That’s the title, but I don’t actually have the answer, except maybe to write about it.
On my mind a lot is what I’ve been seeing about the French ratbastard who was drugging his wife and the runner who was set on fire by her ex boyfriend. What’s running through my mind is (yet another) slogan: Not All Men, but Always Men. Always the bear. Always anything else other than the men we have to share an earth with.
It’s crazy to me, to be honest, that the faces of the 90 men who assaulted her aren’t being shown; its crazy to me that that man managed to die in hospital instead of by mob justice, or public flogging, something exquisitely painful (to the death, if you will). Something commensurate to what he did. It’s strange how murderers can make you have murderous thoughts.
Someone online asked what’s wrong with men, and if it really is all men who think like this. It’s a scary thought, but it’s also pushed by the fact that these men cannot exist in a vacuum. R Kelly wouldn’t have happened if (well, if he hadn’t also been molested and traumatized by his sister) there were plenty of other men, like Aaliyah’s uncle, bringing him all these victims. That French shitface would not have happened if there wasn’t ALREADY (!) an existing chat room looking for people to rape. It wouldn’t have continued if one (ONE!) of the three guys who refused to participate, had bothered to speak to authorities. Any authority. Even sent an anonymous tip to the woman. But no. He had to be committing yet ANOTHER crime – against women, of course, who else? – to be caught at last.
One of the guys who was raping her while she was unconscious was an ex police officer.
What would happen if it wasn’t all men? Doesn’t it stand that so many things wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t all men (100 men, including her husband, were ok with this)? You’re telling me that it’s a select few (Ivy Wangechi’s killer got a lift from his friend to go kill her with the murder weapon in the trunk)? And you expect us to believe that (nothing has happened to most of these people. More than one Kenyan athlete has been killed by their spouse)?
Another thought that’s running concurrently. When Kenyan taxi drivers were on strike, they were insisting on higher fares by locking women in the cars instead of burning the HQ of whatever company they were working for to the ground. When Hamas – and indeed, when any war happens anywhere, the first, second and third battlegrounds are women’s bodies, (even as they retaliate, even when the colonial entity commits rampant genocide) because they are the ones who will get assaulted, shot, tortured – you get the drift. Whether in times of war, or peace, or fantasy – our bodies are always paying the price (even in make believe worlds, women are wearing bikinis and jumping about ass out to save the day, or, when the spaceships are going where no man has gone before, it’s usually one of those planets where women are sex slaves and for once, for always, it’s ok).
How do we live through these times?