Question: when you look back at October 16th 2017, what will you remember? The reports of the American president ribbing his VP's attitude to LGBT folk, by saying, "Don't ask that guy: he wants to hang 'em all;" if in London, a blood red sun in a St John the Divine sky; in San Francisco, the thickening of forest fire smoke in the atmosphere after a weekend where it seemed to be thinning. Or, as a social media user, will it be the day that your news feed revealed a phenomenal incidence of women typing, "Me too"?
It is mind-boggling to consider the fundamental truth of all men: that we are born of women. And yet, as we, the same men, mature - which we rarely seem to, truly - our allegiance errs towards our father's motile sperm, rather than our mother's fertile egg. That human existence is essentially an egalitarian, biological co-operation between the sexes - to begin with - unless we are cloned, give it time - seems the farthest thing from the typical male mind.
It is women who are afforded "child-bearing hips." It is men who are awarded "led in their pencil." Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette biography was revelatory with regard to royal women; in essence, reared concubines to be married off, to populate the world with kings. It was Princess Diana who fell in love with a prince who, in the presence of the international press, questioned what love meant upon the announcement of their engagement; only for Diana to discover, in her view, that she had been inveigled into the Windsor household purely to breed.
The lives of women, the world over, are dominated by the chauvinism of boy-men: birkas, hijabs, mantillas, veils; banishment during the monthly "uncleanness;" genital mutilation, honour killings; pay inequality; beauty pageants; exploitation of the female form in art, advertising, film and pop music video; bikini contests; whipped cream wrestling at the Bulldog Bash; male surfers/surfer babes; the paternal news anchor flanked by the younger female anchor; Christian hostility to women priests; legislation on women's body rights by the majority male mind; female sex tape fame; a list without end.
That women are physically and emotionally "inconvenienced" by biological circumstance once a month is of little consequence to us blokes: see "on the rag," "pussyclart." That women are somewhat slowed by the nine months that they carry the men who populate the world and go on to perpetrate misogyny against them is not enough of a thing. The subsequent agony of birth, its menstrual corollary, and the rest - the biological clock, breech births, caesarian section, dysmenorrhea, lactation, menopause, suckling, and so on - constitute lucky male escapes.
Our male dismissal of, and indifference to these female realities is an ongoing tragedy for women. It is shameful; nothing to be proud of or indifferent to. Men blithely presume that nature is on our side - if our sexist "intelligence" allows. In simplistic male terms, the penis penetrates; the vagina receives. Feminism, it seems, is not feminism without the challenging mockery of men, and then we have to go and bring god into it.
Monotheism is a potent victory for male sexism in Christendom: God is cast as Zeus, antiquity's omnipotent Lothario; Mary, as an unsuspecting desert nymph; a humble, pregnable, inargumentative recipient of his seed; a device to ensure his son's, which is to say, male dominance. Again, monotheism is a permit to oppress, conceal and hobble women in the Islamic world, where, for example, incensed, unabashed male viewers say of a progressive female performer on The X Factor, Afghanistan, that "She deserves to be killed" because she shows her face, her hair, and uses makeup.
Meanwhile, back in the western world, there are those women who experience crisis, if they are separated from their makeup, by "virtue" of what men will see. And female models are recruited by male led corporations to ensure this paranoia of deportment. "Because you are worth it."
And yet, oblivious to these unfortunate social truths, men are at ease on street corners, outside pubs, yelling, "Alright darlin'", "look at the knockers on that," "she looks a right goer," at the top of their voices, and disproportionately so, when a woman is a natural or a bleached blond(e). There are not nearly enough Estelle Rolfes - Garbo Talks (1984) - to go around.
You have to wonder if there is ever any male remorse after the self-indulgent fraternity of lecherous abuse - and it is abuse - with which they bedevil the women who pass building sites. Like the Harvey Weinsteins of this world, male builders may well look at themselves in the mirror before leaving the house, but nothing in the reflections, or their personal hygiene enlightens them as to how their uninvited advances are nauseating to women who have to get to work, feed their children, deal with husbands, boyfriends, male coworkers and bosses; women who are objectified every which way they look.
How extraordinary, then, how preposterous to have one's beauty, femininity, fitness, or taste in revealing clothing be interpreted as "Come hither." Are women ever protected from these nightmares? Are these men ever policed? It is difficult to be sure in a world where Hugh Hefner is some kind of hero, Larry "Hustler" Flynt offers millions to secure the impeachment of an American president exposed as a braggadocious predator, and Donna Karan, with a broad, intellectualist grin from ear to ear, questions whether women are "Asking for it," hollow apology withstanding. Tragically, her since relented position is nothing new; nothing that hasn't been heard before; from a female contributor on Channel Five's The Wright Stuff, for example.
And even so, predictable male challenges to women saying, "Me too" have surfaced. Male anger at being excluded from voicing the abuses they have experienced; males questioning what privileges a woman's sexual abuse and harassment over a man's; male incapability at staying out of what women feel they need to express as a supportive collective; male suspicion at women making a stand; males invoking lesbianism and unshaven feminist legs because women en masse are angry as hell, and not in the mood to be silent on aggressive sexism - just for a day! As if they ever accepted it in the first place.
Men are more than happy to accept the hog-sized platter of privilege that they are handed. It is still a hog-sized platter, and we should notice that we are carrying it. If #metoo makes us men feel uncomfortable, good! Sad, even better. Ashamed? Uh huh. And this is written from the vantage point of a man who, for decades, has frequented male only establishments where punters are often "handy;" where it is presumed, by some, that it is OK to be grabby because men only gay spaces are cruise joints, and by entering them you are signing up for personal space invasion. Unnerving because, unless history repeats itself and LGBT equality erodes, gay "handiness" is probably the next sexual harassment frontier. Whoops! There goes the neighborhood.
Nevertheless, The impositions that we inflict on the mothers and sisters of others should alert us to the repugnance visited on our own mothers and sisters by men like us. We do not exist in the world but for women, unless tests reveal that we have the chromosomes of a jackal. And yet, time after time, we neglect to treat women with respect by presuming upon their personal space, making brusque mockery of their objections. It isn't on, and still, that we don't know better, that we seem incapable of recognising this, is an enduring mystery. If we are not mystified by this state of affairs, it is time that we were.
Thank you to the women who made a stand yesterday; and shame on those of us complicit in the necessity.
DM