“Bitch thinks she can ignore me.”

This is something I’ve thought a lot about lately. Sexism, rape, fat-hate, things that most people would agree are pretty awful and should be ousted. The thing is, this type of behaviour, regardless of how wrong and bad we know it all to be, is reinforced by society and accepted by the general public on a daily fucking basis. “But Tassia!” you say, “Surely you don’t think that I could be perpetuating this kind of behaviour?” The fact of the matter is that at some point in everyone’s lives, they’ve all been guilty of allowing and even adding to these problems. Even myself.

It’s a women’s issue because those goals up there–making somebody feel afraid of speaking, making somebody feel powerless to stop what’s being done to them, making somebody feel like the only recourse is to shut up and hide out forever–are the goals a whole lot of men still hold dear and work towards for all women.

You, dear male reader, are totally not one of those men. I know this, and I appreciate it. I really do. But here’s where all this victimy girl shit concerns you:

• every time you don’t tell your buddies it’s not okay to talk shit about women, even if it’s kinda funny;
• every time you roll your eyes and think “PMS!” instead of listening to why a woman’s upset;
• every time you call Ann Coulter a tranny cunt instead of a halfwit demagogue;
• every time you say any woman–Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Phyllis Schlafly, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, any of us–”deserves whatever she gets” for being so detestable, instead of acknowledging there are things that no human being deserves and only women get;
• every time you joke about how you’ll never let your daughter out of the house or anywhere near a man, ’cause ha ha, that’ll solve everything;
• every time you say, “I don’t understand why thousands of women are insisting this is some kind of woman thing”;
• every time you tell a woman you love she’s being crazy/hysterical/irrational, when you know deep down you haven’t heard a word she’s said in the past 15 minutes, and all you’re really thinking about is how seeing her yell and/or cry is incredibly unsettling to you, and you just want that shit to stop;
• every time you dismiss a woman as “playing the victim,” even if you’re right about that particular woman…

You are missing an opportunity to help stop the bad guys.

via Shapely Prose

Hitting close to home? I know it did for me.

What really gets to me, though, is the idea of a girl “deserving” to be raped. How does anyone deserve something so dehumanizing, demeaning, and debilitating? Why is it that if a woman doesn’t kick or scream or fight back she’s somehow to blame for being raped? We are taught from an early age, as girls, that we shouldn’t show emotion lest we be labeled as a crazy bitch. We shouldn’t raise our voices, or do anything physically imposing, because proper ladies would never hit a boy. We should endure people consistently invading our personal space because “they just want your attention.” We should never tell a man we’ve no interest in talking to to go away, because that’s rude, and good little girls are never rude. We’re taught that by following these rules, patriarchal society’s rules, we will be loved and accepted. Differing from the norm, breaking the rules, results in punishment.

So we follow the rules, we keep our voices down, we don’t hit people, we bottle up our emotions, we allow ourselves to be haggled. We let the man we don’t want to talk to, talk to us because that’s the courteous thing to do. We allow advances because yelling “NO!” makes them, and bystanders, think we’re fucking insane. And we’d never want to be seen as insane. Women all over live by these rules, and silently accept rape because to do otherwise would be unladylike. This shit has to stop.

I highly suggest heading over to this blog to read her article about “resisting rape.”

If women are raised being told by parents, teachers, media, peers, and all surrounding social strata that:

• it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (”mean bitch”)
• it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (”crazy bitch”)
• it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (”stuck-up bitch”)
• it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (”angry bitch”)
• it is not okay to have (or express) conflicted, fluid, or experimental feelings about yourself, your body, your sexuality, your desires, and your needs (”bitch got daddy issues”)
• it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (”dyke bitch”)
• it is not okay to raise your voice (”shrill bitch”)
• it is not okay to completely and utterly shut down somebody who obviously likes you (”mean dyke/frigid bitch”)

If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.

I found this particularly chilling:

Here’s a situation every woman is familiar with: some guy she knows, perhaps a casual acquaintance, perhaps just some dude at the bus stop, is obviously infatuated with her. He’s making conversation, he’s giving her the eye. She doesn’t like him. She doesn’t want to talk to him. She doesn’t want him near her. He is freaking her out. She could disobey the rules, and tell him to GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER, and continue screaming GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME every time he tries to step closer, or speak to her again. And then he will be all, “I was just talking to you! WTF!” and everybody else will be all, “Yeah, seriously, why’d you freak out at a guy just talking to you?” and refuse to offer the support she needs to be safe from dude. Or, the guy might become hostile, violent even. Ladies, you’ve seen that look, the “bitch can’t ignore me” look. It’s a source of constant confusion, as soon as you start budding breasts, that the man who just a moment ago told you how pretty you are is now calling you a stupid ugly whore, all because you didn’t get in his car.

Did you just see the “bitch can’t ignore me” montage in your head? All the guys who have ever given you that look just flashing through your mind, one after the other. Why is it okay to act like this? Why is it okay to bully women into frightened corners? Why do people immediately turn to insults when we express our disinterest? I’m not a frigid bitch, I just don’t want you near me. Fuck off.

I’ve been lucky, as I grew up with a mother who taught us that standing up for what we believed in was okay to do, and we didn’t have to sit back and meekly accept what others dished out. At the same time, however, I spent much of my youth in a state of perpetual confusion. My family said it was okay to be who I was, but my peers and teachers were telling me a completely different story. My mom said, “Be yourself!” while my teachers said, “Shut up and be another cog in the wheel.” I saw, firsthand, the kind of behaviour they were trying to indoctrinate into us. Don’t make a fuss, don’t be so emotional, lighten up, he’s abusing you because he likes you. I had always felt there was something wrong with the lessons they were trying to teach us, and I was thankfully spared from drinking their god damn kool-aid.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, getting hit by a car saved my life. I could very well have been just like those other women who live by the rules and silently accept abuse, but being deemed an unfit outsider from the get-go let me see that load of horseshit for what it really was. A load of horseshit. I will not sit by and meekly accept what you dish out at me. You want to label me as a stuck-up crazy bitch, you go right ahead. I’ll label you right back, you misogynistic assbag. You useless disgusting waste of a human being.

Don’t ever buy into what they tell you is the accepted way to act. You never have to be touched if you don’t want to be. You never have to talk to someone you don’t want to talk to. You never have to be someone you’re not. If someone doesn’t like who you are, don’t worry about it. They’re not worth your time. Why try to change yourself because one random asshole thinks your personality is defective? There are other people out there who like you just as you are, so fuck everyone else.

Add a comment August 5, 2009