Actually, It's About Fear

Full disclosure: I was born with a penis and testicles, and still have all three. This makes me a male. That I am a male is not open for debate – I possess the requisite parts and chromosomes and so it is.

But am I a man?

That may sound like a silly question, but it’s a silly question it seems more and more people are asking these days – what is it that makes a man? Being considered a ‘man’ has always been something we penis-toting-testicle-owners were supposed to aspire to. One male calling another male a ‘man’ was the ultimate compliment. Macho guys were ‘manly men,’ those who rose to face a tough challenge were said to ‘man up,’ and when you completed an especially difficult task you’d ‘done a man’s work.’ (Just like Rick Deckard in Blade Runner! Except there’s irony in that statement because Deckard may not really be a man, and… I’m getting off track.)

As early as grade school, being called a ‘man’ (even a ‘little man’) was the highest compliment your male teachers and coaches could bestow upon you. It catapulted you to their level. It bought you membership into their club. You were one of them.

Conversely, the worst thing any of your teachers, coaches or friends could call you was a ‘girl.’ You were acting like a ‘girl,’ you whined like a ‘girl,’ were you gonna ‘cry like a girl?’ As you got older and language got coarser ‘girl’ was replaced by cruder terms – you were acting like a ‘bitch’ or whining like a ‘pussy.’ But they all meant the same thing: You were being the worst thing you could be – the opposite of a ‘man.’

Even as a kid I never understood this. A little league coach would line us up after a loss and express his disappointment in our poor performance by calling us ‘girls.’ But I liked girls. I thought girls were pretty great, in fact. I didn’t take that as an insult at all. Granted, I didn’t want to be a girl, but heck, there were worse options. I could be a screaming little league coach, for instance.

As those male role models attempted to shame me and my fellow wang-toters by calling us ‘girls,’ I remember thinking, “We’re all guys. We’re always thinking and talking and fantasizing about girls. Don’t we all like girls?”

Nope. Turns out we don’t.

One aspect of being a penis-possessor is all the other penis-possessors think you’re part of the club. You must all think the same, like the same things, and most importantly feel the same way about women. Namely, that they’ve been put on this Earth for you and you alone. As receptacles for your enjoyment, lust, leisure, servitude and anger. Any that stray out of that confinement are labeled ‘sluts,’ ‘bitches,’ ‘whores,’ ‘dykes,’ ‘cunts,’ or countless other colorful examples of hate-speech. And it’s assumed because I’m a male I feel the same way.

Nope. Turns out I don’t.

As I grew older and became more comfortable trusting my own observations and forming my own opinions, I realized the ‘men’ who expressed those feelings toward women were pretty much all assholes. Some were smart. Some were dumb. Some were successful. Some were failures. Some were handsome. Some were homely. But they were all assholes. And they all thought I was one of them.

I’ve spent my life listening to these guys talk about women. I’ve heard thoughts ranging from amusingly ignorant to gaspingly horrifying. I’ve heard guys rhapsodize about how much they love women, when what they love is having sex with women, as well as sociopaths who openly admit they’re only interested in women as playthings (I worked in Hollywood for a long time, remember). So to say I’m not shocked by the current wave of anti-women hate-speech and terrorism spreading across the Internet is an understatement.

I knew these guys existed. Remember – they thought I was in their club.

The Internet is responsible for some amazing advances, primary among them putting the knowledge of the world at our fingertips. But while it provides access to the brightest lights of humanity, it’s also revealed the darkest depths of the human soul. Give a person anonymity and you’ll be stunned at the anger, hatred and bile that can spill forth. Build a community around that anger, hatred and bile and it’ll create an echo chamber that reinforces itself until its members are convinced they are the truth-seekers and all others are out to destroy them.

This is a common theme behind groups aligned against social change. They often rise up against a shared outrage with no coherent agenda other than being against it. Their vision doesn’t extend past the fog of anger that envelops them to try and create reasonable solutions to the problem – their entire reason for being becomes the expression of their righteous wrath. Usually this is because their positions aren’t reasonable. They’re based on fear. Fear of losing a real or perceived societal advantage. Fear of losing privilege. Fear of being left behind.

While the Internet is home to many such groups, the ones making the most noise lately are the women-haters. Of course they claim to not hate women, creating shabby, transparent excuses for why they want to return them to a state of second-class citizenship. Men’s Rights Advocates will howl about how feminists want to take over, eliminating men altogether, while those involved in GamerGate will tell you they’re battling for ethics in gaming journalism.

There’s a rule in writing fiction that applies to real life, too: Action is character, behavior is truth. What that means is what a person says isn’t important if that person’s actions contradict their words. And the actions of these anti-women groups are so vile as to render their words invalid. Both movements have very publicly engaged in campaigns of terror against any women who dare speak out in opposition. Women have been threatened with theft, violence, rape and murder on multiple occasions. They have been driven from their homes. They have had their careers threatened. They have been terrorized. All for the sin of standing up for themselves. For daring to suggest things need to change.

I’ve already stated these groups fear change, but the members of ‘men’s rights’ groups are so vicious because they also fear women. I don’t make that statement as some kind of taunt, but present it as simple fact. Women are powerful. Women possess many things men want and desire – and as a result also possess the power to deny them those things. Not only sex, but companionship. Support. Offspring. Status. Even self-esteem.

Our male-centric society has been tailored to deny women the right to self-determination. It’s been this way for millennia. We’ve operated under a system where man is seen as the strong hunter and provider long past our need as a species to maintain that social order. And why was that obsolete system so rigorously maintained? Because men were afraid of losing their societal advantage, their privilege, of being left behind.

So men denied women influence at every opportunity, terrified that giving them equal rights would allow them to fully exercise the power already inherent in their gender. In other words, they might gain the right to say ‘no.’

Fear prompts anger. Being denied what you desire – especially when you’ve been raised to view being granted your desires as a right – also prompts anger, aimed at those perceived as doing the denying. This double whammy of fear and denial is the reason the men’s rights movement is so brutal, and its tactics so despicable. These men are terrified by the thought of losing their privilege, especially to a group whose power they dread. So what do they do? They revert to their status as the dominant hunter – they threaten to beat, they threaten to rape, they threaten to kill. They hide their fear behind bravado and macho posturing, hoping we can’t see how scared they really are.

But we can. We can see the fear in every threat. We can see it in their inability to justify their ‘causes.’ We can see it in the sheer hysteria of their words. They’re scared little boys. They’re the ones who were mortified when their little league coach called them ‘girls.’ They’re the ones terrified to lose their position of unearned eminence.

If that’s what being a ‘man’ is, I’m proud to admit I don’t qualify.

You can take my membership card and shove it up your asses.

#mensrights #womensrights