Toxic masculinity and sexual assault

[Rev. Rye]

Toxic Masculinity is certainly a major component into why sexual assault has become as huge a problem as it is, but I don't think it's the only factor if we're going to wonder why it happens.

To explain this, I'll tell you about a girl I used to work with at my college's Scene Shop. I say "girl" because that was generally her maturity level. She had an obsession with ducks (or "duckys" as she called them) at a level one rarely sees in women over the age of five. Half the time, she raised her pitch to sound like a small child, and I can recall hearing her call girlfriends "Mommy" on occasion. She was bisexual, of the type that wants one man to live with her, and as for women, ALL OF THEM. She liked going to titty bars, and also flirted with her female coworkers. A lot of the time, it was relatively harmless, but I can recall several times where it seemed to be crossing the line. One time, we were huddling around a stairway, waiting for the boss to give us an order, and I can recall at one point, seeing her grasping for another female coworker, and she seemed to be looking for an excuse to cop a feel from this female coworker, whether she wanted her to or not. I'm not sure if she went for the tits or ass (she may have done this on multiple occasions, and may very well have gone for either areas on separate incidents), but what I do remember is the other girl's look of terror, wondering who actually grabbed her. I wonder if she ever figured out it was the giggling girl standing behind her and looking for an excuse to do what she wanted to do. On another occasion, I heard her talking with another girl about getting topless in a car (bear in mind, by this time, she was actually the top student employee in the department). This coworker was visibly disturbed by this, cringing, but she just laughed it off, presumably playing this offer to get naked in a car off as a joke.

At the time, I thought of this as a weird and funny occurrence (especially given that she seemed to be open about her bisexuality to everyone but herself.) But now, after Harvey Weinstein turned out to be a total slimeball who raped several women and likely coerced others into doing what he wanted to do to them in exchange for possibly enhancing her career, now I start to wonder if that coworker who didn't want to get topless in a car with her might have suffered as a response. This could be reading a bit too much into it, but after looking at the Melanie Martinez accusation, I found myself realising: holy shit, if you replaced Melanie with this girl, probably the only things that would have changed are that when she's trying to butter up her conquest, she'd probably phrase it a bit more childlike, and Timothy Heller (the accuser) would probably have remarked about the rubber ducks staring at her as her friend violated her. At any rate, on her Facebook, there's a lot of stuff of her macking on her female friends (mostly in High School), and at one point, during an argument she says "fuck you" and one of her friends says "umm... please don't." A very strange thing to say.

Is that toxic masculinity at work? For this girl? Perhaps in this case, and perhaps in others, solipsism is a major factor; she didn't seem to particularly factor her girlfriends' potential reactions into whether or not she should do it. And maybe that solipsism is a big crucial factor in how toxic masculinity works (and how it enables men to just do whatever they want and not give a shit what the girl in question wants.)