Before we get to Nate Parker, let's talk about the article below which describes how how toxic masculinity can get "good men" to circle the wagons around other men who have done questionable or even morally reprehensible things
DOCUMENTARY ON AMERICAN MASCULINITY
There's a documentary on Netflix that talks about American Masculinity called "The Mask You Live In" Among many other things this documentary men talk about how Toxic Masculinity says you never rat out your brothers. I think we've all seen demonstrations of this in person. But on a white television show called "How I Met Your Mother" this behavior had a name called "The Bro Code" And one of the things "The Bro Code" called for was never telling a woman that your male buddy was running a con job on her of sorts. Young men, boys really, have been adhering to this "Bro Code," whatever they choose to name it, for decades.
There are variations on this "Bro Code" that have nothing to do with picking women up at the bar etc. There were been a number of black gangster movies in 1980s and 1990s that showed young men proving they were men to other men by keeping their silence about things quasi or very illegal. One of the methods by which some men keep other men silent is by insinuating that a man is less masculine for letting something bother him in an emotional way, enough to report activity X, to begin with.
This form of emotional blackmail seems to be effective with young men trying to prove they are indeed men within toxic masculinity whether a man is black, latino, white, poor, middle class, or rich. Just one symptom of toxic masculinity, this fear of being isolated from other men, the fear of not being seen as a real man to other men can make a lot of "good men" close ranks around just about anything.
I didn't really appreciate how men are able to convince themselves to *not tell* or *not break ranks* even after they are 30, 40 and 50 years old until I read about the inexplicable silence of the white men that protected a white man because he was an important part of a university's winning football record. Of course we can say these men at Penn State were more worried about losing their jobs than the children Sandusky was raping. But Penn State and the Jerry Sandusky case is still a good example of how American Toxic Masculinity makes men close ranks against everyone else.
When Sandusky's story first became public friend of mine created a list that showed that more than a dozen grown white men knew what Sandusky was, a predator that preys on young boys. His male co-workers knew what he was doing.
One man even walked in on Sandusky in the shower with a child. Sandusky claimed he and a young boy were just "playing" while naked in the shower. This witness appeared to be saying he walked into the shower in the first place because he heard some grunting noises that didn't make sense. Yet this witness and bunch of others didn't report Sandusky to the police. Some did report Sandusky to other school officials. But all of them together just let these offenses drop. They did not repeat their concerns to the police. And in 2016, I found an article that says even more grown folk knew that Sandusky was preying on young boys.
You'll have to read article after article after article on the witnesses who didn't come forward until they were exposed. But after you read them you should should start to get an idea of just how afraid men are of the opinions of one another. That lack of willingness to jump over ones boss and leave the University to go to the police is NOT just about fear of losing ones job. That's just the excuse these men used when they looked in the mirror so they could sleep at night.
Toxic Masculinity binds men to one another in some ugly ways. And most women of a certain age, if they've been paying attention, have seen their male classmates in college, male cousins, and brothers link arms around some heinous crap.
This is probably why so many black women are practically growling whenever Nate Parker or his defenders say things they recognize like, "You put yourself in that position" or "We ran a train on ______"
But in Nate Parker's case the Toxic Masculinity broke down.
NATE PARKER'S CASE
One of the two black men Nate Parker invited to have sex with his unconscious date broke down and told the truth when the police came calling. But Tamerlane Kangas didn't break down in the moment of the rape. Kangas refused to participate in the rape and even warned Celestin not to go in to that room with Parker and that unconscious female freshman. But Kangas did not have enough empathy for that 18 year old girl to report what Parker and Celestin were doing to her in the moment or even the next day. Police, the court, law enforcement had to go looking for him.
By the way, I'm so proud of black feminists for refusing to let black men race-guilt them into supporting this trash. I still remember how I read black male posts that quickly identified the woman as white, thinking we'd abandon her --- as if we hadn't seen black women raped in the VERY same manner. Brock Turners are not strictly a white phenomenon.
As one sister put it, we see the black men who aren't looking to end racism so much as move up higher in the patriarchy.
We see you.
DOCUMENTARY ON AMERICAN MASCULINITY
There's a documentary on Netflix that talks about American Masculinity called "The Mask You Live In" Among many other things this documentary men talk about how Toxic Masculinity says you never rat out your brothers. I think we've all seen demonstrations of this in person. But on a white television show called "How I Met Your Mother" this behavior had a name called "The Bro Code" And one of the things "The Bro Code" called for was never telling a woman that your male buddy was running a con job on her of sorts. Young men, boys really, have been adhering to this "Bro Code," whatever they choose to name it, for decades.
There are variations on this "Bro Code" that have nothing to do with picking women up at the bar etc. There were been a number of black gangster movies in 1980s and 1990s that showed young men proving they were men to other men by keeping their silence about things quasi or very illegal. One of the methods by which some men keep other men silent is by insinuating that a man is less masculine for letting something bother him in an emotional way, enough to report activity X, to begin with.
