Why Strong Women Trigger so Many Men

By a show of hands, how many strong, independent, outspoken women have been called a man-hater? Have you? If so, actually, hit the thumbs up. Let's do that. If you are a woman who dares to speak about many of the injustices and inequalities in our society and you've been called a man-hater, let me know. Hit the thumbs up. And now let me ask, how many men who are outspoken about the issues of the toxic patriarchy and the inequalities, how many of you have been called a man-hater? I bet nobody's raising their hand. So I am fortunate, let me turn a negative into a positive, I am fortunate that by sharing my life and my work on YouTube, I get to hear a lot of different, um, let's call them opinions, insults, all kinds of things. And I'm fortunate, I'm going to turn that around and say that I'm fortunate in that what happens to me on YouTube is just representative of what happens to women every single day in this world, right? And so while a lot of you, when I make videos like this, say, don't let it get to you, why do you even talk about it? Don't give them steam. I look at it differently. I say this is an opportunity, another opportunity for me to shed light on the important things that affect every woman in America and around the world. So when I talk about these things, it's not that I, you know, need to vent or get over it, whatever, you know, it's that I get to use my experience here in the public eye and able to talk about the bigger issues because what happens to me isn't, it doesn't, isn't in a vacuum. You know, I don't hear these insults lobbed at me every day. It's not like it's just me. It's not that I'm unique. It's what happens to every woman, those especially who speak out every day in America. So I was kind of caught off guard a little bit this week. I posted a meme on my, used to be the fan club. It's Carolyn, it's Carolyn's RV Life Friendly Nation on Facebook. I posted a meme that said the greatest, something like the greatest thing a woman can do is learn that she doesn't need a man. I was really surprised that I got a couple of man-hating comments from people in this club. I assumed everybody who follows me kind of knows where I stand on women empowerment and women independence. And that meme, I mean, who's, who could get offended by that? Anyway, I also even put a disclaimer and said vice versa, you know, that, but people didn't see that. You know, my, my, my whole mission here is to teach women that we can be independent. We can do things on our own and we don't have to buy into this dialogue or this lie that women are only half a person if they're not with a man or that they can't do things on their own. You know, and that doesn't mean who's going to change your brakes. What that means that I don't need a man is that I don't need a man to help me figure out that I can go to a shop and pay to get my brakes done. That doesn't mean that I need a man to help me feel safe. That means that I am powerful and independent and industrious enough to be able to figure out where I need to go to get the things I need. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole about there's more to that about how, you know, if more women were doing brakes, that would be awesome. But there's a lot of reasons women don't get into auto repair, but that's a whole other issue. So, but the man hating thing, I get it a lot. Many of you get it a lot. And I want to talk about that today. What does it mean? What, when I talk about the issues that face not only women, but really everybody. But when I talk about this, am I really man hating? Am I a man hater? Do I really deep down hate men? And I'm going to talk about what that means today to be a man hater, to be called a man hater and to be a woman who speaks out. So I want to start with Thelma and Louise. How many of you seen Thelma and Louise? When that movie came out, the everyone involved was just shocked at the backlash over the movie being called a man hating movie. Oh my God. They were horrible man haters. If you haven't seen the movie, a couple of spoil alerts here. It's a movie about one woman who's in an abusive relationship and they, two friends go off for the weekend and they're not young, perky, bouncy, you know, Gina Davis is the younger of the two, but Susan Sarandon is, you know, kind of been around. She's, she's, she's not, she's on the, especially as far as Hollywood is concerned, you know, the middle-aged side of women and they go off on a wild weekend. One of them gets raped and the movie is about them being on the run basically after that. What makes that movie a man hating movie? Is it the fact that Thelma's, or Louise, I always get them confused. The abusive husband was portrayed in such a negative light because he was an idiot, an uncaring idiot who was verbally abusive, maybe even physically for all we know. Or was it the scene in which one of them shot the rapist? Is that a man hater? Because she shot a guy who was raping her friend? Or was it the scene where they blew up the truck of the guy who had been lewd and disgusting to them over several days on the road? Or was it all three? That suddenly, a movie in which women fight back against what we deal with every single day, a story about women fighting back, triggered so many people, they were so afraid, what if every woman started doing that, that they had to call them