Dear Prudence: take one for the TEAM?

[cereta]

Dear Prudence,
I became friends with “Jack” a few years ago, and we became very close (I am female). Two years ago, I was invited on a camping trip with him, his girlfriend, and a number of their friends I’d never met before. When I got to the campsite, I met the guy I was to share a tent with (“Steve’”). Shortly after being introduced, Steve made some very uncomfortable jokes at my expense, made a pass at me, and then, when I rebuffed him, told me he would “rape me in my sleep that night.” I refused to share a tent with him after that, and so I slept with Jack’s girlfriend in their tent, and Jack shared with Steve. A few days later, Jack told me that he had been trying to set me and Steve up, and that he felt I was rude for rejecting Steve and thought I should have just “taken one for the team” instead of splitting him and his girlfriend up for the night. Our friendship was never the same after that interaction, and we grew apart.

Now I have moved to the other side of the country and lost touch with Jack completely. I received a message from Jack the other day saying that he would by traveling to my city and wanted to know if I’d like to meet up. I do miss his friendship, but I am still upset over what happened at the camping trip. Was it unreasonable of me to distance myself from Steve that weekend? Should I meet up with Jack and explain why that episode (and his reaction to it) was so upsetting? Or should I just ignore the message and let our friendship go completely?

—Old Friend Wants In

It was not unreasonable for you to distance yourself from a man who suggested you should have considered being raped by one of his friends as “taking one for the team.” It would be more reasonable for you to lose his number and throw that friendship into a volcano. If part of you still wants to tell him off, you have my blessing, but please don’t do it as a precursor to reconciliation. This isn’t a person who deserves your forgiveness or your friendship.

Comments

[cereta]

Okay, the response to this may seem obvious, but I'm going to take a slight tangent. I am always saying that when guys start with the, "Not All Men," they should give really serious fucking thought to when and whether they intervene in situations both micro and macro. I've also said that most men really, genuinely have no idea how much women's lives are shaped by awareness of sexual assault.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet "Jack."

Also, LW, it's perfectly possible to miss positive aspects of a friendship while recognizing that you should in no way rejoin it. EVER.

[recessional]

The Jacks of the world are actually much more detrimental to my ability to put any faith in people outside a given category (be it men, or straight people, or neurotypical people, or whatever) than the people who actually attack me. Because they're the ones who make the difference in whether or not I get help, whether or not the attack gets lauded, ignored or punished, and what happens afterwards.

[jadelennox]

Right? I mean, Steves are gonna be Steves; rapey bastards, and hopefully never successfully. But Jacks are the ones who are Nice Guys™, who think often they're allies, who pressure women to accept violence because the alternative is rude, who have no freaking idea how unacceptable it is to pre-arrange for a woman to share a tent with a man when they're strangers.

Jack thinks he's a good guy, and I hope LW would feel like she could tell Jack flat out, since she lives on the other side of the country and no longer shares a social circle she might risk ruining, that his behaviour is gaslighting, that he should believe women, and that he enables rape by coercing women into unsafe situations for the sake of social courtesies.

[cereta]

God, the thing about the tent arrangement...When I was in grad school and hanging out with a group of mostly male gamers, I had no car, so I had to get rides to games and parties. I would then often get handed off to someone else (usually a guy) who was "headed my way." I am quite sure it never occurred to them that they were putting me in a vulnerable situation, and saying something would have been taken as accusing these guys of being rapists. In the years since, I have really wished I would have said something.