Male toxicity

Yesterday’s Guardian featured an article about the culture of teenage boys and their treatment of girls. Specifically, this article’s investigation uncovered some 3000 testimonies of sexual assault among school age girls. One expert blamed pornography.

“According to an ABC investigation into the use of porn in Australia, the estimation is that more than 90% of boys and 60% of girls have seen online porn, and that 88% of the most popular porn includes physical aggression.”

Monkey see, monkey do. It’s little wonder if boys then begin to act out what they see on a regular basis, adults performing sex acts of violence against women ‘who love it’ or worse don’t. Children are unable to combat the strategy of titillation or discern between reality and fantasy.

A couple of years ago I took my year 9 class to see a talk by Brent Saunders, an ex policeman who runs a consulting firm that aims to eradicate bullying and sexual harassment. It was both an inspirational and terrifying talk. I learnt a lot about sexual assault myself.

When I was eight, I was sexually assaulted by two boys aged 10 and 15 (brothers) who were obviously in the throes of experimenting with their sexuality (at least the older brother was). I was held fast and molested to the satisfaction of my captors and released. In shock and confusion I told my parents, but as they were the children of family friends, it was all very embarrassing and was hushed up. I muddled along as best I could, alone in the experience that ‘didn’t happen’.

I have been under the naïve idea that misogyny had stopped with the advent of the 70’s. Apparently I was wrong.

Much of Saunders’ talk was based around what sexual assault actually is. He admitted that it was shocking to discover that most girls don’t know what it is and that many are stunned to discover that they weren’t just bullied, but that they had in fact been raped. It’s illegal. It’s a crime.

It is a theft of your human dignity and human right to the private sanctum of your own body and in addition, it annihilates your right to feel safe.

Rape is the penetration of the vagina by anything; penis, fingers or any other object against the will of the girl. If a girl is intoxicated, she is deemed by the law, to be incapable of giving consent. Many boys apparently also force young girls to commit acts of oral sex. Sometimes this is witnessed by other boys who do nothing to stop the act. They sit in the bystander role which is also against the law.

So we come to the prevalence of male toxicity; something I really had hoped had been drummed out of boys long ago. But it seems it’s still alive and well.

You only have to look at the leaders of our country and the allegations of rape in the bastion of our democracy- Parliament House. The ego driven environment of an all male culture is still prevalent today- look at the Church and its leaders’ failure to recognise the effects of rape, even on children, and complaints of a toxic male environment in the political sphere escaping from the Hill for decades.

Why does it seem that Australia is no further evolved than the male’s attachment to the Amygdala? This basic and primitive organ controls our response to fear and it seems, according to the article, that boys (and by media accounts, men) are still controlled by what other men think about their masculinity. Add to this the fact that one woman a week is killed in Australia in domestic violence cases and you begin to wonder what the hell is happening to our boys and men.

What is it about Australian male culture (some of it only of course) that is still so confused about who they are as men or what it means to be a man? Is it a lack of positive role modelling? Are boys so easily swayed by what others think of them, that they really can’t take a stand for themselves, because really, I find it impossible to think that more than a few boys have no empathy towards girls and merely see them as objects for their sexual gratification. Surely most boys have some sort of empathic response to their fellow humans.

In many Latin cultures, machismo is seen as the ideal of the male identity. Machismo is exaggerated male pride and results in a demand for subservience from anyone seen as inferior; women and ‘weaker’ men. As such some parts of Latin cultures often have a preponderance for violence towards the inferior species. As a result, femicide in Mexico alone is 10. A. Day.

When people talk about bringing unwanted aspects of culture to a new country, I get cross because it seems to be barely concealed racism. But when it comes to patriarchy and the idea that women are lesser, then I agree. But sadly, I don’t think we can blame any other culture. Because it’s already here.

I see it in the school yard with boys rough housing and smashing each other with glee. I see it in the leers of the young men as they watch and laugh at young female teachers and it terrifies me. I see one young man who wants to be alone, wander off and sit by himself and the mob gathers. One by one or in pairs they approach and taunt him mercilessly. What is that? Why do I have to intervene and drive them away?

I know boys and girls both enter single sex segregation during the teenage years in a bid to reinforce their identity but gender identity is a social construct. So what the hell are we constructing? Where are boys getting the message that machismo is all that matters? Not from me and not from the teachers at school so where does it come from? We all challenge bullying and biased behaviour of any kind. Perhaps at home it’s seen as funny or endearing or ‘boys will be boys’… But if boys are raping our girls and laughing about it, sharing images on social media to reinforce the ‘laugh’, something is seriously wrong my friends.

Have a watch of a TED talk by Joe Ehrmann- Be a Man. He says it all so well.

Men are beautiful. As an admirer of the hard and hairy compared to my soft and squishy, I love how they can be fiercely protective of those they love. As children my boys were so loving and affectionate. Now as men they are caring and thoughtful. Sometimes they are soft and squishy and it does not in any way detract from their masculinity. Why can’t all men be like that? Why can’t we all realise that we are human and we run the gamut on the vast spectrum of gender. It’s just a social construction and we need to re-evaluate what we are modelling and engendering in our male children- because as grown arse men, they can grow up to be horrifically dangerous if we don’t cut them some slack and allow them to be just human- in all its fantastic diverse and creative ways.