Read this.

[lady_songsmith]

No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

Go read it.


Ok. If you've gone and read that, hopefully you recognize how serious it all is. (If you haven't gone and read it, why not?) That said, let's be clear that the following ramble is not intended to trivialize the issue.

I am not a survivor of sexual violence. Fates willing, never will be. But, in reading the 14 pages of comments that followed that post, I began thinking -- specifically about the 1-in-4 statistic discussion.

I am not a survivor. But I can easily, immediately, call to mind several moments in which I felt sexually uncomfortable. Never threatened, thankfully, but on one occasion, uncomfortable enough to need to get the hell away before it could reach that point. The other moments range from a guy at a party who clearly thought (from his conversation) that I was a good 3-5 yrs older than I was hitting on me strongly (deep into my personal space and touching) to the assholes in Jr. High and H.S. that thought snapping my bra or pinching my butt on the stairs was funny.

This is not 'sexual violence' -- but it is inappropriate sexual behavior, and my question is, why do we allow it to continue? In the case of the H.S. jerks, for instance, I was told by various adults and peers that it was 'normal teenage behavior' and to ignore it or take another route to class. Well, it may be normal teenage behavior, but it shouldn't be. If we actually spoke up about these smaller behavior patterns -- if we said, clearly, that touching and sexual language and innuendos were not appropriate -- would we still have to live with the 1-in-4 statistic? If we all learned at a young age that it was wrong, not funny, not normal, not cute -- would we grow up more vocal when we felt threatened? Would we grow up less likely to abuse and to be abused? Can we stand up against sexual violence and still permit the 'little stuff' to pass unnoticed?

I dunno. It just feels like these things cause attrition, and contribute to the attitude that gives us such wonderful statements as "she was asking for it" to deal with. Thoughts, anyone?

Comments

No Pity. No Shame. No Silence

[psyla.livejournal.com]

I most deffinitely agree. I am not a survivor but I have many friends who are. My cousin is.. in her case, she contracted an STD from her assailant. In my friend's (and cousin's) cases they were all very good friends with their assailants. I have dealt with many a laughs and snickers (I hit puberty faster than many females in my class). Many a bra-snapping, butt pinching and name calling I endured. One incident still haunts me and causes me much mental grief. Its tough to stand up to the high school assholes and be like "thats NOT right" if we dont permit the little things in Jr High and HS... then i feel that many of the more serious incidents wouldn't happen. I was too shy to stand up for myself.. i'd just walk home crying.. thats how i dealt... I trained myself to be silent....If we nipped it in the bud early, we would be less likely to be abused because we wouldn't have taught OURSELVES to TOLERATE the behavior.. and if the behavior isn't tolerated then the people would exhibit that behavior either... so yea anyways

Its not funny.. its not cute.. it hurts.. its NOT right!