A Man's Open Letter To The Abusive, Powerful Men In Our Society | The Odyssey Online
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Politics and Activism

A Man's Open Letter To The Abusive, Powerful Men In Our Society

Your own short-term pleasures have long-term consequences on your fellow gender.

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A Man's Open Letter To The Abusive, Powerful Men In Our Society
Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash

Humanly, I would write this article to wish the worst, possible harms against you all, but I see no point in writing with a lack of judgment which would be looked upon years later with embarrassment. I'm thinking of this article just like all my other articles with the same question: "How would an employer look at this?"

Whether the employer is a man or a woman is not relevant to me, but I mostly refrained from writing any inflammatory nonsense and decided to do the exact opposite and give you all credit for how your behavior affected society and me. That does not mean that I will not write with an angry tone.

So, to Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Roy Moore, Louis C. K., Bill O'Reilly, and all the other old, powerful men who have sexually abused their power, I want to congratulate you all for the dramatic, societal consequences caused by your little fun in treating the women (and men) around you like sexual objects.

I want to congratulate you all for being directly responsible for the entrenching division between men and women. You have made life hard for women because now they think that every man is a sexual predator and you have made life hard for men because now they think that every woman is going think that they are sexual predators.

Since I am naturally shy, it was always ingrained within me not to sexually put my hands or my body on anyone or stare lustfully at her breasts or her body, but I am not immune from this paranoia you created. I fear that every single unintentional action or accident would lead to a misunderstanding and be used against me.

That is why I have carefully watched my every footstep, checked my humor to avoid misfiring any edgy, tasteless jokes, and averted my eyes to avoid staring by reducing them into split-second glances. I have avoided innocently flirting with women and even complimenting them.

Of course, I was already doing my best to avoid all of these acts, but now I see no point in doing them. As I have always done, I talk to women in cold, stoic, business-like conversations, the same way I talk to men.

Now, because of your antics, I can no longer feel attracted to women and I am not looking forward to any loving relationships, even if a woman asks. If I was not already feeling like I should not approach a woman because I might be misinterpreted for bothering her (at least) or harassing her (at worst), then my fears have increased tenfold and I have given you all credit for that.

All of the problems like sexual harassment that occur in this country that I do not usually think about are now occupying my mind every single day. Even though I live in a US state where even women tower over me, your actions would still not exempt me from being portrayed as this imposing monster, which would be more insulting to me that if I actually were to be more "well-built."

Your actions have convinced me to probably never have children because I am only guaranteeing them a world of exploitation and misery. If it is a girl, then she would grow up to become everybody's play-thing and will always be treated as such. If it is a boy, then no matter how respectful he is to women, he might still be considered a possible creep and he would spend the rest of his life justifying what makes him separate from a small collection of powerful men who could care less if he existed or not.

You have made me ashamed of who I am, simply because I belong to the same gender as all of you. It is almost as though you all have become de facto representatives of my gender, even though none of what any of you did benefited me whatsoever. It may have benefited ALL OF YOU at the expense of the women you all physically objectified.

By default, you all have been propped up as a microcosm of what all men are and yet I do not even exist to you except as statistical data.

If I were to directly talk to each of all of you man-to-man, then I will tell you the one thing I will NOT give you credit for: actually representing me.

You were never there for me. You never paid for my speech therapy sessions. You never helped me when I was bullied and teased by my peers in school or in the neighborhood. You never took me on vacation and displayed to me the beautiful landscapes of the Florida Keys. You never became a father figure to me when my real father left when I was 15. You never taught me to draw and explore my creativity.

You never practiced driving with me to get my driver's license. You never helped my mother and I move from Florida to New Jersey after I graduated from high school. You never paid for the tuitions for my community college and my university. You never got me a job working for you.

You never told me that I was good-looking and that I could date any woman I wanted if I just work at earning her love. You sure as hell never told me how to treat a woman with respect like any man should.

You never told me that I was smart and that I should continue my studies. You never mentored me and given me a legitimate reason to respect you. You never told me that it was okay to make mistakes, so long as I learn from them. You never made me feel like I possessed value and worth, and that my disability did not matter.

