Men behaving badly

(First published in the Dominion Post, September 16.)

I’ve never cared much for David Cunliffe, but I felt some sympathy for him back in 2014 when, as Labour Party leader, he made his apology for being a man.

Cunliffe copped a lot of stick for that. According to some commentators, the howls of condemnation were a factor in Labour’s decision to dump him as leader.

But really, what was so wrong about what he said? Cunliffe was talking about sexual abuse and family violence, which he correctly described as being overwhelmingly perpetrated by men. He talked about the “deep-seated sexism” still prevalent in New Zealand.

Okay, he may have been trying to ingratiate himself with the feminist lobby. But if he was saying that he sometimes felt ashamed when he saw how other men behaved … well, I do, too.

Example one: Bill Cosby. He could have occupied a place of honour in American entertainment history as the first black male to play a leading role in a prime-time TV series (I Spy). Instead he will be remembered for accusations that he was a serial sexual assaulter of attractive young women.

The evidence against Cosby is compelling. He thought those women were fair game and relied on his star appeal to draw them into his web.

Example two: Roger Ailes.  Ailes, the former boss of Fox News, is a fat old man. It’s hard to imagine any woman finding him sexually attractive. But he’s a powerful fat old man, and he used his power to try to get women into bed with him.

Ailes pressed news anchor Gretchen Carlson to have sex with him and when she refused, he sabotaged her career. He called her a man-hater who needed to learn how to “get on with the boys”.  But the former Miss America bit back and Ailes ended up being fired by Fox News, which paid Carlson $US20 million (a preposterous sum, but that’s America for you) in compensation.

Example three: The Chiefs. The Hamilton-based Super Rugby team would surely recognise the phrase “getting on with the boys”. Being one of the boys is a familiar phenomenon in male sport. It’s an excuse for never having to grow up and for boorish behaviour under the guise of a primitive ritual known as male bonding.

The Chiefs were being boys when they had their “Mad Monday” at Okoroire Springs Hotel and invited a stripper whom they allegedly pawed and sexually propositioned.

You probably thought, as I did, that rugby players acting like dogs on heat were something from the 1970s. Apparently not.

Mind you, Scarlette the stripper isn’t blameless. In fact she’s part of the problem. By buying into that leering, blokey male culture, she encourages men to regard women as playthings for their pleasure. 

You have to wonder where the past few decades have gone. Feminism was supposed to make men aware of women’s right to be treated with respect, but somewhere along the line things went badly askew.

Which brings me to example four: The infamous Roast Busters. Bad behaviour by older men might be explained as the result of lingering attitudes from an era when people knew no better, but here were male teenagers from middle-class Auckland suburbs playing out the same ugly old pattern.

Oh, I almost forgot Colin Craig. If evidence in recent defamation proceedings is to be believed, even gawky, supposedly pious family men can’t help pressing their attentions on women when the adrenalin of politics gives them delusions of sexual irresistibility.

The sense of male sexual entitlement is endemic. Many of us know of women who have been raped and remained silent. They may not have been bashed into submission, but they were raped nonetheless.

In a newspaper column earlier this year, the singer Lizzie Marvelly graphically described the sexual harassment she had endured from men in the music business. She said it was like a cancer in the industry.

I admit I don’t understand this. What possible pleasure can a man get from having sex with a woman who makes it plain she doesn’t want it and isn’t enjoying it?

If sex is supposed to be about the mutual giving of pleasure between consenting partners, then sex as a result of coercion isn’t sex at all. The feminists are right on this point: it’s really about men enjoying power over women.

So yes, when I read about sexual predators, I’m ashamed too. I may not be responsible for what these men did, but that doesn’t stop me feeling tarnished by association.

Miley Cyrus and the Roast Busters

An editorial in the current issue of The Listener says the Roast Busters scandal suggests a need for society to undertake a deep and searching self-appraisal if we’re to understand how we have reached a point where young men take pleasure in the humiliation of vulnerable girls.

There’s ample evidence that this is exactly what is now happening. Not a day passes without the Roast Busters affair being earnestly discussed on talkback radio (which is not, contrary to conventional wisdom, the exclusive domain of the bigoted and ignorant). Several thoughtful and heartfelt newspaper columns have appeared, including three in the Dominion Post by Chris Trotter, Sean Plunket and Jane Bowron*. If there’s a common factor, it’s a sense of shock that we have come to this.

