‘Bad Apples’ Aren’t the Issue When It Comes to Societal Problems

A domination-based culture and the subcultures it engenders are to blame

“It’s not the fault of all men that a few bad apples treat women badly.” Ever heard that one before? I hear it all of the time.

How about this one? “Police brutality is the fault of a few bad apples on the force.”

“Most people aren’t racist. It’s just a few bad apples who do those things, so we shouldn’t all be blamed for their actions.”

Makes sense in a way, right — particularly in a very individualistic society? Obviously, not every single person from any particular demographic is taking part in this sort of anti-social behavior so why should everyone in it be painted with a broad brush? Culture, that’s why, and I’m not talking about art galleries and opera.

The culture of something determines what is pervasively acceptable, and the culture of the United States (and most other Western countries) is rooted in a dominance-based hierarchy. This means that bullying and trying to exert power over others to gain status is an accepted part of how things operate, particularly for men. This leads to and allows for the individuals who do anti-social things because they can reasonably assume they will suffer no consequences for doing so. (For more about the US as a dominance-based culture read An American Culture of Insecure Bullies.)

Allowing that to continue is the responsibility of us all, but the subcultures created by each demographic bear their own responsibility for what is allowable within them, particularly when the people in those demographics hold both historical and current levels of societal power. White people are more responsible for racism against Blacks than other racial subgroups because they have (and have always had) the institutional power to impact it — both to keep it alive and to mitigate it. Men bear more responsibility for misogyny even though some women support and maintain patriarchy as well because a culture of American masculinity has upheld and institutionalized that, even if not every single man actively participates in it.

In addition, when you have benefitted from oppression, even unwillingly or unknowingly, it’s not enough to say, “I don’t do that.” Our society is designed so that those closest to the apex of the pyramid of power rest on the backs of those who have less social power. People who try to use the “It’s not me — it’s some bad apples over there” excuse are simply looking for a “no-fault” way to keep the status quo. Either that or they don’t want to have to be forced to look at all the ways that they subtly enable inequality by refusing to engage with it and its impacts. Either way, they don’t want to have to do anything differently.

As Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel has said, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Pretty much all research done asking American males about what it means to be a man includes not only things like acting tough and being highly independent but also being able to solve problems using aggression. A Promundo survey of thousands of men in the US, Mexico, and the UK identified 7 pillars of masculinity as demanded by the culture. I don’t have time to touch on them all here, but the last one is reflective of the dominator society that we live in.

“Finally, the three messages of Pillar 7 emphasize the need for a “real man” to use physical violence when necessary, and to hold control over household decisions and women’s movements. Section IV of the report will link adherence to the Man Box rules with men’s likelihood of perpetrating various forms of bullying and sexual harassment, among other forms of aggression and control.”

This means, among other things, that women grow up and live with a persistent level of ongoing fear and misogyny as a part of the culture, from young childhood on. It does not require every single man to be actively behaving in anti-social ways in order for that to be the case. It’s the ocean that we swim in and the one that is normalized in our societies. Saying something like, “It’s not fair for women to lump all men together under the same umbrella” willfully ignores that the true umbrella is not men as a demographic but masculinity as a culture as it is defined in this country (and others).

Jock culture (or what the young men I met were more likely to call “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as they promote bonding, preaching honor and integrity, such groups condition guys to treat anyone who is not “on the team” (a category that may include any woman who is not a blood relative) as the enemy — bros before hos! — justifying hostility or antagonism toward them. Loyalty is unconditional, and masculinity asserted through sharing sexual exploits, misogynist language, and homophobia.

Orenstein, Peggy. Boys & Sex (p. 21). Harper. Kindle Edition.

So-called “locker room talk” isn’t so much about actual sex as it is about demonstrating power and control over women’s bodies. Guys don’t talk about how many orgasms the woman had or what a good lover she thought he was. They say things like, “I nailed her!” Masculinity is established essentially by denying female humanity and using it as a punch line to establish both cohesion and pecking order. This may not be consciously done, but that doesn’t really matter because it is creating an environment that is unsafe for women.

This symbolic aggression towards women as a way to bond and validate heterosexual masculinity is so ubiquitous that even boys who are too young to be truly thinking about girls as sex partners understand it — because it’s such a pervasive part of the culture. Even elementary school boys, when asked what it takes to be a man could identify dominating women as a part of the equation. It doesn’t matter if all boys buy into that, because they all know it’s what is expected.

This is the dominant culture for males in this country and so it takes a certain amount of courage and intention to not get sucked into it, even if you can recognize some of the ways that it’s harmful. But even if you have that understanding, not actively participating in this culture does not absolve anyone because as Elie Wiesel pointed out, neutrality helps the oppressor. It keeps the oppression functioning.

Allowing it to go on unchallenged is what keeps the culture alive in which lower-level aggressions against women such as catcalling and unsolicited dick picks make way for worse things such as groping and revenge porn. These, in turn, pave the way for coercive sex, manipulation, and out-and-out sexual assault. They are all a part of the same culture of disrespect for and entitlement to female bodies that nearly all women have extensive experience with.

Whether you personally have ever done any of those things is not particularly relevant because we live in a culture where they are widespread and largely seen as acceptable. Most men have laughed at, even if they haven’t themselves said, the sorts of offensive things that create a misogynistic culture. If they hadn’t, it wouldn’t be so pervasive. We have the culture that we allow and tolerate, and it is rife with bullying and coercive behavior, particularly towards women, but also towards anyone considered to be weaker.

