I'm dubious about the idea of reading copious amounts of feminist literature when PMSing hard. I'm also a bit annoyed with myself for using the phrase "PMSing hard" ever, but today it is true. Oh well.
Mostly, after a day of reading almost nothing but feminist stuff (apart from email, LJ, and SQL help forums), I find that I'm a huge mix of frothy rage and conflicting feelings.
The rage manifests itself in all sorts of ways. I want to spend a year only experiencing female artists. I want to become a full-on lesbian and never again let a man within twenty feet of me. I want to replace everything I own with equivalent woman-made items. I want to set people on fire for ever suggesting ever ever that a rape is the woman's fault ever.
Yesterday, I passed a guy on the way home from the store who called me a bitch because I didn't respond to his "Hello!". I didn't hear him – I was, in fact, reading my book – until a split second before he got vituperative. (Tasty delayed hearing.) When I was in NY with my boyfriend for my girlfriend's wedding, I got catcalled when walking around the neighborhood near our hotel, and yelled at when I didn't respond positively. I ended up having a conversation with a nearby male pedestrian, who explained that they were only being friendly. I didn't have the time or the inclination to get into it, but my two responses to that sort of thing are:
1) In what fucking universe is shouting dirty things about my body considered "being friendly"?
2) Why do they feel entitled to my attention? Why is it an expected thing that I should respond?
And I want to do something to express my feelings about the fact that men will never understand what that feels like. It feels like my purpose in life is to be on display for men, is what it fucking feels like. What's worse is when the occasional man will get pissy with me about feeling unsafe around men: "It's rude of you to assume that Joe Random might be a danger to you!" I used to argue with said men, but nowadays, I'm more inclined to say, "If you listened to women for a half-second, you'd know precisely why we feel this way. So fuck off."
In a world where a staggering percentage of rapists are men, where all harassers I've ever encountered are men, I'm just not that interested in feeling sorry for them.
The worst part about all this is that I don't feel hatred, I feel incredibly sad. When someone says "Don't tempt men by wearing a short skirt!" (or idiocies to that effect), I'm angry that people actually think that, damn straight, but I'm also sad that the speaker holds men in such low regard. I don't think that most "But men are dogs! You should know better than to tempt them/trust them/come within 50 yards of them!" people realise that what they're doing is vastly insulting men. They're essentially calling them incapable of being civilised. And yet, feminists are the man-haters. It's fucking terrible.
(Of course, then there's the irony that the people who spout the "Don't tempt them!" garbage are usually also the ones to get upset that women feel unsafe around men. Mmhmm.)
The silliest thing makes me sad, though – I read a lot of science fiction, and a decent chunk of that is about first contact situations. The thought that always runs through my head when reading these stories is, "Half of our species routinely ignores, oppresses, rapes, and kills the other half just because of our gender, and we think someone else would want to talk to us?? Fuck!"
Assume generalisations where you feel it's necessary to do so. It's a rant, I'm not always interested in being meticulous in my most/some/not all language.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
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