How Do I React?

Like most people watching stories unfold at the “It Happens Here” event I was disturbed. I was angry. I was sad. I felt things I could not describe but warranted taking a walk halfway through. At the end of it all though, I was faced with the question, how do I react?

Part of me wants to continue on with my life, business as usual. It is easier that way, isn’t it? I don’t rape people so it does not apply to me … right? Something in that line of reasoning does not hold up. As the stories told so vividly displayed, ignoring these issues as inapplicable to yourself only serves to make the problem worse.

So then what do I do? How do I act? How do I make things better? Is the answer as simple as “don’t rape or sexually assault people?”  That’s certainly part of it. But what about all the women in my life, my friends on campus who have to contend with this? Morality would dictate that I couldn’t be a bystander when people I care about may be put into dangerous situations. It demands some form of action on my part, something more than inward-self control, something more active.

Anger is the natural response and conveniently the easiest. For me, it comes from the sense of helplessness from hearing these stories and not being able to do anything about it. So rage comes first, as one of the stories showed, telling about an ex-boyfriend wanting to bash a rapist’s head in with a shovel. To be honest, had it been my little sister telling one of those stories, would my response be so different? Violence seems the all-too-obvious choice in the face of such a terrible act. It is too easy, and it does not help. The “vigilante justice” offered by one of the post-it notes following the event will not help victims of sexual assault, nor will it prevent sexual assault from happening. We would just be treating violence with violence.

So what then? I feel powerless without that sense of control and retribution. I can always be a shoulder to cry on, but at the end of the day I would rather nobody cried. What active stance can I take, especially being a man? I desperately want to be an ally to all those affected by sexual assault; I want to join that rallying cry. Yet my gender makes this difficult. Could a stranger take my word that I’m not capable of sexual assault? Likely not.

I came home tipsy once in high school and did not get the lecture I expected from my parents. As in most situations I had to deal with my mother first.

“When you get like that you stay away from the girls.”

“Mom, doesn’t that kind of defeat the point?”

“You heard me.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Listen you (insert expletive here), you are five inches taller than your father, four than your oldest brother, two more than the other one and you have forty pounds on any of your female friends.”

“What’s your point?”

“What if you’re wrong?”

I remember the venom in her hiss when she said that. I remember that startling realization. There was a sudden terror, a sense of responsibility. She was right. I remember that saddle of self restraint cinch firmly into place. For a long time I always figured that was something I had to deal with personally, how I acted on those hazy weekend nights. While she had a point, she was wrong on one thing. It did not just apply to me; she should have given that lecture to every young man she met.

It goes beyond merely self-restraint. In fact, it shouldn’t be about self-restraint at all. It should be about decency, a common humanity striving for a community based on consent. On paper, it sounds like a lofty goal. In reality it should be just something we expect; something we construct everyday with our interactions with one another.

So how do we make sure this happens? Not with grand gestures, but with changing our culture: publically calling out behavior we know to not just be wrong, but unacceptable. “It Happens Here” got it right in that we need to start talking. This article would not have happened without a lot of perspective from a lot of women, perspective that, as a male, I was lacking. So have the conversation about the thing we don’t want to talk about. If there is anywhere that can change its culture it is here, at a place we should all feel safe to call home.