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Guest Post-Mortem: I dreaded men standing up for me in public. This guy changed my mind.
I partied alone a lot in my early 20s, for better and for worse. If you’re a woman or fem-read person, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that my tendency to frequently drink solo meant I dealt with a lot of harassment – groping, gross comments, the works. So theoretically, it sounds like it’d be a good thing whenever a man called out this behavior from one of his fellow dudebros, right?
Nope. I watched too many men unnecessarily, awkwardly escalate situations in the name of supposed chivalry or even try to “nice guy” their own way into my pants after ‘saving me’ from creepy comments or handsy jerks at bars and parties.
But credit where credit is due – one man not only proved me wrong about this curse of bystander intervention; he profoundly changed how I think about standing up for people to this day. I feel like everyone should follow the example of this nameless stranger the next time they see a woman getting harassed in public – something that still happens so fucking frequently that I guarantee this advice will come in handy at least once or twice.
If I could bottle up an example of “how to be an ally 101,” it would be this moment. Let’s break down why this situation was so quietly revolutionary.