This form of emotional blackmail seems to be effective with young men trying to prove they are indeed men within toxic masculinity whether a man is black, latino, white, poor, middle class, or rich. Just one symptom of toxic masculinity, this fear of being isolated from other men, the fear of not being seen as a real man to other men can make a lot of "good men" close ranks around just about anything.
I didn't really appreciate how men are able to convince themselves to *not tell* or *not break ranks* even after they are 30, 40 and 50 years old until I read about the inexplicable silence of the white men that protected a white man because he was an important part of a university's winning football record. Of course we can say these men at Penn State were more worried about losing their jobs than the children Sandusky was raping. But Penn State and the Jerry Sandusky case is still a good example of how American Toxic Masculinity makes men close ranks against everyone else.
When Sandusky's story first became public friend of mine created a list that showed that more than a dozen grown white men knew what Sandusky was, a predator that preys on young boys. His male co-workers knew what he was doing.
One man even walked in on Sandusky in the shower with a child. Sandusky claimed he and a young boy were just "playing" while naked in the shower. This witness appeared to be saying he walked into the shower in the first place because he heard some grunting noises that didn't make sense. Yet this witness and bunch of others didn't report Sandusky to the police. Some did report Sandusky to other school officials. But all of them together just let these offenses drop. They did not repeat their concerns to the police. And in 2016, I found an article that says even more grown folk knew that Sandusky was preying on young boys.
You'll have to read article after article after article on the witnesses who didn't come forward until they were exposed. But after you read them you should should start to get an idea of just how afraid men are of the opinions of one another. That lack of willingness to jump over ones boss and leave the University to go to the police is NOT just about fear of losing ones job. That's just the excuse these men used when they looked in the mirror so they could sleep at night.
Toxic Masculinity binds men to one another in some ugly ways. And most women of a certain age, if they've been paying attention, have seen their male classmates in college, male cousins, and brothers link arms around some heinous crap.
This is probably why so many black women are practically growling whenever Nate Parker or his defenders say things they recognize like, "You put yourself in that position" or "We ran a train on ______"
But in Nate Parker's case the Toxic Masculinity broke down.
NATE PARKER'S CASE
One of the two black men Nate Parker invited to have sex with his unconscious date broke down and told the truth when the police came calling. But Tamerlane Kangas didn't break down in the moment of the rape. Kangas refused to participate in the rape and even warned Celestin not to go in to that room with Parker and that unconscious female freshman. But Kangas did not have enough empathy for that 18 year old girl to report what Parker and Celestin were doing to her in the moment or even the next day. Police, the court, law enforcement had to go looking for him.
When youthful naiveté, alcohol, and toxic masculinity collide, there are no winners, only losers. In the Parker case, one of his roommates confessed in court that Parker asked him to join in the sex assault with an obviously sedated woman who was slipping in and out of consciousness. He left the scene of the woman’s assault because he believed it was “wrong.”
After fleeing, the other roommate did not report Parker and Celestin to authorities even after he confessed his displeasure about how the victim was treated by his roommates. His behavior illustrates what toxic masculinity does to men. It renders them unwilling to view women as full human beings. It silences otherwise intelligent beings into mute witnesses to perversion. Toxic masculinity creates the landscape for men who were “alleged” to have raped a woman, and later found guilty of rape (Celestin), to not stop their abuse and intimidation of their victim.
Penn State–home of Jerry Sandusky, who was found guilty of molesting scores of young boys and men— protected student-athletes like Parker whose role there helped the reputation and financial status of the school. Sports and athletes mattered at the university. Rape culture was something leftist academics and feminists discussed; it was not a term understood and embraced by most Americans in 1999.
~African American History Intellectual Society
I don't believe in never ending consent. So I don't believe Parker's date having oral sex with him means he didn't rape her X days later. If you do, that's a rape culture problem you have if you don't think new consent was necessary X days later. But we'll let that go for now. Forget the one-on-one sex between Parker and his date because we don't know what happened when while she was still upright, walking and talking.
I don't know why Parker has not been asked the right questions in the right order, not even one time during one interview I've seen so far. Nobody asks him about inviting people into the room
The other thing I wonder about is how the rapist minded person depicts a woman that's been raped in a historical movie when that rape didn't really occur. Don't you?
The action that constitutes rape
is inviting other men to have sex (rape)
a woman that's unconscious.
Again, that's the same as
you hiring a hit man to murder someone.
The other thing I wonder about is how the rapist minded person depicts a woman that's been raped in a historical movie when that rape didn't really occur. Don't you?
Read More:
http://www.aaihs.org/nate-parker-rape-culture-and-toxic-masculinity/
Nate Parker, Rape Culture, And Toxic Masculinity
http://www.aaihs.org/nate-parker-rape-culture-and-toxic-masculinity/
By the way, I'm so proud of black feminists for refusing to let black men race-guilt them into supporting this trash. I still remember how I read black male posts that quickly identified the woman as white, thinking we'd abandon her --- as if we hadn't seen black women raped in the VERY same manner. Brock Turners are not strictly a white phenomenon.
As one sister put it, we see the black men who aren't looking to end racism so much as move up higher in the patriarchy.
We see you.
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