Feminisms 1
If you can't see yourself in something, it probably isn't meant for you.
I suspect a lot of the animosity that comes from some men when confronted with stories that either don't involve them or only involve them as the bad guy comes from the fact that men have always existed in word where they are the good guy. No matter the circumstance in every story there is someone they can look at who looks, sounds and feels like them who is doing the right thing and saving the day or at least contributing to the story in some meaningful way. Women, People of Colour and non binary people don't have this. They are quite often villains and for woman and PoC, sex objects, just look at the Bond films. It's far worse for non binary people but that's not my lived experience, nor is it that of a Person of Colour so I can't really speak to either of those so I won't.
We, as women, learn to deal with the fact that our representation in media is very often one of background as in literally scenery or one of villain from very early on. Often this leads us to want be the bad guys because they are the only interesting portrayals we get. How many girls wanted to be Ursula over Ariel because she was cooler? That's a different essay though. My point being we learned to look at characters who were either not like us i.e. male or not the hero to see our place in the story. Men have never had to look for that. I'm not saying there were not little boys who wanted to be Ariel or Ursula or the "Do you want to make a snowman?" girl and there should be! But when you don't have to look for yourself in those other places all the time and then 'suddenly' (it wasn't sudden) that has been taken away you might get a bit scared or defensive, you shouldn't react the way the loudest voices did but when you have always been the hero even when the idea of what that is, particularly in relation to women, is not exactly healthy then the way you voice your displeasure might not be healthy either. Pop Culture Detective (PopCultureDetectiveAgency) has some good video essays on how the relationship between the hero and the love interest are unhealthy.
Just like you wouldn't kick and scream about not understanding the societal commentary in a South Korean film or the jokes in a Russian film, things about and for women are the same just because you are not there does not mean you are the bad guy or if we are talking about men in general and you don't do that then then we probably aren't talking about or to you.
This brings me to my ideas about why some women victims of sexual assault are believed more readily than others. NB: my only expertise in this field is two rather dusty degrees in criminology criminomimy but I'm really basing most of this on my lived experience as a 31 year old woman in the world. I'm going to contrast two real life rape cases here so if this not something you want to read you may wish to stop here.
The first case I am going too look at is one where the victim was pretty much universally believed from the start even though the (at the time) alleged attacker was a rich, white, cis, het man. This was the Brock Turner case (People_v._Turner). I've just included the Wikipedia because that gives enough extra information for you. Essentially in this case a prominent university sportsman (this is in the US so that's a big deal) was caught mid way through raping a unconscious female fellow student outside a fraternity party by two Swedish post graduate students on bicycles (I don't know why but that detail has always struck me as oddly humorous - Swedes on bikes) anyway they yelled at him to stop and caught him after he tried to run away. He went to trial, more controversy ensued but I don't want to look at whether the system failed the victim, what I'm focusing on is the response to the victim's - her name is Chanel Miller - claim which was more supported than is often the case or at least that is my memory of it.
The reason for this support comes back to the roles in which men get to play in these stories. Take a person who has always, absolutely always been able to put themselves in to a story and always been the good guy. In the story of a rape often there are only two people involved, victim and perpetrator. Now as a man who is the hero of EVERY story he can't be the bad guy because that's not him, he's not a rapist which may very well be the case most men aren't but the patriarchy won't let him be the victim either. This is two fold. Men don't get raped, that's weak and not manly and it gay and no homo yeah? Add to that men are not trained to look for themselves in other roles in the story. So they don't see that they could be anyone other than the bad guy and nope no, that's not them so then if they couldn't have done that then maybe there was some reason for this situation that means I, the man, could have been in that situation and been the bad guy, maybe it's not as bad as it looks, maybe she's lying. You get the picture.
The key difference with the Brock Turner case is the Swedes on Bikes, now there is a hero role men can take on that doesn't require anything other than just normal patriarchal stuff. There's a bad guy and then we came along as men and saved the girl. That's the normal story and we can deal with that.
Contrast that with an Australian case (Luke Lazarus) where an 18 year old woman was raped behind a Sydney night club and the original conviction was overturned because it was found that the alleged offender could not have known that the victim (Saxon Mullins) was not consenting. In this case there were only the two involved so there is no role for outside men except as the alleged offender. In this case there is an even stronger desire on the patriarchies part not to be the victim because of the anal sex rape aspect. If Lazarus genuinely believed that there was consent in this situation he should not be having sex and I'm very concerned about the other girls he's been with. However the point is in this case to get around the problem of there only being one role a man can play is to use the law to say that although Saxon was not consenting Lazarus did not have reasonable grounds to know this. IDK but asking to leave multiple times and pulling up her pants after he pulled them down without asking maybe should have given him a clue. I'm not up on NSW legislation so I'm not sure exactly how the law was applied here and I think the judge was a women in this situation but my point still stands people (mostly) were OK with the idea that a grown adult man might not have been able to tell that this woman wasn't consenting because she did expressly say 'no' or actively try to leave or ask him to stop. I think this comes from in part the fact that men are rarely forced to look at themselves in roles that are not the hero so if there was a way that this could be, not OK, but explainable at least. He did a bad thing but it was by mistake, as a man if I were in that situation either I wouldn't make that mistake because I can see how he went wrong or it would be OK to make that mistake because how could anyone have known what was right there.
Anyway just some thoughts about men and stuff. It's nice to write again even if I don't think anyone will read it.
If you do read it and like it let me know or if you just want me to write reviews of Younger tell me that too. Stay safe!
I really like the point about the importance of being able to see yourself in the narrative and how the need to do this can lead to rewriting the narrative until you can see yourself in it. I think it diagnoses a core part of how patriarchy works.Testimony in rape cases is a good example and there are numerous examples. I wonder if this might be even a bit more insidious though. I am curious about mansplaining - the concept had and has traction, it is a useful tool for identifying a real thing that needs to be addressed. However, I do wonder if there will be, in fact is, an attempt by men (the patriarchy) to try to retell the story about mansplaining in a way that, say, identifies good-mansplaining (contradiction in terms if you ask me) and bad-mansplaining, and that tries to say that all that mansplaining you thought you had problems with was really just the good kind all along, so you gals need not be worried about that, let me tell you how it is... One critical note: I personally would like more commas...and yes, I give a fuck about the Oxford Comma, I love it.
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