I Write Letters

[Content Note: Misogyny; rape culture.]

Dear Dudes:

Lots of entries in the Helpful Hints series contain recommendations about listening to women. Listening to women is really important, for a whole lot of reasons, in every context.

But today I just want to talk to you about listening to women in one specific context: When a woman is telling you, or when multiple women are telling you, that they find another man to be dangerous.

We may use a different word than "dangerous." We might use a word like "creepy." Creepy is a useful word, a word women use a lot, to shorthand a spectrum of behaviors that can range from hostility to boundaries to unwanted touching to sexual assault. "Creepy" is often a word that women use when we fear that to actually try to articulate the red flags, which might seem relatively minor to someone who has not lived a lifetime navigating a misogynist culture, will elicit responses that call us hysterical or reactionary or oversensitive. "Creepy" is a way that we convey that we can't trust a man, in a very specific way.

We might use a word like "scary," or "abusive," or "weird." Depending on how safe we feel communicating our lack of safety, we might use a word even more innocuous, like "intense."

Listen to the context in which these words are used. Think about what it means when a woman is trying to tell you something is "off" about a guy, and what it means when she doesn't, or can't, simply come right out and say, "He is demonstrating a pattern of harmful behaviors that I have learned, by necessity and through a lifetime of experience, to recognize as signaling that I am not safe around him."

And, for Maude's sake, whatever you do, don't ever respond to a woman telling you that a man is harmful, in whatever way she can find to tell you, by insisting that he seems like a good guy to you.

Don't tell her that you've never noticed any of those things. Don't tell her he seems fine. Don't tell her, or imply, that she's imagining things. Don't tell her that he's never treated you that way.

Of course he hasn't. He is a dude, and so are you.

One of the basics of feminist theory is understanding that misogynist men don't treat other men the way they treat women.

You aren't capable, by virtue of being a dude, of assessing how a harmful man treats women. Not even being an onlooker, observing how that man interacts with women, is informative in the same way being his target is.

One of the things you need to know about men who abuse women is that most of them are very adept at appearing to be "good guys" when there are other guys watching.

Which is why it's so important to listen to women. Because they have a perspective on these guys that you never will.

That is yet another thing that your privilege grants you. You have the choice to use that as a reason to audit women, or as a reason to listen to us.

Love,
Liss

[Related Reading: Different Perspectives, by Necessity; "He is a good boy."]