It’s time for men to join in the chorus of women calling out sexual harassment.

Almost 80, I’ve been stunned by the ever-expanding list of sexually predatory men. But slowly, I’ve come to a realization I probably should have had long ago. It’s men like me, the bystanders, who enabled them. However righteous we may feel as they’re exposed and punished, the truth is we’re the problem, too.

But we’re part of the solution as well. Alpha men have always been able to do more or less what they wanted – until people started listening to the women speaking up. That reality reinforces who the cowards were: we bystander bros.

I learned that 70 years ago in my elementary school playground in Queens, New York. At recess, Crazy Ronnie pinned girls against the chain-link fence and cackled as he felt them up. We boys, maybe 9, 10, 11 years old, were afraid of Ronnie. No one of us could “take” him, so we just watched. Of course, three or four of us could have pulled him off and stopped it all. Even at that age, what were we thinking? Didn’t we read books and see movies about heroic male saviors? Could we have been getting our own secondhand thrills from his acts?

Eventually, a teacher would notice and drag him away, ending the show. Nothing would be said and life would go on, except that the young girl probably wouldn’t forget the assault (and, as it turns out, neither would I).

The same jock-culture codes that we bumped up against in school – insisting that real men are tough, aggressive, and trust no one who isn’t on their team, especially women (by definition on the other team) – were waiting for us in the military, business, medicine and yes, journalism.

In the 1980s, I found myself on air at the CBS Sunday Morning show where the executive producer indulged in some of the most vile and provocative language I’d ever heard directed at women. I never saw him touch anyone, but female producers winced and sometimes cried after he verbally assaulted and insulted them. At a meeting for my first assignment for his show, the executive producer described my producer, who was standing right next to me, as a “crazed slut” who had to be watched every minute while we were on the road, lest she embarrass us.

I was flabbergasted. Once outside, I asked if she was all right. “Oh, he’s like that,” she told me. “Forget it. It’s like dues for working here and getting the good stories.”

The real job, the hard job, for all of us male bystanders, isn’t to rescue women, but to rescue other men from their own worst behavior and so prevent abuse in the first place, be it by a heroic and possibly dangerous personal intervention or the more difficult political mission of, say, passing an Equal Rights Amendment.

Now that women are rising up, it’s our turn as well. So applaud #metoo, then raise #ustoo, where men can begin to be as courageous as the women who brought down the pigs. We have a lot of catching up to do.

ROBERT LIPSYTE writes for TomDispatch (where this article first appeared) and is the author of a memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter. Lipsyte wrote for the New York Times and was a correspondent for CBS and NBC news.