Blaming Toxic Masculinity for Weinstein Ignores What Makes a Man

Regular Contributor Brad Slager (@MartiniShark)

It seems all anyone can talk about lately is Harvey Weinstein. Social media has been positively glutted with coverage of the fallen movie titan! This is for numerous reasons. One is that he possessed such an entrenched position that he seemed untouchable. (Ahem.) Another is that he is a figurehead of Hollywood, that social stratum that loves to tell us how to conduct our own lives. To see that industry revealed as being far more guilty of its own accusations leads to this coverage.

One of the many pathetic explanations made for his decades of satyriasis is that this is emblematic of one of our society’s supposed problems – “toxic masculinity.”  Feminists and media have hurled this charge like birdseed at a wedding, and the laughable aspect is their entreaties come off like those of the anti-gun lobby; the louder they rage the more evident it becomes they do not know their subject. A feminist hectoring men on how they need to conduct themselves holds all the import of an atheist lecturing on the nuance of the Gospels.

As a testosterone-infected male, allow me to say: Harvey Weinstein is hardly the paragon of masculinity. He’s as masculine as a plush panda toy with a vulgarity-laden voice box. He represents my gender no more than a jodhpur-adorned shepherd in the Alps, a guano farmer in French Polynesia, or a hipster in a drum circle at Burning Man. They are male all, but none is the figurehead of masculinity. Telling me Weinstein represents me in any fashion is to expose your ignorance of manhood like Harvey did with his expansive genital-shielding belly.

My favorite reaction to the decades-long sex scandal was the call for men to stand up and halt these aggressive actions on behalf of women. Oh really?!?! Funny, since feminists and the media have spent the past generation attempting to tamp down this very behavior. Men who cherish and protect women have been cast in the role of the enemy. Holding a door open for a lady has been called demeaning. Any chivalrous or traditional act is regarded as casting the female in a subservient role. Treat women as equals, and don’t pay them preferential attention, has been the lesson plan.

It has been a lesson I have long ignored. Showing a lady deferential treatment is not an aggressive social statement. Holding open doors, carrying their parcels, and aiding in ways that are helpful or polite is not the result of a sexual caste system. It is the pinnacle of positive human interaction. I gladly take items from the top shelf, and I still buy drinks for unknown women with whom I have no intention of speaking further. It is the fertilizer that nourishes humanity. I revere women, and if my actions generate an aggressive response that is more on the recipient than on me.

What the feminists and reactionaries this week calling for my intervention fail to understand; I already do look out for the ladies’ well being. That poisonous tendency I have to treat females with elevated respect means I will also step in when they are treated lowly. I have known a number of abuse victims, and I react viscerally each time. I have had altercations as a result of seeing mistreatment in my periphery. Even this week, while messaging a friend, she revealed enduring bouts of similar abuse, and I found I was practically typing with a fist.

Yet here are the intersectionalists, who have spent time demonizing my charitable acts, now commanding that I change course and take action.

PRE-WEINSTEIN: Don’t you dare treat women like damsels!
POST-WEINSTEIN: When are men going to come to the rescue?!

This would all be so very confusing, were men the type to listen to the lectures in the first place. There is a stark reality in this interaction of the sexes involving feminists. They view males as a toxic entity and thus feel the need to dictate changes and policy upon our lives, and yet if I followed every one of their dictums and commands, in the end, I’d become a neutered hamster. And they would STILL resent me, just based on my plumbing alone.

This is where the feminist agenda becomes worthy of a laugh-track. They hate men so much that they want nothing to do with us and thus have no clue what makes us operate. The result? They attribute Weinstein with alpha-male qualities. His Hitchcockian silhouette, the ever-present hapless 3-day partial beard, and his diesel engine-with-a-thrown-rod demeanor all represent a person who has largely given up on himself. His only saving grace was his professional power base, and he cloaked himself in it entirely (save for when he opened it for French Actresses in Cannes).

Weinstein is that guy in the cigar bar who relies solely on his career and net worth to exude masculinity. Too larded to actually engage in activities, when he sees other men doing things he starts braying about how he could buy all their objects in cash if he desired. Look at how Harvey acted when he was ultimately caught. He blamed his actions on his upbringing in the 60s, and on the nature of his industry. Then he kited off to Europe to evade the law and seek treatment, blaming “sex addiction.”

Utter horseshit. I have a bourbon addiction; that doesn’t mean I force myself into other people’s liquor cabinets and guzzle their Knob Creek against their will. The deflections and excuses are the acts of an impotent character. A real man would fess up, would face his accountability, and take action to repair the damage he caused, and then handle his own business.

Weinstein has acted like a privileged lout, and once exposed, he scurried with his tail tucked. Nothing about this lecher has approached manliness. To hold him up as an example while blaming my gender is an abject contradiction. It is also yet another reason not to listen to those making the accusation.