by Jim Herbert
There’s a conversation that keeps surfacing in our culture, coming in different forms and under different titles, but always carrying the same essential question beneath it. That question is:
Why do we hold men and women to different standards, and at what cost do we all pay when we do so?
I want to write about this question directly, because I think it’s crucial to the work we do in this community of men, and I want to write about it not just as a managing director, facilitator, or community member, but also as someone who has spent years examining his own relationship with power, accountability, and what it means to show up honestly in this world.
Two stories have come close together in the news cycle recently that I’ve given a lot of thought to since they broke. Honestly, I think I knew my turn for this blog was coming and I’ll probably give those thoughts some voice when it does.
Earlier in the spring, photos emerged of New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and Atlantic reporter Diana Russini at an adults-only resort in Arizona. Both Vrabel and Russini are married to other people and both initially suggested that the images were taken out of context. The tone shifted fairly quickly, as happens when the evidence becomes clearer than initially expected. With that tone changing, Vrabel admitted he had some “difficult conversations” ahead of him with his team and his family, and then continued to prepare for the NFL draft. Russini resigned from Athletic following an internal investigation into his personal conduct.
In the end, Vrabel kept his job. I mean why doesn’t he keep his job? His team made it to the Super Bowl in February, and in all likelihood, if he wins enough games next season, this chapter will be remembered as a footnote in an otherwise celebrated coaching career.
Although Russini resigned instead of being fired, the end result is the same. She lost her job when the man left her.
I’m not here to judge what happened between two people at a resort in Arizona. These two were adults who made their own choices and were free to live out any relationship dynamic. What I’m here to say, though, is that the outcome of that situation tells us something important about the world we still live in. One person acknowledged that a difficult conversation was necessary and moved on. One woman was investigated and resigned. Behavior, however, was equal to both of them, while the consequences of life were not equal.
While I am writing about a specific situation, it is not an isolated incident. Perhaps I can remind you of the most famous similar incident of all time, involving Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Director Rupert Sanders and actress Kristen Stewart. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his housekeeper Mildred Baena. This double standard of results is so ingrained in our culture that we stop noticing it, the way you stop noticing the hum of an air conditioner after it has been running for a long time.
Men often get out of sex scandals with little sting. Women often appear shamed, and sometimes even branded as prostitutes by men who claim to be more religious. You’re welcome to dig a little into the story of Pope Gregory the Great and Mary Magdalene if you’re so inclined, but I’ll leave any further thoughts on that outside of this story so as not to incite religious controversy.
Around the same time the Vrabel/Russini story broke, CNN began reporting what had been said Rape Academy. I want to be completely transparent about my own experience of that particular story. As an abused person, I had a really hard time engaging with Rape Academy’s story reporting at first. I want to be absolutely clear that I am not claiming to have felt what these survivors felt, but I do carry my own history with the abuse of power and the silence that surrounds it. Stories of predatory behavior perpetrated by men on vulnerable people hit me in a place that is still tender and still healing. I had to approach the story slowly and in small doses.
When I became more fully involved with the rape academy story, the brutality was just as bad as I had feared, and one of the things that emerged from the public response to those reports was a phrase I wanted to examine more closely. This phrase is a phrase that is often used as a response to a woman expressing her frustration, sadness, and anger about all of these things. The responsible phrase usually sounds something like this:
But not all men.
I understand the passion to protect the many good people that exist in this world. I felt a reaction inside me that wanted to protect. When someone talks about men in a way that seems sweeping or absolute, something inside me wants to clarify, to differentiate, to say wait, that’s not me, the men I don’t know, that’s not trying to make it here in our community. That tendency to defend is perfectly human and not without some level of legitimacy.
This is where my teacher and mentor Dr. David Bedrick came in and helped me realize something that fundamentally changed how I heard the “but not all men” response. According to David, when a woman tells men in plural, frustrated and sometimes angry terms, she is not making a statistical claim that requires verification. He is not saying that every person on the planet has wronged him personally, rather he is speaking from the accumulated weight of years, decades, centuries of experience. He’s speaking of an emotional, experiential truth that hasn’t been heard nearly enough or nearly loud enough.
With this in mind, when an individual or our society in general responds to his experiential truths”But not all men” What they’re actually doing, even if it’s not intended, is asking the injured person to reframe their own experience into something more statistically specific than they actually want to hear about that injury. In fact, they torment him about their own discomfort with being categorized as something that triggers something inside them that they don’t want to be categorized.
In my mind, the “but not all men” response provides no support or empathy, the two things that sufferers need most. Shame develops where unexpected loss festers in the shadows. Again, as David says, trying to dress up the “but not all men” response as justification is nothing more than a diversion.
Men in the menliving community know something about what it really costs to stay home when things get uncomfortable. We sat in circles together, both virtually and in person, and practiced the discipline of listening to pain without immediately trying to manage it, reframe it, or minimize it so we could feel better about ourselves. I know how hard it is to do, and I also know how necessary it is.
So I want to tell the men reading this post.
antidote “But not all men” Statistics are not to be argued about. The antidote is a man who makes statistics less true.
Mature manhood in my mind is a man who either keeps his job or not, but most importantly holds himself truly accountable, not only personally to his family and team mates, but also to the culture in which he publicly participates. A grounded, mature man leans forward and listens as a woman speaks her empirical truth about what men have done, rather than immediately finding and naming exceptions.
The value we accept is the value we set. If we accept a world where a man and a woman do the same thing and only the woman pays the consequences, or more severe consequences, then we are participating in and enabling that world, whether we want to or not. In a world where the response to documented predatory behavior is a defensive clarification about all good, we’re making it easy to continue harming.
I am not writing this to shame anyone. What I’m more interested in is being part of a community, and ultimately a world, that looks at the pattern and asks, “What are we willing to do differently?”
Being responsible good one It’s not a destination you arrive at and then relax, but rather a daily habit of showing, talking and refusing to look away even when it’s the more convenient thing to do.
The MenLiving community is built around the belief that men are more capable than our society cultured them to be and that men can be powerful and accountable at the same time.
In addition to a vision of a world of healthy, purposeful and connected men, I am so grateful to be a part of a community of men who can hold space for someone else’s pain without talking about their own discomfort. When men can model something different for the next generation of boys who are watching and learning from all of us, we initiate that change not just with our words, but with our actions.
Vrabel would continue coaching and Russini would try to rebuild. Rape Academy survivors and the Epstein files will carry what happened to them for the rest of their lives. And we will continue this conversation until the values change.
I want to continue this conversation wherever and whenever necessary, and I hope you will too.
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Previously published Men Living
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