When a woman speaks up about feeling harassed or unsafe, listen.

Shifting the conversation straight to “men suffer too” feels like you're trivializing her pain and drawing the attention back to yourself. The mechanism is the same as when someone says during Black Lives Matter: "Yeah, but all lives matter, don't they?" No one denies that all lives matter, but that isn't the topic of the conversation. It draws attention away from who needs attention, recognition, and protection at that moment. You don’t get to reassign the spotlight because your discomfort flares up. I hear the exhaustion from men. The guilt that is so often instilled in men is sometimes hard to carry. I understand that. I carry it regularly, too. But that's precisely why timing is so important. When you place your hurt on top of someone who is just talking about her pain, you are not listening. You are competing. You are turning two legitimate truths into a duel. And a duel solves nothing. It only hardens the moment into defensiveness, the last thing survivors need. When I see men doing that, I will speak up. When I see women downplaying or hijacking the suffering of men in conversations or texts where men share about their pain and unsafety, I will do the same. Speak up. We have to protect the spaces where people feel safe enough to open up. For women. For men. For all of us. A more mature, strong response would be to first acknowledge what's being said. Validate it. Hold space for it. And if you want to add something afterward, do so in your own time, in your own place, so you don’t overshadow someone else's story. I've had conversations with men who said we need to have these conversations together at the same time, because they're about the same thing! The battle between men and women. They said it's not a story of perpetrators and victims. Men and women are both. Pretending one day that men are the perpetrators, and then a few weeks later that women are the perpetrators, doesn't solve the problem. Believe me when I say that I hear their frustration. I really do. I've felt it too, and I still do. I also believe that men and women share wounds and that we must find solutions together. I completely agree with that. We are entangled. But entangled doesn’t always mean simultaneous. Timing matters. Context matters. Respect matters. When a woman takes the public space to share her pain, it's not the same as a general theoretical debate about "whoever suffers." Men should not come in to talk about “but we also.” It requires listening and acknowledgment. By immediately saying "but we suffer too," you downplay her experience, and do not engage in a genuine way. When a man takes the public space to share his pain, women should also not come in and tell him that he should man up, because their suffering exceeds his. Then it’s their time to listen and acknowledge. We can hold both conversations.
We have to. Just not always on top of each other. Listen first.
Then speak. ~ Bas Waijers Baumann