#sexualisation

It's so ironic and sad at the same time that they put her quote right over two pictures where the camera focuses on the breasts, not her face.

and all the comments were literally fighting the post saying shit like 'let it go. its a completely valid fetish', 'its okay if its like a book, fanfiction or show' and other stuff

i just gotta say WHAT THE FUCK

i've been calling this out for a while now. it literally doesn't even matter if you are queer as well, it doesn't excuse the fact ur sexualising and fetshizing people, you dont get a free pass because of that and like they don't even see the problem

another thing i was talking to my friend @a-mbr0sia / @d7ath about... the use of the words yaoi and yuri to downgrade actual people, characters just to be no more than their ship and potential sexual activities

like i personally don't use those words because of that and its fucking stupid

Can i stop being sexualised for once

(CW // Talks of adultification, sexual harassment, self harm, masturbation, body-image issues)

When I was 12 years old, I had a crush on a teacher at my new school that was a special needs school. I am neurodivergent, hence why I was taken there. My dumbass decided to tell someone about my crush even though I didn’t trust anyone and it spread towards the whole school which made me embarrassed.

A teacher sat me down one day and told me he cannot be with me due to my age (he was a grown adult in his 20s and I was 12), I understood and left the teacher after the chat. This was when I noticed that I still had a crush on him and I wasn’t sure why even though I understood nothing would come out of it. So with my research and the amount of times I called ChildLine when I wanted to vent about stuff, I learned about journaling to try and get these emotions out. So there would be a book I’d take to school and very important to note, I tend to have these emotions at school and it makes it harder for me to focus, so I would write few things in there before going back to my work. Waiting until I went home wasn’t an option for me, since it would go out of control and I’d risk telling another student who I knew I cannot trust due to their big mouths, so this is something I do daily.

Ever since I started bringing my journal book, the teachers started acting weird and threatening to kick me out over this whole situation. I remember a teacher telling me that she would have to either kick me or the teacher out but the teacher is very good at his job, so they’ll need to kick me instead. A very messed up thing to say to a growing 12 year old. I remember having an OC (original character) I made who had the same name as the teacher (which by the way he was made WAY before I came to the school) and a teacher was livid at the sight of the drawing despite me explaining that this wasn’t him. The OC had similar characteristics to the teacher such as having an afro, but he was designed to be one of my imaginary brothers since there were only girls in my family. Nonetheless, the teacher confiscated my book and told me not to bring it, even though there wasn’t anything wrong?

The breaking point was when everyone was sent outside. Me not being close to the other students, I just sat in the shade while writing in my journal. When I looked up, I saw a teacher walking towards me and she told me to go inside without any explaination. I was sent to an office when I was told that I was not allowed to be outside due to me using my book and now my parents have to pick me up so I can go home. To make the time go quicker, I threw a tantrum throwing things everywhere and crying because the whole time I was treated horribly by them and was treated like a criminal without them taking the time to understand me. Luckily, I was able to go home and I told my parents EVERYTHING.

Ever since then, I was traumatised from ever sharing my emotions, especially romantic ones. One incident in my tuition class after I left that school was me having a crush on a boy, and I was constantly telling myself not to have a crush on him or I will ruin my life and would be a horrible person. I would sometimes self harm if I had any sort of crush until any sort of romantic thoughts turned into bad flashbacks that would stop my crushes all together and it would leave me crying on my own.

I am 20 years old now and I’ve been looking back at all my moments. I am able to take accountability for some of the actions I done and realised how some of the things I done and the punishments I’ve been given were somewhat justified. However, there were some instances, especially this one, which lead to believe that there’s something else happening that makes me struggle to find what I did wrong. I remember being accused of masturbating in class (not the same school) when I was actually checking my underwear to see if I was on my period due to me unable to tell the teacher to go to the toilet. That is one hell of a stretch. I remember reading out loud during reading time (same school as the last story) and I was put into isolation due to me unable to read in my head and getting bored at every book given to me.