man haters. Shut up. Stop doing that. It makes us uncomfortable. You're a man hater. It's just another way to shut us up. That movie empowered millions of us, right? And I think that was what scared people. It empowered many of us right on. Finally, women aren't the victims in movies. We're not objects. And yeah, there was violence against women, but finally, the women were fighting back. Unlike the cop shows where the woman is raped and the male cop comes and saves the day and hunts down the bad guy. Because in movies, men cause the crimes, and then men protect the women from the men who cause the crimes. But it's very rare that we see women take their own fate into their own hands, and it triggered a lot of people. The fact that that movie was called a man-hating movie is still, to this day, mind-boggling considering the decades of movies that were made that came out of Hollywood in which women were violated, murdered, beaten, raped, and objectified. The male, powerful, patriarchal Hollywood felt that victimizing women was entertainment. Yeah, think about that. All the movies we've watched our whole lives, which either, if women aren't victimized, they're objectified. Young, bouncy, tight clothes, they have to look, you know, perfect, and you know, the dumb bubble-headed beach blonde or bleach blonde. Men who made movies, men who ran Hollywood, believed that victimizing women was, they did it for entertainment. So if we live in a society in which Hollywood has trained us that women are, that victimizing women is entertainment, and that men are the ones who are the heroes, men victimize women, and then the heroic man comes and saves that woman. That's okay. But when a woman takes it into her own hands, oh, she's a hater. Let's talk about another movie, Deliverance. It took me many, many, many years to watch Deliverance because I kind of knew what it was about and I knew it would be disturbing to me. And I finally watched it, I think, in my 30s. And that scene sticks with me today. That was one of the most disturbing, horrific movie scenes I have ever seen. That, and the second for me, is Shawshank Redemption. The rape scene in that. And I have asked myself over the years, why have those two scenes been so disturbing to me that they have stuck with me for so long? Do you know why? Because we are not used to seeing men get raped. We have become so immune to women being victimized, raped, beaten, on screen, that we can't even register the thousands of times we've seen it. I can't name one off the top of my head, but yet Shawshank Redemption and Deliverance stick with me. They stick with so many of us. Because Hollywood has not made us immune, numb, to male rape. To men getting raped. So Hollywood has made us just, you know, a woman getting raped on screen, just another day. Just another day at the movies. Just another day of life. It's just the way it is. And the fact that I can think of two scenes of men getting raped and how they stuck with me tells you, male rape isn't entertainment, but female rape is. It's just entertainment. Where the guy gets to be the hero. The guy gets to be the villain and the hero. So that's the framework in which we live in. That's the framework in which all of us exist in. Movies are, you can't just say, oh that's just the movies and when we go outside of the movies it doesn't affect us. Just like, a lot of people want to say, well it's just trolling, it's just on the internet, get over it, it's not real. It is very real to the people it affects. And what we see in the movies, I mean, to deny that mass media, to deny that mass media and even advertising affects us. I mean, just look at Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson transformed from a motorcycle into a lifestyle. These things affect us. These things reflect either what's going on in society or often times even, they even determine, that's not the word I'm looking for, they even determine what society is going to do. So to say, oh that's just Hollywood and you have to ignore it, you're making too big of a deal out of this. If I'm making too big of a deal out of it, then why the backlash over Thelma and Louise being man haters when they took it into their own hands to fight back. So this is the framework under which I am working. So if we talk about a society that uses violence against women as entertainment, we have a problem. And when I talk about these issues facing women in society, inequality, objectification, dismissal, and the violence, and the sexual violence, I'm talking about a bigger system that nurtures this, that allows it to flourish. When we have a system that doesn't believe women, that dismisses women, discounts women, like rape is nothing. I mean, it's like, eh, yeah, you know what, she has sex anyway, so what difference does it make if I take it? So we have a society that just diminishes us constantly, over and over again, and when I talk about that, have you ever heard me say all men are bad? No. Have you even heard me say most men are bad? No. What you hear from me, and I want the men who think I'm a man hater and the women especially to pay attention to this, I'm talking about a bigger system, a patriarchal system of hyper toxic masculinity that hurts all of us. It hurts every single one of us. It's this hyper masculine entitlement. We are entitled to the planet. We are entitled, I think about the