Interesting! (At least to me)

For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.

No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:

“You know! Boys will be boys!” 

“He’s just going through a phase!”

“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”

“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”

“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”

I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”

She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.

It was so tempting.

He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.

She had to keep her building safe.

Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.

His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.

Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.

I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”

Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning.  How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?

There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.

There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.

Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”

TeniMyu Fuji Medley

fatfemmefatale:

peechington-marie:

lilacscreams:

themanwiththebluebox:

This needs to fucking stop.  This is an absolute invasion of women, this is disgusting, and this Tumblr needs to go away.

We need to report both the Twitter and the Tumblr.

Creepshots is a website for men to take “sexy” pictures of unsuspecting women, and from their ‘About Us’ section it states: “Creepshots are CANDID pictures.  If a person is posing or aware that a picture is being taken, then it is no longer a creepshot.”  

These men take pictures of women who are unaware and post them.

 And then under their rules for getting the pictures removed?  One of the two options is to “appreciate” the fact that some fucking gross man took a picture of you.

Signal boost.

I’ve sent a report to tumblr and you should too.

To report a blog to tumblr, you need to email the full URL and name of the blog to tumblr.

Let’s get it taken down!

PLEASE SIGNAL BOOST

WE NEED TO REPORT THEM HERE’S HOW

there’s two ways-it’s more effective if you do both:

1) Block them here and then report for harassment. 2) You can also email tumblr at [email protected] and tell them to ban creepshots. Provide them with the url to the blog (creepshots.tumblr.com) and explain why they should be banned. If you’re too lazy to write out an email, you can use mine:

Hello tumblr staff, Please remove/ban the blog creepshots.tumblr.com. They post demeaning, humiliating and objectifying pictures of women (typically their asses and breasts and even under their skirts) that they take without their permission on the street and in public. These guys were banned and deleted from reddit. Can you really say that tumblr is less of a safe respectable place than reddit? What they are doing is wrong. Many, many users on tumblr feel violated and unsafe by this blog’s presence in the tumblr community. These men are violating the privacy of women everywhere. They specifically state in their about me: “Creepshots are CANDID pictures. If a person is posing or aware that a picture is being taken, then it is no longer a creepshot. A true creepshot captures the natural sexy, embarrassing or funny aspect of the subject mater/person without their knowledge.” They specifically state that only accept pictures of people whose privacy has been violated (source:http://creepshots.tumblr.com/AboutUs). Please do something to show that you care about the safety and dignity of women, particularly the women in the tumblr community. If you don’t care about that, can you at least ban/delete them in the name of protecting yourself from legal liability? because there’s a strong likelihood that some of those pictures are of underaged girls. Given that these men are taking pics of young women they don’t know, how can they know their ages for certain? All it takes is one concerned parent or adolescent seeing their picture on that site, and if you don’t take it down, legal action could be taken against you. So please, in the name of what is ethical and right and even legally responsible and smart, delete creepshots. Thank you. Sincerely, ________ (tumblr username/name)

just remember that cerberus, the hell-hound and guard dog of the underworld, comes from the root indo-european word ḱerberos, which evolved into the greek word kerberos, which got changed to cerberus when it went from greek to latin

ḱerberos means “spotted”

that’s right

Mary Dickson

[CW: discussion of rape culture and violence]

This reminds me of an article about online (heterosexual) dating that I read a while ago. It listed men’s and women’s worst fears about meeting someone from online. The highest ranked fear that men had was that their date would be fat, whereas the highest ranked fear that women had was that their date would turn out to be violent and kill them. 

I think that says a lot. 

(via kaitg)

Its interesting also that these fears sit subconsciously until woman are asked to exams their responses to men. We women will operate with this fear in mind, the way we protect ourselves, make sure our friends know where we are when we go on a date, words that we use while interacting with men, all in hopes they will not kill us, but simultaneously love us. 

I think bell hooks made a point about this in her series on love. Something along the lines of how can women hope to love and receive love from men when at the foundation of our relationships there is this strong fear of men. You can’t build true trust when your foundation is crumbling under you. 

The scariest part is, once you recognize this fear, and face it, how do you address it when there is evidence of “good” men abusing, hurting, and killing women everyday?

(via becomingchichi)

I was in my early 20’s when one of my homegirls broke this down for me.  

