I posted on Facebook yesterday an amusing incident that had just occurred to me earlier in the day; an amusing incident created by me, by my own inanity, in my own home.   For those that did not read it, I shall repeat...

'Been reading about Weinstein, #MeToo and all that grotty stuff today, when my phone rings.  I answer in my usual chirpy manner to hear a foreign voice on the other end that says, "Hello, my name is Daniel, I'm coming to sleep with you tonight." 

Immediately, without pause for thought I automatically and defensively reacted in a loud, aggressive manner .... "I BEG YOUR PARDON!!  WHO THE HELL TO YOU THINK YOU ARE!??!!"  (the last part with even greater aggression).

Caller,  "... err ... um ... I'm ... um, I'm Daniel, from Germany, I'm your Airbnb guest tonight ... I think ..."

Oops, so he was ....

It was a classic case of language difficulties and translation.

As funny as it was at the time the reality was that the lovely German tourist coincidentally happened to telephone me at time when my mind had been reflecting on the fall out of the Weinstein affairs and the many others that have become highlighted over the past few years.  This meant my mindset and conscious and subconscious mind was ebbing with those horrible incidents and memories of a time past when so many of us could be the #MeToos.

As it turned out, the heavily accented German tourist was a delightful fellow who was not only a clean living, good looking and vibrant fellow but he added to his overall niceness by showing he was well endowed with an easy conversational manner.  So much so that some time during the evening he opened a bottle of good quality red wine, his, to add to the enjoyment of our very deep conversation on mindsets, mindfulness and meditation.

It was not until I glimpsed at my watch a few minutes before midnight that I quickly rounded off our truly interesting conversation and stated we were going to bed ... our own, individual beds ... as he had to be up and gone by 7 a.m. which meant I had to be up before 6 a.m. to organise the guests'  breakfasts.  His breakfast and the breakfast for the other lovely guest staying for the evening, who happened to be a French woman, same age group as the German, and who was just as delightful, only she had to depart into her own bed much earlier in the evening as kayaking rivers, sky diving and walking 12 kilometres to Huka Falls and back had taken all the awakeness out of her.  I am sure both she and the lovely German fellow were regretful she had such a full day as his conversing with someone his mother's age would not have seemed anywhere near as interesting as conversing with a single, younger, fellow female traveller.

Fortunately at no time during our long evening conversation and discussion did the lovely German broached the subject of my immediate reaction to his initial phone call.  For this I was relieved as did not wish to insult him by explaining that his accent on the phone did not sound German but was reflective of someone from South East Asia;  it sounded very Asian.  Not that that is relevant, but I figured he may not have been flattered to be mistaken as an Asian. 

This morning as I waved goodbye to my new found, young friend, I reflected again on the mindset I was in when he had telephoned the day before and interrupted my thinking patterns.  Then later this morning I check into the daily newspaper sites to see yet more articles on Weistein, then reflections on Trump and other sexually narcissistic fellows around the world.

These past years has seen many exposures (yes, another silly pun) on so many men who had been outed as predators of the testosterone kind.  Some have or are having to face their consequences, others seem to have tefloned them off, so far.

Very recently I was sorting through the many books I had packed in boxes during my move from Auckland to Taupo and came across three books that were once favourite rereads of mine but on seeing those same book in the box I felt ashamed of myself - tainted, dirty and insidious for having once proudly owned and read them.  Two of them were books written by Bill Cosby and the other was written by Rolf Harris.  Even picking these books up out of the cardboard box made me cringe inside, I felt dirty, the huge sense of shame to have had them on my bookcases for years and for having read them to my children, to have enjoyed them was overwhelming; yet at the same time looking at the books also gave me a deep sense of heavy sadness.  Not sadness that these men had been outed, judged and sentenced, but sadness that they, among many other famous men, had been blessed with so much wonderful talent, were so skilled at their trades and yet ruined all the admiration for their infamy by utilsing those same assets as tools for manipulation against vulnerable girls or women.

There have been so many others - Jimmy Saville and Roman Polanski.  Woody Allen, and even Errol Flynn ....  think for a while and more come to mind. And of course, the major teflon one who was recorded boasting about how easy it was to conquer women when you were rich and powerful. 

For most of us women whenever one of those names are mentioned, or another new name comes to light it all makes our spines shiver, creepy tremors stiffen us and the word 'yuk' is the only one that seems to enunciate it for us.

