Repairing our intimacy engines (part 2)

“Not enough is done to educate those men who may become predators” (Early Day Motion 1044, tabled by Tommy Shepard, MP)

This Saturday we are told a meeting will take place in Glasgow to discuss the ideas of misogynistic rape-apologist "Roosh V".

The female and the human responses to this individual and his ideas are relatively straightforward: condemnation. And where the law as it stands omits the statutes necessary to criminalise his hate speech and incitement to commit sexual violence, these omissions should be corrected. Once that is done, it is a matter for the police.

However, I have struggled to articulate a specifically male response to this. I think there is some particular male-oriented intervention required in the discussion, that goes beyond simple revulsion, and acknowledges that we are this individual's intended audience. I am among the group he thinks he is speaking for and to, so I should have something to say about that in particular.

Rather than just protest and reject the ideas he espouses, men need to go further and make clear where they stand and explain precisely why this brutally reductionist and dehumanising ideology does not represent them in any way. And men need to actively contradict any normalisation of the practices he advocates. The very fact they are being discussed risks being passively interpreted as some form of permission by men intent on sexual violence, and so all men must make clear that this is unacceptable to counter this.  

I will admit, there is the stereotypically male urge to try and "fix" this situation, to perhaps somehow educate and enlighten those whose personal inadequacies have made them susceptible to this doctrine. And there is the need to be part of the solution rather than just a spectator, since the spectacle itself is contrived for my benefit and so must be actively declined rather than simply ignored. And there is the fact that I was well raised by my father and taught by him to respect women and under no circumstances to be violent towards them.

Cat Boyd speaks articulately about "a culture that promotes one version of masculinity: the one that can conquer and destroy women" in which "men are animals whose physical prowess in war separates the biological wheat from the chaff". She calls on men to reject this and to remember that they are "a social animal, not a sexual parasite". I whole-heartedly reject that culture and will not be limited by it and weaponised by it. It is the least masculine, least manly thing.

I have discussed elsewhere my thoughts on the alarming prevalence of rape culture online, in "Repairing our intimacy engines".

I discuss how damaging the reductionist ideas of beauty-as-stimulant are: the ubiquitous narrative that beauty is trivial; that it can be communicated by static images such as those on the internet, perpetuating the notion of sexual attraction and activity as an essentially solipsistic, masturbatory pursuit to which all other ideas of beauty are subordinated; and if the stimulant to which the viewer is encouraged to feel entitled is witheld, it may be seized.

I describe how men, in particular, need to reject this and reconnect with other, older ideas of beauty that can change and develop as they get to know someone better, ideas that allow them to describe and navigate the process of becoming familiar with someone and falling in love with them, that equip them to negotiate the frightening process in which they gradually expose themselves physically and mentally to that person (who is going through the same process themselves), with whom they can eventually achieve the intimacy where they celebrate each other's existence. Reconnection with these complex, nuanced ideas of beauty, as mutable as the moods of the beloved, and capable of change and growth as we get to know them better, is what I call "repairing our intimacy engines". This is the emotional maintenance men need to undertake on themselves, encourage in others, and teach their sons.  

I have spoken about the historic institutionalisation of rape culture and the way it still poisons current discourse, in "Honi soit qui mal y pense". I trace a line connecting the foundation of the Order of the Garter in the 14th Century to the protection of over-privileged abusers today. Cat Boyd has spoken about how "misogyny spreads [and] becomes a worldview" and we see misogynistic language deployed for political objectives in the tweets of Brian Spanner. The political motivation of any abusive language does not excuse the abuse, which must be disentangled from our discourse and dealt with, and doing so is everyone's job.