Feminists

Man I gotta catch up on my blogs.

I never knew much about feminism until I joined tumblr, and I began to see all the articles, videos, and testimonies of women being treated in such shocking ways. What was more shocking was the men reacting to the women trying to bring light to the subject. Men laugh, make fun of women for complaining, blame women for being sensitive or over-reacting, and treating the issues like they're no big deal.

Honestly the more I see the more scared I become. I already had relationship scars I was healing from, and when I began to see how a lot of boys think about these things it just scares me even more that I'm never going to be safe or respected in certain areas. 

The amount of harassment boys do in texting and in online messaging is seriously frightening to me, that boys think they can talk to girls like this, that they think it's normal.

This is part of the world we live in.

Rape culture is another thing that became more evident to me through articles and testimonies on tumblr. How often women are blamed for rape. You shouldn't've been walking alone, you shouldn't've been wearing that, you shouldn't've lead him on, and so on. Women are objectified and blamed by men constantly, and it's practically taught to them by our society. Women are just objects to decorate a man, to please a man, for a man to look at as he sees fit, for a man to satisfy his needs with despite what she feels about it. 

Women who bring attention to these issues online get death and rape threats from men online. Women in the gaming community are horribly discriminated against and harassed just for being girls playing video games, or they're made fun of as being "fake" gamers. In one instance a bunch of online men harassed and threw insults at an image of a girl wearing a Star Wars parody shirt and how she probably didn't know anything about Star Wars, and the girl was the actress who played Leia.

Now, men, I'm not trying to attack you with this blog post. I know there are good men out there in the world, and good men here at HU. Just know that these are the kinds of things girls have to face, in some places more than others, and it scares us that in some areas we can't even go outside without being covered head to toe and amongst friends if we don't want to get raped and blamed for it.

I'll end with this video, some of you may have seen it already:

You might think there's no harm in what's taking place, but I'd be lying if I said this doesn't terrify me. If I had to walk through a city and deal with that treatment everyday I would fear for the day one of these men would decide to take it a step further, the day the harassment would escalate. The fact it even happens would make me so very uncomfortable, the fact a man is coming at me with intent to get in my pants and the fact he may be thinking about it in that very moment is disgusting and repulsive to me, and it scares me.