Now that's over with, I'd like to say that I do actually like Rugby, I don't shave my legs as often as I should and my husband and I happen to like it 70's playboy style. None of this has anything to do with feminism. Also... I like bras.
I wasn't always a feminist. I didn't really know what one was, growing up. I have four brothers and they treated me basically the same as one of the lads. Well OK, they pulled their punches, but that was mostly because I was, and still am, really very small. My point is they treated me, more or less, as an equal. And I didn't know any different until I was in my mid-twenties.... No really.
I was convinced I was solely into girls in my teens and only really hung around gay people in gay bars and all we did was get drunk and high and have a laugh, amongst the rows and drama everyone goes through when they're young. It wasn't until I'd left college, and started working that I started to twig something wasn't quite adding up. I noticed that women were treated a bit differently, that we were expected to do odd jobs around the office that blokes didn't have to do. We made more teas, we cleaned up a bit more, we weren't invited to as many outings or if we were on a night out we were expected to behave 'appropriately' while the blokes went out and smashed things. And if a woman behaved out of the norm, then she was made out to be odd, or lesbian or some other such weirdo. We had to dress a certain way, and then be flattered when a bloke acted like a sleaze ball. Then there was the office banter. The casual jokes about race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and then... rape.
When you're brought up in a home full of trauma, and learn to swear like a sailor by the tender age of four and you're still shocked by the locker room talk in the office, then you know something is quite wrong. You see the rule in my home, amongst my brothers, was 'Don't be a Dick' (and never touch Owen's tapes). You can say what you want, do what you want and take something pretty far before you cross the line, but the line was clear as day and we knew not to cross it. My mum is probably a bit of an accidental racist, she says things she shouldn't about Nigerians and Muslims, but I know for a fact that if she saw someone in trouble, she would throw herself in there and help them, even if it was just calling the Gardaí, regardless of their ethnic or religious background. And if any of us had said the 'N' word or called someone queer she would have slapped the white off our asses quicker than we could say Michael Collins. And when it came to joking about the violent abuse or rape of women, well, let’s just say that there are few things my mother would do time for murder for.
When my mother was growing up, women could still be raped by their husbands, legally. Fathers and husbands beat women up and down the country, girls were thrown into institutions if they became 'wayward' or pregnant. They were refused jobs and treated as lesser citizens and serfs by men. She would tell you that she's glad that times have changed. But joking about things that happened to women on a fairly regular basis would be like joking with a black person about the days when they could be owned by their white masters and given as gifts to one another to be molested raped, beaten or killed on a white man's whim. There are just some things, that are so horrible, so deeply and importantly wrong, that to joke about them, crosses the line. In short... you're being a dick.
There was a bit of a interweb storm today about an online 'lad's mag' who posted a story that appeared to condone rape, as the odds were in favour of a rape going unreported.
One tweeter quoted the website's founder Alex Partridge's Facebook status from earlier in the year
The site 'apologised' for the article on twitter and Facebook , but has yet to post an apology on the main site. The apology is somewhat of a non-event when you examine the content of the rest of the website. A quick twitter search will dig up quite a few dodgy articles, an unusual amount focused on rape, sexual assault and rough and violent sexual encounters with women. Then there are the comments from Facebook fans under the apology. Calls for feminists, complainants and anyone who doesn't like the article to be beaten, raped or in some cases strangled. Now I don't believe that the majority of these comments are serious but there's the odd one like...
"I'd say rape only happens because wenches can't handle the banter...but I got in trouble for that before haha"
That make me worry. A recent article in Jezebel highlighted the worrying correlation between the comments in well known lads mags and those of convicted rapists.
The thing is, when you joke about rape... how can you be sure the person you’re talking to hasn’t been raped? You have a one in four chance that the person you’re speaking to is reliving the worst memory of their life. All because you are so far removed from the experience that you think it's funny. It's abstract to you because you can't imagine how awful it would be. People who are raped don't make jokes about it. Children who are abused don't laugh about it afterward. They never, ever get over it and if you're thinking your right to freedom of speech, trumps their right not to have to relive the horror of someone forcing sexual violence upon them, then you're wrong. End of story
You're just wrong.
Some people think that there isn't a need for feminists, just decent human beings. And there's certainly an argument for that, but so many people call themselves decent human beings while at the same time discriminating against other people based on their gender without even a twinge of conscience. Many of the commenter's under that Facebook post consider themselves right-minded individuals just having a bit of a laugh or 'banter'. They would probably even baulk at racism, some at homophobia, ironically. But when it comes to women, it's taken that because women in the west 'have it so good', it's a tongue and cheek, harmless laugh.
I wasn't born a feminist. Shit like this made me one. When I realised it was OK to treat me differently because I have a vagina, when I realised that half the planet was treated less human than the other because of their gender, when I realised that people my age and younger, not just some old school grandpas who were set in their ways, talked about women like they were fuckable living dolls... I realised I was a feminist and so will always be.
Update: The UniLad site is down for 'maintenance'. Rumour has it William Hill bookies have withdrawn sponsorship. Result! Can I get a chest bump??
Another Update: The story just got Huffpo'd! Hollah!
4 comments:
Hear hear!
Ahthankyou!
Great post. That Jezebel story is scary as. ALL the quotes they mentioned sounded like they were from rapists.
That article was probably ne of the scariest I'd read on this topic. And it genuinely drives the point home, that 'banter' isn't just shit some blokes say... at least some of them are acting on it. What really depresses me is the girls defending it like deluded little lap dogs...
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