We’re all Eve’s daughters, and as such are the source of all evil, and we deserve every bad thing that’s ever happened to us. Didn’t you get the memo?
One of my favorite authors said that women were at least partly to blame for being raped. I read that in one of his books and took it to heart when I was a preteen (no, I shouldn’t have been reading that particular book), and when some man tried to rape me, when I was all of 11 or 12 (I looked about 16-18 then, people kept mistaking me for my little brother’s mother), I thought that somehow, it was my fault.
I had a discussion about this thread with my husband. I had never told him about the times I’d been sexually assaulted/attempted rapes. We’ve been married for 32 years and 11 months. When we first got married, he and his buddies thought that rape jokes were the very funniest jokes ever, and it took me a while to convince him to at least not make those jokes in front of me. He found those jokes a lot less funny when we had a baby, a girl. And they became completely UNfunny when his little princess started becoming sexually mature…and started attracting sexual attention. So maybe we, as a society, need to talk more about this. Maybe men don’t understand how very often even “good girls” get into bad situations. Or maybe some men will understand, anyway. I think that too many men are still willing to ignore women’s experiences.
I wonder if it isn’t somehow convincing to those men who think we are all making it up, that so many women who do not know each other IRL, who are every age (I think someone said they were 22; I am 63) all end up saying THE SAME THINGS. It may be disheartening to see how many men don’t get it but it is still heartening to see how many of us women have survived the terrible experiences and remained strong and intelligent. It’s also very encouraging that some men do get it.
Sadly, yes. You live in the same world as the women in this thread. If you have a sister or a close female friend, the next time there’s a news story in your area about a rapist, talk about it and ask her how many of her friends have been assaulted. Like this thread, the answers will probably make you uncomfortable and sad.
People can justify all sorts of terrible behaviours.
Except that friends should look out for each other, particularly when they’ve been drinking and are thus more vulnerable. Checking that your friends are ok and happy with the situation is not obsessive, and letting your friend know if you think a situation is dodgy is not misandrist, it’s being a good friend. It’s trying to make sure your friends are as safe as they can be - you never tell your friends when you think they’re doing something unnecessarily dangerous? If this means it’s harder for you to get laid, well, blame all the men that go round creating the kind of world in which we have to live.
The thing is, you can’t just ignore the entire physical safety angle. Well, you might be able to, but we can’t. Because as well as the humiliation and trauma and PTSD and lasting mental consequences (you can lump these all together under “hurt feelings” and “supposed social stigma” if you want - I wouldn’t, personally), there are physical consequences to us that go along with being wrong about someone. And I just don’t believe it’s fair to say “If you take away this major part of the problem, our experiences are equal.”
If my friend hadn’t been looking out for me one time, I don’t know that I’d even be alive.
I was at a Hell’s Angles party and I ended up really super drunk. One guy took me outside and into the woods. My friend noticed and followed us. I’ve a vague memory of him taking my shirt off and her saying “You can take your hands off my friend now.” I don’t remember much else except that I ended up with alcohol poisoning.
I can only imagine what could have happened had she not been looking out for me. At the very least I would have been raped.
Because, based on experience, if you don’t snub them, they don’t fuck off and leave you alone. They carry on talking, getting increasingly personal and hassley, and usually end up being offensive and/or threatening. And you get shit for leading them on. Cutting these conversations off as early as possible is the pain-free option for me - and, as I’ve said before, I don’t know when you start talking to me - a complete stranger minding my own business - whether you’re going to be one of the few that can apparently pick up non-verbal cues and respect my boundaries, or one of the many who don’t.
(I won’t even comment on your patronising last statement, except to say that conquering our fear of men would be easier if many men didn’t behave in such a way as to inspire fear. Perhaps you could brand the bad ones on their foreheads or something, so we know the ones we can trust.)
That doesn’t matter - because as has been pointed out, we can’t tell reliably which is which. That’s why women still get raped. (Do look into that branding option…) Since we can’t tell, and since many, many men seem to have trouble with appropriate boundaries, we have to err on the side of caution, because the consequences for not doing so and being wrong are significant, to say the least. As this thread has hopefully explained.
At this point, I’m afraid Quartz is either being intentionally obtuse, or is really astoundingly stupid. Or possibly some combination of the two. I can’t really decide.
Yes, Quartz, I too, would like to get over the time someone I thought was a friend took advantage of my drunken state to jam his hand up my vagina. Or the time a man shoved me up against in a wall inside my own house* in order to grope me and kiss me. Never mind the innumerable times I’ve had men holler rude things at me, the times I’ve had men follow me home. It’s true, my fears are completely irrational. But really, what can you expect from a woman? We pretty much ask for it, what with the having of the breasts and the hips and the being alive and trying to go about our daily business while being female.
But one day, gosh, one day I hope I can get over this completely irrational fear than a man might harm me.
*I know, it was my own fault for letting him him in the first place. Inviting a man into your house = inviting him to grab your breasts and slobber all over you. How could I have been so foolish?
