Men Don’t Care
I bet you’re exhausted from hearing about the Cornell 7 case. I am too.
But I’ve been thinking about something for a while now. And it occurred to me that this actually might be the perfect time to articulate my thoughts. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how to say it. And all I could think about were three little words:
Men don’t care.
I know good men. I married a good man. Men who hear about sexual violence and are genuinely horrified. They have no trouble sympathizing and thinking “wow, that’s so horrible”. But they can’t empathize. They can put the story down and continue on with their lives.
Women can’t.
Because for many men, SA is just something awful that they hear about on the news.
For women, it’s a constant reminder that it could have been me.
It could still be me.
Men don’t understand what it feels like to move through the world knowing that half the population could physically overpower you.
What it feels like to not feel like a human being, but like prey.
They don’t know what it‘s like to be raised hearing:
- check your back seat
- don’t walk alone at night
- don’t wear headphones
- don’t wear revealing clothing
- don’t look at your phone
The rules play in an endless loop in our minds. And sometimes, we start to think we’re just being paranoid.
And then another woman is SA’d. Another woman disappears. Another woman is murdered by a person she whole-heartedly trusted.
Suddenly we feel justified in all our little safety routines. And the fear just compounds.
Men don’t know how we feel walking to our car at night.
Your head on a swivel.
All you can hear is your own footsteps.
But wait.
Is that another set of footsteps behind you?
You stop.
Nothing.
You start walking a little faster.
You casually check behind you.
No one.
You see a shadow out of the corner of your eye.
You entire body jolts.
It’s a trash can.
You giggle at yourself.
But your heart is racing.
You see a person walking towards you.
You feel immediate relief to not be alone.
But then you notice it’s a man.
Your body stiffens.
He’s probably just walking home.
Your brain knows that.
But you cross the street anyway.
Wait.
What if you offended him by doing that?
And now he’s angry?
You start thinking if you can outrun him.
You glance behind you.
No, it’s ok, he’s still walking away.
You feel silly.
You make it to the parking lot.
And you start studying every car.
Maybe there’s someone sitting in that one, waiting.
Or behind that other one over there.
You see your car.
You think you hear footsteps again.
And you break into a run.
Your hand is in your purse searching for the keys.
Thirty feet.
You find them.
Twenty.
You hold them between your fingers.
Ten.
You unlock the car right as you reach for the handle.
Collapse onto the seat.
And immediately lock the doors.
Click.
And you finally take the breath you’ve been holding in. Nothing happened.
That’s the thing.
Nothing happened.
But your body was reacting as if it had.
You were terrified. And not because you were irrational. But because you’ve spent your whole life learning that men can do horrible things to women ANYWHERE, at anytime, for any reason.
In parking garages, elevators, hiking trails, Ubers, hotel hallways, buses, the workplace, our own homes.
And we don’t know which men are dangerous just by looking at them.
So we learn to be wary of ALL OF THEM.
There are men who hear these stories and feel sick. They think “I would never do that” and “My friends would never do that”.
There are men who know logically that it’s awful, but think there is nothing they can personally do about it.
There are men who immediately start to try to justify the assault.
How much did she drink?
What was she wearing?
Why did she trust him?
Why didn’t she file charges right away?
Why did she go there?
And then there are men who don’t see why it’s a big deal. They don’t see women as people.
Just a container to empty themselves in.
But there’s a category that I think is the biggest one of all.
Men who think they care. But don’t really understand what they’re being asked to care about.
Because sexual violence doesn’t live in their bodies the same way.
Maybe that’s what I mean when I say men don’t care.
Not that every man is cruel. Not that men can’t also be victims. Not that good men don’t feel anything when women are hurt.
What I mean is that most men have the privilege of experiencing sexual violence as:
Something horrible that happens.
Women experience it as:
Something horrible that happens to us.
Years ago, my husband and I watched the TV series Outlander. And (SPOILER ALERT) at the end of season one there is a horrific man-on-man rape scene.
He cried. I sobbed.
We had seen rape depicted on screen many times before, but this felt different.
Especially for my husband.
He could put himself in the victim’s body in a way he hadn’t really been able to before. He was able to imagine the violation. To feel the fear. It was visceral. And he said something I’ll never forget:
“I think every man should have to watch that.”
Because suddenly, it no longer felt like an abstract horror that happens to “other people”. He could finally truly understand the gravity of it.
According to the CDC, nearly half of women have experienced sexual violence. More than 1 in 5 have experienced rape or attempted rape.
Think about that for a second. If nearly half of women have experienced something like this… then how many men have been the perpetrators?
Most men think they don’t know someone or wouldn’t be friends with someone who would do something like that. And I know it’s scary:
But you do.
