Tag Archives: privilege

Men Are the Fucking Worst

8 Nov

Sorry, guys. It’s true. Men are the fucking worst. White men, I am mostly talking to you. But before you all roll your eyes, shut the browser window and grumble about women and feminism, and #notallmen and whatever, please hear me out. I feel like you owe us that much. Or don’t. And just reinforce my theory that men are the fucking worst.

Here’s the thing. There are plenty of individual men who are not, on their own, the fucking worst. I am, in fact, dating one such person and in my opinion, which of course is biased, he is pretty great. So let’s not get all crazy here. There are lots of men who, when they are on their own, I like very much. It is men as a group that I have a problem with. And also some men that are part of that group and absolutely refuse to engage with their own privilege, their own behavior, and the ways in which those things negatively impact those around them. Those men are individually pretty shitty. As a white person, I can understand the frustration with being lumped in with a bunch of other people who just happen to share a characteristic with me and then being blamed for their bad behavior. Or for the bad behavior of the group as a whole in which I am a member. Did I choose to be part of the oppressive class? No. But I am. And much in the way that men are the fucking worst, white people are also the fucking worst. Seriously, we suck. I am Jewish and do you know who tried to kill all the Jews? White people. People who look like me actively tried to wipe people who also look like me off the face of the earth and for what reason? Some bullshit, that’s what. And I am still lumped in with white people even though if it was up to white people I wouldn’t even exist anymore. And even still I am like, well, you know what? I benefit from the way that I look and even though I might not have been around at the inception of racism, I benefit from the persistence of it whether I like it or not and whether I want to admit it or not. But what does not admitting it get me? Nothing except that it makes me even more of the fucking worst. It is my job to be better.

So in my mind the same thing applies to men. I get it. Men get mad that women blame them for all the bad treatment and shit like that. And women do, in fact, blame men for historical things that current men might not have even been alive for. I understand that is frustrating. But take a second and ask yourself, really ask yourself, do you receive benefits in your daily life solely from being male. Let me give you some direction here. The answer is YES, yes you fucking do. And that isn’t your fault, necessarily, but it does need to be acknowledged and challenged and much as white people shouldn’t task people of color with undoing racism and educating us about how our behavior negatively impacts their lived experience, women should not be tasked with constantly calling men out on their shit. And that is part of the reason why the #metoo movement pissed me off. Women were tasked with reliving their horror for the benefit of men. This has been going on for fucking ever, it is the year 2017 for crying out loud, and this is all just coming out now. And it doesn’t just take one woman to make it happen. It takes tens of thousands. Millions, even. And I still don’t see us really having large discussions about the systemic reasons why this is the case.

Part of me feels compelled to go into all those systemic things that I wish we were talking about. A lot of me wants to address the issue that, in this rare moment when women are actually being listened to, there are only some women, very few women, with a platform to speak and with a voice that people are willing to hear. Those women are mostly famous, mostly wealthy, and mostly white. And, in my personal opinion, they still aren’t really being heard. They are the most privileged among us and still they are being dismissed in many corners. They are being given this moment but I can already see the moment fading away. See people wondering why we are still talking about this. People getting frustrated. But just think about all the women that have had these experiences who are not speaking up because, for myriad reasons, they cannot. The voices coming from Hollywood might be expressing experiences that most of us have had, but they are not loud enough to drown out the silence of millions more. And they are not powerful enough to stop all of the sexual assaults and sexual mistreatment that has happened since these scandals hit the mainstream, and they cannot stop those which will happen going forward.

I don’t know how to even begin to fix that other than to tell men to listen to the women in your lives. Don’t mock us when we express fear that, to you, might seem unfounded. We have been trained to sense danger in even the most unexpected places. Don’t call us crazy when we tell you that the way you are talking to us is condescending. Don’t get into bed with us when we are too drunk to consent and then tell us our behavior was confusing or that it is our fault that you misunderstood or that we wanted it.  Don’t tell us our lived experiences are not valid. Don’t speak over us. And also, pay attention. Don’t make us do all the work. Open your eyes and see what is right in front of you. See what you, yes you, do on a daily basis that undermines women’s feelings of self worth. It is not your fault that you grew up in this system. We all did. But it is your job to work to be better and to challenge it.

