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During the first episode of The Atlantic’s new podcast, Jeffrey Goldberg asked Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, if he is being overly hopeful to believe the revelations surrounding Harvey Weinstein signifies a tipping point for feminism where women’s sexual allegations are starting to be heard.
“Am I being overly hopeful about where we’re at?”
I had my own definitive answer ricocheting inside my head as I listened while doing the dishes. Without missing a beat, Adichie responded, satisfyingly echoing my sentiments. “Yes.”
Yes, one would be overly hopeful to believe this is a tipping point for feminism, because that connotes a downhill slide to victory from here on out when the fight against patriarchy has always been a struggle. When you push against a system of power, there will be backlash, because power adapts into other nefarious forms in order to keep its power. The courageous women sharing their #MeToo stories and holding powerful men to account for their acts of sexual violence is a valiant pull towards justice, but to think this is a tipping point? No, we must stay vigilant for the backlash, for the pushback, for continued resistance.
To be sure, we must hold these men accountable for their actions. They are sick individuals who have chosen to act out of evil impulses and prey on vulnerable women. But considering the frequency and the breadth of its reach, how often these incidents happen and how it occurs everywhere, we also have a severe, systemic problem. These waters we swim in are toxic. When do wide-eyed little boys who jump out of bed Christmas mornings eager to open presents under the tree, become men who use those very same hands to rip apart a woman’s clothes?
bell hooks, a feminist author speaks in a recent interview with New Yorker Radio Hour, “Parenting is political. We’ve got to be willing to challenge the way we parent.” By the time a man assaults a woman, he’s received countless messages of entitlement, domination, and violence from the culture. As parents, we are only one sphere of influence in our children’s lives, but a powerful one. We hold an incredible responsibility to provide our children the eyes to see, and the tools to resist the toxicity of patriarchy. This is the long game to preventing another generation of #MeToos.
In parenting literature, there has emerged a strong counter-cultural message towards honoring children’s body agency and autonomy. For example, the Girl Scouts recently released a PSA reminding parents to not pressure their girls to give and receive hugs during the holidays. Although this kind of physical touch is non-sexual, cultivating a child’s bodily agency prepares them emotionally to demand sexual consent in the future.
Body autonomy, when extended to boys, combat toxic masculinity that aims to exile a boy’s body away from his ability to feel, to empathize, and to relate to others.
When a parent spanks a child, she’s telling him this pain on his body is a form of love. This is cognitively dissonant for a child, and the only way to maintain that dissonance is to sever a connection between the body and the mind. The child says to himself: The way my body feels is separate from the way I love people. Each time a child’s bodily autonomy is violated, he detaches his emotions a little bit more from his body.
Then the world tells boys he can’t feel (“boys don’t cry”), but he can use his body to fight in a war, to win at sports, and to dominate women. He grows into a fractured, empty shell of a man, incapable of filling his physical activity with emotional intimacy. Comic artist Toby Morris describes his teen years at an all boys’ school where sex became an achievement. The language used was one of personal conquest: “I got a blowjob. I got laid. I’m scoring chicks.” So that when teenage boys begin having sex, they are disembodied beings doing sex to up their score, instead of integrated human beings sharing in intimacy with another full human being.
Imagine a world in which we help our children stay integrated with their bodies by giving them touch that is consistent with our love. In which we gave them freedom in the way they dress their own bodies, choose what foods to consume, and respected their body autonomy long before puberty. Imagine raising men whose bodies are aligned with the way they risk themselves in love with another.
If we challenge the way we parent in the thousands of moments in our homes raising our boys, we can uproot the deeply entrenched patriarchy that has led to the epidemic of #MeToos. I can be hopeful about that.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
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