Daily Times

Harvey Weinstein is now synonymous with the hubris that typifies powerful men in Hollywood and across society. The disgraced film mogul was so enamored with his self-imagined invincibility that he systemically preyed on young actresses for decades.

In the wake of ‘Weinsteingate’, 20 other public figures ranging from film directors to politicians — all men — stand accused of similar sexual misconduct. Are mothers raising boys wrong? Or are men genetically hardwired to treat women as playthings once they acquire power?

Feminists believe Weinstein is the poster-child of an immovable patriarchy that has long oppressed women around the world. While international law guarantees women’s economic and civic equality, men resist treating them as social equals. Meaning the express acknowledgment that men and women are identical in talent, productivity and innovation.

In her eloquent speech before the UN in 2014, avowed feminist and actor Emma Watson said “Men wield power over women. That is the crux. Feminism is about addressing the power imbalances.” This echoed the core feminist narrative that men consciously and ruthlessly use every means at their disposal to marginalise women. This narrative, however, never addresses why men wield this power in the first place.

Another vocal feminist and author, Wendy McElroy, in her largely scathing review of psychologist Roy Baumeister’s book “Is There anything Good About Men?” begrudgingly admits this thrust of argument is problematic. She muses, “Why did no musical geniuses arise from the ranks of 19th-century women, for whom musical accomplishment was a common ‘grace’? The standard answer is because they were oppressed. And, yet, black men freshly freed from slavery innovated the blues, jazz, and ragtime. Was their oppression less than that of middle-class white women?”

This question hints at differences in psychology that keep men atop the totem pole of society. McElroy writes, “As a class, men display what is statistically called a ‘long tail’: There tend to be more men at the top and at the bottom of distributions; women dominate the middle. Since the distribution holds firm for physical characteristics, such as genius and retardation, there is reasonable to assume it has some natural basis.”

In fact, there are also disproportionately more male criminals, drug addicts and suicides. The American academic Camille Paglia in 2013 posited the sociological reason for this ‘natural basis.’ Gender roles, she wrote, emerged not from “men’s hatred or enslavement of women” but from the “natural division of labor” that occurred many millennia ago when most societies were agrarian by necessity.

With men farming, hunting and defending the tribe, women could focus on the all-important task of rearing the next generation. Paglia’s think piece also exposed the underlying hypocrisy of the modern feminist movement: Its narrow focus on white-collars jobs as the barometer of gender equality. Feminists routinely bemoan the lack of women CEO’s, presidents and millionaire entrepreneurs etc.

However, no feminist talks about how there should be more female plumbers, coal miners, construction workers and janitors. Isn’t this reverse sexism conveniently disguised as the pursuit of social justice? Hence, men still do most of the dirty and dangerous work that society needs done to tick along smoothly.

Beyond the base hormonal differences, male and female attitudes to life diverge profoundly. “Maybe the differences between the genders are more about motivation than ability,” Baumeister contends. The social pressures men face to succeed in developed societies can be soul crushing. For instance, suicide stats of people aged 30 to 50 in highly hierarchical South Korea from 2010 to 2014 showed a 10-point gap between males and females.

Baumeister further argues that human culture “needs people to do dangerous or risky things, and so it offers big rewards to motivate people to take those risks. Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high payoff slots. Some men reap big rewards, and others flop, fail and even die. Most shield their women from risks and also don’t give them big rewards.”

Moreover, it is important to add post-feminism to the mix of what keeps creeps like Weinstein going. Post-feminism preaches the modern woman is emancipated, equality has been achieved and hence she is free to personalise her life choices. If she wants to sell her sex appeal, then so be it. On the flip side, this makes powerful men think these women are easy and hence fair game.

Feminists believe Weinstein is the poster-child of an immovable patriarchy that has long oppressed women around the world. While international law guarantees women’s economic and civic equality, men resist treating them as social equals

Coincidentally, this is the core argument of females in the porn industry. It is their choice to strip naked or have sex for money on video and the Internet. To them, it is the ultimate expression of feminism — Women exercising complete control over their bodies regardless of how society judges them. Self-assured music superstars like Beyoncé, Nicky Minaj and Shakira are objectified because they choose to present themselves that way, not because men force them to.

Finally, I find it supremely odd that Hollywood superstars Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow — who haven’t needed a Weinstein to pay their rent for quite some time now and were allegedly harassed by him — did not use their considerable clout to confront this issue for years until The New York Times exposé made headlines in October. It took lesser-known actors like Rose McGowan to speak out before half of female Hollywood crawled out of the woodwork.

Were Jolie and Paltrow so caught up in the trappings of success they started “thinking like men”? Did they too seek to conserve the status quo at all cost? If so, both enabled the many Weinsteins of Hollywood by reason of willful ignorance. Weinsteingate to me reinforces the thesis that human nature always trumps morality. It appears success desensitises both genders to the dark crevices of their industry.

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance journalist

Published in Daily Times, November 18^th 2017.