Men & Power

I’m not surprised about the weird, synchronicity in my life anymore: And I wasn’t surprised to see this piece on Andrew Huberman in New York Magazine. I kicked off the four-part series with an audit of how these men don’t interview women, and finished it with a piece about women, reputational harm and goodness—and how men are immune to assaults on their morality so long as we perceive them as powerful. And here we are. Not saying I’m psychic, but not NOT saying I’m psychic. The first piece is “Ending the Manel,” the final piece is “The Achilles Heel of Women.” From the last one:

There’s nothing more destructive in our culture than to be publicly derided as a “bad” woman—a bad mother, a bad friend, a toxic co-worker, an unfeeling boss. Of course, this is an entirely subjective measure, making it all the more terrifying to operate in the world: Who is to decide where that line of censure begins and ends? The crime of being vaguely “bad” is not codified by specific actions—it’s just a vibe. (You know, she’s a bitch, she’s unfeeling, she’s cold, she demands too much, she’s selfish, she puts herself first.) Meanwhile, the idea of goodness, you’ll note, is indelibly wrapped up with the qualities of femininity: Care. A woman who doesn’t care (enough, appropriately) is deviant, an aberration.

Meanwhile, men can do truly terrible things—things that our courts deem reprehensible. Assault, kill, embezzle, abuse. But these men are Teflon when it comes to reputational harm: We don’t really care when they misbehave, we certainly don’t send them off-stage or light their careers and legacies on fire. We only lose interest and consign them to the dung heap when we perceive them as not having any power—of being weak. You know, soft or womanly. Give me an example of a male cultural figure who we’ve truly canceled because we thought they were bad? Most of the men who went through a #MeToo reckoning who have any cultural power are fully back or well on their way, no problem. (This is not to say that I’m not for rehabilitation, remorse, and reintegration…just pointing out the extreme double standard.) I promise you that if Harvey Weinstein weren’t in prison, he’d still be making movies. Trump endures because he is literally a strongman.