well behaved women

Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced

I would recommend this to men or women. This is a beautiful little piece, and while many of the comments are made of win, there are a few that are rage inducing.


You know what? THIS. IS. NOT. OUR. FUCKING. PROBLEM. You do not goddamn well get to tell your victim, the victim of your privilege, to 'stop living in fear' and to 'stand up for yourself instead of being so polite'. You do not get to tell other women that because you have been naive and sheltered enough to think that walking the streets alone at night is as safe as visiting your grandfather, they don't get to be careful of their safety and have a healthy wariness of men.

And oh my god, you do NOT FUCKING GET to tell a woman that being wary of a privileged section of the population that statistically--overwhelmingly statistically--assaults, violates and takes advantage of her is on the same level as racism.

Fuck you, a thousand times over. This is what women and girls grow up learning. This is not 'living in fear' and if women do live in fear you have no fucking right to criticize them for it. This is a sane reaction to the insanity the world likes to visit upon us in the form of rape, assault, sexism, abuse.

I linked to deeply intelligent articles about this issue a while back. I can't be coherent right now. It's beyond me.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/48204.html. Please comment there using OpenID.