The problem with growing up in a society like ours is that no matter how hard we try, how much we grow, how liberal we try to be, there will always be those little voices in our heads saying horrible things about ourselves and others. In a land where rich white men profit off of hatred and negativity, somewhere alone the way it plants this deep inside our heads too. A little Donald Trump, or Nigel Farage, or Tony Abbott live in all our heads, saying horrible untruths, and by God, they’re near impossible to pick back out.
Hi. I’m Jess, I’m 23 years old, I like in London and I’m an English Literature graduate. And I’m an ism-aholic. But I’m working on it.
I don’t know when I first started to notice the judgements my brain passed out - maybe at Uni, when I had the good luck to find and befriend some very diverse and wonderfully liberal people, or when I joined Tumblr, or maybe even before that. But at some point along the way I realised that no matter how liberal and accepting I thought I was, I still judge people in an instant, allow my perceptions to tar my interactions with people, and allow outdated and damaging societal structures and values to affect my daily life.
Of course, just realising wasn’t enough. Noticing the racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ableist… hell, everything-ist thoughts in my head didn’t stop them appearing, not by any means. It’ll be a lifelong struggle. But I challenge them each and every time they come up, and try to challenge others too. Because I’m part of the problem, and I’m going to try to be one of the people to tackle it. One day at a time!
That’s why campaigns like Brook’s ‘Sex:Positive’ are so amazing. They’re enlisting young people to help tackle a problem deeply ingrained and dear to their hearts, and mine. By talking about the judgemental and negative attitudes around sex and sexuality, and spreading examples of sex positivity, they are digging at the roots of the tiny Donald Trumps living in our brains. That’s fantastic, and I’m so happy I get to be a part of it.
At 11 o’clock at night, you moved across the train car to sit far too close to two girls about half your age so you could interrupt our conversation to tell us how pretty we are. We said thank you, have a good night, and went back to our conversation.
You interrupted us a second time to say that you didn’t want to bother us, but we needed to hear it, how pretty we are. We said cool, thanks, have a good night, and went back to our conversation.
You interrupted us a third time to say you wouldn’t say anything else, you didn’t want to bother us, you just had to let us know. We said have a good night, and went back to our conversation.
This seemed to perplex you. You came all that way across a train car to bestow upon us this life altering knowledge - the fact we were pretty - and all you got was a polite thank you? You grumbled about gratitude, about how you better not end up on facebook, were we putting you on facebook? Why was my friend looking at her phone? Was she putting you on facebook? All you’d done was tell us we were pretty.
At this point, my friend says, “Sir, we’re trying to have a conversation. Please don’t be disrespectful.”
This was when you got angry. Disrespectful? YOU? For taking the time out of your day to tell us we were pretty? Did we know we were pretty?
“Yes, we knew,” says my friend.
Well, that was the last straw. How dare we know we were pretty! Sure, you were allowed to tell us we were pretty, but we weren’t allowed to think it independently, without your permission! And if we had somehow already known - perhaps some other strange man had informed us earlier in the day - we certainly weren’t allowed to SAY it! Where did we get off, having confidence in ourselves? You wanted us to know we were pretty, sure, but only as a reward for good behavior. We were pretty when you gifted it upon us with your words, and not a moment before! You raged for a minute about how horrible we were for saying we thought we were pretty, how awful we turned out to be.
I took a page out of your book and interrupted you. “Sir, you said you wouldn’t say anything else, and then you kept talking,” I said. “You complimented us, we said thank you, and we don’t owe you anything else. It’s late, you’re a stranger, and I don’t want to talk to you. We’ve tried to disengage multiple times but you keep bothering us.”
At this point, our train pulled into the next stop. My friend suggested we leave, so we got up and went to the door.
Seeing your last chance, you lashed out with the killing blow. “I was wrong!” you shouted at us as we left, “You’re ugly! You’re both REALLY UGLY!”
Fortunately, since our worth as human beings is in no way dependent upon how physically attractive you find us, my friend and I were unharmed and continued on with our night. She walked home; I switched to the next train car and sat down.
