The “Good Guy” Myth
“He’s a good man”
“He was just a kid.”
“He’s from a nice family.”
Miss me with all that. Let’s be clear: nice boys who go to nice schools can and will assault people. Brock Turner was a nice boy from a nice family with good grades and an athletic scholarship- and that didn’t stop him from assaulting an unconscious girl behind a dumpster. Brett Kavanaugh was a good boy from a good home, and that didn’t stop him from smothering one girl and putting his penis in another one’s face. And even besides sexual assault and violence, so-called “good guys” are fully capable of hurting women in other ways. One of my exes attended an elite, all-boys, Catholic school like Brett Kavanaugh, and none of that religious education stopped him from hitting me in the face in broad daylight.
A person’s characteristics can mean very little about their character. Having some list of socially acceptable accomplishments does not and will not make a man an inherently good person- or a good spouse for that matter. But once a man has been officially labeled a “good guy”, he’s officially “marriage material” and beyond critique for the rest of eternity. Never mind how he treats you.
Stop it. The “good guy” stamp needs to be retired and permanently discontinued. It creates a false sense of security that they are all safe and always well-intentioned. That is a lie. If we have learned anything from the last few weeks and the #metoo movement it’s that a lot of harm has been done by a lot good men whether they are judges, pastors, teachers, coaches, family, friends, boyfriends, husbands, and so on.
Truth be told, there are no “good men”. There are just men who wake up every day and make their own efforts and decisions. Thankfully, there are men who make an effort to build integrity and live up to it. There are men who decide to be good partners. There are men who make an effort to respect boundaries. There are men who decide not to be predators. There are grown men who make an effort to unlearn all the misogyny and sexism they learned over the years from their teenage friends, creepy uncles, football coaches, youth ministers, pornos, and Instagram personalities.
The “good guy” is a myth. We are ALL flawed human beings capable of helping and hurting other people. The sooner we come to terms with that, the sooner we’ll stop handing out “good guy” labels that are literally functioning as get out of jail free cards.