Boys Will Be Boys

by Clementine Ford

  As a society, we have to ask ourselves why it is that we refuse to challenge boys on this behaviour and work instead to offer them every excuse in the world to make that behaviour just a standard part of their life education. Why are we so afraid to look at that murky space between how the law defines guilt and lack of guilt, and commit to treating as intolerable some of the things that we find there?

  She consented!

  No, she didn’t.

  Not fighting back isn’t the same as consenting. Relenting isn’t consenting. Giving in out of self-preservation isn’t consenting.

  Are people so afraid of challenging male entitlement that they would risk their young boys becoming rapists rather than speak to them about what enthusiastic consent and good, healthy sex looks like? Please, I implore you, have these conversations with your sons. You should want them to make different choices from the ones constantly being modelled to them as ‘boys being boys’.

  In her closing statements to Four Corners, Saxon reminded everyone what consent truly looks like.

  ‘All you need to say is, “Do you want to be here?”’ she explained. ‘And very clearly, “Do you want to have sex with me?” And if it’s not an enthusiastic “yes”, then it’s not enough. If it’s not an enthusiastic “yes”, it’s a “no”. That’s it. And then, you’re committing a crime.’

  Enthusiastic consent. Unlike facing down a legal system written by men and invested in men’s interests, it’s really not that fucking hard to master.

  Committing to radically challenging the rape culture we live in isn’t just about creating better outcomes for boys. It’s also about recognising the significant impact this culture has on girls. In 2016, a searing first-person account of abuse and its aftermath appeared on the news and media website Inquisitr. In a piece titled ‘One Woman’s Collision with Rape Culture on the Path to Greatness’, journalist Caitlin Johnstone recounted the testimony of a young female swimmer whose career was thwarted because of the sexual trauma inflicted on her by one of her male teammates. Over the course of a few weeks, the teenaged swimmer was continually harassed and physically assaulted by him. She recalls him pinning down her body with his in a hotel room after an out-of-town swim meet; pressing her up against a car and forcing a kiss on her; even pulling her bathing suit down to the laughter of other teammates, until one of them urged him to stop before telling her not to cry because ‘it’s not a big deal’.

  The young woman’s complaints were downplayed, first by her friend and then by her coach. The latter told her, ‘don’t make waves here’ because ‘we need to keep the team together’. Her performances in the pool grew worse. She placed badly at nationals. She started to miss more and more practices, until one day she just quit.

  Commenting on Brock Turner’s case on one of my Facebook posts, a woman named Louisa Curry sharply observed, ‘I see a pattern emerging in rape culture that suggests women have a past, while men have a potential.’ As a community, we are urged to think of the futures of these young boys and men, to see their crimes not as conscious choices but simply the unfortunate outcomes of living in a world in which girls continue to be temptresses and jezebels and boys continue to be boys. It is not choice that undoes these young men, but circumstance. We might now call it the Brock Turner treatment, though of course it’s a practice that precedes the handing down of a paltry six-month prison sentence to a rapist who knows how to swim good. Like Turner, the Steubenville rapists were also spoken of in terms of their ‘promising’ futures. Roman Polanksi, who drugged and raped a thirteen-year-old girl more than forty years ago and then fled America after pleading guilty, has been defended by hundreds of his industry peers; his ‘art’ is not only heralded but supported, consumed and financially rewarded. Schoolboys in Australia are routinely excused as having just done ‘what boys do’ when they perpetrate acts of violence against their female peers, like stealing their intimate photographs and sharing them in repulsive, predatory networks.

  And yet, what of the promising futures of these girls and women? The world is awash with women who would have bloomed into something magnificent had they not, as Caitlin Johnstone put it, ‘collided with rape culture’. But this collision does occur, and it continues to do so at alarming levels because we are yet to reach a point where the promising futures of young girls are considered every bit as important and precious as the promising futures of young boys.

  It is not the job of women to dutifully absorb the collisions men force on their lives. These acts of harm and violence are not casual mistakes men should be forgiven for making on their ascent to the top. They are the barriers that can so easily prevent women from living up to the potential they once had.

  In her interview with Johnstone, the anonymous swimmer issued a call to arms.

  What I am proposing here is that we make women a big deal.

  I want to know how many other women who were destined to win a medal at the Olympics didn’t because someone took the wind out of her sails, robbed her of her spirit, and removed her drive for greatness. I want to know how many women out there didn’t compose that song, or write that screenplay, or publish that book. I want to know how many women didn’t finish that degree, or get to hang that painting in an art gallery.

  I want to know what this world could be like if women got to be really fucking big deals.

