Hide the China the Boys Are Back at It Again
Clementine Ford is clutching her phone to her ear, distracted, as she walks through the Un building in New York, trying to observe a friend she'southward supposed to be meeting.
The columnist and author has spent the last two weeks darting betwixt cities in the United states of america giving talks to promote her new book, Boys Will Be Boys, and her tearing and frankly polarising brand of feminism to an American audience.
She'south exhausted, she says, and misses her toddler back dwelling house in Melbourne desperately. Just she'due south excited for what's to come: An Australian volume tour, which kicked off this week, and a Boys Will Be Boys documentary TV serial to exist adult for the ABC in Australia and Netflix globally, if things go to plan.
Ford's epic rise to international author condition has been swift: Only two years ago, her commencement book, Fight Like A Girl, became a bestseller before it had even hit shelves.
The feminist "manifesto" was eagerly snapped up by readers who connected with her calls for women to embrace their rage nigh gender inequality and need more than from the men continuing in their fashion. (Six years before that, she says, a local publisher knocked dorsum an early on version of Fight Like A Girl, saying, "people don't purchase feminist books".)
Since and then, still, two major events take happened. The get-go is the #MeToo movement: an unprecedented global conversation, led by women, virtually sexual harassment and assault in all pockets of social club. The second: Ford had a baby — a son.
Now, she wants to talk about men: about why "nearly men struggle to speak out against sexism and abuse" and about how power, patriarchy and what she calls the "toxic bonds of mateship" fuel gender inequality and violence confronting women.
And the timing, information technology seems, could not be better, with Ford's US tour wrapping up just as Christine Blasey Ford went public with her allegations that U.s. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her as a teenager. (2 more than women take since fabricated allegations against him.)
Dr Blasey Ford, a 51-year-former research psychologist, has accused Approximate Kavanaugh of belongings her downward on a bed, grinding his body against hers and covering her mouth to terminate her from screaming when they were at a loftier school party in the 1980s.
He has denied the assault occurred and said he is eager to prove to clear his name; she has said she thought she might dice that 24-hour interval. "I idea he might inadvertently kill me," Dr Ford told the Washington Mail. "He was trying to attack me and remove my habiliment."
Simply the debate effectually the allegations shifted rapidly from the question of whether they were true to whether they fifty-fifty mattered.
Information technology was unfair, many commentators argued, for a homo to be judged for — and his career potentially compromised by — things he may accept done every bit a teenager. Information technology could have been simply "horseplay" some suggested, or "drunk teenagers playing seven minutes of heaven" — just uncomplicated youthful indiscretion, boys being boys.
"If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this," a lawyer close to the White Firm told Pol, "and so yous, me, every human being certainly should be worried."
Boys will be boys, but at what cost to women?
That response — the inclination to defend men's misdemeanours and the hurt they cause others as harmless fun between lads — is the primal focus of Boys Will Be Boys.
In it, Ford examines how "toxic masculinity" — which she defines every bit a rigid adherence to narrowly-defined, traditional norms of masculinity such every bit entitlement, aggressiveness, disdain for women, and homophobia — can be as harmful to men and boys every bit it is for women and girls.
At its extreme edges, information technology has been linked with sexual violence and anti-gay detest crimes and yet, Ford writes, it is routinely dismissed equally "part and bundle" of what it ways to be a man.
"Boys don't hateful to hurt girls," she says. "They merely lose control. They make mistakes ... They shouldn't exist punished for a lapse in judgement, an action that was entirely out of character ... It's not equally if nosotros don't know what boys are similar."
And so so what does it mean when people alibi, say, sexual harassment or assault as just something blokes do?
"What it comes downward to is that men, peculiarly men with ability and privilege, are protected and coddled and their indiscretions in the past dismissed because their ... careers are considered more than important than not just the dignity and safety of women but also the careers of women," Ford told ABC News.
The behaviour Brett Kavanaugh is defendant of would be "rampant" in Washington, she said, because the mental attitude backside it was rampant.
"Boys volition be boys is a securely held platonic that has been effectually for generations, and the fact that so many people are working to protect [Kavanaugh's] career, protect his power, is indicative of where nosotros're yet at when it comes to these attitudes."
In other words, boys will be boys: just at what cost to women, and other men?
This conversation is not new, of course; feminists have been working for decades to heighten sensation of the impacts of patriarchy and male privilege. But the forms it'south taking — and the impact it's having — in the wake of the #MeToo move may be giving it greater urgency.
