I found your LJ through Stephanie McMillan's site.
Just wanted to say that as a guy who thought I'd thought and read a lot about this (what it would feel like to be a woman in these situations), your post still had a lot of impact. Coming at the same point from different angles, with a lot of heart but also a lot of substance that forces people to think about it, and that brings out that this is really different levels and degrees of violent subjugation -- a continuum where the subtle leads to the extreme and the extreme gives power to the subtle. Kind of like how lynching of Black people worked -- "only" a few thousand were lynched, but there were a million daily reminders that you COULD be lynched, so you better watch how you act. (Or same point nowadays with police brutality.) Not that every guy who makes an unwanted approch is a potential rapist, but it's still fitting into and reinforcing this whole fucked up set of relationships.
Is that italicized entry part of something larger you're writing? If so, what is it.
The "ask your sister part made me think of something else/related: I just had a discussion with an anti-abortion guy at my job who claimed that no woman he knows had ever had an abortion. And I'm trying to figure out if a) he's lying, or at any rate, has never actually asked anyone, or b) he's telling the truth. And if "b", is it that he runs in an incredibly narrow circle of people, or is it that the women he knows don't tell him the truth (which would not be at all surprising.) Anyone have any thoughts.
Just wanted to say that as a guy who thought I'd thought and read a lot about this (what it would feel like to be a woman in these situations), your post still had a lot of impact. Coming at the same point from different angles, with a lot of heart but also a lot of substance that forces people to think about it, and that brings out that this is really different levels and degrees of violent subjugation -- a continuum where the subtle leads to the extreme and the extreme gives power to the subtle. Kind of like how lynching of Black people worked -- "only" a few thousand were lynched, but there were a million daily reminders that you COULD be lynched, so you better watch how you act. (Or same point nowadays with police brutality.) Not that every guy who makes an unwanted approch is a potential rapist, but it's still fitting into and reinforcing this whole fucked up set of relationships.
Is that italicized entry part of something larger you're writing? If so, what is it.
The "ask your sister part made me think of something else/related: I just had a discussion with an anti-abortion guy at my job who claimed that no woman he knows had ever had an abortion. And I'm trying to figure out if a) he's lying, or at any rate, has never actually asked anyone, or b) he's telling the truth. And if "b", is it that he runs in an incredibly narrow circle of people, or is it that the women he knows don't tell him the truth (which would not be at all surprising.) Anyone have any thoughts.
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