[electronvolt]

I agree that everyone can help.

However, I disagree that claiming that men should take primary responsibility is wrong and I think your analogy is a bit off: unless you're claiming that all men are harassers, which would be pretty hyperbolic.

For better or worse, the men who do this kind of stuff listen to other men a lot more than they listen to women, probably largely because you probably don't respect women if you're harassing them. A clear message that harassment isn't acceptable, coming from other men, is much more likely to reach these people than if only or primarily women are saying it. This kind of behavior thrives when the person taking part in it can rationalize it as normal or OK--and making it clear that isn't the case goes a long way.

[pekk]

Men can try (and take their lumps along with the women trying to do something about these problems). But there are some fundamental cultural splits across which men certainly don't listen to each other. For many, it matters much less whether I am male and much more what religion I observe.

In some subcultures, and cultures, it really is considered the woman's fault if a man feels inclined to harass her (or rape her, as the case may be). I can't sympathetically reach people who stick firmly to these views and are reinforced by large numbers of other people who reject all my arguments and fundamentally reject me, because they just don't share any part of my worldview, we have completely different values. They have me encoded as a threat to tradition, or a nonbeliever, or as not a real man, or as a cultural imperialist, and they just don't want to hear anything I have to say about this.

I can confront these people, and that may carry a certain amount of satisfaction for me, but that sort of confrontation rarely convinces anybody.

In that case maybe we need to stop thinking we are always going to get people to listen to us. What is a rational response to that realization?