I don’t really want to talk about #metoo. It makes me sad. The stories I’ve heard and read are discouraging. I had a horrible dream last night that was totally related to this conversation.
But as hard as it is, it is important.
First of all, #metoo. It hasn’t happened often (I don’t even need a whole hand to count the instances), but there have been rare occasions that a man spoke to me in a way that made me terribly uncomfortable.
But second, I’m not sure where to place my experience. None of them should have happened. But to hear the conversation, “all the other women” experience this kind of treatment so often it’s a casual reality of their life. And I can’t figure out which of us is the unusual case. Am I strange to have so few, or are they unusual to have so many?
And where do the men stand in all of it. To hear the conversation, all men are basically Harvey Weinstein. Or wannabes, anyway. And when someone says “not all men,” they get scolded. But many, many men do not behave this way at all. So which is the strange one? The man who doesn’t take advantage of or speak inappropriately to women or the ones who habitually and intentionally make those comments or gestures or advances (or worse)?
Last of all, I fear that the entire conversation misses the real point. The way a man treats a woman–or whether, like in Hollywood, a woman might comply for some reason–is a heart issue. We can’t fix it with laws or bringing social pressure to bear. Oh, we can drive it deeper into the shadows and corners, but it’s still going to happen. Because the issue is one of making ourselves important. It’s a problem of seeing others as means to an end (MY desired end) instead of people in their own right. It’s a problem of control and power and trying to fill an emptiness that we spend a lot of time and money hiding.
And without Jesus, it cannot be changed. Yes, we need to teach our boys. Yes, we need to change the laws to protect the victims. Yes, we all (men and women) need to stand up against and call out those who choose this perverse and damaging path. But unless we include Jesus in the conversation, we have no hope of making any lasting change.
Which makes a hard topic, even harder.
