sometimes i wanna disappear

New comic!

TUMBLRITES: This comic is huge and likely doesn’t render well on tumblr. Check out a more complete version on my site here. 

Please note: This comic contains discussion of sexual assault, rape, and rape culture

This guy, this fucking guy, still sticks in my brain. It’s been years since I’ve been online dating. It was an interaction of messages that culminated in this exchange over about 2 weeks.

He’s so forgettable in every other way, but I am just still so aggravated by this weird smug privileged obliviousness around constant social demands on women and femmefolk to be both constantly available to men and at the same time perfectly take all necessary steps to prevent their own rapes. 

It is STUPID and AWFUL that we are expected to constantly be smart, aware, strong, reactive, proactive, and sober enough to prevent our own assaults. It is STUPID and AWFUL that if we do anything, ANYTHING, like have a glass of wine, or walk home, or smile at someone, or not smile at someone, that we are somehow in that way shouldering responsibility for someone deliberately, maliciously harming us. 

And it is ridiculous to ask someone to shrug all of that social pressure and blaming and responsibility off because it’s vaguely insulting to you that someone has to think about the possibility that you’re not a great person. 

Me: Ahem, sweetie (:

To my fellow white women: Beyoncé’s LEMONADE is not for us. We can enjoy it. We can blast it loud in the shower. We can appreciate it aestheticly and visually and musically. But it is not for us to appropriate for our own gain. I don’t want to see white women writing op-eds about it. I don’t want to hear your acoustic covers of the tracks. I’m not interested in your critiques, as a white woman, of it. I don’t want you CAPITALIZING on a piece of art that is fundamentally not. for. us. LEMONADE is a beautiful tribute to black womanhood, femininity, the black struggle, and black power. It is NOT for all women, and most importantly, it is NOT for white women to co-opt and colonize and attempt to profit from.

I don’t care if your feelings are hurt because it “doesn’t include enough” white folx. I don’t care. I don’t want to hear about it.