Men about how their action has changed

For a few days now, Facebook has been running the campaign # ЯНАСAЯSShazati (# ЯАНЯЮSpeak): under this hashtag, women talk about their experiences of sexual abuse and harassment. Gradually, men began to join the flashmob. Their reaction was very different: some told about their own traumatic experience, others expressed words of support to women who survived the violence, and others made fun of the flash mob and its participants. We have collected comments from several men, whom the action forced to take a different look at the problem of violence, the attitude of society towards the victims of violence, the behavior of others and their own actions.

All day today I read the posts of familiar girls about the nightmare that happened to you. All day I have been in a state of horror, anger, shame, and an incredible gnawing up everything inside melancholy. I am terrified of how much you are. It does not fit in the head. From this powerlessness. From the fact that I can not help you, just cancel everything that happened to you. I bow to your fortitude. There is not and cannot be any justification for all this cruelty, all this violence. It can not and everything. You are not to blame. Thank you for your courage.

And further. Often there are words that no one came to the rescue. And it becomes embarrassing at the very thought that I, too, could easily be such a passer-by who didn’t fit. Suddenly, I did not pay attention somewhere? Did not attach importance? You can not pass by. At least scream if you are afraid to come. But do not pass by. Sorry if I wrote awkwardly.

I admire everyone incredibly # JANE FearSend and Yane I Am afraidTo tell. And I have a good idea how to be afraid to say. If the flash mob convinced me of something, it is that fear and horror are around every corner.

# ЯНЕЯSpekazit that was on both sides of such stories. And I am terribly, terribly ashamed. No, I was taught in childhood not to touch people, they taught not to offend girls and boys. Yes, I am by nature a shy introvert: I remember when I first went to a psychologist about my shyness, which was very disturbing to live, I was late, because I was too embarrassed to ask the driver if the bus stops at the right stop.

Against the background of all this beautifully built memory of yourself as a shy home boy, no, no, yes, and something comes up that you don't want to remember about yourself. How several times he participated in the "pinching" of girls and helped them to close in the toilet. Well, of course, they did everything, and I did what it was. No, for every third record there will be memories of how traumatic it was. And of course, I did not rape anyone. Did not drag in the bushes and did not paw on the subway, God forbid. But my student years — did I stop when I heard the first “no, let's not go,” or if a person had to repeat it again — that is, one more time than necessary? I'm afraid not. More precisely, even while I was writing this post, I remembered that no. Of course, I have long wanted to ask for forgiveness for all this or do something so that they would not have this injury. But where to find them, how to remember them?

And therefore, the whole # ЯНЕЯ тебеSpeak is an incredibly important story. Much more than an opportunity to speak out about a random traumatic experience. Yes, alas, anyone can become a victim of accidental violence from a drug addict or a nervous taxi driver. And no, no hashtag will stop them, and here we are preaching to the choir. Of course. But hey, if at least one person read or told under this hashtag helps not to see an extra nightmare in life or to put on a beautiful dress more easily, then everything was worth it.

This hashtag, in my opinion, is also an attempt to talk about how everyone seems to know, but they do nothing. As tacitly legitimized, all these pinchings in school corridors, harassment of drunken distant relatives at weddings and dubious neighbors at summer houses. No, of course, they are not encouraged - but the victims know that they will not receive unconditional sympathy, because they are shy, they are silent. And the circle is reproduced. Here, an attempt to stop this circle, an attempt to teach trust in the victim — your child, your acquaintance, your relative or friend — is, in my opinion, the most important thing that is happening now. No, nothing will change tomorrow. And a year later, too. If in ten years the son of someone from those who are now writing or reading these posts, remembers the stories of their parents and does not climb the tear-stained girl under her skirt at recess - we have already won.

