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I saw this quote on the Anti-Porn Feminists blog. Too good not to share.
I have seen a sixteen-year-old boy weeping in distress after getting a girl’s pube stuck in his teeth, I hear he was unshaven. I have seen boys showing each other porn on their iPhones on the train home from school, in bars and whilst strolling along the Champs-Elyséés. I have had a boy ask me to text him screenshots of porn films because he was on a wifi-free family holiday. One boy turned to kiss his date in the cinema but not before romantically whispering ‘don’t struggle’. One friend drunkenly walked off into a park in the early hours of the morning and when a male friend brought her back without ‘trying anything’, he was heralded as being ‘soo nice!’ rather than ‘soo normal!’. I have friends whose boyfriends have posted naked pictures of them all over the Internet. I have heard consent described as ‘de-romanticizing’. I have had a shockingly sober boy say to me ‘Why can’t I just slap my dick on your arse? Doesn’t cost you anything!’. This just scratches the surface of my store of depressing anecdotes; the most violent of which I won’t go into out of respect for the girls involved.
2014 is not a good year to be a teenage girl. The last of the 90’s kids are growing up and we are starting to see the effects of being raised with the Internet. For generations before us, hormonal teenage boys looking for sexy images of women had limited options; they could brave the embarrassment of going to the counter and buying Playboy, they could look through their sister’s Cosmo or they could use their imagination. Porn today has rid itself of the embarrassment-factor by embracing the anonymity of the World Wide Web; Playboy isn’t really considered to be porn anymore, the real stuff lives in your phone, on your laptop, your tablet; it is available anywhere, anytime at the touch of a button.
Violence, Teenagers, and Gonzo Porn, Clara Bennathan
Home run…’nuff said.
“FreeXXXpics”.
It’s a search I get all the time, and each and every time it pops up on sitemeter
I want to scream at the top of my lungs.
A few weeks ago I was sitting at my desk sipping gingerly on my hot cup of coffee. I popped into sitemeter to log the searches and there it was again, “FreeXXXpics” my hand trembled and my smile turned into a frown of wrath and fury. What was it about this particular phrase that sent shockwaves through me?
I very nearly threw my coffee cup at the wall that day, so enraged was I by the search. Clearly, this shit was getting to me. Several days later, I took my burnout time but now I’m back again and the phrase is still haunting me. So, this morning amidst the chaos of homeschooling, networking for the rape campaign, researching and so on…
View original post 2,313 more words
Men can be better than this. Change your thoughts, change the culture around *you*; take your spoons, speak up, and when you see the rape enabling BS, make a difference.
I just needed to share this with you, gentle readers. My humble experiences on other feminists blogs reminds me that women discussing women’s issues is a clairion call that rouses the dudes who either don’t have a clue what’s going on, or by the rights invested in their ‘peen, decide to tell women what the issue is, and even, if they issue is actually an issue at all. It happens on even the most basic of issues that should be obvious if not blinkered by privilege and good ole fashioned ignorance.
Here it is.
The title of the post is “Men Taking up too much space”. No relevant text, just the picture and a link to the tumblr that has more images of dudes being dudes. It brings up a valid point:
that in the public sphere men get to define their own space and women do not.
Let’s sample the comments on this seemingly straightforward post.
I disapprove of this website. It’s pretty mean-spirited to post pictures of people on a public forum for the permanent record for what amounts to (at most) a very minor infraction. Moreover, I can’t tell how empty these trains are. There are a couple of pictures in which it is clear that the dude is crowding out other people — the one linked above for example. But most of them that’s just not even close to obvious, and from what I can tell, a lot of the trains look fairly empty. So why shouldn’t people — men or women — spread out a little? Some of the picture also seem to me to be more anti-fat person too.
Really? We’re going to nit-pick privacy issues and state strong disapprobation with the entire website! The use of public space is a phenomena and not all pictures are going to be black and white clear cut examples. Hyperskepticism rears its ugly head once again, funny how it only comes along when male privilege(NSFW link warning) is challenged.
