Making Fists

My mother just told me a story about how she got cat called by at least a dozen men in a company of like a hundred, brand new Navy recruits, when she was in the navy.

She said there was nothing she could do but walk by and it made her so angry.

She out ranked all of them, and she had made sailor of the quarter three times in a row, was a wife and had a newborn son at home.

And she started tearing up as she told me this.

It makes me so mad. Twenty-five years later, it still hurts her to have been cat called by a bunch of 19 year old assholes. 

That’s rape culture. 

Female Privilege 6

southernfeminist:

False rape accusations. AMIRITE? Like it’s so easy for us women to accuse a poor, sweet guy of raping us and ruin his life. I mean, even though it’s been proven that only .06 percent of rape accusations are false and that most women don’t even report their rapes anyways and since people are still going to blame the woman who was raped, but whatever, isn’t it great that we women just have this magical ability to scream rape and suddenly a good guy’s life is ruined. Pretty powerful, huh? Pretty big FEMALE PRIVILEGE! It’s tough to be a guy facing all of this FEMALE PRIVILEGE everywhere!

A “Benevolent” Use of Rape Culture

I read a post yesterday about a man talking about rape culture and how he is aware of it and because he’s aware of it, he goes out of his way to make sure he’s not making any of the women in his life uncomfortable. By doing such things as crossing the street for strange women at night, not getting in elevators with a strange woman, etc. 

Which, good for him. That’s awesome. We need more men like that.

But he also detailed how he always makes sure the women he works with get walked to their cars at night, or walked home by someone at night, and I want to talk about that for a minute. 

The discussion on rape culture has a lot of talk about street harassment, which is something we should be talking about, but I think another side gets left out, and that’s some of these good men’s behavior.

I have been harassed on the street, but I’ve also had men make me very uncomfortable by insisting on walking to my car or walking me home.

I have had more than one guy not let me walk to my car by myself, after turning his offer down, and use the excuse of, “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” to spend time with me alone and sometimes try to initiate unwanted physical contact. 

I had a man I was in class with when I was living in the dorms who would insist on walking me back to my room after class even after I repeatedly asked him not to. 

And his response was, “I would hate to know something happened to you that I could’ve prevented.”

Well, first of all, let’s get you your medal for being so willing to protect a little girl like me.

Second of all, let’s have a nice chat about consent.

Because, yes, terrible things happen to women in this world, but if a woman declines your invitation to walk her home or to her car - back the fuck off.

Because that means she doesn’t want to be alone with you. You make her uncomfortable. 

And there are good men and “good guys” who are using the “bad things happen to women who are alone” as an excuse to invade the space of women who don’t want them there.

These guys are probably not the same ones who engage in street harassment, but if I don’t want you to walk me home at seven in the evening, or I don’t want you to walk me to my car at three a.m., you have to realize that I am an adult and I can make my own decisions and you need to back the fuck off.

If I ask you to walk me to my car, please, walk me to my car. If you offer to walk me to my car and I say no - respect that.

Because insisting on “protecting” me from the world by gracing me with your presence is really just a “nice” part of rape culture and you’re using the system - that you are claiming you are working against - for your own end. 

And it is just as bad as the creepy men who yell shit at women on the street.

Knock it off.

On Women Defending Themselves

1. They tell us to carry mace, flashlights, whistles
A gun.
And then sell us pants with no pockets.

2. “Well, you got a purse,” the man says.
Yeah, just excuse me while I fumble through
my bag in a dark alleyway.
I’m sure my attacker will patiently wait.

3. They say don’t drink.
And then tell us to
Ruin his libido with piss.
I don’t know about you,
But I get stage fright even with a full bladder. 

4. They say take a martial arts class,
Learn to defend yourself.
Ten years into that pursuit now, myself
And my sensei’s never turned to me and said,
“Why don’t you wear your heels into class?
Wanna make sure you can do a proper take down in them.”

5. “Don’t wear your hair up,” says the person
Who’s never fought loose, waist-length hair in a windstorm.
Or pulled it out of sticky lip gloss for the umpteenth time.

6. “Carry your keys between your fingers like a weapon.”
Because three inches of dull metal
Is really menacing to someone who is bigger and stronger 
And determined to hurt me.

pretty in pink.

owlmylove:

When I was 10, I saw

my first episode of Law & Order, SVU

a woman screamed

and her pretty pink dress ripped

the scene cut to black but then

she sat in a station

hair mussed and mascara running

and she seemed broken

and empty

and that’s when I began to prepare

for the inevitable.

Read More

(via moniquill)

Apparently, I’m just dwelling on the negative

lunaradvent:

makingfists:

I tried explaining my enthusiasm for feminism to a male friend a while back after he was, well, really put off by my feminism.

So, I thought I would try to explain it to him, I started off by telling him that one in four American women will be raped in her lifetime (it seemed like an easy place to start in the broad spectrum of feminism).

