You seem to have completely missed the point of what I said, as well as the posts I was responding to.
It’s insidious, because while yes, it is wrong, it is absolutely not universal that even all women will perceive it as something abnormal and unacceptable. Some women in this very thread have said, in essence, “I’ve never been groped. It only ever happened when I went to skeevy clubs.” Which are mutually exclusive declarations. Both things cannot simultaneously be true.
It’s a cultural idea that infiltrates into the heads and attitudes of everyone, including women, which is my point. It’s at a club, so it’s not “really” groping, whatever that means. You know what clubs are like, so she was asking for it. Blah blah blah.
I have no idea what you mean by “acceptable” and “common” being mutually exclusive. There are many situations where that’s flatly untrue. It’s both common and acceptable to eat bread.
I’ll also add that you have to remember that misogyny is everywhere in our culture. Politicians bitch about “legitimate rape” and tell us we won’t get pregnant (by magic, I guess) if we don’t want to. Women’s healthcare is this HUGE battleground, but men’s healthcare is always covered, even scrips like Viagra. We make less money (still!) for the same work. We are marketed to as if our only desire or purpose is to pop out babies, clean house, and eat yogurt. If we’re assertive in public, we’re bitches. If we have sex we’re sluts. If we’re raped, did you see what we were wearing? If we report an assault, we’re told we’re making a big deal out of nothing. Have you seen those news reports about how those high school or college golden boys were having their lives ruined by the rape trial? That they shouldn’t be punished because then they’ll lose out on their golden futures they deserve? Those poor boys, right? Not like the girl had her life ruined or anything.
In short, this shit is everywhere, so getting groped is ONE MORE assertion of power and control over us on a giant pile of such forced disempowerment that’s a mile high already.
Also, we have no way of knowing if he’ll stop at a grope until he leaves or keeps going, so there’s a massive safety issue, too.
One more… I think this underlines the cultural problem pretty well. The the aftermath of Steubenville, the schools come up with a program to teach boys… not to take selfies and post to social media when raping someone. Not to not rape them, mind you. Not to address the entitlement complex that leads to rape. Just “good social media habits.”
I think this is the biggest part of the psychological disconnect happening here. For most women, we walk around knowing that no matter how much we work out, what techniques we learn, the reality is that if a man who is much bigger and physically stronger than you really wants to do something. . . well, there’s not much you can do about it. Unfortunately, most men are bigger and stronger than me, so this is a constant threat assessment I have to do in my day to day life. Sure, maybe the guy just wants to slap my ass as I walk by. . . or maybe he wants rape me. I can’t know.
:smack: because it didn’t happen if you don’t get caught. :rolleyes: :smack:
I was sitting with my sisters, my nephews and my kids by a pool. One of my nephews kept splashing my daughter. She said “don’t do that.” She said “stop” She said “no.” He kept splashing - I finally yelled “Sam, no means no! She said not to splash her, now respect that and don’t splash her!”
My other sister (not the mother) looked at me and said “rape counseling eight year olds?”
And, I suspect that is the problem in a nutshell. The little imp was getting away with it. She said no, his mother was right there, he wasn’t getting in trouble, it must be ok. We start them young, telling them no without consequences. Does it really surprise us that they don’t understand when they are teenagers and young adults.
I’m just curious, do you think there is a gender bias in the way people raise their kids? Does passively allowing boys to ‘get away’ with little things in their childhood lead to rape culture?
I’m not doubting you, I’m just wondering if allowing boys to splash their female cousins ultimately perpetuates groping in the long run. What happens when the genders are reversed? I know that setting poor boundaries to kids in general leads to problems when they are teenagers; do we selectively enforce childhood behaviors?
I wouldn’t know the difference either way since I’m a man and don’t know if my parents were ‘easy on me’ simply because I was a boy and not a girl. But then again I was pretty scared of getting in trouble and if it was something that would cause me to get in trouble with my parents (stealing, drugs, raping women and bragging about it on social media) I would avoid it.
There IS a gender bias in raising kids. I have one of each. There is also an innate differences in the sexes - boys challenge more directly than girls. (And notice, I didn’t say girls don’t challenge, they are just far less direct). I didn’t want to believe either of those things until I had kids, but yep. And from discussions with my feminist girlfriends, they think the same.
But I think the biggest issue here is that girls seldom rape. Women - generally speaking, seem to have less desire to cop a feel on a stranger. Our boundary and entitlement issues are less physical and more emotional. We have them - and we have our “no means no” issues (how many horror stories about dating psycho bitch have we had here) - but they don’t usually involve sexual assault.
ETA: Of course, these are generalizations, any individual member of a population may not fit the generalization.
It sounds like the best way to change attitudes is to address them as early as possible. The earlier in life it happens, the more subtle the positive influences can be. This is good for two reasons:
1.) The older someone gets, the more entrenched in their beliefs they become. Forcing someone that comitted sexual harassment at work to go to ‘sensitivity training’ as punishment/re-education is probably not going to be that effective, because the harasser will take the training as a consequence of getting caught, not to address that he needs to respect his co workers boundaries. But teaching, say, a pre-school age boy to be considerate to other people’s bodies and space, parallel to teaching them to share, look both ways before crossing a street, count to ten, etc, will (hopefully) instill in them a sense of values that encompass being considerate of the space, boundaries, and comfort of other people.
2.) Telling High Schools they need to have Dont Rape Women classes for boys to attend will probably be met with a lot of opposition. The later in life this happens, the more direct and literal you have to be, since the older an abuser gets, the more they rationalize their behavior. But I can just imagine critics, PTA members, and Men’s Right’s Activists howling from the rafters about how ‘feminists are emasculating our sons’ or ‘its suddenly taboo for a boy to act a boy these days’. Regardless of the benefit and ultimate intent, people will find a million faults with the idea. But do it when kids are young, and it doesn’t have to be as blunt or overexplained.
Again (was that in this thread or another? I’m too tired to go look) how do we teach kids not to eat each other? Because cannibalism is fucking disgusting, and we show disgust when it’s mentioned, and it’s portrayed as disgusting in books and movies. (Not in every culture, so it’s not hard wired, but in our culture.) It’s so ingrained and it starts so early that we don’t even realize it’s taught at all.
Yeah, it has to start young. No giggling when a toddler kisses an reluctant peer. No urging little ones to hug when they don’t want to. No letting Aunt Sally force goodbye kisses, or Grandpa make them sit on his lap and pinch their cheeks. Teach disgust when bodily autonomy is violated in little ways, and rape will seem unfathomably disgusting.
We’re halfway there. We’re up to “no means no” even when it’s Grandpa (at least if you believe the parenting magazines; this is what they’re teaching now). But if we really want to indoctrinate kids into an antirape culture, we have to be vocally shocked and appalled that Grandpa would even try to make an unwilling kid sit on his lap, not make apologies for the kid not wanting to.
(Please note that all of this applies to *unwilling *physical contact only. I’m all for hugs and kisses and snuggles and tickles when everyone is enjoying it.)
Chatting with my roommates last night, and this subject came up. One of them said that yes she has been groped before and the other said that no she never was.