When the ##metoo movement started, I was alarmed. Coming of age in the 80s and graduating law school in the 90s, I never thought of myself as a frail victim that needed to be protected from men. Men were my classmates. In law school, my study partner was a guy with smelly feet and that was the only toxicity I feared from him. Coveted spots on Law Review, which alas I had no hope of obtaining, were made up of men and women. If I remember correctly, it was pretty much 50-50. At the time, I lived by myself and rode my bike as my main transportation (even in the snow.) Every once in a while some fool would try and slap my behind while I rode. I wasn’t crushed by the sexist behavior. I was more worried the moron would lose control and run me over. I didn’t take those incidents and generalize it to all males. That would have been illogical and asinine. I later joined a defense firm for the medical profession. It had a majority of female attorneys. I never heard one client demand a male attorney. The only thing they cared about was whether you were competent.
Fast forward to today and I look upon young women as if they are from a different time - the Victorian era to be exact where women are to be sheltered from the harsh realities of life. Alas, there will be some who say, you don’t understand, you haven’t been a victim of male toxicity. And I would respond that I most certainly have. But I didn’t call them a toxic male, I called them an asshole and got on with my life. (I am not talking about women who suffered a sexual or physical assault. Those are serious matters that are not the subject of the essay.) Despite what the media tells us, women don’t need to run around on a daily basis fearing such assaults. To know that they exist is essential so adequate protective measures can be taken. When I was in high school, there were kidnappings/murders in our area. My father instructed me to ‘let them kill you in the parking lot so there will be witnesses.’ I never forgot the explicit message nor the implicit one that my safety was my responsibility. To this day, I always keep a watchful eye on my surroundings - it is second nature.
I am not alone in my views. Other friends, who came of age with me, have a similar mindset. We don’t look at men as possible predators. We see them as friends, colleagues, bosses, and employees. They’re strangers in front of you at the store, fellow slogs on overcrowded highways, wondering if the traffic will ever break, and lovers who help pay the bills. In essence, they are humans just like women, only the ‘opposite sex.’ Yes we all had some creepy experiences when younger. And what did we do? We put our big girl pants on and took care of matters letting them know they were out of line.
It is with sadness and confusion to hear young women view men, in general, as threatening, and toxic. I hear it from men and it saddens me. Good men have been on the receiving end of the mantra ‘I don’t feel safe around you.’ Ironically it has come about when women have been asked by men to act honorably in a business transaction or to be courteous in a restaurant. So the mere request to act decently is now categorized as a soft hate crime. And quite honestly what does ‘I don’t feel safe around you’ mean? Is it an accusation that a physical assault is going to happen? Or is it their mere presence of testosterone that is threatening like a nuclear reactor? Shrouding the accusation in fog seems to be the intent for one does not know how to respond. By its nature, fog doesn’t take a definitive shape it just encapsulates you, disorientating you.
The men, and again men of character, are crushed by such accusations. Men who are jerks don’t care. The end result is that the men are victimized by the fog of words but the women are also victims. They are being brainwashed to believe they need to use sinister manipulation to navigate the world. That is not a step forward but one decidedly backward. It is also incredibly selfish for it fails to recognize what men have suffered. Take for example our country’s seemingly endless wars. Young men and it is mostly men, are given orders to protect. Some die, some suffer life-long injuries, and some watch their friends die. They are then asked to rejoin society without inconvenient baggage from what they have endured. For Vietnam Vets things were particularly cruel. As Frank Hooper wrote, “[w]e all fell off a Norman Rockwell calendar and into a banker’s war.” And for their involuntary servitude, they were spat on as they came home.
As the drumbeat of war is again upon us, I fear the future for my son. I look upon the demand that he register with the selective service and I am sick to my stomach as AOC and the ‘Squad’ vote us closer and closer to war. AOC never had to register for this, nor has any other young female. The registration is one step closer to a later demand that he sacrifices his life while simultaneously checking his ‘male toxicity’ on college campuses. It is like a game where you spin a person around with a blindfold. But they keep spinning and spinning and spinning until the disorientation evaporates whatever the male self is.
For awhile it was a thing for the young to wear clothes from the 80s. As I told my son, they all need to do more than just wear the clothes, they need to dig up the attitude. For a lighter approach, some movies I suggest are Melanie Griffith in ‘Working Girl’ and Sigourney Weaver in ‘Alien.’ to start - especially Alien and then make your way to Terminator 2 from 1991 with Linda Hamilton. I particularly love her chin-up scene. Bad ass indeed.
For a more serious approach, and one duly needed by young women, I recommend a reading of the four Catholic women who were raped and murdered in El Salvador. Three were nuns and the fourth a Catholic layperson. They were there because they were called to serve the poor. They did it knowing the risk of death. https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/four-churchwomen-murdered-el-salvador-47386. These were the type of women that I found heroic. In the late 80s, I demonstrated with a nun, who gave up an easy life as a sister teaching at a rich girl’s school, to seek justice for the poor in Central America. These women truly encountered men who made them unsafe. For an 80s girl, these are women to admire, to hold up on a pedestal. We need to return to reality and remove the fog of the language that has descended upon us.
Excellent essay. I feel sorry for the latest generation; males and females both struggling to find their place in a toxic world that hates them for their nature. My grandson stayed in trouble in middle school because he acted like a boy; not a bad boy, but full of energy, piss and vinegar. My daughter moved him to a Christian private school, and he hasn't been expelled once! Public schools are full of control freaks that have no understanding of human nature, and certainly not the nature of normal boys. Twelve year old boys have trouble sitting still for seven hours. (I guess that's why they ended recess.). And the sexulation of young girls, and I do mean young, is equally disturbing. It's no small wonder that some of them want to change their gender. And people think this is progress?
A fantastic piece, Elizabeth. Thank you for sharing. First time reader here.
The culture war is a Hydra.
So many heads, each spitting acid. All animated from the same black heart.
Nothing is safe. Little that is good, or was good, can escape it.
It became easier to understand when I framed it for myself as a war. A multi-generational war. Acid pouring down, decade on decade. Corroding every pillar. A slow-time takedown by timeless evil.
They have been busy. And as with the Plandemonium, the majority are acting as Stormtroopers for the Black Hats. Or perhaps flying monkeys.
How long will it take for the cultural psychosis to lift? We've pretty much been at MK Ultra levels of psyops for years or decades. You don't just walk away from that without damage, without disability. Our children may not walk away from that, healthy, particularly if the WHO gets its way with them.
A generation, written off, quite possibly.
After the rampaging Monster is put down and smoke has cleared, we'll see where we stand. Who still stands. And what we can build together.
Until then this is one tragedy amid many.
For now, we need to make the psychopaths conducting this democide feel unsafe.
The Hydra isn't going to kill itself.
Peace.