A clip of WNBA star Angel Reese recently went viral after she invited her mentor, Shaquille O’Neal (Shaq), to her podcast, where he made some sexually suggestive comments about her. Social media was outraged, with many women responding to the incident with disdain due to personal experiences of being sexualized by men old enough to be a father figure. This opened up online discourse about women’s relationships with predatory men, specifically relationships that start with positive intentions but have insidious ulterior motives. While men and women can coexist in a healthy relationship, it is important to be aware of grooming patterns that can occur in relationships between older men and younger women. Based on Shaq’s sexualization of Angel Reese, here are some takeaways about recognizing predatory relationships with men.
Platonic Relationships with Men
After the clip of Shaq went viral, many women reflected on incidents where their platonic male friends crossed the line by making sexually suggestive comments. This blurs the line between male and female relationships, especially when men befriend women with hidden motives of eventually sleeping with them. Due to patriarchy, which has normalized limited emotional expression among men, women usually act as an emotional safety net for men in friendships. However, due to not having a safe space to release emotionally, men can confuse this emotional support as a potential romantic connection. In the context of Angel Reese, Shaq positioned himself as her support system while harboring sexual thoughts about her which is predatory.
It can be hard to recognize men’s ulterior motives until they reveal their intentions to you. As a woman, it’s important to have tough conversations with your male friends about what a healthy relationship with the opposite sex looks like. Setting boundaries from the relationship’s inception is necessary to set the tone of what lines cannot be crossed. Boundaries can be broken when male friends make sexual comments about your body, touch you inappropriately, take advantage of your emotional state, or constantly compare themselves to your boyfriend. For Angel Reese, it was clear her boundaries were broken when she insisted that Shaq should stop making sexualizing comments, yet he persisted. Ultimately, whatever interactions make you feel uncomfortable within your male friendships should be considered a red flag and addressed immediately.
Familial Relationships with Men
Another important context where trusted men can be predatory is within our family units. What’s disheartening in the context of Angel Reese is that Shaq positioned himself as a mentor and father figure. Within the same podcast where he sexualized her, he claimed that he loves her as a daughter and would never consider her sexually or romantically. The contradiction in his statement is an indication that he was preying on Angel Reese by earning her trust through emotional support and then weakening her boundaries with the assumption that she would entertain his inappropriate comments. Women can also experience this scenario within familial relationships, whether it’s a close family friend, a creepy stepfather, or a perverted uncle.
It can be difficult to recognize perverted behavior from male family members, especially as a young girl. This is because the level of trust established between you and a male family member can cloud your judgment when they are grooming you and weaponizing that family connection. Since trust is most likely established in a familial context, the goal of grooming it is to gradually weaken your boundaries and get you to accept inappropriate behavior. This can look like making inappropriate jokes about your body, which can lead to inappropriate sexual commentary and even sexual assault. Grooming can also look like emotional abuse, where the groomer love bombs you with affirmations and regular gifts and then weaponizes your emotional security against you.
Fighting Against Rape Culture
Due to patriarchy, we exist in a world that has normalized rape culture where men are conditioned to feel entitled to women’s bodies that are viewed as sexual property. In the US, child marriage is still legal in 37 states where children as young as the age of 10 have been forced to marry adult men. This reality, in addition to the high rates of gender-based violence and continuous femicide cases, is a clear affirmation that violence against women and girls is normalized. Victim blaming is an effective tactic that uplifts rape culture; for example, a lot of men justified Shaq sexualizing Angel Reese because they claimed she already dresses “sexually”. This affirms the idea that women deserve to be sexualized and preyed upon because they don’t dress respectably.
Respectability politics, the idea that how you dress and act justifies how you are treated, fuels victim blaming, even amongst women. As women, it is important to take accountability for our participation in rape culture because even though we are victims of it, we are also capable of perpetuating it. A great example is how women support known abusers within their families at the expense of harming other women, even their children. Telling your daughters to change their outfits because of a creepy uncle, forcing them to hug a male family member without asking their consent, or telling them to keep quiet when they are assaulted are forms of enabling rape culture. Doing all this in the name of protecting your family or to maintain your reputation is rooted in rape culture. Therefore, unpacking your participation in respectability politics and victim-blaming is a great start to recognizing predatory relationships with men.
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