More on the sacred right of privacy for dudes:
“It’s not hard to blur out the faces of the photographs. It’s in fact really easy. The organizers of this site have opted to not do this.”
“I have to concur that this was an unreasonable decision on the part of the person or persons who operate that website. Even if it weren’t true that, as Matt points out, the website includes many marginal and/or ambiguous cases”
“Why couldn’t they blur the faces? Terrible judgment involved here, of the kind that inherently tends to overshadow the point they were trying to make (which is a shame).”
Translation: How dare you violate the privacy of men?! We are talking about people here and their privacy. What about the poor menz!!11!11!!
I arch my eyebrow at the bleating of this inconsequential minor infraction and then look back up to the link to a search using the key terms “upskirt” and “voyeur” and behold the hundreds of sites offering thousands of pictures of women who unlike the clothed men in the tumblr photos, are often naked or in states of undress, unconsenting and unaware.
But non blurred faces of these dudes “overshadows the point”. *sigh* What isn’t overshadowed is the societal conditioning that Men are the default standard human beings and women are the sex class and most pointedly do not share the same status as men.
It gets better, or really, worse as the comments go on. We’ll file this next section under privileged clueless dudes that have important things to say:
“2) When men do encroach, as in the OP photo, people have to say something. It irritates me to covertly sneer at someone over the distance of the Internet in lieu of confronting them face to face.”
“And I’m not making any assumptions about “equal basis”, whatever that means, or socialization.”
“I’m talking about how we change bad conduct. It’s not by being self-righteous and cowardly over the Internet.”
“Definitely. But the mean-spiritedness and humiliation tactics are misplaced, especially in a world with much bigger issues for gender equality than space-hoggers on public transit. It trivializes women’s issues; it’s so petty I couldn’t take it seriously.”
Oh the sheer ignorance on display. It is so amazing to watch the clueless ramble on about how things are and if only women did this. Make careful notes good readers at the privilege-blind wanking going here that conveniently ignores social norms, power gradients and gender socialization in society. If your space is enroached on, then just tell the person off. Easy as pie. What is your problem here???
*headesking them forever (thanks Syrbal)* – Dudes will come up with all sorts of shite to mansplain away the concerns of women.
But enough indulgence. If you have any spoons left over and feel like taking a run at educating dudes on the internet, join the fun over at Feminist Philosophers.. :)
Oh we’ve all been there, but now we can play along at the same time!
Hey d00dz, do you realize all the shit that you don’t ever have to put up with. I bet you don’t. Blair has a helpful story for you.
“This is about speaking up, creepers, and what good men don’t always see. Names have been changed.
Some time ago, I was having lunch with a group of friends—four men, one woman, and me. I’ve known most of the group for five or six years. We were talking about shared past experiences when one of the men mentioned that he missed Larry. “Gotta like a man who can make a good cup of coffee,” he said.
“No, I don’t,” I blurted out, and described how that man knew precisely where the lines of “inappropriate” behavior were drawn, and had spent the last couple of years nudging those lines whenever he came across a woman he considered “available.” I mentioned he’d been called out for failing to heed polite turn-downs, that he got offended when the turn-down became less polite. I mentioned how women who weren’t even the focus of his attention breathed a sigh of relief when he left the room.
None of the men discounted my experience or my descriptions. But every one of them said they hadn’t seen or noticed anything like that. I do want to be clear that their responses were not in the spirit, tone, or words of dismissal. Instead, they were genuinely puzzled that their observations had missed something they assumed would be obvious. One said he felt bad he hadn’t realized what was going on.
So I pushed the issue.
Without explaining what I was going to do, I got up and stood behind one of the men. I put my hands on his shoulders, then stretched my fingers as far down his chest as possible while still seeming to give a platonic shoulder rub.* I pulled him back against my chest, digging my fingers in when he resisted. That action alone let him know I acknowledged he didn’t want me to be pulling on and touching him, and I didn’t care.
