General

When You Can’t Throw All Men Into The Ocean
And Start Over, What CAN You Do?

Ijeoma Oluo – The Establishment
This society is broken, abusive, patriarchal trash—and not
just in little pockets or in dark alleys and frat parties.
I was just commenting a few weeks ago about how at least
once a month a woman will reach out to me to let me know that a man I’ve worked
with, socialized with, or even considered a friend, is an abuser. These aren’t
tales of one incident, it’s almost always a pattern of abuse quietly shared by
multiple women who are scared of being publicly known. Occasionally these are
stories from women who made their accusations VERY publicly known—but they were
quickly and violently shouted down by their own community and, almost
immediately, the accusations were forgotten by everyone except for the women
who had been abused and cast out.
These aren’t famous people. These abusers are local artists,
activists, teachers. But many have found themselves in places of even minor
prestige or power and used that power to abuse women—and keep them silent about
it. Even in a group as small as two — say, in a marriage — certain men will use
their power to abuse women (and many men and non-binary people as well, who are
often silenced with the added shame of the “feminized” nature of sexual
assault).
And along with all the ways in which women are constantly
reminded of how unsafe and powerless they are when someone in their circle is
revealed as an abuser, we now also have a spate of very high-profile and widely
admired men who are being outed as serial abusers.

Weinstein, Tambor, Hoffman, Louis CK, Seagal, Piven,
Spacey—maybe it would save time to just start keeping lists of men we admire
(I’m aware that not many have admired Steven Seagal in a while, but the point
stands) who aren’t sexual predators, and then slowly cross their names off as
every news story breaks until we all explode from rage and frustration and
disappointment.