The #MeToo Elephant in the Room: Sex
The many recent #MeToo stories drew me to think about my own experiences as a man in the same world all these accounts take place. It left me with a deep desire to express my own story, which feels different from other voices I’m hearing in this conversation.
Part I — One Man’s Experience
For brevity I’ll use the term “jerk behavior” to describe a cultural standard of the masculine intimidating the feminine. That definition necessarily needs to include a vast grey area of behavior often seen as being “assertive”, you know, “not being afraid to get what you want.”
I know many men like myself who were shy and awkward from puberty through early adulthood precisely because they could not be “jerks”. We saw jerks get what they wanted, but could not bring ourselves to play the game.
By definition, any entrenched system invalidates those who stand in opposition to it. So while the “jerk” system intimidates women, it simultaneously invalidates non-participating men.
#MeToo lines are often drawn rather literally between men and women because the stories rarely describe men as direct victims of sexual abuse. But if one counts as victims the un-jerk-like men who feel invalidated by the very same system, #MeToo may inadvertently condemn more victims than perpetrators.
As a young man I was confused, frightened, and lacking in enough context to speak out at jerk-ness. Like a child who imagines their parent’s fights are somehow the child’s fault, I felt simply unappealing, weak, and irrelevant in my unwillingness to be a jerk.
Looking back now, I know the system was failing me. But at the time I thought I was failing the system, which was painful and confusing.
Fairly early in my adult career I gained the kind of power to be a jerk, hiring some 70 women by the time I was 40. But I’ve never had that jerk energy in me. The jerks hurt me too. So the last thing in the world I would want to do is give those jerks power by becoming one of them.
The jerk system invalidated and alienated me as a young man. As that young man grew into an adult, I jumped at the chance to invalidate jerks by not being anything like them.
But today I see both women and men beating the #MeToo drum while simultaneously perpetuating the jerk system. For example, it often shows up in a romantic or sexual context with seemingly harmless sentiments like, “You need to tell a woman what she wants to hear.”
Such dishonesty inherently drinks the poison of the old jerk system. Having been personally disenfranchised by the jerk system myself, I yearn for a world that supports authentic honesty and rejects the current standard of parallel realities that don’t speak truthfully to each other.
I want to live in a world where we are all living at choice; Where being a jerk falls flat, but being vulnerable is incredibly sexy. Working to create such a world is the best way I know to unlock our past and yield our much needed healing.
