I view myself as a deeply empathetic person. Which is why, when I was informed by several female friends that my behaviour was inappropriate and crossing a line, I was shocked.
I was around 24-25 years old at the time, and in my mind, simply expressing myself and living my best life. But I was blind to how my behaviour was impacting the women in my life, and blind to the misogynistic attitudes that had subtly crept their way into my psyche.
I had a few options available to me when I was told.
Ignore it: Carry on living my ‘best life’.
Dismiss it: “Sorry you feel that way!”
Arc up and get defensive: “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Acknowledge it: Reflect on my behaviour and seek to be a better person.
Options 1, 2 and 3 would probably have been easier. But truth be told, none of them felt right. A gut feeling told me that option 4 was the only way forward, because it was the only one that aligned with my true, deeper values.
I’m deeply grateful to my female friends at the time, who, in spite of their own anger, sat down with me. They owed me nothing, but chose to explain the impact my behaviour was having.
They were life-changing conversations that set me on a path towards examining my attitudes towards women, where they had come from, and what sort of man I wanted to be. I haven’t been a perfect man in the decade since, but I feel much better about myself knowing that I’m being true to one of my core values: respect.
My message to any man reading this is simple: it’s never too late to take accountability for your actions, and the path forward, though it’s hard, will ultimately make you and the people around you happier and healthier.
Growing up in a stereotypical male environment
I grew up in a loving family and went to a good local Catholic school. I was friends with girls and boys. I also grew up in a culture that conformed to traditional masculine stereotypes. To be one of the boys, you had to be “good with girls”, drink beer, and play footy well. Your social standing as a young man rested on those pillars, and the pinnacle was sex.
I didn’t have sex until I was 22 years old (six months and eight days, not that I was counting...) and my virginity weighed on me like the Stone of Shame Homer gets in the Stonecutters episode of The Simpsons.
This meant that I lived my life in service of one goal: lose my virginity and finally become a real man. The pressure I felt was immense, and not only did it overtake my deeper values, it fostered darker new attitudes.
Obsessed with losing my virginity, I had subtly started to view women as objects.
I wish I could say that when I finally lost my virginity – at a bush doof in a donkey onesie no less – things changed. But now I was making up for lost time, and I had new notches in my belt to seek.
I developed an air of invincibility and arrogance. I was finally getting laid and surely every woman wanted me. And when, inevitably, they did not, instead of dealing with the rejection, I became more of a prick. I believed I was entitled to women’s attention and attraction and, on the surface, I didn’t care how I was making them feel.
But this confidence and bravado was a house of cards, hiding deep insecurities. And it crumbled when I pushed it too far and made some friends feel uncomfortable. When they told me, my internal world exploded.
I felt so much pain, guilt and shame. I believed deep down that I was a respectful bloke, and yet here I was being told that wasn’t the case. It shattered my image of who I thought I was.
How I took action
Ultimately, I learned that my pain was my responsibility, and that I had an opportunity to take accountability for my behaviour.
I listened to my friends tell me how they felt. I didn’t interrupt. I said that I was sorry, but I also knew that sorry was just a word if it didn’t come with changed behaviour. So I sat with my own feelings of guilt, shame, indignation, anger and hurt. I went to therapy to help me work through them. It was hard. But things that are worthwhile are not often easy. I started to explore ways I could make things right. That wasn’t necessarily through contacting all the women I had potentially harmed. (I would recommend seeking advice before doing this because every situation is different, and people may not want to hear from you).) It also wouldn’t have been right if my goal was to make myself feel better, for them to tell me that it’s all okay and that I’m a good person. I started listening to the women in my life more intentionally (it wasn’t until my early 20s that I learned many women carry keys in their hand when walking alone at night). I started following more female voices online, like Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Chanel Contos. I’m a huge comedy and music fan, so I made a conscious effort to listen to more music by women, see more shows by female comedians. I started listening to perspectives from people who don’t look like me, from non-binary artists to queer rappers. I wasn’t doing it to be “woke”, I was doing it because empathy was one of my core values, and I wanted that to extend to as many experiences outside of my own as possible. In the process, I became a happier person who had healthier relationships, so much so that at 25 I ended up in a beautiful, loving, nurturing relationship for seven years. Younger me was bloody stoked!
Redefining strength We talk a lot about strength in our workshops with teenage boys at The Man Cave. It is often the first trait boys name when we ask what it traditionally means to be a man. And here’s the thing – they’re right. Strength is a beautiful trait.
But we’ve done it a disservice by defining it only as physical strength, or misconstruing it with stoicism, another word we’ve corrupted to mean ignoring our emotions and “getting on with it”.
One of the most common occurrences in our workshops goes like this:
Facilitators: “What’s the stereotype of being a man?” Boys: “Be strong. Be hard.” “How do we define strength?” “Bottle up your emotions and get on with it.” “When we face challenging times, as a man, is it easier to express our emotions or bottle them up?” “Bottle them up.” Then, inevitably, one courageous young man will take the lead, and share something authentic and vulnerable, in front of the entire group. You can feel the particles in the room change. Then we’ll ask a question: “Who reckons that took a lot of strength?” Every single hand goes up. In defining masculinity so narrowly for so long, we have done a grave disservice to boys, men and everyone. It took a great deal of strength for me to examine my own attitudes and behaviours, and seek to become a better person. Boys and men resonate with the idea of strength, it just has a marketing problem. So to any fellas out there reading this piece, and examining their own attitudes and behaviours towards women, know that doing so takes serious strength.
It should also become the baseline standard. We’ll all be rewarded when it makes the world a better place.
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