Thread by @tarang_chawla

1 - AN OPEN LETTER TO “GOOD MEN” EVERYWHERE

At the start of this week a website from 2017 resurfaced, with a “guide” for men on how to “get” women, as though women are objects to be traded or exchanged as part of some pick-up economy.

2 - In its wake, women have spoken out yet again about the fear that they live with on a daily basis. It’s scarily common how many women will clutch their keys when they walk outside in case they are attacked, or tell multiple friends when they’re going somewhere “just in case”,

3 - or have a fully thought out “exit plan” to get out of any potential dangerous situation. What’s a dangerous situation? Any situation where a man might hurt them.

Guys, let that sink in for a minute.

4 - Women change the way they go about their lives in order to avoid being hurt by one of us. Women are scared that we will hurt them. And this fear of the threat of violence for women is real. That fear exists in a public space where women fear they may fall victim to stranger

5 - violence. And it also exists in their interpersonal relationships, which is where women are actually at greatest risk. We need to start to fully grasp and accept the fears that women have of being harmed or killed by one of us - a man they know.

6 - I’ve listened to these fears from women everyday since my sister Nikita was murdered in 2015 by a man she knew. Yet, I keep hearing men say things like: “Well it’s not me who’s violent. It’s not all men who are violent. It’s only some men. Why should I do anything about it?”

7 - And after hearing all of this, the take out for me is this: All men have to be responsible not just for ourselves but for each other. We must shift our thinking away from the idea that it’s “not all men” who commit violence.

8 - That it’s only the monsters or “some men” who commit violent crime. Even if we’re not violent, we can’t help feed the myth that many unfortunately still subscribe to, that it’s the lone wolf who operates on his own that harms women.

9 - We have to stop feeding the myth that it’s “other” men and that we can’t possibly know someone who has committed an act of violence. Odds are, in your group there is at least one man who at some point has been violent or made a woman feel afraid.

10 - It wasn't so bad that she thought he might kill her, but it made her deeply uncomfortable and question whether she can ever trust him. Maybe that guy was you. Maybe that guy was me. Any guy who says otherwise or thinks he can’t know a guy who has is being disingenuous.

11 - Guys, the men who commit violent crimes don’t look like some special type of person you can spot from a distance. They are the ones later described by the media, their colleagues and their mates as being “good men”. They are the husbands, the boyfriends, the brothers.

12 - So how do good men end up committing violent crime? Because our culture allows it. Because it’s websites with guides on where and how to “target” women that good blokes spend their time frequenting that gives them licence to see women as objects for their own gratification

13 - without any notion of thinking about what she wants.

These sites are a bible of sorts for how to approach women even when she wants nothing to do with you. And those situations where women reject men are the ones where they are at most risk of harm.

14 - Not because they “put” themselves there, but because we men don’t have a good history of taking rejection well and we give women a reason to feel scared for their safety.

15 - We tell ourselves that we’re not like that. Because men who perpetrate violence fit some kind of idea about what violent men are supposed to look like or sound like. But that’s just not true. Most men who are violent look so damn ordinary it’s scary.

16 - We probably pass people like that every single day. We work with them, we socialise with them and sometimes, these ordinary looking men make women feel genuinely scared.

17 - And that’s why I believe it’s men’s responsibility to do something about it. Because women change their lives in order to not die because one of us decides we have a right to cause harm.

18 - Women are faced with not only having to manage their anxieties about male behaviour, but having to control our responses. Where’s our responsibility in all of this?

19 - To the men who have read this far, you can actually do something so women don’t feel they need to keep talking about men’s violence. Start to look at yourself and challenge attitudes of gender inequality and sexism in everyday life.

20 - Reflect on your own thinking and the male role models you admire, your understanding of what being a man means and wherever you find there’s misogyny or patriarchy or other fancy big words, change it for the better. It will take time, but do it anyway.

21 - You will slip up along the way, but keep doing it. Do it because it will make you a better man to be around for everyone else in your life. But more importantly, do it because it will make you a better man for yourself.

22 - Basically, make a conscious choice. Make a choice so that ALL MEN are seen as better men and ALL MEN have the option to be better. When we start trying to be part of the solution to ending violence, then change is possible. Don’t give others a reason to say, “Not All Men”.

23 - Think about the small day-to-day stuff. You don’t always need to impress your mates. Don’t think you need to posture or put on some veneer of toughness all the time. It’s actually not as cool as we’re led to believe.

24 - It’s not all that manly to go around acting like you’re a deadset legend because you made sure a woman knows her place or you turn a blind eye knowing full well that one of your mates treats the women in his life that way.

25 - we’re happy protecting our mates or just saying it’s “not all men” when men are committing most of the violent crime in this country, what’s that say about us? Surely us men want to be better than that, don’t we?