The presence of your abuser in your safe space is very real and very valid. You aren't overreacting and you aren't being petty. In the instance that you haven't reported your abuse to a higher power, no matter what the reason may be, I've noticed that it's become increasingly difficult to feel safe within a safe space. How are you supposed to feel secure when your security is compromised?
How can you handle dancing when you can feel a pair of eyes (or multiple pairs of eyes) following you, in tandem with mouths that are, undoubtedly, speaking about you?
There's also the matter of approaching this—the few brave that confront their abuser and tell them, exactly, what's making them uncomfortable and why. There's likely a feigned degree of understanding, an apology and a proposed compromise, yet not alteration of sh*tty behavior. It's your word against your abuser's. There's no one there to tell your abuser that they're wrong besides you. You lack support.
And that's because their friends, who are more than likely fully aware of their abusive behavior, excuse it because they're "bros." They don't hold their friends accountable because it's only sh*tty when your friends aren't doing it.
Wrong.
Too many of the people I've come to know on my college campus accept and even perpetuate abusive, misogynistic behavior because it hits too close to home. It's often dismissed or made light of—no one wants to tell their friends that they're wrong! Understandable. I get that.
But what about when this behavior is repeatedly brought forward? What if there are multiple instances? Multiple people?
Apathy and neutrality are the equivalent to not caring enough to do something. This is not ignorance. Ignorance is a separate privilege from this. When you are apathetic and neutral you are taking advantage of the fact that this abuse is not directly your problem; you do not feel obligated to hold your pal accountable because they aren't projecting this behavior onto you.
You aren't in pain. This hurt is not your problem. However, by doing this you are enabling. You are willingly perpetuating an abusive culture in our so-called "safe spaces" because it isn't your problem, making light of someone else's horrifying social situation—when they can't even enter a classroom without feeling unsafe or threatened.
Stop patting yourselves on the back for staying out of the way when your friend does something horrible. Neutrality is not socially defined as solving the problem.
You become guilty by association.
You become the problem.
