Abuse Culture - Tumblr Posts
stop the phrase “tattle-tale”. stop indirectly telling kids that if they speak up about someone that’s bothering them, they’re doing something bad. stop contributing to the culture of abuse.
If I’ve learnt anything from my contact with the bdsm community, the poly community, the geek community and the atheist community is that any social group who claims to “not to be like other groups” and to be"accepting and safe for all" is going to spend a lot of energy hiding the predators within the community and silencing abuse survivors.
I think, after all these years, I have identified the worst “positive” reaction to coming out as a queer woman. This guy was very supportive. He was totally okay with me being into women. And to show his support, he’d try to bond with me like he would with a straight guy — by talking about hot women.
And oh my god, I don’t think I ever quite realized the way most men’s heads worked until then. This guy is older but relatively progressive. He used to work with victims of sexual abuse so he’s usually pretty sensitive to things like that.
AND YET
Suddenly we were having horrible conversations like:
“Hey, I saw a drunk girl outside. She’s so drunk that her top keeps slipping off and she’s flashing everyone.” “Holy shit.” *checks outside to make sure she’s okay and has friends to take care of her* “Yeah, I know you’re into women now so I figured you’d want to take a look too, haha.”
And I just! That reaction is just chilling! Suddenly I was having a straight guy joking with me about women in all kinds of compromised sexual situations, suddenly he was nudging me about every tit in media, suddenly he was talking in graphic objectifying detail about women’s bodies.
It was like I’d been inducted into a boy’s club and it was horrible in there. And all I could think was like… is this genuinely the way you guys talk about us? Are these really your bonding rituals? Do you think all queer women do this to other women?
Like, I’m not going to say that there aren’t any women who are creeps about other women (or hell, even about men), but the sheer lack of shame was kind of shocking. It’s not just this one guy; I’ve gotten it from other “woke” guys, too. This shameless, casual dehumanization of women, like it’s normal, like it’s the only way you can be sexually attracted to a woman. There’s a strange undercurrent of violence to it that feels utterly foreign to me.
I can’t look at a woman too drunk to consent and get excited about seeing her accidentally bared body because I’m thinking “What if that were me? What if that were my friend? What is she going to feel like later? Is she safe?” It’s a scary thing, not a hot one. And it’s kind of disturbing that empathy isn’t the first thought for the men who look at her, too. If anything, there was a sort of aroused disdain for a girl that “sloppy”. (But not so sloppy that they wouldn’t stare at her breasts.)
As a queer woman, I spend so much time fretting about being accidentally weird towards women. Staring too long or too hard, being too close, crossing boundaries. Because I think about all the times men have harassed me and made me feel small and scared and alone and I never want to do that to someone else. I’m not some awkward preteen who’s unsure about sexual boundaries anymore; I’m a grown-ass adult who has a responsibility to not be a creep.
And it’s always so bizarre and frankly kind of horrifying to realize how many other adults do not feel that same responsibility. As much as I hate the simultaneous desexualization and oversexualization of queer women, I found that being treated like “just one of the guys” was so much worse. I try to be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking my own sexuality is innately predatory because of its queerness — and then I’m confronted with sexuality that actually is predatory and it’s like a slap in the face.
God, what must it be like to never worry about the feelings of the person you’re staring at? How liberating. How horrible. How terrifying.
I'm a trans lesbian whose best friend is a lesbian who's nonbinary but AFAB and used to be a te/rf YEARS and years ago as an early teen, and pretty much everything she's said about it fits with what you said about feeling trapped by womanhood leading to transmisogyny. and even beyond that, from how she's talked about it, it just sounds like... such a sad mentality. like obviously fuck them, they chose and are choosing to be hateful, but it sounds like it just leads to such a horrible sense of self. like you're a woman therefore you MUST be suffering all the time. not to mention how awful they are to each other regularly
Oh yeah, like not to sympathize with bigots too much but from what I've seen, a lot of radfems are like.... very deeply traumatized people. Part of why they talk so much about "sex based oppression" in the first place is because they've experienced many of the worst forms of mistreatment and abuse associated with being a woman and are insulted that anyone (like me, for instance), could view being a woman as a fun thing that lets me feel more like myself.
And to be 100% clear, 1) not all terfs are like that. A lot of them are just assholes who refuse to listen to other perspectives 2) getting involved in radfem communities is an EXTREMELY unhealthy trauma response and 3) despite all this, radfems are still not worth getting in extended conversations with online because once you get deep enough into that shit it's next to impossible to talk someone out of it in those circumstances
So as much as I *want* to sympathize with someone who has endured so much abuse, they make it very, very difficult to do so and probably would not even want my sympathy to begin with.
Sure, relationships typically start with a honeymoon phase that then grows into something deeper but a bit more mellow if things work out, but it’s depressing as fuck that this has turned into a really, really common script for straight relationships that says it’s totally normal and inevitable for dudes to just become more and more emotionally checked out of the relationship, and leave it to their girlfriend/wife to perform if she wants to get even a crumb of affection from him. I’m so fucking tired of seeing women constantly being taught that decades of emotional neglect is just our lot in life.
i swear to god, men raising their voice is the most terrifying thing in the whole world. they dont understand, like its an immediate panic response, game over
“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”
— bell hooks, all about love