Here are his quotes regarding his thoughts on the #MeToo movement:
Naturally, he has received a wave of backlash on social media and has hastily issued an apology, but you know, the damage is already done.
Has our acute awareness of sexual misconduct now made the game of flirting more confusing and a bit of a social minefield for well-meaning men now that what is considered acceptable and harassment rapidly evolving? Yes, and it should be okay to address this without someone getting bent out of shape and accusing you of undermining sexual assault victims simply because you want to assuage men’s fears that interactions with the opposite sex are now inherently dangerous.
But the way Cavill has articulated his stance makes him appear like a total dunce. Just when and where has anyone ever been accused of rape simply because they approached someone and talked to them? This sounds like the type of drivel you’d come across on r/theredpill. And if he’s so fearful of being falsely accused, then why continue to uphold sexist and retrograde rules of interactions between men and women? Wouldn’t it be to your benefit if women felt empowered to approach a man first since you’re sooooooo scared of someone crying rape because you talked to them? And then this part in particular that stands out to me:
Wait… so you fear a complete stranger accusing you of rape simply because you chatted them up at a bar, but you’re not worried about your EX-girlfriend doing the same? Per your logic, her being an ex should make her a much bigger liability than a woman who doesn’t know you. What’s to stop her from crying rape just to get revenge on you? The majority of rape victims have some sort of relationship with their rapist (friend, lover, former flame) so if anything, you’d have a much bigger target on your back by continuing to have dalliances with your ex than you would interacting with a woman you’ve never met before in your life. Or does he say this because he believes that being in a sexual relationship with a woman grants you a lifetime all-access pass to her body, so it’s impossible for him to rape his ex-girlfriend? This angle makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
Seriously, did he not think of how dumb this would make him sound? The lack of self-awareness is almost frightening.
Yeah, no guy, especially not one who looks like Henry Cavill, is going to get called a rapist just for going up and talking to a woman, unless their definition of “talking” is a little different than the one that’s commonly accepted. So yeah I don’t know what he’s on about here.
So a new MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie is coming out; I guess this means one of the actors in it has some odd views about psychology, and the other is Tom Cruise.
Well, at least in my experience, the game isn’t talking to someone, it’s getting to the point where you kiss them, and then see if you can go farther. That’s the part where it’s pretty much unknown; you don’t always know if how that’s going to work out - you may get a good response if you put your hand in certain places, or she may react very negatively and in Cavill’s case, post it on social media.
I mean, he may think he’s getting to second base with some girl, and she’s thinking #Metoo, and all of a sudden he’s a creep and rapist. What’s he supposed to do, stop and formally ask her “Do you hereby consent to my touching of your breast? Please sign here in blue ink and get it notarized.”
“Are you feeling good about this? Should we dial it back?”
Christ, you make it sound like something onerous. It’s not. Just grow the fuck up and stop thinking of women as something to possess and sex something to wrest from her. Use your goddamn words.
Some people think he’s projecting, in that he may have done some of these things in the past and got away with it, and now he’s disappointed that he can’t keep doing it.
I’m not so certain that’s it, I just think like many men expressing the same concerns, that he is exaggerating a worst-case scenario as a form of sarcasm. i.e. “political correctness gone mad!”
The status quo on relationship etiquette is changing, and men are struggling to keep up. A lot are rolling with it, learning what’s expected of them, adapting. A few are professing confusion and lashing out with poorly thought out reactionary retaliation.
For me personally*, I have long thought dating traditions were weird in their expectations and the way it was weighted towards men taking care of women in expectation of etting something in return for their money/gifts/charming conversation. I’m glad there’s a shift to something a bit more equal.
*Someone who is not attractive to women and never goes out on dates
Well, maybe Cavill is a bit of a dunce - he makes his living by being extremely good looking and pretending to be other people, not by solving quadratic equations or inventing an FTL drive. He currently plays a super-genius that built power-armor to make him a superhero, he is not actually a super-genius in real life. He’s not really superman, he’s just played that character in the movies.
I see guys like this struggling with a change that means sex has more risk for them than in the past. Sort of like how paternity tests now make it much harder for cads to father children then deny those kids are theirs. (Not that I have any reason to think Cavill is in that category).
The reality is that men now have to be more careful about approaching women for sex and pay more attention to how the women is actually reacting so they can read signs of rejection. It will take awhile for this to be sorted out. And yes, women also need to be more explicit when they say either “yes” or “no”. Even then, there will still be instances of people with less than laudable morals doing bad things to other people. Men who are celebrities and/or have money do have a risk of blackmail, and celebrities do have the worry about public opinion impacting them, too.
I think Cavill’s mistake was to puzzle over this in public. The “backlash”, to my mind, is a bit of an overreaction. Yes, Cavill in real life may be a bit of a clueless dork. Guess what, there are a lot of clueless dorks out there struggling with this. Get a grip.
Slight nitpick, but I think you’re thinking of a different in-real-life actor who merely played Superman on the big screen: a guy who recently celebrated his tenth wedding anniversary, and who currently works side-by-side with his wife.
We need to quit with stuff like “Abstinence only” sex ed., and teaching women they are whores if they like sex. If a woman feels she needs to have been seduced, in order to convince herself that she didn’t do anything wrong, then she’s going to have to say “No” when asked the first time, and isn’t going to be able to say “Yes” with real conviction. We need to teach our daughters that sex is normal, and it’s OK to want to do it. Then from there, we need to teach them how to be discerning, and how to know what they want in a partner, how to know when they are looking for sex, and when they are looking for a relationship-- all the things we teach our sons already.
Then women will always mean it when they say “No”; it won’t ever be an act of flirtation, and they will be able to say yes with real conviction.
Believe me, it won’t make girls promiscuous. I was taught that, by a very progressive family, and I still chose to remain a virgin all through high school. Part of that had to do with the timing of the AIDS epidemic, but most of it was just who I was. I didn’t remain a virgin until I was married, but my first time was when I chose it to be, and exactly when I wanted it to be, and with whom I wanted it. No one pressured me into anything.
There’s a certain irony in that Cavill was apparently afraid of being publicly shamed for saying the wrong thing, and now he’s being publicly shamed for saying that.
I don’t agree. Like the OP, I think it has a whole more to do with HOW he decided to do it. As far as I can tell, he basically attacked women as being too stupid to know that talking is not rape. And his musings seem very much like the type of anti-#metoo rhetoric going around–which is definitely a bad thing to say.
And, yes, part of it is that it’s hard to have sympathy for him. Yeah, sure he thinks that women would freak out if he asks them out. Bullshit. He’s a rich, attractive celebrity actor. So him whining about this stuff only comes off as whining bullshit.
I think he actually could have brought it up in a way that would work–make it about other people and how he sympathizes with people not understanding and how he himself has the irrational fear that women will freak out. He could have mused on it and done a good job. Instead, he made himself look like a whiny creep.
Cavill certainly did not do his case any good suggesting that merely talking to someone could get you accused of rape. Personally I would ascribe that to either lazy writing/thought process or he is using a bit of hyperbole to make the situation he describes seem more dangerous for him. I would be surprised, if you asked him, that he really thought that there is a real chance of being accused of rape for merely trying to talk to a woman.
That said after things like what happened to Aziz Ansari when a woman tried to hang him out to dry I can see why famous men might be more wary.