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oyb (m)
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this is d essay i was talking about before
MEN: WE JUST DON'T GET IT
At about the tender age of sixteen, I carried around in my
wallet a wrinkled piece of paper that contained a notorious
list. I'm ashamed to admit it now, but back then I proudly
showed off the contents of that list, often during winebingeing
bragging sessions with the boys on the block.
The list contained the names of some twenty or so teenage
girls-in our vernacular, babes, broads, bitches-who held
the unlucky distinction of having been laid by me.
In most cases, I had "talked the drawers off" the girls,
meaning they'D willingly yielded to empty promises designed
to persuade them to prove their devotion by hopping into
my driver's license and my Social Security card. There
was enough written evidence of confessed sex crimes, scribbled
in my distinctive handwriting, to put me away in prison
for a long, long time.
But that didn't matter to me then. I wasn't afraid of exposure
because I honestly didn't grasp the tragic implications of
the thing. I just didn't get it.
That might seem unbelievable, but what's more stunning is
this: I was far from alone in such cruel stupidity. Of course,
there were many exceptions. There were lots of decent, selfrespecting
teenage boys who wouldn't dare take advantage of
a girl even if the opportunity presented itself. Still, in addition
to my hoodlum partners and me, a sizable number of other,
"regular" dudes-bookworms, jocks, and other everyday,
play-by-the-rules kinds of guys-also held cloudy notions
about the distinction between consensual sex and rape.
I've heard all the macho men's-room talk, and I'D say the
number of boys and men who harbor blurry notions about
the liberties they can rightfully take with a female is nothing
less than mind-boggling. If the truth be told, on some level of
awareness or another, most men don't get it.
That massive male blindness accounts for the boatload of
sexual-harassment cases filed by women in government and
civilian workplaces every year. That obtuseness explains why
some of the highest-ranking men in the nation-including the
President of the United States and a US. Supreme Court
justice-have been accused of taking indecent liberties with
women.
William Kennedy Smith, Mike Tvson, the late Tupac
Shakur-theirs are among the high-profile sexual-assault
cases that have made headlines in recent years, but they represent
only a small fraction of the incidents that do untold
psychic damage to girls and women every day.
From this male's perspective, the pervasiveness of men's
problem with sexual aggression suggests one of two things:
Either God developed a defective sensibility gene when he assembled
males, or there's a major flaw in our cultural conditioning,
and that flaw feeds this madness that's corrupted us.
After much soul-searching, I'm inclined to believe the latter
is true: that even in these so-called modern times, we still
uphold a supermacho cultural climate that helps men feel
comfortable-even justified-in forcing their attentions on
the opposite sex. Certainly, the role of individual responsibility
can't be dismissed, but in a sense our whole society is an
accessory in this thing called rape. In America, where sex
seems to sell everything, from new cars to good beer, it's not
hard at all to become a sexist pig. All that's needed are eves,
ears, and a hearty store of testosterone.
As I look back on my own warped past, it's impossible to
say just when the boorishness toward females first kicked in.
I suspect that for me and for most other boys who mistakenly
embraced sex as a rite of passage into manhood, the foundation
for our brutish ways was laid early and deep.
Long before Tonka trucks and G.I. Joes assigned us our sex
roles, we boys were sent clear messages about who we were
to become. The sex-typed toys that we were cheerfully given
at Christmastime simply reinforced the negative stereotypes
that we were already being force-fed every day.
It's very likely that adolescence was the time when the crass
sexism seeped in deeper for my buddies and me. Maybe it was
somewhere around middle school-when zealous cheerleaders
leaped in the air and did phenomenal splits in support of
the boys' more celebrated exploits on the football field-that
we were thoughtlessly handed the double standards that
would govern us.
Somewhere amid all the TV ads showing half-naked
buxom women selling products that had absolutely nothing
to do with the female body, the notion of male dominance
crystallized: While the girls learned to view males as the ob
jests of their love, we boys learned to regard females as mere
objects.
For many guys, that notion creates a major emotional disconnect.
That disconnect makes it easier to regard females as
something less on the human scale. Once that disconnect occurs,
it's entirely possible to discount a female's humanity; it's
entirely possible to subject a woman to sexual harassment or,
worse, to rape.
