This Is A Man’s Issue
Let me first just say that this Cornell 57 news is repulsive, disgusting, and completely unacceptable… but you already know that.
To me, what’s important is that we recognize that this is a man’s issue.
We cannot pretend to care about women and then happily legislate their rights away.
We cannot pretend to care about women and criticize them for however tight or loose, many or few clothes they’re wearing.
We cannot pretend to care about women and blame them for our lack of self-control.
We cannot pretend to care about women and spend all of our time suggesting ways for them to prevent an attack, while doing far too little to prevent the attacker.
Think about how much we have taught women to do just to navigate the possibility of male violence.
Watch where you park.
Watch what you wear.
Watch how much you drink.
Tell someone where you’re going.
Don’t walk alone.
Hold your keys a certain way.
Watch your drink.
Let someone know when you get home.
Figure out how to reject him without making him angry.
That is not solving the problem.
That is teaching women how to survive the problem.
You have no right to a woman. PERIOD.
She may invite you in, sure, but you can absolutely overstay your welcome. An invitation is not ownership. Attraction is not consent. A relationship is not consent. What happened five minutes ago is not consent for what happens five minutes from now.
And “no” does not require an explanation.
This is for us to solve because this is our problem.
We have made women unsafe. We have harmed them repeatedly. We have treated them as lesser than us. We have expected them to change their behavior in response to ours. And too often, we have protected the comfort, reputation, and acceptance of other men before protecting the humanity of women.
So maybe we need to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions:
Why have we needed women to be smaller for us to feel like men?
Why does her independence threaten some of us?
Why does rejection become humiliation?
Why does her sexuality become something we believe we get to police?
Why have we confused masculinity with control?
And why are we still so much more comfortable teaching women how to avoid dangerous men than teaching men not to be dangerous?
This isn’t only about what we teach our sons.
It’s about what we say to our brothers, nephews, cousins, coworkers, and friends.
It’s about what happens when another man says something degrading about a woman and we’re standing there.
It’s about whether we laugh.
Whether we stay quiet.
Whether we excuse behavior because “that’s just how he is.”
Whether we care more about maintaining solidarity with another man than confronting what that man has done.
We have to teach the boys and men in our lives how to respect and honor women, and understand that doing so does not diminish the respect and honor we have for ourselves.
But women shouldn’t have to be extraordinary to earn that respect.
They shouldn’t have to be our mothers, wives, sisters, or daughters for us to care about what happens to them.
They shouldn’t have to be powerful.
They shouldn’t have to be nurturing.
They shouldn’t have to give us life, love us, choose us, need us, or offer us anything at all.
Their humanity is sufficient.
Respecting women isn’t something honorable men do because women are extraordinary.
It’s something men owe women because women are people.
And none of this requires us to become less of a man.
Maybe it requires us to finally interrogate what we’ve been taught a man is.
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