I spent some time on twitter this morning trying to get a pulse of the multitude of realities that people inhabit. Even on the same stream the conversation is so, well, divergent, that it makes me question how we are all tied together. The hashtag I explored was the 10yr old thread #metoo, which gained notoriety recently as it has helped topple several high profile sexual predators including Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. I was more interested in the gray areas of the debate–that interpretative line of what is or isn’t harassment and, in particular, the mindset these perpetrators and even victims occupy.
Here is what I think: Boys are being raised to feel like they need to be the sexual initiators–that ‘no’ is part of the negotiation. In other words, some resistance is expected and part of that process is moving through a woman’s resistance by slowly gaining her trust until eventually you get there. In other words, for a lot of these men ‘No’ means ‘not yet’ and for a lot of these women ‘no’ means I don’t want to have sex but lets keep messing around.
Personally, I feel like there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Men always want to go further. My entire collegiate dating history was an exercise in me wanting to go further, if only because I wanted the end result. I was never taught to luxuriate in the stages of a sexual relationship. Everything I saw, heard, read was about the endgame. It took becoming a man to recognize that all stages of intimacy have value and that it isn’t just a race to the finish. I believe men need to learn this lesson a lot sooner and once they do it will have an effect on their relationships with women and their relationship to sex itself.
Some Thoughts:
- I’ve come around to putting up with an extreme amount of bullshit in order to spend my days in a way that fills my heart with warmth. The greatest downside of this on my end is the compromise means I spend all of my nights alone, cold, and empty. I realize we are both compromising ourselves, but I wonder if the why is worth it, or if we are stricken with such a fear as to immobilize us into doing nothing but letting the world spin and tear at us. Perhaps the only way we are comfortable knowing is this one. I certainly hope this is not true.