I write on a schedule and publish once a week. I’ve gone according to plan for 12 years, until last week. I had a post, but I was holding back because it didn’t feel authentic. This time, I waited until I was ready. Maybe I was too ready, but here goes.
History
This month marks 10 years since I wrote Sexual Harassment, Collateral Prey and the Myth of the Bystander. More recently, 14 weeks ago, I wrote about drugged drinks and how little effort is put into solving this issue in Drugged Drinks in Boston. This week:
The Cornell 7 …What if it were <insert female relative here> ?
Just stop reframing the question as “What if it was your mother, your daughter, or your sister?” It’s performative nonsense and non-impactful bullshit.
I wrote about my experience of a second-level manager groping me as my peers watched. I waited for one of the guys, there were five of them, to come up, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “Hey, buddy, that’s enough,” but no one did. So I grabbed a drink as a waiter passed by and dumped it on him.
A while later, one of my peers came up to me with tears in his eyes and said, “I’m so glad you did that. He did that to my wife, and I didn’t know what to do.”
There was a client who had hidden my purse, asked for my hotel room number, and said he’d bring it to me if he found it. His business partner, who had two daughters close to my age, was sitting across from me. I know it was a customer, but I still hit him as hard as I could and demanded he give me my purse, which he then retrieved from a nearby planter, where he had hidden it wrapped in a cloth napkin.
Do men really defend women out of chivalry? Not the jealous fits, but when a woman is actually in peril. This is not to litigate the men from the past; it is, though, to highlight that, in my lived experience, the wrong question is being asked.
What if it was you?
To men, it is, “What if it were you?” You’re in a sports bar and you have a drink. Just some friendly conversation. The guy next to you buys a round. Of course you’re going to drink. You start to feel woozy. Did you eat enough? You’re not feeling well. You hear, “Hey, pal, you alright?”
It doesn’t occur to you that you were drugged until you come to in a strange place and realize you’re paralyzed in a room with seven men, laughing and joking about a party getting started. It turns out you are the party favor. Now go read the account of Jane Doe. You are forced to snort ketamine off male genitalia, and you are passed around the seven men like a joint at a concert.
The drugs in your system cloud your brain. The sodomized parts are in pain. There are people who mention you in whispers. The trauma causes you to leave because in no way do you want this to happen again. When you report, if you report, a few days have gone by.
The response is that you were asking for it because you were in a bar and you drank when someone brought a round of drinks.
For men, just sit with that, because it’s not a matter of it being a female in your life; it’s a matter of it being you.
Yes, for males, it can be you. For the record, the scenario happens to men just as well, though it’s tremendously underreported.
It’s Men and Women; Not Men versus Women
Does sexual abuse occur more often in women? Yes. The numbers are uncomfortably high for both. Half! Half the perpetrators are known.
No One is Coming to Save Us
Aspirationally, there are men who want to be like the one of 50 who saved the screenshots and forwarded them to Jane Doe. It was only one out of 50! The odds are not in favor of someone stepping up and stepping in. In the comments on my post from 10 years ago, a woman reported an incident somewhat similar to mine, with harassment occurring and the men standing by and watching.
A few of the men came up to me the next day to express their apologies for not intervening.
That took me back to my experience. Sure apologize, relate to your inaction, BUT, would you do anything different? This is the conversation we need to have. Exactly, what do you do to intervene?
What’s Next
I have questions, but not necessarily the answers. At the University of Tennessee, I had a friend from the dorm who was gang raped. The fraternity pulled a train. There was a university action with a hearing, at the end of which she left school. I do not know the details. I just sat with her as she cried. That was 46 years ago.
#MeToo went global in 2017. Cornell received more than 1,200 reports of sexual violence and related misconduct between 2018 and 2024. Awareness training is not a solution; that is performative nonsense.
What is? Maybe asking the right questions is the start.
One of the films in the Roxbury film festival centered on male survivors of sexual abuse. The organization, Men Healing was onsite to promote their program and bring awareness to male sexual abuse. Here is the link to the organization. Anthony Edwards is sharing his story of abuse. https://www.menhealing.org/ally-shoutout-anthony-edwards/
This week, I wrote about the Converse Controversy on Substack.
