![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Culture of Fear
May. 12th, 2011 05:00 amMirrored from Words, words, words, art..
“The Culture of Fear” is a phrase you might hear if you venture in Feminist circles. Basically, it’s the way (White) girls/women are taught to be afraid of everything, because no matter what they do, if they get raped it’s their fault. They shouldn’t have been alone, they shouldn’t have been wearing THAT, they shouldn’t have done X or talked to Y or visited Z or worn their hair THAT WAY. Don’t they know that anything a woman does hornies up a man’s blood and he’s just to rape his way out of the situation? So women don’t talk to strange men, walk with their keys between their fingers, forward idiotic emails about the dangers of pony tails and overalls and elevators, etc. And some women, you prompt them and they start reeling off all the stuff they do to feel safe and it’s a list that just goes on and on and on. Because rape? It’s a real threat to most women, as is sexual harassment and assault.
The vast majority of women I know have been harassed or assaulted.
But, if you ask me “Brigid, do you live in fear?” I’d say “no.” And then I’d clarify that I am terrified of many things, including the hand of God reaching down from the sky to crush me, because I have an Anxiety Disorder, but that’s not really connected with, you know, The Culture Of Fear.
But I do live in Fear.
I was at the park with my kid the other day. He’s two. There were a bunch of young men playing basket ball near by, and they were throwing the ball around a little wildly so it was flying over near the other kids and the adults with the kids, and they were cussing. A lot. Loudly. And most of the parents kept giving them looks like “oh, hey, ok, ha ha, knock it off, ok?” and measuring glances like maybe they should just go. The only one who actually said anything was a guy who told them to knock it off around the kids. He was young, way younger than me, and like me he was shorter than the ballers.
But he stood up and told them off, told them to be respectful around the kids, to watch their language. And the guys quieted down, apologized, kept it clean for awhile until they forgot again.
None of the women spoke up. None of us.
Because we all know very well what happens when a woman calls a strange dude out for being a douche bag.
SPOILER: It’s generally not good.
Related Articles:
Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.
