for her I’d rather disrupt the peace than silently enable

This summer, after folk fest, seven of us were sitting around a table eating Chinese food at 3 am. Two men. Five women.

One of the men made a joke about lowering the age of consent to 14 as a political platform. He said it directly to one of the women at the table.

Everyone froze.

I said, "Excuse me. Did you just say that? What about that is funny?"

He said it was a joke. Sometimes his jokes don't land. Then he wanted me to know he's not a bad person. He has two nieces.

He knew he'd been outed in the moment. You could see and hear him backpedal and justify. To make me sound like the crazy one. That I was triggered and irrational.

So I told him to be the man those nieces won't be afraid of. The one they'd know will stand up for them. Not the one joking about them reaching the age of consent at 14.

You talk about one girl that way, you talk about all women that way.

Every body at that table did something

Something I revisit often about that night is that every person at that table responded differently, and every one of them did what their nervous system knew how to do. It allows me to hold compassion for them in their responses.

The woman the joke was said to left quickly with the other man. She and I never got to follow up.

One of the women turned on me. She told me not to attack his character, that it wasn't the right time to have this conversation.

I didn't. I called the comment disgusting. I asked him to imagine his nieces in that situation.

Well, I also wonder if it was the right time to make that joke.

Wait. That's the thing, isn't it? It's not a joke. It never was. And the fact that it's positioned as a joke is the problem with silent enabling and a social structure that thrives on insecurity and fear.

This is something I want us to understand: the pushback often doesn't come from the person who said the harmful thing. It comes from the people around them. The ones who would never do the bad thing themselves.

That's the fawn response. Appeasement taking over to keep the peace. Smooth it over. Laugh it off. Make the person who spoke up the problem. It feels like being reasonable. It's actually our nervous system doing what it learned kept us safe.

And the freeze around that table? Not a character flaw either. Same nervous system, same job, different strategy.

The next day

The next day, the other man came to me. He said he froze. He didn't know what to say, and he got out of there as fast as he could. He knew he left me in a not good place.

Then he asked, "How do I be more supportive in moments like that?"

He said it surprised him to see me stand up, because he'd never seen someone like me do that. Someone like me meaning a pretty little blonde-haired girl.

Another woman came to me that day too. She'd known him a long time. She didn't even really like him. She'd made that clear all evening. But he wasn't a bad guy. She didn't want to kill the vibe of the weekend and talk about it. She didn't want to see him that way.

She told him it wasn't a cool joke.

But he wasn't a bad guy.

We rationalize the harm so we can make it seem less harmful, or take it in bite-size pieces rather than for what it really is. We shapeshift it until it becomes palatable and far from what it originally was.

We rationalize the bad and ask, well, how bad is it?

Until it happens to us.

The next evening, I saw him again. He looked me in the face, looked to the left of me, and walked past me with a bead of sweat on his forehead, as if I were a ghost he was choosing not to see but knew was there.

Which is fine. I didn't need him to say anything.

But what it did do is confirm what I suspected. He had revealed something about himself he didn't want others to know. And while maybe not everyone understood the context, I did. I saw it for what it was.

His lack of accountability spoke louder than any pleas to justify his position as "not a bad guy."

And one woman stood with me. She froze in the moment too. But she stayed. We grew closer after that. It was as if a line had been drawn. We talked it through, and she told me she wished she could speak up. That I didn't just speak up for me. I spoke up for her, and for every woman.

If not in the moment, when?

I get told there's a time and place for comments like that.

But if not in the moment, when? When a child is sold? Or forced to be a child bride? When a woman at an Ivy League university is assaulted by 7 men while 50 said nothing? When a woman carries around the mattress as protest for justice? When we actively have people targeting human rights and making some people more human than others out of perceived righteousness?

When is the time to speak up? When is it ever the right time? When do we challenge our own fear and say the damn thing?

When a woman speaks up, she's angry. Aggressive. A bitch. Out to ruin the fun.

Or is it just uncomfortable to challenge your own bias? Your subconscious beliefs around power and control?

I get told I'm too loud. Too much. That it makes people uncomfortable.

But would it be uncomfortable if I were speaking up that way alongside you, about your exact hurt or injustice? Naming your lived oppression and challenging the oppressor? Especially if you were not able to speak up yourself?

When I speak up, I think about my younger self. The one who couldn't say anything at all. The one who had no one to stand up for her or protect her. She had to learn how to do that for herself. I became my pact with her.

Don't get me wrong. The fear of losing everything and everyone is still in me. It can be very alive sometimes. My beliefs just outweigh that now. They don't live in the dark anymore, and I can't call myself an ally and not speak up when I can, so I am learning to use my voice too. To let my fight become an agent of mobilizing change rather than something I feel shameful for.

This has been one of the greatest gifts of my own somatic work. Learning how to move with it, rather than be consumed by it. Learning how to funnel it into something worth saying, rather than it becoming a boulder I carry attached to my throat.

It's not worth the burden I carry when I say nothing.

I'm the fight

Flight. Freeze. Fawn. And me?

I'm the fight. It's my go-to response.

I've lost many relationships to fight. But I know fight is an invitation. It shows me what is crossing a boundary. And when it's mobilized, it leads to change.

Learning how to work with it has changed my life.

And trust me, I am not an expert or perfect at it. There are still some things that make me lose my mind. But I have more access to choice now.

If someone can't be challenged on their bias, harmful actions, or beliefs, that's not someone I'm willing to entertain. I defend the right to choice. And I choose not to have those folks in my life.

Fight may not always be loud. You don't need to wear pink to sit at my table on Wednesdays. But I do require more.

For her

I never got to follow up with the woman that joke was said to.

I think about her often. I hope she knows I don't blame her for fleeing.

I just hope I did her justice in that moment.

I'd rather disrupt the peace than silently enable.