About That There #Yesallwomen
May. 30th, 2014 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdTell me if I'm being defensive about this.
Women are almost constantly talking and writing about the time(s) they were raped, and the several hundred slightly less horrible things men do/say to them. I've seen a lot of those things, but not being one who hangs out in bars or parties where people are apt to get drunk or high, I don't see all that much of it.
But I know it happens because:
I have dated three different women who were battered women/rape crisis counselors.
For about a year my house in rural coastal WA was a safe house for battered women, all of whom were fleeing ultra-macho lumberjacks or fishermen.
I saw a housemate in college throw his girlfriend down the stairs. She was a nursing student. She was a nursing student because she had been raped, stabbed and left for dead by a gang of four men, and managed to crawl to a house for help. The house just happened to be the home of a nurse, who saved her life. The housemate's first job after college was as a security guard, a job he got despite all of his housemates contacting his employer with negative recommendations.
A long time friend and former co-worker was staying at my house while hers was being remodeled. My house was on the edge of the Inner City. I came home from work one day to find the door wide open and her purse sitting in plain sight. he had gone for a walk, met a guy, invited him back to the house, and was raped. She had just spent an hour in the shower. I phoned the woman I was then dating, who had a job as a rape counselor with the city mayor's office.
--
But I don't understand it. Not at all. I just can't wrap my head around the concept of a man treating a woman badly. It makes no sense to me.
About as close as I come is I am attracted to women, and make a judgment on first sight if she is "eye candy" or not. But I do this with men too. But I'm just as likely to start a conversation with someone I don't think of as eye candy. I have interesting and talented friends of all levels of attractiveness.
Women are almost constantly talking and writing about the time(s) they were raped, and the several hundred slightly less horrible things men do/say to them. I've seen a lot of those things, but not being one who hangs out in bars or parties where people are apt to get drunk or high, I don't see all that much of it.
But I know it happens because:
I have dated three different women who were battered women/rape crisis counselors.
For about a year my house in rural coastal WA was a safe house for battered women, all of whom were fleeing ultra-macho lumberjacks or fishermen.
I saw a housemate in college throw his girlfriend down the stairs. She was a nursing student. She was a nursing student because she had been raped, stabbed and left for dead by a gang of four men, and managed to crawl to a house for help. The house just happened to be the home of a nurse, who saved her life. The housemate's first job after college was as a security guard, a job he got despite all of his housemates contacting his employer with negative recommendations.
A long time friend and former co-worker was staying at my house while hers was being remodeled. My house was on the edge of the Inner City. I came home from work one day to find the door wide open and her purse sitting in plain sight. he had gone for a walk, met a guy, invited him back to the house, and was raped. She had just spent an hour in the shower. I phoned the woman I was then dating, who had a job as a rape counselor with the city mayor's office.
--
But I don't understand it. Not at all. I just can't wrap my head around the concept of a man treating a woman badly. It makes no sense to me.
About as close as I come is I am attracted to women, and make a judgment on first sight if she is "eye candy" or not. But I do this with men too. But I'm just as likely to start a conversation with someone I don't think of as eye candy. I have interesting and talented friends of all levels of attractiveness.
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-31 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-31 06:20 pm (UTC)It's not "not all men."