Who asked you?

Ever since the Schrödinger’s Rapist post on Shapely Prose, I've been giving some thought to how I'm approached by strange men.  There are a lot of complexities involved in human communication, and one of the things that's become clear to me is that it's often not exactly what a guy says, but how and where he says it, that determines my reaction.

Around a month ago, I was out at a bar with some friends when a guy who was a friend of a friend, and whom I hadn't specifically met, approached me.  He apologized for just walking up to me and speaking and then said he hoped I didn't mind if he said he thought I was beautiful.  He then clarified that he wasn't expecting anything from me, he just wanted to let me know, and then he turned and went back to what he had been doing before, talking with his friends.  I accepted the compliment and felt flattered.  Here's why:

1. We were in a social setting where it wasn't unreasonable to think someone I didn't know would talk to me.
2. He was not a total stranger; he knew some of my friends, and we'd all been talking in changing configurations of small groups, so he had a reasonable "in" to talk to me.
   
3. He waited until I was momentarily unoccupied; he didn't interrupt me or approach me when I was obviously otherwise engaged.
4. He apologized for the potential intrusion upon my boundaries, recognizing that I hadn't invited his attention and might not want it.
5. He waited as I smiled and made eye contact and said I didn't mind his talking to me before he continued.
   
6. He wasn't trying to get anything out of me, and he respectfully left me alone after he'd said his piece and I'd thanked him.

Today, I was standing around on campus after a class, talking to a female friend, when a guy I didn't know interrupted our conversation loudly and suddenly and said to me, "You're cute!  What's your name?  I'm [name I don't remember]."  I was completely taken aback and irritated.  Here's why:

1. Although it was a generally social setting, there was nothing about my actions or demeanor that invited conversation from strangers.  If I'd been engaged in a conversation with a whole group of people, it would have been a different dynamic, but I wasn't.  I was specifically engaged in conversation with one close friend.
2. I didn't know the guy, and there was no reasonable "in" to the conversation I was having that might have made it logical for him to join in.
3. He didn't try to join in, anyway; he just butted in and cut me off mid-sentence, letting me know that in his mind, his desire to comment on my looks (as if I'd asked for his opinion) superseded my right to speak or to be engaged in something else.
4. His demeanor demanded my attention now, and he made no apology for rudely interrupting my conversation.
5. He completely ignored my unfriendly stare and my obvious discomfort.
   
6. He seemed to expect me to jump for joy and hand him my phone number.  Despite my obvious irritation, he kept trying to talk over me, and I had to turn my back on him in order to continue the conversation I'd been having.

What really bugs me about these encounters is that I never seem to be able to come up with a way to articulate my reaction until the scene is over and the guy is gone.  Instead of explaining calmly that it was rude of him to interrupt and to comment uninvited on my looks, I just kind of glared at him for a moment before awkwardly stating my name, nodding along to a couple of inane things he said, and finally turning away so that I could continue my conversation in peace.

I didn't feel threatened by him during this encounter, largely because of the setting: a busy campus with lots of people around.  But I did feel encroached upon, objectified, and dismissed as a person.  How self-important is it just to assume that a perfect stranger gives a shit about your assessment of her looks, that she cares enough about your opinion that she won't mind being interrupted from an engaging conversation with someone else, that it's reasonable of you to demand her name after your uninvited proclamation?  If you approach a woman this way, you've already let her know that your "right" to her attention trumps her right to go about her life without being bothered by you, and by interrupting her to comment on her appearance, you're telling her that what she says is trifling and unimportant, but how she looks is not.

The whole encounter lasted maybe a minute or two, and I was caught too much off-guard to express any of this, but as I walked away afterward, I felt more and more annoyed and indignant, and I almost wished he was still standing there so I could go back and explain why.  Ironically enough, the conversation he interrupted was about feminism.  Or maybe that's not ironic at all.

What it (literally) means to be a woman

Did you know that if you're female, it's impossible to express your existence in the English language without contextualizing yourself?

Here is the etymological proof:

The word "woman" is derived from the Old English wifman.  Wif meant "woman" and is the same word from which we derive the modern "wife."  Man meant simply "human being."  So to be a man is simply to be human; to be a woman is to be a qualified, and thus lesser, version of a human being.

The word "female" is derived from the Latin femella, a diminutive of the Latin word femina, which literally means "she who suckles."  So to call yourself a female is to reduce your existence to the biological function of reproduction.  In contrast, the word "male" is derived from the Latin masculus, which simply means "male."

