How To Be Less Of A Shit All The Time
Photo: JAMIE WDZIEKONSKI
It is an unfortunate and pathetically humbling moment to realize that an essay like this - one in which a man addresses men on why and how to confront other men about misogyny, sexism, and assault - is a necessity, but given the epidemic rates at which men are beating, sexually assaulting, and murdering women - particularly women and trans women of color - it very much is.
I suppose we as a culture might benefit from (or perhaps, if not ‘benefit’, we can settle for ‘wouldn’t suffer terribly from’) a male voice (ironic considering the male voice never seems to shut the fuck up in every field other than the prevention of men hurting women) if simply via the logic that we are the problem, and were the female voice able to get this point across on its own, this issue wouldn’t exist, which is not an indictment of the strength and validity of the female voice, perspective, and experience, but rather a testament to the belittlement that they suffer.
This is a difficult essay to write.
How often have you heard your friend say they’re off to ‘fuck some bitch’ and congratulated them? How many times have you seen a girl groped and done nothing? How did you manage to swallow your morals when you saw someone take home a girl whom you could see was too drunk to understand what was happening to her?
“ By verbalizing these challenges to your peers, you inflict them upon yourself, and you may not be very proud of your result.”
I know it often isn’t easy to act in these instances. It is uncomfortable for you, but then, you aren’t the one that these things are happening to. You’re the one that can stop them, and it is vital that you do.
First, and most obviously, if you see an assault occurring, however mild it may appear to you, intervene. If you see something that might be an assault occurring, intervene. If you see something that probably isn’t an assault occurring but is unsettling enough that the possibility of an assault occurred to you, intervene. What does that intervention look like in the moment? It depends on the circumstances.
Obviously calling the police (unfortunately) or intervening physically may be needed, but for the far more common and endlessly more nuanced occurrences of abuse, harassment, or other situations where women are made to feel unsafe, for men, it is often as easy as asking her if she is okay. That question not only allows her to call for help, but rings a bell in the dude’s head that he is doing something that is so fucked that it would warrant that question from a stranger. I have seen this simple act to be extremely effective in deescalating situations and takes nothing more than a breath from you. And yet, still, it is an intimidating proposition.
To confront, but also to be confronted in these situations, requires a degree of humility and willingness to participate in conflict, but most importantly, requires the development of a sort of muscle that most men - particularly straight young middle-class men who’ve not experienced much humanitarian unity but have been raised in the most polarized Western political climate since the American Civil War - do not possess: the capacity to be wrong.
From bar trivia to instances of moral depravity, people don’t like to be wrong, especially in public. Their intolerance for personal error burns so deeply that they’ll deny facts and science, let alone the inappropriateness of their comment to the female flight attendant.
Where does the hesitance come from? What makes these questions and these actions so difficult to apply? Of course conflict is scary, and when it’s your friend (or some enormous scary dude who looks like he will hurt you), you have a lot to lose in that conflict. But I would argue that if you have a friend who would require this sort of intervention and they don’t find resolution or the error of their ways, fuck them. You don’t want people like that in your life in the first place. They are the ones who you will be scared to bring to the bar, to introduce to your girlfriend, and whom when they get canceled, will bring you down with them, and you, being strong enough to have faced that conflict in the first place, don’t deserve to carry their burden.
“it is as important that you intervene when you see someone attacked on the subway as it is when your friend comments something explicit on a young girl’s Instagram post”
Though the potential loss of friends and bodily safety are valid concerns, I have found that the real fear, the most difficult thing about asking your peers these questions, is that in asking them, you must answer them yourself. By verbalizing these challenges to your peers, you inflict them upon yourself, and you may not be very proud of your result. That is fucking terrifying, but that’s a fear worth facing if it means not inflicting that which you are most ashamed of on the women around you.
Let me die on the hill for you.
I have been weird. I have texted too much. After a girl and I had broken up, I tried to convince her to kiss me when she did not want to kiss me. I have not taken the hint. My natural disposition lends me more toward isolation and timidity and I have spent much of my life avoiding women in sexual situations altogether which - though effective in providing them space and personally convenient given my extreme shyness - comes from a mild but present bias in my understanding of women; that women are something that I as a man am unable or unwilling to interact with, not on the same plane as myself and other men; that they are somehow ‘other.’ These admissions and realizations were brought forth through conflict resulting from a discussion another man had with me, and though it was terrible, it was necessary, and we remain friends.
All of this said, it is as important that you intervene when you see someone attacked on the subway as it is when your friend comments something explicit on a young girl’s Instagram post, though at that point it may be too late, for like trade agreements and student exchange programs, the best time for these things to occur is in times of peace, preventatively, long before the incident occurs. When you are alone and in comfortable spaces with your friends and peers. Ask them (and, God help you, yourself) the questions that need to be asked in periods of time and contexts that allow the answers to those questions to be truly wondered and formed.
Questions you should ask other men:
-How do you create a safe and comfortable environment for someone to say no to you?
-How do you call out bullshit misogyny when you see it?
-When’s the last time you asked a woman about how they’re feeling, and how did you support them?
be less shit
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be less shit -
If you simply cannot handle the direct approach, a strategy I have found especially useful while trying to retain my battered but lingering sense of masculinity, is to shape these difficult questions into requests for advice from peers.
For example, instead of posing the vital but jagged question, ‘are you making sure that women feel safe rejecting you?’ you could opt for the passive (cowardly, but we do what we can), ‘‘I don’t want this girl to go on a date with me because she feels like she has to because I like her a lot. I mean, how do you know if she really likes you and isn’t just saying yes out of guilt or pity or whatever?’ If his answer to that question is anything like, ‘who cares?’, that’s exactly the sort of bullshit we are talking about.
Alternatively, tell an anecdote that describes a humiliatingly misogynistic moment experienced by you, and make that an absolutely despicable and intolerable scenario. For example:
‘I was at this cafe and this girl walked in and had a cat print on her shirt and some guy said ‘can I see your pussy up close?’ And everyone in the cafe booed and called him a dumb stupid fucking cunt and he was so pathetically humiliated that he apologized and tried to buy everyone a coffee, but he was so repulsive that no one accepted, and he slinked out. I mean what a fucking asshole, right?’
This, repeated over and over, is a passive way to set the cultural climate of your immediate group of friends and peers where the rules are understood that instances described in the stories are intolerable.
Both of these strategies of discussion are passive, low-confrontation work arounds for having a chat with your mates and setting the rules, because ultimately, that is often the preventative measure that works best: setting sternly the expectations, boundaries, ideology, and morality for yourself and those around you.
Yourself and those around you. That is where it starts.
No one deserves to feel unsafe on their street, violated in a crowd, demeaned at work; murdered, abused, raped. It is an intolerable and inhumane existence, and won’t survive if you don’t allow it to. You may find that you have to put your words, your body between someone who may not be as strong as you and someone who’d do them harm which is fucking scary, but in those moments remember that by virtue of being a man, you are in the best (if only) position to save someone, to make a change in the grander culture and ideology of the men around you, and to be as good a person as we know you can be.