Grab Em by the Dick

Sometimes I don’t know if I can sustain this, living in our social media world. I can’t help it, I have a hard time holding back regarding certain topics, and I regularly find myself in a few days long cloud of frustration and anger and Facebook arguments. Now it’s because of Donald Trump. ‘Grab em by the pussy’. And, what I find just as creepy if not a little more, Billy Bush asking the soap actress for a hug for him and Donald. Those sneaky ways men cross boundaries. He can pretend he’s ‘only asking for a hug’, while he’s actually putting her in a position of not really being able to deny him physical contact.

A major frustration for me is hearing and seeing posts from so many men that this is not a common way men talk, they’ve never spoken like this, they’ve never heard anyone speak like this, etc. It’s frustrating because they’re taking it a little too literal. Sure, maybe you or your friends haven’t said something as base as ‘grab em by the pussy’, but you can convey the same feeling, the same message, without using words like pussy, or bragging that you grab pussies. It’s such a complex issue because, as this perfect article (http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/10/yes-actually-it-is-all-men/?utm_content=bufferb4c73&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer) on Everyday Feminism writes: ‘The thing about privilege is that it’s often invisible from the inside. It’s hard to see the scale and scope of a system designed to benefit you when it’s as all-encompassing as patriarchy. And that might lead you to buy into the idea of “not all men.”’

Here’s some examples of things that have happened in my life or in the lives of the women I know that aren’t so blatant as ‘grab em by the pussy’ but still manage to be grossly violating and indulgent of male privilege:

Waiting tables at 22 years old, serving a father and son who look around 60ish and 25ish, respectively. Friendly banter, they ask several questions about the menu each time the waitress replies ‘yes!’. The father then laughs and says ‘she sure says yes a lot! I wonder what else she’d say yes to!’

Female purple belt in Jiu Jitsu, 5 or so years of training. Rolling with an 18 year old male blue belt, submits him with a triangle, a choke in which a persons head and arm are trapped between your legs, their face near your crotch. A guy from the other side of the gym (a 30 year old Surgeon, educated, respected at his job) shouts ‘that was the best moment of his life, he never wanted to tap!’ When the woman tells him not to say something like that, he says ‘you don’t ever need to talk to me again!’ Everyone else in the room is men, roughly 20 of them. Not one of them says a word.

A girls birthday party, her friend brings a friend, a guy. He’s introduced to the birthday girl and a few minutes later leans in to her and mumbles ‘so you need some birthday dick?’

Husbands share texts about all the 20 year olds they’d be fucking if they weren’t married.

Husbands receive photos via text from younger, single friends of half naked girls they’re sleeping with, moan about how sad they are they can’t fuck anyone but their wives.

Husbands comment euphemisms about their boners on Instagram photos on the accounts of playboy bunnies.

Husbands call their wives ‘crazy’ when they’re upset by these things.

Waitress politely fends off drunk dudes attempts at flirting while still giving great service; is later stiffed on any tip after first telling the manager she was rude and gave bad service.

Girl in high school who’s drunk older brother hugs her tightly, a little too closely to her breasts, and says in her ear ‘you have the best little body you know that?’

Lawyer gets told by opposing council, a 65 year old man, IN COURT that she looks like an exotic dancer and should be named like an exotic dancer. Refuses to call her by her actual name, only by the exotic dancer name he’s given her.

 

These are just some examples that, off the top of my head, I was able to rattle off in the last few minutes. These are all men so very alike all of the men out there saying ‘never me, never us!’ ‘Grab em by the pussy’ comes from the same head space as when a man has ever called any woman ‘crazy’ for having a reasonable and legitimate feeling; the same place as when a man insults or offends a woman, finds out she has a boyfriend or husband, then apologizes to the boyfriend or husband.

It comes from the same place as the idea that a woman should give any man a pass for what happens at a bachelor party. Because once, some many years ago, a man gaslit his wife in to believing she was overreacting about him having gone to a strip club, that it’s just ‘what guys do’; or called her crazy for getting upset when he felt entitled to go to a strip club, or to lie about the hookers or strippers or whatever else you saw at your or your buddies bachelor party (fun game for the ladies: ask your partners if they have ever participated in a bachelor party that sounds like this and watch the split second of panic in their eyes).

