queercakes:

queenmogwai:

queercakes:

just-smith:

Let’s teach men not to rape.

We should teach men that no means no.

Excuse me?

I can’t speak for all men, but I have morals. From experience, I would also hazard a guess that most men do. Unless you’re suggesting that men are naturally evil, then maybe my shot in the dark there might be on to something. I know that men aren’t as sensitive as women, that they don’t have feelings and can’t be hurt or upset, but on a purely logical basis we’re going to have to assume that they have basic morals.

Yes, a little boy baby know just as much that rape is wrong as a little girl baby does. This is not an inherent imbalance. Men don’t require extra lessons to bring them up to speed with the morality that comes naturally to women. Thanks, but no thanks.

As for language… yes, I speak basic English. Most men raised in English-speaking communities do. I do realise what ‘no’ means, and I could certainly tell you that it is, like every word, synonymous to itself. I’m not fully bilingual at all, but I could tell you that ‘non’ means ‘non’, and that ‘nein’ means ‘nein’. In fact, without even having to translate it, I could confirm that ‘不是’ means ‘不是’. I guess I’m just clever like that.

Most men are. Just as they can tell you that 1=1, they can tell you that no=no. They do understand equality - and yes, feminists who generalise and exclude men like this in the first place, that does include gender equality. I know you have a much more able female brain, so you shouldn’t have any trouble taking all of this in. But I’ll understand if you want to break it up into sections first to cope with the shock.

Men do not need special lessons. We don’t need teaching these things, any more than women do. To say otherwise is to offensively class men as automatically less moral and less intelligent. Understood?

‘Ah’, I hear you say, ‘but if men really can think as well as women, how come they are always getting confused about these things? Why, if their minds really can handle it, do men make these simple mistakes so much more often then women do? Surely this is more evidence that they think only with their genitals’.

Do you want to know the difference? Women don’t have people telling them every day that ‘no’ means ‘yes’. If I had unlimited resources, I could arrange that. I could have women taught that ‘2+2=5’ from childhood to old age. I could have the message subliminally implanted in all female-orientated advertising, and referenced in all popular media. 

Men could then express puzzlement at how poorly women performed at simple mathematics. They could suggest that we could set up special campaigns to ‘teach’ women something they obviously had trouble grasping. 

But that would be a generalisation, it would be patronising, and it would ignore the real problem. The problem wouldn’t be that women haven’t been taught the correct answer enough, it would be that they have been taught (through my scheming) the wrong one too much. The real solution would therefore be to remove this bad influence, and allow their natural common sense to shine through. 

So yes, men have common sense. Yes, left to their own devices, men could probably figure out that ‘no’ means ‘no’. The problem is just that they aren’t left to their own devices. I consider myself fairly literate, and I can certainly understand that ‘no’ is a negative response, and an antonym for ‘yes’. But even I have personally had more than one girl say ‘no’ when she has meant ‘yes’. I know that this happens to a lot of the men around me. I also see it happen in books, film, television… you name it. 

I also see men pressured into being dominant and persistent, as good things. I see women praising these qualities.

So if anyone is to blame for the confusion, it is not men who don’t understand basic English, it’s women who don’t speak it. Can you not see how that might be a little confusing? But all it takes is for one man to get it wrong, and it is men who are once again typecast as the clumsy fools. Either we’re too stupid to understand subtlety (if we look for a plain answer), or we’re too stupid to understand a plain answer (if we look for subtlety).

 To conclude: please, stop ’teaching’ us. We’d much rather you left us alone. 

Oh you’d much rather be left alone? That’s cute because I’d much rather not be raped. I advocate for teaching everyone, regardless of gender, about what consent means. There seems to be an issue with that. “Well they didn’t explicitly say no so it can’t be rape!” Yes. Yes it can, actually. Maybe they couldn’t speak because they were worried what would happen if they did. Maybe they were too drunk to understand what was going on. Maybe they were passed out. Maybe they have a social disorder that causes them to completely freeze up in that kind of situation. Maybe they said no in other ways (body language, other phrases: “I should really be going…”, “It’s getting late…,” “Can you call me a cab…,”). A LACK OF THE WORD NO DOES NOT = CONSENT. But people still fail to realize that. 

ALSO! Fun fact, there was a study done. If you ask men (the study only interviewed men) if rape was wrong, nearly all of them said yes it was. If you change the wording to pressuring someone to have sex with you or forcing yourself on someone, a significant portion of men said it wasn’t wrong when those situations WOULD STILL BE RAPE. And then they asked if the men had ever raped someone. Most said no. Finally they asked if they had ever coerced someone to have sex with them, most said yes. 

Coerced consent is not consent.

So actually. You’re wrong. Boys are socialized to think women are their property. Something to control. They are also socialized to think it can’t be rape if we were friends. It can’t be rape if we were dating. It can’t be rape if we were married. It can’t be rape if they didn’t outright say no. BUT THAT’S WRONG.

Educating people about what consent truly is is essential.

This guy. Is such. An asshat.

“Boys are socialized to think women are their property.”

And girls dress like they want to be raped.

Oh, sorry, I was just making a generalization. That guy is not an asshat. He has valid points. Just because you don’t agree with them, doesn’t make him an asshat.

Jesus fuck.

Boys ARE socialized to think women are their property because we live in a patriarchal society. Little boys are continually taught that they are allowed to treat women as poorly as they want because they are better than women. Think about kids on the playground. What do we tell a little girl if she gets pushed off the swing by a boy? Or has her hair pulled? Or is told she’s ugly? We tell her it’s okay because he probably just has a crush on her. In that simple example, society has both taught boys they can mistreat women AND we have taught little girls to accept mistreatment by boys and to assume it’s a form of affection. So little boys are told early on that they can disrespect women. Fast forward to college aged men who were polled in the study I referenced earlier. These men think it’s acceptable to coerce women to sleep with them. To talk them into it even if they’ve been told no. Why? Probably because from an early age we’ve been telling them how they can do whatever they want to women whenever they want to do it. 

Oh and about girls’ clothing. Girls don’t really have infinite options as far as clothing goes. Girls are socialized to believe their entire worth is dependent on their looks. They are taught by the media what size clothing is acceptable and what size is not acceptable. They are taught what to wear. They are taught to show off their bodies because this is all they are good for anyways. But in the real world, if a woman does show off her body (as she has been taught to do), she’s labeled a bunch of negative words. On the flip side, if she covers her body, she’s labeled prude. Which is almost as bad a being a slut to most people. Luckily, we’ve got a bunch of fantastic people out there nowadays reclaiming words like slut. But they are still branded as negative by the majority of people. Basically, women are taught to dress this way and then blamed for their rape BECAUSE THEY WERE WEARING WHAT THEY WERE TOLD THEY SHOULD WEAR TO FIT IN AND BE DEEMED ATTRACTIVE. 

Does that not sound fucked up to anyone else?

Oh and that guy is actually an asshat if you’ve ever read his blog. He sincerely is. 

all of the above.

love, a consenting, submissive, feminist