  When people talk about rape and consent, who is it that they choose to make ‘a big deal’ in that equation? Almost inevitably, it turns out to be the boys and men who perpetrate violence within a rape culture and are supported at every turn to escape the consequences. And when young boys see these conversations being had, when they see members of the public, their fathers, their uncles, their teachers, famous men they admire and perhaps have aspirations to one day be, like, talking about ‘liars’ and ‘sluts’ who stitch up good blokes because they woke up with a case of buyer’s remorse and, besides, she consented, then what they hear yet again is that men are the ones entitled to decide the terms of reference for sexual interaction, and ‘indiscretions’ are mistakes all young men are entitled to make at least once on their journey through life. As the complainant at the centre of the Turner rape trial wrote in her victim impact statement, ‘We should not create a culture that suggests we learn that rape is wrong through trial and error.’

  We should be focusing instead on making a world in which women get to be considered just as big a fucking deal as men. But that world should also be one in which the scope of what a ‘big deal’ means for men isn’t confined to restrictive, toxic ideals of masculinity that cause nothing but harm.

  It is essential that we give boys something better than the excuses so routinely offered to them and that we demand more from them than the laziness these stereotypes reinforce. Women’s bodies are still being used as the conduit for men’s reckoning with each other. What does it say about certain expressions of masculinity that colluding in the assault of women—even just by way of intentional sexual trickery—can be used as a pathway to male bonding? And what does it say about us as a society that we make it so easy for this to not only happen, but to be rigorously defended as an essential part of their laddish identities?

  Boys will be boys.

  These are challenges that we must take on as a society if we want to prevent our daughters’ lives being derailed by rape. But these are also the realities we must face if we want to prevent our sons being the ones who rape them.

  For the sake of them all, we need to fix this now.

  12

  WITCH HUNT

  People’s lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused—life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?

  So tweeted President Donald Trump at the start of 2018. His tweet was in response to the resignation of White House Staff Secretary, Rob Porter, who had been accused by at least two women of spousal abuse beginning a
t least as far back as 2003. One of those women, Jennifer Willoughby, filed for an emergency protection order against him in 2010. In a blog post written in April 2017, Willoughby described the abuse she alleged she suffered in her marriage to Porter, saying, ‘The first time he called me a “fucking bitch” was on our honeymoon. (I found out years later he had kicked his first wife on theirs.) . . . He belittled my intelligence and destroyed my confidence . . . in my home, the abuse was insidious. The threats were personal. The terror was real.’

  More than a decade earlier, Porter’s first wife, Colbie Holderness, had taken photographs of a black eye she says Porter inflicted on her when they were holidaying in Florence. Over the subsequent years, she spoke to family, friends, clergy and even the FBI about the abuse. In fact, the FBI spoke to both Willoughby and Holderness about Porter when the Trump Administration took office, because White House staff members all require security clearance. That it was proving difficult for Porter to obtain his was apparently not considered an issue by the people he ultimately ended up working for. After the allegations were made public (but before Porter resigned), the White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, said in a statement, ‘He is a friend, a confidante and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him.’ He went further, calling Porter ‘a man of true integrity and honour and I can’t say enough good things about him’.

  After Porter’s resignation, Trump—who repeatedly claimed throughout his presidential campaign that ‘nobody respects women more than Donald Trump’—told reporters, ‘He . . . says he’s innocent. And I think you have to remember that . . . we absolutely wish him well, he did a very good job when he was at the White House.’

  These attitudes are not uncommon. Far from the accepted belief that unfounded allegations will ruin a man’s career—that indeed, as Trump tweeted, ‘there is no recovery for someone falsely accused’—the exact opposite is true. Men’s careers recover all the time following accusations of abuse and/or sexual violence against women. Hell, men’s careers recover following convictions for these things. Male power has always been valued and protected more than women’s bodies, no matter what level of abuse they may have been accused of. As Dahlia Lithwick wrote of Porter in a piece for Slate on 8 February 2018, ‘Taken together, all the grown-ups in the room protected, privileged, and covered for Rob Porter despite everything they knew about his pattern of abuse, because his career was important to them.’

  In the wake of #MeToo, paranoia about women organising to ‘take down men’ has been at an all-time high. The idea that feminists began organising decades ago to quietly stage the world’s slowest moving coup against men is laughable, but it seems this is still far easier for some people to believe than the alternative: that women have suffered sexual assault, harassment and physical abuse as a matter of course throughout history, and that men have largely been supported to get away with it.

  So, here is an incomplete list of men who have either been accused or convicted of various crimes against women and a description of the impact these accusations had on their careers. I make no judgments either way about the truth of these allegations. I have just tried to lay the circumstances out as they occurred.

  Please note: I understand this list could be significantly longer, but I have chosen a selection that I feel adequately represents the issue.

  Casey Affleck: In 2010, two of Affleck’s former colleagues filed civil lawsuits against him after working with him on the set of I’m Still Here. One of the women alleged Affleck had made ‘unwanted and unwelcome sexual advances’ at work, while the other said the actor had snuck into her bed, caressed her back and then later verbally attacked her for refusing his advances. The civil suits came to the public’s attention in 2016, while Affleck was on the publicity trail for his role in Manchester by the Sea. Affleck went on to win ten major awards, including an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Actor. At the time of writing, he has two movies and a TV miniseries in production.

