It’s easy to get discouraged if you care about fairness for women, isn’t it? The last little while seems to have been especially tough.
The news of a sexual attack on a young woman at an American college’s frat house was disturbing on its own, even as it called to mind the actions brought to light in last year’s trial of Canadian junior hockey players. Although we’ll never know the exact details of either occurrence, both involved young men inviting others to have sex with an incapacitated woman in front of a group, apparently with no regard for her condition or her basic humanity.
Then there’s the recent monologue by an American performer who opened Saturday Night Live by vilifying the way women dress at the gym and complaining that he wasn’t even allowed to leer at them. Whether he did the routine in rehearsal and it was okayed, or whether he tossed it in as a surprise when the show went live, it felt about 40 years out of date.
No doubt millions of women on hearing of these events just shrugged. Sure, we may have made huge strides in political representation, economic power and social status, but we’re all too familiar with the regular reminders that some people, even in very public roles, have no problem treating women as sexual objects they have a right to judge and possess. Some days it feels like the promise of equality is just something to dangle in front of us so we’ll work hard and won’t complain, rather than something we’ll ever actually achieve.
That’s a natural reaction. Anger and helplessness are never far from the surface when misogyny shows itself. It’s okay to take some time to let it wash over us, to feel the fury. Because the good news is that it’s not the 1980s anymore.
Protests about the college’s handling of the frat house incident have swept across North American campuses. Young men made stinging TikToks picturing what a visit to the police station would be like if we treated victims of car theft the way we treat sexual assault survivors.
Actor-director Dan Levy immediately called out the SNL performer on Instagram, saying “Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores, misogynists.” Other men in the entertainment industry pointed out that women are not responsible for what goes on inside men’s heads, and calmly demonstrated how the monologue denies woman their personhood and perpetuates the ideas that make women unsafe.
Sure, there are all kinds of social media posts supporting misogyny, but they’ve never faced so much backlash from those who believe women have the right to live their lives free of men’s judgements on and decisions about their bodies.
But it’s reassuring to know there are good people of all genders standing up to cruelty and oppression directed at women, in very public ways. The ugliness doesn’t get diminished and laughed off by the mainstream anymore. And while there are plenty of people ready to rush to the defence of the men involved — “One bad decision shouldn’t spoil such promising futures!” or “Can’t you take a joke?!”— there are just as many, if not more, ready to stand up for women and challenge the misogynistic norm.
Yes, it’s depressing to think that the gains women have made are never secure. But it’s uplifting to realize that we’re not alone and we’re never going back.
By Nancy Payne
