When thinking of this topic I’ve thought of the different accounts I have heard and read from women that have been victimized by men. We’ve heard it in the news lately. Danny Masterson of “That 70s Show” fame was sentenced to 30 years to life for rape. Local sports figure Kevin Porter Jr. has been arrested for domestic violence and the accounts are awful. I’ve read other accounts as well that made my blood boil.

I could retell their story, but it is not my story to tell. The difficulty here is that we are cast into three different lots. We could be the aggressors themselves. We could be innocent bystanders, but unlike the Seinfeld finale, bystanding is not necessarily innocent. Finally, you can be an ally or advocate. I think most of us know what we want to be, but we struggle to do it. We don’t know how to be an ally. If we act without knowing then we can make things worse. So, many of us become the innocent bystander not because we don’t care but because we don’t know how to help.

A large part of this thought experiment was done when thinking of sexism as a tool of fascism and there certainly are economic drivers here we could get into. Suffice it to say, this is an extension of a conversation about the “other”. If I am able to look down on someone then that means I’m not at the bottom of the totem poll. I work in a field dominated by women. Education has always been that way. Like most people in their forties and fifties, I have gotten to the point in my life when I am beginning to take stock in what I’ve accomplished. Erik Erickson had his stages of psychosocial development. It’s at this point where I realize my career path has mostly played itself out. I wanted to be a school counselor. Heck, maybe I could have been principal. Those are becoming less likely by the year.

I could choose to blame someone else for that gap between where I wanted to be and where I am. I could choose to blame myself. I could also choose to accept and be happy with my lot in life. A number of men choose the first one. More than a few of us point the finger at women. After all, back in the “good ole days” women knew their place. Now, they are competing with us and sometimes they are better than us. My wife is the smartest person in any room she enters. That always includes any room we are both in. I was lucky to learn that lesson a long time ago. Some men never have.

Even good men have difficulty fully leaning into that goodness. We struggle to call out the jackasses and sons of bitches in our herd. When the whole Danny Masterson thing was going down, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis were caught backing the wrong horse. Many of us have had similar experiences even though they didn’t play out on page six of the New York Post. Someone we knew acted like an ass and instead of calling it out we were silent or even defended them. Most of us want to be allies but are unwilling or unable to put in the work to do it. Sometimes we don’t know what to say and do. Sometimes we know and choose the path of least resistance. People like Masterson and Porter Jr. belong in jail. That’s true no matter how talented they are. That’s certainly not everything, but hopefully it is a good beginning.