big redwoods in California all the time, and how a hundred years ago, you know, who cares that these trees took a thousand years to build, to grow? We need them. We want them. And just chop them down. This entitlement that whatever we see, whether it be trees, whether it be land that we're going to steal from the natives, or whether it be a woman's body or her attention, it's ours. We have a right to it. We're entitled to it. That's what the patriarchy teaches us, all of us. It teaches men that, and it teaches women that. That white male powerful people have a right to whatever they want. Look at the rich people in this country. Look at the rich CEOs who think that it's their right to earn billions while their workers have to work two jobs just to put food on the table. This patriarchal system affects all of us. It's not just women. Inequality affects all of us. Imagine you're married, you have a young kid, and you, the husband, want to stay home and raise the kid, and the wife wants to go to work, but she earns 78 cents to the dollar. So it doesn't make sense for her to go out into the workforce. Can't get by on her 78 cents to the dollar. When we are raped, when we are molested by our parents, by our fathers, it affects every relationship we have for the rest of our lives. That affects you too, as a man. Maybe you love someone who has intimacy issues, who can't get close. When there is inequality, none of us are equal. None of us thrive. This is, when I talk about these issues of society, I'm not blaming you as an individual man. I'm blaming a bigger system that allows this to keep going on. And the only way we can change it is by talking about it. So I wonder, when I talk about these issues, and I've never said all men, I've never said some men even, or maybe I have said some men, I've never said many men, most men. But the fact is, most crimes against women, most violent crimes, sexual crimes against women are committed by men. That's a fact. Am I supposed to tiptoe around that, pretend it's not true? Say, you know, ease your poor ego, you know? Here I am, multiple times, victimized sexually by men, in other ways. And I'm supposed to make you feel okay about that? Because by talking about it, like Thelma and Louise, taking control of my own situation, determining my own destiny, I'm a man-hater, just like Thelma and Louise, right? Because I'm supposed to wait for a man to save me. Is that it? I'm not supposed to talk about it. I'm supposed to just toe the line, put on your makeup, lose the weight, look the way you're supposed to look, shut up, be nice, and a man will come along and save you. Is that it? So my question to you is, why are you getting triggered? When I talk about the bigger issues facing our society, and men, and women, especially women, especially since the Me Too movement, we see that we have been the silent majority for far too long, but why are you getting triggered? Maybe you've got your own abuse or violence that you haven't dealt with. Is that it? That you've also been a victim, and you just haven't worked through that yet? You haven't done all the work, and so it's triggering something in you? You're seeing me work through my trauma, and maybe you're still unhappy and you can't figure out why? Is that it? Or are you one of the nice guys? So I hear that. You know, there's a lot of nice guys out there. I'm one of the nice guys. You know, you hate men, and I'm sick of you talking about all men. I'm not all men. Okay? Yes, you're right. I understand that, and I've said that. There are many, many wonderful, great men out there, but guess what? You have to be more than that. Being a nice guy isn't enough. If you're a nice guy who sits there politely while your friend shows you naked pictures of his girlfriend or his wife, or even a sex video, or talks about a colleague or a co-worker, or, man, I'd like to get with that, and doesn't say anything, you're part of the problem. Being a nice guy is not enough. Unless you're standing up against the patriarchy to protect the weakest in that, I mean, not that I'm weak, but you know what I mean, the victims, unless you're standing up to that, you're part of the problem. Being a nice guy is not enough. Being a nice woman is not enough. A couple, we had a conversation on the Friendly Nation. Women and men need to raise their voice to be good, respectable, to listen to women, to understand boundaries, to ask for consent. It takes all of us to help all of us. We can't just dismiss it as 50% of the society is victimized and dismissed and undervalued and oh well, oh well, we need to shut up about it, because talking about it is not going to help. No, we need to talk about it and we need to stand up. Being a nice guy is not enough. You're part of the problem unless you're speaking up. Unless you're telling your friend, dude, no, that is not cool. I don't want to see naked pictures of your girlfriend. That is disgusting. How dare you victimize her and treat her that way. Yeah, that's what you need to be doing. Not laughing it off. Boys will be boys, locker room talk. Being a nice guy is not enough. And third, are you getting triggered by me talking about this because there's something in your own past you don't want to face? I'm writing my story and I'm being forced to look back at my experiences through a new lens. We didn't have the Me Too movement when I was 18. And I