Those are some of the closing words on a post I’ve linked to before, Your Silence is Protection That They Do Not Deserve. I can’t stop thinking about it.

When the verdict in Steubenville was handed down, CNN pointed out how the promising lives and careers of these two teenage boys — now convicted rapists — were ruined because they were found guilty of taking advantage of a girl. CNN did not look at the implications of the rape on the victim. Football reigned supreme in Steubenville and as such, commanded incredible respect and honor in the town. Those boys on the team, they were small-town heroes who had reputations and responsibility. It was an honor to play.

But then they took that power too far.

CNN seemed to be saying that whether or not the boys’ position on the team impacted their behavior isn’t really important. That, because these boys had earned some kind of respect and prestige in town, the inexcusable and disgusting acts they performed upon a girl who did not give her consent were not important. Rather, it was a shame that this verdict happened as it did, that the decision to punish these boys who deserved that punishment for their vile acts against a woman because it would ruin their promising futures. That their status as football players, as revered for this honor in the town of Steubenville, was somehow more important than the fact they did something utterly despicable.

This is a big deal and this is a big conversation we need to be thinking about and considering. Because it’s not just these high-profile cases where we continue to excuse the people exploiting their power. We continue to allow these people to speak and behave from a position of power and we call anyone who dares speak out against it as either a hater or as someone who is just jealous.

There are tactful ways to engage and there are ways to engage with another person that pull from a perceived — or real — place of power. Then there are acts of microaggression and microinvalidation that, on the surface, seem so throw-away and meaningless it’s easy not to consider the bigger implications of letting them go unaddressed. Then there are acts of derailing  as a form of trolling, when two or more people are having a conversation about a given topic and a third person starts posting unrelated photos, GIFs, links to videos. It’s “supposed to be funny!” but it’s really saying, “what you’re talking about is unimportant and/or makes me so uncomfortable that I’m going to change the subject by force! Look at this instead.”

While I’m not comparing the horrific incidents at Steubenville to something that happens on a small and non-physical level, it’s important to use these situations as opportunities to raise our own consciousness about the ways we are microaggressive and derail conversations in our everyday lives. Because if we continue to interact in those ways and if we continue to allow people to go unchecked in the way they converse with others, then we continue to desensitize ourselves to it.

We continue to forget how important empathy and respect truly are.

Here’s an example — a true one that happened online a couple of weeks ago. A male librarian derailed a conversation with a female librarian on a topic of importance to her. When she stepped back and approached him privately, saying that she felt uncomfortable with how their conversation played out publicly and she wanted to discuss things between the two of them, he told her he was “not somebody to fuck with” and if she wanted to matter to him to “do something big enough I recognize your name.” The conversation went on to say that she should “come up with an idea that takes hold and makes a difference” and to “quit whining about how unfair life is” and “be so good they can’t ignore you.” If she did that, then she had the right to “talk shit to [him].”

All she’d done in this instance was take the conversation to a private venue and express her disappointment with the way he’d taken the initial discussion away from the original point to a place where her concerns were invalidated and belittled. And rather than say to her that he didn’t want to have the conversation — a fair and valid means of saying someone is not interested in dialogue — he chose instead to be aggressive in response. Not only was he aggressive, but he belittled her and invalidated her right to feelings and to expressing them in an appropriate manner.

When he did that, she spoke out. She did not afford him the silence he didn’t deserve.

What made this situation tougher was that the person who spoke those words to her did so not only in a demeaning and very gendered way, but from a specific place of power. That person was awarded one of the highest honors in librarianship, and even though it wasn’t public at that point, he was well aware he had earned it. And rather than simply tell her he wasn’t interested in continuing the discussion (which is fair and is his right), he chose to wield his power over her. He told her she wasn’t good enough. That what she did did not matter and worse, that he wasn’t a person to fuck with. Words like that are no joke. They’re belittling and they’re intimidating.

These are aggressive words. They aren’t words coming from a place of wanting to help or advance a conversation, nor are they coming from a place of wanting to help or advance another professional. Instead, they’re words that are meant to keep a person down. To silence their opinion and silence their emotions.

This weekend, when it was made public this individual earned one of the highest honors of librarianship, the librarian who’d he’d been aggressive towards pointed out his behavior again.

And then.

And then.

A group of people chose to stand up for the person who was belittled. Because the way she was spoken to was inappropriate and because sometimes, it’s our duty to support other people. They were then labeled a club of “mean girls”, fighting and defending the actions of the woman who was silenced and intimidated when she chose to speak up, rather than afford him the silence that he didn’t deserve.

The term “mean girls” is one worth noting and thinking about here. It’s a term that’s tossed around whenever a woman speaks up and does so without apologizing for it, isn’t it? In this instance, because a group of women chose to amplify the voice of another who had been hurt, they were themselves villainized and made to feel like they were doing something wrong by standing up and insisting that these sorts of microaggressions weren’t tolerable from anyone, let alone someone who earned distinction in this field as a leader. As someone who should know better than to intimidate someone else.

This was never about jealousy or envy about a distinction. It was about the way we converse and about the way the words we use speaks volumes about us as leaders.

Here’s the thing about respect: like power and money, it’s something you earn, not something you are entitled to because of your gender, your race, your status in your profession. It’s currency you earn every day, over the course of years, based on your work and your behavior towards others. You don’t have to “be nice” — we’ve talked about that before and how insidious it is. You don’t have to love everyone. You do have to be courteous and generous. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Think twice, post once. Be challenging, ask questions, be tough all you want. But be fair, too, and remember that you’re a member of a professional community.

Derailing earnest conversations? Dropping the f-bomb? Failing to apologize when you’ve been cruel? Not cool. And you will be called to account.

Additionally, choosing to align yourself with one side of a conversation and not listening to the other side doesn’t make you the narrator of any given conversation. It doesn’t give you the power to dictate who is and isn’t being a “mean girl.” And it certainly doesn’t entitle you to belittle the legitimate thoughts and feelings of other people in the conversation. Sometimes the narrative and the dialog contain much more history than appears on the surface. The conversation about gender, about youth librarianship, the conversation about the appropriate ways to interact and converse with one another collegially, about respect — this isn’t new terrain.

It’s not about rock stardom. It’s not about Movers & Shakers. It’s not about the honors or prestige that come from a place of being recognized and rewarded for hard work. It’s about being a decent human being with the capacity to engage in conversation and knowing how to step out of a conversation without belittling or intimidating another person and taking away their right to speak up and out when they need to.