Is it really a bad time to be a man?

At least US President Donald Trump seems to think so.

For those unacquainted with the Kavanaugh hearings, I suggest you take some time out to familiarise yourself with the situation. It’s a watershed moment, for, amongst many things, feminism and of course for patriarchal society. It’s a watershed moment, not just for the US but for the world in general, simply because, for better or for worse, these days the case being the latter, whatever happens in the US resonates globally. In the midst of a global movement towards right-wing populist politics, it was the election of Donald Trump in America that perhaps most significantly legitimised the right-wing populist movement, further emboldening such political forces from the UK, to Hungary to the Philippines.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh is President Trump’s nominee to fill a vacant seat of the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court, as it happens, is historically critically influential in the US. It has acted to delegitimise racial discrimination and gender discrimination in the US, it legalised gay marriages, it often stands as the final guardian of all rights enshrined in the US constitution, and of course there was this one time in the year 2000 when the US Supreme Court inexplicably (s)elected George W Bush as the President, no points for seeing how that decision of the US Supreme Court impacted the entire world, but let us not digress.

Before being officially appointed as a Judge of the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh has to be confirmed by the Senate, which is essentially a screening exercise by the US Senate’s judiciary committee and hence, the hearings. Now, as the nomination of Kavanaugh moved closer to a confirmation, alarm bells rang across the US, well specifically in Palo Alto. A psychology professor at a university there accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her as a teenager. The Senate proceeded to call the professor, Dr Christine Blasley Ford, to testify before it, before Kavanaugh could be confirmed. Ford’s testimony was powerful and credible, she didn’t have much to gain from calling out Kavanaugh, except the unwanted attention of, inter alia, allegedly credible news organisation, and Trump’s best, maybe only, friend, Fox and friend(s) at Fox News. Kavanaugh’s testimony on the other hand was aggressive, demeaning and most significantly incoherent and suspect, his entitled demeanour was as expected from a privileged white male American, who went to a prestigious private high school with its own golf course, and then went to Yale as a legacy student, which by the way is in stark contrast to his claim that he went to Yale by “bustin’ my [his] tail.” The tail bustin’ was done by his grandfather, but again, let us not digress for we are here to find out if it is indeed a bad time to be a man.

To cut a long story short, the cold hearts, if any, of the US Senate were resuscitated just enough by Dr Ford’s moving testimony to call for an FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh. Importantly, the scope of the investigation is strictly limited to the allegations by Dr Ford, lest the FBI find something else that is a murky and illegal act of a person who never gets drunk yet, paradoxically, is a self-proclaimed beer aficionado, Judge Kavanaugh.

All this while, Trump exercised unusual restraint as his nominee was battered in the court of public opinion, largely due to the testimony of Dr Ford. Of course, however, Donald Trump’s restraint has its limits and when you cross that limit, he will mock you, childishly, from a very safe distance, in a rally, in Mississippi, in a classic Trump manner. That is exactly what he did to Dr Ford. Now, it’s okay, maybe even good, for someone to be mocked by Trump, but then Trump, again speaking about this case, uncharacteristically, raised a very important question. He said, as he referred to Dr Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh, that the allegations had smeared Kavanaugh’s good family name, that his family had been terrorised, and that the man was in tatters, which paradoxically sounds like Kavanaugh was sexually assaulted. He said further that due to these hearings and other women braving the outside world to come out and tell their stories of sexual assault amidst decades of suffering brought about by entitled men, it was now a “very scary time for young men in America” and thus a bad time to be a man.

But it’s not. It was never a bad time to be a man, and it will not be a bad time to be a man for the foreseeable future, perhaps even beyond. Man, and this comes from a man, is the most privileged of species, be it a man in America, or any other country for that matter. The world, in its entirety, exists on a spectrum of patriarchal society, the intensity of patriarchy in these societies may be higher or lower depending on the time and place, but throughout history, patriarchy has sustained itself, existing in one form or another, often on the most intense end of the spectrum. Having said that, patriarchy by its very definition is a system designed to ensure the privilege of man. It is impossible, as a question of the scientific method to claim that it is a bad time to be a man, or better put, that it is not an amazing time to be a man, while patriarchy continues to exist. Maybe it’s a slightly inconvenient time to be a man, because suddenly women have found themselves, albeit extremely limitedly, with the courage to brave centuries, nay millennia, of man’s dominance, and to lay claim to their independence as an entity, by as a first step reclaiming their own bodies and calling out sexual assault. To be clear, it is not an affront on the independence of man, but just a claim against man’s usurpation of the independence of women, which of course man finds to be an inconvenient situation.

So, no, it’s not a bad time to be a man, it never was, and it will not be so for a very long time, considering Trump, being a self-admitted sexual predator, is President of the United States. As always, now is an excellent time to be a man. But Trump is right about one thing, it is a scary time for men, because for the first time in history man is finding himself being forced to answer for his privileged entitlement, with a few brave women endangering his beloved patriarchy.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2018.

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