There is a seductive allure to Jackson’s logic, the idea that only “weak” men “allow” themselves to be victimized. It is the same logic that animates victim-blaming rhetoric most often directed at women, but with an added valence of patriarchal posturing. When Jackson (or any other man) suggests that Crews only froze in fear when targeted by a predator because Crews is uniquely weak-willed, the detractor is insisting on his own imperviousness to harm. Because he is a man, he is strong. Because he is strong, he cannot be overpowered. But victimhood is not just the domain of the weak. Sexual violence does not select against “strong” people (and even if it did, Jackson’s comments would still be reprehensible).

Jackson is far from the first to mock Crews for speaking out. In a March interview with BuzzFeed News, Crews noted the controversy that now surrounds him in Hollywood: “I walk in the room, and the room is split right down the middle,” he said. “It just divides right there. It’s kind of like lightning.” While not everyone in the camp Crews identifies as unsupportive speaks of the actor in terms that are as vulgar as Jackson’s, their irritation with Crews’s accounts still functions to discredit both his stories and his masculinity.

The logic of male imperviousness also serves to distance Strong Men(™) from the “weaker” sex. If strength is a hallmark of masculinity, then Jackson’s insistence on his own immunity to harm is also a feverish attempt at denouncing femininity. It is common, when naming sexual assault as an issue that disproportionately affects women, to be met with a barrage of trolls lambasting female advocates for supposedly overlooking male survivors. And so often, the men who decry female advocates’ efforts do not support male survivors when the time comes to do so. The invocation of the male survivor is more often rooted in disdain for women’s organizing than it is in any real concern for the livelihood of the boys and men who must contend with the effects of sexual violence on their lives.

In the days since Crews’ testimony, the silence from other men—men whom Crews has explicitly said he hopes to comfort and embolden with his actions—has been deafening. Meanwhile, the men who mock Crews are participating in the theater of masculine performance to the detriment of their own—and other men’s—healing.

Crews’s testimony also comes in the same week that celebrities in the worlds that he and Jackson both inhabit have thrown their support behind a man whose life represented a far different model of (black) masculinity. Just hours after Crews spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee, 23-year-old Philadelphia rapper Lil Uzi Vert tweeted his plans to establish a foundation for the family of the slain rapper XXXTentacion, whose list of alleged abuses included beating his pregnant ex-girlfriend so badly that she may still be in danger of losing vision in one eye. Uzi’s tweet also included a call for other celebrities to assist his endeavors; thus far, Nicki Minaj, Lil Yachty, and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie have all pledged their support. XXXTentacion, who brought his fans tremendous comfort and his alleged victim deep pain during his short life, attracts sympathy from his peers with ease. To rally behind a “controversial” dead man, even one accused of heinous abuses, may be shocking to some, but it is hardly without precedent. To support Crews, however, a man forsaking the comfortable façade of patriarchal force for a revealing vulnerability, would be to admit complicity in valuing the masculine veneer.