Beyond Allyship: What My Campus Taught Me About Male Responsibility

Trigger/Content Warning: This post contains discussion of gender-based violence and abuse. The story shared here has been included with the full consent of the individual involved. Please take care of yourself as you read, and engage only when you feel ready.

The first time a classmate confided in me about sexual misconduct, there was no dramatic headline attached to her story. She had not been assaulted in the way people expect when they hear the term “gender-based violence.” She had been accosted by a lecturer, cornered by authority, made uncomfortable by insinuation, and left navigating the quiet intimidation that comes when power over your grades is misused.

What stayed with me was not only what happened, but what followed. Hesitation, calculation, the fear that reporting would cost more than silence. Questions about credibility, concerns about retaliation and the unspoken awareness that institutions often protect their own.

At that moment, I understood something unsettling: gender inequality does not always explode in obvious violence. Sometimes it whispers through systems that normalize misconduct and complicate accountability.

As a man engaged in Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) advocacy, that experience clarified my role. Globally, nearly one in three women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. While my classmate’s experience did not escalate to that level, it belonged to the same continuum of power imbalance. When harm becomes predictable rather than shocking, we must ask: is the issue an individual character or an institutional design?

Photo of Oluwanifemi Oladele

Too often, men are told to “support women” but support implies distance. It suggests equality is a cause women own and men assist. I am compelled to ask, is justice an act of generosity? Or is it a responsibility to dismantle systems that advantage us?

We must challenge the system itself rather than cast ourselves as heroes fighting for women. Inequality is not a battlefield where men defend women; it is a framework that privileges men. The task is not protection, it is reconstruction.

On campus, reconstruction begins with institutional courage. Are reporting mechanisms truly independent? Are investigations transparent? Do students trust that outcomes will not be quietly negotiated? We must ask ourselves these questions and answer truthfully. When authority is concentrated and oversight is weak, silence becomes rational. And silence is not neutrality; it is a design flaw.

In Nigeria, this dynamic is compounded by cultural realities. Survivors of misconduct often face skepticism stronger than scrutiny directed at perpetrators. Hierarchy is deeply respected, sometimes at the expense of accountability and when deference to authority overrides protection of the vulnerable, equality cannot thrive!

But inequality does not begin in lecture halls. It begins in the socialization of boys and girls long before adulthood. Boys are frequently conditioned to equate masculinity with dominance and emotional detachment. Girls are conditioned toward accommodation and by the time they meet in professional spaces, these scripts are the rulebook they play by. What would it mean for men to redefine strength as accountability? What if masculinity were measured not by control, but by restraint?

Men must model alternative masculinities, secure enough to listen, disciplined enough to relinquish dominance, courageous enough to challenge peers. Silence in male-only spaces is pure complacence. Many men condemn harassment publicly yet remain passive when colleagues make dismissive remarks about female students or coworkers. But neutrality protects the status quo and the status quo rarely protects the less powerful.

Still, personal decency is insufficient without structural reform.

Society must institutionalize equality rather than rely on goodwill. Transparent grievance procedures, enforceable consequences for misconduct, equitable parental leave policies, and measurable leadership diversity are not symbolic gestures; they are infrastructure. What is measured can be corrected while that which is hidden persists!

Working in SGBV advocacy and witnessing its subtler manifestations within my own university  has taught me that inequality survives because it is normalized. Systems tend to protect those who resemble their architects. And oftentimes, they reward silence over disruption.

Men who benefit from these systems must undertake an uncomfortable but necessary task: to question advantages we did not design but still inherit. This may feel like loss (loss of comfort, loss of assumed authority) but I say, what is surrendered in privilege is gained in legitimacy, innovation, and justice. Gender equality should not be a concession men grant, it is a recalibration of power.

If we are serious about change, men must move beyond sympathy and assume structural responsibility, not as saviors, not as spectators, but as architects willing to redesign the systems that once worked in our favor.

Let us all know,

"Equality will not be secured by men who stand beside women in moments of crisis, but by men who dismantle the quiet structures that make those crises possible."

---

Article written by: Oluwanifemi Oladele, Millennium Fellow of class of 2025 from Obafemi Awolowo University