cw: discussions of sexual assault and other forms of violence
A couple of days ago I read https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/cornell/ and https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/how-to-be-difficult/ , two solid pieces talking about not just that men need to do better when it comes to how we deal with rape culture, but how to do better. I also read Brennan Day's thoughts on the topic.
What's being asked for largely boils down to telling people when they say something misogynistic that that's not ok. To confronting toxic bullshit in men's chats and making it awkward.
It's a weird discussion for me at this point in my life as a trans man.
While I have guy friends (both cis and trans), it's extremely rare that I encounter the types of behaviours that need to be challenged like this. I just.. don't associate with people who enable or enact this kind of shit. Which does not mean for one second that I don't believe that those conversations are happening. Just that even though I now "pass" and in theory could find myself in the spaces where men feel particularly free to voice said takes, I just.. haven't much.
Which means I still don't have much practice doing this kind of shutting down of folks in an offline setting, at least not while being seen as a guy. I've got 30+ years of interfacing with the world being seen as a girl/woman, and only a few being seen as a dude.
This is where I admit that this kind of standing up and being "difficult" feels fraught in a very particular way from the position of being a trans man.
I think it's probably a relatable experience to most women when I say that I was raised seeing men as almost always a potentially physical threat at a moment's notice. This is offset (somewhat) in many social scenarios by the fact that it's generally socially inappropriate for a man to hit a woman in a public setting, but even then I think I can reasonably assume that when GirlOnTheNet talks about the times when she's spoken up and shut down men spouting this kind of vile bullshit that she's done calculations figuring out "How likely is this to get violent? Will this person be able to follow me into a private space later if he gets angry?".
I have an entire growing-up's worth of that type of evaluation in that discussion. But now, I don't know if/when it is likely to apply. Because I don't have the growing-up's worth of reading the signs of when a man is likely to become violent towards another man. I'm still learning the skills of de-escalation from the perspective of "viewed as a man". That said.. from what I have experience and what I've heard from others... the situation has to be dealing with a particularly controlling and violent group of people for the kinds of speaking up that are being called for here to result in violence towards someone who is read as a man.
And that's key to the other half of the equation for me - will I be viewed as a man in this exchange or not? When might that change? Will my doing this kind of speaking out be the thing that makes someone question whether or not I'm a man? Will that cause violence?
And that's not me being hyperbolic. While the odds will differ in every situation, the same kinds of people who want to rape women are often the same ones who are offended at the idea of a trans man, and who come up with the idea of "corrective" beatings and/or rape of trans men. And to anyone who just went "Wait, wait. We were talking about people making iffy jokes, not people who actively want to rape women!", while not every person who makes iffy jokes wants to rape someone, you can expect that most of the people who do want to rape people will test the waters in their friend group with a slightly iffy joke well before they start bragging about actions they want to take or have taken. Once again, the odds vary, but these things have absolutely happened.
All of which does not exempt me from standing up and being the difficult one when someone says something misogynistic. It does not exempt me from bringing up hard conversations with other guys. It might exempt me from specific situations where I'm among strangers in scenarios where I don't have control over when and how I leave, because we all have to do our own risk analysis and shouldn't put ourselves at high risk of physical harm.
But to my cis bros out there... you do have a growing-up's worth of knowledge letting you be confident of when this will just be an uncomfortable conversation. You can survive an uncomfortable conversation, I promise. If you keep having it, eventually you'll be in fewer and fewer conversations where anyone says anything that needs to be shot down, and more and more ones where people are respectful of others. They're honestly better conversations to be in! It'll take time, you may lose friends along the way, but in the long run it still does benefit you to do the simple things that GirlOnTheNet asks for.
And when you wonder why women get so fucking tired of the fact that it doesn't occur to you to speak up? Understand that she knows that every time she speaks up, she increases the likelihood that she'll be labeled "That Bitch", you know, the one who becomes the target of violence when that guy goes down the men's rights incel rabbit hole and eventually decides he's "owed" something.
..and because this is the internet, I'm going to clarify that that doesn't mean she's taking actions she shouldn't, or that she's "asking for it". I'm saying she knows that he might think so. And that's the risk that is being run, and has been being run by women fighting for their rights forever. A risk she wouldn't have to run, that no woman would have to run, if it occurred to reasonable men to be the one saying something. Something that can be as simple as "Dude, not cool."
Guys. I believe in you. We can do this. Talk about these things with your buds. Show them that you care about women. Show them that you see women as human beings. Why would you want to hide that anyway?