SOCIAL
#notallwomen
It’s time for some accountability, bitches
It’s taken me a long time to sit down and write this.
I read a great story, well written and very descriptive of how this type of thing feels, about an experience of harassment that a woman endured publicly.
I asked about this on social media some time ago, and only three women had the courage to reply that they had experienced something similar. As a woman, in South Africa, I would have to say that EVERY woman in my country has experienced this kind of thing at least once. I would hazard a guess that they would say repeatedly. It’s par for the course that men feel entitled to enter a woman’s space psychologically, emotionally or physically without invitation or consent.
In fact, it is not only their “right” to enter a woman’s space any way they see fit at any time… it is how a normal, virile man is taught to behave.
This overstepping of boundaries even happens on first dates. I’ve arrived to meet a male person for a first date and they, almost every time, give me a brazen once over from the tip of my head to my unpainted toenails. I have even had one gorgeous and educated man comment that he could not see my body beneath the soft, flowing jersey that I am most comfortable wearing, precisely because of this kind of behaviour.
It’s kinda outrageous and undoubtedly disrespectful, but it’s accepted as entirely normal.
I’ve had many moments of harassment in my time. Some really frightening. Some physically violent. Threats. A couple of beatings. A rape. And more.
I’m not here to talk about my experience as a survivor. I know that most women would be able to post a #metoo in some form or another, sadly.
Thing is, most of them will not.
I’m here to say that the ongoing bullshit of some men is just as much due to the behaviour of women. I’m sick and tired of hearing us complain when, once again, few of us are ready to sacrifice anything to change the status quo.
Yes — you read that right. This mess is women’s fault as well, and every woman that wants this stuff to shift needs to be fully accountable for their part in it.
Let me share that I have recently spent two years in a family court system to try and get an extremely airtight and low contact parenting plan ordered, with a dangerous and brutally abusive man. I have written a bit about the experience and no longer want to go over it much. I’m trying to heal because it left me with Post Traumatic Stress that has taken over a year and a half to “fix”. (I’m not sure I will ever be quite the same again after what I saw and heard in those halls of “justice”)
Suffice to say that the WORST culprits on my case, in my family and in my social circle, who were responsible for both re-traumatising me as a “victim”, shaming me as “victim”, furthering the abuse by the system and actually colluding with and assisting the abuser… WERE WOMEN.
The story below that I read was, really, marvellously written. Emotional tugs and moral outrage the whole read through. She describes exactly how it feels to go through something like this, and the fear and being socially paralysed because of programming that, often, leaves one with an even greater amount of trauma than the actual incident.
To feel this kind of powerlessness stays with a person for a very, very long time.
But what I was left thinking at the end her story was…
There must have been women on the train as well…
Yes. It is all women as well. And that just about sums my response up. (although it is neither all men, nor all women to really be accurate)
I have more to say about how us women are programmed to accept this kind of shit. About how society ostracises us if we are not quiet and “well-behaved”. Of the pressure on us to conform to stereo-types. Of the shallowness, of some of us, that may share a gender based violence post during the week that awareness is being raised, but won’t share a post when a women explodes publicly in desperation or reach out to assist. Of how women accept the bad behaviour of their husbands because credit cards and pretty things, while their children learn the same behaviour and perpetuate it by rote and example.
I’m not a fan of Freud due to his misogyny and mama issues but perhaps, in instances like this, he is sadly fucking correct. It is the mother’s fault.
Our sons learn how to be men from our mothers as much as our fathers. A mother teaches her son how to treat women. It doesn’t matter if she tries to teach manners, respect and consent if she is being treated like shit by the daddy in front of the child. Words mean little — kids mostly learn from what we do and not what we say. Never mind the legacy of taking a whole bunch of crap, that us mothers then pass on to our daughters inadvertently.
If we don’t ALL learn how to courageously, powerfully and still kindly, lovingly and gracefully correct men when they act out on this disturbingly bad programming… things are never going to change.
It is up to us women to stop bitching about this and pretending that we have no part in the ongoing nonsense. People treat you the way that you allow them to. End of story.
Also — no. It is not all men. There are some very respectful, decent human beings on the planet that happen to have penises.
Interestingly, I saw a woman being harassed by two older youths on the Tube in London, on my way back from work one evening, and nobody did anything either.
I did. I told them to fucking stop it.
They followed me up the escalator at my station and, as I was walking to the bus, I saw them behind me and turned to face them again. The older one came at me at spat in my face. Then they ran off, laughing as I tried to catch them.
They got away. I was livid. It was worth it.
Because when I told them to stop being full of shit on that train, they did stop… and they left that woman alone.
True story.
It’s past due we owned our shit, made some sacrifices and put ourselves on the line a bit, if we want to progress.
Thanks for your reading time!
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