Every Week, Something New And Awful (updated)

[recursiveparadox]

Update: A friend of mine mentioned sexual violence and dehumanization targeting queer men and trans men by straight cis women, so I'll wait till she comments in greater detail before I make any major edits.

Something new and shitty happens every week to further drive home the point that male privilege, sexism and the rape culture is alive and well and that we have a lot of work ahead of us to fight those things.

Relatively recently someone called my phone, most likely a straight cis guy, and asked me if I could masturbate for him. I hung up and he called several more times (presumably, I didn't actually pick up the phone). The fact that some pissant asshole thinks he has a right to call a random girl and sexually harass her over her phone, without any indication that she wanted to be sexual with him, is pretty fucking disgusting.

And this attitude is part of what fuels the rape culture. This idea that women can be subjected to unwanted sexual attention and that it isn't an issue stems from the overriding ideology that we don't own our own bodies, that instead, our bodies are up for grabs from whomever is willing to make the grab. Someone tried to make the grab using the phone and when I hung up, they didn't honor that very obvious and very explicit rejection, further cementing the impression that they don't view me as the owner of my own body. It's scary, it's creepy and it left me feeling really fucking unsafe. It's a huge disregard for bodily domain, something only really taken seriously when it's violated on people who have power and privilege in society. The more -isms descend on your head, the less likely a violation of your bodily domain, your space and you, will be cared about. Women are still pretty damn far down that pyramid.

These attitudes are why women are raped so damn much, by men. Obviously, men are raped by men and women two and there are thousands of combinations of perpetrator and victim when you look at the nonbinaries, but none of the numbers really come close to the sheer ridiculous amounts of rapes that cisgendered straight men perpetrate against woman of all types and stripes (including trans women, IS women, lesbian women, black women, white women etc). There are racial, transphobic and homophobic elements that come into play too that can get minorities targeted more heavily, but I can't go into that as well as this (beyond the trans and maybe lesbian side of it) because my privilege makes it hard to speak on racial elements in this when I'm speaking from my own experiences. So if any people of color are reading right now, please do add some perspective on how race factors into the rape culture. If you're willing, I can even add in some edits with mentions of what you say.

So, these ridiculous numbers? They're a fucking problem. And this is from someone who, before transition, did not see this attitude of dehumanization women face as so widespread. So I am giving you the solid mention of someone who has experienced this shift, if the numbers aren't enough to make it clear.

Something is very wrong in Western Society. So yes, we still need feminism and womanism.

Comments

This is pretty much on target

[voz_latina]

It was the title that threw me off.

Anyways, the DV stats for cis lesbians are one factor that does not agree with the power differential perpetuating systemic violence, but that aside, you make excellent points here.

The cis women on GV perceived as men and cis on trans violence history was what I was referring to, and that history was my own.

One of the problems of cis women on trans women violence is how the perceived power differential shifts when outed. If a cis woman hassles a trans woman and then outs her to the authorities, the cis woman can often get the trans woman ugendered with some impressively bad results.

So, its that ungendering and perceived as male that I was referring to. It got one trans woman survivor of Katrina shot on sight in a woman's shower in a shelter, and makes DV services for trans women completely unavailable.

Feminism and womanism are worse than worthless in these situations, since they do not honor the notion of the power dynamic that is really at work in any of these situations, and very often, will reverse it, and favor the privileged, offending entity.

Feminism in its current cissupremacist incarnation are only useable when het cis women are involved, and no other oppressions. The same can be said of womanism, with the caveat that it incorporates race.

Beyond that, I agree with you that something is very wrong in Western society, but I disagree that invoking a tool of cissupremacy is the way to deal with it. Feminism is not your friend, unless you are relatively privileged by the kyriarchy already.

I honestly do not expect this to change in my lifetime.

it's ty_ping, you're internets confuse me

[(Anonymous)]

Yanno... Most of the time I don't know what you're talking about on this blog, possibly because I'm the most un-PC person in the world. I still call Chicks, chicks and Dudes, dudes. And Chicks, Dudes most of the time unless she's a Broad.
:D

In any case, this made me think of a show that I was watching that one of the women on it pissed me off.
She was on this femminist show for getting women to bond and get over their abusive partners. Her partner was apparently abusive because He broke up with Her after calling the cops on her for hitting him.

But she's the victim and was coo'ed over on this show for being a broken woman that needed her sisters to lift her back up.

e-scuze me for a moment while I go bash my head into a wall.

By the by, have you see the newest "Best dance crew" with the group with the Broad in it? I like her, she's classy ^_^

I hope they win.