Yesterday I had the dubious ‘pleasure’ of reading a (male) law enforcement officer’s opinions about how women get themselves raped. It was the usual cant about “you need to take Personal Responsibility”. I got to thinking about it and am in fact still thinking about it.
Because it’s never a person’s fault if they’re raped. Never. Never. Never. The fault belongs to the rapist.
I’ve always taken precautions in my life, and frankly I think every woman has. We walk with our keys in stabbing mode, interleaved through our fingers to serve as ad hoc brass knucles. We know to SING (Solar Plexus, Instep, Nose, Groin). We’ve been told to pee on ourselves if rape seems imminent. Et cetera. But precautions are sometimes never enough. And it isn’t our fault when they fail us. It never is.
I haven’t blogged steadily for a very long time. I have attracted the attention of some folks who think a good way to spend their time is to come and leave personal attacks in the comments on my blog. Blogs are pretty porous and it’s not really a medium inclined to protection of privacy. So I just stopped writing on my own blog, guesting on other blogs and commenting on the blogs of my friends. As time goes by I’ve strained against the tether of FB, because I missed my 500 words. Lately I’ve missed them badly enough to be writing “status updates” that are more like “editorial columns.”
I wanted to blog.
But I didn’t.
I was taking precautions. I was not putting myself in harm’s way. I was not attracting their attention.
And no, it’s not the same as being raped. Not even remotely the same. But the attitudes about “how to stay safe” are similar. After all, you’re perfectly safe when you’re sitting quietly in your room in a flannel bathrobe and slippers. Aren’t you? No one is ever harmed in their own home!
It occurs to me as these streams get crossed and I see what I say to myself about why I shouldn’t blog and what these people say to women about why they shouldn’t look pretty or go to parties and I realise it’s all a subset of Trading Liberty For Security.
A person can die by inches as they let fear limit their life. And I have enough limitations as it is. So, I’m not staying away any more. I’m not letting a bully scare me away from doing what I love doing. Precautions are meant to keep you as safe as possible while encountering the world. They aren’t meant to keep you from living.
The rape is the fault of the rapist. The bullying is the fault of the bully.
A writer writes and if she isn’t writing she’s dying by inches.
**There are a lot of bloggers who no longer feel comfortable blogging because of the sheer sociopathy of web society. Yesterday several of my friends confessed that they too had to stop blogging because of stalkers. I can’t blame them and I don’t fault them for their choice. Everyone responds to violence in their own way. And it’s different when your stalker is local to you. I’m fortunate in that my problem is with non-local people. So this is in no way meant as an indictment of all the women who choose to quit blogging OR who choose to stay home in sweats.
The lowest common denominator on the interwebs makes me wonder how on earth the billions of people I don’t know behave when I’m not looking at them.
You are exactly right. I’m glad you’re doing what you love to do!
I actually wrote out a very eloquent message to you regarding your “Don’t Adopt a Shelter Dog” article… Then accidentally deleted it, thus wasting 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get beck. As I was moving on to continuing my search for information on pet adoptions, I found myself back at your blog site. And I read this post. And I realized that I did indeed need to communicate to you the reason I wrote the email to begin with (not something I have ever done prior to today). It is honestly odd to even find myself reading a blog, let alone responding to one.
As an active shelter/foster advocate, I am embarrassed and appalled at some of the comments people from “my side” of the issue left on your site. I commend you for voicing a not so popular opinion, and lending some insight to a viewpoint I rarely encounter in my work with foster agencies.
More importantly, I am sorry for your loss. As supposed animal lovers, I would think that anyone commenting on that particular post would at least recognize the purity of your motivation and show compassion for the pain of losing three beloved pets. I was shocked to read some of the negative comments, most of which included entirely too many misspellings and an extremely high ratio of exclamation marks to periods following their sentences (always a sign of crazy in my experience).
Please do not let these people deter you. Your writing is good. I have a degree in biology. I know nothing about writing, and I require a helmet when using a computer. But I know enough to recognize that your writing is poignant. And more importantly, it’s fun. And in today’s society, with 140 characters to get a point across, I know that “fun” is often a necessary ingredient to get important views out there. I call it a “spoonful of sugar for society’s medicine”. I use it all the time in my work.
Lastly, kudos to you for adopting. Whether it be from a shelter, a breeder, a neighbor, an ex-locker partner, a guy in a trench coat on the side of the street with a box of kittens, whatever…. Based on your post, you obviously recognize the challenges and commitment involved with adopting a pet.
On your bad days, please remember: for every 12 internet trolls out there, posting inane rude responses to your articles, there are 4,376 readers who truly appreciate your insight. (Actual number, I looked it up. No. Not really.) And usually only one of those 4,376 has the free time on a Saturday to let you know it. So there. I have spoken for the other 4,375 of us. My work here is done.
And car theft is always the thief’s fault. But most sane people would agree it’s not too bright to, for example, leave your BMW in the hood at night unlocked with the keys in it.
So if a girl goes to a frat party in skimpy clothes, gets sloppy drunk, and stays until the wee hours and gets raped, she’s obviously still a victim, albeit a dumb one.