The word "girl" is of unclear origin, but the two contenders are an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "garment" and an ancient Greek word meaning "virgin."  So to refer to yourself as a girl is to contextualize yourself in terms of your appearance or your sexuality.

The word "lady" is derived from the Old English hlæfdige, which literally means "bread-kneader."  So when you say that you're a lady, you're reducing yourself to the traditionally female social function of domestic caretaker.

"Madam," "madonna," and "dame" all come from the Latin mea domina, which means "mistress of the house."

What none of these words mean, unlike their male counterparts, is the essence of the thing itself; every one of these words reflect sexual or social status.  Even the language we use refuses to recognize women as sovereign entities.

On a separate but related note, the word "vagina" comes from the Latin vagina, literally meaning a sheath, as for a sword.

It really puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

Men's women

It began with the color pink.  Or, at least, that's the earliest memory I can point to for the opening scene of this narrative.  I was five years old, and I decided that I hated the color pink.  It's what girls were supposed to like.  I don't know what exactly I'd absorbed by age five that had already established subconsciously for me that a girl was something I did not want to be, but there it was.  Being unable to escape my physical gender, I made up my mind that at least I would not be like those other girls, you know, the ones who were scared of bugs, who didn't want to get grass stains on their knees, who were afraid to climb trees.  They were the ones who giggled when the boys chased them around on the playground, knocking them to their feet and running away, and I was not going to be one of them.

Instead, I played with G.I. Joes and matchbox cars.  I went outside in the mud and got as dirty as possible.  I collected cicada shells in a glass jar and scoffed at the girls who shrieked and backed away from them.  I built things with scrap wood and nails, and whatever the boys were doing, I'd go out of my way to do it better, faster, and more daringly, and I'd roll my eyes at the wimpy girls who didn't even try.

This is not to say that I never did traditionally "feminine" things.  I had dolls and a tea set.  But I was definitely a tomboy, and I intended to keep it that way.  Already, I was learning: in a man's world, it's easier to ally yourself with those in power than it is to fight the system.  Of course, I wouldn't have put it in those terms back then, but it's astonishing in retrospect just how early these cultural messages infiltrated my thinking and affected my choices and behavior.

In adulthood, this method of coping takes many forms.  Women align themselves against each other and ingratiate themselves with men, often without realizing that this is what they're doing.  It's an attempt at sharing in some of the power and privilege that men enjoy, and it's also an attempt to avoid terrifying feelings of powerlessness.  This is what's going on when:

• Women say that female victims of domestic abuse are victims because they have low self-esteem, they like being abused, they're stupid, they're weak, and that abuse could never happen to the woman making these claims.
• Women say that rape victims have at least some culpability in the crime committed against them because of the way they were dressed, their level of intoxication, their failure to "fight back" hard enough, their sexual history, or the fact that they supposedly lead the rapist on.
• Women blame the woman that her husband/partner cheated with, rather than the man who did the cheating.  They call the other woman a whore, a slut, a homewrecker.  I'm not going to defend the premise of getting involved with someone whom you know is in a serious relationship; that's not a very moral or kind thing to do.  But many women seem to ignore the fact that the real problem in this situation is with the man who made a commitment to them, not the woman he cheated with.  They can't do anything about her, but blaming her is easier than facing the fact that their trust has been broken and they're going to have to make some difficult decisions about their relationship.
• Women call other women "bitches," "sluts," "whores," and other derogatory names.
• Women are cruel to other women out of jealousy or fear that these other women might be prettier, more popular, more successful, etc. than they are.
• Women are cruel to other women in ways that make them feel better about themselves, e.g., making fun of another woman's weight, her failures, her clothes, her looks, her mistakes.
• Women willingly engage in the use of terms like "pussy" or "gay" to denigrate men (the insult here is that the man in question is supposedly feminine in some way, and that's bad because women are not human beings like men are, but something different and lowlier).
• Women agree with men that it's nasty or gross for a woman not to shave her legs or adhere to other social expectations of femininity that are mainly geared toward keeping women attractive to men.
• Women claim that they have no problem with their partners or other men using pornography which is denigrating to women, even though somewhere deep inside, it makes them feel bad to know that the person they love is getting off to unrealistic fantasy women being objectified and used.
  