For my buddies and me, our inclination to strong-arm girls
related directly to our definition of masculinity. Men, who are
schooled by other men, are taught to see themselves, first and
foremost, as conquerors. Our movie heroes attest to that.
Heros such as John Wayne were almost always big, strong,
domineering men who often boasted a sharp, sexist wit. In
their movies, the settings, story lines, and subplots were secondary
to the underlying quest. The bottom line was obvious.
It was about pussy: The conqueror got the pretty girl.
That's how the fellas and I thought of it, too. We didn't
think of what we did as rape as much as we saw it as the ultimate
macho conquest sport. Our competitive language reinforced
that. In the male idiom, where men were called
"hounds" and women were dubbed "foxes," it required no
great leap of logic to extend the realm of conquest to sex.
Life's purpose was made clear: The hunt was on, and females
were the game.
As teenagers, operating with that kind of twisted vision as
a frame of reference, we singled out as potential prey every
little cute thing who even thought she had a crush on one of
us. (Strangely enough, females in our families-mothers, sisters,
cousins, and so on-were afforded respect.) With few
exceptions, everybody's "phat" daughter who crossed our
path was an unwitting candidate for our respective lists.
And why not keep a list? Almost from day one, we boys
had been primed to score.
What is clearer now than it was back then is that the social
scientists' take on rape is absolutely true: It's more about
power than about sexual enjoyment. Think about it; nobody
i n his right mind can truly enjoy forcing someone to share
something so intimate as sex.
Sometimes, the fellas and I engaged in the conquest sport
alone, but we occasionally formed teams that carried out a
male rite called "running trains." Often with the help of guys
secretly stationed in closets in the appointed room, we simply
i ntimidated our victims with fear or might or both, then took
turns having our way.
It was a perverse exercise in male bonding; it was a bizarre
camaraderie that boys and men shared as a way of showing
off; it was a reenactment of the primitive caveman's rite of dividing
the spoils of the hunt.
Really, we didn't get it.
Probably the clearest indication of our utter confusion
about the seriousness of sexual aggression was the conflicting
attitudes we held about rape. If you'D walked into the very
room at the very moment one of our sexual escapades was
going down, we would've been highly offended-pissed off
even-at any suggestion that we were committing a serious
crime.
It's true. We frowned on rapists. We regarded rapists as deranged
men, social misfits, outcasts, freaks who were so hard
up they couldn't get sex on their own. Reports by the American
Medical Association show that 80 percent of rape vicrims
know their assailants. But in our limited vision, rapists
were people who attacked perfect strangers to get their jollies
off. Rapists were weirdos who went alone to darkened theaters,
slouched low in their seats, and masturbated while gazing
at the movie screen.
Looking back, I find it hard to know exactly where the
moral breakdown occurred. I suspect that it erupted somewhere
amid all those puzzling instructions that were handed
down to us boys from men who were no more than grownup
boys themselves. Where females were concerned, we boys
were given general training about right and wrong, but we
also were granted broad latitude to interpret what a woman's
rights really are.
I now know this: A woman has the right to say no when-
ever she wants. A woman has the right to change her mind
anytime she chooses. But I remember being told, straight up,
from men I respected, that it's OK for a man to take sexual
liberties with a woman if she "leads him on." I recall hearing,
over and over, that a woman is required to "give it up" if a
man spends a fair amount of money on her during a date.
Indications are that the notions my buddies and I were
taught back then are still being passed along today. In an
AMA survey of high school students, 56 percent of the girls
and 76 percent of the boys believed forced sex was acceptable
"under some circumstances." Among eleven- to fourteenyear-
olds, 5 1 percent of the boys and -I1 percent of the girls
said forced sex was acceptable if the boy "spent a lot of
money" on the girl.
And so much of what we were told was male ego driven.
We were assured that, regardless of what they say to the contrary,
most girls and women really want to have sex: "They
j ust need to be coaxed along."
If all this strikes you as appalling, then try this next thought
on for size: Where the general oppression of females is concerned,
there are also a good number of women unwittingly
playing supporting roles. There is some subtle and blatant
voodoo being worked on them that even a whole lot of young
girls and grown-up women just don't get.
