Yet Another Site I Will Rarely If Ever Use

If owning a gun and knowing how to use it worked, the military would be the safest place for a woman. It’s not.

If women covering up their bodies worked, Afghanistan would have a lower rate of sexual assault than Polynesia. It doesn’t.

If not drinking alcohol worked, children would not be raped. They are.

If your advice to a woman to avoid rape is to be the most modestly dressed, soberest and first to go home, you may as well add “so the rapist will choose someone else”.

If your response to hearing a woman has been raped is “she didn’t have to go to that bar/nightclub/party” you are saying that you want bars, nightclubs and parties to have no women in them. Unless you want the women to show up, but wear kaftans and drink orange juice. Good luck selling either of those options to your friends.

Or you could just be honest and say that you don’t want less rape, you want (even) less prosecution of rapists.

When people scoff at the message that we need to teach people not to rape they make the assumption that the lesson goes: “Rape is bad. Don’t do it.” That is not what the lesson looks like. The lesson, once it is adopted, will be that every single person out there, regardless of any defining personal characteristics, is a human being of value, and with a right to make their own decisions about what bodily contact to have with others. There is nothing a person can do that makes them less deserving of that right. Violating any person’s right to control the when, what and who with of their sexual interactions is wrong. Do it and you will be punished, and you will deserve it.

N.B. While not all those who are raped are women, and not all rapists are men, much less rape apologists; rape prevention myths are always targeted at women, and this post reflects this. My language in the final paragraph is very consciously gender-neutral.

A Short Post on Rape Prevention (via stfuconservatives)

(via johnhexcarter)

I’m not very butch. I still wear eyeliner. I like the way it makes my face look. I have long hair, and sometimes I wear heels. It does feel a little like dress-up, a tad “draggy,” but I’m doing the best with what I’ve got while trying to stay true to myself. I’m not planning on transitioning into a male body like so many other trans guys, partially due to the fact that I’m an actor and believe I’ll have more success in my field if I stay in the body I have now. I’ve also embraced this appearance as part of my role in the battle against conflating sex and gender.

Still, after figuring out that I’m transgender and not crazy, I began to feel entitled to acknowledgment of the fact that I’m a man. It had always felt right, but I hadn’t previously realized that I was entitled to that acknowledgement, looking like I do. I began to ask my girlfriend to refer to me using male pronouns every so often. “It makes me feel good,” I told her. It made me feel recognized, affirmed. I’d never related to female pronouns anyway; they always made me pause a little before responding. (So does entering women’s restrooms, and checking the “female” box on government documents or job applications.) But to this day, friends who know me as male, and even my girlfriend, have a hard time remembering to acknowledge my male identity with those very affirming pronouns that so many cisgender men take for granted. Why? Because I appear female.

This brought me to the discovery that pronouns are not based on gender but on appearance. Since realizing that, I’ve gained a little more patience with people who use female pronouns when referring to me. I realize what a visual society we are. However, I know that letting the “wrong” pronouns slide and not demanding that people refer to me as I truly am may be seen as rolling over in an extremely important battle for respect of diverse gender identities. It’s hard for me to know when I should bring it up, or when I’m being too politically correct or even hypocritical. I suppose I’m engaging in the sensitive task of trying to gradually challenge what society considers “male” and what it considers “female.” Yes, transitioning is courageous and important, but I believe that it is also important for people to begin seeing and knowing men who look like me and women who look like any Joe or John on the street.

Lauren Hennessy, Pronouns and Cons (via genderfluidity)

THIS. A million times this.