I know it must be rather difficult being a mere male now when so many of your species have let you down.  I do feel for the good, honest and authentic men in our lives when they learn of yet another sexual creep being exposed to the media.  Fortunately the good, honest and authentic women in the world do not brand or cast you into the same category as these well known ones, but it has to be said, especially with the #MeToo campaign, that there are so few of us women who have not had one, some, or many incidences in their lives when #MeToo is a hash tag they can relate to only too well.

Have often told the story of many years ago, some thirty-almost-forty years ago, a group of five women friends and I, all aged between 25 and 35, were running together in the Auckland Domain when the conversation became quite personal to one of the women, as it often does when good friends natter together.  This one person mentioned the fact that she had been violated in a sexual manner when she was a child.  On this unexpected and shocking revelation one of the other in the group said "Me too".   By the end of our ten kilometre run we had all revealed that each one of us had, sometime in our childhood or early teenage years, been in an unsavoury situation of sexual violation by a grown, adult, mature male. 

These women were middle-class, intelligent wives and mothers who grew up in safe, educated and secure environments, yet each one had an unrevealed story to tell and this particular day was their first, and probably only, opportunity to share the sordidness that had been secreted away in their memories for many years. 

I vividly recall the five of us returning to our running base at the gym and all sitting around on the bleaches, looking at one another and realising that five out of five of us had something happen to us therefore how many other women in our lives could or would have been able to share their own stories.  We were shocked.  That shock has stayed with us all forever.

But what we didn't relate to so much at that particular time was the known fact that as adult women we were all able to give further stories where males in our lives had been predators in much the same way, only because we were grown up we were supposed to be able to 'handle ourselves'.  The times various times and incidences when we had been in vulnerable situations in our early working or vocational training years where approaches, propositions or threats were made of the sexual kind such as those who are now relating to the many Weinstein examples.

But in those childhood and adulthood times there was no culpability, no acknowledgement of inexcusable behaviour or no admission that this was not an acceptable behaviour.  Manhandling, learing and suggestive approaches were always seen as macho, bravado, heroism almost for a male to brag to another about what he had done or tried to do to that particular girl in the office one night.  Another beer and a good slap on the back for being 'a man' was the reward for the grossness of the acts.

I recall going to a boss at one time, I would have been seventeen, and trying to ask him for advice, that one of the fellow men in the office kept bailing me up whenever I worked late when others were not around.  That boss was more embarrassed about the fact that the young office girl sitting on the other side of his desk had begun to cry as she retold the many times she had been caught in this ongoing situation.  He couldn't wait to get me out of his office not because he wanted to take action but because he felt awkward about the tears, the crying - he certainly did not feel shock or surprise at the man's actions, nor did this boss feel any compulsion to reprimand the 'bravado' of his male colleague.  His sage advice was that I try to get my work done quicker in the day so that I did not have to stay back and work late in the office to complete it. 

I remember feeling small, silly and that I had been the one being reprimanded for not being able to solve what I saw as a problem, but he saw as my inefficiency.

The decades of the groping, the touching, the innuendo, the slagging, the threats, the vulnerability of so many young girls and women - I would bet that if fifty of my female friends sat around a very large boardroom table today that each one of them would have their own similar stories. 

Sadly, that was a horrible time and generation that women throughout the world have had to bury in their minds and hearts all their lives and just kept forging on, making the most of not making the fuss it would create - of accepting our status as being feminine. 

But now that seems to be changing.  Finally well known women are speaking out and because they are well known people are actually taking notice.

Even so, when famous predators began to be exposed to the world's media a few years ago and even now, there was and has been a sense of "oh come on .... who hasn't groped a women sometime in their lives ? ... it's just male stuff...  it happens ....  "  

What is insidious about that is the dismissal of the actions and the condoning of "well that was how it was at the time".

That is exactly what Weinstein said in his defense recently, "that was the culture then". 

Yes Harvey, many of us will agree, it actually was - whether you were a film director in the 70's in Hollywood or a fellow office worker in Auckland, Sydney, London, Timbuktu or Manawatu, it was the accepted 'culture then'  - but that doesn't justify it - then or now - that was the excuse to condone it, encourage it and then ignore it - it doesn't make it right.

What will make it right is the unmasking of you and your fellow offenders.  What will make it right is to have those who think 'it was the culture then' turn on themselves in embarrassed shame and realise how bad their own thinking is - to realise that it is their wives, their sisters, their mothers and even their daughters who have been violated because of your attitudes.

Let more women come out and #MeToo.

Verna Cook-Jackson