Being a man, how do you feel about the sudden surge in news of sexual assault by men?

I get that the hope of things like #metoo is that men reconsider how they act on their environment and stuff but I don't condone that shit anyway and some stuff you just can't do a whole lot about..

For me there are three categories :

First of all : anti-social assholes who catcall women in the street for whom my opinion is quite simple , these are not regular dudes , they have serious mental health issues. Experience consequences more often than you may think , never learn.

Secondly: Relatively normal guys in certain environments, the construction worker who whistle's cause it's a stereotype, frat guy under peer pressure , the kid who saw a guy squeeze a ladies butt in a movie. These are the people you can influence ( although of course not everyone is in your circle of influence ) and they are often even aware their have internalized stuff that's wrong and try to work on it. Group that gets the most attention.

Third : guys who fall into the #metoo category. Even when they are aware that large parts of society don't approve they put up a veneer for the rest of us they just choose to pretend it's fine and make sure they have people around them who have an interest in them getting to keep doing what they are doing.

I know culturally speaking this behavior has been accepted more from men than women ( women in power are often under more scrutiny in general even), but the tendency to abuse power over others like Harvey Weinstein is not a inherently or exclusively male trait to me and In my mind these people get away with it because they are powerful not because they are men.

They as men may have had an advantage when it comes to getting said power, but in many of the cases that hit the media cycle recently men and women in the industry alike ( not talking about the the victims mind you ) didn't do enough to call it out or stop it, which had to do with them being depended on these figures. They exist outside the wider cultural normalization of the second category, they can be gay ,they can be pedophiles, as long as they have enough power and the others have an interest in their continued success ( see Roy Moore, where it's actually happening in the open ).

/r/AskMen Thread