Preaching #MeToo through the converted

"Okay ladies, now let's get in formation, I slay...always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper."

Beyonce Knowles, Formation

WHEN NUS student Monica Baey took to social media to express her anger that her report on being filmed in the shower by fellow student Nicholas Lim had not been adequately addressed by authorities, the case pointed to a deeply rooted problem of toxic masculinity.

It also rightly brought criticism to a system that has been patently slow in righting the scales for women.

Ms Baey's case only pointed to the prevalence of such voyeurism on campus, as reported statistics showed. And the lack of progress in this area has stretched into decades.

More than 10 years ago, a campus newspaper at a Singapore university reported a Peeping Tom case, with the perpetrator a male student in a leadership position in school. The female student was peeped at while she was showering. A police report had been filed.

The tune sung by the school administration a full decade ago was strikingly similar to what Ms Baey had been told: why would you want to ruin a young man's life? Those accusations were levelled at said reporter, as the then-editor of the campus newspaper.

A decade later, with Ms Baey's case making the headlines, such telling words stick with a stain.

In recent times, more Peeping Tom cases have been reported, despite extensive media coverage over the incident. It appears that all that media attention has had little deterrent effect on voyeurs on the prowl.

What is still troubling is that in some quarters, the tired excuse for Peeping Toms remains: that boys will be boys.

Let's be clear, toxic masculinity alone does not turn a man into a Peeping Tom.

But it makes a violation of someone else's basic rights to safety and privacy more acceptable in some parts of society than it should be. It gives society the permission to blink and turn away from injustice more easily than it should. It offers little room to start a broader conversation about gender dynamics and consent.

It makes it very easy to blame women, even when their lot is not their fault.

Even up to the point that Ms Baey had to turn to social media to go public with her case, some quarters cannot see male privilege for what it is.

Toxic masculinity can fester when one man looks at another man, and sees that his maleness is acknowledged, multiplied and defined by aggression. It becomes an expression of power against the another person - man or woman, deemed as a sign of worth.

That theme is reinforced and becomes a key line along which men and women are judged, when boys are not expected to understand that there are alternatives to aggression.

There is little reason to learn, when there is little penalty from expressing frustration through verbal or physical aggression. "Boys will be boys."

It then adds to the gender imbalance, where there is a binary faultline that trips us up. Today, a female leader continues to be criticised for being aggressive, but a male leader is vaunted for being opinionated.

The disparity began from the moment a girl is disproportionately expected to cooperate, to accommodate, to help.

There is a tragic irony here in the way progress has been postponed.

It is increasingly clear that the job rests largely on women to right the scales. Each feminist mother must teach each son to redefine masculinity. For if society is still blind to male privilege, then those who are edged to the margin are the ones who must push back.

But this comes as every woman is battling a system still weighing down her economic worth. It can be argued that in some cases, the way the scales are tipped against women begins from the time that a woman - tired of her biological lot, with her engorged breasts, and pay gap, and larger household burden - is worn down into accepting that sons should be brought up in the same way as the boys from a decade, two decades, three decades ago.

And perhaps when there is a daughter in the mix, sometimes the hope is for them to empathise, to understand, that boys will be boys. When you are tired, it is easier to reduce responsibilities on gender lines.

If a boy is too loud, will the girl please help? Will you, the girl, be quiet instead?

When the world continues to orbit around maleness, and women continue to struggle to seek some kind of Goldilocks perfection of their femalehood, can women also be the single force that would snap the vicious circle of toxic masculinity?

Boys become men. And then they would not understand how women had grown up to be angry.

The weight of this responsibility in tipping the scales should not be borne by women again. And yet. Decades upon decades, this remains the underdog story of the 50 per cent. We were not born to be an accommodating statistic. We did not ask to be a cliche.

Will the girl please help? I wonder for how long more must women be tired.