So, men, I am telling you that as a group you are the fucking worst and I don’t really like you. As a group, you make my life worse, more difficult. As a group, you make me feel less valuable, less valued, less human. So as individuals, try to be better. And in an effort to help, because I am feeling charitable today, I am going to start doing something. I am going to take my power back. Because what I have come to realize is that I don’t care if you like me or not. Did you hear that, men? I, Rebekah Frank, do not care whether you like me or think I am the biggest bitch in the entire world. I spent a lot of time caring. A lot of time protecting your feelings where you didn’t protect mine. A lot of time dressing a certain way, acting a certain way and doing certain things I didn’t want to do to make you like me but I am done with all that. In fact, I am going to do you a favor. When I don’t like what you’re doing, I’m going to tell you. And I might not be nice about it. And I hope you are man enough to take a step back and realize that what I am addressing did not happen in a vacuum, it has the full power of history behind it. And that history might not be your fault, personally, but you benefit from it so it is up to you to fight against its persistence. Just try and be a little bit less the worst. It won’t be easy and you won’t always get it right, but we’ll all be better because of it.

It is up to every man, just like it is up to every white person, to be less of the worst. So let’s get to it, shall we?

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When Big Money Comes to Town

1 Apr

Just last night a bar on Atlantic Avenue that opened its doors 16 years ago announced it will be closing them at the end of this month.  I never worked there and, to be honest, I haven’t hung out there all that much in the last couple of years.  I always kind of thought it was one of those places I “lost in the divorce,” as they say.  Whoever “they” are.  I guess we all should have seen this coming when the Barney’s Coop opened up a few years ago.  Followed by a Sephora, a Lululemon, a Splendid, Gap and Banana Republic Outlets, talk of a J. Crew and who knows what else.  There isn’t so much room for character when big money and condos come to town.

It’s a weird coincidence because I was literally just thinking about this yesterday.  (My life, by the way, has involved a lot of coincidences recently.  Maybe I’ll tell you about them someday.)  So I have a few friends, two in particular, who oftentimes lament the loss of the old Brooklyn, the Brooklyn they grew up in.  One of them posts in this blog here which is really awesome and you should check it out.  No, seriously, check it out.  Anyway, I didn’t grow up in Brooklyn, or New York City for that matter.  I grew up in the suburbs in New Jersey, a place that has a lot of trees and doesn’t really change all that much.  You don’t hear too much about people losing leases on storefronts.  Generally, stores close because whoever owned them either gets sick of doing it or gets old and dies.  Then the store closes and a nail salon goes in its place.  There are A LOT of nail salons in my hometown.  You also don’t have the same brand of blind development as in the city.  Here, luxury condo after luxury condo just sort of go up over night, oftentimes cheaply built, overpriced, and under filled.  Eventually people move into the doorman, gym included building.  Usually they are transplants from Manhattan, previously transplants from somewhere else, looking for something more affordable.  Their “more affordable” prices-out the people who had lived in the neighborhood previously, many of whom priced-out the people who grew up there.  In my hometown, a lot of people knock down houses to build bigger houses with more rooms than they can possibly use.  I really don’t understand the appeal of getting lost in your own home but that’s just me.  My mom calls them McMansions.  They are pretty much just the architectural version of a big dick contest.  I digress.