So, strange man, I know you’re confused. I don’t know if you’ll think about anything I said to you, but I hope you do learn this: when you give someone something - a gift, a compliment, whatever - with stringent stipulations about how they respond to it, you are not giving anything. You are setting a trap. It is not as nice as you think it is.
But you’ll be happy to know that when I sat down in the next car, a strange man several seats over called, “Hey, pretty girl. Nice guitar. How was your concert?”
“Thanks. Good,” I said, then looked away and put on my headphones, the universal sign for ‘I’d like to be left alone.’
“Wow. Fine. Whatever. Fucking bitch,” he said.
Fucking creepers. May I ask how feminism or anything similar would actually have prevented this from happening? This ya already socially unacceptable.
Men - because to be clear, I called them ‘strange men’ because they were strangers to me, not because there was anything abnormal about them - act this way because they are raised in a culture that lets them believe their time and opinions are more important than the time and opinions of women, and that as a consequence, they are owed women’s attention. They are socialized to believe women should be grateful to them for their attention, and that they are being denied something rightfully theirs when women are not.
Raising someone with feminism, the idea that all sexes/genders are equals and thus no party is beholden to or more important than another, would have prevented this by not allowing men to grow up expecting ‘rights’ that are not actually theirs. You say this is socially unacceptable, but there were 20+ people on that train who actively watched us being harassed and did not say a word. It is socially unacceptable, but this kind of thing happens to me and many other women multiple times a week, with often more traumatic results.
So, yes, I believe more feminism would prevent sexist moments like this. Also, water is wet, the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, and cheese is addictive.
REBLOGGING FOR THE FUCKING COMMENTARY
Glad these girls stood up for themselves, but I don’t think feminism would fix this. There will always be assholes in the world, you can’t fix assholes.
Except you absolutely can.
People act out or misbehave when they think they can get away with it. It’s why people say things anonymously online that they would never dare say to someone’s face. It’s why crime is more common at night or dimly lit places. It’s why people feel emboldened to act when they have a crowd supporting them, or are in a group of their friends. It’s why men tend to harass women who are either alone or with other women, but not women who are with other men.
You can never 100% curb a behavior, it’s true; there are too many humans and we all vary in too many ways for one thing to be effective on everybody. But kids who grow up watching TV/reading books/playing games that tell them it’s acceptable to treat women (or really anyone who isn’t an able-bodied, cisgendered straight white male) badly, as lessors, as people who have equal rights in only a winkwinknudgenudge manner are going to grow up emulating the things they’ve learned through the media they’ve absorbed. Kids who see their parents, or other adults, or other kids their age treating people poorly and not being corrected or admonished grow up thinking that they too can act that way without getting in trouble.
Kids who grow up seeing people of all types being treated equally, seeing people who are openly intolerant being shut down by those around them rather than quietly allowed to continue, grow up emulating better behavior. Social acceptance is a powerful motivator. Think about how terrified you were as a teen of saying or doing the wrong thing and having people ridicule you or think you were lame. Imagine being that terrified of someone thinking you were a misogynist.
The Supreme Court has had eight months to exercise their right to advise and consent in regards to President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court seat. They have failed to exercise this right in an effort to obstruct his choice, and they have waived their right by causing an excessive delay. Here is a petition to have Obama make his Supreme Court pick before leaving office:
This is not by any means an exhaustive list of actions you can take, but it is a start. Please don’t ever feel you are helpless or that you can’t do anything. You matter. Your votes matter. Your actions matter. And no matter how difficult things feel right now, you are not alone.
The Supreme Court has had eight months to exercise their right to advise and consent in regards to President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court seat. They have failed to exercise this right in an effort to obstruct his choice, and they have waived their right by causing an excessive delay. Here is a petition to have Obama make his Supreme Court pick before leaving office:
This is not by any means an exhaustive list of actions you can take, but it is a start. Please don’t ever feel you are helpless or that you can’t do anything. You matter. Your votes matter. Your actions matter. And no matter how difficult things feel right now, you are not alone.
