So now that some powerful men have toppled so sensationally from their plinths, the ongoing witch hunt for badly behaved men has suddenly roused those who for the longest time had been complicit in endorsing such men to suddenly grow a conscience. Maybe "grow a conscience" is the wrong phrase. Saving one's own career or reputation is probably more apt. Jumping on the bandwagon is always the more convenient route when the opportunity presents itself, especially in the liberal and loud entertainment or fashion industry, it seems.
In the US, where this whole exposé first found a furious audience, the call for female empowerment rang like a battle cry, prompting women who'd suffered, and endured degrading treatment from men to step out of their chains finally, without fear. I, too felt a sense of satisfaction when the Harvey Weinstein story broke. It called to mind an incident I once had at Mass General Hospital a few years ago, after I'd been brought to the ER in a wheelchair and looked as pale as a corpse, due to a stress related stomach illness. I was called into a small room to be examined by a large, male doctor. While lying down on the exam table, he put his hands under my sweater aggressively, without warning. I reacted impulsively, my body jerking away, and he snapped loudly at me, "let me do my job!" Just like that, I was silenced. No apology, no retreating of his hands to acknowledge my surprise, and then explain, like any doctor would, what he was doing. It was just the two of us in the room with a closed door, and he was exercising his power over me, in the least professional and concerned manner that I'd ever experienced with a doctor. After awhile, I sat in the seat next to him while he asked some questions. The entire time he did not hide the fact that he was staring at my chest, and when I held my bag to cover my front, his eyes simply traveled slowly down the rest of my body.
I understand how power structures work, and how one female voice gets shut down when it tries to confront a pig in a powerful position. In incidents like the one I experienced, it becomes even more difficult to make a complaint because some male doctor made a female patient feel uncomfortable, who cares? Perhaps some people would just roll their eyes at what I described above, because he was just a massive sleazeball like a lot of men. The point is that it was a professional setting, and he was a doctor showing brazen disrespect for his sick patient by creating an uncomfortable atmosphere all on his own. Did I make any sort of complaint? Of course not.
Because like Harvey Weinstein and others like him, they are protected by their status and a culture of entitlement.
But then came the pitchforks and torches, brandished by young naive girls, in some cases, who've had poor luck with the opposite sex due to, perhaps, poor choices, and are intent on placing blame on anyone but themselves. The whole Aziz Ansari debacle last week is what I'm mostly referring to. And I really can't stand Aziz Ansari. In fact, I find him revolting for reasons I will likely delve into in a future post. But some petulant girl decided that he is guilty of treating her in a way that made her uncomfortable, after she desperately tried to get his attention at a party, and then, fast forward to a date in New York City where Ansari hurriedly paid for a meal, she went back to his place thinking...what? He was eager to get back so he could read some poetry to her?
Aziz Ansari is more guilty of being bad at comedy than he is of being a typical guy. There needs to be some responsibility shouldered by girls like "Grace" who're too comfortable with feeling like helpless little flowers while expecting guys to be machines, and then crying when they realize guys are in fact not machines in situations that she has helped enable or advance.
A movement that began as a call for women to rally together in solidarity against specific types of men has become tainted with immature individuals who are quick to play the victim while disregarding their own behavior. Take the Tariq Ramadan incident, as another example. The revelations stunned me as well when it was first reported in France in their feminist version of "Me Too." It was crushing to learn that religion, and Islam in particular, has exposed yet another raging hypocrite (see also Nouman Ali Khan, the sleazy Pakistani-American Muslim speaker). Those parading around basking in their celebrity "religious scholar" status, preaching on how to be good to others while they themselves are not.
I am in no way defending Ramadan for what he is accused of, but the statements made by two of his accusers, a French woman and a Morrocan woman, does raise some pertinent questions. The former confessed that she had agreed to meet him at his hotel room to "discuss religion" and that she had fantasized the possibility of the handsome, intelligent Islamic scholar falling in love with her and they would marry. The former disclosed that she had been in a relationship with Ramadan for five years. What stories like this always fail to consider is the naivete of women, and aside from Ramadan's own lack of self-control, what about their's? "
I was under his influence, he manipulated me,"
claims Henda Ayari, the French Tunisian woman who went on to sleep with the renowned Islamic scholar.
"
I pointed out to him that he had promised to take me to the light,"
says Majda Bernoussi, rather pathetically, and who intends to publish a manuscript titled, "A voyage in troubled waters with Tariq Ramadan."
When I was eighteen and attending a college in Malaysia, students in my program were encouraged to attend a college fair to meet representatives from various universities around the US. Before the event, the program director, an American woman, took a few of us female students aside and said to us, "if any of the male reps suggest that you meet him in his hotel room later to discuss your options further, do not go." She implied with that warning that such incidents had happened before, and had not ended well. Still, as good advice as it was, I don't think most girls or women need to have such things explained to them. It's just common sense. It's not flattering, or bold. It's naivete, and gross. Besides, there's a cafe in the hotel if you desperately want to ask a man some questions about religion and seek some direction in life. If he refuses to meet in the hotel lobby, cafe or any other public setting tell him to piss off. Ramadan's shady, manipulative text messages, as described by his accusers had already filled them with suspicion in regards to his character, yet they reacted with shock and dismay in the end when his allegedly grotesque behavior in person matched the conniving statements he made to them in private correspondence. Well, don't follow your intuition or anything!
The fact that these Muslim women are supposedly intent on improving themselves as human beings through religious study highlights the reality that they really have a long way to go in that department, if they don't see a problem with encouraging a married man's unprincipled behavior, but instead cling to the hope that he will leave his wife for them, his sexual play things. This is not just wicked, self-serving behavior on both sides, but unequivocally anti-woman –– ruin another woman while also playing the victim, and profit from some books detailing your dalliance with a hypocrite, while revealing yourself to be one as well.
Well done to Western feminism, where women are more content with calling themselves oppressed victims, and helpless in their "free" state, instead of seeing themselves as capable of risilience, and taking responsibility for their own actions and lack of common sense.
