For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!”
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.
It was so tempting.
He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.
She had to keep her building safe.
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.
Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning. How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respected, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement.
(Source: lastlifeinuniverse)
Here is just a sample of some of my recent photo project, CONsent, which you can read about here.
Please read and spread the word around. I got to work with some great cosplayers, photographers and fans and I really hope to continue this project if it gains enough support.
Thank you for looking!I just want to say that as a cosplayer at cons, this is a real issue. The amount of things that get said (and mostly REQUESTED) to us is ridiculous. This deserves a signal boost.
Word. Even if you’re a dude cosplaying you’re very often touched without permission and if it’s someone you know that’s fine but usually there’s at least one weirdo clinging to you. I’ve seen how the lady cosplayers are treated, especially when they wear “more revealing costumes” and it’s disgusting. They all stand up for themselves wonderfully but it would be really awesome if they didn’t have to.
“ [TW: rape, partner consent issues] What people don’t understand is when we say “Teach men not to rape,” we’re not talking about telling them not to jump out of the bushes in a ski mask and grab the nearest female. We’re talking about the way we teach boys that masculinity is measured by power over others, and that they aren’t men unless they “get some.” We’re talking about teaching men (and women) that it’s not okay to laugh at jokes about rape and abuse. We’re talking about telling men that a lack of “No” doesn’t mean “Yes,” that if a woman is too drunk to consent they shouldn’t touch her, that dating someone - or even being married to someone - does not mean automatic consent. We’re talking about teaching boys to pay attention to the girl they’re with, and if she looks uncomfortable to stop and ask if she’s okay, because sometimes girls don’t know how to say stop in a situation like that. We’re talking about how women have the right to change their mind. Even if she’s been saying yes all night, if she says no, that’s it. It’s over. That’s what we mean when we say “Teach men not to rape. ”
Kalitena on Facebook (via oldloveinyoungbodies)
This.
So often, people have a very narrow definition of what rape is. They don’t realize a lack of no doesn’t mean yes. They don’t realize that we can revoke consent at any given time. They don’t understand that they’re not entitled to a person’s body, nor sex, even though they bought them dinner.
They seem to think that rape is only defined a certain way- a stranger, in bushes/a dark alley/parking lot coming out of nowhere and forcing themselves on defenseless woman who’s wearing a short skirt, walking alone in the dead of night.
(via stfuhypocrisy)
Absolute perfection. Pass it on.
(via trinandtonic)
(Source: waitforhightide)
“When you say “no,” and you mean “no,” and the other person, regardless of whether it’s in a situation where somebody wants to attack you or a situation where somebody wants to change your opinion…
When you say no, and the other person continues, you should think immediately — not “how do I make it nice, how do I make it better” — but immediately think why is this person trying to control me because “no” is a complete sentence.”
ugh. that second paragraph is so ridiculously important for me. i feel like it’s finally clicked!!!!
what the actual fuck just happened in my Pimsleur japanese lesson?
well, basically, they just taught me how to harass a woman to have a drink with me after she says no several times.
in the lesson, the woman is being harassed by a man and i get to be the man (of course).
after she says no to having drinks with me at x,y and z times, i am then told to ask her “but you want to eat with me, right?”
of course, she says no again but this time sternly and then she tells me I don’t understand.
and I have to say “what don’t I understand?” like an asshole, to which she replies “you don’t understand japanese.”
this was the worst lesson. so horrible. i enjoyed all the others up to this point. i have no idea what this company was thinking when they thought this would be a good lesson. you can now harass women in a new language! i can’t get over it. that left me feeling so on edge and uncomfortable. i basically stopped saying what i was being told to say and just yelled “she said no, you fucking assholes!” instead
“I’d like you to remember the last time you found it difficult to give an explicit “no” to somebody in a non-sexual context. Maybe they asked you to do them a favour, or to join them for a drink. Did you speak up and say, outright, “No?” Did you apologise for your “no?” Did you qualify it and say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t make it today?” If you gave an outright “no,” what privileged positions do you occupy in society, and how does your answer differ from the answers of people occupying more marginalised positions?
This form of refusal was analysed in 1999 by Kitzinger and Frith (K&F) in Just Say No? The Use of Conversation Analysis in Developing a Feminist Perspective on Sexual Refusal. Despite the seeming ambiguity in question/refusal acts like, “We were wondering if you wanted to come over Saturday for dinner,” “Well, uhh, it’d be great but we promised Carol already,” they are widely understood by the participants as straightforward refusals.
K&F conclude by saying that, “For men to claim [in a sexual context] that they do not ‘understand’ such refusals to be refusals (because, for example, they do not include the word ‘no’) is to lay claim to an astounding and implausible ignorance of normative conversational patterns.”
”
Under Duress: Agency, Power, and Consent
Like I’ve said before. There’s no excuse.
(via home-of-amazons)