And, despite the constant torrent of online harassment and corruption Ford receives for speaking out about these issues (the mere use of the term "toxic masculinity" inevitably triggers criticism from men who detect it offensive), she's quietly confident her message may be sinking in.
'I go contacted past a lot of fathers'
"I recollect more men are invested in having the chat," Ford said. "I get contacted by a lot of men who desire to exist a part of the alter. Information technology's interesting, because people presume that I'g this huge man-hater ... they also act as if aught I have to say is of value to men. But my experience suggests differently.
"I become contacted by a lot of fathers likewise ... who acknowledge that I've really challenged some of their stereotypical thinking."
The need to challenge such stereotypes, she says, became more than pressing later the birth of her start son in 2016.
She feels particularly strongly, for case, nearly how the uneven segmentation of domestic labour (women in Australia still perform the bulk of unpaid childcare and housework) can cripple women'due south employment and economic prospects and foment harmful attitudes towards women afterward on.
"It'due south really important for women, if they choose to live in a heterosexual partnership with a man ... to insist on 50-50 division of labour, and to not do that matter that women do where we're like, 'Oh, it's only easier to do it myself'," Ford said. "Because ... then what are your children observing?"
This matters because, as Ford writes in her book, "The lessons taught to children about who does what in the home are inextricably linked to the roles they feel entitled to assume afterward in life."
And while it might not seem similar such a big deal for say, a 5-year-quondam, "it becomes a much larger deal when that five-year-old becomes a grown human being with expectations of what the world either owes him or will permit him to escape penalization for."
Perhaps i of the strongest illustrations of this dynamic in force can be seen in cases of sexual assault.
In her affiliate Request For Information technology, Ford examines how difficult it tin be for survivors of sexual assault to detect justice in a system that presumes the perpetrator is innocent, and the insidious means rape civilization minimises the impacts of this violence on victims.
There are always "extenuating circumstances" Ford says — a range of gendered explanations for why male perpetrators of rape are "not really to blame for their actions": because the female victim was drinking, or went home with him, or "didn't say no or fight back."
In case after high-profile case are examples of how the judiciary and news media have supported men accused of rape over their female accusers: Brock Turner, Luke Lazarus, numerous professional football players. And the odds at securing a conviction, Ford says, are stacked fifty-fifty higher against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander victims of sexual assault.
The inevitable backlash
Accept, for example, the case of Lynette Daley, a 33-year-sometime mother of seven who bled to decease at a embankment in northern NSW after existence violently raped past her swain Adrian Attwater and his friend Paul Maris on an Australia Day camping trip in 2011.
The trio had been drinking heavily when Attwater "repeatedly and vigorously" assaulted his intoxicated girlfriend, only stopping when he noticed blood on his paw.
Instead of immediately seeking medical help, however, Attwater dragged her into the ocean to wash the blood off her body, while Maris, who had also joined in on the set on, burned her wearing apparel and the claret-soaked mattress on which it occurred.
In a recording of Attwater's call to triple-0 — made several hours afterwards Ms Daley had died — he can be heard maxim, "What a proficient f***ing Australia Twenty-four hour period, f*** sake, f***ing hell, y'all bloody bowwow".
The NSW Managing director of Public Prosecutions twice declined to prosecute, arguing there was insufficient bear witness.
This sparked fierce criticism from Ms Daley's family and others in the Aboriginal community, who claimed Ms Daley, similar so many other Indigenous Australian women, had been denied justice by a "racist" arrangement because she was Aboriginal.
It was not until terminal year, after a 2016 written report by Four Corners prompted a review of the DPP'due south decision not to prosecute, that the men were finally charged and convicted.
But, as Ford notes, the justice system's handling of Ms Daley'south case also turned upwardly another disturbing particular.
"Incredibly," she writes, "both Attwater and Maris claimed that the rape had been consensual." When law questioned the men well-nigh how the trio had come up to have "grouping sex", Attwater replied: "These things happen ... girls will be girls, boys will exist boys".
Ford is not the only ane railing against the attitudes behind this expression and the flippancy with which it is often delivered.
In June the Australian pyjama make Peter Alexander removed from auction a jumper featuring the slogan 'boys will exist boys' following complaints from concerned parents.
"I simply think that information technology allows boys to do whatever they want because they are boys," Melbourne female parent Bridie Harris wrote on Facebook. "It gives them an excuse for inappropriate behaviour. If a girl hurts someone or does something, you lot never hear someone that says girls will be girls."
