Wednesday 4th August 2021
I’ll admit that I’m not always the greatest on social issues. I believe in equality and diversity but as a white-passing man (I suffer with vitiligo so there’s something about being called white that riles me a little) I miss a lot of things.
I’ve had something in one of my communities whereby a serial harasser has been given a role of importance. As you can imagine, people who were subject to the harassment (mostly women, but also a non-binary person), aren’t happy.
And yet, the moment one of them raises the question of whether this role would be good such a person, they are met by a wall of angry men. Perhaps if I’d not seen all the recent Blizzard stuff this might have passed me by, but I did find myself thinking that it’s no wonder victims no longer come forward.
How dare these women try and ruin this person’s ‘career’ .
What amazed me, reading the thread where it was all kicking off, where how people I respect for their knowledge were being such dicks.
We demand evidence? At least three women I know came forwards.
But they’re all womenfolk! At least one man saw it and spoke to them about their behaviour.
But they are all from the same group! No, this was from 3 different clubs
Oh it would be that three? You mean the ones with women in positions of leadership meaning that women felt safer to come forwards.
What was most interesting to watch was the culprit in question. Rather than remorse they were getting a kick out of it.
I’ve been in at least one situation where purely through misunderstanding I’ve made women feel uncomfortable. I went to say something, it came out wrong, and as I stumbled to correct myself I saw a look on a woman’s face that said she worried I might be problematic. What I did after apologising was to shut up. I stepped away from the conversation.
Likewise, I’m sure most normal people, if they were told they did something that made someone uncomfortable, would apologise and if they were unable to resolve the issue, keep a healthy distance away. But watch a serial harrasser at play.
It’s all a joke. No attempt to deny, just jokes about how they’ve been cancelled, posts from an alt account. All quite creepy stuff.
I wrote a facebook post, aimed at guys, pointing this generalised fact out. When someone gets accused of harassment by a number of people, you might want to take it seriously. See how they act. Harassers have a habit of filtering out people who might object. Raise an eyebrow at a slightly off-colour joke and you’ll be filtered out of future conversations.
Mostly, I think men react so vehemently to people around them being accused of harassment is because they think it’s a reflection on them. They’ve been fine around them, if something had gone on they would have seen. And if their friend is a bad person, perhaps they are too. It’s taken as a personal attack. What they need to do is understand if they’ve been filtered out (and how it might of happened) and then spot the signs by how they act online compared to people normally.
The Facebook post was born out of frustration rather than anything else.
What amazed me was just how many women, including some I didn’t know, came forward and said thank you for posting it. I’m no white knight. I try and be a good person, but like everyone, I sometimes fail. Yet, if I ever needed convincing of how bad sexism is, it was the volume of response I got from women about that post.
I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done today as a result of this and Warcraft Wednesday, but you know what? I don’t mind. I learnt a lot today. I learnt how just speaking up can make a difference to people. I learnt to watch harassers behaviours even more carefully, and to point this out to people. I had some men that approached me as well, saying the message had got through to them. I doubt we’ll ever be fully rid of sexism but maybe we took a tiny step forwards on a journey a million miles long.
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