The Good Men Who Love #YesAllWomen

"He's checking you out." My tall classmate scooted closer to me in the auditorium and nodded toward the English professor up front.

"He's married. He has a kid."

"He's totally checking you out."

This came after several weeks of feeling increasingly uncomfortable in class and wondering if I was missing the stares he gave others. Maybe it wasn't just me; maybe some strange social quirk. And then there was the day he had me work on an in-class assignment involving a comic book that showed a woman and giant spider copulating. I looked around and noticed that other members of the class were given more normal assignments.

But I was still incredulous. Still thought perhaps I was making it up. My tall friend, a star basketball player at my college told me I wasn't.

When mid-semester one-on-one conferences came around, his appointment was right before mine. He walked out and said to me as I started to walk in the room for mine: "He's totally going to ask you out. I will be in the cafeteria. Come find me."

I sat down to a disconcerting interview in which I kept trying to keep his eyes up and he proceeded to change the final writing assignment required for both the class and a graduation pre-requisite from a term paper on an environmental theme to a "series of poems on your love affairs." He informed me that my writing was amazing, I was "really talented" and the normal term paper wasn't necessary for me. He wanted me to write my poems and then he wanted us to go for coffee and read them together because he really enjoyed my writing.

I exited his office in a daze, still thinking I had to have misunderstood. I found John, who had forewarned me, in the cafeteria, near Vicki, an older student who had befriended me.

"Well?" John inquired.

I blurted out the whole weird episode in the office while Vicki became increasing horrified. "To the dean. You are going to the dean," she got out.

I argued. I didn't want to be that girl, that screaming feminist who yells "sexual harassment" at every turn. I felt sick and I just wanted this to go away.

Vicki laid it out all: "What if he does this to some 18-year old freshman? You're older, and you are a good student. You have to speak up."

I went to the dean who with great wisdom asked key questions: 1) Was I learning in the class? 2) Did I feel like I was receiving fair grades on my work? 3) Was this man teaching well aside from this incident?

I answered "yes" to all three and the dean asked what I wanted to do about the invasive assignment. I told him I had one idea: I could write poems about my love affair with Ireland. He thought that was clever and encouraged me to proceed, stay in touch, and come to him if I felt threatened.

I did feel threatened, but that felt so unreasonable. My friend John knew how I felt, and made it his personal mission to sit by me in class. The last day of class he stared the prof down while moving even closer to me. I turned in my work and the class ended.

My previous work had been returned to me signed with the professor's first name and phone number. This time I received a message asking me to call him and we would go "off-campus" and he would give me "personal feedback" on my poems. I left a note in his campus box that I was busy and if he would just return the work to me in my box, I would let him know if I had questions. This went on for a couple of weeks under the dean's watchful eye; eventually I was able to get a grade, my work, and a final grade without seeing him again. The next semester he went after a younger student and the two incidents ended his employ at my alma mater.

Later, I learned he hadn't given John, the required "C" required in Advanced Writing to graduate.  I had seen John's grades throughout the class, typically B's and B+'s. John calmed me down telling me he had to take responsibility because he had turned in his last assignment late. But I will always wonder, if he didn't getting stuck retaking that class because he came to my aid, knowing I was receiving unwanted attention.

In the wake of Elliot Rodger's hideous crimes and the great outpouring of female frustration tweeting at #YesAllWomen, I, too, found myself looking at this incident and others and understanding the fear, exhaustion, and helplessness that women are often subjected to.

But to be fair, each time I have been afraid of a man, there has been another man there who protected, stuck up or simply validated that I had done nothing to bring about unwanted advances.

Not very feminist of me to admit. A little helpless sounding. But only fair when we all turn our attention to Elliot Rodgers and to the creeps and stalkers in our lives.

I went off to an academic conference in my mid-20s. I planned to go to graduate school and I was encouraged to go to this conference and meet key representatives of the programs I was interested in as I sent off my applications. The top program in the U.S. was completely funded and I was hopeful I might get in. I was friends with a professor at another university who had been key to getting me to go and we shared a hotel room. At the opening barbeque, a respected publisher of an academic journal noticed me and enveloped me in his group of friends. I was terrified of all these intelligent and credentialed people and he noticed and asked me to write a book review for his journal. He also proceeded to point out the people for me to meet and talk with.

On the second day of the conference, I boldly made my way up to one of the top professors at the school I desperately wanted to get into to. He was a short, balding man and I told him I was making application to his school and asked for suggestions on making my application as appealing as possible. He stood way too close to me. He asked a few questions and then told me that he felt he needed some time with me, because, he could "affect my admission." He told me that rather than attend the evening's events, we would go away just the two of us and spend the evening by ourselves. And then he gave me a rather long kiss on the cheek. I was stunned. He told me where to find him and I started to move away, rather dazed.

My publisher friend, who had been about 20 feet away, motioned me over to him and asked if I was ok. I remember looking up at him, wondering if I looked that bad. He then looked at me and said, "You need to watch him. He has a bit of a reputation." I made some excuse and escaped up to my room, literally shaking by the time I got there. My friend was there and when I told her the story, she was livid. She asked me what I wanted to do. Disappear. She then told me that her graduate prof had constantly made advances toward her and she had been terrified too. He had power over whether or not she received her master's and in the end he had asked her to sit on his lap. Grateful, he hadn't pushed it further, she still never fully respected her decision to go along.

I stuck with the conference that night, telling the professor when he came looking for me, that I felt I needed to be part of the evening at the conference. I went home and never applied to the one school that would have had the funding for my doctorate. I was admitted into all the other unfunded programs I applied to. For years I wondered if I should have applied anyway. Just recently, I realized that I did the right thing. For me. I don't think I would have enjoyed having to fight my way through years of a Ph.D. program with that burden, funded or not.

But while dealing with more creepiness, once again, I found a good man. A nice man who let me know I wasn't crazy, that I wasn't imagining anything and that I felt icky for a reason. It was icky.

There have been other little moments: at work, in an empty subway station, being stalked by a classmate, when I have been threatened, and each and every time, there has been a male who was looking out for my best interest.

I get #YesAllWomen. And Amanda Hess's Slate article had so much truth in it, it sent shivers down my spine. Now I have two little girls, and how do I teach them to move and maneuver in a fallen world where men can be dangerous?

But I have a son too. And he is no Elliot Rodgers. And I don't want him him lumped into any category. So, remember. For all the crazy men, who view women as things they are entitled to possess, there are the good men too. The ones who step in the middle, or just listen and affirm. Or simply live their lives respecting the women they come into contact with for all they are and all they can be.

So rather than come together as women decrying the men who have scared, hurt, or killed us, let's come together as humans, saddened yet again, by humanity's curse, and while recognizing the evil, hoping, just hoping, we won't let this happen again.