In the past, society always tried to place the responsibility of avoiding sexual assault on women. People's first reaction when hearing about a sexual assault would be to wonder what she was wearing, if she was drinking, if she led him on. However, the world post-#MeToo has started to ask different questions and shifted towards trying to see the situation as a whole rather than knee-jerk victim-blaming. In 2020 and beyond, men need to start taking responsibility for their actions and try to intervene if they see something wrong.

A little disclaimer: I know that men are sexually assaulted and that women can be predators just as much as men can. However, if the only reason why you bring up male survivors is to contradict female survivors, you don't really care about sexual assault. You just want to silence women (plus, you're a huge asshole). I am focusing on female victims and male responsibility in this article because 91% of rape victims are female and almost 99% of rapists are men. I believe that women who falsely accuse men of sexual assault should be punished for it, but I think that we need to start actually punishing rapists before we get to that (out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, only six result in incarceration, according to the RAINN).

Women are constantly being force-fed the idea that if something bad happens to them, it is because they made stupid mistakes. We're expected to take self-defense classes and carry mace, tasers, or stun guns. We can't leave our drinks alone at a party or a bar, or us getting drugged is our own fault. We can't walk alone at night, or stay in hotels alone, or travel alone. We have to travel in packs to the bathroom, to the next club, to our own homes. We have to be constantly vigilant and notice anything strange and be prepared to handle it if it happens. We have to tell our Uber drivers to drop us off on the corner so they don't know where we live. We have to check the backseat before we get in to make sure there isn't someone trying to abduct us. We can't trust kindness, because Ted Bundy was kind to women, and look where that got them. We miss a lot of the world because it isn't safe for women, and then get accused of being man-haters or calculated, cold-hearted bitches for being scared. We have to be perfect, and even then there's still a decent chance we will get assaulted or abducted or killed. And if we are, we're going to be the first people they blame for the crimes committed against us.

Women are expected to do all this and do it flawlessly, or they are to blame for their assault. But what do we expect from men?

Men don't feel the icy hand of fear curling around their hearts every time they're in a parking garage or in an alley, at least not in the same way that women do. They think that if you're clever enough, strong enough, bad things won't happen to you at all. They don't call out their friend who had sex with a girl who may or may not have been conscious. They certainly don't stop being friends with someone because of it. I think the reason that so many men were resentful of the Me Too Movement because they themselves had had questionable sexual encounters and didn't like being dubbed as predators, even if that's the truth. But now, we need to start shifting the responsibility of preventing sexual assault from the ones experiencing it to the ones perpetuating it.

Let me be explicitly clear: I love men. I know that most men aren't rapists. I believe that there is a really positive side to masculinity and that men are capable of kindness and gentleness and courage. I believe that men know the difference between right and wrong and that they are not animals, they are people capable of impulse control. The main problem in our society now is how men are raised to view women. Predators think they are owed sex and sexuality from women, as evidenced by the booming pornography business and the rise of Incel (Involuntarily Celibate), even though they punish women for performing sexually in ways that don't benefit them. They think that sex is something you do to a woman rather than with a woman. They see a woman on the street, in a bar, at a party, at the gym, and they think that she is an open target rather than a human being. Women don't owe you shit. They don't owe you their time, their energy or politeness, their bodies or their minds; you can't get mad at a woman for not being interested or not liking you, and you certainly can't take out your anger at being rejected on the woman.

To the men reading this: if it doesn't apply to you, great! I'm not going to congratulate you on not being a rapist, but it's definitely better than being one. However, you can't completely absolve yourself of responsibility just yet. When women are given attention in a way they don't like, the fastest way to shut it down is to tell the guy you have a boyfriend. Why is this? It's because a man will respect another man, even one he can't see, more than the woman standing in front of him. He respects the fact that you already belong to some other man, and that is what makes him stop. Men need to use this power, the power of making other men hear them, to help women. Men need to stop turning a blind eye to their pervy friends because "that's the code" and they need to stop enabling their friends through their silence. Trust me when I say that who your friends are says a lot about you and about that person because if a survivor sees you being friends with their abuser, they think that people don't care enough about what happened to them to stop. Not-so-friendly reminder: he isn't a college athlete who just happened to rape someone, he's a rapist who happens to be good at football. Men need to start believing women when they say something is wrong, and they need to recognize that rape isn't just old men hiding in alleys, it most often is someone we know and trust. Think about that the next time you're in a situation where a woman needs help, and don't let her be assaulted for the sake of your own comfort.