Confronting #MeToo

If you need proof that anything can be taken to an unhealthy extreme, witness the removal of Baby, It's Cold Outside by Cleveland radio station WDOK from its holiday playlist. According to the station's general manager, this is in response to complaints that the song's lyrics are “inappropriate”.

If you're not familiar with the standard, it is a playful exchange between a man and a woman. The man wants his companion to stay the night, citing the undue cold and potential risk taking her home could subject her to.

The woman effectively pleads her case that this is not the right time, and the song draws to a close. There is no rape. There is no assault. There is no predation.

We don't even know if she stays or returns home. 

Apparently, the #MeToo community is privy to information the rest of us aren't.

Let me address the sexist hysteria responsible for turning this harmless song into an invitation to date-rape. (I should also apologize in advance for possessing a penis, which likely renders this yet-another unbearable example of mansplaining.)

Baby, It's Cold Outside is a vignette. An imagined dialogue between two people confronting the eternal question: I want to. Don't you?

Men express this thought. Women express this thought. There is no gender monopoly here. It is a song about the beautiful longing two human beings can feel for each other. It is a wry and poetic seduction. 

I hear it and smile at the memory of my own (mostly unsuccessful) attempts.

It is cute. Playful. Nothing more, nothing less.

I am of the opinion that the well-intentioned people who have issues with this song could find evidence of Satanic worship in a Norman Rockwell painting, or enticements to methamphetamine use in The Sound of Music. 

Look hard enough for something and you'll find it.

But beyond that, I'd like to know the whereabouts of the legions of fierce, strong women I hear so incessantly about. I mean, seriously? A guy cooing in your ear and inviting you to a sleepover is your kryptonite?

Sorry, but that's crazy.

For those of us with the broad and deep frames of reference age affords, this is the feminist equivalent of the Tawana Brawley scandal. A flimsy, cheap, over-reaching and ultimately damaging effort that will undermine, not strengthen, #MeToo.

Please. Keep your sexism out of my Christmas.

#MeToo and Gender and 2018

Me too. For a long time, that phrase described a woman's place in the world. An afterthought. A casual, last-minute addition. 

Today, it means something very different. It is a forum where women detail the sexual abuse and manipulation they have received at the hands of men.

Like so much else that surfaced in 2017, it is ugly.

Heading the list is Harvey Weinstein, an immensely powerful Hollywood mogul who held in his hands the futures of alluring young women eager to taste Hollywood's fame and riches. Judging from the available evidence, it appears that Weinstein had no compunction whatsoever about taking advantage of that position.

These allegations are serious and are being taken in kind. Dozens of accused men have surrendered their jobs, their public standing and conceivably, their marriages. It is a very high price to pay.

My concern is that so many of them are merely that—allegations. Only a tiny percentage have seen the inside of a courtroom, where they would be held up to the bright light of examination and proven or disproven.

Women, like men, are capable of holding grudges. Of crafting agendas. Of seizing opportunities. Of lying. And what better way to soothe a wounded ego than to accuse a powerful and well-connected man of withholding a coveted role because you didn't put out?

There is a faint whiff of the sordid Tawana Brawley – Al Sharpton affair, which was one of the more distressing events of my lifetime. I remember thinking you mean there isn't enough genuine racism in the world? We have to manufacture it???

And yet, having witnessed firsthand the depths my sex can sink to in the pursuit of female, um, companionship, they aren't terribly hard to believe, either. And after folding in the intoxicating multipliers of celebrity and wealth, imagining the worst requires the same stretch that reaching for the remote does.

As a man raised by a mother who had “...and to obey” stricken from her marriage vows, and as one who came of age in the sensitive male seventies, I was taught to respect women as fellow human beings. They were neither superior nor inferior; they existed alongside me.

All of which made perfect sense.

But in the divisive twenty-first century, where everything has become a war, those attitudes would be roundly mocked by half of the population. Men reach for extreme expressions of masculinity in a changing social and economic landscape that increasingly favors women, while feminism becomes less about equality and more about control.

As an age-enhanced individual, I find it ironic when I encounter women who remind me of the men feminists once railed against. They are dismissive, arrogant and possess the same sense of gender-based entitlement my forebearers did.

When I don't find it ironic, I find it sad. This is progress?

I love the French expression vive la difference. I can only wonder how it plays out in French culture. Are relationships between men and women really better there? Do French men and women truly love and respect one another for who they are?

In America, life is about winning. And there can only be one winner. It isn't about co-existing, it's about emerging victorious. About control. Contentment is frowned upon. One must always seek the promotion. Desire the bigger house. Have and want more.

Sadly, this seeps into our personal relationships as well.

This competition was once the exclusive property of men in the workplace. But again, times have changed. Women, historically denied the opportunity to buy into that and become part of it suddenly do. And are.

How funny is it that in a country as homophobic as the United States, women are assuming the qualities of men? And must do so if not for respect, then equality?

The aforementioned age-enhanced individual laments that as a society, we refuse to recognize traditional feminine characteristics as different—but equal—strengths. One sex gets to dominate, the other is made subservient.

We refuse to celebrate our differences. To appreciate and regard each gender for their unique qualities and what each brings to the world. To understand how vital each is to an ongoing, functional civilization.

Before I am labelled a Bible-toting chauvinist, I should add that we also refuse to allow women opportunity when traditional roles don't appeal.

While not a knee-jerk supporter of girl power (I don't remember the last male boss I had nor do I make a third more than the woman working next to me simply because I have a penis), I have to admit the societal model is broken.

Women shouldn't ever be put through what so many have been, be it in Hollywood or on Wall Street.

Seventies feminism provoked the frequently-asked question “What do women want?”, which was, in retrospect, entirely the wrong question. Women are individuals. They are diverse and want as many different things as men do.

Maybe a better question was (and is) what can women want? 

With democracy on life-support, my wish for 2018 is that both sexes can live fulfilling lives unconstrained and undefined by gender.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.