“I am explicitly requesting that every male friend of mine read this, because it is perfect.”
Done. I urge my male friends to do the same.
Why Would This Time Be Any Different?, by Lindsey Adler (Deadspin)… Here’s what I find most aggravating: The men I know get to pick and choose when the subject of sexual harassment and abuse inconveniences them. They don’t want to talk about it too much, brushing it off as, “Yeah, I know it’s bad.” I’m a liberal man, I abhor sexual assault. Which, thanks! I would like, though, for the men in my life to actually sit with the conversation at hand and stop thinking about how it affects them and whether they’re on trial. I would like for them—even, perhaps especially, the good ones—to allow their worldview to be disrupted, and to think about the ways they’ve affected the women in their lives.
I know men—many men; nearly all the men who talk about it—who profess to abhor and do abhor sexual assault and harassment and yet struggle to really engage with the issue because no one in their right minds wants to sully the way they see their friends or themselves. Sure, there are some bad men, a lot of bad men; we as women and we as men know that. And still, when I have tried and urged the men in my life to really take a look at how absolutely insidious this issue is and what role they may have played or be playing in it, their walls have gone up. It’s a thought they find unsafe, a perspective they don’t want to have. I’m not like that.
At this point, I say, “Tough shit, dudes.”
