day 18/19

A love letter to the men that I know 

I know who you are and I know who you think you are too.

You’re a good man, you pick your sister up from school on Thursdays, you tell your mum you love her, sometimes you even remember to buy her flowers for Mother’s Day. You drink tea in the mornings, never coffee at night, otherwise it keeps you up. You’re protective of your best friend in a brotherly sort of way. You like to hear the words “I love you”, and kind of always have. You took a quiz and found out you were in Gryffindor, but secretly think you might be in Hufflepuff. You play football on the weekend, but you’re not very good. You’ve spent hours gaming with your boys online, but it’s really just an excuse to catch up. But you’re confused by all this noise because you’re not like those men. Not one of those men who leers, jeers, cheers when a girl crosses the road. You’d never hit a woman. Or intentionally make a stranger cry.

Because you’ve stood up for the girl at the bus stop, being hit on by an older man’s eye. You’ve corrected someone in the locker room, when they’ve called a girl a whore. You’ve walked a friend home after a night out, but said that you didn’t have to stay the night. You’ve never interrupted a woman in the middle of a meeting as she tried to start that sentence again. You’ve never been in bed and kept pushing the line, every time she lays down a boundary, come on, a little longer, I’m going to take your pants off now. You didn’t laugh when your friend called your boss frigid and in need of a fuck, maybe then she’d stop being such a bitch? But did you? 

Or did you turn a blind eye to the man at the bus stop, snigger in the locker room, stay the night and interrupt because it seemed like she was finished, end up having sex and laugh when your friend made the joke…. 

Because we’re alone out here. In the dark out here. And we need you. Here.

I know who you are and I know who you think you are too.