So I just saw yet another post about tips for women to avoid shitty men rather than a callout for shitty men & it reminded me of a really awful experience I'd like to share.

When I lived in NYC, I had a best friend who was a guy & he would stop by my comic shop a lot to say hello. One time he stopped by w/ this other cute guy who he introduced as his lifelong friend. Other guy asked for my number & I gave it.

Once the other guy walked out of the store, only then did my best friend tell me not to pick up if the guy called. "I'm looking out for you," he said. "He's bad news." I asked him, if the guy's bad news, why they're friends. He said "we don't talk about girls."

Against my friend's advice, I did get involved w/ his friend. He was one of those Dominants that doesn't understand boundaries. Looking back, I recognize this was sexual assault, but I didn't then. I just thought I didn't communicate my boundaries enough.

When I tried to tell my best friend that this lifelong friend of his had done really uncomfy things to me, he said "I told you not to see him. I was looking out for you." When I asked him to confront his friend, he refused. He had done his duty "as a feminist" by warning me.

Now those two are good friends right? They still are. So suddenly, b/c they "don't discuss friends", I couldn't go to events where my best friend invited me, b/c I might run into my assaulter. I was the one out. And it was reiterated to me, repeatedly, that he warned me.

Never once did my best friend confront his friend about assaulting me. Not. Once. And I found out later that he had done this to MULTIPLE WOMEN. But my bestie just kept warning the women rather than confronting the assaulter. And he thought that was enough.

Except warning me wasn't enough. I wasn't prepared to be assaulted. I blamed myself for not following the warning. And now I was ostracized from my friend group b/c if it was me & my assaulter, I had to make the choice to step away, since he never would.

This is a small-scale example of what happens when we warn women about avoiding assault but don't tell men to stop assaulting.

When you tell women to take precautions, it doesn't protect them from the men that know about those precautions & find ways to circumvent them.

And since so many abusive men are repeat offenders, by warning women but not confronting them, they just get better & better at finding new victims. And they keep being welcomed back into society where their former victims are no longer welcome.

When we focus our sexual assault & abuse efforts on victims & not perpetrators, all we get is more victims blaming themselves & less perpetrators called out. And it does real, long-term damage to those victims' sense of self.

Confront your abusive male friends. And maybe consider, if you keep them around, they're using you, a decent person, to locate more victims. You aren't just ignoring their abuse, you're HELPING IT HAPPEN.