I'm not going to tell stories. You know stories. I'm not going to say #notallmen or call for a 6pm curfew on myself, or share memes about screwdrivers.
Trust me - a lot of my friends live in a country with 'screwdrivers' in it, with thousands dead every year from the use of 'screwdrivers' and people still happily run around demanding the right of everyone to buy screwdrivers and carry them at all times.
Our government followed a policy of making our streets 'safer' using CCTV. Great if you are prosecuting a vandal, less great if you trying to prevent the sort of crime we are talking about. Safe doesn't mean you are happy that your murderer is prosecuted.
But not everyone feels safe about more police on the streets.
There are active bills in parliament that, if government was serious about making 51% of the world feel safer, they would pass. Enact into law. There are calls to make misogyny a hate crime. Because we all know these crimes ARE hate crimes. Not just crimes against A person, but against ANY person, based purely on their gender. Why should that not carry a higher tariff?
Because incels are sex nazis. These ARE hate crimes. And this is something we can clearly and obviously do.
Now, I get it. A lot of people are empiricists. they don't believe in things they cannot see or feel or touch. And they never felt - or experienced - racism, sexism, homophobia. And thus it isn't 'real' to them.
Worse, they see it like a challenge to them and their belief systems. Human need ego to survive, and when your belief systems are challenged it becomes an ego threat. Up go the defensive barriers.
Like a virus protect. Something we are all intimately familiar with now.
But what if it is already inside?
Well, those -isms eat your ego. You cease to be the living breathing you, and transform into the -ism. You can't pass any thread without jumping in and screaming ALL LIVES MATTER!!!! even though you tell everyone that you don't care about politics. You are like one of those zombie caterpillars. Only existing to propogate it now.
So I get it.
If you have ever been the target of it - or you have a loved one been the target of it - then you see it for what it is. a virus, eating your loved one's ego. But the difference is they can see it. They know it is happening.
What do we do with viruses?
We vaccinate. That's what bills to make misogyny hate crime does. And THEN we burn it out with fire.
But here's the thing.
I haven't felt safe in a locker room since I was fourteen. I haven't done 'locker room' things so I don't have the knowledge of what men talk about in 'locker rooms' since then, and back then it was all about how 'gay' everyone you wanted to pick on was.
And when you spoke out about it? lets just say it did not go well for you. I have kids at secondary school. It still does not go well for you.
Now, we can fight 'our' corner, as adults. Build the safest spaces we can. We can walk the walk and talk 'the Talk' - if we need to. Most of my friends don't tell me their secret desires to commit misogynistic crimes and don't in fact do them.
So, unpacking toxic masculinity is a lot harder than it looks. We can say 'lets not grow up to become our fathers' but then again I still grew up to be mine. I guess we just have to be the best role models we can, the best way we can. And hope we don't fuck people up too badly.