am seeing so many of my experiences through a new lens. And it's beyond troubling. Beyond troubling. That's a whole other story away from my book. But are you having the same issue? Are you getting triggered because you either don't want to or can't or are unwilling to look back at every single encounter you've ever had with a woman and ask yourself, did I behave the best way I could have in that situation? That one girl who was too drunk to hold her eyes open? Maybe I shouldn't have done that. How many of you have situations like that? I'm sure most of you don't. But maybe that's another reason some of you are getting triggered. How many of you have seen Promising Young Woman? Yeah, I had a conversation about that with someone the other day and I kept saying, it's fiction, it's fiction. And she was like, yeah, no, it's based on reality. You know that happens. And unfortunately, yeah, I do. I do know that happens. So maybe that's why you're getting triggered. Being a good guy is not enough. You need to be proactive or at least speak up against injustices that you see and inequality that you see. If you know a coworker is making less than you, go back to the other thing. But being a good guy also means reflecting upon every sexual encounter, every relationship you've ever had with a woman or a man and saying, did I act respectfully and appropriately in every situation I've ever had with a woman? Did I have sex with a woman when she was unconscious? And I'm not saying that you need to like, you know, go turn yourself into the cops. I'm just saying that we can't grow and evolve and begin to understand what's going on for half of our society until we do the hard work. So maybe you're getting triggered and calling me a man hater because you don't want to face your own. I've faced it. I've been victimized more times than you can imagine because my young life started out that way and it sets a pattern for what I attracted. Are you one of those guys who is attracted to someone like me? Being a good guy, I'm going to keep saying it, is not enough. You need to reflect. If you haven't already looked at every relationship, every sexual encounter you've ever had and asked yourself, was that consensual? Did I behave like I would want someone to behave with my daughter or my mother or my sister or my wife? And you need to do that hard work. If the answer is no, if the answer is, oh my God, oh man, yeah, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Okay, that's a starting point. That's a place that you can start to maybe understand what we have gone through. It's not just sex when it's taken from you. It's not just sex when you're manipulated into it. It's not just sex when you're the only one who is too out of it to consent. I mean, yeah, sure. You know what? There are times for sure. I'm not going to say that there are times when both people are so completely drunk, whatever. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the times when something else is going on, let's just say that. So that's it. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about hating all men. I'm not talking about hating individual men unless they're guilty of a crime. I'm talking about a bigger system that allows crimes and inequality and objectification of women to thrive. And unless we all take action and look at ourselves honestly, it's not going to change. And unless it changes, none of us are ever going to be free and equal. This is not going to be an equitable society for any of us until all women are treated with respect. And we shouldn't have to worry about walking down the street and being harassed. We shouldn't have to worry that if we drink too much, we're going to get raped. Do you worry about that? You come home from the gym or you're walking down the street from the gym and you're in your bike shorts or whatever, are you worried that you're going to be harassed? Are you ever, have you ever worried? Have you ever worried once that if you go to a party and drink too much, you're going to be assaulted? If you're triggered by me talking about these things, I say look inside and find out why. Because it's not about me. It's not about me hating men. It's about something going on in you, something you don't want to look at, something you don't want to face. Maybe you're not standing up enough. Maybe you have something in your past you don't want to admit. I'm not going to stop talking about things that matter to all of us and I'm certainly not going to stop talking about what happened to me to help other women. I even heard from men who have been raped and assaulted. So it's not just women. Men have been raped and assaulted. Men are victims of the patriarchy as much as women are in very different ways. This toxic masculinity, this idea of what you're supposed to be. It just so happens that women maybe are the first ones who are able to talk about it through the Me Too movement. Or maybe because it's been more blatant. I mean, yeah, look at the movies, like I said. Alright, that's it. I'm not a man-hater. Anybody who is aware of social and societal issues knows that I'm not a man-hater and if you think I'm a man-hater, look at yourself. Because you're getting triggered by something that is within you, not about me. Thank you all so much for listening. I'll see you next time. In the meantime, be happy, be free, and be kind. I'll see you soon.