Thinking about 20somethings revealing 30somethings seduction attempts when they were teens.

I'll begin by saying the first rape narratives I heard were about war. But I also knew women who fought in wars, so I didn't have an automatic idea of female victimhood.

My issue was malaise over the victimhood of humanity as an whole, nothing matters, & what if it did(?)

I digress.

I want to generally apologise to all the women whose rape stories I heard & quietly thought, "Idiot."

I failed to understand all the implications. In a world where male attention is the apex, rape, even though terrible is attention.

Where everyone's cup is determined by attractiveness to someone (hierarchical scale), there is less gender & more exploiter & victim.

Slowly the US & hence the world has come to learn about, "the talk", the discussion black parents have with their children about how to respond to the police specifically & white men generally.

I was on the receiving end of a number of similar talks. They were never set aside moments, embuded with life or death drama. Rather simple suggestions around expectations, behaviour, & my rights to feel safe at all times & to make that happen.

It wasn't only a father daughter thing. I can think f an uncle teaching me a couple of choke holds, a friend sparing with me one afternoon & casually mentioning that all men wait for sex imagining it will fulfill everything.

Some figure out it doesn't others never realise this & think they just need to find the right woman –beware this group (I'm really editing this).

None of them held back on physical tactics & options of resistance.

Twice I've put these to use -both late at night when I looked alone & harmless.

Why did I look harmless?

For the same reason Enmitt Till, a child, & George Floyd or Rodney King, big men, seemed harmless to their perpetrators:

Their individual positions was civilly & legally disadvantaged.

The watershed has been understanding this (again), even if unconsciously & moving together & bringing in adjacent (environmental, lgbtq+, poverty, &c) activists.

This is the primary reason it's so important to go out every day, but also begin to craft broad platform/exchange ideas.

But for daughters – fathers of daughters, uncles, brothers, friends, lovers you have a special task.

The time has come for your "daughter talk". Not about morality or sex but their integral personhood, physical space, right to refuse, ..just keep adding on.

They need to hear this from men. They need to hear this from everyone.

They need to be able to share. And parents need to be in the loop of their kid's lives.

Jayzus, how is it anyone needs to say this?!?

And women, start a broader movement than "Karen & Hollywood Karen needs better rights".

Do that thing you're so awesome with doing for everyone else for your Moms, your daughters, your friends, & YOURSELF.

Get out in the street, chant, make a mess of the society that made you accountable for all behaviour towards you & powerless against it.

RIOT GRRLS! o/