Unfathomable. Unbelievable. Despicable. Unconscionable. Pick one negative adjective. Pick them all. They all fit snuggly into this shit-sandwich-shaped story we've all been audience to these past few weeks. This whole story starting with Harvey Weinstein (at least the current version of it) is out of hand and very horrible, a gross understatement, I know. But it didn't hit me how horrible it was until nearly every female friend I have on Facebook started updating their statuses with #metoo, the hashtag resuscitated by Alyssa Milano (apparently it's been around for a while first started by activist Tarana Burke for a similar reason) to bring awareness to the misogyny women have to put up with on a damn-near-hourly basis. It was disheartening to say the least when I awoke the day after the tweet started trending and checked my Facebook to see update after update of stories ranging from relatively mild catcalling to horrendous slut shaming. This is in addition to all the stories I've heard over the years of OkCupid messages full of unsolicited dick pics and guys masturbating in cars.
This, I'm sure, has forced every man witnessing all of this to think back to every time he might have caused a woman distress with his actions, whether they're comfortable enough to talk about it in the open or not.
Well, I want to talk about it. Unfortunately, I have a story of my own to tell. It's not as disgusting as name calling or ass grabbing. By comparison, it's a rather tame story, but I'm sure I made the person involved very uncomfortable all the same.
A few years back I worked in the entertainment industry in realty television. I was between jobs looking for work and a gig opened up, so naturally I applied. I went down to the interview and the person interviewing me happened to be a woman. She had the most wonderful eyes I had ever seen, no exaggeration. They were a very rare, at least to me, shade of gray that I had never seen before. In the middle of the interview I decided, for whatever reason, to let her know that I thought her eyes were very pretty. The expression on her face as I told her this subsequently told me, very boldly, what she thought of what I had thought was a compliment. It came across as ass-kissing, which I guess was my brain's miscalculated objective at the time. I suppose I thought a little flattery would work in getting me the gig (it didn't), but I immediately regretted saying what I did the second it left my mouth. Later I retold the story to a couple of female friends of mine and they agreed that that was probably the reason I rightfully failed the interview.
My intention was not to brown nose; I genuinely wanted to let her know that I appreciated her uniquely beautiful eyes. The point here is that it was wildly inappropriate timing to say something like that to someone I didn't know. I blurted it out almost as an after thought. The exchange went something like this:
Her: "So, what other shows did you work on?"
Me: "Well, I worked on a couple of seasons of Hell's Kitchen––your eyes are so pretty––um, and a couple of seasons The Celebrity Apprentice."
What the fuck did that have to do with anything? I was in the middle of a goddamn sentence. I wouldn't have said that to a man. Why did I say that to her? The fact that I subconsciously did it is the problem. It's not just intentional harassment we men have to work on and that women have to be on the look out for. We men do it nonchalantly as well, and that's not okay. I feel disgusted that I'm probably number 13 on her list of misogynistic asshole harassment stories. Thinking back I'm glad she was in the position she was to deny a job to someone like me. Here's hoping she went even higher.
Coincidently, that year I was working on a story that became my book Autonomously Yours. I wrote it to deal with the exact issue we're currently confronting.
Disclaimer: I swear this isn't an advertisement for my book or my writing, but because it is relevant to this subject I don't know how to talk about it without it sounding like a plug. But I'll try best to sound sincere.
The story is about a mild-mannered male roboticist who is commissioned to create an extremely lifelike female android essentially for prostitution, and he has to deal with the ramifications of letting her go off on that path. I wrote it as an apology letter to womenkind for not doing better and for not doing what I can when I can as a male. It's definitely metaphorical. I set it a hundred years in the future as a way of saying I don't think things will get better for women as prey and for men as predators even as time moves on. I tried to convey my sadness over that fact. A bleak outlook, for sure, but hearing these women speak out over these couple of weeks has unfortunately given my outlook some unwanted validation. Some people don't think I stuck the landing in my ending––it might come across as a male savior narrative––but my intention was absolutely apologetic.
So, here I will also use the hashtag #metoo, but for a different reason. To say that I, too, have harassed, and whether I'm sorry for it or not is besides the point. It's not okay, and I will do better. The story I wrote was the first conscious attempt of, hopefully, a lifetime of attempts to make it easier for women to live safely in our world.
I want to be optimistic that all the attention this is getting is the start of big change, not only within the entertainment industry, but in every walk of life. But I've never been known for my optimism.
For now, I'll share hashtags because that's all I can do will this blog post.
#HowIwillchange #Ididit #Ihave #NotOkay #Imsorry
