The rhetoric of “Not All Men”
[trigger warning: discussion of the Cornell case]
My 10th grade health class had a poster of alcoholic warning signs with cartoony drawings illustrating each point. The ‘hiding your supply’ one stuck with me because it seemed so ludicrous — a woman pulling a bottle of booze out of the dryer. That was so insane on so many levels.
But fast forward 30 years and I am working at a substance abuse agency, doing evaluations for people who have been mandated by the Department of Children and Families or their probation officer or their own families. And so many of them had their own low bar beneath which they would never sink —
Well, it’s not like I’m drinking every day.
It’s not like I drink first thing in the morning.
It’s not like I’m drinking until I pass out.
It’s not like I’m hiding my booze in the dryer.
But in those statements you can hear their struggle — I’m close to drinking every day but I don’t; I could drink first thing in the morning but I wait; I drink a lot but not enough to pass out.
I asked one client the standard question, “Has your drinking ever caused a problem for you or people in your life?” and he leaned back and took a long time to think.
No. Aside from my family.
Sir, that’s it. Your family is the whole enchilada.
(And, true story: years after my parents had moved into their house, I was digging around in the basement, in the laundry room, for some Christmas decorations or paint brushes or something and found, tucked behind a wall stud, a very dusty flask of Bacardi. Much more practical than the dryer. I could picture the former owner, escaping from the glaring tensions of life upstairs, and slipping into the dark downstairs for that hidden supply.)
It’s the reflexiveness that’s part of the tell — you can tell they grapple with this but because they’re not hitting that low bar, they’re ok, they can have that drink, it’s noon. Today they can drink because yesterday they didn’t. They can polish off that case of beer, they’re not passed out. Attempts at control is what that’s called, and it’s a warning sign of substance abuse or dependence. My boss would say, “Do people ever talk this way about Pepsi?” and that would bring the problematic aspect of the use into sharp focus.
And that is what the knee-jerk ‘not all men’ reactions to any sexual harrassment or sexual assault stories reminds me of. I read a woman’s post that her own husband’s ‘not all men’ response to the horrific Cornell rape case took her completely by surprise, and my heart hurt for her.
It’s one of two things, both of which are Not Good, even though the men waving this particular flag are trying to hide under the label of But I’m A Good Guy:
It’s a thought-terminating cliche. Expertly defined here by Professor Jennie Young of the Burned Haystack Dating Method as a statement that ends the discussion and critical thinking and turns the problem back onto the person who brought it up in the first place. “Not all men” means that if the man you’re talking with isn’t actually raping a woman right now, then this doesn’t apply to him and therefore he doesn’t care about it. Just like how young children immediately cry, “Not me! I didn’t do it!” when something breaks, I didn’t do it, so I don’t want to think about it or engage in it.
“Not all men” means he’s rape-adjacent. Like the drinkers who had to complete a substance abuse evaluation, he’s in it, he’s near it, but he’s got some low bar he’s still clearing. He’s one of the 57 guys in that text group who didn’t help, who didn’t say “WTF”, who didn’t thumbs down it. He’s the Cornell police officers who minimized the victim’s statements in their summary to the Tompkins County DA. He’s the DA who didn’t initiate an investigation. He’s the VP of University Relations who attempted to gaslight the mass outrage by saying the reaction would cause future victims to not come forward (that was a real doozy). He’s the president of the university who had the vapors about being followed during a campus protest but was okay with a two-year investigation of a gang-rape culminating in essay-writing. He’s every Cornell administrator and trustee who was okay with an already high and still increasing rate of sexual assault for female students (1 in 3), higher than the national average (1 in 4). He may not be the Weill Cornell School of Medicine doctor who abused patients from 2009 to 2019, but he’s the chair of the department who knew about it and did nothing. By the way, staff on the Cornell campus talk about working in ‘austerity measures’ now because that particular episode of sexual assault cost them $1 billion in settlements.
He’s an enabler or an apologist or a defender. He’s got a buddy who’s “a little handsy.” He’s in a group chat that his wife would be appalled at. He laughs at rape jokes. He listens to Joe Rogan or the Tate Brothers or whatever they were listening to at Chi Phi. But he “would never hit a woman” (seen, weirdly, on many men’s dating profiles). He hasn’t participated in a gang rape. So, “not all men.” It’s a low low bar that allows them to scoot over, carrying all the misogynist harrassing enabling bullshit with them.
Because the actual good guys? And I know a lot of them — truly wonderful men who would have intervened and brought a blanket for her while they waited for the police; who added more to my perspective on the situation; who are mouthier than I am on social media — it would never occur to the actual good guys to say that.
Just like a Pepsi drinker wouldn’t be bargaining with themselves about when is too early to start drinking, or if a Pepsi on Sunday “counts”, or what makes it okay to finish the entire case of Pepsi, an actual good guy would never need to distinguish his lack of rapeyness from an okay level of rapeyness. Because, being an actual good guy, rape would repulse him.
So to the Not All Men-ers out there: you’re telling on yourselves.
And to the woman who was shocked when her husband said that to her, I’m so sorry. You deserve an actual good guy.
You deserve space and peace at midlife.
I love working with women to find that.
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