One question I have for the big shot men who've been accused of abusive behavior toward women is this: Don’t you see what losers you are if you have to use your power or celebrity to force yourself on women?
I remember being a numbskull teenager and doing some stupid things, but one thing I did not do was attack girls. Nor did I know anyone who did.
The overriding interest of most guys I knew was getting girls to like them — not always an obvious or easy thing to do. But attacking girls did not seem like the way to do it.
It’s usually said that abusive behavior is really about anger and power, not about affection or love. And that makes me think of a friend from my teenage years.
One time he described the dark fantasy of running down a girl in the park at night, which I thought peculiar and weird. Eventually I understood that the aggression he felt was probably linked to family unhappiness and the violence he experienced at the hands of his own mother.
The crude and aggressive behavior associated with frat house bashes has long been the subject of comedy. We’re used to laughing at boys and men acting like idiots. Girls are taught to go along with it — to laugh at it — as a matter of survival.
But there’s no reason girls or women should have to live in survival mode, putting on a facade of good humor in answer to demeaning behavior. The #MeToo movement is about men getting the message that acting like an idiot or behaving like a brute is just not funny.
For guys a major part of growing up is learning that women are actual human beings, and the best way to learn this is if they see the women in their family treated with respect. I was lucky because my father loved my mother in a way that taught us to love and respect her also.
The nasty behavior described in the Kavanaugh hearings ought to have been instructive to the nation. Whether the nation is willing to learn is a question that will be settled in time.