“You look so tense,” I said in a nice, soft voice. Not sexy, not husky, but more intimate than standard conversation. Not intimate enough to be “inappropriate,” though. “You just let me give you a rub and I’ll make you feel better. I can tell you need that.”
Then, while he sa[t] immobile with surprise, I leaned past him to pick up his coffee cup, keeping my chest close to his face and my other hand firmly on his shoulder. To the others, it likely looked as if I was just resting my hand there. That man, though, could feel the pressure I exerted to keep him pressed close to me. He would have had to make an obvious, rude-looking push to get away. “I’ll get you some more coffee, too. You just let me take care of that.”
I gave the man a sweet smile in answer to his shocked stare, then returned to my seat, put my napkin back on my lap, and said, “That’s what Larry does.”
The man I’d touched totally understood in that moment. He’d experienced how it felt—even at the hands of a friend—to have your personal boundaries violated and your “polite” signals of resistance ignored. The other men had that slack expression that comes when surprising facts suddenly jolt long-held assumptions. “Creepy” was uttered, as was “awful” and “scary.
Their words held a tone of… almost fear? As if they were suddenly running through all sorts of past interactions in search of similar behaviors, and finding some.
Now they are able to see it.
*The “long-fingered” shoulder rub is a common tactic used by creepers who want to look like they’re being so tender and nurturing while actually making the woman fear he’s going to grab a breast at any moment.”
Pro-Tip – Your experience is not everyone’s experience. Repeat until that sinks in.
I’m finishing Brownmiller’s book, Against our Will. Funny how the arguments really have not changed and are still regularly trotted out by ‘feminist allies’ and critics here in 2012. As Brownmilla concludes, she thoroughly brings the noise and lays it all down on the table with bon mots like this:
“Critics of the women’s movement, when they are not faulting us for being slovenly, straggly-haired, construction booted, whiny sore losers who refuse to accept our female responsibilities, often profess to see a certain inexplicable Victorian primness and anti-sexual prudery in our attitudes and responses. “Come on, gals,” they say in essence, “don’t you know that your battle for female liberation is part of our larger battle for sexual liberation? Free yourselves from all your old hang-ups! Stop pretending that you are actually offended by those four-letter words and animal noise we grunt in your direction on the street in appreciation of your womanly charms. When we plaster your faceless naked body on the cover our slick magazines, which sell millions of copies, we do it in sensual obeisance to your timeless beauty – which, by our estimation, ceases to be timeless at age twenty or thereabouts. If we feel the need for a little fun and go out and rent the body of a prostitute for half and hour or so, we are merely engaging in a mutual act between two consenting adults, and what’s it got to do with you? When we turn our movie theatres into showcase for pornographic films and covert our bookstores to outlets for mass produced obscene smut, not only should you marvel at the wonders of our free-enterprise system, but you should applaud us for pushing back the barriers of repressive middle class morality, and for our strenuous defense of all the civil liberties you hold so dear, because we have made obscenity the new frontier in defense of freedom of speech, that noble tradition. And surely you’re not against civil liberties and freedom of speech, now, are you?”
The case against pornography and the case against toleration of prostitution are central to the fight against rape, and if it angers a large part of the liberal population to be so informed, then I would question in turn the political understanding of such liberals and their true concern for the rights of women.”
[…]
Once we accept as basic truth that rape is not a crime of irrational,impulsive, uncontrollable lust, but is a deliberate, hostile, violent act of degradation and possession on the part of the would be conqueror, designed to intimidate and inspire fear, we must look toward those elements in our culture that promote and propagandize these attitudes, which offer men, and in particular impressionable, adolescent males, who form the potential raping population, the ideology and psychologic encouragement to commit their acts of aggression without awareness, for the most part, that they have committed a punishable crime, let alone a moral wrong. ”
-Susan Brownmiller quoted from her book Against our Will p.389-390.
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