I could list more examples, but you get the point.  Basically, this is what's going on almost any time a woman attempts to place herself in a position of power over another woman or to distance herself from damaging female stereotypes without attempting in any way to discredit them.

This is how we wind up with women like Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Margaret Thatcher, and Phyllis Schlafly, to name a few.

A recent poll in the UK showed that more women than men believe a woman is at least partially responsible for her own rape if she was dressed in revealing clothing.  If you can believe that a woman somehow caused the act of violence that was committed against her, it makes you feel safer, because whatever she did to cause it, you won't do, and therefore it can't happen to you.  As emotionally compelling as this line of reasoning is, it's illogical and untrue.  Victim-blaming not only fails to make you any safer; it actually makes women as a whole less safe, because it perpetuates misogynistic ideals and is a large part of the reason why so many men who commit violence against women are able to walk away with no consequences.

But victim-blaming is only one form of behaving like a man's woman.  As Harriet Jacobs has pointed out, even something as simple as saying "I'd never put up with that" when referring to unwanted attention from men puts the speaker at odds with other women and actually aligns her against them, even if that's not at all what she intended.

It took me a long time to really understand why it is that being a man's woman is to fail utterly at being your own woman.  I think all of us have probably behaved like men's women at some point(s) in our lives.  A man's woman may reject certain gendered cultural ideals, and quite often, she may see herself as a feminist, but by mentally distinguishing herself from and aligning herself against those other women, she is actually doing all women (herself included) a great deal more harm than good.  She is perpetuating the status quo by playing directly into it, even despite herself.

Acting like a man's woman is an understandable survival tactic in a misogynistic society, but it's ultimately a step backward, all the more treacherous because it can sometimes be so well disguised as progress.  Let's instead be women's women; in other words, let's choose to identify as human beings, and not limit ourselves to the roles that men have historically carved out for us, not even the ones that at first seem empowering but which, on closer inspection, turn out to be little more than supporting roles in the great misogynistic drama.

The Unbearable Weight of Feminism

Yeah, I ripped off Milan Kundera with my title.  It was intentional, because he's a good example of what I'm talking about.  Once upon a time, I considered him my favorite writer.  I read a whole bunch of his books.  I spent a lot of time contemplating his postmodernist style, his integration of so many different elements, his unique voice.  Then one day I happened to mention all of this to a male professor of mine, who said, "But he's a terrible misogynist.  Haven't you noticed?"

I shrugged uncomfortably.  I guess I had noticed a little.  I'd just been...overlooking it.

My professor then lent me a book of essays by Joan Smith, called "Misogynies."  (It's out of print, but if you can find a copy, I highly recommend it.)  It includes an essay specifically about the misogyny of Milan Kundera titled "Czech Mate."  My professor assured me it would ruin Kundera for me, and to my horror, it did.  Once someone had pointed out how he denigrates women, how he reduces them to unflattering physical descriptions and the various ways in which they can be used by men, it was impossible to read him the same way.  How could I not have seen the violence, the bitter vitriol, the fear and even hatred he directs at his female characters?

And thus was something I'd treasured destroyed for me.  It was the beginning of a process of which I'm still in the early stages: digging through everything that's ever given my life meaning and weeding out the things I realize I can no longer live with.  Books, music, movies...so many things I've somehow missed all my life and now I suddenly see.  Ilsa in Casablanca: how could I have failed to notice her absolute lack of sovereign purpose?  She exists first as a plaything for Rick, who is himself terribly misogynistic, and who ultimately altruistically gives her up, as Victor needs her more.  Where is Ilsa in all of this?  And why did I never think to ask this question before?

Worst of all, does this mean I can't like Casablanca anymore?

It's as if Pandora has opened her box, only instead of evil coming out, as the Greeks claimed, it's awareness of evil, of all the harm and injustice committed by one half of humankind against the other since at least as far back as the beginning of recorded history.

It's overwhelming, to say the least.

I always thought I was a feminist.  I grew up with a mother who not only worked, she worked in a male-dominated industry with almost exclusively male colleagues.  She brought me to pro-choice marches when I was just a kid.  She taught me never to believe that my gender should hold me back from anything I wanted to do.  And yeah, I knew that women are still paid less than men for the same jobs.  I'd observed that violence between the sexes is disproportionately committed against women.  I heard the names whispered about girls at my high school (bitch, slut, whore) and noticed that there didn't seem to be equivalents for boys.  But I'd just pop in my Ani DiFranco CD's and think, it can't really be all that bad, can it?