That includes the vast number of women who squeal in ex-
cited glee at men flaunting the same macho behaviors that
victimize them; that includes the Miss America want to-bes
who strut across lighted stages in high heels and swimsuits so
men can judge their considerable "talents"; that certainly includes
the pseudodivas who shake their rounded rumps for
those gold-chained misogynists in some rap-music videos.
It's no mystery why so many females are so gullible. While
the boys were conditioned to be sexist oafs, the girls were socialized
to seek happiness by providing the services men value
most. Almost from birth, they are well primed by the likes of
Barbie dolls and Suzy Homemakers to cooperate in this sexoppression
thing.
"Our parents gave us girls tea sets for Christmas," Debra
Dennis, a friend, told me recently. "And we didn't even drink
tea in our fucking house!"
The females were hit with it nonstop. Still are. And you
have to know that for young girls there's a cumulative effect
of seeing so many women everywhere serving so many men's
interests-all the time. At some point, the message sinks in:
Gals exist for the sole purpose of pleasing guys.
All that bull, piled high as the heavens, made it easier for
my buddies and me to get our way. And the confusion that
those messages created in young girls' heads is what enabled
us to get away undetected with the things we did.
It's no wonder, then, that the AMA survey found that
among college-age women who have been the victim of rape
or attempted rape, 4? percent never even reported what happened
to them.
Like so many others, my partners and I usually got away
scot-free, usually without being punished for sexual assaults.
But in the years since then, I've often wondered whether any
of us really got away.
Life has a way of avenging folks who've been terribly
wronged, even if the victims never get a chance to witness poetic
justice firsthand Life has a way of revisiting you with acts
of meanness that you may have committed against someone
i n some long-forgotten rime. Among the guns in my bunch,
some got their wickedness shipped right back to them, almost
exactly the same way they'D dished it out.
When I consider this idea, I'm reminded of something that
happened during one of our street-corner bragging sessions
years ago. A number of dudes were standing around in a tight
circle, listening to a guy called Foots gloat over some girl he'D
strong-armed the night before. A dude I'll call Alfred Towns,
who'D also been known to do such things, happened to walk
up and join the circle. Foots was so wrapped up in his boasti
ng that he didn't even see Alfred approach. He went on jabbering.
And Alfred went on listening-only to get what must've
been the shock of his life: Alfred heard Foots call out his sister's
name.
When Foots spotted Alfred in the crowd, he smiled sheepishly
and apologized. As everyone turned and looked his way,
Alfred stared straight ahead. His eyes glazed over, and he
stood in stunned silence. Alfred was deeply affected; he was
shocked to learn that his own sister had been raped.
In the years since those crazy days, I've changed my thinking
about women and sex, but still, life's revenge has come
back to haunt me, too. The first time revenge paid a visit, I
was involved with a woman I really felt strongly about. In
one of our intimate conversations, she disclosed that some
guys had run a train on her years ago, when she was a teen.
Another time, a former girlfriend confessed that she had once
been "taken advantage of" bN1 her boyfriend in a violent
episode that left her permanently scarred.
These stories hurt me. But more than anything, they forced
me to face my own past cruelty and helped me understand the
truth about what I'D done: I had committed one of the worst
offenses one person can commit against another and somehow
had failed to see the brutality inherent in it. I just didn't
get it.
Those stories told by my women friends also underscored
just how widespread assaults on females are. They revealed
that sexual violence is no respecter of color, race, or social
standing, that it happens in all quarters, from church pews,
where preachers take liberties with female members of their
unsuspecting flocks, to college campuses, where frat brothers
often carry on such manhood rites at the expense of hapless
coeds.
Of all the life experiences that have taught me about the common
threat to females' humanity none has provided greater
enlightenment than fatherhood. I think the Creator devised
the best way to help me fully get the point when he gave me
a daughter. She's twelve now and fast approaching that stage
when boys and men will start eyeing her with that certain
hungry look.
I look at her with a father's love-and also with a father's
dread. As a man, I know what young predators might see
when they look at her. They might see a vivacious, trusting Little
girl who is a stranger to no one. Or they might see a babe,
a broad, a bitch, an object whose good nature makes her easy
prey-a candidate for somebody's sordid list.
And I fear that my daughter may just fall for some boy who
she thinks cares the world for her. He could be a nice guy. Or
he could turn out to be another messed-up young man who,
like me, was improperly schooled in matters of respect and
sex. He might be another male who just doesn't get it.
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