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As the conversation about appropriate behavior at conventions and the like continues, it's time for the next square on our bingo card:
"I'm sorry we're not all SAINTS like you!"
"I'm sorry we're not all SAINTS like you!"
This is one of my favorite bullshit deflections, because it puts the blame on the people who DIDN'T sexually harass their peers. We were SAINTS! How dare we hold anyone else to our standards?
Well, some of us graduated kindergarten, you see.
Well, some of us graduated kindergarten, you see.
It's not that the people who aren't being called out right now are SAINTS. It's not that we've never had a sexual thought about someone it was inappropriate to pursue, or wanted to make a crass comment at a bad moment.
It's not that we've never been on a panel next to a guy who had been running roughshod over everyone else for half an hour, not letting anyone else get a word in edgewise, and suddenly been seized by the nigh-overwhelming urge to lean over and honk his dick like a bike horn.
It's that we actually PAID ATTENTION when our early childhood teachers said "no means no, everyone gets their turn, no biting, no hitting, no one else's body is yours to use."
Learning how to understand and respect basic boundaries is not sainthood. But assuming that everyone who can manage it thinks they're somehow better than you because you can't is...is...yeah, okay, is totally fair.
I LIKE girls. I think they're pretty and soft and nice, and I like touching them, and I like looking at them, and I like dating them. And because I am a girl, I am often given access to places FULL of girls.
My life is an endless girl buffet. And excepting a few possible incidents when I was a clueless teenager at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I have managed to reach the age of forty without sexually harassing ANY girls.
Do I think this makes me better than you, forty-five year old man who tried to put a twenty-year-old girl in your lap yesterday? Yeah, actually, I do. Sorry-not-sorry about that.
I am not a saint. I don't claim to be. I claim to be someone who works hard every day to be a decent person, even and especially when it's not easy.
Maybe you should try it. You'd have to apologize less.
Maybe you should try it. You'd have to apologize less.
And part of the issue with this line of reasoning is that if I, and everyone else who ISN'T a creepy asshole, am a saint, who never gets these feelings or urges, well, then, of course I didn't give in. I couldn't!
It normalizes the idea that ANYONE who found that girl attractive would have creeped on her, ANYONE who found that guy tempting would have given in to temptation, ANYONE who wanted to fuck a stranger would have asked them what was in their pants.
The only reason the rest of us didn't do it is because we're boring SAINTS, barely human, not worth worrying about. (And not because we're asexual. Ace people can be as sleazy and abusive as anyone else.)
Splitting things into "normal people and saints" distracts from the actual divide, which is "normal people and creeps." Actions only count if they're choices. An erection is not a choice. Acting on an erection is.