It's only now, in my late 20's, that I've begun to understand the scope of what I'm dealing with, and at times I feel paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of this thing.  It's everywhere: in TV commercials, on the magazines I see in the check-out line declaring brightly that they've got the secret to snaring a man.  It's in the lyrics of songs that practically jump-started my adolescence and taught me to love rock and roll ("Soul of a woman was created below"... really, Robert Plant?)  It's in the crappy selection of uncomfortable, impractical shoes I find when I go looking for a new pair of flip-flops.  It's in jokes told in movies or at a bar, the ones whose punchlines are women, or violence against women, or the stupidity of women.  It's the names men use to put one another down (pussy, pansy, gay, bitch).  It's in offices and courtrooms and news articles.

In short, it's everywhere.

And what's even worse than that startling realization is how, once you start talking about it, men and women both rally to shoot you down, to tell you you're irrational, melodramatic, vindictive, crazy, all of the epithets that have been used since Eve to keep us silent and complacent.

Some days, that's just more than I want to deal with.  The thing I've been wondering lately is how to strike a balance between being the feminist I've started to become and living my life.  The two shouldn't be mutually exclusive, but if I spoke up or acted every time I saw or heard something misogynist, if I considered every possible effect on women everywhere of every action I take on a daily basis, I wouldn't have time to do anything else at all.

And what about when I get backed into a corner?  Do I write my mid-term paper on misogyny in Shakespeare like I want to, even after my professor has completely shot down my ideas and it's pretty clear that I'll get a bad grade if do, and knowing that I need an A so I don't injure my chances of acceptance into grad school?

When is it time to act and when is it okay to let things slide?  When is it time to speak up and risk ruining everyone's good time, including mine, and when should I grit my teeth against the bitter taste in my mouth and keep quiet?  How much of who I've been and what I've loved do I have to let go of now that my eyes are opened and I can no longer gloss over the glaring sexism in blissful ignorance?

I'm still shifting these questions through the corridors of my mind, looking for answers that sometimes seem impossible.  There are so many factors working against women who might otherwise embrace feminism, and I'm beginning to realize that the plain heavy weight of it all is one of them.

Still, I wouldn't go back for anything.  I would rather be sitting here asking myself impossible questions than go back to that uncomfortable, shitty feeling I used to get every time some guy made a rape joke and everyone else laughed and I was left wondering why I was the only who didn't really see the humor, not even sure why I had a vague feeling that somehow they were all laughing at my expense.  No, the only way I can ever hope for change is first to know what's wrong.

It's a start.

Rape is never okay...unless you also happen to make Great Art

For the last several days, I've been appalled, disgusted, disheartened, and enraged by the Hollywood response to Roman Polanski's arrest.  I've also been enraged by most of the media response I've seen.  Even the articles which come out in support of extraditing him and making him face justice seem at times to entirely miss the point.

Case in point: this editorial piece from the Washington Post.

The author acknowledges that Polanski drugged and raped his victim and that she said "no," and yet he calls it "sex" not once, but twice.  NEWSFLASH: rape is not sex.  And you undermine your point that Polanski must be held accountable for his "sordid" crime when you confuse the two.

Even more disturbing are articles like this one from the Irish Independent.  Although the overall message seems to be that gee, well, hm, I guess he should be extradited and brought to "justice," the author, Chris Ayres, calls Polanski a "fugitive from a sex case," and that's just the beginning.  Ronald Harwood (the screen writer for The Pianist) is quoted as saying that Polanski's arrest is "vindictive and mean."  Can I get a WTF?!  And for some reason, the author of the piece feels the need to dive into Polanski's "tragic" past, citing the many hardships he's faced, as if any of it is somehow relevant to the fact that he raped someone and then fled justice.  And then he reveals what are perhaps his true feelings on the topic in this sentence: "Alas, the American public also doesn't seem to be on his side."

Alas?  Alas?  Alas, WHAT?  Alas, it would be such a fucking tragedy if this "brilliant" man were actually held accountable (to whatever degree is even possible anymore after 30 years of comfortable freedom in France) for raping a child?

