For those of us who bring awareness to and fight against rape culture, our 'work environment' can be an exhausting place. Not a day goes by that I don't read or hear about something vile being done to a woman, whether that be an act of physical violence or simply the aftermath of violence exerted when strangers gather round to determine what she did to deserve it. Of course, everyone wants to believe they oppose sexual violence and harassment. Many of them bend over backwards to protest conversations about rape culture, insisting that it's a myth created by angry, opportunistic feminists who are too stupid to understand that culture (particularly the 'enlightened' culture of the west) simply cannot and does not teach anyone that rape is okay. All this blather does is perpetuate feminism's supposed hateful desire to paint all men as rapists and criminalise their behaviour.
It's an argument fiercely upheld by large swathes of people, all of whom refuse to accept the fact that there is something deeply broken about the ways masculinity - and young white masculinity in particular - can give rise to intensely toxic behaviour. You don't need to look far to find stories of how 'normal' boys and men can be drawn into collusion with each other to degrade and dehumanise women as a path to male bonding.
The latest local example of this emerged this week after Melbourne University student Eleanor Henry decided to expose a small group of her peers for engaging in vile and pathetic sexual bullying. The group of men (all fellow students at Melbourne Uni) were chatting on a private messaging thread on Facebook when talk turned to Henry. One of the men wanted to ask her out, and the others were offering him advice. The chat grew increasingly sordid, until the main offender suggested his friend "Bring her to Thailand. We need a bike."
As *hilarious* as jokes about a group of men passing a single woman around like a piece of property are (which is to say, not at all), Henry would have been none the wiser had one of the chat participants not decided to add her to the thread. (It's been reported that this was an accident, but it was likely a very deliberate move - not only is it very difficult to mistakenly add anyone to a chat thread via Facebook's settings, but this particular practice is becoming more commonplace as a form of online bullying.) Henry was quickly removed, but Facebook's message settings allowed her to retain all content posted up to that point. Understandably, she was horrified to discover that men she attended school with were either blithely making (or at least laughing along with) jokes about sourcing naked photographs of her and all 'having a ride' on her. She responded by doing what more and more women are being empowered to do now - she documented the conversation in images and shared them on her own Facebook page for their shared community to see.
In response to her post, the main offender contacted her to instruct her that "all that was said in a joke" and that "I don't think posting something like that publicly will do anyone any good". He then told her it was "unnecessary to build a scene" because "when someone from outside sees stuff like that it looks wrong". Even beyond that, in this mythical rape culture that we don't live in, members of the public have been quick to turn on Henry. What did she expect, with those photographs posted on her Facebook wall? What kind of woman dresses like that and then gets mad when she's sexualised by men? Why didn't she just ignore these messages, leave the group and get over it?
Why do these bitches always try and make things so difficult for those boys who are just being boys?
Because it's just a joke, you see. These kinds of boys don't mean it when they laugh about violating women. They don't mean it when they post memes on men's only Facebook pages joking about beating women up, or share actual videos and photographs of women engaged in sex acts with them so that other men can enjoy watching. Those men at ADFA - they didn't mean it when they illegally recorded their friend having sex with one of their fellow female colleagues. The boys at Steubenville didn't mean it when they dragged an unconscious girl from party to party, raping her and then urinating on her and filming the whole thing for a laugh. The boys and men sharing photographs of underage schoolgirls with each other, they didn't mean to violate these girls' privacy. They don't mean it when they rally online troops against women who dare to stand up against them, tagging all their friends and swooping in to demonstrate what happens when mouthy women fight back. Donald Trump didn't mean it when he joked about using his star power to sexually assault women. This is just locker room banter, boys being boys.
In Henry's case, the impulse to add her to that group chat wasn't just about boys being boys. It was about boys feeling so emboldened by those codes of masculinity that they can 'be boys' openly in front of the target of their discussion, and there's not a damn thing she can do about it.
Or so they think.
If boys and men require the presence of a woman's degraded body, whether literal or figurative, to banter with each other and indulge in their most boyish of urges, then tell me again how rape culture is a myth? Tell me again why girls and women shouldn't exercise caution or complain about the way these boys and men treat them or make them feel. Tell me why we should laugh along and accept that it's all just jolly good fun and the real crime here would be to put an end to it with our hysterical female overreactions and inability to just lie back and take it. In Henry's case, the most egregious comments all came from the same man. Yet no one pushed back against it even though one of the responses suggested at least a vague discomfort.
Is this what boys being boys is really about? Laughing along at the degradation of women, because being the lone dissenter in that locker room full of other 'bantering' men is too big of a social risk.
Well, they better watch out. This might just be a case of boys being boys. But pushing back against that bullshit? That's rapidly starting to become a case of girls being girls. And this time, there really isn't a damn thing anyone can do to stop that.