I’ve been feeling really convicted of late about the types of conversations I allow around me. The other day, while on a tea break with a male colleague, we got to talking and he was telling me about his side chick and how he was trying furiously in his words, to impregnate her. He made a couple of comments which I found myself kiking about and then later paused to ask why I thought it was alright to laugh about such a matter.
Shortly after, I was eating a banana at my desk and this same man began to pass rather offensive and suggestive comments at me. Again, I said nothing to reprimand or correct him but I should have because he had absolutely no right to make me feel uncomfortable about eating a fruit in the office. I kept quiet when I should have called him out instantly. Something on the inside said I was contributing to the problem and not the solution. I’ll tell you how.
Maybe just maybe, if some of the men in the older generation were called out instantly by their male counterparts or the women around them on their conduct, we would have less sexual harassment cases. Maybe if certain acts weren’t just swept under the rug or shrugged off, then the boys will be boys excuse wouldn’t hold water.
It seems fitting that the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Choose to Challenge”. So I’m choosing to challenge myself to watch the kinds of conversations I permit around me. To challenge men who make offensive sexual comments or say degrading things about women. It’s not okay to think you can say certain things and get away with it. I choose to challenge myself to leave my comfort zone and risk losing certain friendships if it means making the world a better place for the upcoming generation. I have a duty to the next generation to not allow the same things I complained about in my own time to be replicated in the men who would become uncles and bosses in the future. At some point, the cycle has to stop. After all, what you permit you promote.
