Brave Enough To Be Bliss

I want to share a few examples of what women deal with and how other men sometimes don’t step in to stop inappropriate behavior. ▪ I had an employee contact me because during a medical test a male patient was making sexual comments to her. This man was in his late 60s and she was in her 20s. This patient, unbeknownst to management, had a history of this type of behavior. She tried to handle it herself politely asking him to stop, but he didn’t . After hearing about the incident, a male physician called and told him he couldn’t come back to our facility, and we documented it appropriately with instructions on how he could request his medical records to be forwarded to a new provider. Zero tolerance for inappropriate sexual harassment, no matter the environment or the age of the offender, is what is needed to make it clear that while we cannot control what happens outside of a business environment, we certainly can within it. ▪ Kylee called me after an incident where she and several friends went to a small neighborhood bar to grab a drink and dinner after work. There was one drunk man harassing her group of friends, even touching one of the women. A number of men sat there watching what was happening and didn’t do anything to intervene. The drunk man even threatened them and said he would be waiting for them in the parking lot. Not one man moved or offered to walk them out to their cars. A woman observed the situation and offered to walk out with them. That isn’t OK and that is the type of behavior that leads women to group all men togethe r because while they weren’t a ll providing the harassment, they were all tolerating it. ▪ Watch this and think about how it makes you feel. If any of these women were your daughter, sister or wife, wouldn’t you be proud of her for doing something she loves and is passionate about, for striving and achieving? If you feel differently after watching, I encourage you to really dig deep as to why it bothers you and see what you can learn about yourself. And don’t react simply based on what you’ve heard, but delve into how you really feel for yourself. Nike - Dream crazier (English sub) ▪ You may have seen videos on social media where men are asked whether they would leave their daughter with a bear, or a man. The men choose the bear in every video I ’ ve seen. Whether you have a daughter or not, that should make every man’s skin crawl that that is what men believe about themselves, and each should be thinking about what action he can take to change that reality. (Search man or bear online and you’ll find plenty of examples and see under Resources the one from a former police detective.) It’s time for men to step up, to model appropriate behavior and make it clear that perpetrators of sexual harassment, abuse and assault are the only people who need to live in fear and shame. Openly talking about these issues, disclosing them, reporting them, and educating our children is how we begin to shift the power away from perpetrators who have been living with it far too long. This is a male issue that can only be resolved with male accountability. I believe there are many more men interested in being heroes than perpetrators, so I want to work with them to resolve these issues instead of being angry with them and shaming them, because that simply isn’t getting us anywhere. And men, if you’re ever unsure if you should intervene, just ask and be prepared for the answer to be yes. When I first heard this song, I felt anger rising within me until it got to the chorus. This song breaks my heart because hurt young women who cope with their pain by drinking too much are all too often further victimized by young men who rape them instead of what this young man in the song does. This should be the standard for what being a man is.

Chris Janson -Drunk Girl- Lyrics On Screen (youtube.com)

A male high school friend wrote a very heartfelt post commenting on a number of friends who came to watch his band play. There had been several classmates who had passed away recently, and he said, “It meant the world to me to see so many of your faces. I try never to take anything for granted. It took me a day or two to gather the words for what I feel, but I made a pledge to myself to always let people know how I feel. I know it’s not a real normal thing, but we need to normalize it. Love is always positive. It meant so much that so many went out of their way and traveled so far for this. Thank you!”

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