Well, shucks, Mr. Ayres, that would be a tragedy, wouldn't it?  Because if even a rich, famous, highly respected, Oscar-winning film director like Roman Polanski could be sent to jail for rape, then we just might have to concede the possibly the rape really isn't okay, no matter who you are.  We just might have to begin the lengthy and difficult process of changing our views, of taking a long, hard look at what the fuck is wrong with our culture in the first place that made it acceptable for this man to do what he did, that made it acceptable for him to seek and find shelter from accountability, that made us think it was okay to reward this criminal with prestigious awards in absentia, and that is now causing a range of celebrities from Terry Gilliam to Whoopi Goldberg to rush to his defense and demand his release.

Most disgusting of all is when Ayres calls Polanski "a 76-year-old man, who has been the victim of far worse crimes than the one he allegedly perpetrated 30 years ago [emphasis mine]."  Gosh, I'm sorry, I must have missed the fucking memo where we all learned that violent crime occurs on a scale of pretty-dang-horrific to not-really-all-that-devastating.  I'm glad he cleared that up for me.  Now I can feel so much better about rape, knowing that's it really not all that bad in the grand scheme of things.  And there's no "allegedly"; Polanski admitted the crime.

According to RAINN, a woman is sexually assaulted every two minutes in the United States alone.  EVERY TWO MINUTES.  And considering that just about every single woman I know has been sexually assaulted at some point in her life and has not reported it, we can only assume that any available statistics represent a pretty serious underestimation of the figures.

If Polanski were just some dude off the street, would people be coming out in droves to declare that his 30 years of living as a free man and doing more or less whatever the hell he wanted were punishment enough?  Somehow, I don't think so.  Yet sadly enough, this case is not as much of an anomaly as it might seem.  We live in a culture of rape apologism where rape and sexual assault are routinely excused, justified, downplayed, or just outright ignored.  How the hell else could rapists rape as often as they do, with at least 15 of 16 rapists walking away from their crime scott-free?

This shit needs to stop.  Rape is a crime of violence.  It doesn't matter who the rapist is.  It doesn't matter who the victim is.  It doesn't matter how hard she fought or what she was wearing or how much she had to drink.  It doesn't matter whether she knew the rapist, whether she'd gone out with him, whether she kissed him or went back to his place or had sex with fifty thousand other men first.  No one has the right to rape another person, and anyone who does must be held accountable, must receive the message that rape is not okay and will not be tolerated, each and every time, no exceptions.  How else can we ever build a society in which a woman can move freely through her world without fearing for her physical and emotional safety at every turn?

I can only hope and pray that our justice system takes this opportunity to declare loudly and without apology that no one has immunity from accountability for rape, not even Roman Polanski.

The monster inside

I recently stumbled across this post from Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, and it got me thinking. A lot.

Sometimes it's hard to be honest with ourselves. Sometimes it's really hard. For example, I know that I am not a racist. I actively strive not to be. I try to speak up when I hear something I know is wrong. I try to challenge false assumptions and stereotypes when I encounter them. But if I am absolutely honest with myself, I have to admit that sometimes the false assumptions or stereotypes are my own. They will occasionally pop into my head unbidden, and I find myself regarding my own subconscious library of internalized (or at least retained) ideas with a feeling that lies somewhere on the spectrum between shock and disgust. Despite my open-minded upbringing, despite my own continuous attempts at examining my world and the ideas therein for validity and morality, these little seeds of racism have crept in and eased between the cracks, attempting to take root and destroy what I've created.

I was walking down the street today, thinking these thoughts, when something deeply unnerving suddenly occurred to me. If I have these unwanted thoughts (or absorbed memories of others' thoughts) about other groups of people, then it's only logical to assume that the men in my life have them about women, too. I'm not talking about the obvious misogynist assholes, the abusers, the rapists, the casual sexual harrassers...I mean the men I know and care about and in whom I have at least some amount of emotional investment. The ones I trust.

Of course when these renegade thoughts about other groups appear on my mental horizon, I stop in my tracks and challenge them, examine them, refute them, and spit them right back out. And I can hope that the men I care about do the same when they have such thoughts about women. But even if I could believe for certain that they do, it doesn't temper the sting I feel imagining those thoughts flickering, however briefly, through their minds.

It's a realization that nearly stopped me dead in the middle of the sidewalk. Of course I know society does this. Of course I know popular culture does it. Of course I know that some of my professors, my peers, my acquaintances do it. But for whatever reason, I just hadn't really thought about the fact that men that I trust, that I love, must do it, too.