Sure, some guys don’t think like this, particularly younger men who have grown up with more challenges to this culture, but even amongst them, there are often problematic cultural elements that are widely tolerated.

The boy who, at age ten, asks his friends the difference between a dead baby and a bowling ball may or may not find it equally uproarious, at sixteen, to share what a woman and a bowling ball have in common (you can Google it). He may or may not post ever-escalating “jokes” about women, or African Americans, or homosexuals, or disabled people on a group Snapchat. He may or may not send “funny” texts to friends about “girls who need to be raped” or think it’s hysterical to surprise a buddy with a meme in which a woman is being gagged by a penis, her mascara mixed with her tears. He may or may not, at eighteen, scrawl the names of his hookups on the wall of his all-male dorm, as part of a yearlong competition to see who can “pull” the most women. Perfectly nice, bright, polite boys I interviewed had done each of those things.

Orenstein, Peggy. Boys & Sex (pp. 31–32). Harper. Kindle Edition.

Mark Greene, senior editor for The Good Men Project points out, one of the reasons for this: “This is because we have no collective consensus for dealing with bullies. The fact is, for generations, we have collectively accepted a culture of masculinity that rewards bullying as an empowering expression of manhood.” This is due to living in a domination-based culture, where hierarchy is determined largely by aggression. Be tough, be independent, be in control, be dominant, if you don’t win, you lose. No one spells this out in a handbook that is taught in so many words, because they don’t have to. It’s the culture that we all swim in, and that culture applies doubly to men. It’s reinforced in media, and amongst boys and men in social settings, sports, etc.

Our culture accepts not only objectification and denigration of women as a way for men to bond and obtain or solidify status, but as Orenstein pointed out above, also by locking shoulders against anyone else who is not “on the team.”

In a country that was founded by and for the interests of white men and their families, this dynamic still largely reflects on the “otherness” of racial minorities, particularly Blacks. This is not the sole responsibility of masculinity, however. Plenty of white women also take part in this aspect of our domination-based culture, in both conscious and subconscious ways. The culture of white centrality is still pervasive even though in just a few years, whites will be the racial minority in the US. The fear of losing this cultural centrality drove the election of Donald Trump and the attack on the US Capitol as well as a more general rise in white nationalism. (For more on that, read Is Losing Cultural Centrality Worth Killing Democracy Over?)

Although we’ve certainly made some social progress in the past 60 years, pervasive discrimination against Blacks is still bad enough that in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a whole new wave of social activism highlighted just how much more work is needed. Domination of and denigration of “the other” is so baked into our culture that it took a time in history when people were more willing to listen for more of that to become visible. (See my story on what the George Floyd protests have accomplished for more on that.)

Although overt, conscious racism has improved tremendously since the 1960s, it’s not just a few bad apples who are responsible for what remains. We have a culture where racism is still a largely unconscious aspect of many institutions and society at large. We also have a white population that is estimated to be about 20–25% overtly racist as well. Social stratification and domination of those who are seen to be weaker or lesser is a huge part of our American culture, so it is hardly surprising that racism is alive and well.

“About 1,000 civilians are killed each year by law-enforcement officers in the United States. By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime. And in another study, Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed.”

Helping to maintain the pyramid of power is a part of what the police have always been tasked to do in this country, from slave patrols to strike breaking, from Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement. The confluence of race, poverty and social class in many cases intensifies the likelihood of Blacks being greater targets of police brutality, although it happens to middle-class and wealthy Blacks as well.

It’s not just a few bad apples who participate in police brutality — it’s a culture of distrust and suspicion of “the other” that is a pervasive part of everyday policing. In a culture where Blacks are routinely portrayed as being inherently dangerous and criminal, this means they are more often considered suspicious just for existing. (For more about this, read ‘Driving While Black’ Is a Real Issue.)

The world’s most influential training program for law enforcement, for example, is called the Reid Technique. It is used in something like two-thirds of U.S. state police departments — not to mention the FBI and countless other law-enforcement agencies around the world — and the Reid system is based directly on the idea of transparency: it instructs police officers, when dealing with people they do not know, to use demeanor as a guide to judge innocence and guilt.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Talking to Strangers (p. 327). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

This completely fails to take into account that if you and the other people in your community are used to be hassled by the police for no real reason, your demeanor around them is bound to reflect that. Those who are closer to the bottom of the social dominance hierarchy are naturally going to be treated with greater suspicion based on nothing other than their status in society. This culture is a problem, just as all other manifestations of a domination-based culture are problematic.

The gendered issues in our society have less to do with men and more to do with the pervasive culture of masculinity, which is harmful to women, but also to men and to society as a whole.

The racial problems we still have are less to do with white people as a demographic and more to do with a still robust culture of white centrality and superiority which they too often uphold.

Police brutality is less about police forces attracting sociopaths and more about a culture that teaches distrust of those who do not behave in the ways that you believe that they should, along with a historic role of maintaining the social hierarchy.

We’re all responsible to some extent for the culture that we have in this country and the ways that it disadvantages traumatizes, and oppresses certain groups of people. Those with more social power or more direct influence over certain subcultures play a larger role in maintaining them, but none of us is without culpability. Even if you aren’t maintaining these destructive cultures, you must be working to actively counter them in order to be an actual “good citizen.”

Overwhelmingly, our social ills are not due to a few bad apples. They are due to the culture (and subcultures) that we allow and tolerate. Trying to stand at the side saying, “That’s not me,” just isn’t going to cut it.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2021 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love.