Sorry, I thought I posted a link to the new thread earlier. If I’d made you aware of it sooner we could have avoided this hijack. It’s an important discussion but this really isn’t the place for it, for the reasons Lamia stated. When you pour out your heart and soul and describe your most painful experiences, it sucks to have people nitpick and argue instead of just honoring your pain.
(To clarify re: my job, I work for an organization that provides a vast array of services for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. I work in Development though, which means grant-writing, so I do not interact directly with clients. Writing grants does require me to have a general knowledge not only of the services offered but general statistical trends, issues related to rape culture, etc. To say this is an issue close to my heart would be an understatement.)
It’s easy to get discouraged about the prevalence and continued ignorance about this subject, but it also heartens me daily, when people are being assholes on the internet, to just go into work and earn a bunch of money for assault survivors and obliterate their misogynist asses with a few keystrokes. When the definition of ‘consent’ is stuck to your staff fridge and there are signs on the bathroom mirrors that say ‘‘IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT’’ and you’re working in a huge $8.3 million dollar shelter-services complex that was funded by countless local donations of people committed to eliminating sexual violence, it is validating and encouraging as hell. Comparatively, the misogynists on the internet are just pissing into the wind.
You haven’t even posted in the thread to share any of the experiences that were being overshadowed by what I apologized to the participants in the thread for allowing to become a hijack.
I realize that when I quoted you and araminty the quotes got reversed so maybe it looked like I was addressing you directly, but I wasn’t. I was answering her post which was in answer to your post, and generally to those I had been engaging with up to that point through the entire thread.
Ironically your only participation in the thread so far is to help perpetuate the problem that I was apologizing for my part in and you don’t sound sorry to me either.
CrazyHorse, some of us see right through your “apology” BS. You still continue to minimize what a lot of us are saying and make up explanations and excuses to make your spew sound like some kind of intellectual argument. But at the core of it is just another threatened, defensive misogynist.
There’s really a dichotomy between the men in this thread. Some are kind and empathetic (for whom I’m so grateful), and then there’s this crap.
When I was thirteen I was, 5’6, thin, freckles, blond hair, and I was very pretty but actually looked younger than thirteen, more like a child.
In high school there was a group of three bigger boys, probably around 16 years old that hung around in isolated group. I never saw them talk to anyone except each other.
In between classes, when the hallways where busy with students rushing to their next class— these three boys would walk through the middle of the crowded halls and ram their hands between girls legs and grab our girl parts, and then laugh, and say got one! and keep walking. I got grabbed more than once by them. When it happened it was so fast— over in an instant, and I kept walking. All I did was hope no one saw it happen, and act like it didn’t happen, and keep walking to get to the safety of my class.
I got my girl parts grabbed for months, and it was hard to avoid because my locker was in that hall. I didn’t get grabbed every day, sometimes I dodged them and they missed, or they got the girl next to me instead. The same thing happened to lots of other girls, including some of my friends. And the strange thing was, we never told any adults about these boys doing this, or even talked to each other about the boys who grabbed us. Other boys and girls saw it happen too, and never talked about it. We all just rushed by to class and tried not to look. It was as if we all thought if we act like it never happened, it never happened. I think individually we feared embarrassment and humiliation, above all else. We didn’t want people to point fingers at us and say “that girl was grabbed in the p___sy,” which would be so embarrassing it would be worse than actually being grabbed in the pussy. So as long as we didn’t talk about it, it never happened.
And now I wonder, because Trump bragged about grabbing, how many young men will want to be a star like Donald? Will it become a sport– like how many girls can you grope in a day walking to your next class?
I just want to quickly add that I feel the same way. It really bothers me that we are sharing our experiences in this thread and we have people going on and on andonandonandonandon with “not all men do this” in a (futile) attempt to keep the space safe and on topic.
We need to do these ridiculous pre-emptive strikes to be able to talk about our own experiences. But this is exactly what we do in real life: avoid eye contact, head down, walk past quickly. When they start, try a non-offensive way of getting yourself out of the situation. Try to minimise hurt feelings and thus danger, by being really nice while saying no.
Just fab these threads need to be echoes of that shit.