But there have also been kneejerk reactions, the aim of which seems to be to contain the discussion within parameters that certain people are comfortable with. I refer to the orchestrated condemnation of RadioLive hosts Willie Jackson and John Tamihere, who have now been taken off the air for the rest of the year to reflect on their wickedness.

I don’t listen to the Willie and JT Show and suspect I wouldn’t much like it if I did. Mouthy blokes don’t do it for me. Yet I have found myself forced to defend Jackson and Tamihere for asking questions that many people think shouldn’t be asked, even if I think they could have done it rather more sensitively.

Before I go any further, I should make a couple of points as emphatically as I can, since the reaction to my earlier post on this subject suggests some people have trouble getting the message. These are (a) that I detest sexual abuse in any shape or form, and (b) that nothing excuses the behaviour of the contemptible young shits who call themselves the Roast Busters. Everyone got that?

I need to restate this since some of my attackers effectively accuse me of "victim blaming", because I suggested that it’s valid to ask questions about whether the behaviour of the Roast Busters’ victims might have contributed in any way to their abuse.

Here’s my point: it’s simplistic to conclude that this is simply a matter of over-testosteroned young men behaving reprehensibly. Of course that’s the core problem, and nothing excuses or condones their behaviour. But we need to acknowledge that the social context in which this abuse occurred is more complex than that.

For a start, there’s evidence that some of the Roast Busters’ female friends saw nothing wrong in what they did and even admired them for it. That alone suggests society – or perhaps a subset of society – has taken a wrong turning somewhere.

If we step back and try to look at the big picture, it’s almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that a key reason for aberrant behaviour like that of the Roast Busters is that we live in a society that’s drenched with sex. That makes me sound like a 1950s prude, but what the hell.

The sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s may have liberated us, but it has also left us with some perverse outcomes. One is that many girls grow up thinking one of their key functions is to be sexually alluring and available. And the attitude of some of their male peers, as demonstrated by the Roast Busters, is one of entitlement. After all, if there’s all that sex out there (and they know there is, because they see it all the time on music videos, on TV, in the movies and in video games like Grand Theft Auto), why shouldn’t they grab some?

I’m not just talking about pornography being instantly and universally available, though that’s certainly part of the problem. I’m also talking about girls being sexualised from an inexcusably early age and bombarded with sexual imagery and sexually-laden marketing everywhere they look.

I believe children are entitled to enjoy their innocence for as long as they can.  God knows they encounter the real world soon enough. But society and popular culture seems determined to rob them of that innocence long before they have the maturity to deal with the emotional complications that come with sex.

Who’s to blame? Phwoar. Where to start? Perhaps with pop stars like Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga, whom popular culture holds up as role models for girls. In the MTV Video Awards, seen by millions of sub-teens, Cyrus – a former Disney Channel child star – comes on to Robin Thicke, submissively rubbing her buttocks against his groin and doing that crotch-towelling thing that dancers in seedy strip clubs do; in the video for her song Wrecking Ball, surely one of the most watched songs on YouTube, she strips naked and mock-fellates the head of a sledgehammer. Swallows and Amazons this isn’t. And only this morning I read about the sexually explicit content on Lady Gaga’s latest album, supposedly inspired by her own sex experiences.   

But the blame goes much further than that. How about the Family Planning Association, which for years has been running a determined campaign to promote sexual precocity in kids? (Now that will definitely get me labelled as some sort of Mother Grundy, but it’s true.)

Ultimately, though, responsibility lies with all of us for sitting back passively while our children’s right to the innocent, uncomplicated pleasures of childhood was gradually stripped away.

Now, to get more specific, I’ve been asked to defend myself by explaining how the behaviour of the Roast Busters’ victims could have been a contributory factor in their abuse. (Please note that I didn’t say their behaviour was a contributory factor; merely that it’s legitimate to ask whether it was a contributory factor – a distinction lost on the ideologues who prefer explanations for bad behaviour to be bumper-slogan simple.)

Here are a few of the things I was thinking about. How do 13-year-old girls get into situations where they are at risk of being sexually exploited by older boys? How did they end up at parties where they were plied with alcohol? Did their parents know where they were? Did they care?

Do young girls dress provocatively because they see people like Miley Cyrus wearing only a bra and knickers, or nothing at all, and think that’s the cool thing to do – a sure way to attract male attention? Do they then suddenly find themselves out of their depth and in a situation that they can’t control?

Suggesting these might be factors doesn’t excuse bad behaviour; but it may go some way toward explaining it. And if we’re genuinely interested in understanding how society produces aberrant young males like the Roast Busters, then we shouldn’t exclude anything from the conversation.   

I know the argument goes that women and girls should be entitled to dress however they want without risking harassment or assault, but that strikes me as naively idealistic. I could argue that I should be able to go to bed at night leaving the doors unlocked and the windows open, but I don’t because I know what the consequences could be.

A 77-year-old Papatoetoe woman forgot to lock her door on Sunday and was sexually assaulted by an intruder. Does her forgetfulness justify or excuse the crime against her? Of course not, but it was inarguably a contributory factor. The point is, we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

I have long believed it’s unfair that a woman can’t go into a bar for a drink on her own without risking being hit on, but most women aren’t prepared to take the chance. It’s not right that things should be that way, but it’s the way the world is. And until we change the world – which I believe we’re doing, slowly – then we have to accept that some actions may have unpleasant consequences, so prudent people try to avoid them.

In the case of young teenage girls, those traumatic consequences are almost inevitably unintended, simply because they don’t have the maturity or experience to anticipate or perhaps even understand them. In other words, what happens to them ISN’T THEIR FAULT. (I need to put this in capital letters because some readers of this blog have limited skills of comprehension.) But that shouldn’t stop us stepping back and considering whether sexual abuse might not be quite so one-dimensional as the ideologues – the people who clamour for radio hosts to be taken off air – would like us to believe.

* Sorry, but I couldn't find Jane's column online.

The tyranny of the mob - again

Sigh. Here we go again: the tyranny of the mob. Emboldened by numbers and anonymity, the finger-waggers swarm on to Twitter and Facebook, demanding the heads of RadioLive broadcasters Willie Jackson and John Tamihere for asking supposedly inappropriate questions of the friend of an alleged Roast Busters victim. Moral righteousness is never so easy as when there are thousands of you and opinion is never cheaper than when you can join the shrill chorus of condemnation without having to identify yourself.

We have been here before. We saw it with the furore over the late Paul Holmes' throwaway remark - which I suspect was meant ironically, although that point was lost in the moralistic clamour that ensued - about Kofi Annan being a "cheeky darkie". We saw it again when Alasdair Thompson was hounded from his job because he made a perfectly legitimate remark that was deemed offensive to women.

Once again we see timid corporate advertisers being panicked and bullied into boycotting the programme involved, just as happened to Holmes. And once again we see the contrite hosts making the now-ritual apology - and inevitably, then being condemned because it wasn't considered sincere enough. You can't win.

The initiator of the boycott, reportedly, was left-wing blogger Giovanni Tiso, who is understandably bathing in a self-congratulatory glow. Funny how it's almost invariably the Left that wants to shut down opinions it doesn't like, and even odder that capitalist companies should meekly fall into line.

Before I'm accused of indulging in victim-blaming, which is one of those accusations (like "racist", "sexist" and "beneficiary basher") that activists use to intimidate opponents into silence, I should state that there are few things I detest more than  sexual abuse. I abhor the misogynist culture that exists within parts of New Zealand society and, like most people, I'm aghast at the reported activities of the so-called Roast Busters - and perhaps even more so at the lackadaisical reaction, at least until this week, of the police.

But the outrage over the Roast Busters has triggered a potentially valuable national conversation about how such attitudes could exist in a supposedly enlightened, civilised society, and everything should be on the table. If we genuinely want to understand what's been going on in West Auckland, a few awkward questions need to be asked. One of those questions is whether the behaviour of the victims may have been a contributory factor, consciously or otherwise. Asking that question doesn't excuse the contemptible behaviour of the perpetrators. Neither does it mean blaming the victim.

If we don't ask those uncomfortable questions, an opportunity will have been lost. And the enemies of free speech and open debate will have triumphed again.