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Last night, Ami posted a link to an excellently fantastic article, which refutes basically all the annoyance she has been subjected to lately. And while I was reading that, I discovered there is a Feminism 101 Blog, which I need because I don't know feminism.
Anyway, I hopped over to see how it was (and, incidentally, discovered why I was getting no entries in my reader from Shakespeare's Sister - they've moved). I'm not going to repost all the links (find them in the post linked at the start of this paragraph), but in the first two Melissa McEwan explains that no, despite what some radio personalities and apparently a whole lotta other men might think, rape is not funny. For her trouble a small crowd of trolls shows up in the otherwise excellent comments and start hurling abuse at her (and into her inbox, reportedly). In the third she talks about the minimisation of rape in the public eye (with awful examples). This one was not interrupted and remained amazing throughout the comments, especially the last one by Interrobang which hit me with the force of wow.
I will link to the last post tigtog linked to, this time by Kate Harding|shapely prose, who uses the response to McEwan's posts to demonstrate and help explain the difference between the cyberbullying experienced by men and by women. That post is the reason I wrote this one, so if you follow any of my links follow that one, but be warned that following any of them can be painful for people who have compassion.
There is one other thing that came to mind while writing this. That is, nearly always when the topic is rape, the people who speak up and speak out refer to their own experiences to reinforce their statements. I don't like this. I'm not saying, at all, that survivors of rape should not be speaking up. I'm saying they should not be speaking up alone. Maybe it is just selective memory making things seem that way, but even people who have not experienced it themselves need to make it heard that rape is awful and wrong and not ever an okay thing for a person to do and... maybe this is why people don't say things more often. I am suddenly worried I will say something wrong and ruin whatever good I might have done so far because I just don't know, I can't imagine.
And... there's this idea that anyone reading my posts, anyone who I would count as a friend must surely, already realise this. So it is not really necessary to say it, is it? But there are people out there who don't get it. I don't know who they are or where to find them so it seems to me the only thing to do is spread the message far and wide and hope it sinks in.
There. That should be an end to it for now.
Anyway, I hopped over to see how it was (and, incidentally, discovered why I was getting no entries in my reader from Shakespeare's Sister - they've moved). I'm not going to repost all the links (find them in the post linked at the start of this paragraph), but in the first two Melissa McEwan explains that no, despite what some radio personalities and apparently a whole lotta other men might think, rape is not funny. For her trouble a small crowd of trolls shows up in the otherwise excellent comments and start hurling abuse at her (and into her inbox, reportedly). In the third she talks about the minimisation of rape in the public eye (with awful examples). This one was not interrupted and remained amazing throughout the comments, especially the last one by Interrobang which hit me with the force of wow.
I will link to the last post tigtog linked to, this time by Kate Harding|shapely prose, who uses the response to McEwan's posts to demonstrate and help explain the difference between the cyberbullying experienced by men and by women. That post is the reason I wrote this one, so if you follow any of my links follow that one, but be warned that following any of them can be painful for people who have compassion.
There is one other thing that came to mind while writing this. That is, nearly always when the topic is rape, the people who speak up and speak out refer to their own experiences to reinforce their statements. I don't like this. I'm not saying, at all, that survivors of rape should not be speaking up. I'm saying they should not be speaking up alone. Maybe it is just selective memory making things seem that way, but even people who have not experienced it themselves need to make it heard that rape is awful and wrong and not ever an okay thing for a person to do and... maybe this is why people don't say things more often. I am suddenly worried I will say something wrong and ruin whatever good I might have done so far because I just don't know, I can't imagine.
And... there's this idea that anyone reading my posts, anyone who I would count as a friend must surely, already realise this. So it is not really necessary to say it, is it? But there are people out there who don't get it. I don't know who they are or where to find them so it seems to me the only thing to do is spread the message far and wide and hope it sinks in.
There. That should be an end to it for now.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 15:26 (UTC)From:I went to the last link and, while the article was fine, I made the mistake of reading the comments. I have since outlawed soapboxes.
It seemed like everyone couldn't wait to spew how enlightened they were on such a topic and it made me feel sick, if not gruesomely cynical.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-22 10:19 (UTC)From: