As #MeToo has gone on, I’ve started reading many accounts of sexual assault and rape, especially of those in communities I frequent. I’m writing this to try and better understand how this happens and to use this information to critically look at how I interact in relationships (platonic and romantic) and see how I could improve. To me, much of this behavior is unfathomable. I can’t imagine meeting or interacting with someone and them coming away at the end of the day feeling worse off or see me significantly more negatively because of it. I would never intentionally do that. Behaving in such a way just seems antithetical to what people want.

These accounts usually start off small, with the offender, slowly pushing boundaries and leveraging their relationship with the victim. They will disregard signs that the other party is uncomfortable and ignore non verbal and verbal signs of discomfort. I think this is where everybody can improve, regardless of whether or not you make the other party uncomfortable. You can always improve on reading body language, checking in with the other party to make sure you’re ok and not crossing any boundaries, etc. Communication is complicated, and sometimes you cross over boundaries without knowing. Creating an environment where the people you interact with are comfortable with bringing up their issues is important. Some of the posts I read, the offender had NO idea they were making the other party uncomfortable and maybe if they knew, could have prevented some of the smaller scale actions (that does not mean it is up to the victim to prevent what happens. It is the responsibility of the person making the actions to stop ¹). Communication is hard and even if you ask bluntly “hey are you ok?” even if they say they are comfortable, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are. Actions speak louder than words, and you need to see how they act, as well as their verbal and non verbal cues to see how they feel.

Many of the accounts I read, the party receiving the harassment can not be honest with the other party because the latter holds a position of power over the former. Sometimes it’s their manager or boss, sometimes they were being provided housing for business purposes. For the person receiving the harassment, being honest with the other party puts so much more at risk turning down the other party. If they turn them down will their job be at risk? Are they currently away from home in a different state? What happens if they get kicked out? Will they get blackballed from the industry? All this silent pressure encourages the party receiving the harassment to just take the abuse (because of the implication).

While some accounts may be unintentional, such as one party being blind to the discomfort and doing unreciprocated flirting. Other cases are more insidious, where one party is predatory and knowingly push boundaries and leverage their position to manipulate the relationship to an area where the other party is not comfortable. If they are not able to succeed in bullying the other party into what they want, they will often invoke tactics to the detriment of whom they pusued (kicking them out, firing them, blackballing etc). The predators, then move on to other people and continuing targeting more people until they succeed. These people usually have multiple accusations about them from multiple people establishing their pattern of behavior. What usually would happen is that there would be one accusation against them, then, after that accusations many more accusations would spring up. The most common reason cited for the following torrent of accusations after the initial one was the realization that they weren’t the only person abused by them and they felt empowered to speak out against them. Often time the first accounts state how they felt like they were bringing up drama, or feel bad for speaking up. There’s a perception from them that them speaking up would put the person’s name through the mud. This, along with public pressure and backlash, makes it very difficult to come out, especially as the first account. After they come out, there’s some (survivor-esque) guilt associated with the feeling that they were protecting their harasser and by them not coming forward earlier they enabled the person to prey on others.

A frustrating part is, even if 1% of guys are predatory themselves, or utilise predatory behavior, that is enough to permanently taint perception for the other side. Think about how many people you meet a month? It’s not unreasonable to meet over a hundred people a month. Do you go to the store? A bar or a club? Moving to a new location? Do you need to go to a different office at work? That’s potentially exposing you to predatory behavior every month. Most of the people that have been accused have had friends that had no idea how predatory they were (sometimes they think they are a little touchy/flirty but have no idea to what extent). Now an interaction with someone can be way more stressful. If someone asks you out, how are they going to react? How far are they going to push it if you turn them down? The stakes may feel way higher, even for normal people. Since men are the almost always the instigators for (hetero) relationships, it puts the receiving end in an awkward spot. Due to the fear of rejection, guys will instead, opt for the slow subversion of the other’s boundaries and creeping to the result they want.

Trying to resolve these issues privately or through private channels often times don’t work. When women get harassed at work an they go to HR, they end up being reassigned or moved out of the group. This doesn’t resolve the root cause and doesn’t fix the issue for the future. Many of the current systems protect the harasser over the harassee because they value the person with more power (almost always the harasser). Bringing up issues privately will protect them over the person reporting it. It’s often times to the detriment, of say, an employee to report the harassment of their boss to them as the company will favor the boss over them every time.