So I grew up close to New York City but not in it and even though I went to the city quite a number of times my memory of it is pretty limited.  Here is what I remember:

1.  Going to Take Your Daughter to Work Day with my Dad and spending most of my time at the Museum of TV and Radio watching old episodes of PeeWee’s Playhouse.
2.  My Dad’s one office that had those really cool pipes that ran throughout the floor so you could deliver messages to other people.  You would put the message in a little tube thing and then put it in the pipe and it would get sucked away and end up where it was supposed to go.  I loved those pipes.
3.  I’m pretty sure we went to the Thanksgiving Day Parade once?  Or did I make that up?
4.  That one time me and my friend Gina cut school and went into the city for the day.  We felt SO cool.
5.  My Uncle Mike works at The Met and I got to go see The Temple of Dendur when it was still closed to the public.

We never went to Brooklyn.  Honestly, I don’t think I even knew what Brooklyn was when I was a little kid except for as it was represented by Spot Collins in Newsies.  Spot Collins and the boys from Brooklyn really saved the day in Newsies so I always figured that where ever it was it was pretty damn hardcore.

Over the last almost 10 years that I have lived here, I have seen my neighborhood change quite significantly.  And that is nothing, I am sure, compared to the changes that came before.  I have wondered sometimes what it was like in the 1990s, before trendy bars and restaurants opened and before the hipster invasion of 2011.  I was wondering exactly that thing as I walked home from a hardware store across a busy avenue in the less developed, slightly rougher, area.  I walked past a scrap metal collection place and stopped at the light, right next to some guy who I guess had just disposed of his metal and was waiting for his buddy.  Then, this:

Guy: Damn, you lookin’ sexy mama.
Me:  (Eye roll, unimpressed head shake.)
Guy:  What?  Bad day?
Me: It was fine until you said that.
Guy: Well, how are you supposed to know if I don’t tell you?
Me: I already know.
Guy: How about I take you for a drink? Some coffee? There’s a bagel store over there.
He gestured at a storefront that has been having constant grand openings for the past 8 years at least.  I am 100% certain it is a front for something nefarious.  The light changed and I walked away.

So here’s the thing.  I never felt intimidated or scared talking to that guy.  A few years ago, I would have been petrified because it might not have been one guy, it might have been 3 and he might not have found me quite as amusing.  There certainly would have been less people walking around.  More than anything I was annoyed that this guy called me sexy while I was holding a bottle of Draino* to, once again, unclog the shower.  I mean, without the Draino I would have also felt annoyed but for some reason I felt like sharing that with you.  I just found it amusing because, like, I was hungover, I think I still had a little makeup on my eyes from the night before, my hair was filthy and I was carrying Draino and some drier sheets and yet still with this guy.  But the point of all of this.  The point is that this gentrification is a real mixed bag.  I miss the days when big chain stores didn’t come to Brooklyn, when everything was family-run, when spending money locally was really the only option rather than some trend that only wealthy people can afford.  I miss my neighborhood being less trendy.  I miss hearing more Spanish than English on the streets.  I miss having sunlight on my street, the sunlight that was blocked by the fucking ugly 13 story building they built on my corner.  What I don’t miss?  Walking home from the train alone at night.  My neighbor getting jumped on the front steps.  Another friend getting beaten up by a group of marauding women.  Feeling afraid.

Here’s the thing.  I know that when Big Money Brooklyn takes over my neighborhood I am not going to be pleased.  I know I will get priced-out.  And it will be one more step in the direction of making all of New York less affordable for the people who always lived here.  I feel like I can’t really be mad about being priced-out because I, unknowingly at 21, did it to others.  At this point I am aware of my own privilege and the impacts it has.  It will suck, though.  So I don’t know.  I mean, I’ll take the improved safety but I wish you would keep your condos, your Barney’s, your expensive cars, your $15 bottles of pickles.  My hometown, and towns like it, could use a little business diversity.

*I was feeling very guilty about this because my landlord, who I ADORE, told me not to use Draino because it messes up the pipes.  But every time he comes to unclog the drain he tells me to use a drain cover because I have so much hair.  But I do!  And it clogs anyway!

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