Will Smith wasn't defending his wife's honor, he was raising red flags

This is what toxic masculinity looks like, by the way.

I’ve already written one post about the Will Smith assault on Chris Rock during Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony. The reaction to that post was mostly positive, but there were still a disconcerting number of people who said things like:

“If someone talked crap about my wife like that I’d do the same thing.”

“He had it coming making fun of someone’s disability like that.”

“Good for Will Smith. He defended his wife.”

Or, the truly bizarre:

Erik Kain @erikkain

Uh, Tiffany, you saw a black man strike another black man because he apparently didn't think his wife was strong enough to take a joke. If that's 'the most beautiful thing you've ever seen' you've got some problems.

Tiffany Haddish apparently thinks that a black man attacking another black man to defend his wife against a mild joke is ‘the most beautiful thing’ she’s ever seen. Riiiiight . . . . that’s not at all psycho.

Even more unhinged was Smith’s apology to the Academy when he accepted his award for Best Actor and the standing ovation he received afterward. This is a man who just flagrantly assaulted a colleague in front of everyone and the crowd got out of their seats to clap for him.

Jim Carrey, oddly enough, turns out to be the voice of reason here, who said during CBS Mornings that he was “sickened by the standing ovation. Hollywood is just spineless en masse and it really felt like this is a really clear indication that we aren’t the cool club anymore.”

He added that if he were Rock, “I’d have announced this morning that I was suing Will for 200 million dollars because that video is going to be there forever, it’s going to be ubiquitous. That insult is gonna last a very long time. If you want to yell from the audience and show disapproval or say something on Twitter, you do not have the right to walk up on stage and smack somebody in the face ‘cuz they said words.”

That last bit is key. You do not have the right to smack somebody because of words. Just because you feel like you need to “defend” your woman against the slings and arrows of outrageous comics (or anyone for that matter) doesn’t mean you get to go up and punch someone in the face. You can, sure, but you should get arrested for it. The old aphorism applies: “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.”

More to the point, this kind of behavior should raise lots and lots of red flags. This is not something to applaud, it’s something to be wary of. Should men stand up for their wives and girlfriends and daughters and mothers and other women? Absolutely. But there are ways to do this without using violence.

Frankly, Smith’s behavior is the type women (and their friends and loved ones) should be on the lookout for. If your husband or boyfriend or this nice guy you’ve just started seeing responds to a joke with violence, you should probably be on alert. That’s real toxic masculinity (as much as that term is abused in current discourse, it really is). If a man is so prone to violence that he’ll walk on stage, during a public awards ceremony that millions of people are watching on TV at home, and attack someone over a joke, one has to question where he draws the line.

That anger and that willingness to do violence is frightening. If you see that in a man, alarm bells should start going off. He could be dangerous. The sort of man who attacks someone over a joke could very well turn that anger on the same woman whose honor he was previously defending. I’m not saying Will Smith is going to engage in domestic violence, I’m just saying it’s a red flag for that sort of thing.

And sure, Smith apologized to Chris Rock eventually:

Erik Kain @erikkain

Here's Will Smith's apology to Chris Rock. Better late than never. Now can his fanboys stop defending his violence?

And yes, it’s good he apologized, but it sounds like the thing a PR team writes up the next day rather than the heartfelt apology of a man who just did something wrong that he regrets. If Smith truly felt sorry, he would have apologized during his speech. This is damage control, plain and simple. That’s better than nothing, but it’s hard to take him seriously.

Will Smith was laughing at Chris Rock’s joke and didn’t get angry until Jada Pinkett Smith gave him a death look. His response should have been to shut up and stop laughing and get ready for a night on the couch, not go onstage and hit another man so he can get his spot in bed back. That isn’t defending someone’s honor, it’s just being an aggressive asshole.

Ladies, if you see similar behavior in a man you’re dating don’t encourage it. Men can stand up for their women by being supportive, by verbally responding to verbal insults or mockery, and in myriad other ways. This is not one of them—unless you are protecting her from a physical assault.

Women are not just these shrinking violets with no agency and no capacity to stand up for themselves or take jokes. Men, if your woman can’t take a joke or stand up for herself or encourages you to mete out violence in response to every perceived slight, that should also raise red flags!

Red flags everywhere.

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I saw this posted on Facebook recently:

I hate this garbage. This is A-class snobbery at play.

Oh the defense budget is too big and climate change is a problem and wealth inequality sucks? No shit.

If only our brains could contain more than one idea at the same time. I mean, these guys are literally talking about the Will Smith vs Chris Rock thing and at the same time pretending that they’re better than everyone else by not caring, and acting like anyone who does care about it is somehow falling short of caring about other things.

The comments on the post where I found this were universally positive, like this is some deeply profound observation these guys are making. It just reminded me of the time a reader emailed me and said that she felt sorry for me because I wrote about video games and TV shows when I ought to be writing about more important things like the “extinction of the butterflies.” Mmmmmhmmmm.

So why does this topic matter to me so much? Maybe it’s because I have a daughter and because I see a lot of toxic behavior in young people these days, both girls and boys, and because I’m troubled by how many people I see cheering on Smith’s behavior, and these antiquated and shitty notions of ‘honor’ that we should have outgrown ages ago. Honor is important, don’t get me wrong, but solving every insult with guns at dawn is stupid and barbaric. And not very honorable!

But hey, we shouldn’t worry about toxic relationships, mental health issues, the line between free speech and violence, the behavior of the elite celebrity class or any of that because Bobby Boucher, JD and David Sirota wag their fingers at us, the unwashed masses, from up high on their pedestals. It’s a virtue signaling game. You can take any issue and say “hey but why do you care about that when this is so much more important and also hey look at me and how clever and caring I am all at the same time!”

Thanks for reading, oh my droogies. I feel the desire to write creeping back in. It’s a good feeling. I hope it sticks around. Much love.