““This is about the time, when I talk about politics, that the
Internet trolls tell me to stick to my day job,” the actor said. “I’d
like to talk about my day job. My day job is the chairman and the
co-founder of Thorn. We built software to fight human trafficking and
the sexual exploitation of children. My other day job is that of the
father of two, a 2-month old and 2-year-old.”
He then described joining the FBI in raids in India, Russia, Mexico and stateside in New Jersey and New York.
“I’ve seen things that no person should ever see,” he said, tearing
up. “I’ve seen video content of a child that is the same age as mine
being raped by an American man that was a sex tourist in Cambodia. This
child was so conditioned by her environment that she thought she was
engaging in play.”
He continued, “I’ve been on the other end of a phone call from my team
asking for my help because we had received a call from the Department of
Homeland Security, telling us that a 7-year-old girl was being sexually
abused and that content was being spread on the Dark Web … They’d
watched her for three years and they could not find the perpetrator, [and were] asking us for help. We were the last line of defense. An actor and his foundation were the last line of defense.”
“I had to say no and it devastated me, it haunted me,” Kutcher said,
choking up again. “For the next three months I had to go to sleep every
night and think about that little girl that was being abused and the
fact that if I built the right thing, we could have saved her. Now, if I
got that phone call, the answer would be yes.”
He then recalled the story of “Amy,” a 15-year-old girl from Oakland,
Calif., who was forced into trafficking within hours of meeting a man
in person she’d first talked to online. “This isn’t an isolated
incident. There’s not much that’s unusual about it,” Kutcher said. “The
only unusual thing is that ‘Amy’ was found and returned to her family
within three days using a tool we created … called Spotlight.”
Kutcher said the tool aids police in cutting investigation time by 60
percent, adding, “That’s my day job and I’m sticking to it.”
It wasn’t all heavy: Kutcher and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had a lighthearted moment after his speech. “You were better looking in the movies,” McCain said.
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Here’s the reason why your “POOR MEN!” comments on my “men don’t know how to do emotional labor and rely solely on their wives to do it for them,” post are GARBAGE. Like, shut upppppp.
Do we live in a society that socializes a lot of young men to not have the foundational tools they need for their personal and emotional wellbeing? YES. Does that suck? YES. Is everyone in society responsible for recreating, over and over again, toxic masculinity? YES.
But what all those comments completely ignore are the BENEFITS of men not being expected to do emotional labor. Men benefit GREATLY from this shit. ALL THE TIME.
They benefit from not having to do the incredibly exhausting legwork of emotionally caring for their children. Dad is the “fun one” and mom is who you go to talk through all your life shit with. Doing emotional labor for your children is beautiful work but it is honestly a 24/7 job and it is exhausting and intensive and requires a great deal of patience. I know a shit-ton of people my age (myself included) who had little to no emotional labor support growing up from their dads. That means their moms (and grandmas. And sisters. And aunts.) were doing the bulk of this labor.
(Also it’s pretty sad when a girl child in the family is expected to do the emotional labor of her siblings cause dad can’t get his head out of his ass to show up and listen for 5 minutes)
Men benefit from not having any expectations on them that they do any other kind of kinship work too. Like calling their moms on their mom’s birthday. Like writing christmas cards, inviting friends to dinner, scheduling healthcare visits for their kids (and sometimes even for themselves!), making sure dinner is on the table for a family dinner, getting presents for family birthdays, etc etc. Many men are completely oblivious of how their family actually functions, because they’ve never had to do kinship work like this in any real, substantive way.
When men are exempt from kinship work and emotional labor, they have a shitton of free time and energy on their hands to explore other activities, activities that their busy, emotionally taxed wives cannot explore. This is a huge benefit for men and it has a huge cost for women.
I honestly think that this is the cause of many straight relationship breakups/divorces, because men have all this time to pursue personal projects and women are fucking E X H A U S T E D and busy doing all the emotional labor, and men end up looking at their wives and being like “You’re boring now. All you think about/talk about is being a mom. I need a ~partner~. Someone with more interests.”
So before you’re like POOR MEN fucking recognize that POOR MEN benefit from not being expected to do emotional labor and that these POOR MEN are GROWNASS MEN who are capable of changing that up and learning but DON’T. They’re not children anymore. They can actually do this shit if they want to.
