There has been such a slew of bad behavior committed by men recently that I started to ponder the nature of such acts, both in the present day and over time, and why society puts up with them.
Let's start with the "merely" sexual - no one gets physically hurt but the perpetrators are just plain stupid. I'm talking about Anthony Wiener, Mark Sanford, Tiger Woods, Jesse James, Bill Clinton, Silvio Berlusconi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eliot Spitzer and every other man in the public eye (or not,) who has had dalliances and transgressions that are now all too easy to document with the preponderance of social media. What's incredible about these is the lack of memory the public seems to display. Without fail, all these men get back to their lives after a period of time, and carry on with their careers with absolutely no repercussions. Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton or Diane Feinstein had been caught texting nude pictures of themselves to someone? I can guarantee you their political careers would be over. Or how about Venus Williams having sex with 36 men or more? And she's not even married with children. Again, the public would vilify her, and her tennis (and endorsement) career would be done.
Then there are the murderers and assaulters. There are actors and athletes (and yes, Silvio Berlusconi,) who have been convicted of heinous crimes, yet who still managed to get back to making millions of dollars a year in their chosen careers, and their advertising endorsements came back. Hello - Michael Vick? I am truly disgusted by this, since the message we send is that it really doesn't matter what you did. Your prowess and sniveling public apology will see you through. Let's see what happens with Oscar Pistorius. Imagine if Maria Sharapova was caught running an illegal dog fighting ring. Really - what do you think would happen?
How about the drug takers? Any baseball player, any cyclist, and probably many other athletes you can think of. Some go down and others come up smelling like a rose. Let's just see what happens to Lance Armstrong in the long run. My bet is that at some stage he will "redeem" himself and be back.
I'll turn now to the areas of no redemption and no sympathy but which are 100% populated by men. I'm talking about rapists, child abusers, kidnappers, terrorists, mass murderers, school shooters, movie theater shooters, and corrupt political leaders. Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Osama bin Ladin, Ariel Castro, Jerry Sandusky, Charles Manson, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Adam Lanza. I could go on. Every single one of them male. Name one female that went on a shooting spree in the past one hundred years. That's right. Zero.
It would be interesting to look at all the statistics and extrapolate how much damage the male species has done to fellow humans, animals and the planet in general, and compare the results to statistics in scientific endeavors and the medical world. If you have a tumor that's malignant, you cut it out. If you have a disease or organism that is 100% likely to cause harm and even kill, what do you do?
This isn't a rant about feminism, rather a statistical look at where all the trauma, all the death, all the hurt comes from. Yes, there have been some devious and nasty women in history: Lucretia Borgia, Margaret Thatcher, Salome and Cercei Lannister (OK, she's fictional,) and yes, there are some really not very nice femakebut really, they are few and far between.
Think of a world where anyone involved in politics, movies, sports, looking after our children, was, for the most part, "good". Easy to achieve in my mind. And if the shoe was on the other foot, don't you think men would have done something by now?
Let's start with the "merely" sexual - no one gets physically hurt but the perpetrators are just plain stupid. I'm talking about Anthony Wiener, Mark Sanford, Tiger Woods, Jesse James, Bill Clinton, Silvio Berlusconi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eliot Spitzer and every other man in the public eye (or not,) who has had dalliances and transgressions that are now all too easy to document with the preponderance of social media. What's incredible about these is the lack of memory the public seems to display. Without fail, all these men get back to their lives after a period of time, and carry on with their careers with absolutely no repercussions. Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton or Diane Feinstein had been caught texting nude pictures of themselves to someone? I can guarantee you their political careers would be over. Or how about Venus Williams having sex with 36 men or more? And she's not even married with children. Again, the public would vilify her, and her tennis (and endorsement) career would be done.
Then there are the murderers and assaulters. There are actors and athletes (and yes, Silvio Berlusconi,) who have been convicted of heinous crimes, yet who still managed to get back to making millions of dollars a year in their chosen careers, and their advertising endorsements came back. Hello - Michael Vick? I am truly disgusted by this, since the message we send is that it really doesn't matter what you did. Your prowess and sniveling public apology will see you through. Let's see what happens with Oscar Pistorius. Imagine if Maria Sharapova was caught running an illegal dog fighting ring. Really - what do you think would happen?
How about the drug takers? Any baseball player, any cyclist, and probably many other athletes you can think of. Some go down and others come up smelling like a rose. Let's just see what happens to Lance Armstrong in the long run. My bet is that at some stage he will "redeem" himself and be back.
I'll turn now to the areas of no redemption and no sympathy but which are 100% populated by men. I'm talking about rapists, child abusers, kidnappers, terrorists, mass murderers, school shooters, movie theater shooters, and corrupt political leaders. Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Osama bin Ladin, Ariel Castro, Jerry Sandusky, Charles Manson, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Adam Lanza. I could go on. Every single one of them male. Name one female that went on a shooting spree in the past one hundred years. That's right. Zero.
It would be interesting to look at all the statistics and extrapolate how much damage the male species has done to fellow humans, animals and the planet in general, and compare the results to statistics in scientific endeavors and the medical world. If you have a tumor that's malignant, you cut it out. If you have a disease or organism that is 100% likely to cause harm and even kill, what do you do?
This isn't a rant about feminism, rather a statistical look at where all the trauma, all the death, all the hurt comes from. Yes, there have been some devious and nasty women in history: Lucretia Borgia, Margaret Thatcher, Salome and Cercei Lannister (OK, she's fictional,) and yes, there are some really not very nice femakebut really, they are few and far between.
Think of a world where anyone involved in politics, movies, sports, looking after our children, was, for the most part, "good". Easy to achieve in my mind. And if the shoe was on the other foot, don't you think men would have done something by now?
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