On Rape Jokes and Normalizing Assault

[jimhines]

A few people have commented on this part of yesterday’s blog post about sexual assault and excuses:

And then you have the guys who say they’ve never heard such things. Really? Never? As common as sexual assault is in this country, you’ve never heard anyone boasting about a problematic encounter? Never heard anyone glorifying assault, talking about

Comments

[mt_yvr]

There is a modern working model for things that if some one talks about their experiences in something that appears tangental it's trying to appropriate or derail a conversation. Knowing how this'll look (gay white male speaking in a thread about women), I ask for patience. I normally attempt to connect with things I'm not directly affected by, by way of similar / paraphrasing events in my own life.

When coming out, back in about 94, there were informal polls and studies being done about violence to gay men in Vancouver. In one I remember that close to 89% of gay men under the age of 25 believed that they would be victims of violence. If they had not already been one.

It was common to know, KNOW, that if you entered a bathroom with urinals in a straight space, you needed to be careful. To this day I have mental spasms when I'm in public restrooms. It was known, understood that if I looked sideways, even by accident, straight men had the right to beat me to the point of hospitalization.

How I dressed, knowing that I was going to be out late, knowing which streets to avoid after certain times, always always ALWAYS having taxi money and a ride lined up so I never had to be outside of specific, small safe spaces.

Being asked "who's the wife?" at work. People thinking that "I think he's cute" about a random stranger on the street was transgressive and getting lectures at work about those four words. While people discussed who they fucked and how over the weekend.

The idea that there is a pervasive culture of abuse that we all just ... seep in. And women are inured to, trained by family and society and experience to overlook or minimize or deal with in isolation because anything else is a fault?

Yeah. I have seen it. I've also had tastes of it. Not 1:1, obviously. But enough that I recognize it and am constantly astonished by the number of men who refuse to see.

We've normalized the belief that one set of people have the right to abuse another set of people and the "problem" is if the abused MENTION it. They're ruining the fun.

I genuinely don't know how women do it.

[kaph]

I'm so sorry you had to deal with this. And also thank you, thank you, thank you for thinking about how it relates to violence against women.