“Nothing quite prepares us for the struggle of identity and intimacy in this world.”
This is the opening quote of the Liberated Documentary, provided by its director and Exodus Cry Founder, Benjamin Nolot. Having watched his previous documentary, Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, I was eager for his latest film. So eager that I even interviewed Benjamin over the phone one year before Liberated’s release date. Where Nefarious exposed the global sex slave trade on multiple continents, the pursuit of a Liberated asked the question, “How did we get to this point?” Where was the demand coming from?
Turning their cameras to the spring break culture in Florida became very revealing. Upon watching, I observed how this culture isn’t just at spring break but reflected in numerous areas of our culture from Hollywood to Las Vegas to strip clubs to college life I.e sororities and fraternities to bars and night clubs to restaurants like Hooters to the world of modeling and even party scenes riddled across the country. This hookup culture and the demand for no-strings attached sex is found everywhere. Gone are the days where a young man would get a young woman’s phone number and date her and get to know her family.
It wasn’t the culture itself that was so shocking to me. After ten plus years engrossed in the anti-trafficking movement, witnessing the rampant sexual assault and harassment occurring in this culture was discouraging but not surprising. After all, this culture has existed for centuries. Even the events of the Biblical book of Judges in regards to rape culture would give Game of Thrones a run for its money. Let’s also not forget that the “wisest” king of all time, Solomon, had 700 wives and concubines. Perhaps why this culture seems so shocking now is because of how publicized it is through the media.
Liberated unpacks how the culture has become pornified. Sex sells. And this idea of sex without emotions is the deception that is sold to youth even while they are vulnerable children. While the sexual revolution of the sixties was fraught with emotion and the idea of connection – “What the World Needs Now is Love…” and “Come on people now, smile on your brother, let us love one another right now…”- this new sexual revolution is completely devoid of emotion. Friends with benefits except without the friends. One night stands or far quicker of a time as shown in Liberated.
How is this idea sold in our culture and how does it target boys and girls differently?
Anywhere we turn, we can easily find messages of sexual objectification in our culture. Hollywood is saturated in it and displays it before children on television, in films, on radio, in magazines. Sports culture, world of fashion, businesses with sexually-themed ads. What a tragedy that the stars of Jersey Shore and the Kardashians have become role models for the majority of tweens and teens vs the Neil Armstrong’s, Florence Nightingales, and Marie Curies of the world. Liberated reveals the valid point of how much our culture is steeped in this nation-wide grooming effort. Dangerous apps such as Tinder and Snapchat and Musical.ly are not even addressed in this documentary but could easily take up an entire film on their own.
How does this message target boys and girls differently?
For boys: it is clear that boys fall into herd categories. Liberated unpacks how the culture is influencing boys from an early age. Dr. Jackson Katz quotes this message: It’s saying that being a man means being powerful, being in control, being in control of yourself, in control of situations, it means getting the respect of others. So deeply embedded this idea of manhood being powerful.
Liberated reveals how women become the tools used in order for men to display this power. Again, this is a tale as old as time. A social norm generated for centuries. Henry VIII is one such famous king who practiced this. James Bond is Hollywood’s classic and modern Icon for this sort of behavior.
Don McPherson – former NFL quarterback: I always say that masculinity is really a performance, it’s a performance boys do for other boys. So what happens is that girls become what boys do to prove their masculinity to other boys. So, she’s not necessarily a girl with a name and identity, but she’s an opportunity to prove my masculinity to my friends.
Masculinity is found in being a “player”. This stereotype exists for a reason. Like so many males that have come before them, boys are growing up to believe girls are a conquest, a score. Sex is bragging rights.
One young man compared it to “fishing”. “The more intoxicated they are, the more willing they are. Girls are nothing but pantydroppers. You give them a Percocet and a couple Vicodins and the panties drop.”
When unpacking this message to boys and the social norms around it, I began to feel pity for these boys. I felt pity for the young man who related that he lost his virginity at age 15 because there was an ongoing bet with the guys around him, and whoever was the last to lose his virginity would be considered a social outcast or would have to do something ridiculous. I felt pity that this boy’s chance to be a normal teenager without the necessity of conquest was lost. I felt pity and anger that a girl became a frantic rush to screw and not the chance to view her as a human being or potential friend. I felt anger that if this boy continued to remain a virgin, he would have been bullied.
As for girls, the message naturally does a 180:
In the spring break culture of girls interviewed, it was no surprise that girls were not working toward any particular goal. They were simply there to have fun. They did not want to be taken advantage of. A common fear was being drugged.
The message our culture sends to girls is similar to boys because it’s one of comparison. But while boys are compared to how much they can use girls around them, girls are physically compared to one another. Picked apart from a young age over dress, hair, body, skin, and more. When one girl’s are going through puberty and subject to hormones and a smorgasbord of emotions and they the airbrushed magazine covers and the young men around them drooling over such, it relays the message that she must look that way to be accepted. And thus, competition between other girls begins. The compare and contrast gets worse as girls get older.
Dr. Caroline Heldman: Political scientist and educator: I believe that women think that being a sex object is empowering because it makes them feel as though they are wanted and desired. But the idea that our bodies are our value means that we are forever dependent on men to validate us, to say that we are important, to say that we are valuable. So I think women engage in hookup culture because it fits right into this. What’s the ultimate way to get validation? It’s to be wanted sexually. If someone values you and wants to have sex with you, then for that brief moment in time, we feel validated, we feel like we matter, we feel like we have worth.
This cultures message to girls in the words of Gail Dines, Professor of Sociology: if you act a certain way, dress a certain way, then you are an empowered young women. is that they must look a certain way and act a certain way and dress a certain way and if they don’t, then they do not matter and fade into the background till they are invisible.
