Comments | girliejones: Female empowerment - it used to be called feminism

girliejones

Female empowerment - it used to be called feminism

Aug 05, 2009 11:13

Whilst I was writing the last post, a really interesting link to a post about rape arrived in my inbox from a friend.

The way men and women interact on a daily basis is the way they interact when rape occurs. The social dynamics we see at play between men and women are the same social dynamics that cause men to feel rape is okay, and women to ( Read more... )

feminism, women's issues

Comments 67

cassiphone August 5 2009, 04:24:51 UTC

The kind of victim-blaming that happens with rape stories (and there have been a couple of raped-male stories in the press lately where victim-blaming has been noticeably absent) almost always is about pointing the finger at the woman and asking why she didn't better articulate her lack of consent ( ... )

girliejones August 5 2009, 04:29:00 UTC

And you so know that the fact that I talk here about enforcing boundaries and how that slides into enforcing boundaries in the bedroom will suddenly give my point so much more validity that before. Which is also bullshit but also kind of the point. Because for every time a white male says of the sexism/racism debate "Do we have to talk about this *here* and about *this*" it means, yeah, fuck yeah we have to talk about this here and about this - cause you haven't gotten it yet.

But yeah, at the end of the day, if you walk off and you still feel unheard, and you have to explain what it means to be heard, you don't really need to explain it anymore.

cassiphone August 5 2009, 05:35:14 UTC

*nods nods ( ... )

girliejones August 5 2009, 06:29:51 UTC

I think it's seeing women as "people", as "equal" cause if you do that, the rest follows - the valuing our work, our feelings, our opinions, are different outlooks and interaction in the world ( ... )

Thread 61

purrdence August 5 2009, 06:24:27 UTC

how people don't really know how to deal with women when they stand up and say no.

And how young this is getting ingrained in our children is alarming too. I battle daily with 14 year old boys who chuck tantrums when they find out that I, as a woman twice their age, will not just lie back and let them belittle and treat me like shit under their shoe.

girliejones August 5 2009, 06:31:26 UTC

Plus, that's not really appropriate behaviour when interacting with your teacher, either.

purrdence August 5 2009, 08:57:31 UTC

Some of the male teachers I have worked with actually think I should ignore/ put up with this behaviour and that I am crazy/shrill/being hoydenish for not being willing to ignore the boys' behaviour.

purrdence August 5 2009, 08:58:50 UTC

Heh, even LJ is on my case now!

Thread 10

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girliejones August 5 2009, 10:53:18 UTC

I don't think it's as easy as that - the line is very very gray.

That said, yeah i get the difference now. It's all good.

(The comment has been removed)

girliejones August 5 2009, 11:03:26 UTC

as long as they do, yeah

jumbled_words August 5 2009, 11:37:24 UTC

This is a really great post. And I'm so glad you linked to that blog post, I read it yesterday and was floored.

I wish that I could link you to one of the best blogs I've read recently, but sadly it's in Swedish. The person writing it recently did this post on how women often agree to sex even though they don't want to, because they KNOW that they won't be heard if they say no. Rather than becoming a victim of sexual assault that nobody believes anyway we agree even when we don't want to. And in doing that it's just a bad sex encounter, and it stops at that.

It was really sad to see how many comments there were to that particular post, written by women who had done that exact thing.

girliejones August 5 2009, 11:42:26 UTC

That doesn't surprise me.

Oddly, with all the personal posts that I make here, i don't really want to talk about what i was personally referring to here. But yeah, if you don't really feel like sex, the person who does is not really being all that sensitive to that, and you just think it will be quicker to do the act than discuss it, or yet again say actually, no I don't want to or what you do doesn't turn me on or hey how bout paying me attention when I'm not naked to, so you don't not consent, is that rape?

To me the whole "technicality" thing is so much greyer.

People don't want to think you feel that way, across a bunch of things, not just in relation to sex, but that doesn't make it not true.

jedinic August 5 2009, 14:36:16 UTC

I've read this a few times now. So much truth in here, but it's one of those extremely difficult topics and I don't know what to say. (Or more accurately, what I would say is so coloured by my own experience, but without the context, it's hard to explain the rage that I have.)