Do You Respect Yourself As Much As You Respect Other People?

Someone treats you rudely or crosses a line, and instead of answering back you go quiet. Maybe you're embarrassed. Maybe you worry the other person will turn on you if you say anything. A lot of people are counting on exactly that reaction. Your silence is what lets them keep doing whatever bothers you, to you or to someone else nearby. And often we second-guess ourselves, wondering whether we read the situation wrong and whether speaking up would just make us look ridiculous.

Take the way some men behave toward women. A grope, a quick grab, the assumption that the woman will pretend nothing happened. She ends up carrying blame that belongs to the man who did it. Afterward he might even say, "You liked it, I could tell." In his head the woman was asking for it the whole time, too shy to say so out loud, and he was simply obliging.

I could name the men who have pulled this on me. There's also the matter of sexual talk, photos, videos, and films that some women find uncomfortable rather than exciting. We tend not to spoil a man's fun, so we let it play, and sometimes we even sit through it ourselves, uneasy the entire time.

Did women's liberation overshoot? Some women seem to believe the new rules require them to be more sexually available and agreeable even when they'd rather not be. Picture being groped by the man beside you in the back seat while the couple up front is making out. Is that enjoyable, or is it awkward, maybe humiliating?

What a woman usually wants from a sexual relationship starts with mutual affection, mutual attraction, a sense of ease, and privacy. Some raise the bar further and hold out for the whole romantic setup, the penthouse suite version of things.

Women can be guarded about naming what they want in bed, partly because many have never had much chance to practice saying it. Men, meanwhile, often treat sexual dominance as a way to earn bragging rights with other men, which is its own problem, and as proof that their notions of good sex, meaning good for them, are correct. They don't accept no.

Here's one that actually happened. I knew a professor like this, and my friend who managed his office could barely keep him staffed with secretaries, he was that predatory and that repulsive. The rest of the office, mostly men, thought he was terrific. He was really just thoughtless and wrapped up in himself.

Did he make a move on me? He did. I found him neither appealing nor available, since he was married with a family, and I was divorced at the time. While I worked there I met a much younger man I felt easy around, attractive in a warm, unforced way. So it wasn't that I was frigid. The professor simply wasn't someone I wanted near me, and he was cruel to women.

Another one that really happened: I was packed into a small attic room with this professor and a group of students. Several of them, him included, were smoking. My eyes began to water, and I don't smoke. He told me to take out my contact lenses if the smoke was getting to me. That day I had my glasses on. I didn't say a word.

How much do we let slide simply because we won't open our mouths? I once mentioned to the pastor who guided me that making a scene in church felt impolite, yet some people genuinely needed to be called out. I wasn't trying to shut anyone out of faith. I was doing what Jesus did with his own disciples when they strayed. They were regular men who sometimes went the wrong way, and he saw it coming and said so.

What do I actually risk by speaking up in front of others? Maybe my self-respect, which cuts the other direction. Don't let people buffalo you into swallowing something you believe is wrong and ought to stop because somebody is getting hurt or could be. Even as bystanders with no direct stake, we sometimes have to name the problem unfolding right in front of us.

There's a man, and I'll call him a young man because he still has growing up to do, who got high in front of me and was tremendously pleased with himself about it, even proud. I do care about him, though he can wear me out. I called him on being high, since he assumes I'm too much of a nerd to notice, and on the fake, grating self-assurance that came with it. His whole swagger was hollow.

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