And I'm ashamed after the flash mob. I have never raped anyone and did not use physical violence, but this does not mean that those who are scattered here and there by the tags # ЯНЕДожюSpeak and # ЯНЕ I am afraid of Tell the stories do not give a start to the revaluation of values. There have been too many cases in my life when I used emotional violence - consciously, unconsciously, if I caused discomfort, fear and pain. I am ashamed of harassment and shame for persecution. It's a shame for the frightening things that I once said. I am ashamed that I am ashamed to talk about this in detail, to make out cases, to single out episodes.

In this world, ashamed to be a man. We discussed it last night with my friend. He has a similar, but slightly different reaction. He said that several times in his life there were stories when he continued to emotionally influence the girls, having heard an unequivocal "no" from them. Yesterday, he even wrote one of them with an apology, described his thoughts, told about shame - to which he received an answer like "what are you talking about?". I can not speak for this girl - God knows that she was actually prompted to write like that, but this answer is a very important thing for me. It is important for me that my friend understood his past and realized it, and that it gnaws at him, that he is ashamed of him. What matters to me is that talking about violence — whether physical or emotional — encourages men to overestimate themselves. The matter will not move from the dead center until you yourself understand that the problem is not onanists, exhibitionists, second cousins, neighbors' boys, which are not abstract for you. The problem is you yourself. Thank.

A little more than a month ago, I heard from one completely random familiar story about how she was raped during one of the acute episodes of mental disorder, when she began to lose consciousness. Then there was another blow - a story from a close friend. I still did not know how many similar stories I would have to hear from relatives and not very people in the near future, but very quickly I wanted to just bang the wall in some kind of blind rage. I began to dig everything my hands reach: about rape trauma syndrome, attacks of self-accusation, I asked familiar girls. At some point, I simply stopped grabbing me - from everything that I learned from shock: here, here, with your loved ones, an epidemic is happening right around you, and you did not know anything about it. I really wanted to start talking about it out loud, and waited for the wall of silence to finally collapse, and it was good that I waited.

A little later, another feeling appeared - it became very harsh and wildly embarrassing because of this new perspective on relationships. What I always assumed to be an innocent eccentricity, a quirk - for a girl who grew up in a culture of violence, might well have seemed aggressive, intrusive, or overly obsessive. Nothing criminal, but a lot of wild, very wildly ashamed. Until recently, I had no idea what it was, but as soon as you begin to hear and read all these stories, something starts to change fundamentally in the worldview.

Yes, there is a fear that the pendulum will swing in the other direction, that there is always room for hysteria and ambiguous interpretation of gray zones, but - shit. We are not even at the beginning of a thoughtful conversation about it. What is happening now is something very important. This way we begin to heal.

And yes, I’m afraid to say / I’m afraid to tell - this is not about the fact that "all men are rapists" (while I am sure many of us, after reading all the stories, now begin a period of reassessment). It’s about a culture of violence, it’s about how a drunk man started beating me at the age of five and was scared away only in time by the moms of yard friends. It is also about responsibility, courage, femininity, trust and care for loved ones. Many acts of violence are committed not by maniacs in a dark alley, but by acquaintances and relatives. And, even worse, most often the victims of violence meet with their relatives doubt, but not support.

Reading the stories of friends and girlfriends under this hashtag, I still can’t help but say: you did fine, we gon 'be alright - and more and more admire those talented, beautiful, kind, courageous, successful and intelligent people who survived it and yet decided not to close. This way we heal.

Oh, what do people have in their head? Especially in men. They perceive the confidence of girls in their security and in their abilities as a threat to their “rights”. They are afraid that having consent will “spoil” the joint sexual experience. They think that some kind of, even the most idiotic, behavior can be an excuse for violence. People, be more attentive to each other and to yourself. Our bright childhood, as it turns out, is bright only because no one spoke or noticed the horror around.

All that has fallen into tapes over the past couple of days is such a complex problem, in which each part is almost tightly welded to the other: social norms, patriarchal society, habitual patterns of behavior for men and women, general bad manners and insensitivity, manipulations by representatives of both sexes, mental illness, self-exploitation, fear and insecurity, common human stupidity and indiscretions, lack of sympathy and mercy for all to everyone.

