I have encountered many ‘Weinstein’s’ in my time, from my own father to bosses, strangers, even those I thought were friends. From the ‘playful’ pinches all the way through to rape. I have experienced the gamut of ‘toxic masculinity’.
But I will not stand and make them my enemy. I will not make men an evil entity that need to be punished for their heinous behaviour. What I see are deeply wounded and damaged individuals who have had their innocent child hearts hurt and broken in unimaginable ways. They have become adults desperate for validation, for control and emotional ‘safety’ and this comes out in toxic, wounding and terrible actions.
I am not condoning a single thing that they have done as accountable, responsible adults. Do they need to be brought up and held to account? Do they need the awareness of their behaviour brought to light, do they need support, therapy, counselling? Yes to all this. And in the very worst cases, prison is probably the first port of call before any rehabilitation can be implemented. I am not, for a moment, suggesting allowing or permitting this type of behaviour but what I am saying is that by making these men into inhuman animals worthy only of our hatred and scorn we are only perpetuating this dynamic in our society.
As a global society we are failing our children. We have forgotten, disassociated ourselves from, the crucial attachment needs that create respectful, kind, thoughtful humans. These are the roots of the problems that we are witnessing today in our men and women. If our sons and daughters were raised with loving consciousness and presence, is it even possible for them to become the monsters that we vilify in the press? No, it’s like a law of science, we cannot provide wholesome parenting and create evil.
But just loving our children is not enough, I adore my children but that doesn’t stop me passing on my insecurities, my wounding. What will break my ancestral cycles is bringing my awareness to the psychological needs of my children and my own childhood, becoming conscious of what created my wounds and my anger and working hard to provide what I lacked, owning my mistakes and attempting to do it differently next time. Only by taking full responsibility for my own actions will I model that possibility to my children and my descendants.
So when I read the powerful hatred towards Weinstein et al, all I really hear is hatred towards ourselves. What I would love is to embrace the possibility that Weinstein’s willingness to enter rehabilitation might just birth a shift in his perspective that could create healing. What I would love to hear is how these moments of unveiling could push us to reflect on why men exist in this way. How can we create the changes in our world to bring forth the necessary shifts to our humanness? Can we learn from our mistakes or will we just continue to punish them?
This is so beautiful Amanda. I hear you. I can’t help feel all these feelings of hatred that you mention but it’s greed of our systems. Calling Weinstein’s beahviour “sex addiction” is not helpful. In my opinion behaviour like that has nothing to do with an addiction to sex. It’s power, misogyny and self-loathing. I worry that Weinstein’s stint in “rehab” is a publicity stunt and the use of language regarding his visit, written in the media, is almost excusing his bahaviour as something that is par for the course in Hollywood and other realms of society and business and that it’s somethi we should just “roll our eyes at” I sincerely hope that time doesn’t dilute the horror of what he is.
I hear you too honey. I know it is difficult not to be hardened to such a character as Weinstein. His trip to rehab may well just be publicity, but the bigger picture is how we as a society react to it in totality. What I always bring myself back to is that he was once an innocent baby and every one of our babies has the potential for good or bad, entirely dependent on how they are raised. I remember his innocence and I hold hope for his healing and for the world’s healing too.
Hi
From the age of 13/14 like many women I have been subjected to varing degrees of unwelcome uninvited sexual advances of opportunistic men. From sexual innuendo remarks and jokes to touching and groping from men in my work places and in social situations. My reactions have been varied from bring mildly irritated to extremely angry according to how unpleasant or embarrassing the experience was at the time.
I’ve also been on the receiving end of domestic violence to be fair I’ve also dished some out to either in retaliation or defence.
One of the conclusions I’ve come to is that all of the above is very much to do with the intrinsic nature of men, obviously not all men. By nature mostly men are more domineering than women, they are far more single minded and focused on achieving what ever goal is in the sight and they feel far less concern for other people’s feelings along the way of reaching their goal.
The other conclusion is that for women to be less likely to be subjected to all of the above they would need to change some of their behaviour and become much tougher than maybe what would come naturally to them.
I think many women would benefit from attending Assertiveness classes and basic Self defence classes. Because I think that both would improve a womans confidence and sense of self worth etc. For the most part confident women do not become the victims of what is really the preditory advances and exploits of some men.