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So, I'm going to tread cautiously into a space that, I ah, haven't done a good job in over the course of my life. It links back to the O6/GO WAP controversy from a few months ago. And it also tells the story of how romance writers made me a more compassionate person.
Trigger warnings: sexual abuse, trauma, rape. Please feel free to mute.
Also, for anyone who says trigger warnings are PC bullshit, it really means that you recognize what you're about to say could cause someone to re-experience renewed trauma.
Also, for anyone who says trigger warnings are PC bullshit, it really means that you recognize what you're about to say could cause someone to re-experience renewed trauma.
I'm not sure how best to approach this. There's a LOT of personal baggage with this that I've only been processing for a few months. A place to start is with @NickKristof's article the Children of Pornhub.
Kristof's article talks about the recurring abuse of children who were targeted and groomed, frequently by other children. 12 year old girls (and I'm focusing on girls at the moment) abused by 16 year old boys and that abuse being filmed. And shared.
These girls rarely get a chance to heal because the evidence of their abuse is always out there, being shared, downloaded, uploaded. Mocked and judged.
Some of these girls engage in risky behaviors bc they have not processed their trauma. And there are men who will gladly take advantage of that. Someday, dear Army, we are going to have to have the conversation about why so many men view having sx w someone unconscious as good
Again, note the language I just used. "having sex w/ someone unconscious" vs rape. Words matter. They tell us what we focus on and what we ignore. They help us define a situation (see yesterday's thread).
Sex w/ someone unconscious = "what did they expect?" Filming something - of course they should have expected it to be shared (sarcasm). I'm not surprising anyone with the "let's make her famous" move that (mostly) men have done when a relationship goes sideways.
The idea that she deserves to be shamed because "good girls" wouldn't have done this. Notice who we're talking about right now. She, her, her actions, her choices. Almost immediately, the person who shared/uploaded the videos is removed from the conversation.
She expected an act of intimacy but instead got betrayal. Why don't we talk about what it says about him that he would violate someone's trust by sharing that with the world?
But, hypothetically, back to the WAP in uniform controversy. There was a comment made that "put this around a bunch of infantrymen and bad things happen."
The idea that these girls were dancing to a video about WAP - I really don't need to spell it out, urban dictionary is your friend - let's think about WAP for who? Guess what? Even if they film a video for the whole world to see, that does not entitle the whole world to their WAP
And this is something I am ashamed to admit took me far too long into adulthood to grasp. Even if the entire world sees someone's WAP on display, that someone still gets to say yes or no to sex with every single person. And men have to get better at teaching other men this.
This is something deeply misunderstood in our culture. She was a whore, she couldn't have been raped. Well, if rape is about consent, then yes she could have. Just b/c she said yes to person a does not mean she says yes to person b.
And fundamentally, we as a culture do not grasp that. So when we say things like this is putting them at risk. At risk to who? People who do not fundamentally expect a woman to have control over who she has sex with. (again going with a gender binary here)
One thing the romance genre has taught me is that its filled with super smart (mostly) women who have a fundamentally different understanding about sex and agency than I did when I started writing it.
The idea that a woman who is able to say yes enthusiastically to sex is really quite revolutionary. The idea of a woman who is able to say yes to sex AND still be seen as a woman of value in all other areas of her life even more so.
I never understood this. I'm not proud of this fact but I spent my entire life in the Army and trying to be one of the guys. I never learned valued the women in my life for being women. I had to learn this.
And that meant learning that women with sexual agency are not dirty or unclean or disgusting. They're completely fucking normal. But I also recognize that there are vast swaths of this country where that is fundamentally not the cultural assumption.
And that also meant learning that just bc someone said yes to person a did not mean that person b gets to jump in without enthusiastic consent. that means that making a video does not mean they were asking for it. It does not mean they're "disgusting"
It means we as a society don't know what box to put a woman in who is a) a sexual creature and b) professional.
So instead of focusing on the women, let's shift our focus to the men who think it's okay to have sex with someone who is passed out. Let's talk about the men who think a girl who cheated on them deserves to have intimate pictures shared with the world forever and ever.
There was a post on here that talked about news headlines about women being murdered "because she" or "after she" did something and I can't find it but it was really eye opening. It frames women as causally responsible for men's behavior.
"a woman was raped after she posted a sexy online video" is a vastly different than "a man raped a woman because he didn't think she had the right say no because she posted a sexy video"
"A man choked his wife after she served him with divorce papers" - that headline communicates "well what did she expect"? Women who dare to no longer want a man in their lives should expect violence. that's what this communicates.