It's Not OK
Young guys have to be held accountable by men. It's our responsibility, for better or worse.
A quick warning: This blog post contains descriptions of violence against women.
The guy, having grabbed his girlfriend by the neck and thrown her to the dirty concert floor, bounded up the stadium steps, his curly hair bouncing, his lanky arms swinging. The music blared, people looked at each other in disgust and confusion, and I made a run for the steps.
I didn’t have a plan, exactly, beyond not letting this kid get away with what he had done to the girl on the ground, sobbing and babbling incoherently, holding her elbow in pain, as wide-eyed bystanders tried to get her to her feet. I raced up the steps of Nationals Stadium and slowed my pace when I saw the guy – late-20s, thin as a rail, scraggly beard, red hair – leaning against a trashcan near the top of the steps.
He stared blankly onto the field, where the band played and people danced and sang under a welcomed drizzle on a crushingly humid late-summer night in occupied Washington, D.C. I stood next to him for a few seconds while I caught my breath and collected myself. I needed to say something to this kid. Amid hundreds if not thousands of onlookers, this boy had put his hand around his girlfriend’s throat and flung her to the ground, shouted a few obscenities, and ran away. An act of such naked violence had stunned me and everyone else in our section of the concert. It was surreal in the worst way.
Denny Carter
My initial rage had cooled by the time I was ready to confront this abusive boy, whose hands trembled as he watched the show. Probably a lot of BFT readers wouldn’t label me a brawler, and I’m not. In high school I was in a few fights, mostly the kind where you grab each other and roll around on the ground and wait for your buddies to pull you apart. So I was not going to fight this guy. That was never the plan, even if he deserved it.
Finally, I turned to him. “A lot of people saw what you did down there,” I said. “You’re not gonna be able to run away from this.”
I’ve never seen eyes light up with such fury so quickly. Within a moment of the words leaving my mouth, this violent man child had lost his fucking mind completely. He was drunk, of course, and high, but not weed-high, something else, something that had made him feel invincible.
Fuck you, he screamed directly into my face. You’re not a hero, bro, you’re a bitch. I’m not trying to be a hero, I said. Take a swing at me, he bellowed, his spittle hitting my face, his guttural screams hurting my ears. I’m not here to hit you, I said. With a calmness I can’t really explain outside the moment, I told him what he had done was not OK, and that he needed to take responsibility and accountability for the terrible thing he had done. He made excuses – something about “that bitch” – and I stopped him, calmly, and said no, there is no excuse for what happened. You know you’re wrong. Do the right thing and go back.
Denny Carter
He then repeated this request over and over: Take a swing at me, take a swing at me, take a swing, take a swing, take a swing. He lurched at me. He bucked once, twice, three times. Well shit, I thought, this asshole is gonna deck me. But he didn’t. One last time he reminded me that I was not a hero before again running away from his misdeeds.
In hindsight, as I walked around to cool off after the incident, I knew that he knew he deserved to be hit, to be punched, to be punished for what he had done. This inebriated boy, full of hate and fury, was asking me to give him what he had coming to him. That much was clear to me.
Eventually I returned to my seat and found three security guards interviewing folks who had witnessed the violence. I approached one of the guards and offered what I could: A description of the guy’s face and hair and clothing, what I had seen, where he had gone after fleeing the scene. The guard asked me how I knew where he had gone; I told him I followed him up the stairs into the stadium concourse.
The next few minutes were a blur animated by the depth of trauma women carry with them everywhere all the time (Please believe me when I say none of this is self congratulatory. I did what I thought was right in the moment after witnessing a fucked-up situation; I hope other guys would do the same, and surely men step up all the time in these circumstances. There was no thought of being a hero or the recipient of praise, I swear).
Three women who appeared to be in their thirties and forties approached me after the security guards had left in search of the perpetrator. They thanked me for following the guy. They cried and trembled. They said they had been harassed and abused so many times they had lost count, and it was nice to see a man do something – anything – after witnessing a young woman get pummeled in a public space. I could see them quickly recounting all the gender-based verbal and psychological and physical violence they had endured over the years, all the accountability their abusers had avoided because others – men in particular – and the justice system largely refuse to do the right thing and make guys pay for their crimes. This was triggering for them in ways I couldn't possibly understand.
