The Harvey Weinsteins of
this world may be grubby sexual opportunists, but the people calling for his
head on a platter need to understand the landscape on which the likes of Harvey
Weinstein operate. Not that that's any excuse for his behaviour (obviously!!) -
but it does have a context, and it's a context that the people that become his
victims help facilitate.
The way I usually
summarise these situations is like this: When demand astronomically outweighs
supply in a winner takes all market, the ground is fertile for manipulation and
coercion. And that's what we are seeing here.
When consumers wanted to
fill their tanks during the petrol crisis, some garages took advantage with
higher prices, ditto water sellers after hurricanes hit America
Take any institution in
which wannabe celebrities court fame - Hollywood, The X Factor, even the BBC
- and you will find my formula (demand
astronomically outweighs supply in a winner takes all market) is highly
prominent. Supply and demand are in extreme disequilibrium on Hollywood's
yellow brick road, which means the power is skewed in favour of people like
Harvey Weinstein, and heavily skewed against people wishing to carve out a
career in Hollywood, and who may make themselves vulnerable if they think it
will give them a leg up (pun intended).
Aspiring stars in a winner
takes all market already have to fight hard to get on the ladder to stardom:
usually their career begins with long hours, low pay, fringe roles and susceptibility
to manipulation and coercion that wouldn't occur to anything like the same extent
in other industries.
Just like how readers have
to take a smidgen of responsibility for what the gutter press releases in its
newspapers, would-be celebrities should be mindful that obsessive courting of
wealth and fame makes them susceptible to the thrall of powerful people who
will capitalise on those hopes and dreams (this does not exculpate the
perpetrators {obviously!!}, but it's true that some crimes have a wider context
that should be explored*).
What about the #MeToo gesture?
Here's the thing. On
October 17th I made a prediction - I warned that genuine sufferers of abuse may
end up being washed into similitude by floods of socially-conformist #MeToo
gestures - and that is precisely what happened, I'm sorry to say.
But naturally, that isn't
all that has happened - and despite some inevitable protestations to the
contrary, I never said otherwise (again, obviously!! Who would?) The positive
side of #MeToo is that it hopefully helped a lot of women who've been abused - to
be reached out to by friends and family that otherwise might not have known,
and to be supported in issues they may now feel more comfortable confronting.
Yet, alas, it also created
a platform for the misandrous wing of feminism to spew out some pretty
unpleasant things - and that is what I also warned against - that scores of
socially awkward and intellectually inept women would take to their keyboards
to paint a far too bleak picture of men, and hard-sell a worldview of women as
being little more than pathetic victims in a harsh, patriarchal watered down
version of The Handmaid's Tale.
To me, and I'm pleased to
say, to quite a few women I know who are with me on this (pugnacious feminism
is, thankfully, a minority level phenomenon), this radically departs from the
well-worn wisdom that the best way to achieve progress for women and men is to
be conjoined in striving for progress for both sexes, not in pitting one sex
against the other in completely erroneous pursuits (like this
one).
There are loads of
examples I could pick, but as a couple of Facebook friends shared it, let's go
with this one by a feminist called Jeni Harvey who writes a charming
little piece in which she refers to people who don't agree with her as 'pus
gatherers'. She divides these 'pus gatherers' into three categories, with each of
her categories being as myopic as it is charmless:
1) First is blanket denial, whereby men and their
cheerleaders deny that sexual abuse on such a massive scale exists at all.
Women are fanciful, lying, exaggerating for effect. There is a bandwagon onto
which women are joyfully leaping in an attempt to malign men and revel in their
perceived victimhood.
Er…yes, damn right - we
are denying that in the UK
And on the second point, again,
yes, damn right, there is a bandwagon onto which some women are joyfully
leaping in an attempt to malign men and revel in their perceived victimhood. Once
again, if Jeni Harvey is oblivious to this, she is ultra-selective in how she
views reality.
2) Second, we have the more modern form of denial
which concedes that yes, sexual abuse is a common problem, although
not a gendered one. There are simply some people that abuse other people and
all abuse is equally bad. The inconvenient and statistical truth that 98% of
all sexual crime is committed by men, and that the overwhelming majority of
their victims are female, can be pasted over with obfuscation and the politics
of individualism.