It’s regular dudes like all the ones we know, like you and all the ones you know, who participate in perpetuating the freedom men have, that allows them to do things like this, to say ‘grab em by the pussy’, and to actually grab women by the pussy. Because society and patriarchy have allowed you to decide how much and when girls and women deserve your respect and decent treatment, and they deserve it when you decide to give it to them. Because you are the one with the power, the one who’s word matters most. That’s the world we live in. You might want to say ‘not me, I don’t think like that.’ But to some level you all do. Another great passage in the Everyday Feminism article describes it well:

‘Living in the United States, every single one of us is socialized under patriarchy – a system in which men hold more power than other a/genders, in both everyday and institutionalized ways, therefore systematically disadvantaging anyone who isn’t a man on the axis of gender. As such, we all (all of us!) grow up to believe, and therefore enact, certain gendered messaging…And this doesn’t have to be explicit to be true. When we find it difficult to say no to our male bosses when we’re asked to take on another project that we don’t have the time for, or to our male partners when they’re asking for emotional labor from us that we’re energetically incapable of, it’s not because we actively think, “Well, Jim is a man, and as a not-man, I can’t say no to him.” It’s because we’ve been taught again and again and again since birth through observation (hey, social learning theory!) that we are not allowed – or will otherwise be punished for – the expression of no. In the meantime, what men are implicitly picking up on is that every time they ask for something, they’re going to get it (hey, script theory!). A sense of entitlement isn’t born out of actively believing oneself to be better than anyone else or more deserving of favors and respect. It comes from a discomfort with the social script being broken. And the social script of patriarchy is one that allows men to benefit at the disadvantage of everyone else. And all men are at least passively complicit in this patriarchal system that rewards male entitlement. We see it every single day.’

So often it’s this entitlement that plays in to all of our every day lives. Entitlement in all of those examples I gave, and the entitled expectation that women are supposed to acquiesce or accept your behavior and move on, regardless of how degrading or hurtful it is. That expectation is your own version of ‘locker room talk’. Locker room talk doesn’t necessarily literally mean locker room talk. It means ‘it’s ok for me to talk like this because everything in life is in place for it to be generally accepted.’

There is the distinction that Donald Trump is admitting to sexual assault. I am not saying that all men have committed sexual assault or assault, or that the anecdotes above are assault. But what they share is overall a general crossing of boundaries, with varying degrees of seriousness.

And many argue ‘women talk like this too, they’re just as bad!’ Ok. If a woman said she regularly goes up to men and grabs them by the dick, that would also be sexual assault. So enough of that. Do women talk crudely about men? Yes. Do women cross boundaries? Yes. But the difference is that men can expect with near certainty that they will get away with this kind of behavior if they’re caught, but a woman can behave this way at her own risk. Why? Because we get punished for straying from that ‘social script’. The punishment could be death, like in the case of Tiarah Poyau who was shot in the face after telling a man to stop grinding on her at a music festival. Or it could mean having your career ruined like Dr. Jamie Naughright, after being assaulted by Peyton Manning. Or it could be more subtle, again coming back to womens feelings getting brushed off or mocked because they’re ‘crazy’ or ‘overreacting’ or ‘too emotional’.

I know there are great men out there who have a thoughtful awareness of all of this, men who don’t and may not ever have said something so over the top as ‘grab em by the pussy’. But even the most earnest ones miss it. Like in the article by Chris Kluwe, former NFL player, who wrote, ‘Oh sure, we had some dumb guys, and some guys I wouldn’t want to hang out with on any sort of regular basis, but we never had anyone say anything as foul and demeaning as you did on that tape.’ http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/10/10/13230346/donald-trump-locker-room-talk-chris-kluwe

What’s up with those ‘dumb guys’? To me that sounds like some guys who crossed some lines, were probably somewhat degrading, but because they didn’t brag about grabbing women by the pussy or use major vulgarity, they’re just ‘dumb guys’. But those guys do damage too. And brushing them off as just ‘dumb guys’ is damaging. Having Donald Trump and his words as a qualifier isn’t going to count out the behavior and words that aren’t quite ‘as bad’.

So what do we do? We women keep screaming our emotional, overreacting heads off. We keep supporting each other. We keep calling out sexism and privilege on all levels, across the board, and maybe, just maybe, a drop of knowledge and insight will get through now and then. Like Beyoncé said ‘what’s worst, lookin jealous or crazy, jealous or crazy? Or walked all over lately, walked all over lately? I’d rather be crazy.’
Let’s go crazy. Buck wild, over the top, unbridled crazy. I got you.