From the very beginning when I was four and the redneck spawn down the block, a year older than me, coaxed me behind his garage and yanked my pants down, I've never felt anything but outrage and righteous fucking anger.
I have, as I've gotten older and learned to be a better human being, realized how a girl could be helpless in those situations, how they could be paralyzed or weary or resigned. But it's still a profound culture shock to me, in the way that a dinner guest suggesting that we eat the family pet would be.
I read a great analogy somewhere about the disconnect between 1. people who view sex as a product or service provided by women to men and 2. people who view sex as an enjoyable collboration such as play or music. I've learned to live in a world where my body can be and is interpreted as property or the source of a commodity, but the first, foremost, and inherently primal reaction I have is violence directed outward. What the fuck, dude, we're here to have FUN, which is MUTUAL and not this CREEPY POWER SHIT.
I don't lean away and ignore that crap, because that in itself is acquiesence to a bidding process. "If I keep talking, if I annoy her enough, if I make it the price she has to pay to get me to stop..."
That's coercion. And it makes me irrationally angry. (You may or may not remember the incident in Boston with the dude with the camera, who quite likely shit a brick because--borderline autistic or not--I was debating if I could/whether I should destroy his camera and I think he actually grokked that.) Because I missed the part of female socialization where I have to be nice and make everyone feel good despite myself--most of that baggage was heaved overboard three generations back, and the last carry-on was pitched by my grandmother when she booted my grandfather's sorry drunk ass out the door. We really don't care if we're seen as bitches. Better a bitch than a doormat or a slave. We try to be good people, but we won't eat shit to prove it.
This is new ground for women, for how we raise them and what we expect of them. Even with a practical feminism rooted in 1917 in my female line, it's a tough line to walk, and sometimes a dangerous thing to act in accordance with thinking you're a full human being when society makes different assumptions. To be angry and lash out when the script is to be meek and self-effacing. To figure out *how* to be aggressive and effective, when girls aren't put through the same playground schools and bootcamps as boys, aren't really allowed to *be* angry, much less *how* to be angry *well*.
This is the way I'm wired, so I've had to figure it out ad-hoc, and while I cultivate this reaction because I believe personal physical sovereignty is fundamental to all human rights (and as a small woman I have a lot of misapprehensions to counter right off the bat), it's only luck and surprise that have kept me from being seriously hurt in situations that, in retrospect, a more sagacious female would have avoided.
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Date: 2008-04-24 02:57 am (UTC)I have, as I've gotten older and learned to be a better human being, realized how a girl could be helpless in those situations, how they could be paralyzed or weary or resigned. But it's still a profound culture shock to me, in the way that a dinner guest suggesting that we eat the family pet would be.
I read a great analogy somewhere about the disconnect between 1. people who view sex as a product or service provided by women to men and 2. people who view sex as an enjoyable collboration such as play or music. I've learned to live in a world where my body can be and is interpreted as property or the source of a commodity, but the first, foremost, and inherently primal reaction I have is violence directed outward. What the fuck, dude, we're here to have FUN, which is MUTUAL and not this CREEPY POWER SHIT.
I don't lean away and ignore that crap, because that in itself is acquiesence to a bidding process. "If I keep talking, if I annoy her enough, if I make it the price she has to pay to get me to stop..."
That's coercion. And it makes me irrationally angry. (You may or may not remember the incident in Boston with the dude with the camera, who quite likely shit a brick because--borderline autistic or not--I was debating if I could/whether I should destroy his camera and I think he actually grokked that.) Because I missed the part of female socialization where I have to be nice and make everyone feel good despite myself--most of that baggage was heaved overboard three generations back, and the last carry-on was pitched by my grandmother when she booted my grandfather's sorry drunk ass out the door. We really don't care if we're seen as bitches. Better a bitch than a doormat or a slave. We try to be good people, but we won't eat shit to prove it.
This is new ground for women, for how we raise them and what we expect of them. Even with a practical feminism rooted in 1917 in my female line, it's a tough line to walk, and sometimes a dangerous thing to act in accordance with thinking you're a full human being when society makes different assumptions. To be angry and lash out when the script is to be meek and self-effacing. To figure out *how* to be aggressive and effective, when girls aren't put through the same playground schools and bootcamps as boys, aren't really allowed to *be* angry, much less *how* to be angry *well*.
This is the way I'm wired, so I've had to figure it out ad-hoc, and while I cultivate this reaction because I believe personal physical sovereignty is fundamental to all human rights (and as a small woman I have a lot of misapprehensions to counter right off the bat), it's only luck and surprise that have kept me from being seriously hurt in situations that, in retrospect, a more sagacious female would have avoided.