Thursday, April 21, 2011

I Will Victimize You With This Post


[trigger warning: modesty, rape. please enjoy this immodest, nonrapey otter instead.]

I just victimized you. Just now. Look at the picture of my boobs again- and I victimized you twice in 10 seconds.

Of course, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you've seen them before, and you don't consider seeing my boobs to be an aggressive move on my part. Your reaction was probably "meh", "nice!" or "Oh, c'mon, again?"

If you were raised in the fundamentalism subculture, however, as millions of Americans were and are, you would see my choice of clothing, the way I move, my body itself as assaultive towards you. Assuming you are a man, of course. (Since women have no sex drive and only have sex in exchange for shelter and food, men can't assault us with their sexiness.*) Men are not responsible for their own actions, and lust is a sin, which creates a situation where, if a man finds a woman vaguely attractive, it's because she is a WHORE and she is flaunting her WHOREisness in front of the innocent mens.

This creates some frightening beliefs and attitudes, btw. Some of these men are angry, which makes sense, really. If you believe that lust is evil and that women are responsible for your thoughts and feelings and actions, you would be constantly angry. You would be angry at every woman in a tank top, every woman in a short skirt, every woman whose breasts bounce** as she moves, every woman whose hips sway as she walks**- in other words, every woman.

And you would be angry at the fact that you can't control it at all. You can't control how women dress or move. You can't control where they walk in those low cut shirts and short skirts.

Here are some comments that reflect that anger from the modesty survey at Rebelution:

Saddened; disappointed; sometimes angered. They're distracting good men, dishonoring God and marriage, and offering themselves cheaply---which makes me desire even more strongly a girl who is modest, who is valuable. I would be disingenuous if I didn't concede that these kinds of girls are a temptation. But I always remind myself that if a girl flaunts herself before I marry her, she'll do the same thing afterward. As a husband, that would make me pretty mad.What would make me happy is dedicating all my energy to loving a young woman who reserves herself for me.

It's not their body to flaunt. It belongs to Christ and their future husband. How dare they flaunt something that God did not permit them to flaunt? How dare they write a check the Bible doesn't allow them to cash? When a girl purposely flaunts her body, she is almost immediately ruled out for anything beyond acquantenance in my eyes.

Yes, you can turn me on, but don't expect me to respect you. Yes, I might find you attractive on the outside, but that won't make me think of you as attractive on the inside. Sure you might get my attention, but it will be negative attention.Men are easily stimulated visually. It doesn't take rocket science to figure that out. But this leads to lust - not love.Love is a commitment. In order to get a commitment from a guy, he needs to perceive you as respectable and of immeasurable worth. Flaunting your body communicates that you don't have a lot of self-worth. God made women and by flaunting their bodies, they are insulting the creator and cheapening his invaluable creation.



It's not my body to flaunt. It's God's body, it's my (future) husband's body, but it's not mine. I just live in it.

So, how many steps do you suppose are between that and rape? One, maybe two? I mean, it's not my body and I'm hurting every man who can see me, so . . . let's teach me a lesson, huh? I mean, I am flaunting and dishonoring my (future) husband and GOD and cheapening myself so I must want to fuck every guy in the world and men aren't responsible for their actions and . . . rape.

Funny thing, Rebelution, sexual assault is higher in countries that do control what women wear and where they go, like Saudi Arabia***. You won't see anything of a woman but her eyes, no bouncing, no swaying, nothing but black fabric broken only by a tiny mesh window. And sexual assault is far more prevalent than in the US.

Why is that? Because the entirety of Saudi Arabia has bought the lie that women are responsible for how men feel and act and that men carry no responsibility for their feelings and actions, which sexual assault is always whose fault? I'll give you a hint: not the one doing the assaulting.

Look, I'm not feeling bad for rapists, and I'd like pictures of the men who gave those comments so I know whom to avoid, but I feel bad for them, too. According to their upbringing, they are constantly being victimized. They are the victim of virtually every woman they see. That must really suck.

Psst . . . guys! Yeah, you. Feminism can help you. No, really. Once you understand that feelings are okay and you are responsible for your own actions and that women's bodies belong to the women and nobody else, you will stop being a victim. You'll feel so much better, I promise.

Well, I doubt any of those guys saw that, but let's keep saying it. Eventually someone stuck as an eternal victim will hear it, statistically speaking or something. At the very least, our children will hear it and that's a start.


*HAHAHAHAHAHA!

**These things are unavoidable. The construction of breasts, the way they are attached to the chest, their composition, makes bouncing and bobbling unavoidable. As to hips, I honestly don't know how not to sway a bit when I walk. I mean, my hips are 11" bigger than my waist, I think swaying is also unavoidable given that build.

