"Eight Stories of Men's Regret": The Me-Too Tell All
After Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came out about her sexual assault, the New York Times asked their male readers, "Have you ever behaved toward girls or women in ways you now regret?", and they received more than 750 responses. Some of the incidents were allegedly too much to write about in the times, however the 8 incidents that were written were still chilling.
There are accounts of men explaining how they've mistreated women from coercing them into performing acts they weren't comfortable with, to using threatening sexual language to instill fear into women just to make themselves feel powerful.
A lot of this problematic behavior came from men who are in their late 70's or 80's. It's interesting to see the behavior difference in older generations, but also interesting to see that while most of them never had to face consequences for their actions, they feel remorse. "To this day, I think of that experience with shame and regret. Those feelings come over me at unexpected times. And I’m nearly 82 years old now. I should have stopped. And I’m sure I should have apologized. I did neither. I’m sorry, Diane."
This article is a tribute to showing how much time has changed men's opinions of women. Though we have a long way to go to defeat the gender inequalities women face, we can see glimmers of hope in the future.
I understand that it is interesting to write about and that readers will want to read so it is profitable, but I wonder do these stories need to be told? Are we supposed to feel sympathy for abusers and rapists? Was the purpose of writing and publishing this, to humanize them? More powerful is to continue to publish stories of survivors that come forward, to validate their experiences so that maybe we can see a real change. I don't think time has changed men's opinions of women or men's opinion of rape. As is clearly indicated by Brock Turner and Brett Kavanaugh. The hope lies in survivors stories being validated and not silenced.
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