In fact, sexual violence is perpetrated across genders. Although the methods of abuse often differ: Men are more likely to actively perpetrate, where women tend to enable abuse or abuse covertly. Let me try and explain:
Some of those in the #metoo movement made a fundamental mistake:
Now, let's focus on the most glaring inconsistency in this argument: "Men are doing this to women." I invite you to consider the fact that, literally, billions of men have been brutally sexually assaulted at birth. Billions of male babies were tied down on a rack and their genitals mutilated without anesthetic, as you can see:
Of course, we're conditioned to accept this mass enactment of sexual-assault on males because it has been culturally conditioned into us. We have been conditioned to believe that it is normal to stab babies in the genitals with knives. Whereas to do this to an adult would see you in prison for decades.
Cue all your culturally-conditioned arguments for circumcision here. Now put them aside and listen up:
Women have argued that their relentless sexual assault by men has gone unchecked and unacknowledged for years. And this is true. Women have been brutally injured by men. But, the puzzle does not end there. The same thing has been done to men, and it is equally covert.
Just as society ignored the sexual assault of women, normalizing the process. It has done the same to men.
Are we are doing anything that might cause sex and violence to become intimately bound together in the stimulus-response matrix of the developing subconscious of male children?
No?
Anything?
Are we, for example, stabbing billions of male children in the most sensitive organ of the body, at a pre-verbal stage, and causing those male babies to go into deep shock and suffer a lifetime of complex PTSD and sexual dysfunction? Sadly, yes, we are.
Where is this narrative in the #metoo story?
Now, bear in mind that this is not an anti-women piece. I love and sympathize with women, I am simply attempting to redress a balance here. I had quite a difficult negotiation with this gender division myself. I initially took the side of those gendered as ‘women’. I then learned some very hard lessons. Those lessons led me to discover that this problem is not split along gendered lines. In fact, I wonder now if gender is racism; an arbitrary attribution of qualities to different people.
Yes, I would agree that by-and-large, the most violent abusers (if you exclude sexual assaults by genital mutilation of babies) are men. However, these men abuse within the context of many, many, many women covering up for them; denying what they are doing; facilitating that abuse; sometimes facilitating them simply though the act of marrying them to give the illusion of social legitimacy.
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I can report, definitively, that a lot of the women who were complicit in my sexual abuse were manipulative. Many women feel deeply dependent on their partners. This takes priority over anything else. As a result, many women would rather side with male abusers, and abuse children, rather than speaking out.
I feel like an unspoken deal was struck. The deal in my family seemed to be: My mother, without explicitly saying so, agreed that: ‘Yes, as my husband you can abuse these children, as long as you keep paying for this house and this car, and the things I want. As long as I can have some aspect of power over you; you can have power over these children.’ The children are often the trade-off in the deal. The children are the aspect that can be done with as they like.
To return to the concept of the #metoo movement: I want to emphasize I’m 80% behind it. The remaining 20% represents my problem with this gender division: This idea that somehow women have been entirely victimized in this experience rather than the reality. That reality is that there has been, generation-after-generation, an agreement to keep silent. Because that silence brings certain benefits.
Consider former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She vividly represents a female figure who is also complicit. She was told many times — and presented with dossiers — demonstrating to her that members of her cabinet were abusing young boys; children. They were raping children. She ignored it. She pushed it away; she hid it.
If we look at our leaders as archetypes of the family, then I think this is a frighteningly clear demonstration of what was going on, and maybe still does go on in a lot of homes in the UK. This is that: A lot of women in relationships are presented with evidence of abuse by their partners and they ignore it.
They ignore it because they retain a certain aspect of power by ignoring it. Although that power is false and flimsy, there’s a power dynamic that exists. There’s a clear advantage to women keeping silent about abuse.
Now, I don’t want this to sound like I’m going on this big, mad, rant against women. I support women, but I am concerned about the the way that, let’s call it ‘The war against sexual abuse’, is being waged. It feels like, in this war, some of us are making the classic mistake which is to allow ourselves to be divided.
As soon as an authoritarian system recognizes that the people are waking up to an abuse that involves power and authority, they seek to divide.
What easier way to divide citizens than to divide us along gender? As in, ‘This is something men are doing to women. Instead of the more accurate view: ‘This is something society is doing to itself. Or, this is something that elite society is subjecting us to for the purposes of maintaining control and power.
This Steemit post was adapted from material in Episode 1 of the Karma Police podcast, which I co-host.
You can listen to the podcast below. Or subscribe to it using your podcast app of choice.
