In light of disturbing revelations about a massive online network of men encouraging each other to drug and assault their partners, Tim Christian examines the role men play as bystanders, and why speaking up matters more than ever.
In a field in Derbyshire, sometime in the mid-2000s, I stood with tens of thousands of other music fans watching some band I struggle to name now on the main stage at Download Festival, when the familiar shifting in the crowd behind us signalled the approach of another crowd-surfer.
As we had already done many times that day, with one eye on the band, we lifted this crowd-surfer onwards (in this case, a young woman, maybe 18-20), when a guy two or three rows ahead of me reached up and very deliberately and aggressively squeezed one of her breasts. Turning to the guy next to him he loudly proclaimed, “You’ve got to, haven’t you?” before laughing and turning back to watch the band.
We all saw it. Me and everyone around me. At least 30-40 men saw and heard this and did nothing.
A couple of guys laughed along, some of us might have pulled a bit of a face, but there was not one word of protest, not one word of disagreement and not one of us called him out, including me.
It’s a moment I think back on with some regularity and not without shame. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I make it clear that what he did was unacceptable? What might have been “a laugh” for him in the moment could well have ruined that woman’s weekend and might be a moment that she also still thinks of now with disgust. Or maybe worse, one that blurs into the next, like too many similar experiences in too many similar places – an experience that repetition and familiarity renders indistinguishable from so many others.
“Every woman has a story” is something we hear often when we talk about harassment, abuse and violence. Whether it’s a story of unwanted attention or one of assault and violence, every woman has one to tell. Too often, they don’t, and men tell theirs even less.
Because I maintain that every man has a story too. No matter how much of an ally they consider themselves to be, every man has a story of a time when they’ve been witness to misogyny and done nothing. Whether every man will admit that – to themselves or anyone else – is another matter. But we know.
Over the past five years, we’ve seen local women come out en masse to share their stories. Nearly 400 women have shared their experiences on Reclaim Blackpool Map, creating a space where women can speak openly about harassment, abuse and violence, and the impact has been undeniable. That work has grown beyond the town too, with a national map now documenting experiences across the UK.
The women involved in that have done something powerful. They’ve shown courage, persistence and a willingness to speak up despite everything that comes with it.
But it’s time for men to start sharing our stories as well. Not stories of what’s been done to us, but stories of what we’ve seen and stayed silent on. If we’re serious about change, we need to be honest about our own inaction.
Men should be furious about this. Not just because of the brutality of the acts, but because of what they erode. Safety. Trust.
You can record a bystander account on reclaimblackpoolmap.co.uk, or reclaimukmap.co.uk if it happened elsewhere. Add your voice to help show the scale of the problem and our place within it.
As I write there is a horrifying revelation currently unrolling its sickly tendrils across the internet. A CNN investigation has revealed an online “rape academy” where men go online to swap advice on how to drug their partners in order to photograph and film themselves abusing and raping them, before posting that content online for other men to see. At other times they’ll live stream the assaults while other men give them instructions on what to do to their partners in real time.
This website has over 20,000 videos uploaded onto it with hundreds of thousands of views each. The website received 62 million visits in February alone. And this is only one example of one website that mostly operates to a US audience. We will never know any full global figures for the extent of these activities.
This has, understandably, disgusted and terrified women around the world, who already have to constantly contend with danger from men they don’t know – every time they go on a date, on a night out, to the shop, or simply step out of their door.
One quote from a survivor in the report stuck with me:
“We worry about who’s coming behind us, walking down the street, or who’s even friending us on Facebook,” said Zoe Watts. “You know, we worry about going to our car late at night in a car park, but we don’t worry about who you lie next to. I didn’t realise I had to.”
Men should be furious about this. Not just because of the brutality of the acts, but because of what they erode. Safety. Trust. The truth is that sexual abuse is usually committed by men already known to their victims.
“Not all men” is a tired defence that misses the point entirely. It’s not about whether every man is capable of this. It’s about the fact that women have no reliable way of knowing who isn’t.
Following the revelations, social media was full of women’s reactions. Anger, disgust, and fear. Reassuringly, a lot of resolve too. The willingness of women to keep speaking out in the face of all of this is something I find both inspiring and, at the same time, deeply frustrating that it’s needed at all.
There are men talking about it too. My hope is that the overwhelming magnitude of this and the depth of the betrayal involved will encourage more men to finally stand up and say something. But it’s far from enough.
It’s tempting to try to reassure women that there are men out there who aren’t like that. Well-meaning as it might be, it edges dangerously close to centring ourselves again – that dangerous three word refrain. Women don’t need to hear that it’s not all men. They need action. They need advocacy and allyship – the kind that actually does something.
I realised that instead of getting defensive, we needed to be asking ourselves why. We already know the answer.
With that in mind, I am writing this to other men.
Put simply, I want to see more men speaking up. I want to see more men telling each other that their behaviour is not acceptable. I want to see more men stepping in when they see harassment, abuse and violence.
I believe, I hope, that most men are good people and the majority do want to speak out and intervene. But it doesn’t mean shit if you don’t actually do anything. It’s too easy to stay quiet, and yeah, you might be exposing yourself to some laughter or ridicule or even violence, but that’s nothing compared to what women are having to contend with every day just to exist.
None of us will change the world by ourselves, but every little act becomes part of a larger shift in attitudes. Steadily that can become the norm and not only will the misogynistic words and deeds diminish, but the attitudes that fuel them will wither as well. It ain’t gonna happen overnight, but the quicker we get started, the quicker it will come.
When women tell us they feel safer choosing a bear over a man, a lot of men get defensive. I did, for a moment. I felt that little spike of indignation in my chest – that righteous little demon wanting to defend itself against the implied accusation and say that I was better than that.
But I sat with it and spoke to some of the women in my life, and I began to understand that the basis of the problem is men centring themselves and not bothering to try and see it from the woman’s point of view. I realised that instead of getting defensive, we needed to be asking ourselves why. That is something we can answer for ourselves when examined honestly, and it’s been writ large in the light of the CNN report. We already know the answer.
Patriarchy gives our collective voice a weight that women are not afforded. Like it or not, men often listen to other men more than they listen to women. So we have a responsibility to use that.
So here I am, another man, trying to do my bit and get you to do yours.
Challenge yourself. Challenge your friends. Challenge the loud-mouthed dickhead in the street. Challenge the creepy guy bothering the girl on the bus, or filming them in the park. Challenge the culture that allows it to happen.
My little confessional callout seems trivial, but this is where it starts. Men perpetrate this and men need to end it too. This can manifest in many ways. I once heard that the word “ally” should be a verb and not a noun, so be a good ally and act.
There are numerous ways to intervene when you see something that doesn’t look right, and there are plenty of resources available if you want to learn more about being an active bystander [LINK – green dot], which provide multiple levels of intervention.
I’ve been a silent witness. I’m not proud of that, and I’d like to think that age and experience have given me the guts to do something if it happened now, but I’ve also learned about the tools I can use in order to do so. That only matters if it’s true when the moment comes.
It’s the absolute least that we as men can do. I’m not pretending to have the answers and I’m certainly not arrogant enough to believe I’m going to fix anything with one article, but neither can I bear to be silent. And neither should you.
Individually, we can’t tackle a global rape academy, but we can reject and defeat the mindset that leads to the commodification, objectification and subjugation of women. We can refuse to accept it.
That starts with an admission. We all have a story too.