To which he replied,

“Well, that means 75% of women don’t get raped. That’s a huge number. You’re just dwelling on the negative.”

I then tried to explain to him that, okay, yes, maybe most women don’t get raped, but every single one of them gets raised to believe that someday they will be raped. 

He said, again, just dwelling on the negative. Shouldn’t plan your life around something that there is only a one in four chance of happening to you.

But I’m like, if a fucking quarter of the American population was getting killed in the streets for having the audacity to exist, I’m pretty sure we would all collectively admit there is something wrong with our culture.

But, no, a quarter of women get raped and I’m just “dwelling on the negative.”

Well considering that men are more likely to be brutalized than women, I feel like he is right to say that you should not focus on the negative when the negative is unlikely to happen. 

I’m not even going to touch on how the 1 in 4 stat is deceitful.

I never denied that men are more likely to get physically assaulted than women. I wanted to make one point about one issue. 

One issue in which women are statistically more likely to get raped then men. (That is not to deny that men get raped. Not at all. That does happen. In fact, that stat is one in thirty-three.)

Have some sources!

Whoops, okay, I messed up my stat. It’s one in six, or one in five. Ish. 

(Sorry, I do remember reading a study that had it at one in four but I’ve misplaced the source now.)

Still. 1 in 6 is not like a seriously low number. (That’s still 16% of women in America.)

I highly recommend you sit down and watch “Tough Guise” before you actually try to make the argument that male-on-male violence takes precedent over rape culture.

Because feminism knows that both of these issues come from the exact same problem and to solve them both, we culturally need to disband patriarchy. 

Making one point about rape does not mean I am insensitive or uneducated on the issues that plague men of our culture. 

And the fact that our culture honestly does teach every single girl that someday she is going to get raped and it will be her fault is a huge issue that perpetuates rape culture and allows these attacks to continue under victim blaming.

It all goes hand in hand with the same things that tell men it is okay to rape and it is okay to perpetuate violence on other males.

It’s patriarchy. 

These issues are deeply interconnected. 

(And gets a tad bit more complicated once you add intersectionality to the mix. Yes, race and class comes out to play too!)

But I should still be allowed to acknowledge that a lot of women are getting hurt every day without someone accusing me of being insensitive towards men.

Apparently, I’m just dwelling on the negative

I tried explaining my enthusiasm for feminism to a male friend a while back after he was, well, really put off by my feminism.

So, I thought I would try to explain it to him, I started off by telling him that one in four American women will be raped in her lifetime (it seemed like an easy place to start in the broad spectrum of feminism).

To which he replied,

“Well, that means 75% of women don’t get raped. That’s a huge number. You’re just dwelling on the negative.”

I then tried to explain to him that, okay, yes, maybe most women don’t get raped, but every single one of them gets raised to believe that someday they will be raped. 

He said, again, just dwelling on the negative. Shouldn’t plan your life around something that there is only a one in four chance of happening to you.

But I’m like, if a fucking quarter of the American population was getting killed in the streets for having the audacity to exist, I’m pretty sure we would all collectively admit there is something wrong with our culture.

But, no, a quarter of women get raped and I’m just “dwelling on the negative.”

Twelve Angry Men

I can still hear the sound of her screaming inside my head.

That split-second before I pinpointed the noise and thought maybe the world had cracked open and this was the sound of the apocalypse coming.

I’m not even exaggerating.

One of our cocktail waitress brought her to me, and we sat on the floor and I held her while she cried and she just kept saying over and over and over again, “He tried to rape me. He tried to rape me.”

We closed the bar at 1:45 like we do every night - dispelled the crowd out into the parking lot and onto the street. She was parked out back and some guy knocked her down behind the dumpster, punched her in the face and tried to pull up her dress.

She screamed.

She screamed and hit him back.

Which our bouncers heard, our bartenders heard, our regulars heard, and all ran to her rescue.

Twelve angry men chased him off, and our cocktail waitress brought her to me and I held her while she cried and we called the cops.

Two young men working the fast-food joint behind our bar actually caught him.

Beat the ever living shit out of him. Held him till the cops came.

They arrested him. Managed to convict him of attempted kidnapping.

He’s in jail now.

She comes into our bar every Thursday.

Says she’s not going to let that bastard win.

And the whole situation makes me so mad for every woman who doesn’t have twelve bouncers to run off an attacker.

As a child/preteen, I was taught by my mother that if I was ever assaulted to not scream “Rape,” but to scream “Fire.”

My mother’s logic was that people wouldn’t want to be involved in stopping a rape. People would turn a blind eye and just let it happen.

But fire?

Fire is something interesting. People will come to gawk at a fire. 

It only just now occurred to me how messed up our society must be that a mother would tell her daughter she can’t depend on anyone coming to help her if she screams while being attacked, but, low and behold, you can surely depend on people’s morbid curiosities to come to your rescue.