Dear Men: It’s You, Too
In feminist discourse we talk about rape culture, but the people we most need to reach — the men who are the cause of the problem and the women who feel moved to excuse them — are often resistant to the idea that rape culture even exists.
Women are being hysterical, they say. Women are being humorless. Women are being oversensitive. Women should just dress or behave or feel differently.
.. These same people buy into the myth that there are ways women can avoid sexual violence and harassment — if we act nicer or drink less or dress less provocatively or smile or show a little gratitude or, or, or — because boys will be boys, because men are so fragile, so frenzied with sexual need that they cannot simply control themselves and their baser impulses.
.. Some people insinuate that women themselves can stave off attacks. They insist we can wear modest clothes or be grateful for unconventional looks, or that we can avoid “asking for it” by “presenting all the sensuality and the sexuality,” as Donna Karan has said.
.. no one escapes unwanted male attention because they don’t meet certain beauty standards or because they don’t dress a certain way.
.. Sexual violence is about power. There is a sexual component, yes, but mostly it’s about someone exerting his or her will over another and deriving pleasure and satisfaction from that exertion.
.. women and men who have been harassed or assaulted but aren’t “conventionally attractive” will be ignored, silenced, or worse, disbelieved.