Yes, you are the asshole

Defensible and accountable are not the same thing

One of the most entertaining corners of the internet is the AITA (Am I The Asshole) subreddit where people share stories about things they’ve done and ask the internet to decide whether they’re the asshole in the situation or not. It tends to be a lot like an old school advice column but with significantly less self-awareness.

There are definitely more common situations and dynamics you continue to see: weddings always bring drama on all sides, stepmothers are always in the wrong, and an odd amount of intolerance around food allergies or preferences. As the subreddit has gained more prominence, there have been some marked shifts — namely the rise of obvious AI-generated posts, the lurking of 12 year olds in the comments pretending to be adults, and, most alarmingly, the conflation of whether something is permitted (by law or societal norms) or you’re an asshole.

For example, a recent post included a guy wondering whether he was the asshole for having a childfree wedding that would likely mean his sister can’t attend because of lack of childcare for her toddler. Buried at the end of the post was that the save the date and earlier conversations never mentioned that it was child-free and so his sister (a single mom) only learned one month before the wedding that her toddler was not welcome at a family event across the country for which she had already bought plane tickets. The comments were full of people saying “it’s your wedding, you make the call” and “she can find a babysitter.”

Those things are true. What is also true is that you, sir, are absolutely the asshole.

I bring this up because I’ve seen a similar pattern in the work environment and the world at large. Most recently, all the uproar around President Trump’s call to the men’s hockey team after they won gold at the Olympics.

It can absolutely be true that they didn’t know that it was being recorded/would be leaked, maybe that they didn’t hear the joke that well or know what they were laughing at, that they were on a high after a huge/life changing win, that they respect their peers on the women’s team, and that they didn’t have bad intentions.

And it can also be true that they were the assholes and should apologize.

That’s really all it would have taken: a timely “we’re so embarrassed that the video makes it look like we were laughing at our peers, that was not our intent. We are extremely sorry and in no way meant to imply the women’s team were not our equals.”

Instead, we got “People are so negative out there and they are just trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing.”

The reason the video is upsetting for many is not political and it’s not because they care so strongly about the opinions of a bunch of toothless 20-something multimillionaire men. It’s because we already knew we were being laughed at by men behind our backs and we didn’t always have the proof.

Making the entire conversation around whether it should have been filmed and/or shared, whether it’s just more “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” or whether others are allowed to be offended if the women’s hockey team has mostly said publicly a version of “we know the men’s team respects us,” simply obscures the bigger point. That whether an act itself is defensible and whether the person behind it is an asshole are not mutually exclusive and conflating the two is how people avoid accountability.

I didn’t play sports and went to an all girls school so locker room talk isn’t really a thing I dealt with or navigated but my point remains: we already know that subtle sexism is pervasive as well as culturally accepted. When proof is provided that reinforces what we already knew was happening, and getting any kind of thoughtful acknowledgement is like squeezing blood from the stone, it’s hard to ignore.

I don’t have the benefit of a viral video to serve as a receipt but some of my experiences of subtle/not so subtle sexism are as vividly captured as a TikTok in my memory, like:

1. The very senior male executive who liked to make blowjob jokes at the office and HR said “he’s of a different era but we’ll handle it.” “Handle it” meant “drop it.”

2. The company where I argued for a more generous/appropriate parental leave policy and was consequently blamed in front of other leaders every time anyone was out on leave for costing the company time and money. Only for the same leaders who were so critical of the policy to give the whole company a surprise day off after the Super Bowl to “recover” (which cost the same as the equivalent of 6.5 employees taking parental leave).

3. The sales leader who told me executive sponsorship was most successful when you had “the females talk to other females” because it was hard for him to find anything in common with women.

4. The boss who told me that I needed to do more to “get our customers in line” because “82% of them are women and more emotional than rational.” We did not even have accurate data on the percentage of the customer base that was female but I didn’t bring that up because the same boss told me I didn’t understand math. Fair, I did only get a 790 on the Math portion of the SAT.

It’s certainly hard for me to ignore when I’ve personally experienced so many things that were defensible on some level but still wrong, unkind, and yes, asshole-ish.

It’s one thing to actually believe it or feel that way (and who really knows whether a bunch of American hockey players drunk on Mexican beer were really tracking that much of what was being said or implied) but that in sober moments the debate is about whether or not it should have been filmed/captured/shared instead of any of these athletes saying “I’m so sorry that it looks like I was laughing at the women’s team, that was absolutely not my intent.”

I’m not sure that there’s a satisfying conclusion (and an awkward SNL monologue appearance from the Hughes brothers five days later certainly wasn’t it). Those who laughed aren’t going to suddenly understand why it mattered. The people defending locker room talk were already okay with locker room talk. And the next time something like this happens — and there will be a next time — the cycle will continue.

The most appropriate dialogue from all of this came from US Women’s Team captain Hilary Knight (no relation to the illustrator of “Eloise”) who said to the press: “Now I have to sit in front of you and explain someone else’s behavior. It’s not my responsibility.”