As far as I could scroll on my feed this morning, all I saw were my female friends. Me too. Me too. I’m not sure I know a single woman who can’t say it. Me too.
And scattered in between are the men. “I promise I don’t do this stuff.” “I’d totally fight someone if I saw them doing that to you.” “Have you thought about self defense classes? I can show you where to buy mace.”
And it’s well intentioned but here’s the thing.
We don’t want your advice. We don’t want your condolences. Lord almighty **we don’t want you to apologize on behalf of your gender.**
We want your voices. We want to know that you see this, and hear it, and acknowledge it.
We want you to know that most of you have been part of the problem before and to a certain extent that’s ok. Lots of us have been part of the problem too. We are in this together and we are not shaming you. Whether it’s laughing at a rape joke even though you know deep down it was gross and unfunny, or failing to stand up to someone at work when they say something lewd behind closed doors about a woman who isn’t present. Whether it’s putting your head down and walking by as you hear the harassment on the streets, or smiling sympathetically to the woman being publicly ogled or even groped as though to say “hey just between us I don’t agree with this.”
We want your “me, too"s.
We want you to look us in the eye and acknowledge this and be and do better. We want you to admit that you’ve let this slide before and we want you to promise that from now on you won’t. We want you to mean it, and we want you to stick with it after this trend has come and gone.
None of this is because we are angry or trying to blame you, the men who have never overtly behaved like this.
All of this is because this is seemingly the only way this will get better for us. This is how we can take this moment in time and make it count.
We don’t want your apology or your advice or your strongly worded “not it"s.
We want to know you’ve finally tuned in and we want to hear you say you’ll stay tuned in.
WE want YOUR "me, too"s.