I read about adultification, and I am positive this has happened to me as a 12 year old black neurodivergent person. While yes this didn’t lead to serious cases where police were involved, but it can also include getting harsh punishments for small mistakes such as when I was forced into going to the disabled toilets instead of the girls toilets and not being allowed to hang out with the other girls my age (for a while, I wasn’t allowed to go out and play and I was forced in a room with a teacher), getting my innocence sexualised such as when I was accused of sexual harassment for trying to stop my confusing extreme crushes the best way I could without proper support, and also not getting enough proper support like the time where I was pulled out of class to talk about sex when I was 12 and was uncomfortable with it. Honourable mention, I was taken out of school to change due to me wearing my book day outside in school a week before and was told I wasn’t allowed to wear it. I understand it was against the rules, but the tone of the teacher’s voice wasn’t compassionate but rather harsh and degrading, almost like she was disgusted for wearing this outfit that I was really excited to wear.

These experiences lead me to have really bad self esteem, body-image issues, made me feel like I wasn’t allowed to be a kid, had lack of trust from those teachers, suffered from depression and anxiety growing up and overall I hated going to school that I felt like I had to pretend to be sick just so I didn’t need to go. As for the situation with the crush on the teacher, this impacted me so much as an adult that I struggled with my emotions and for a while I thought I turned asexual or have the inability to commit to a relationship due to my fear of accidentally sexually harassing someone without them telling me.

Every time I tell my story, people kept insisting that I indeed sexually harassed a teacher when I didn’t even do any of that. It took me finding videos of people talking about the adultification of black girls that I realised that I was just an innocent kid, the adults around me just didn’t allow me to do so. I thought maybe this is a Gen Z thing and I just had to get with the times and not follow everything I see from Gen X and Millennial media when really, I was looking at girlhood at the perspective of a privileged white neurotypical teenage girl who was able to be a teenager without fear of this happening to her. She was able to fall in love and pull out whenever possible. She was able to make mistakes and everyone calls her quirky. She was able to get in trouble, and she’ll be seen as “someone-who-made-a-silly-mistake-and-has-to-seek-her-teacher-after-school.”

The Weeknd wouldn’t get on his knees and have a woman pull his hair, Bruno wouldn’t wear lingerie in a music video. Harry incorporates moments of sexuality into his concerts but his music videos are mostly absurdist storylines he’s barely even the focus of. They also don’t act like little boys.

It’s rare or basically impossible to find a famous man who objectifies himself or frames himself as a sex thing primarily for women to use/place their fantasies onto. I know there’s lots of reasons for this, but the imbalance is what I think people are reacting to, underneath it all.

Anyway here’s some visual examples of what I’m talking about:

The Weeknd/Playboy Carti’s video for Timeless has video vixens in it, but how are the men dressed?

Fully covered head to toe, mostly shapeless clothing. They move to the beat sometimes but mostly posture and pose for the camera.

Meanwhile the women:

(Really couldn’t have a better example of the imbalance than this screenshot…)

Literally the only video I could find where the Weeknd - someone who sings about sex ALL the time - remotely “sexualises” himself is the Earned It video from a decade ago, and it’s one small scene in a video where topless women do an entire burlesque routine and Dakota Johnson is naked and tied up:

Again fully clothed, he interacts with this (faceless) woman in a sort of sexualised manner by singing his way down her body (and she’s in lingerie).

Meanwhile the women:

Similarly rapper Sexxy Red has a song with Bruno Mars called Fat, Juicy and Wet (…don’t suppose we’ll hear the follow up Hard, Long and Strong any time soon…). Here’s how each artist portrays themselves in the video:

Like The Weeknd, Bruno is fully covered head to toe in any outfit he wears and he is not twerking or doing the splits. Now the video does have a comical tone to it and there’s one scene where Bruno, Sexxy, Gaga and Rose all have suits on posturing/having fun together, so points where they’re due but overall it’s still another example of how women sexualise themselves and men just don’t. It’s ok to ask why that is. And how we’d react if men did do it.

We do have a few examples like JLo’s I Luh You Papi video: