thewinterotter:robothugscomic:New comic! TUMBLRITES: This comic is huge and likely doesn’t
thewinterotter: robothugscomic: New comic! TUMBLRITES: This comic is huge and likely doesn’t render well on tumblr. Check out a more complete version on my site here. Please note: This comic contains discussion of sexual assault, rape, and rape culture This guy, this fucking guy, still sticks in my brain. It’s been years since I’ve been online dating. It was an interaction of messages that culminated in this exchange over about 2 weeks. He’s so forgettable in every other way, but I am just still so aggravated by this weird smug privileged obliviousness around constant social demands on women and femmefolk to be both constantly available to men and at the same time perfectly take all necessary steps to prevent their own rapes. It is STUPID and AWFUL that we are expected to constantly be smart, aware, strong, reactive, proactive, and sober enough to prevent our own assaults. It is STUPID and AWFUL that if we do anything, ANYTHING, like have a glass of wine, or walk home, or smile at someone, or not smile at someone, that we are somehow in that way shouldering responsibility for someone deliberately, maliciously harming us. And it is ridiculous to ask someone to shrug all of that social pressure and blaming and responsibility off because it’s vaguely insulting to you that someone has to think about the possibility that you’re not a great person. Dude, thanks. You saved me a lot of wasted time with that message. I mean it. Wow, this comic speaks to me on so many levels. I have had exactly that conversation with a guy who I didn’t even REALIZE I was agreeing to a date with. (It’d met him at the non-profit where I worked, and he’d invited me to meet with him to talk about some supposed ideas he had about fundraising. Spoiler alert: none of this was about my work.) When I’d agreed to meet him, I’d told him to pick a restaurant and let me know the address and I’d meet him there. After I googled the address he’d given me to make sure I wouldn’t get lost, I realized it was a residential neighborhood: he’d given me directions to his house.I called him en route, and tried for diplomatic. “I’m really tired” — I’d literally been training wild animals all day — “I’m really hungry, let’s just meet up at a restaurant so I can get some dinner.” He continued to insist that we meet at his house and then he’d drive us to a restaurant. I was not on board with this plan; I have enough trouble just socializing in general, I NEVER put myself in a situation where somebody else is my only transport out of there. So it went a little like this:Me: I’d really feel more comfortable just meeting you somewhere.Him: I’ve got my photo portfolios out to show you, you’ll love them! I cleaned and everything.Me: Listen, I can appreciate that, but the thing is I don’t really know you. And I don’t really just roll up to the houses of people I don’t know.Him: [Your coworker] knows me! And anyway, I really want you to meet my dogs!Me: Yeah, my coworker doesn’t really know you either. I asked him. He’s talked to you once before. And I wouldn’t really care if he knows you. Like I said, *I* don’t know you. And as I’m sure you can appreciate, women can’t really afford to just show up at a stranger’s house. So you do you want to meet somewhere or shall I just go get dinner by myself?That should have been the end of it. I SHOULD have just told him to fuck himself just gone to dinner solo. Instead I ended up following him to a restaurant and spent an hour listening to him a) talk about himself and b) drop a comment about every five minutes about what an awful person I was to doubt his character by refusing to meet at his house. (Every time he brought it up I felt more and more justified in avoiding it, though. There is no legitimate reason in the world for a guy to care that much about where you’re going to meet. If he’s that insistent about meeting at his house or someplace similarly private/remote, you are 100% justified to be having ALL the alarm bells going off in your head.)I don’t get this kind of shit much, to be honest. I’m fairly masculine for a woman and not particularly great looking and fairly oblivious; I’ve only ever been on one date that I actually realized was a date at the time. And from my experience, I feel like we really don’t prepare girls for how to fend off this kind of stuff, particularly when we’re so socially trained to be accommodating. I don’t really get catcalled (on account of most people mistaking me for a guy), but I still vividly remember the day I was walking home from high school and a guy chose to walk right next to me, practically all the way from my high school to my house (about a half hour’s walk), while asking me pretty fucking invasive questions. These days, there’s no universe in which I’d put up with it. I can recognize it for the fucking disgusting harassment that it was. As an intensely shy teenager, I didn’t even know I had any other options than to stutter out a few answers and keep walking. I couldn’t imagine a world in which anybody would be interested in me sexually so it didn’t even occur to me that the guy might want something from me. It’s a free country, right? He can walk right there beside me if he wants to, right? I’m not entitled to my own personal space, right? It never even occurred to me that I could stop walking and tell him to take a hike, or duck into a business along my route and ask for help, or that I shouldn’t keep heading home because then the fucking creep would know exactly where I lived.Saying no is a pretty dangerous thing for a woman these days. But then, not saying anything is dangerous too. Existing is dangerous. There’s no way out of it. But I do wish that I’d learned much earlier to stick up for myself, and that I COULD stick up for myself, that I don’t owe people anything, not my time or my attention or anything else they might want from me that I don’t want to give. As a friend of mine likes to say, “‘No’ is a complete sentence.” And anybody who’s willing to try to bulldoze over your own preferences, objections, and limitations is somebody you want to seriously keep your distance from.That day I was walking home and that guy followed me the whole way, I had my JROTC uniform slung over my shoulder. I was planning on joining the Marines, after graduation. I was on the rifle drill team; I knew how a handle a fucking gun but I didn’t know how to handle a guy talking to me when I didn’t want him to. And that’s just a goddamned shame. -- source link
Tumblr Blog : robothugscomic.tumblr.com
#feminist keep