And I thought back to Melissa's post, how she talks about working every day to be a trustworthy person, and I wondered what harm I've inflicted over the years with my own assumptions, my own failures to stand up when someone needed to and no one was, my own casual complacency or lack of action in the face of rhetoric that causes someone, somewhere, to feel the same acrid paralysis that I feel when I imagine men who matter to me thinking, if only momentarily, that maybe there is some truth to the idea that women are too emotional to be rational (as if the two were mutually exclusive), or that some women just deserve to be hit.

The truth is that none of us are immune to the cumulative effects of harmful cultural messages. All of us have to work continuously and vigorously to overcome the saplings of fear, prejudice, and hatred nurtured in us is spite of ourselves from birth. It's a never-ending process for me and for everyone else who cares, and I guess in the end, that's what it comes down to: whether or not you are really doing your best, every day, to move forward, to learn, to grow, to become a little closer to the person you'd like to be.

The men whom I will at least try to trust won't be perfect, but if they're actively engaged in this process, it's all I can really ask. And it's the same thing I need to be asking of myself.

But it's just a (fill in the blank)!

I get so very tired of hearing this comment. People make it in reference to movies, song lyrics, jokes, books, TV shows, you name it. Most recently, I heard it in reference to this horrendous song by the "band" 3OH!3 (I use quotes because the word "band" implies music, and music implies art, and to associate this particular monstrosity of pop culture with art would be like shelving Danielle Steele "novels" among tomes of feminist literature at the public library). Among other sparkling gems, "Don't Trust Me" includes the lyrics: "Shush, girl. Shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips."

I don't even know where to start with this. It reduces women to walking vaginas who threaten to shatter the fantasy if they open their mouths for any reason other than to offer a blow job. I won't even get into the Helen Keller reference, lest I lose my cool entirely and send my laptop sprawling.

The thing is, when I try to point any of this out, I am almost invariably greeted with the protest, "Geez, lighten up! It's just a song!"

I will interject here that another of 3OH!3's "just" songs includes the lyrics: "I think I should know how to make love to something innocent without leaving my fingerprints." Yes, you read that right. And there are videos on YouTube of young girls dancing and lip syncing to those very lyrics. Am I alone when I see things like this and feel absolute horror?

But yeah, it's just a song.

Well, everything is just something. But all those little somethings begin to add up to a frighteningly powerful and oppressive force in a culture where young women see nothing at all wrong with getting down to song lyrics that outright glorify rape, to say nothing of the less obviously horrifying messages which degrade and deny the inherent humanity of women, period. We live in a world which is full of "just" movies and television shows that portray women as naive, two-dimensional sets of tantalizing orifices, here to parade around in uncomfortable and impractical clothing so that we might fulfill our ultimate goal of inducing hard-ons in any man who happens to be nearby, making occasional self-depricating witty asides so that it's clear to all observers that we enjoy being contextualized in this way. Hell, it was our idea in the first place. Right?

But what disturbs me more than anything is how many of these comments come from other women. The minute I open my mouth in defense of my own sentient and inherently worthwhile existence, outside the realm of serving the status quo, I begin to hear it: "Relax! Why are you so angry? It must be that some guy hurt you once upon a time, and now, in true feminine form, you are hell-bent on some kind of melodramatic quest for vengeance that somehow involves the subjugation and dehumanization of all men!"

Yeah, because that's what feminism is about. And it continues...

"Why don't you go burn some bras or something, you man-hating feminazi?"

Somehow, speaking up for my right to be viewed as more than a not-quite-human, second-class afterthought in the garden of Eden has become aligned in the minds of what seems to be the majority with a breed of so-called radical feminism that has little to nothing to do with anything that feminism is actually about. And it makes about as much sense as, say, denigrating all Christians because that David Koresh character was a freaking nutjob.

But I digress.

My point is that people need to wake up to the reality that the sum of many misogynistic parts can and does add up to a seriously disturbing pattern. When a popular band can sing about rape in a way that makes it seem sexy and alluring without giving radio deejays even a moment's pause as they click "play," there is something very deeply wrong, and it's not with the chorus of female voices who protest that this is not okay. The band, the song lyrics, the accompanying video...these are not anomalies but symptoms of prevailing cultural attitudes and perceived norms, and it's time that people, especially women, rise up and stop minimizing and justifying each "isolated" occurrence of the perpetuation of these twisted values in one medium or another.

When a song diminishes and contextualizes women within a system which diminishes and contextualizes women, it is no longer just a song.