All of my life, I have been frightened and intimidated by young men when they get rowdy and rude and generally full of themselves, and most especially when they’re in groups. I know most women have been harassed and intimidated by them. And I’m sure many men and boys experience the fight or flight syndrome when they encounter gangs like that, but most won’t admit it for fear of being labeled unmanly. That’s part of toxic masculinity. It is self-perpetuating because men who don’t want to be like that are threatened if they speak out.
Some want to excuse the boys in D.C. because they were supposedly provoked. Well, that religious extremist group was terrible, no doubt about that, but that doesn’t explain or excuse the boys’ reaction to the Native American man. It was rude, disrespectful and threatening as shit. I’ve seen it before a million times. I have been threatened, humiliated, and on a few occasions assaulted and sexually abused by young men like that, and so have a lot of people.
You know, LGBTs have to deal with religious crazies quite regularly. They show up at our Pride events, and they sometimes even show up at our funerals. But we’re expected to keep our cool. These same people who are now saying these boys were “provoked” would accuse us of not respecting religious liberty if we got out of hand in the presence of religious nuts.
This behavior is not okay. It’s not “boys being boys.” They’re like that because we train them to be like that. The shits in D.C. are going to get away with it even though they were caught on camera. They’re even going to be rewarded. And in a few years, they’re going to start having kids of their own, and they’ll teach their sons to be the same way. And they’ll tell their daughters and the gentle boys to deal with it.
