Before the Light (Credit: akki64 on DeviantArt)
I recognize that in light of recent revelations regarding Cornell University, a man’s voice in the current discourse is both the thing needed the most and the least. It’s one of those funny contradictions on a grimly serious subject.
I do not intend for this to be a definitive, “this is what we men need to do to combat the problems of women being harmed in society’ type of article. Bluntly, I cannot say that. I am not a social expert, a leader, or someone who has studied human behavior except in the most amateur of senses. I am not a woman, so I won’t pretend to speak for them or get it wrong. But I feel that at least some of my experiences and thoughts are worth sharing in the aftermath of the Cornell University case returning to public attention. Apologies for how late this one is coming to everyone.
When I was younger, I was part of a friend group with many of the boys I was going to school with. This group formed because we all played Xbox together, but as time wore on, I found myself becoming more of a punching bag and less of an equal partner. Put bluntly, I was bullied by most of the boys pretty severely. A bunch of the girls in our grade invited me to start sitting with them at lunch and they became my friends for the rest of middle school. From that young of an age, I learned that girls were safer. Over the years, a majority of my close friendships were with girls, and that pattern has continued to today. What opened my eyes to the way women are treated in society is the fact that every one of my friends had stories of sexual assault and harassment. Stories. Not just one incident. Every one of my friends detailed several instances where a man didn’t take no for an answer, and many of them told me in such a way that was so matter-of-fact it made my head spin.
See, in my mind, it was almost inconceivable that they could be so blasé about these absolutely heinous crimes against them. It made my blood boil, I wanted payback. Brutal payback. I wanted to send a message. And in a society where the justice system so routinely fails women who make accusations of sexual assault, vigilantism is a tantalizing alternative. Justice denied is vengeance waiting to happen. I hated the fact that the courts would never side with the women in these moments, and I felt that it was our duty as ‘decent’ men to make sure justice was seen. Of course, I had many reasons for never acting on that desire, with logic and fear being chief among them. Rationally, I knew that violence begets violence and only serves to dump kerosene on an active fire. The cowardice was knowing so few men would follow me into the fray, and I was too chickenshit to stand alone for what was right. Even without breaking faces, I grew up in a world where we were told not to talk about anything controversial for fear of messing up future prospects. It’s ‘safest’ when you’re at the top of the food chain (which, as a straight white man, I pretty much am) to never speak. Don’t give the masses a reason to tear you down because you will be safe. It’s not a point of view I subscribe to any more, but it take a lot to overwrite the societal program to not rock the boat, in the same way it’s difficult to unlearn the societally-ordained proclivity towards violence which we expect, desire, and loathe in a lot of men.
As a result, I missed the real lesson within for so long. The point which women have been screaming at men for years to get. Revenge isn’t going to solve this; it needs to be stopped before it happens. It needs to be stopped by men like us putting our shoulders to the wheel and facilitating a massive cultural shift the likes of which might seem unfair to many of us who don’t understand that equality does not bring us down but lifts others up. Cornell happened like so very many instances of sexual assault happen because we failed as men. We failed to raise our sons to be better than our fathers raised us to be. We failed to hold our friends to account when they crossed lines and hurt people. We failed to walk the talk and stand up because staying silent asks less of us.
And people have suffered unimaginable horrors because of our failures.
I heard these stories from women I love and care deeply about. I got to hear, eventually, when I proved myself trustworthy enough, the truth about what being assaulted did to their psyches and personalities. I saw how horrible it made them feel, and very quickly came to the belief that nobody should ever have to suffer like that. It’s a natural extension of the empathy people seem to have such disdain for in today’s day in age. That lack of empathy is killing all of us, slowly, from the inside out. That lack of empathy means that a lot of men cannot comprehend how evil and life altering sexual assault is unless it’s contextualized with the, “Well what if this happened to [INSERT WOMAN THEY PERSONALLY CARE ABOUT HERE].”
And I think that’s where a lot of men go wrong, where they always find some way to relate women’s sexual assault to themselves. “My wife or mother or daughter or friend” and so on. You shouldn’t care about a woman getting sexually assaulted just because you know them, you should care because nobody deserves to have their sense of autonomy violated like that. Anyone. Ever. It’s the same kind of identity and confidence destroying crime as when it happens to us (and yes, sexual assault does happen to men, and it’s just as serious, but it’s not the point of this article because it deserves its own fully in-depth discussion), albeit, not in the same ways, which means that most of us have absolutely no frame of reference as to how it feels and what the aftermath does to someone.
Instead, because we have not cultivated this empathy or desire to understand people with differing experiences, so many people jump to the usual defenses. ‘He’s not a bad person, he couldn’t have done that’ or ‘Well, boys will be boys. It’s not fair to ruin his life’ or ‘She shouldn’t have put herself in that situation in the first place.’ As if when someone has a criminal who breaks into their house, shoots their dog, and steals all their stuff that they get blamed for the crime. But somehow, with rape, it’s a normal thing.
I can’t say I’m surprised at the reaction of fraternities to circle the wagons as they so often do. Nor am I surprised as the number of people trying to find ways to paint Jane Doe as a bitter girl or someone flinging false allegations to destroy a good man or whatever excuse they use this time. There is a certain amount of protection that’s afforded to men by other men when they’re accused of sexual assault because we look at it as an us versus them issue when it’s not. Therein lies the other struggle I have with how we as men tend to talk about these things. It’s as if there is always the search for a reason to exonerate a man on principal, and it comes from this stupid tribalist mindset about how men need to look out for other men at the expense of justice and decency. It’s not ruining another man’s life to speak out when they rape somebody. Actions speak louder than words, and you are only as good as the company you keep. It’s disgusting that enough people felt comfortable in a group chat where a passed out woman was being advertised as “free pussy” and nobody who was conscious at the time said, “What the fuck are you lunatics doing? What is the matter with you? I’m calling the fucking police!” Nobody came to the aid of a girl who was passed out, out of her mind, and being used as an unwilling sex toy for frat bros.
