"Just some good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm, been in trouble with the law since the day they were born," sang Waylon Jennings in Good Ol' Boys, the theme song to the Dukes of Hazzard. "Making their way, the only way they know how, that's just a little bit more than the law will allow."
That's the excuse that's been used since time began to condone boorish behaviour from boys. Especially when gathered together in a group, boys of all ages often compete to outdo one another with talk and action that is equal parts dangerous, rude, cruel, immature, reckless and stupid.
These good ol' boys are idiots, man-children who want all of the privileges and power that comes with adulthood but none of the responsibility. They are an embarrassment to all men.
Shawn Simoes is just the latest so-called man to show lots of courage harassing a female TV reporter outside of a Toronto FC soccer game last weekend with harsh and hurtful sexual comments, his chums in the background yukking it up.
Simoes isn't laughing now.
His employer, Hydro One, the Ontario equivalent of B.C. Hydro, fired him from his $107,000 a year engineering job. For some, that seems an overreaction but it's the right thing to do, both morally and legally. From a moral standpoint, his words were hateful and intolerable. He has earned the right to be made an example of. Legally, many employers now have morality clauses written into the contracts of senior staff, allowing for discipline and termination for employees who tarnish the reputation of the employer and other employees.
Even if Simoes didn't sign such a contract, the courts have been siding with employers for two decades in cases where an individual's private actions have been deemed harmful to his or her professional reputation and that of their employer and profession, starting with a case involving a B.C. teacher who had willingly posed for pornographic pictures taken by her spouse, who posted the pictures online.
Some people might call that a horrible infringement on privacy and individual rights but they would be wrong. Simoes surrendered his right to privacy the moment he stood in front of the TV camera and started yapping into the microphone held by TV reporter Shauna Hunt. The same goes for posting words (or pictures) online.
In his now ample spare time, Simoes should sit down to read So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson's new book about the growing list of people who have destroyed their professional and personal lives with damaging comments made online or on camera.
Sadly, Simoes is part of a legion of boys disguised as men. He and those good ol' boys at the Dalhousie dentist program in Halifax won't be the last of their kind we'll see. Male entitlement is alive and well, now using the catch phrases of civil and individual rights and even feminism to justify itself.
Feminism as philosophy is about power, not gender. The power men as a gender have lost in the past half-century in Western society is considerable and no power shift, be it political, social or individual, happens without resentment and retaliation. The devaluation of men and masculinity has been relentless in both private and public life. Men have lost their central roles in the home and at work. Worst of all, traditionally masculine traits of strength, resilience and firm control have been shunned on one hand and appropriated by female leaders on the other.
Power itself has now framed by women, with teamwork and collaboration seen as the female and modern way to wield power while detailed control and constant oversight is seen as micromanaging and hopelessly male and backward.
Many men have adapted, quietly relieved they no longer have to flex their muscles all the time, projecting a viral masculinity that always felt silly and fake. Now they are partners at home and at work, no longer trapped by the notion of blue and pink jobs.
Some haven't changed but are trying to and they deserve encouragement and patience.
Some refuse to change and they deserve nothing but scorn and condemnation from society in general and from men in particular.