  Roger Ailes: Ailes died in 2017, but his twenty-year career at Fox News (part of which was spent as the network’s chairman) was plagued by allegations of sexual harassment. At least four female journalists went public in 2016 with stories about their former boss, whose alleged harassment had been well known to network executives over the previous two decades. Ailes resigned from Fox News and went on to become a key media adviser on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, helping the candidate to prepare for the first of his presidential debates with Hillary Clinton.

  Woody Allen: In 1992, Allen was publicly accused of molesting his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow. The allegations were repeated over the years, including by Dylan herself in 2017. In addition, Mariel Hemingway (who made her film debut in 1979 as the girlfriend of Allen’s character in Manhattan—she was sixteen, he was forty-four) revealed in 2015 that she was subjected to unwanted romantic attention from Allen after the movie’s completion. Despite this, Allen has never had difficulty attracting A-list stars to appear in his movies (although more are turning their backs on him now that #MeToo has become so prominent). In 1996, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America, and in 2014, he was honoured with the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Golden Globes.

  Alec Baldwin: In 2007, Baldwin left a voicemail message on his daughter’s phone in which he referred to her as a ‘rude, thoughtless pig’ without ‘brains or decency’. Ireland Baldwin was eleven years old at the time. In 2017, Baldwin admitted he had bullied women in the past and behaved in ‘a very sexist way’. Baldwin made the comments at the Paley Center for Media, where he was being honoured for his ‘distinguished career and supportive efforts for the organization’s educational initiatives’. In 2018, Baldwin published a series of tweets in which he defended Woody Allen and inferred that Dylan Farrow was a liar.

  Dayne Beams: In 2010, the AFL player was questioned by police over sexual assault allegations following that year’s grand final. No charges were laid. In 2018, he stepped down as captain of the Brisbane Lions after his father’s death.

  Nathan Bock: In 2009, when Bock played AFL for the Adelaide Crows, he admitted to assaulting his girlfriend outside a city nightclub. He was put on ‘indefinite suspension’ by club officials, but the suspension was lifted one week later when the team was due to play Geelong. In round 17 of that year, he was awarded the Showdown Medal for the player judged ‘best on ground’ in the game played between the Crows and Port Power. Less than a year later, the newly formed Gold Coast Suns lured him to Queensland with the offer of a significantly higher salary package. In 2011, he received a two-match suspension for leaking information to a friend and two family members that assisted them in bet placing, meaning his punishment for hurting the gambling industry was twice what he received for hurting a woman. After his retirement, he moved into a coaching role.

  Marlon Brando: In the 1972 movie Last Tango In Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando conspired to film a graphic rape scene without the knowledge or consent of the lead actress, Maria Schneider. Although Schneider wasn’t actually raped by Brando, the scene itself wasn’t in the script and it was deliberately kept from her. Bertolucci said he and Brando had come up with the idea the morning before shooting, and hadn’t told Schneider because the director ‘wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress’. Schneider was nineteen at the time; Brando was forty-eight. In 1999, Time magazine named him as one of its 100 Most Important People of the Century. In 2005, Forbes revealed he was one of the highest-earning deceased celebrities of that year.

  Richard Branson: In October 2017, a woman named Antonia Jenae named Branson in a #MeToo post as having ‘motorboated’ her (that is to say, buried his face between her breasts and rapidly shook it back and forth) without her consent during a private party in 2010 on his property, Necker Island. Jenae was a back-up singer for Joss Stone, and said that Branson had earlier asked her to show him her breasts. Stone has confirmed she recalls the incident. In 2018, as Branson’s company Virgin Galactic continued
testing rocket flights with the eventual plan to take tourists into space, it was estimated the mogul had a net worth of US$5 billion.

  Josh Brolin: In 2004, the actor was charged with spousal battery after his wife of four months, the actress Diane Lane, called police and said he had hit her. She later declined to press charges. In 2009, he was nominated for an Academy Award.

  Chris Brown: The night before the 2009 Grammys ceremony, Brown assaulted his then girlfriend, Rihanna, in an attack that left the superstar with a split lip, facial bruises and a black eye. Brown pled guilty to felony assault and was put on five years’ probation and sentenced to six months of community service (which he didn’t complete). Both Brown and Rihanna had been due to perform at the awards ceremony. It appeared that Brown was blacklisted for a while, but in 2012 he was invited to perform at the ceremony once again to stage his ‘comeback’. This was the same year he was awarded Best R&B album for his record, F.A.M.E. He has been nominated numerous times since. In the intervening years, he’s faced other allegations of violence against women, including punching one woman in the face in a Las Vegas nightclub and threatening another with a gun. In 2017, he released a documentary called Chris Brown: Welcome to My Life in which he appears to blame Rihanna for his attack against her. His net worth is approximately US$30 million.