I was in a broken relationship, and one of the things was that bugged me at the time was that the girlfriend at the time would freak out whenever I got angry - I never yelled, never throw or hit things, mostly, I just needed some time to cool out.

“Why does she get scared when I’m angry? I’d never hit her!”

“But she doesn’t KNOW that.  She can’t assume that.  Look at how many dudes are out there pulling shit.”

And that stuck with me for a hot minute.  The relationship was broken on so many levels anyway, but that fact still remains, as a man, I can’t fault women for assuming the worst in order to protect themselves, especially how the world’s patriarchy and misogyny rolls.

(via bankuei)

I’ve had continual discussions with Tchy about this, and I don’t expect to stop. It’s fair to say that there’s no one in the world that I trust more, and he has been extremely careful with me, but… the fact remains that he leans quite a bit towards the masculine, and this means that that fear is always there. The news of transmasculine folks abusing/raping people doesn’t help that fear any. :(

I’m learning not to apologize for it. It’s not my fault (nor, really, is it his) that I’m scared of dude-type people. But it’s always there. Which is another reason why I get so pissed off when trans men try to make transmisogyny about them.

(via kiriamaya)

This is an incredible thread of responses. I’ve seen this quote before, but not the dialogue that built up around it. The part about loud=violent hits home particularly hard for me. I am terrified of getting into irl arguments with men, especially when they get loud. It’s always going to sit in the pit of my stomach.

(via mizbingley)

That part resonates for me too, although from a completely different angle. Despite being more terrified of sexual violence than I am of anything other than my own brain, I do not hesitate to yell, confront, get up in the face of, threaten, even hit men twice my size and many times my strength. Faced with a threat of violence from men, I will either imply or state “I dare you to.”

I also, as previously established on this blog, have a death wish.

To me, that encapsulates everything about the violence, especially sexual violence, coded into relationships between men and women in our society: for a woman to assert herself in the face of maleness may require the woman in question (such as me) to be perpetually suicidal.

(via 14kgoldnyc)

Reblogging for commentary. I have been frightened and scared by men being loud with me, even if I don’t think they’ll be violent. Like people have said above, it’s just a latent response in your brain to fear violence from men.

I went out to dinner with someone a couple of weeks ago (LONG story, was supposed to be a group dinner but it ended up just being me & a strange man) and I told him I blogged about feminism and politics, and he went off on me. He told me feelings were bullshit and women just wanted special privileges, and then he said, “Women don’t give men enough credit for not being violent psychopaths. That’s what we are, deep down. We want to rape and pillage, and we don’t, and women don’t give us enough credit for that.” I burst into tears. That shit was terrifying.

(via stfuconservatives)

I too am reblogging this for the amazing commentary. 

When supposed feminist ally men deny this very basic, simple truth - that’s how you know they are an ally to no one.

This all gets taught to women at a very young age, how dangerous the world is when you’re in it being a woman. I’ve been struggling to write about something that happened with my daughter a few weeks ago, how to form the words, but this is possibly the best context.

We were in the wine shop, in line to pay, and she was so excited to get her lollipop (in the time honored tradition of wine stores everywhere). A man two people ahead of us started fighting with the woman behind the counter about how much money he’d given her. As I was moving her behind my body, my daughter froze, and when I say froze, I mean wasn’t moving a muscle except to shake.

It sorted itself out pretty quickly. We paid and left.

Once we got back into the car, she started crying. I asked her what was the matter, and she said, “Mama, I was so scared. When men get angry they shoot people.”

That’s a direct quote. When men get angry, they shoot people.

I asked her, “Baby, why do you think that?” She replied, “on NPR, that’s what happens. When men get really mad they kill people. That guy was really mad, what if he had a gun? What would you do?”

The talk we had afterwards was difficult; no one said parenting was easy. But this is the life we live as women. If my 9 year old understands it, then men of the world, alleged feminist allies, Nice Guys, random douches on the street, and even actual non-dangerous men: so can you.

(via someauthorgirl)

I’ve reblogged this quote before, I think. But reblogging now for the amazing commentary.

I was having a discussion with my father and brother the other day. We were talking about receiving threats of rape or violence via the internet. Their whole argument was “just ignore it and walk away from your computer”. Amazing solution. Can’t believe I never thought of that. It’s so clever because we all know that when you leave your keyboard the threat of violence disappears. 

Urgh.