And I hope that we suddenly wake up and find ourselves in our own apartment, which has been dirty for years. And it is not at all clear what to grab for and what to do. But at least now we see that it is in the mud, and we don’t want to coexist with it anymore.

This flash mob is, of course, the most powerful thing that happened on Facebook in my memory. In my life there were no problems directly related to violence, but stories about how I pinched someone, drunk and told God knows what, pressed, as if in a joke, but in fact, of course, not quite - even . I began to really think about it only a couple of years ago, when we met Lilya Brainis, with whom we talked so much about everything, how much I didn’t talk about anything at all. And how much we joked about Lilia, perhaps, for me, this is one of the greatest discoveries in life - the man who opened my eyes to a completely different side of life.

From my own experience I can say that you never know how a person can perceive something that seems to you and in fact is even funny, innocent, and does not imply any double meaning. You never know what happens to a person at home or on the street, what he had in the past. I do not particularly keep my distance with people, I can talk about anything, I easily converge, but this is not always good. It is always better to think once again, so as not to fall into ambiguous and awkward situations. This flash mob is especially valuable for me, of course, because the different stories I heard about from my girlfriends and friends suddenly formed an unattractive, disgusting picture of our present that needs to be recognized, and then everyone tries to make it better.

About myself I can say that there was one moment in my life - we lived with my girlfriend and very often swore. As often happens in domestic quarrels, in a fit of frenzied anger or some kind of anger and helplessness, you stop a step away from doing something that you will always regret afterwards. Sometimes you do things exactly on the verge: grabbing too much, and grabbing in general, trying to stop, not let go, got in the face.

I remember how we once cursed for a very long time, and I wound up so much that I was exactly one step away from hitting her - and at that moment I saw this look, which everyone described here - helplessness and fear, when a person is simply afraid of you and can't do anything with you, such a huge carcass. I remembered it for the rest of my life, and I still feel ashamed. It is shameful and scary because you can do this, that you are stronger, and to yourself you understand that you cannot be completely sure that such a situation will not happen in life when you lose control of yourself. I know so many stories about my acquaintances: someone beat her friend drunk, someone beat her own daughter and many more.

Mikhail Kalashnikov today wrote a very important thing - the world is becoming more transparent. And ties are getting closer. And this is very good. And in spite of the fact that keeping your shoals in secret becomes more and more difficult, and now you sit and you, except that you are so ashamed to be horrified, you also understand that everything in the world knows everything about everything - and this is very good. Because this Soviet system is absolutely a disguise, suppression and suppression - a direct path to the hell in which we live in part today.

And the last thing: the only advice I can give to all the girls I know is to never be afraid to say no. Direct and clear. Say "I don't like it," "stop it," "don't do it." Because it is normal. And it is necessary.

#I'm AfraidTell

This, of course, is not true. Because I'm afraid to talk about it. But probably this is also important. Stories on the tag suggest that on one side can be every woman. The horror is compounded by the fact that on the other side can be every man. The meaning of this campaign, as I understand it, is to show that sexual violence does not occur where it is not clear, it is not clear with whom, but literally with every woman. And it became very clear. But the second half of the story remained blurred. On the other side there were some perverts or rare scoundrels. And this is also not true. On the other side are the same real people. Which can look pretty decent. In my opinion, it is not enough to say “yes, we are men, so bad” - it is important to take personal responsibility.

It is terrible to remember how I did not stop after the first "no", and after the second. Even more terrible is that, although I immediately realized that what was happening was terrible, I rather easily forgot about this incident. Only a few years later, when I began to get acquainted with the feminist discourse, I realized that it is absolutely unimportant how far this has gone and what happened before that, there can be no excuse for me. It was disgusting. It was the worst thing I did in my life. I'm afraid to imagine how traumatic this experience could be for a girl.

