not a thought experiment

[coraa]

From vito_excalibur: This is not a joke. This is not a satire. This is not a test. ... This is a little real world help for a real world problem.

Here's my pledge: if I see somebody groping you in public, and you're not moaning Yes! Yes! Yes!, I will break through your Somebody Else's Problem invisibility field and come over and ask if you're okay. If your situation looks dangerous enough I can't help on my own, I will call over friends or, if it's a situation in which I think the cops would be on your side, I will call the cops. If you're being harassed by a guy, you can say so to me, even if you don't know me. I pledge I will distract him so you can get away, or I will tell him that he needs to leave, or whatever I can do to the best of my ability. [...] If you tell me that a guy just did something shitty to you I will not refuse to look at any evidence and tell you that I know him and he's a great guy and you must have been imagining things.

And 'guy' is defined as gender-neutral in the post, too.

There have been times in my life when it would have been a big help for someone to step up to the plate and say, "Are you okay? Is he bothering you?" There have been times in my life when some wonderful person did do exactly that, and I was so grateful for the sense of not being alone and defenseless. (Once, in a bookstore... but that's another post for another time.)

I think I can pledge to step up to the plate when someone else needs me to be that person.

Comments

[erinpie.livejournal.com]

Kickass.

I'm pretty far removed from the con scene, but I've been following up on the backstory from your Just Jealous post the other day. And I'm going to take that pledge too.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I don't go to cons that often, so mostly this is something I'd like to do in general.

Yay.

[istgut.livejournal.com]

The one time I thought I was stepping up the plate, it turns out I was wrong and person I was trying to help was mad at me. But I think I can get past that. I think I would also add to the statement that anyone who sees *me* being an ass to someone, please tell me so that I can stop.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I think it's harder for guys to back women up in that way -- because some guys use "is he bothering you?" in a "chivalrous" way that acts more as a pick-up line than as a defense. (Or in a "chivalrous" way in general that implies that the woman can't take care of herself -- which is something that I think most geeky women are less leery of coming from another woman.) Which is not not not not to say that guys shouldn't check and see if something bad is going on (and intervene if it is) in a potentially-sketchy situation; that's just why occasionally it'll be responded to less than perfectly.

(Also -- and again, not that you did this, I have no idea, just in general -- sometimes guys will go straight to trying to solve the problem first, rather than starting with a simple 'are you okay?')

Being willing to say 'if I'm acting like a jerk accidentally, please let me know, I won't bite you for it' is huge, though, thank you for pointing that out. It makes such a difference.

[istgut.livejournal.com]

will go straight to trying to solve the problem

Yeah, that was part of my mistake. There were others, but that was the core.