***Official statistics put Saudi Arabia at the lowest per capita, with a rate of .003 per 1,000. This is because fornication is punishable by death, and rape counts as fornication. Private, anonymous surveys show that as many as 80% of women were sexually assaulted in some way at some point in their lives.

9 comments:

  1. Wow. What a perfect example of taking something that isn't about oneself (a woman, living here own life, in her own body, imagine that) and making all about mememememememememeeeeeee ("me" in this case being this commenter). Dude. She is a human being. She is your equal. You are hers. Her life isn't about you. Your life isn't about hers. Likewise your bodies have nothing to do with each other unless you two make a mutual decision to get involved.

    Like, I'm so seriously, you guys. That's the only way it should be. EASY STUFF: WHY DO PEOPLE MAKE IT TEH HARD?!

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  2. /makes hairball noises

    You know, I sometimes think the fundamental anger at the heart of patriarchy is that no matter what, no matter how much abuse is meted out, in the end you CAN'T own someone else's body or mind. Not really. Not the way they want.

    But they've been told they could, they should, they must! I'm sure it's all very frustrating. Smallest violin etc. etc.

    Otherwise. I knew many a young man like this in the JW days of my family and they are so...ragefully creepy.

    Of course, the idea that women should be in charge of helping men deal with their emotional baggage is also pervasive and fucking exhausting. Meh.

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  3. This line of thinking is also present in a lot of MRA blogs and commentary, to the point that some men say tight tops and cleavage are equivalent to a man flashing his penis. I can kiiind of get it when men complain about low cut tops, but really, our boobs are kind of hard to hide while also dressing in a comfortable, easy to move around in manner. They're just... there, and they get in the way, and the bigger they are, the less "modest" they look in anything, so really these dudes need to get over it.

    Also, super duper yikes to the lack of bodily autonomy present in those quotes. It legit worries me when I hear about people who think a woman's body is not, or should not be, her own.

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  4. If there is consent it is not assault. I looked three times. At any rate I was raised in a non Christian household and that whole women are tempting men and women who dress that way are sluts mentality took hold with me, and it isn't going to take hold with my daughter or my son.

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  5. "Since women have no sex drive and only have sex in exchange for shelter and food, men can't assault us with their sexiness.*
    [...]
    *HAHAHAHAHAHA!
    "

    Let me just say, I really, really love it when you address fundie-female sexuality, specifically the idea that women don't have sexual feelings. Really. Someone needs to.

    I'm an ex-fundie-kid (relatively recent - late 2008) and in the grocery store today, as I walked by the magazine stand, I happened to glance at a hot shirtless guy on the cover of one of the magazines. I did an appropriate double-take without really even thinking about it, but was then immediately struck with the thought that what I had just done was not only in some way bad, but also unnatural and unusually perverted.

    Why? Because I'm a girl, and normal girls just don't think of the male body that way. Oh sure, every once in a while you find a really messed up slutty girl, with extreme daddy issues who thinks about guys that way, but in general girls just aren't into that.

    Anyway, there I was in the grocery store, atheistically ogling this totally gorgeous half-naked dude on the magazine cover and at the same time feeling like I was doing something bizarre and wrong.

    Fundamentalism really is fucked up.

    So, yeah, I love it when you blog about (or even just reference, like in this post) that mindset. Please keep it up; it helps me see that I'm not a creep or a freak or a pervert for actually finding the male body attractive.

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  6. Kelley;

    the other night, Pete and i were watching... something? i don't even remember. anyway, HOT! guy in the movie took off his shirt, and i went "mmmmm" - then i said "oh, sorry!"
    he shrugged and laughed. and i was only embarrased because i did that while cuddling with my PARTNER. i'd never be embarrassed at thinking a guy is hot, never have. i've been "boycrazy" most of my life. [which, ironically, was NOT the reason people always called me "slut" or "whore" - those came simply from the fact that i have over-large breasts]


    guys can be REALLY nummy looking ["nummy" is what you say when you think a PERSON looks delicious - you can actually say a PERSON looks delicious, that's reducing them to "meat", same with "yummy" and similar, so i made my own word which means "man, i'd love to lick that man" :D ]

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  7. *can't. you CAN'T say it. oh, why do my fingers fail me so?

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  8. "It's not their body to flaunt. It belongs to Christ and their future husband."

    I actually had to minimize the screen and step away from my computer after reading that. Thanks for the otter, it helped.

    ReplyDelete
  9. i want to give thanks to the great doctor Lawrence who help me in getting back my ex-boyfriend i saw a testimony post by miss Kate from Spain about how the great doctor Lawrence had helped her, i decide to email him and to my greatest surprise my ex-boyfriend came back to me after three days of contacting him.i simply want to say thanks for what he had done for me and am so happy may he live long. if you have any problem just email him :drlawrencespelltemple@hotmail.com and you will not regret contacting him...

    ReplyDelete

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