Let’s Call “Culture” Out.
When you search the word “culture” on the internet, you’ll find thousands of pictures from all around the world. You’ll see pictures of different people, their artwork, their buildings, and their love. We use the world “culture” to denote many things. We use it to describe beautiful, age-old traditions that a group of people have shared and enjoyed for years, or lovely specialty dishes of a specific region, or greetings that are only understand by a select country. When we say, It’s part of their culture, that makes it something secret, special, and beautiful. It doesn’t need to be explained further than that; in fact, to demand explanation would be insulting. To describe something as culture gives it a hushed grandeur that does not need to justify; it just is.
But “culture” is also used to describe unpleasant things in society that everyone is supposed to accept and believe in wholeheartedly. It makes things that are really illogical or inexplicable, reasonable. It takes something that really should be considered exotic, endotic.
In our society today, there are many little unspoken assumptions about the roles of men versus those of women. There are some injustices that I believe we are growing dangerously close to finding completely normal, and even right. I will not try to offer a solution to this, nor will I deny that I probably have contribued to this harmful mentality. I want only to share my piece on this topic, because I believe that I bring something to the conversation. And from there, we can do more.
My senior year, my friend was really good friends with a guy. And he started to have feelings for her. And she thought she may like him too, so they tried. They kissed, and since they already were so close, it was more than just a first kiss. For her, it was a moment of trying, but for him, it was the culmination of months of longing and hopes. It was much more than just the beginning of something, it was the confirmation that they already were something. She didn’t know that going in, she wanted out. She ended it with him after a few days, hoping that there would be some way to recover from this incident and keep her friend.
His friends didn’t think so. They were absolutely brutal. And these are nice guys too, who prior to the incident were nearly as good of friends with her as they were with the guy. But it’s just the culture: when a girl hurts a guy’s feelings, she’s a bitch.
I accepted that mentality just as much as his friends did. I comforted her, and told her she had done nothing wrong, but at the same time, I did not condemn those who condemned her. I didn’t think twice about their harsh judgements because even I knew she had broken an unspoken, fundamental rule of our society:
When a guy breaks a girl’s heart, he’s just being a guy. Yeah, maybe people will call him a dick, say What an asshole, but he’s already pardoned. To some, he may even be a legend. Look at him making all those girls cry about him. He must be a real man.
But when a girl hurts a guy’s feelings, she’s manipulative, heartless, and inhuman. It’s just the natural order of things.
At college, there is what everyone commonly accepts as “hookup culture.” What this entails is basically is that you go out, meet someone, sleep with them, and you should expect nothing more than this. Does this seem a little strange? Is it implied, at least to some extent, that one gender is supposed to reap the benefits of this? Perhaps it would help to note that the most accessible site of hookup culture is parties. Thrown, of course, by the frats.
It is by no means a mentality that everyone has; I don’t want to generalize. But it is something that everyone recognizes, and accepts as a truth. Even if one doesn’t particitpate in it, it’s there.
What this means is that when my friend is blown off by this guy who just wanted to hook up a few times, we blame her for it, just a little bit, because “it’s just the culture.” She should have expected it, right? It goes against everything in us to blame the guy. The culture protects men. Maybe not always, and maybe not consciously. But in my experience, and for more times than I can count, it’s protected men.
I was flirting with this guy one night. Invited him back to my room, without intentions to really do anything. I won’t go into why not; suffice it to say that I wasn’t interested in having sex with him. At one point, I tell him that I’m not interested in having sex, and he says, “Yeah that’s totally fine. But can I just put it in for a second?” To say I was flummoxed would be a huge understatement. I didn’t know if I felt offended, or just wanted to laugh.
And here’s what I got the next day.
“He slept over? Oh, so you guys had sex. No? Okay, but you gave him a blowjob, right? What? Wow. Weird. That’s like, the baseline. You know, the standard for a hookup.”
“You invited him over but you didn’t have sex with him? I don’t know. He’s probably mad, it sounds like you gave him the wrong idea. I mean, you kind of led him on.”
“Oh wow, and he didn’t push having sex after you said no? He sounds like a nice guy. Do you want to see him again? You’ll have sex with him if you guys hook up again right?”
The problem with this is that when we start to assume that a guy is “nice” just for not pushing you to do something you don’t want to, we set the baseline for the average guy as someone who doesn’t do that. And that is a very dangerous mentality to adopt.
I wish I could say that I called these people out when they said these things to me. The reason I didn’t was twofold. First: I cowered under the weight of their judgement. As I was initially unsure whether I was right to feel indignant, I folded easily at the slightest confirmation that I wasn’t. And second, the nonchalant and righteous air with which they uttered their statements made it difficult to justify any rebuttal. Because when I heard these people saying these things to me, they did not sound like a judgement targeted towards me specifically. They sounded like simple statements of fact, and it’s foolish to argue against facts.
The reason we accept things we should not is because of the protective word surround them: culture. We don’t need to explain our mentalities because we are supported by this one word that implies authority, tradition, and impassivity.
Do I even dare to ask how can we change this mentality? But I do not even know if others believe that the need to change is there. Because I can hear people wondering, why would you invite him to your room without the intention of giving him sex? I tremble at the thought of facing the moral indignation of the majority, and I’ve received only pricks of the majority’s potential wrath. And so that’s why I wonder whether things will ever change, on a large scale.
For my part, I can promise to never apologize for saying no to a guy that I’m not interested in. I’ll never shame my friend for having feelings for someone, or for not reciprocating someone’s feelings. I’ll never tell her that she should have expected him to never text back, to leave her on read, or to be talking to other girls. These are things that are part of an unspoken, collective agreement, and it’s difficult to realize that they may not all be just. I feel like many more people will read these words and agree with them than are actually capable of changing their perspective.
Our attitudes towards things are often so deeply embedded in us that we don’t even think consciously before we react to something. We don’t think about whether our reactions are justified, whether we are being too harsh, or not harsh enough.
It would be much too big a leap to ask that everyone spontaneously stop reacting in ways that they have, arguably, been trained to react.
But it’s not too much to propose that you think about how you feel towards someone. The next time you find yourself judging someone, or feeling scorn towards them, ask if they deserve it. Then, ask if you have the right to decide this. Truly try to put your finger on to what degree your opinion, whatever it is, came from you, and to what degree it’s been shaped by what’s expected of you. Maybe then, your opinion will change.
It’s too easy to give up, and blame the “culture” for fostering our attitudes. Culture is powerful, after all. But remember at the beginning of this write, when I contemplated the double nature of “culture”: it is powerful because we create it. Which means that if we care enough, we can change it.
