[thesloppy]

That was a decent apology.

I'm relatively bummed that the recent revolution of abuse reporting has revealed one of my closest friends to be kind of a creepy dude. Literally every time one of these stories comes up he immediately segues into a long explanation about why he's not trying to blame the victims, before coming up with some way to gaslight/question the victims (usually along the lines of "Why didn't they just leave?"). Once or twice I might be able to look past, since we're both old farts who love to play devil's advocate, but EVERY time, and with some conviction, is something of a red flag.

I've started to try to check him to the best of my ability (which admittedly isn't much), but it's easier said than done, when talking with a close personal friend, rather than a strawman, or some construct on the internet. Like Louis and a lot of these dudes, I think my friend's issues with women (and himself) are largely based in shame and there's a real challenge in trying to check someone's core behavior without also making them feel more shamed/judged, which might just serve to make the attitude/behavior even worse.

Anybody else dealing with similar challenges these days?