Crazyhorse – of course not all men do this. My guess is that a couple percent of men do this stuff. What you seem to be missing is that when I pass a stranger on the street, I don’t know if he’s one of that couple of percent. If I make eye contact with him, I might attract his attention. And in many places, it’s the bad ones who are far more likely to try to make eye contact – in most cities I’ve lived in, the social norm is to ignore strangers, and anyone violating that social norm is more likley to violate other social norms. It is SAFER to look straight ahead and not return that “hi”.
That’s what you seem to be missing.
It’s not as if random women are chalking you up as “probably predator, call the police, make his life difficult.” Rather, they are thinking “better safe than sorry, I’ll just keep walking.” And you have not been harmed in any way by that interaction. You are in the same place you’d be if you didn’t even see that woman.
I said above that when I walk in my neighborhood I do acknowledge strangers. I can do that because I am a wealthy white middle-aged woman in a small community. Most of my neighbors know me. I have a lot of social capital. There isn’t anyone who could get away with groping me without consequences to HIM, so the odds a negative outcome are inconsequential. When I was young and in a city, the equation was very different.
And I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve only suffered a few minor sexual assaults in my life. So I don’t carry a lot of scars. Some women do. They are more circumspect. That is their right.
I think it would be nice if you apologized for criticizing women who are just trying to get through their day without trouble.
I vacation on an island that’s not really close to the main “shipping lanes”. In general, we DO wave to most passing boats.
I think the number of people you expect to see in that situation is an important part of the ordinary reaction. If there are lots of people, you ignore them. If there are few, you greet them. (ignoring issues of safety, of course, which can tip you towards “ignore”.)
:::hijack::: i’ve never waved at anyone to be friendly (except as gratitude for driving behavior) when I was in a car or to someone in a car when I was walking.
Except this one time out west, I was driving on a lonesome road in the Llano Estacado when I came upon a construction vehicle out in the middle of nowhere, with a traffic guy directing the (almost non-existent traffic) around the construction, with no one else visible for miles around the flat terrain. There’s something about being the only two visible people around for at least a dozen miles that makes you want to be friendly*, so I waved at him.
*And the urge might serve a practical evolutionary purpose too, in case one of you has information about upcoming conditions, or is in trouble somehow.
Of course, any answer is valid. No one is required to offer any particular facial expression to anyone else on the street; your decision to offer a friendly smile or nod in a small-town setting but not in the heart of Manhattan is absolutely valid, as is your decision to return one if offered.
But so, too, is someone else’s decision to do so even in Manhattan. Right?
To the extent that a “safe space,” appears to mean an area in which one participant can share a view or interpretation without challenge by other participants. . . yes, you’re absolutely correct: this thread, this board, and this country are not “safe spaces,” and I intend to work diligently to ensure that they never become safe spaces.
Sure, if you choose to smile and nod at passing strangers in Manhattan, that’s perfectly valid. If you do that, you might get some odd reactions, but you are certainly not doing anything wrong.
Now, if you get nasty because someone refuses to reciprocate, then, I think, you have crossed a line, and your decision is no longer valid. But if you offer a smile and a nod, and accept that some will ignore you, sure, I completely support your right to do that.
I don’t. There are a number of reasons: I typically drive with the window up; I typically drive with two hands on the wheel; I typically pass cars so quickly that such a gesture would be unseen and therefore meaningless to make.
However, there are certainly times in which I do, and those typically arise in situations where traffic is slow and there is some reason to interact, such as lane merges or “after you” intersections where no one is quite sure who should proceed first.
And in those instances, while I don’t “stick my hand out the window,” I smile and wave to indicate my assent to the proposed maneuver.
That’s right, I posted in this thread to explain why I am no longer willing to share my personal experiences with sexual assault on this message board:
You quoted this post in it entirety, although you say now that you weren’t actually replying to me. So perhaps you did not even read it the first time. That wouldn’t surprise me, since you’re obviously not here to listen. You are here because you want to make a thread about women’s experiences with sexual assault all about you, and you’re angry at me because I won’t open a vein to feed you.
If I don’t sound sorry about that, it’s because I’m not.
