#NotAllMen and the Tragedy of Women
Will 2021 be the year we reckon with our patriarchy poisoning?
“If you leave a woman, though, you probably ought to shoot her. It would save enough trouble in the end even if they hanged you.”
—Ernest Hemmingway, to his editor Maxwell Perkins, about how Zelda ruined F. Scott Fitzgerald
This week marks a year’s passage through a great many tragedies and, sadly, some new ones. Most notably, the world turned its attention to the disappearance of Sara Everard in the UK, which serves as a reminder that even in a worldwide pandemic women are not safe. Women, in turn, took to social media to talk about their experiences in the #TooManyWomen hashtag. Unsurprisingly, men responded with #NotAllMen, a hashtag we had hoped was dead and gone.
One of the women who has been blamed for her own death is Breonna Taylor, who died one year ago. She was a 26-year-old emergency room technician shot to death by police in her bedroom. She was a Black woman. Her story spoke to people across the world, but her family has not received much in the way of answers or justice.
Before Breonna was thought of as a victim, police tried to insinuate that she was a suspect. People who wanted to believe this, did. They chose to side with police officers, or they chose to believe she was guilty of something because it gave them comfort that bad things could happen in a chaotic fashion to people who didn’t ‘deserve’ it. It was easy for some people to put her in the role of suspect because of the way Black people are criminalized in America (and in Canada).
#NotAllMen is a backlash against an allegation no one is making, but that doesn't stop these men from trying to co-opt women's pain and turn it into their own movement, further blaming women for the crimes committed against us.
To be a woman is to be familiar with the idea that culture will try and excuse what happened to you. That before you are innocent, you are a suspect. Recently, I wrote about Cindy Gladue in Chatelaine. About the trial of the man who killed her, and how to mitigate his own guilt, he said that she consented to the so-called ‘rough sex’ that caused her death. In a way, some reason, she was asking for it. Or her life choices led to this tragedy because ‘that’s what happens’. The same defense is used by other men attempting to be acquitted of rape, murder, and assault.
Recently, by way of a New York Times documentary, Britney Spears told us another version of this story. The film, “Framing Britney Spears” revisits the treatment of a celebrity that most of us witnessed first hand.
There’s this clip from the early 2000s I remember, where Ed the Sock mocks Spears’ for her use of sexuality. Because she would dare to dance in a way that was attractive, while also saying that she was a virgin.
“I’m sorry guys,” says Ed “I’ve never met a virgin who could move like this.”
I was thirteen when I heard this. I thought it was funny. Now, the recollection makes me burn with shame. Now, there’s a sadness in me for the girl who was so steeped in misogyny that I must have felt Spears ‘deserved’ it. Because, when you dress like that—the age-old adage goes—what do you expect will happen? It makes some think, surely you are guilty of something, behaving like that.
I suppose it is a mark of progress that if you watch the clip now, you will probably wince.
Still, the sentiment that she deserves it clings stubbornly in our cultural imagination. Because women are trouble right?
There was more sad news this week as Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman who disappeared mysteriously while walking back from a friend's house in London. Her remains were found, and a police officer has been charged with her death.
In response to Everard going missing, and before she was found, the hashtag #TooManyWomen" started trending on Twitter. It was reminiscent of #MeToo as more and more women came forward to share their stories of being sexually harassed or abused or generally feeling unsafe in their day-to-day life.
I looked at the hashtag, but didn’t add a story. I marveled that women could pick just one incident when life seems to hold so many.
Then something else happened, #NotAllMen began to trend in response. We have seen this before. It happens every time that there’s a growing concern over violence against women. Many respond that they view the conversation as an attack on the character of men— an unfair attempt to blame men for the wrong-doing of a select number of individuals.
#NotAllMen is the opposite effect to trying to presume the guiltiness of women. The innocence of the majority of men. Even in a year when domestic abuse, against women, has skyrocketed. Even while we reckon with cultural misogyny and the way it has shaped us.
Sometimes we feel so close to a cultural breakthrough that will finally stick. Where women, all women, can be presumed innocent for the wrongs done to them, rather than having to fight or rely on advocates to prove that we were in fact, the victim.
Sometimes we feel further away from justice , that the moral arc of the universe that Dr. King spoke of, is inverted. This was one such week for me.