“I Would Never Do That!” And Other Falsehoods We Tell Ourselves About Causing Harm. 

What happens when we assume harm only comes from “bad people”

What do you think of when you think of a perpetrator? 

If I were to guess, I’d assume that what comes to mind is not someone who is a good friend, dependable sibling, strong student, or loyal partner.

It feels good, it feels safe, to hold the belief that people who cause harm are somehow different from ourselves. That they’re these devious, messed-up, monstrous people who we “normals” can relatively easily identify and stay clear of. We, collectively (the “normals,” of course), would never associate with this perpetrator. I mean, we sure as hell wouldn’t identify with this perpetrator. 

And things would certainly be easier if all this were true! Yet, it’s not. Really, none of it is. And I’d like to break down what it means when we don’t accept that everyone is capable of causing harm, even cool, kind, “normal,” people. Even us.

Harm is more than just overt sexual violence

What is considered harm is far more than just overt sexual violence; it is a wide range of behaviors that impact each of us differently depending on our life experiences. Oftentimes, when we hear the word perpetrator, we imagine physical forms of violence such as rape. But harm itself exists on a spectrum, and that spectrum matters if we want to interrupt hurt of all sorts.

It can sometimes feel like the only legitimate forms of harm are the types that fall under the umbrella of what is discussed as deeply serious, like violent rape or physical violence. Clearly, these experiences are devastating and deserve to be quantified as severely harmful. 

Yet, sometimes, when we only talk about these types of “obvious” behaviors as harmful, we miss a whole host of behaviors that can hurt yet fly under the radar or become normal.

Some of these behaviors might include: 

• Objectifying a sexual partner when talking about them, like in a morning-after debrief.
• Exaggerating or lying about someone else’s behavior to make yourself seem like the good guy.
• Excessively tracking a crush or a partner’s location. 
• Calling someone names or using insults, even if it’s masked as a joke.
• Misrepresenting yourself to get someone to have sex with/go on a date with you. And not in a using a fake name way, but in a “I also love this band/I’m also religious/I also love the outdoors/I’m also looking for something serious” way. 
• Doing something with the goal of getting someone to have sex with you.
• And more. 

We are all capable of causing harm in some way. Harm is ubiquitous; no one is without an experience of being hurt. And just as this is true, it’s also true that we have all caused hurt. Not all of us are capable of causing harm in the severe, violent ways I referred to earlier, but each of us has at one time hurt another person. 

This reality doesn’t make us completely bad or a lost cause, and recognizing experiences of causing and being harmed allows us to make changes that reduce the harm we may cause in the future. 

But in order to reduce the harm we cause, we have to disentangle the falsehoods we commonly believe about who is capable of harm. 

There is no archetype of someone who causes harm

I started this narrative by asking what you think of when you think of a perpetrator, and while I’ve opened our definition of harm to be more inclusive of a broad range of behaviors, I want to look more deeply at who we view as the people who commit acts of sexual harm. 

The vision that we often have of the creepy rapist is, for the most part, false. Most sexual violence occurs between people who know each other – friends, partners, classmates, dates, or peers. And sexual harm is incredibly common, in a national survey, 81% of women, and 43% of men reported some form of sexual harassment or assault, and these rates are even higher when we consider individuals with marginalized identities¹. 

With this information in mind, we are misguided if we still roll with the assumption that people who cause sexual harm are somehow different from the rest of us. They are the rest of us. 

The point of this isn’t to increase fear and disconnection from others, the point is to help us understand that causing harm is, simply, within reach. Recognizing that there is often not a strange monster going around hurting people allows us to do two important things: 

Support and believe survivors

Sometimes, after someone discloses an experience of harm, whether romantically, relationally, or sexually, they are disbelieved, on the basis of the person being that aforementioned nice, cool, normal type. 

“But she’s so nice!” “You guys have had sex before, though, right?” “That doesn’t sound like him.” “I thought you guys were dating?” “I’ve never seen them act like that before.” “He’s not that type of person.”

People who cause harm can be good friends. People who cause harm can be fun to be around. People who cause harm can show kindness to others. They can be all of these things, and still engage in behavior that hurts. 

By recognizing that there is not one single type of person who causes harm, we can become a support person immediately. We don’t have to second-guess truthfulness and play detective because an act seems out of character. We don’t have to engage in mental gymnastics to make it possible for someone you like and have had positive interactions with to hurt another. We just get to believe. 

Better recognize when we cause harm

And then what if we’re the person who has caused harm? It can be painful to be told that something you did hurt another person. Most of us don’t set out with the intention of maliciously harming. Most of us don’t fit the stereotype of the type of person who causes harm. Still, if someone tells us that we’ve hurt them in some way, we have to listen. Even if we remember things differently. Even if we didn’t mean to. Even if that’s not the type of person we are. 

When we are able to understand that, yes, we can cause harm, we are better suited to: 

• Take responsibility for our behavior and change when someone expresses hurt. 
• Reflect on instances when we may have crossed a line, even if no one told us that we did.
• And, examine our patterns, actions, and behaviors to avoid causing harm in the future.

I’d like to think that I’m a pretty kind person. I try my best to be a good friend, I value empathy, and I work to take the time to reflect on how my actions might impact others. I am all these things. And, I still possess the capacity to cause harm. Even more than this, I have caused harm! 

We are never one thing and one thing only. No one is completely good, and no one is completely bad. Preventing violence begins when we recognize this reality and stop shifting responsibility for harm onto a fabled other. We are the fabled other. 

And prevention can start small. Work to: 

• Question the “they would never do something like that” narrative by believing survivors and reflecting on what misconceptions of harm that you may hold.
• Listen when someone expresses hurt without defensiveness. It’s okay to be curious, it’s not okay to lash out.
• Notice when you might cross boundaries, even in small ways.
• Apologize in a real way when you hurt someone.

References

¹Kearl, H. (2018). The facts behind the #metoo movement: A national study on sexual harassment and assault. Stop Street Harassment. 

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