Honestly, my only reaction to this is a big fat so? No one asked you to agree. Whether you agree or not is so utterly irrelevant to everything that I’m not sure why you felt it needed to be shared, frankly.
Prove it. Quantify that assertion. To be more Doper specific about it: cite?
Because our mainstream culture doesn’t celebrate or encourage murder and dogs giving birth are an insignificance. Here, have a primer.
Not offensive to you. Given its connection to sexual violence in its most offensive connotation, it’s out of place in a discussion of rape.
It doesn’t seem to matter much what i wear when some asshole harrasses me; I’ve been given shit in faded black jeans, shorts of any length, blue jeans, sweaters, tank tops, flannel shirts.
I have been hassled in a polo shirt and scrub pants at a bus stop, while wearing shorts and running errands, while going somewhere on a bicycle, and I am not sure myself what these incidents have in common except that some male creature thinks i exist only to gratify his demands.
If you had women catcall you everytime you left your house AND at all hours of the day -it would change your opinion in a snap. I don’t know that i am afraid of all people but i DO have the feeling that i hate everyone until they prove that they might be trustworthy.
I’ve been struggling to work out what it is that bothers me about this thread and some of the contributions to it - some of them have made me really angry, and I wasn’t sure why. But I think I’ve got it now - it’s that it illustrates much more clearly than I had ever expected to be the case that (some) men do seem to have this expectation that total strangers should listen to what they’ve got to say and be flattered by it if it’s something they (the men) consider positive. That their right to comment and express whatever’s on their minds is more important than the right of the woman they are talking at to live her life in peace. No matter how scared or even just uninterested the woman is, it’s rude for us not to listen to the completely unsolicited comments of the men around us, even if they’re complete strangers commenting on us. It’s the turning around of the blame to the women who don’t want to listen to the thoughts of complete strangers, particularly as they pertain to our physical appearance, rather than on the men who actively approach and intimidate us.
And then, if we do listen and then turn them down, we open ourselves up to torrents of verbal and/or physical abuse, followed by blame from everyone we know for ‘leading them on’ or sending out the wrong signals, or whatever.
That’s what’s annoyed me about this thread, the sense of entitlement it’s thrown up, and the clear demonstration that women can’t win either way. Either we’re paranoid for not trusting, or we’re stupid for trusting. But either way, it’s obviously our fault. And given the way this thread started, it’s a shame it ended up here.
Thank you to all women who have been brave enough to share their stories in this thread, I appreciate your courage and strength.
The difference is that I have a MUCH better chance of defending myself from assault from any random woman than any random man. You just don’t get it. I am at a constant physical disadvantage against 90% of the male population (at least) whereas I’m probably equal or better to 75% of the women out there. Men are inherently more of a threat simply because they are bigger and stronger than me.
And that’s the unknown entity isn’t it. First of all, we aren’t only worried about rape - we are worried about sexual assault - verbal and physical. And from the stories, the majority of rape and assault isn’t reported.
Enough men put us in situations where we do not want to be in that we are wary. Some of us have been put in those situations multiple times. So enough men are willing to sexually assault a woman that it is a risk large enough to be weighed.
I’ve never met a woman who has told me she was sexually assaulted by another woman. Not saying it doesn’t happen. But when I’ve been sexually assaulted by bull dykes half a dozen times, I’ll be a lot warier of women as well.
I was attempting to say that men are emotionally impacted from the social aspects of everyone being afraid of them, on a level with the social aspects of sexual assault on women (if you include false accusations). I was also trying to say that the aspects directly caused by the assault (PTSD, trauma) is another story, and does not impact men nearly as much (except of course that they can be victims of assault as well.)
I know you said you weren’t going to come back to this thread, but I will respond anyway. Thanks for clarifying your meaning. However:
Comments about my physical appearance made by strangers are not nice. Period.
These comments are equally rude coming from strange women. I’m not talking about fear of sexual assault, I’m talking about how comments about strangers’ physical appearance are rude and that no one gets the right* to a polite response to these comments, and that it is upsetting that you assume I only find them rude because I’m afraid of men.
Yep. I still get pissed off when I think about the time I was doing my grocery shopping and a guy came up and hit on me and asked me out. At a goddamned grocery store when I’m looking at frozen veggies on sale.
I even smiled and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, but I have a boyfriend”. It was true, but even if it wasn’t, that means “not interested”.
And what did I get in return? Him sneering and saying shit like, “oh, you think you too good for me, bitch? Stuck up or something?”
So here we go: had a guy come up to me when I’m busy doing my grocery shopping, I smile and politely turn him down, and I get cussed out? And for any guy reading this: PLEASE realize that after that happens, you have to watch out for him in the rest of the store. You have to spend the time at the check out wondering if he’s waiting at the exit. You have to wonder if he’s in the parking lot when you’re getting to your car and wonder if you’ll have to figure out a quick escape route in case he’s still pissed off at you being “stuck up” because you said you weren’t interested NICELY in a fucking grocery store.