You are not counseling me and convincing me that life is wonderful and worth living. You never made me feel like I had any control over my own life and that the world was my studio. You never laughed at my jokes. You never patted me on my shoulder for any of my accomplishments.

You never listened to me when I needed advice. You never used your privilege to enable me to explore my creative or academic interests.

And yet, I still have to answer for what all of you have done.

This may be the greatest personal insult directed at me, which is the fact that I have to be associated with a group of creepy, powerful assholes, even though they never made an impact on my life that they are influencing. I will give you all credit for having less honor, dignity, and integrity than all of the male mentors in my life.

Just to be clear, do not think that this letter comes from a place of sanctimony or political grand-standing, rather it comes from a place of guilt for the actions YOU committed. You have burdened me with collective responsibility because of your sexual harassment allegations in which I had no personal involvement.

I feel indirectly responsible for the sufferings of Rose McGowan, Selma Hayek, and all the other actresses and women who have come forward.

Because I majored in an academic field dominated by women and because I'm writing for an online magazine group also dominated by women, I feel the incredibly high expectations that have been placed upon me to be one of the "good men."

Although I was never directly told that, I have been tempted to tell all of them that I am not a "good man," because I never claimed to be one because I am filled with imperfections just like any other human being, male or female. To quote my previous article, I am not chivalrous because I am not a knight in shining armor, but I am also no monster. I give credit to you all for having this burden being placed upon me.

I just want to be an ordinary person without feeling scrutinized, without having to answer for what my gender has done. I just want to treat women the same way I treat men like I always had. I do not want all this expectation being placed upon me, especially since I have no power in my daily life. I am so powerless that nothing would really change and barely anybody outside of my family would care if I died tomorrow. I never had power and you all have made life even harder for me.

I do not want the concept of gender to become a major occupier of my life. I never obsessed about my own gender until your misdeeds have been exposed, and now I do not know how I could ever address this type of problem because I do not think that denouncing this type of behavior would be enough.

That is why I have written about misogyny, in order to make myself more dignified. At the same time, what good will a few articles do to a societal problem?

If this letter did have the power to make men not abuse women in any way anymore, I would have already written this, published this, and moved on with my life, but that is not the reality I am living in. This letter is not about checking my male privilege because I have no male privilege nor have I ever had it.

All of you are the ones with the male privilege and I am giving all of you credit for taking advantage of it and exploiting it for so long.

I know I said that I will not wish anything upon any of you all in this article, but at the same time if something did happen, then do not expect me to care. If anything, since I am giving you all credit for the actions you committed, then you all deserve everything you get. The reality is that if something happened to me, none of you would care about me. To you all, I am disposable like the women you all exploited.

Although I never had interest in Hollywood, to begin with, it has become clear to me that it is not a place where intelligent minds congregate based on their love of aesthetics, rather it is a cutthroat place where people are treated like disposable props. I do not think that Hollywood will change, even if women take over.

If the women in power become abusive themselves, they have all of you to thank for providing them with that type of atmosphere. This is the type of cynical mindset you have given me, since the people I admired and respected, such as John Lasseter, have also exploited their power. I have begun to view power as nothing more than a stage of hierarchy waiting to be abused, and the abuser's gender would not matter.

There are no heroes.

This letter is not a matter of determining complexity or greyness when your negative sides came at people's expense, nor it is it about being a byproduct of a time period because the time period of focus is right now as of January 2018. I have always been wary and skeptical of everybody including myself, but now all of you have darkened and dimmed my worldview even more.

Of course, I can give you credit for all of the films that you all produced and any other achievements with your names on them, but I also give you credit for becoming cautionary tales. As far as I am concerned, meaningless apologies will not fix years of damage that you all inflicted nor will it bring back your careers.

If I had an award, a gold, metallic statuette, I would use my male aggression to smash it into thousands of pieces and present each of you your own piece. For being creeps, for giving the male gender a bad name, for making all women feel and actually be unsafe and vulnerable, for making all of the good men shoulder the catastrophe you left behind, my award goes to all of you.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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