I've seen my friends harass women on the street. I can't be silent any more

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/01/my-friends-harass-women-i-cant-silent-any-more

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On the first hot day of 2015, I was hanging out with some friends on a street corner in east Baltimore when a woman and her child walked past.

Bulk chants of “Ohhhh! Got Damn! Smile baby! Shorty you phat as shit! Bring dat ass over here!” ripped from the corner where about 30 of us stood. We are all different guys, with 30 different occupations, all bought up in the same abrasive culture where many men feel entitled to harass women.

“Chill man, leave her alone!” I yelled. My friend T echoed: “Yeah man she don’t want y’all bums anyway!”

The woman stopped and muffled her child’s ears: “Y’all some fuckin’ clowns!” and continued down the block.

Most of the dudes burst out in laughter, some of us shook our heads in despair. One dude mixed up in our group, a light-skinned kid with one big gold tooth spoke out: “Yo that’s why I only fuck wit white women now – black ones be too angry!”

It’s never been my style, but dudes have been hollering, cat calling or cracking on women years before I was even born. I grew up in east Baltimore’s dope-boy culture, where the coolest guys attracted women by dressing nice, being popular and having conversations. Screaming at women and acting thirsty always looked stupid to me and always will. Seeing the look on that young woman’s face while she was walking with her child made me realize how scary it can be for a woman to walk down the street.

If we men are the problem, we can also be part of the solution.

“Men should call each other out when they see their friends violating women”, Juliana Pache, an activist, told me. The co-founder of Pussy Power, a Philly-based feminist group with the purpose of creating spaces where women can feel safe and free to express themselves, Pache said:

They should sit them down and explain to them how wrong they are. Just like white people need to call each other out on racism. If you are in a privileged group, and you want to help oppressed people, one of the best things you can do is teach other people in your privileged group. As a person of privilege, you do not have to actually face the oppression, so you have time to teach. Oppressed people do not have the energy to teach everyone about the oppression they have to live through everyday.

The day I watched my friends harass the young mother, I tried.

“Yo, she had her son with her!” I chimed in. “What if somebody said: ‘Lemme squeeze your sexy fat ass’ to your grandma?’ Would that be cool?”

The light-skinned kid shrugged. Travis, the tallest kid out there answered: “Yo, little man gotta learn the game. One day he’ll yell at somebody’s sister on the street!”

And that’s the problem. Remaining silent and following suit is how our misogynistic culture is sustained for generations. Little guys see big guys street harass and then grow up to street harass and this toxic tradition is so strong that the kid in front of me shrugs at the idea of me telling his grandma that she has a sexy fat ass.

“Man ya’ll sound like Captain Save-a-hoes!” said Travis, pulling a Black-N-Mild from his ear and sparking it: “Lemme get y’all some capes!” Everyone laughed.

I reminded most of them of who they live with, whose cell phone account they’re on, who feeds them or fed them when they were flat broke, who brought them into the world, who let them stay on the basement couch past the age of 30, who raised them, who they call when they get in trouble, who co-signs, who got that bail money, who was there when everyone else ditched them and how when trouble strikes, “Mommy!” the first thing they always yell out.

Some fronted but most nodded in agreement, acknowledging that their go-to people are always their black grandmothers, black wives, black girlfriends, black sisters and black daughters.

I asked Pache how do we move forward. “Privileged groups should stop expecting oppressed groups to teach them. We’re busy being oppressed. The whole concept that privileged people won’t learn unless we teach them is just pure laziness. If you care about the people around you, you’ll do the work to educate yourself.”

Educating and making myself aware to the issues that many of the women in my community face is only half the battle. As a kid in Keep Ya Head Up, Tupac rapped “And since we all came from a woman/ Got our name from a woman/and our game from a woman!” He painted a clear picture of what he felt every male needed to acknowledge. Many didn’t, leaving him to continue with: “I wonder why we take from our women/ Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?/ I think it’s time to kill for our women/ Time to heal our women, be real to our women!”

Pac had it right: us men are responsible for not only stopping guys from harassing women, but also telling others to do the same. For this is the only way to shift the culture.