Yet not everyone is on board with that critique.
Peter Alexander'southward conclusion to pull the sweat top set off a heated debate, with many claiming information technology was evidence of "over-the-top PC culture".
"This is ridiculous," one adult female who called in to 3AW said. "It has to stop — this has gone to far. There are so many rules, nobody can be themselves anymore."
Host Tom Elliot agreed, proverb: "To me, when I remember 'boys will be boys', it'south the fashion that young boys tend to smash things and break things ... they tend to be, on average, naturally more than rambunctious than trivial girls ... I don't think it's all nigh male person violence towards women."
'Marry-transport is going to make men uncomfortable'
But a "defensive" — and frequently hostile — response and then predictably follows whatever public discussion almost masculinity and violence that Ford says she could "gear up her scout by it".
1 mutual criticism she says she receives from men later writing about gender inequality and its ills is that she'd "win more than men over" to her crusade if she was "nicer to them".
And, by her own admission, she's dished out her "fair share" of insults, oftentimes responding to men's brutal attacks and harassment on social media with abuse of her own.
Aren't such concerns worth engaging with? Is information technology not of import to try and understand why some men feel marginalised by conversations nearly masculinity, rather than mocking and dismissing them as "human being baby whingers"?
"No, I don't call back it'due south worth engaging with them because I think it'south a lark," Ford said. "It derails and distracts from the intention of conversations about actual harm that women feel under patriarchy to how men feel about women talking about that."
What men demand to realise, she added, particularly in the #MeToo era, is that "marry-ship is ofttimes going to make yous uncomfortable".
"You lot're going to experience implicated and guilty, just it'south how you choose to handle and engage with that discomfort that makes the divergence. If you cull to react to it by lashing out or suggesting that the people who fabricated y'all experience that mode have a responsibleness to make you feel better about it, then you're not actually listening to what they're maxim."
Associate professor Michael Flood, who researches gender, sexuality and violence at Queensland University of Technology, agrees it's non the responsibility of women like Ford to respond to men's pushback against their commentary on issues similar sexism and violence.
"In a sense, men should be grateful at that place is non more anger and hostility from women given the ugly things some men exercise," Dr Flood told ABC News. "I recollect women in general still seize with teeth their tongues ... about the everyday forms of mistreatment they experience."
Men, he adds, accept a "critical role to play" in facilitating conversations about male discomfort with topics similar toxic masculinity and feminism.
"Men who are sympathetic to feminism, who agree there is a existent problem in Commonwealth of australia ... should be speaking up and ... intervening in spaces — either online or offline — where that kind of hostility and defensiveness is present," Dr Flood said. "I reason men should do that is because ... men will listen more than readily to other men."
'I am hopeful that men tin can change'
And then then is it even possible for Ford'southward message to take hold in a guild seemingly so determined not to listen to women?
When the #MeToo movement has, by some estimations, stalled in Australia, while, in one survey of American men, more than half had never even heard of information technology?
According to Dr Flood, there has been "some rethinking" of aspects of masculinity among men in Australia. But, he said: "there'due south even so a significant discomfort around feminism and critiques of sexism and male person privilege. And that shows itself in the pushback against the term 'toxic masculinity'."
Ford has also been considering whether her book, a catalogue of dozens of horrific examples of male violence and their devastating impacts on women, will get out readers feeling more overwhelmed than motivated.
"Ane of my concerns [about Boys Will Be Boys] has been that it is merely so bleak that people volition go to the stop of it and be like, I hated every second of reading that," she said.
Only at the same time, she added, "We need to run into that horror. And I am hopeful that men tin change. I often go accused of saying all these things merely not offering a solution. Only ... I'thousand just trying to beginning a conversation," she said.
"If I can merely plant the seeds in people's brains ... then they can get into their own homes and talk to their sons about ... consent, well-nigh respect for themselves and for other people. So nosotros'll start to shift things, I think."
Equally she writes in her last chapter, a letter to her son: "Boys will exist boys, but we accept so far collectively failed to let you all exist anything other than the most rigid, dissentious and reductive form of male child. What if we tried to do things differently?
"We may have to render to the cartoon board over again and once again. Only if nosotros work at it, if we directly our energies into addressing our mistakes and finding better solutions, we can paint an alternative picture."
Posted , updated
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-28/boys-will-be-boys-but-at-what-cost-to-women/10310694
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