#MeToo and the Men Who Don’t Understand It

When I was teaching undergraduate architecture and planning students, I facilitated a classroom discussion one afternoon about the built environment and it’s enabling of places on campus that put women, primarily, at risk. Blue-lit boxes with phones in them had been placed strategically several years before, on this and other college campuses with the idea that if a woman was being pursued, she could use the phone. (prior to cell phones!) There were three women and myself in the classroom that day, offering our perspective on the issue of campus safety and architecture and 20 young men. We had just read an article on landscape architecture that made the case that trees and bushes and other accouterments that enrich a property were also “rape enhancers.” It was clear from our discussion that the young male students were primarily perplexed by this idea, but the young women were right there with the author. A discussion ensued about walls, shrubs and dark spaces in a landscape that were intentionally placed. The conversation shifted when a young woman said, “When I am walking at night, no matter where I am, if there are men behind me, I always cross the street, to be on the side that they are not.” This started a cacophony of responses. Most of the men were incredulous. “You cross the street no matter what they look like?” “You would cross the street, if you didn’t know me and I was behind you?” “I could be someone for whom you would cross the street?” “You would cross the street even if it is only one man?” It went on. The male students, to their credit, were not defensive, just hurt. They found it impossible to believe that women, any woman, would see them as a threat. They began to brainstorm what they could do to alleviate a woman’s fear. For some, the answer was to cross the street, so she wouldn’t have to. For others, they wondered aloud if they could call out to the woman in front of them, telling them that they are a safe person. To this the three female students giggled. “Do you think that you calling out that you are safe, would make me believe you?” This was a hard lesson to grasp for these young twenty somethings. Flash forward so many years later and the #MeToo movement has men wondering aloud about their own behavior again. “How do you share an interest in a woman without her thinking you are harassing her?” “What if I was interested in a woman, how do I communicate that to her in a safe way?” An older male pundit on cable news even lamented the age-old Freudian statement: “What do women want?” It was more than twenty-five years ago that I was a part of that classroom discussion and we have yet to really listen to the answers that women have given. But it seems like it continues to be an important discussion to have every 25 years or so. Who knows, maybe one day, we won’t have to ask the question; we will all already know the answer.