Yes, Men ARE Scared Of Women Right Now. Here’s Why.
2017 has been a whirlwind when it comes to women and sexual assault. It seems like every day over the past few months I’ve read a headline about a famous and powerful man being fired, arrested, or even committing suicide in the wake of sexual assault accusations against him. Women everywhere have gotten braver, stronger, and more vocal about the wrongs done to them on a society-wide level. Hell, TIME Magazine even named “The Silence Breakers” their collective “Person of the Year” for 2017.
This new trend of women standing up and speaking out makes me incredibly happy. As I discussed in my article about Harvey Weinstein and the #metoo movement, the need for women to loudly and publicly expose their systematic abuse by men is essential to our world becoming a better place; not only for women of today, but for future generations of women as well.
However, there is a dark side of this new trend, a feminist idea which has been making the rounds over the past week in meme-form. This screen cap below is not the original post or author (at least I don’t think so), but the text is what I’ve read a few times on my various social media feeds:
Before I get into my issue with this, I want to make it perfectly clear that I understand the intent of this post. I understand that the idea of men “punishing” women for speaking out about how society treats them as second-class citizens and looks the other way when abuse is inflicted upon them is a valid and deeply concerning problem. No woman should ever have to go through the horrors of sexual assault, and then go through the pain and turmoil of coming forward about that assault, and then have the response to that be, “Men won’t want to be around you anymore at this rate!” That’s absolutely messed up, and I won’t stand for it.
But if you read between the lines of this meme you find a nugget of truth, one which a lot of women don’t want to admit. That truth is this: women do confuse men when it comes to sex and consent, and in a lot of ways this past year has made men even more scared and confused than they’ve ever been.
A Little Backstory…
I was lucky to be raised in a household with a strong female leader. My mother was the breadwinner of the family, working tirelessly in a thankless job to make sure we could afford rent and food. My step-father, her husband, was a mess of a man; if my mother wasn’t there to keep him in check, I firmly believe he and his children would have been living on the streets. Growing up in this environment cemented the idea in my head that women are not only as good as men: they are better than men. To this day, most of the people I associate with closely are women, and I find myself feeling out-of-place when I hang out with groups of men.
But despite my step-father’s ineptitude and myriad emotional and mental issues, he also preached loudly to me about how to respect women. When I was coming-of-age, he would give me advice (usually unsolicited) about girls I was dating, and most of it was simple yet solid: don’t ever hit women, remember that women are just like you, don’t ever force yourself upon a woman, etc. You know, basic stuff that for some reason isn’t taught in every household in America.
These concepts of elementary respect for the female gender were so ingrained in my head that the first time I met a woman who wanted me to be aggressively forceful with her during sex, I became overwhelmed with confusion and sadness. Confusion because women should be revered, never subjugated, and sadness because what this woman was asking of me really turned me on. She wanted me to treat her as if she was less-than-equal, and I relished the thought of it…which made me feel like a horrible person.
In the kink world, this is commonly referred to as “top drop,” or the emotional confusion and exhaustion dominant partners feel before, during, or after a violent, sadistic, or otherwise aggressive session of power imbalance. Top drop is normal (obviously it is common enough to have a cute little name) and any experienced Dom/Domme will openly tell you about a recent time it befell them.
This started happening when I was in my late teens. My parents were the opposite of helicopter parents, and my house was essentially atheistic; I felt no religious shame or parental boundary in exploring sexuality. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I had already had sexual experiences that people twice my age were just starting to experiment with.
I was lucky that this was the sequence of events in my life: I had the basic values of human respect instilled in me at a young age, and then had the sexual freedom to explore how the exchange of power between men and women can be sexually exciting. Like Neo in The Matrix, I learned the rules of the world first, and then was taught how to safely bend or even break those rules to achieve an end goal.
But My Story Is Not The Norm
Many men out there weren’t as lucky as me. The issue today is that men across America (and the rest of the world) are getting their first tastes of feminism and their first tastes of sex and kink all at the same time. They are learning both the rules of the game (feminism) and the ways to bend or break those rules (kink and sexual exploration) all together (or in some cases backwards), and it’s happening while they’re adults.
On any given day in 2017, men heard in one ear about the struggles of women: the rape, the assault, the wage gap, the stereotypes, etc. And in the other ear they heard about how women are still obsessed with a story about a young girl being sexually subjugated without consent by a billionaire man (50 Shades of Grey), increasingly consuming misogynistic or even violent pornography, and becoming more comfortable with expressing their submissive sexual desires.
One can’t ignore how confusing that must be for men who have no experience with this sort of thing.
Like I said earlier in this article: I understand that women shouldn’t feel burdened by men’s conflicted feelings when it comes to being open about sexual assault. But the meme above paints the picture that men are hapless fools who ignore the rule book they received at birth detailing what women are OK with and when, precisely, they are OK with it. But that is not the case at all. There is no rule book, and even if there were one the rules would only be useful to men experienced and wise enough to know when those rules need to be applied.
Take this simple example: ask a woman how she would like a date to make the first move. Would she rather he verbally ask her if he can kiss her and then do so upon explicit consent, or would she rather he just go for it? Ask around, and I’m 100% certain you’ll find a majority of women would prefer the man to “just go for it.”
Head further down the rabbit hole by asking any woman who responds “just go for it” how her date will know if going in for the kiss will result in a positive response. The most likely answer will be, “He’ll know from my body language,” or simply, “He’ll know.” How unhelpful is that to a man who has little-to-no success or experience with women and dating?
Men ponder things like this and then see headlines about other men being fired for unwanted sexual advances towards women, and they get extremely nervous. They are getting information that is conflicting and that makes them incredibly insecure with themselves and their interactions with women. That’s what this popular meme is neglecting to take into account: many men want to be good men, but they don’t know what the hell they are doing and fear that they will accidentally make a life-altering mistake.
This is not women’s problem, of course. This is men’s problem, and our society-as-a-whole’s problem when it comes to the values and lessons we instill (or don’t instill) into young boys. It’s also a problem with our society’s inability to treat sex and normal (but perceived as deviant) fetishes and desires of both men and women as anything but abhorrent.
This also does not absolve men who are reckless and ignorant when it comes to sex and feminism. Men can’t pull the “I have no idea what I’m doing” card when they force their hands down a woman’s pants. But despite how the media portrays our world, those men are the minority. Many men out there are good people, who want to do the right thing. They are simply so confused by how women think and what they want sexually that they’d rather stay safe and not play ball than risk their career or reputation in this new environment of empowered women standing up for themselves.
It’s not that they are afraid of empowered women, it’s that they are afraid of how their own inexperience with women in general could potentially harm them.
So please think about this before hitting “share” on that meme.
