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Sometimes I just want to break windows and shit.

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Imagine what it would be like if every woman responded to the sexual harassment, oppression, rapes, and sexist comments and jokes that perpetrate this anti-woman culture with extreme violence. What if every woman who gets harassed on the streets decided to throw a punch or every rape victim decided to stab her rapist or every time someone made an assumption or comment based on sexist ideas a woman decided to smash something. It’d be a really fucking violent world. An openly violent world. There would be constant violence in the streets and in homes and everywhere.

Sometimes I wish it was like that. Sometimes I wish we would all just fucking lose our shit and start breaking glass and rioting.

Do you think they’d finally listen if we did?

I’ve been thinking a lot about overt female sexuality. Because I’ve been listening to Lords of Acid. And I started thinking about how if you’re a woman you either can’t express sexuality at all (and you’re a real, true goodly lady). Or you CAN and you can be labeled all the things that women who express sexuality get labeled. But beyond that, you are no longer a real, true goodly lady. So anything that happens to you, say, you get assaulted or raped is your fault. By expressing sexuality and a desire for sex, you’re clearly expressing a desire for sex WITH ANYONE AT ALL TIMES EVER FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE AND NO MEANS YES FROM NOW ON. Cause you’re a slut. If you like sex with one person, you’ll like it with the next.

We can choose to have sex or not have sex. We can choose to show our bodies or not. But there still exists the whore/virgin dichotomy. And it’s still hurting every single one of us. And as far as a large part of the world is concerned, if you choose to have sex you’re also choosing to be a bad girl and you deserve all the shit that may or may happen to you. And only bad shit happens to bad girls, right? Which is why we bemoan the past decisions (or the way they look or where they were or what they were doing) of rape victims and make it seem like they somehow brought it on themselves. It’s why we clutch our pearls at the thought of female sexuality and try to make it seem so scary and dangerous. People are so afraid of women having full and complete ownership of their bodies and their sexualities. Because that’s something that men do. It’s a manly thing. And if women do the things that men do, well, it’s like they ARE men and then there’s no power dynamic and we have to be all equal and shit.

I know I’m oversimplifying.

And I know that I’ve said this all before. And the people that I choose to surround myself with have said this all before and will continue saying it endlessly. It’s the rest of the people that I can’t get through to. Those are the people that don’t want to listen or don’t comprehend and those are the people that scare me because it’s people like that who have power, who make decisions about me and my body and the laws and the protections for and against women. I read a really thought-provoking comment on one of Britni’s posts once:

…I’m going to agree with Melissa McEwan here and say, “And just like how people who speak Arabic are better translators of Arabic than people who don’t, people who have immersed themselves in the critical theories of gender are better translators of what is and is not sexism. Identifying and defining sexism is not–as “sexism is a matter of opinion” suggests–a speculative chore. There is an existing framework for recognizing and characterizing expressed sexism—and those who have made it their business to become fluent in it are the closest thing to objective experts as exist in any discipline.”

I’ve spent most of my life, since I was about 11 years old and started reading books about rape and domestic violence, studying these things in a non-academic setting (although I incorporated it into my schoolwork sometimes). Reading books, reading blogs, listening to people’s stories, experiencing the shit first-hand, etc. I’m planning on going to college to study all of this even more. I’m lucky enough to be in a relationship with someone who has also studied these things. It’s easy for me to recognize sexism and how badly it hurts people. It’s other people that I don’t know how to reach. How do you try to point out something as simple as ‘this is sexist’, when it feels like you have to go into a detailed explanation of HOW and WHY it’s so sexist and WHY it’s important and how YES, IT REALLY, REALLY IS SEXIST AND WOULD YOU JUST STFU AND LISTEN TO ME BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!?

And that’s how angry conversations start. And then we end up nowhere.

Forgive me if this post is really disjointed and makes little sense. I’ve been reading My Fault, I’m Female (you should read it too) and I got really angry and just had to write stuff.

 

 


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