w*nker???" And I know for a fact that men are involved, nay, men act as agressors or perpetrators in the overwhelming majority of (if not in all) cases of public harassment or yeah, sexual offences. So, it is completely justified that men get the shit for being pieces of shit. That's the way it should be. You f*ck up - you get the guillotine. Fair enough.
That's the way it should be. You f*ck up - you get the guillotine. Fair enough.
However, some men have been feeling very fragile and very offended about this and came forward saying stuff like "Well, ladies, too bad that this all is happening in our cities, too bad that women get cat-called, that a woman can't go back from a friend's place without being appoached to by a man who does not have even an ounce of self-f*cking-awareness that would tell him that all the questions or comment or, i don't know, recent news or whatever he ABSOLUTELY HAS to share with her should be rolled into a tight wad and inserted up his own bottom, too bad that all of this is happening, yeah, but I DON'T DO THAT". They say that with the same sense of conviction as the infamous "nice guys" which love to assert that "they are true gentlemen", that they would "treat a woman well", failing to realise that to treat her well, to NOT DO THAT is a bare minimum of that what is expected of a man in a society.
So, as a response to those pricks, the people in whose hearts this cause has found a particular resonance have set out to show that everyone, or rather every man, is a part of the problem. One of the more widely used arguments was "You are not innocent - just look at all the things on this list featuring the "ways of treatment of women that we as a society condone" and tell us, honestly, that you have never done any of them. Aha, you can't! Caught you!" This list, indeed, is quite extensive and, if one was to categorise it in legal terms, includes acts as well as omissions (non-acts) as well as mere indirect contributions to a negative situation. Though I looked through it briefly, it reminded me of the list familiar to any law student in the UK: "Aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring". I'm not showing off. Sorry if I am. Point is - it is a broad, comprehensive list of negative behaviours that men carry out against women. Though it's a bitter pill to swallow, again, this list of "misdemeanors and offences" just goes to show how widespread and deep-rooted the misoginy is.
But what has rubbed me the wrong way - and we are finally coming to the meat and potatoes of this article - was an episode from a comedy show or something, shared by a social media user, where this guy said something to the tune of: "Dear men, stop having a hero fantasy, and instead do something when your help and protection is needed. Take part. Be the change" etc. Well, now that is absolutely ridiculous. Why shoud we force the good men to change? Shouldn't we only re-educate the ones who are at fault here, the harassers, the rapists, the abusers, the attackers? Why can we not leave the good men alone? They have enough weight on their shoulders as it is - the gender gap, the colonies, the patriarchy, the politics, the absent fathers, shitty jobs, fake friends, partners who don't really love them[, white guilt? (where applicable)]... Come on! The male psyche is not strong enough to bear all that! Lay off, will you? The women can manage it without the male help. Just legalise pepper sprays and open more karate workshops. Men can take a hike!
As valuable as this is - to address this gender-based problem within the society using society's own "internal tools" such as alluding to moral arguments, I think we need a much wider arsenal of techniques to tackle this societal corrosion. For this reason I find it a bit odd to see statements like "just don't do it [it =sexual offences, harrasment etc], is that so hard?". Of course it is not hard. Yet, these events should be treated not so much as a gender problem, but rather as a perpetration, with attackers and victims, because then we can open up another avenue that may help us prevent new offences, as we can then gain insight into the psychology of an offender with the help of existing developments in the field of criminal science. It is widely accepted that crime, even violent crime, can often be caused by something greater than just a sudden switch 'going off' in an offender's mind. So, if we agree that behind the acts of robbers, muggers, murderers, even rapists lie complex social and psychological factors, then surely we could use the same tools to better understand the enemy we are dealing with here - the culture of "toxic masculinity", the "spring break" phenomenon, guys egging each other on to hit on the pretty girl at the club and getting violent when she says "no".
Finally, I am really not sure that demanding that everyone gets on board with the cause is the way to go. I think it is already quite clear what the societal guidelines are - the only thing that needs to be made clear is that penalty will be imposed on those who like to play with fire. We do need to ring alarm bells and cry "Predator! " when we see misconduct. We should come together and lend a kind shoulder to the victims and ruthlessly isolate and rehabilitate the wrongdoers. But don't make the silent majority do anything. Thank you for giving them an incentive, a shove in the right direction. Keep doing that. Don't let them fall back into the post-dinner lull. Push their eyelids up, make them watch. But don't urge them to take action. Their own passiveness will make them feel worse than torture. You'll see.
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