This still skews the
reality somewhat, and misses the point in doing so. Even if 98% of all sexual
crime is committed by men, and even if the overwhelming majority of their
victims are female, this still compromises
a relatively small proportion of the population. Again, that doesn't trivialise
all the dreadful instances of abuse that do go on, but to pretend this is a
problem that indicts most men is a lie.
Moreover, even if we move
away from sexual abuse onto other things that social justice warriors like to bemoan
- like sexism and racism - you'll find this is greatly exaggerated.
If racism is accurately
defined as:
"Unfair and unkind prejudice against someone
based only on ethnicity or skin colour"
And if sexism is
accurately defined as:
"Unfair and unkind prejudice against someone
based only on their sex"
Then there is very little
racism or sexism in the UK UK
By the way, don't be tempted to lump Internet abuse into neatly demarcated categories like sexism and racism, even when it looks very much like that is what it is. Most Internet abuse is driven from another place - a place of immature anonymity which takes the personhood out of communication. Face to face, most of these online trolls wouldn't act like as they do - social media is a mask behind which many insecure people spew out their bile because, like the experiments of Millgram and Zimbardo, they can do so under a different, morally less-culpable, persona.
3) Lastly, we have the outraged hyperbole. The shock!
The fury! Whoever could have imagined such horrifying evil existed in the
world?!
Oh do stop it! Look, those
men that abuse women are awful, but most men would stand right behind you in a
direct challenge to abuse. Men in general have done so much for women (and
women for men) - men have gone to war to defend the household and toiled and
sweated in hard industry to provide for their families. They do not deserve
this level of misandry - and if the signposts were reversed, women would rightly
be calling out misogyny.
"Do they seek to ameliorate or weaponise suffering? If it's the latter, they're fakes"
Melting socialist snowflakes
One final point and I'm
done. It's no coincidence that most of the belligerent feminists that feed off
female insecurity are also statist socialists who rather resemble conspiracy
theorists in their distrust of markets, competition and the individual ability
to act according to liberty and the free exchange of opinions and ideas.
And I'm afraid that this
is the triune responsibility of their parents, the education system and the
media - all of which play their part in leaving young people thoroughly
ill-equipped to deal with the society into which they will grow. Many are
corralled inside a gilded cage of paranoia, and are imbued with a spirit that
gravitationally pulls them towards safe spaces and an inability to encounter
views and opinions that radically depart from their own.
This gets sold as society
being more tolerant, sensitive and understanding - but if only that were true - it
is a small subsection of society being selectively tolerant, sensitive and
understanding towards views they agree with, and radically intolerant and
dismissive of contra-opinions and afraid to have their ideas challenged. They
are putting up walls for wallflowers, and this is a sure-fire route to an exaggerated
perceived victimhood that convinces itself to look for offence, unfairness and injustice
when it isn't there.
An analogy for the harm it
does - when a child falls over and grazes their knee, if a parent fusses with 'Oh diddums' they will start to become
cry babies every time they fall over. If a parent says 'Now come on, up you get, it's only a fall' they will habitually start
to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move along.
The biggest amnesia from
which the young need to be rescued is the one whereby they have forgotten that
it's the free exchange of opinions and ideas that breeds the highest levels of
tolerance, progression and clarity of facts and truths.
I am going to close with an
awesome statement I read the other day from someone called Kristina Blount Guyban. I don't mind admitting it brought the vapour of a tear to my eye:
"We will not sit back and watch our husbands and
sons be disrespected by women who don't know them because they are men.
We will not sit back and watch our husbands and sons
be lumped into the same category as disgusting and depraved men.
We will not sit back and allow the world to become a
place that is hostile to our growing sons just because they are men.
We will not allow our husbands' masculinity and
manhood be dragged through the mud because some women think all men are
worthless.
We will not sit back and watch our hard working
husbands sacrifice blood sweat and tears for our families only to have their
earnings taxed to pay for things that are against their values.
We will not sit back and watch the legacies our
husbands are building be torn down. This is our proclamation: some say hell
hath no fury like a woman scorned, we say hell hath no fury like a woman
defending her husband.
We're not here to oppress you. We are here to defend
our men. Don't underestimate us. We are smart, we are brave."
Kristina Blount Guyban
Amen! And I reciprocate
that wholeheartedly to all women out there, and, of course, men too!!
Further reading -- A
Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Cheap Fame