Gisele Pelicot’s husband drugged her for yearsand invited countless strangers to rape her.
Fifty men, including her husband, were convicted of sexual crimes.
FIFTY MEN. That’s what haunts me.
Not only that someone she trusted so much could do something so heinous to her. But that he was able to find so many men willing to participate in the assault of an unconscious woman. These were ordinary men who went home afterwards and continued on with their lives like nothing had happened. The people who commit these crimes are not mythical monsters hiding out in dark alleyways. They’re normal everyday people.
Coworkers. Neighbors. Friends. Family members. Husbands. Sons. Uncles. Godfathers. Your kid’s coach. Your barber. The police officer you often see around town.
When women see stories like this it does something to our sense of safety and our understanding of the world.
Because if danger always looked dangerous, it wouldn’t be so scary.
But danger could look like the person you’ve been married to for 20 years, your father, your brother, your friend, your boss.
And this fear exists against a backdrop that isn’t exactly ancient history.
American women gained the constitutional right to vote in 1920. It wasn’t until 1974 that women were federally protected from discrimination when applying for bank accounts and credit cards in their own names. Marital rape didn’t become illegal in all 50 states until 1993.
Just 33 years ago!
We have barely lived in a world where women weren’t legally, financially, socially, and sexually subordinate to men. We’re only a few generations removed from it.
We have always been regarded as second-class citizens.
So when another story breaks, women aren’t reacting to one isolated crime. We’re reacting to the accumulated weight of it all. All the history. All the statistics. Our own experiences. Our family’s experiences. Our friend’s experiences. The jokes. The questions about what she was wearing. The victim blaming. The headlines.
Men have, throughout history, been oppressed for their race, class, sexuality, disability, and countless other identities.
But systemically:
Men have never had to live with the indignity of being a second-class citizen simply because of what’s between their legs.
And this is where I need “good men” to really pay attention.
Last year, my husband and I watched Adolescence. At some point I realized… I don’t think he has any idea what they’re talking about.
I was right. He didn’t know what the Manosphere was. I had to explain it to him.
He didn’t believe me at first when I told him about the podcasters. About the communities. The rhetoric. The thousands and thousands of men who consume the content rabidly.
He wasn’t defending it. He literally didn’t even know it existed.
I won’t lie. It made me angry.
Sometimes, I’ll start telling my husband about another woman who was assaulted or killed. The headline that has been making me feel ill for hours.
But about half the time, he’ll stop me.
“I don’t want to hear this”. It makes him too angry. Too uncomfortable and sad.
I’ve asked him how he hasn’t even heard of these cases. And his answer?
“Why would I read about things that will only make me miserable?”
And you know what? I GET THAT.
He tunes it out because he wants to be happy.
I wish I could do that too.
But that’s the problem.
Women don’t get to opt out of not knowing.
Because whether or not we dive into the details of a case… We still have to walk through the parking garage. We still have to tell our daughters about what to watch out for. We still have to wonder and hope that the male friend we just met is safe.
We still have to live in the world that the headline described.
And if good men keep looking away because the reality of it is bleaker than they care to handle… well then, all the men who actually give a shit have just removed themselves from a very important conversation.
And that cannot happen. Good men need to be paying attention to bad men.
You need to know what these disgusting podcasters and “celebrities” are talking about. You need to be able to recognize the rhetoric. You need to know what young boys are being told about women. You need to be able to catch the euphemisms, the thinly-veiled jokes, the misogyny being repackaged as “self-improvement” and “dating advice”.
Because how can you realize when something dangerous starts festering in the hearts of your friends, your brothers, your sons, or co-workers...
if you have no idea what to even look for?
How can you teach boys to reject a worldview you’ve never bothered to understand?
How do you recognize when a joke isn’t just a joke if you’ve never seen where that joke can actually lead?
So read the stories that make you angry.
Watch media that puts you in the shoes of victims.
Learn about the depraved movements that are trying to worm their way into our society and our politics.
When your friend makes a joke, don’t dismiss it by thinking he doesn’t really mean it.
Call him out. Literally just say:
“EWW. I can’t believe you just said that out loud”.
Being a good man can’t simply mean you don’t hurt women.
Being a good man means that you NOTICE what hurts women. You talk about it. You understand it. And most importantly: you are willing to make other men uncomfortable over it.
It might make you second-guess your friendships. It might challenge your worldview. It will definitely make the world seem less safe than it did yesterday.
Welcome. You don’t get to look away because it makes you uneasy. WE are uneasy. We have always been uneasy.
I’m asking you to be uncomfortable with us.
Because your discomfort might actually help change things.
Your ignorance never will.
- Jessy Vanpo