The hope of this documentary comes toward the end where the theme is acknowledging that we have a rape culture but in understanding this, we can take action to shift the focus of the culture’s message and recognize that in defying the culture, we find true liberation.
Tony Porter, Co-Founder of A Call to Men: By embracing the dignity of women, I’m allowing myself to be full, to be whole. When I embrace the dignity of women, I’m no longer being held hostage to these rigid norms that define manhood. So when I’m promoting freedom for women, I’m promoting freedom for me.
My response to all of this:
One thing that automatically popped up in my mind is the stereotype of victim blaming. Of how easy it is for people to wag fingers at these girls in the hookup culture environment and say, “What do you expect in that environment and you shouldn’t be there in the first place.” My counter question is, “haven’t we come far enough as a society with all our education and science and technology to convey the message that it’s not wrong for girls to want to have a good time and dance with their friends and that instead it is wrong for boys to make a premeditated decision to grope or assault a girl no matter what environment or how they are dressed?” Shouldn’t we teach young men not to seek out girls for objectification and harassment so girls don’t need to feel threatened when walking in any environment?
What discourages me most about this culture is how it has even seeped into churches. Not on the same inundated level, but it is still there. This idea that Christian men should enjoy or simply enjoy catering to what the culture defines as “masculine” whether it’s found in hunting and guns or in the sports culture where young women are continually objectified on and off the football field. Or perhaps even the idea that they have to find a “wife” to be accepted and fulfill their churchy roles where they are even influenced to find a specific type of “acceptable” wife in this culture.
When attending an anti trafficking conference and hearing from Rebecca Kotz about a survey done of the secular crowd and church crowd on masculinity, the descriptions of what it means to be a man were strikingly similar. The common theme was powerful, dominant, insensitive, and unemotional. How ironic when Christians are called to be imitators of Jesus and that the two words that Jesus used to define himself above all others were these: humble and meek. I can’t speak as to any men even in the church environment who would be comfortable identifying with those terms. And yet Jesus could have called thousands of angels to his side in a split second. The most powerful man on earth and the most powerful Son of God chose to define himself as humble and meek.
Perhaps my favorite universal definition of masculinity and femininity comes from Exodus Cry’s Founder and Liberated Director himself, a man I consider a friend: Benji Nolot. In his testimony before a United Nations Summit (Youtube it and watch the whole summit cause it’s EPIC), Benji went onto describe, “we must reclaim our identity and we must change the story that we are telling. Our world needs real men and real women not fabrications of the culture. This will require us disavowing the culture’s narrative and constructing a new one. One in which women are respected and valued for the diverse range of gifts they bring into the world, not merely their sex appeal. Women are intellectual, emotional, spiritual, creative, athletic, familial, political, caring, compassionate, relational, and strong. They may have desires for autonomy and independence or family and children. Women are searching for deeper meaning and purpose. They have histories, memories and unique experiences. They long to have an impact in the world. Simply put, women are not a sexual buffet for the gratuitous appetite of men. They are the image bearers of God and the crown of his creation.
“Similarly, men are not what the pop culture has constructed. We are not mindless, sexual roving beasts without conscience. There are so many beautiful dimensions of manhood that are being obscured, that we bring as a gift in this world. Men are strong, protective, communal, innovative, courageous, passionate and have a capacity for great gentleness. We want t9 use our strength for purpose. We long for adventure. We desire intimacy. We want to be known and celebrated, loved and respected. Men are three dimensional beings full of complexity and beauty. We must embrace the better angels of our nature and usher in a new generation of manhood. One based in honor, dignity, respect, vulnerability, empathy, and mutuality. Central to this is the way we speak about and treat women. We must expose the bankrupt practice of using women for sex to gain status from other men. Being a player should not be a badge of honor but rather a badge of disgrace. Esteeming Women, engaging in loving relationships, protecting the vulnerable are ways to respect oneself and advance the male gender. We must create a world where men are loving and respectful and where women are valued and safe and only then will we disrupt and eliminate sex-trafficking in our world.”
Amen, Benji. Here is my final wrap up quote and one that I would love every parent on my Facebook and every parent I know to hear:
We need to look at the messages our culture is sending to our youth about sex. Because if we want our children to have healthy sexual relationships fraught with meaning and intimacy, if we want them to have a loving relationship that will stand the rest of time where they will have support and care and communication and affection and all the good things that we want for our children, that they deserve, then for God’s sake, we need to be every bit as outspoken about that kind of message as our culture is in sending the opposite one. Dare to be that parent and that advocate. Dare to defy the culture and shift the message and rewrite the story.
Power Quotes:
If men are sexualized to be sexually aggressive, then it’s not a very big leap from a consensual sexual activity to sexual coercion from varying degrees where men are often encouraged to pressure women into being sexually available even when that girl may not want to.
Dr. Robert Jensen: were talking about a sexually coercive landscape where men are socialized into taking sex from women. Women are socialized into capitulating to that as part of a normal social scene. And the terrain on which sex goes forward is extremely difficult and dangerous, especially for a young woman.
Dr. Caroline Heldman: Strange thing about all this is that it happens every year in hundreds of thousands of people in hundreds of thousands of cities. The fact that we normalize this and allow it to happen in a public setting is a clear indicator that we live in a rape culture where we condone this sort of behavior. This is the culture that we’ve created.
Dr. Caroline Heldman: The system is completely and profoundly broken for young women. So it’s good for young women to fight to get away from the messages that make us feel that we need to be sex objects and that that’s our worth and to carve out spaces with like-minded individuals where they can explore these ideas of empowerment, what it really means to be empowered and to have self worth and confidence and how you can build that.
White House Council on women and girls: One in five women have been sexually assaulted while in college.