No, really: It’s time to stop making excuses for bad behaviour

I started listening to Kathy Karlo’s For The Love of Climbing podcast a few weeks ago, and the August 15th episode titled “Unbroken” inspired me to write this post. This powerful episode opens up conversations about vulnerability and truths within our climbing community — with those amazing people we interact with on a frequent basis, and how, just like others, our community isn’t perfect.  Whether you are or are not a climber take a listen to Kathy’s podcast — especially Unbroken. It’s a story that speaks to all of us as humans that often struggle to speak our truths.

I want to talk about bad behaviour in this blog post and how often we make excuses for them. How often we, as people of habit and politeness, brush things off too easily. Sometimes bad behaviour is so minor and seemingly innocuous that we don’t even realize it’s negative the moment it happens.

Over time these microscopic actions can build up into bigger and worse scenarios. We should stop letting them go unnoticed and start setting boundaries and communicating instead. In turn, we protect and also demand respect of ourselves and our spaces.

The other week I was climbing at a gym with a few acquaintances. One of them, who I’ll call Mike, sat down next to me and playfully hit me on the thigh. Through the corner of my eye I could see that he was looking at me, watching for a reaction. I didn’t have one because I perceived it to be playful and meaningless. When I didn’t say anything he suddenly said, “I just assaulted you. What are you going to do about it?”

“Um what?” I thought to myself. I instantly felt confused, self-conscious and disgusted. A harmless action had suddenly felt creepy and inappropriate. After a few seconds I finally responded, “You just hit me in the thigh playfully, how is that assault?” He responded, “Oh, yeah, ok,”

I laughed and got up to do a climb.

“Ok that was weird but Mike is a little bit of a strange guy, I guess he may not have realized what he said,” I thought to myself. This dumb excuse was mistake number one.

The situation sat strangely with me for the rest of the night, even when Mike offered to drive me home with a mutual friend of ours. Accepting this drive back was mistake number two. After our friend had been dropped off at the subway station there was casual talk about me coming over sometime because I had missed some social events at his place last year. Being in his vehicle and feeling physically inferior and slightly weirded out, I said “yeah ok!” despite having no desire to go over ever. This was mistake number three.

I mentioned this event to some close friends the next day, who instantly reacted negatively to what had happened. It was at this point that I suddenly realized that the situation shouldn’t have been brushed off on my part so casually. I felt annoyed at myself. Why had I made excuses for his poor word choice, his poor actions, his questionable invitations? No matter how minor, stupid, or playful his intentions had been, I should have called him out on what he said and how uncomfortable it made me feel. And I had not only made excuses for why everything probably meant nothing, but I also behaved in a way that made it seem like I wasn’t affected and didn’t care.

Sometimes we make excuses for people because we don’t know them well. Or because we want to be polite, we want to keep things chill and not make a big deal about things. But some things are a big deal and need to be addressed. And if you find yourself making excuses for someone’s behaviour, chances are there’s something already wrong to begin with.

Communication is vital like in every area of life. Sometimes these small behaviours start off as micro-aggressions that have the potential to explode out of control. It’s safer to be cognizant of these realities and to draw attention them immediately if we can, rather than to ignore them. Otherwise we risk getting trapped in a spiral that we can’t break out of.

Push back, speak up, say no, yes, say something. Set limits. We all have the right to speak our minds and not feel guilty or scared about it. And in the same vein, we deserve to be treated with respect. Your physical and emotional space, your safety, your time, your self. Respect starts with us and our thoughts and behaviour towards ourselves. 

Let’s stop making excuses for inappropriate behaviour. Let’s help each other to call out bad behaviour when it happens and keep each other safe.