Let’s have a look at question two in Series 10 of Five Questions.
Earlier today my friend Katy (@thevoiceofboo) retweeted Louise O’Neill (@oneilllo):
Men who choose to respond to the emerging stories of sexual harassment with “But I’m not like that” are the embodiment of a patriarchal society that teaches straight, white men to believe that their experiences alone are the most valid and important.
That may indeed be so, but look at the other side of the coin. If I say “But yes, I am like that” I get vilified. Men have been put in a lose-lose situation (yes, OK, by their own stupidity), so no wonder some are pissed off and feel hunted.
I know there have been times I’ve overstepped the mark, either physically or verbally. I can call a handful to mind, but no doubt there are others I’ve forgotten. I can’t find the right words to describe how I feel about this, but they include: sorrow, mortified, distressed, depressed, demoralised, upset, worried and fearful.
This is despite, right from my teen years, having a personal code of conduct that I don’t touch people (especially females) and I’m very circumspect about saying anything – which is why, girls, you won’t generally find me complimenting even your attractive frock. I’ve spent my life being almost afraid, certainly too insecure, to engage with females on anything but a very superficial, purely business, level. There are very few I have known well enough to even begin to rise above this level; one reason, no doubt, why I’ve never had very many girlfriends.
To give you an example, at a fairly innocuous level, of how insecure this made me feel … If, at work, I was lunching alone in the restaurant and there was a group of female colleagues I knew already at a table, I would never join them (unless they spotted me and beckoned me over). I always felt that to do so would (potentially, at least) be imposing myself into their possibly girls only conversation and that this was inappropriate. I had many fewer qualms about joining an equivalent group of guys.
And yet I can still do stupid things, at least on an odd occasion – in spite of being able to think about these things and remaining vigilant.
But the sad thing is, I suspect, that the vast majority of blokes, who don’t think and drift through life relying on their Neanderthal instincts, are just going to say “Err … Yer wot? … Fuck off” and carry on regardless; probably despite wondering why they feel that womankind is against them, which just reinforces their attitude.
It’s all very sad.
We’re returning to our normal, fairly run-of-the-mill themes for this month’s Ten Things.
Ten Things which should be Large
So here we go with the answer to the first question in Series 10 of Five Questions.
It’s around six months since we had a round of Five Questions. So here’s a new series, Series 10, of five variously daft and thought provoking questions. Yes they range from the interesting to the downright crazy.
Someone amongst my friends posted this on Facebook the other day, so here’s my take …
No I’m not tagging anyone, but join in if you want to.
Hopefully this will be a final update on my left knee replacement …
On Wednesday of this week – exactly 6 weeks since surgery – I saw the surgeon of a check-up. It was, as I had hoped, a non-event. He is delighted with my recovery, healing (see photo), and the flex on the knee, and has cleared me for all normal activity. He doesn’t want to see me again unless I have problems and has discharged back into the care of my GP.
As I reported earlier my physio appointment 10 days ago was equally positive. I have another physio appointment next week as we agreed it would be sensible that we meet once we had the surgeon’s update. All being well I suspect will be the last appointment.
Both knees are fine except that they are very stiff and achy – but that’s just the muscles having to rebuild and get accustomed to normal activity again. So now I just need to get the knees walking more and build up the muscles.
I know I’ve had this work done privately (we’re lucky to be able to afford health insurance) but I have to say the care I’ve received has, overall, been absolutely outstanding. The whole hospital is cheerful, friendly and helpful from the consultants right down to the porters and cleaners – everyone has time and a friendly word.
It all looks very much like “job done” and very well done too!
I need to be able to implement this lesson today, but even after all these years I don’t know how to (at least not reliably).
I’ve been thinking about all the recent #metoo posts. While in one way I’m not surprised, in another it is frighteningly disturbing to realise the level of abuse that we men inflict and remain totally unaware of. But from what I’ve seen (and I may be misinterpreting) I don’t think most women are saying that every man harasses them or is a sex offender.
(On the other hand, in some senses maybe we all are offenders, if only in our heads. Be honest, which of us doesn’t look at a pretty girl and think some variant of “I wonder what she’d fuck like?”. But then there is a line between thinking it and grabbing it.)
However if even 50% of women have experienced men being inappropriate (and 50% seems to be a very low estimate) then it isn’t just a tiny minority of men doing it.
We are all thoughtless and stupid towards others at times, whatever our gender and whatever the gender of the other person. (This isn’t just men on women, although that is almost certainly the vast majority or the “action”.) That’s not an excuse – there are no excuses – but a fact of life. We will never totally eradicate it, just as we can never be completely certain that our actions can ensure “X never happens again”. There will always be outliers. But we can all work hard to ensure our thoughtlessness and stupidity is reduced to an absolutely minimal level and those few outliers are all that remain.
I’m not conscious of ever having done anything wrong physically – though I will concede I probably have unknowingly. But I know that at times I have said, either verbally or in writing, and mostly without meaning to, something stupid, thoughtless or just plain badly worded. At times I’ve been called for it; at times I’ve realised myself I’ve overstepped the mark. I hope that on all such occasions I’ve apologised, learnt something, improved; and hopefully we have all been able to move on with some level of dignity restored. Even so there are a few of these occasions which still haunt me.
And for those occasions where I still don’t realise I’ve overstepped the mark, I apologise now!
Obviously as, I hope, a considerate being I would never deliberately set out to harass or abuse anyone; something I outlined in my post earlier in the year on my personal ethics and morals.
I feel sure that very often men don’t realise they’re behaving inappropriately; but I don’t buy the “that’s just because it’s the way men are” non-excuse. I suggest it’s because we’ve never been taught to be aware of such things – how can we have been when previous generations of men haven’t been aware of the problem and women have been too frightened to speak up, so no-one could teach us – and we’ve been too lazy to think about it for ourselves?
Hopefully the new, heightened, awareness can help change this, but realistically it isn’t going to happen overnight. Hopefully men can start to trust and believe what women say; they can start thinking about how they behave; and they can learn about being generally more sensitive, considerate and thoughtful human beings. Many – the more thoughtful men – will. But I do worry that the majority, who go through life relying only on their animal cave-man instincts, are just going to say “fuck off” and carry on regardless. They are going to need a lot of work by the rest of us – men and women. We all have to be brave and stand up to them, and that in itself isn’t always going to be easy – but if we’re being considerate human beings we have to try, pro bono pubico.
Boy-Cat has a really terrible life; he’s had to find a new place to sleep …
