The Shared Responsibility to Protect The Vulnerable

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Perpetrators very often go scot-free due to many reasons. Their position in society and the overall silence of the bystanders around such matters being primary. The largely deaf ear and blind eye towards quiet sufferers, scared voices, especially of children, can be excruciatingly painful. The resultant slut-shaming and self-damning guilt of survivors with questions and comments like, “They must have asked for it!” “What was she wearing?” ,”Why was I there in the first place? It’s my fault being there at that time..!!“, etc, are enough to avoid reporting the incident altogether. The victim – no, the survivor has already been judged… and continues to live chained in relentless agony.

As a community, we are taught to shy away from difficult conversations and in the process end up shielding criminals while putting more vulnerable people at risk.

We have a moral obligation and shared responsibility to care for the most vulnerable in our community and to ensure our communities are safe for everyone to live wholesome lives. We need to go above & beyond our discomfort with hard questions and actively create safe spaces instead of engaging in whataboutery with respect to a handful of mistrials and misuse of resources. We have history speaking of centuries of oppression against women and the marginalized, yet to challenge the creation of change, we want to hang on to the flimsy excuses of a handful of instances where a man was framed.

Then there is the matter of privilege of one’s gender that is simply not acknowledged and the Not-All-Men trope is announced with much gusto.

I have known some brilliant men in my life – kind, compassionate, caring, respectful, gentle – really lovely men who embody genuine masculine energy – not toxic patriarchal assholery. They also have their flaws, who doesn’t? They are not perfect – I do not claim them to be… but they acknowledge the privilege they have in the real world. And then there are those who flinch so hard at the thought of equitable spaces and the conversation of the right to safe spaces for all genders. One would think that giving someone their right would mean taking someone else’s. The classic quote of equal rights not being pie always comes to mind.

While #NotAllMen is a legit idea, what we tend to disregard is that while not all men as culpable, ALL MEN do enjoy the benefits of male privilege and patriarchal investiture. On that note it is a moral duty of ALL MEN to stand up to the creeps in society who give them a bad name instead of getting offended when we share our stories and engage in whataboutery and misplaced defensiveness with #NotAllMen. Stand up for what is right!

At the same time, it also makes me wonder if the vehement resistance is due to their culpability in similar crimes themselves! Are they scared of being outed? Are they so aware of their misdemeanors and past sins that they just worry about being caught? Or are they just scared that with more education of the society and heightened vigilance, their pool of easy prey would now start to dwindle!?

The thought is scary – but it is also a dangerous possibility.

Part 1: The Need to Talk About Women & Child Safety

Part 3: And So I Speak