I want to give credit to the guy who was sleeping who woke up when he saw the messages and told the girl about them. Not because the basic human decency is something supremely worthy of praise, but that it is difficult to do the right thing when mob mentality is at play and the right thing goes against the mob. Humans are social creatures by nature, and it is only natural to want to gain acceptance from your chosen group. Especially when that group chooses you back which, as I understand, is part of the process of successfully joining a fraternity. This guy, the lonesome man, number 57, did something that probably got him shunned in social situations. He went and ‘ruined the fun’ of the fraternity brothers who found themselves under more severe scrutiny.
Simply put, we need more of that. We need more men out here being unpopular with other men because we call each other out when we’re doing horrendous shit. Or even just unpalatable shit. Or even just say things that aren’t nice about women. If you have women friends in your life as a man, you owe it to them to speak up when your guy friends are saying demeaning things about women. Because how the hell can you laugh at offensive jokes about people you supposedly respect and then look them in the eye? It’s one thing if you’ve got an environment where everyone busts on each other for basic things about their identity, and making those jokes with women who make similar jokes about men back and forth to each other is not the situation I’m talking about. It’s the ones where men would never be caught dead making those jokes in front of the women they respect, or are trying to score with.
I’ve often spoken about how there are some men who know what kind of company they keep. They know when to censor themselves in front of men who would disapprove of crass jokes or telling scummy stories. I knew several of them. People I thought were friends and shared values with me. I found out secondhand the kinds of things they said about women behind my back. Especially women I knew, was fond of, and had spoken of with nothing but respect and earnestness. It enraged me when they finally felt that I was ‘safe’ enough to drop the mask around and demeaned women in front of me, and often times, it was my partner at the time, or women I considered friends. I didn’t want to let that slide, or else how could I look the people I considered dear to me in the eyes if I didn’t stand up for them? How could I ever look any woman in the eyes if I let that slide?
It cost me a lot of friendships. I was the bummer stick in the mud who didn’t like the locker room talk. I talked myself out of a lot of friendships with ‘the boys’ because I didn’t want to be someone who let that behavior slide, even with people who, otherwise, I’d be happy to be friends with. It’s not going to get better until we take accountability, and more importantly, take action. The more of us that refuse to tolerate the crass comments about women, enable predators to rape women, and excuse the people who do this shit, then the better chance we will have at dramatically reducing how many damn times it happens.
I know that after the initial resurgence of this story into the public eye, additional text messages from Jane Doe came out which attempted to placate one of the men who facilitated this shit and assure him it was okay but she didn’t want the additional men or the ketamine. Basically she said that it was okay. Now, I can’t speak for her emotional state, but it’s not the slam dunk, “See, she’s just overreacting” moment that a lot of people make it out to be. Those texts were sent mere days after the assault. There is a very real possibility that the victim did not even have the chance to process what had happened to her and actually identify that it was sexual assault before sending those texts.
It’s very normal for people who have been harmed to try and placate the one who harmed them as well. Especially in situations where a level of vulnerability played a factor in it. For example, I was involved in a very close friendship with someone who was incredibly emotionally manipulative, and every time this person would alter their behavior from their norm, it set me on edge. This person mocked me, belittled me, and attempted to undermine my sense of self so that I was wholly dependent on them before they discarded me unceremoniously. Despite all of this insane behavior, I felt like I was always at fault because they held the power in the situation between us. So even when I was the aggrieved party and had a real bone to pick, I felt like I was the one who had to apologize and grovel because I felt that I did something wrong. And that’s exactly what I did. I would go hat in hand to this person and apologize, and push myself to right all of these “wrongs” in such a way that gave this person all of the authority in the situation and compromised my own integrity.
With that in mind, I cannot overstate how believable that someone who literally had their autonomy completely stripped from them through sexual assault could react the same way. A situation which completely destroys their sense of self by someone who they thought they could trust would absolutely inspire the same compulsion to prostrate themselves and placate the offending party. And to be crystal clear, I mean that my situation was far less damaging to my psyche or sense of self or the hurt committed against me was far less egregious than sexual assault, so if I can feel that way in my situation, then someone who was hurt so much worse than I was can definitely feel that way in theirs.
Ironically, if I shared the identity of the person who did this to me, a lot of people would willingly attack them to defend my honor. Because I get the benefit of the doubt as a man in today’s society while we look for reasons to disbelieve Jane Doe. Many of us feel that in the age of women asking for equality so long denied that it is an attack against us when in reality it means the same standards are being applied across the board and that for us to continue to succeed, we have to be better in all avenues. Mediocrity no longer gets us past the finish line because of the good old boys club, nor should it. If we truly want to live in the meritocracy we say we do, then women are not something to be threatened by.
I know this one was a long, rambling one without much of a plan of action. I find myself struck by how few solutions I can offer. The culture which encourages sexual assault with such horrific frequency can’t be changed by one well-meaning man, nor will it change overnight. So I guess I can just say that everyone everywhere is worthy of the same respect, that rape is a horrific crime that truly changes the way you interface with the world, and to crib some wisdom from an ancient book: Treat all who you meet, be them strangers or dear loved ones, the way you hope anyone would treat you.
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