(Untitled)

[blackplayground]

i'm lucky. i haven't been the victim of sexual abuse/violence. the fact that so many have enrages me. 1 in 5 women will experience sexual violence. 1 in 3 physical violence. walking down the street in mid-afternoon men in cars will yell out to me. every week i have at least five men yell something crude or, preferably, undecipherable out their car

Comments

[grace_julia]

while i agree that males yell out of car windows is annoying, sexist, insulting, demeaning, rude, unnessesary, and often hurtful - as a victim of abuse, i don't think that i consider that sort of action "sexual violence". while it is certainly awful to experience and often humiliating, if we were to turn to the law about a petty boy screaming out of a car window, we would likely detract from the more serious sexual issues at hand, such as rape and assault. i think that a lot of "feminazis" have affected the chances of many victims of sexual crimes, because nowadays (or i've found, anyway) people mis-use the terms sexual violence or assault. i think that wolf-whistling and rude behaviour is awful, but i just think that addressing petty issues such as these may have caused rape to be taken less seriously. i mean... drink spiking used to be a huge, scary and very real thing. then so many girls called "my drink has been spiked" and now it's seen as trivial, when in reality it's very dangerous for those who actually HAVE had their drinks spiked... i guess i'm talking about a real-life "boy who cried wolf" situation.

i'm rambling. sorry.

[blackplayground]

don't be sorry for rambling, but i do think you should re-examine your views. not in that they are wrong but rather.... i'll try and be delicate and i don't want to seem as though i am... attacking or undermining your experiences, particularly those as a victim of abuse. but i do disagree with... where you are coming from.

violence doesn't necessarily have to show bruises and cuts. when i was growing up i was inflicted with years and years of emotional abuse that still has scars that smart and show. words and attitudes can be violent and be felt deeply, whether by an individual or as a group. when men yell at me to 'show them my cunt' out of their car window they intend this comment in a sexual way and it has a violent intention - they're not saying that because they respect women and know that their behaviour will hurt and that this is unacceptable. it might not be physically sexually violent and i'm quite certain that the 1 in 5 figure comes from sexual abuse and attack, not sexist comments. however this type of behaviour is a form of sexual violence. i can't know, no one can, but perhaps i'm the lucky one for whom they don't stop the car, get out and rape. who knows what happened to someone two hours later?

the 'petty issues' statement is a i think a fairly common one and it bothers me. where is the line drawn for non petty and or petty. by cracking down and opposing all sexually violent behaviour it shows 'society' as a whole that that kind of attitude is unacceptable and that people better get their act together and not allow this and not engage in this. imagine if four hoons in a car drove past a woman, yelled obscene things at her and then stopped and beat her up. would it be fair to say - oh the yelling okay but the violence wasn't? i think the two are definitively linked in that one lead to the other.

i don't think that it would detract from the issues. i think a male dominated society that still hasn't fully grasped the full evil, extent or terror of rape or violence against women says that to further undermine and demean the things women suffer. by saying "oh yes bad things happen to women but only sometimes and not always and everything else is fine and dandy" is a way of not fully appreciating the prevalance of negative attitudes towards women. particularly in australia it's this attitude of 'get over it' or 'deal with it'. but we shouldn't have to deal with it. by bringing attention to the 'petty' level behaviours we show how constant the attacks against women are and how widespread this hatred or anger or disrespect is. by narrowing crimes and violence against women to only the truly drastic things we narrow the ability for society to realise the full extent. and by shielding them from this we prevent change and awareness.

in my personal experience telling people i know, particularly males, about my experiences with wolf whistlers and men in the street that i walk past has truly opened their eyes. so many have no idea that such behaviour occurs or that their close female friends have to endure it. they are aware of rape and aware of how terrible it is but they are unaware of the extent of abuse handed out to women, in public, and letting them know about it is a fairly effective way to raise awareness of violence against women and then unrelenting presence of it.

[blackplayground]

i agree that people who boy-who-cried-wolf about things demean the reality of those events. but although people talk about 'all those women who accuse falsely' i haven't seen much evidence of this actually happening. further there is the fact that (as noted below) sexual assault can be difficult to prove, not because it didn't happen but because evidence is difficult to come by. this leads to a large majority of cases not going to trial or the perpetrator not being brought to justice. this certainly doesn't mean that the events didn't happen as the victim has claimed they did. i understand that you've experienced someone lying in this type of situation but... as the article pointed out a large number of women who have experience some kind of violence don't come forward and don't report it. those unnamed masses far outweigh the rather small amount of women who lie.

i'd also like to add that in this specific instance it is women we are speaking of. but that in many, many, many other instances there are men and women who lie in legal matters. when someone falsely accuses someone else of something in say... kidnapping or bribery or murder the reaction is rarely 'oh by doing that they've undermined the legal system taking seriously'.

cx