I hate a culture that since childhood teaches us that “no” from a woman means “yes”, that you just need to be more stable, and those who immediately refuse are not real men. A culture in which the most romantic photograph is one in which a drunken sailor grabs an unsuspecting girl. “No” means “no”, only “no” and nothing else. “No” means stop immediately. And if there is even a shadow of a doubt whether any action is desired, you need to explicitly ask about it. This will not make any unreal man, will not destroy the romance of the moment and certainly will not make a woman worse to think about you.

I do not know what to do to prevent all this from happening. I am terribly afraid for my wife, for my daughter, for my sisters, and for all my friends and distant acquaintances - fear mixed with powerlessness, because what can you do. Having read this hell, I want to walk the subway with a club and peel at these greasy hands. But of course, I will not go anywhere, although I will certainly be more attentively looking around. And what if I'm in a night car, at the other end is a lonely girl, and at the station three drunk goons sit down at her? Do I sit in the seat? Or am I, frankly, not Hercules, stunned by adrenaline, on cotton feet I will go to them? What will I tell them? What will be the answer?

So far I have only one recipe, and I cannot use it, because I have no son, only a daughter. Well and, probably, all my friends, whose sons are growing up, have already explained everything to them what to do with girls is never necessary, even as a joke? So, friends?

Empathy, that is, the ability to empathize with another living being, in theory, is inherent in any person (if there is none, then this is pathology). But I don’t know what to do with all people who were not explained this in childhood, they don’t explain now and will not explain later - neither at home nor at school. Probably, only a physical barrier will help from them, but you will not put a guard on every woman (a robot, apparently). In many situations, no electric shock, spray or even the most high-tech device.

The fact that Katya Kermlin came up with friends (a ring with a panic button) is really cool, I hope that the gadget will go into mass production, and I will immediately hunt up all the women around. But it also will not save from all these thousands of seemingly small and insignificant, but still, after all, disgusting unwelcome strokes, pats and feelings. Again, any new remedy simply introduces an additional level of guilt for all victims of violence: why didn't you put on a life ring, armored pants, a spike tampon, which the South African activist invented and did not make up his nails with a special varnish, which Stanford University students invented ?

I do not know what else to add, honestly. Не хватайте никого по пьяни, не пользуйтесь ничьей беспомощностью, говорю я, как обычно, поправив крахмальный воротничок, с кафедры церковному хору.

Бесконечно благодарен всем женщинам, которые рассказали свои истории под хештегом ‪#‎ЯНеБоюсьСказати.‬ Требуется много храбрости, чтобы говорить о травме, которая всячески стигматизируется, обращается в глазах общества против говорящей и так далее. И поддержка, солидарность тут неоценимы. Поэтому я не нахожу состоятельным тот аргумент, что подобные акции якобы (только) ретравматизируют.

Не стану говорить о собственном разнообразном невесёлом опыте. Не потому, что стыжусь. And not because I consider the sexual abuse of men against other men as an unimportant problem. Just want to say something else. The reaction of men to this flash mob is very different. There are many, of course, abominations, mockings, depreciations, as well as any kind of fabulous ... (crap) type of discourse on "victimization behavior" or sermons on the All-Good Korotkostvolle. But the other responses are more important to me, even though there are fewer of them in the general stream (not in my tape, thank G-gina). First of all, the stunning of men by the scale of the violence perpetrated by their fellow men

I want to hope that another masculinity is possible, achievable as a model of behavior and sensuality. Nonviolent, sympathetic, friendly, loving, reflective, refusing cruelty. I do not want to believe that those of the Radfem who, in the essentialist vein, consider all men without exception as irreparable rapists, are right.

Twice in the tape quoted unexpected words of Andrea Dvorkin. Yes, precisely the very "ideologini of the misandry". I also want to quote: "I do not believe that rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I wouldn’t do what I do. If I did, my political practice would be different. You never wondered why we [women] We are in an armed conflict with you? Not because of the shortage of kitchen knives in the country. But because we believe in your humanity, despite the totality of facts. "

The photo: Allen Penton - stock.adobe.com

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