Men aren’t Trash, society is.

A few days ago I was reading a thread in one of my favourite mum groups on Facebook. I love a good lurk – not really a commenter or sharer, but lurking makes me smile and I read the posts because occasionally they are good fodder for this.

Unfortunately, this was good fodder but in every way that is bad.

For a start, the post was about the current sexual assault and harassment charges that are being brought up in the entertainment industry. I was really interested because, as a card carrying let’s-make-the-world-a-more-equal-place feminist, I find this group really interesting as it is a feminist parent group, and I find the current affairs both abhorrent and massively important and empowering for our society. This has been going on for years in varying degrees of horrifying, from full blown rape to god awful harassment.

Yet this post is the first one that has really pissed me off.

Phrases like “oh god, I’m so upset, all men are shit.” And “men are evil. I hate them all.” Were being passed around like Haribo at a kid’s party. The vitriol, the hatred – I’ve not seen it for a long time, and whilst I get it, I can’t support it. That isn’t feminism: that’s the very opposite.

So are all men shit? Well in a way I guess yes – in exactly the same way that all WOMEN are shit. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a SOCIETAL problem. I have as of yet to come across a man, my own husband included, who hasn’t contributed to or supported patriarchal culture. And guess what? The very same is true for the majority of women. Yes, we live in a society where men are raised and encouraged to treat women, whether intentional or not, as objects. From birth where “as long as there is a healthy baby” at the end of it is the go to phrase and surgeons (both male and female) mock birth plans because whatever the woman wants to happen to her body is irrelevant, to asking a man for his daughter’s hand like he has a say in who visits her vagina on a regular basis as opposed to just after a drunk fumble in a club. We have a big societal problem here, it’s so deeply seated but I want to make something crystal clear:

THIS IS NOT A MAN THING. This is a society thing. Yes, it’s men committing these offenses, but that doesn’t mean it is men exclusively to blame for the attitudes towards them (the offenses, obviously, are exclusively on the fuckwits doing them).

Who is raising these men? Exclusively other men huh? NO. Women AND men have created the problem where women are treated as lesser, treated so much as objects that they are victim shamed when they come forward as victims of rape more often than not. If my boys, god forbid, we’re to grow up to treat someone as lesser because she lacks a dangly bit, treat her as worthless or inferior, that isn’t on their dad, that’s on us both. On their teachers. On their peers.

Yes, men stand by and watch the smallest of offenders against women happen, all the way through to the worst. Colin Firth admitted that his colleague told him about the sexual assault she suffered at the hands of Harvey Winstein, but he did nothing. Countless women have been told by their male agents to “keep it shut” because they will lose their jobs/roles/industry foot in the door that they WORKED hard for and that should be stripped from the male attacker, not the victim… however those same women, they were victim shamed by other women, told to keep quiet by secretaries who turned a blind eye, other actresses and singers. Not through fear for their own careers but because the misogyny is so ingrained in our society, such a power balance skew, that this is just a sad normal. For both sexes. How can we make horrendous claims like “it’s all men” when it’s not – it’s so many women too.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have the normalisers – the men who stand and laugh at the “locker room humour” (which is basically sexually objectifying women like pieces of meat) and though they find it abhorrent, they say nothing. It’s just “having a laugh”. There are women too – read any of these stories of sexual harassment in the news and you will see a steady stream of women saying “another money grabber” or “ugh as if you wouldn’t report it, she’s just trying to harm his career on social.” and so on, and so on. It’s enough to make your toes curl.

So what is the solution? We have to acknowledge that we have a HUGE problem in our society where men hold the majority of the cards and there is an attitude towards women that should have been left in the dark ages. So many studies have been conducted that show how truly ingrained our hidden misogyny is, but that doesn’t mean “all men are the problem”. Far from it. It is far more serious than that. All of us, male, female, trans, non conforming… we’re all there. We’re all the problem.

To fix the future generations and stop this happening we need to stop raising them, both sexes, to fit into this world and to challenge it. I need to change, you need to change, we all need to re-evaluate because “all men are trash” is, in my humble, a cop out. It’s a pass off for the horrible truth that we’re all contributing.

All men are NOT trash. But society really is.