One lady shook my hand. She said it was nice to meet a man who did not abide by “bro code.” I suppose this code includes prohibitions against holding fellow dudes accountable for violence against women. Sounds like a fucking terrible code if you ask me.
Intellectually I have known for a long time that women endure a lot of bad shit that no one really sees or acknowledges. I had never felt it the way I did at the concert. It’s just part of being a woman, I suppose. Having men talk down to you, gaslight you into oblivion, threaten you, berate you, insult you, love you, hate you, carefully destroy you because they were raised to believe this is their unalienable right, to dominate and exploit, to torment, to defend the hierarchy of oppression atop which they sit. No man is born this way; they are taught to be this way by the broken men who raise them and the women who have internalized and normalized this whole fucking horror show. Boys will be boys: The toxicity seeps from every word.
There are a lot of Good Men out there. I believe that in my marrow. Either they were raised right or maybe they read a few books that made them woke to the injustices in gender relations, and today they look out on a political landscape covered with hyper-masculine shit – the outgrowth of Gamergate and all its shockingly violent misogyny – and they are disgusted. Good Men see young men raised inside the Manosphere and they grit their teeth and hope against hope that the boys who consume this soul-corroding online content aren’t ruined forever, that there might be something human left after Tate and Rogan and the rest of these cretins are done corrupting them for clicks and page views and money, so much money.
A couple days after the concert, I opened by phone and doom scrolled on Bluesky until I came across a gut-punch of a clip showing our mad king – an accused rapist – downplaying domestic violence. I thought of that young guy at the concert coming across that clip on his various social media apps. I thought of him pointing to our vile, melting king and saying see, the president is on my side. He’s with me. He says what I did was OK. He’s joking about it, smiling about it. The president might have shaken my hand for showing my girl who's boss.
I think about such a scenario and I understand the permission structure is in place for these boys to end up as terrible men, human poison in their communities. And really, that’s always been Trump’s allure: He allows people to be the worst version of themselves. He tells them it’s OK that you’re a bad person, for I’m a bad person too. We can be bad together.
Denny Carter
That these women at the concert felt the need to thank me for pursuing the asshole who had lifted his partner by her neck and tossed her to the ground is bleak, very bleak. It means they do not see guys stepping up anywhere at any time to face down misogynistic violence. It means they feel all alone, totally isolated, in their pain and resentment and victimhood, the shit they have gone through because men feel entitled to violence and domination as a birthright. I took it as a terrible sign of the times that these women were so grateful for someone trying to do the right thing.
I can tell you from (unfortunate) experience that men don't like being held accountable. They're not big fans of being called out for inexcusable behavior. A few years ago, when I was still posting on the microblogging platform we used to call Twitter, I came across a thread of guys harassing a woman who had quickly risen to prominence in the fantasy football space. Enraged, I lashed out and maybe said some things I shouldn't have said. I was mad though. This was fucked. Mostly I was stunned that no one else had stood up for this young woman as she was dogpiled by a group of miserable guys who harassed her endlessly. The backlash against me lasted for days and days. You're no hero, they said. She's not gonna fuck you bro, they said, unable to comprehend why a guy would stand up for a woman expect as some elaborate sexual pursuit. These men wanted to let me know how unhappy they were with me calling out their antisocial online antics, and boy, did they ever.
I’m not asking men to put themselves in harm’s way if or when they see another guy treat a woman like shit. In a violent, gun-sick nation like ours, I could have easily been maimed or killed for calmly suggesting that a man had done wrong by his partner when he choked her and threw her into the aisle of a concert venue. I get that. I remember the look in the boy's eyes: He was murderous. But I would plead with men to do what they can to hold other men accountable and to maybe bring some shame and social pressure into the equation when you’ve seen something unjust. Don't do this for your wife or girlfriend or your mom or grandmother or daughter or niece. Do it because it's right. Do it because it needs to be done.
Guys have to know this shit is not OK. They won’t know, they can’t know, unless Good Men tell them.
Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social
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