I’ve said it before and will say it again and again. I don’t write because I have answers, I write because I have questions. Because the older I get, the truer it becomes. Certainty is a luxury of youth and ambition; wisdom is all about the questions. And while I may feel more certainty of self as the days go by, other certainties crumble and demand that I reexamine and redefine them.

When I wrote, That’s on You, Bro I didn’t know that it was Part One. But, it turns out, there’s more to ask, more to wonder about, more to unveil. My previous essay was an opener, a jumping-off point into the consideration of the either/or mentality when it comes to the right to thrive, that has served as a crutch and a muddling of the truest manifestation of equality. “A rising tide lifts all boats” may be a tired trope, but when women thrive, families thrive, and families are made up of girls and boys, so the benefits are integral.

I’ve come to believe that the men in our lives may not feel compelled by urgency and heartfelt empathy to stand with us if they don’t understand the intrinsic nature of being born and raised to conform and placate for our very survival and safety. When I worked as an advocate for victims of domestic and sexual violence, most people begged me not to talk about my job too much—keep work at work. It was too much pain, too much ugliness, too much of the worst of us. They would say I was seeing the world through abuse-tinted glasses and things weren’t really all that bad. Generally, we want to believe that violence and abuse are rare and the exception to the human rule. But it depends on how we define it. Men behaving badly has been the accepted status quo for so long that it requires a concerted effort to rip off the blindfold of tolerance and witness instead the crippling endurance those on the receiving end have had to embrace.

If your experience has been punctuated by the luxury of moving through life with the assurance that most of what you say and do will be weighted with dignity and authority and met with admiration seemingly as a matter of divine fact, it may be difficult to fathom what it is like to be on the other side—knowing that, for the most part, your words will be schooled and corrected and your actions and ideas admonished, also as a matter of divine fact. The more time I spend pondering the patriarchy and male privilege, the more aware I’ve become of my interactions with it day to day. Privilege allows us, whether it’s male privilege, white privilege, or economic privilege, to move through our lives and exist in spaces with a certain unspoken but accepted entitlement. If you walk into a place as if you belong there, no one will question it; if you fill a space and spill over, just because it’s there and you can, no one will doubt your right to claim it. It’s about entitlement, but it’s also about domination—taking and maintaining control. Holding court. Ensuring that you are the loudest voice in the room, exuding confidence and knowledge, even if it’s a ruse. It’s the right to be—period, no matter the shape it takes or who is smothered or sidelined because of it.

Bear with me; I’ll try to explain.

Imagine you’re a young woman soaking up some sunshine after going for a swim. An older man sitting nearby makes a comment about how you forgot to shave your bikini line, ensuring that you know he’s looking at your crotch, or “teases” that you must be cold, leaving no doubt that he’s staring at your breasts. The acute feeling of exposure, nakedness really, is searing, and you wrap yourself tightly in your towel. Later on, you share the story privately with a tinge of indignation, which is really a mask for your shame and embarrassment. Your discomfort provokes irritation and dismissal; that’s just who he is. It’s harmless; don’t be so sensitive. You let it drop. But file it away in the drawer of indignities because you are that sensitive (and are still painfully unaware that you have every right to be), and as you swallow it stoically, you vow that if you have a daughter, you will keep her far away from men like that.

You can’t change the men, but you will protect her.

This has been our motto as women—forever. We can’t change it, but we will figure out how to navigate it, survive it, soften it, and pass those skills on to our daughters. A pattern that falls woefully short of what they actually need.

I wish I’d known.

But I didn’t. Instead, I taught what I had learned and what I had lived. Placate, redirect, laugh it off, smooth it over, rationalize it—be grateful—it could be so much worse. But discontent is persistent and in this case, justified. Discontent is the fire that is burning within and around me, and of late, has grown to a roar. Gen X is characterized as the lost generation, the middle child, forced into self-reliance, independence, and resilience by parents with distracted, alternate priorities. I’ve noted that my peers are also the generation who are refusing to bow down to the way it’s always been and to accept because I said so as a viable answer. I am so proud of us, and when I say us, I mean the women and the men who care about us, for not shutting up.

It is in that spirit of resilience that I continue to be fully committed to speaking, stripped down, just facts, with zero apologies for my sensitivity, my discomfort (or yours), or my heartbreak. And absolutely no apology to anyone for my femininity or sexuality. Women and girls have so long been held responsible for men’s actions that sometimes it’s a challenge to remember that men are completely formed humans with just as much power of choice as anyone, and they choose to be crass, they choose intimidation, they choose harassment because for some, it’s a very comfortable place to be and for others, it’s performative of societal expectations, basically a requirement for admittance into the tribe of masculinity.

People aren’t inherently cruel, and those who dismissed me did so out of habit and training, rather than malice. But it doesn’t change the effect it had on me, which was to shrink, to fold inward, and to conform. Even the man who caused the discomfort was behaving exactly as he always had. That is not an excuse, merely a fact—it had never been unacceptable. As icky as that is, men of his generation were taught that there was nothing abhorrent about such behavior—boys being boys. While noticing can definitely tip into creepiness, it is often harmless. Giving voice to the internal dialogue means it’s no longer about observation and private thoughts; it becomes about power and domination, and that is the distinction that is most often glossed over.

I absolutely don’t excuse the behavior. But I do know that until we teach men how to be different kinds of humans while simultaneously encouraging women to fill up space and step into their potential and power, the patriarchy will remain vibrant and the gulf between us will just keep growing. I’ve perfected the censorship, the polishing, the meticulous consideration necessary to be deemed worthy of participating in conversation. I’ve perfected the grinning and bearing it, the dismissing, the accommodating. I learned that that was what it meant to be gracious, mature, and feminine. But then I started asking myself--

Is it grace? Or is it the doormat, the punching bag, the eternal peacemaker at the expense of my own mental and physical comfort and safety?

Whether it’s crossing the street to avoid a potential encounter, walking with our keys poking out between our fingers like claws, or checking the back seat of our cars before we get into them, I don’t think men truly understand how afraid we are of them. We aren’t exaggerating or being difficult or too sensitive. The heartbreaking truth is, most men don’t deserve that fear, but because we never know, we can’t risk it. I can imagine how exasperating that might be. I won’t apologize because women need to stop doing that, but I will acknowledge it.

Stay tuned for Part Three: Left Behind? Or Left Out?