No, really, I'm fine.
Jealous of the fact that my Hub has the day off, hence giving him a four-day weekend (why didn't I think of that?) for the holiday, jealous of a friend of mine who is getting free lunch and probably getting to sneak out of work early 9[rant re: our company president deleted just in case]), jealous of friend's boyfriend who has recently upgraded jobs so that now he's working in a field that he really wants to, in a gorgeous company. Generally angry at the high percentage of idiots at our company at the moment, all of whom seem to want me to do their job for them.
But really, really what's ticked me off today is this:
A teenage girl who claims she was gang raped by three 13-year-old schoolboys was overweight and would have been “glad of the attention”, a barrister told a jury.
The 16-year-old and her friend told a court the boys mugged them for their phones then raped them repeatedly in a park while filming the ordeal on a mobile.
But lawyer Sheilagh Davies, acting for one of the defendants, said the girls consented to sex “maybe to gain attention, maybe to gain affection”.
...
...
...
ARE YOU FUCKING WELL KIDDING ME???
I have no words. Seriously. It already infuriates me to hear the "it's the woman's fault for being attractive/dressing 'provocatively'/acting such and such a way" reasoning for rape, but to a certain extent (and yes, this is just sad) I'm used to it. Taking it a step further and indicating that because the girl was fat, it indicates consent for being gang-banged by THREE THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS?
Sweet Jesus. I am so angry right now. This is so far over the line, we can't even see the damn line anymore. This is a defense lawyer looking out at the jury, assuming that none of them would want to fuck a fat girl, assuming that they think that no other guy would want to fuck a fat girl, and thus because this girl didn't meet their personal standards of fuckability that somehow creates doubt that she was raped. Clearly, a fat chick is lucky to have anyone willing to have sex with her at all, even the rat-bastard little shits who just mugged her for her cell phone, so really, when the chance came up she jumped all over that.
I continue to be baffled by the fact that people still think that rape has something to do with sex appeal, that it somehow occurs because the rapist finds his victim attractive, that a guy can't get an erection if the chick isn't hot. And hey, what guy hasn't been frustrated by not having the chance to fuck someone he found desperately attractive? It's soooo understandable, isn't it?
No. It's fucking well not.
Rape has been used since time immemorial to prove mastery over conquered foes and slaves and pretty much anyone that the rapists felt needed to be put in their place. Rape is not about sex. Rape is not flattering. Rape is about proving that someone is powerful, and someone else is not; that one person can force another person to share their very body, and thus prove in a physical way that the other person is lesser, weaker, smaller, that the rapist is bigger, more powerful, more important.
And for the record: yes, being fat can put a certain crimp in one's social life, but I hardly think that leads directly to the assumption that a fat woman would be grateful to be raped. This is like thinking "wow, nobody has hugged me in a long time; sure, it's okay if you hit me in the face!" or "gee, I haven't gotten a present in a long time; hey, it's okay if you rob my apartment!" Just plain does not fucking compute.
Lately, this concept of "fuckability" has been preying on my mind. From Leonard Nimoy's artistic photographs of nude obese women (that one's actually a good thing; good for you, Len!), to this WaPo article demonstrating just how bad for your feet those sexy high heels are, to the new idiocy sweeping the suburbs: all-female pole-dancing parties, to the bizarre concept of the "sports corset" (seriously, WHAT?), to that completely whackjob ad for breast implants implying, somehow, that big boobs = brains, to Joss Whedon's awesome rant linking the new film Captivity to the "honor killing" stoning death of a woman in Iraq, to this thoughtful article on the Girls Gone Wild phenomenon and why a display of female sexuality is seen as more important than the actual experience of sexual pleasure for the females in question.
I haven't yet read Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body by Courtney E. Martin, but I read the excerpt from it on Alternet, and it hit me like a sledgehammer: the shit I went through, the desperate desire for acceptance that drove me alternately to work my ass off to become perfect and to despair and give up-- it's not just me. I'm not alone in this.
And then I read the comments on Alternet, which started with a guy bemoaning the fact that MORE women didn't starve themselves, in order to make it so that there are more women out there that he finds fuckable, and I kind of snapped. It went right back, in my head, to the Dove campaign with the regular-gal models that so many people (mostly men) reacted to with disgust, not having it ever enter their little heads that a company that advertises to a female demographic may not have male preference in visual fodder in mind when creating an advertising campaign.
I'm just... what the hell? Seriously, this is insane. I keep looking at the whole loop, thinking that somehow it's all turned into a situation where it isn't enough to be conventionally attractive, or reasonably trim; there was an article up in the New Yorker a few months ago (alas, they have it behind their damn wall) about how the thing that's in now isn't chiseled abs-- it's chiseled COLLARBONES. And they don't mean just having the little divots at the top show up, either-- they mean having the whole fucking collarbone stick out. IT'S A BONE, PEOPLE. A BONE. ON A PERSON. THOSE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SHOW. OH MY HOLY HECK.
Here's the part where my brain breaks: taking all this together, women are sexy if they're a) putting their sexuality on display and b) skinny enough to have "chiseled collarbones". And since they're sexy, they're "asking for it" in the case of rape. The rest of us, without chiseled collarbones, are fat, and, being fat, are apparently desperate enough for love that we won't mind being raped.
I really hate this world sometimes.
But really, really what's ticked me off today is this:
A teenage girl who claims she was gang raped by three 13-year-old schoolboys was overweight and would have been “glad of the attention”, a barrister told a jury.
The 16-year-old and her friend told a court the boys mugged them for their phones then raped them repeatedly in a park while filming the ordeal on a mobile.
But lawyer Sheilagh Davies, acting for one of the defendants, said the girls consented to sex “maybe to gain attention, maybe to gain affection”.
...
...
...
ARE YOU FUCKING WELL KIDDING ME???
I have no words. Seriously. It already infuriates me to hear the "it's the woman's fault for being attractive/dressing 'provocatively'/acting such and such a way" reasoning for rape, but to a certain extent (and yes, this is just sad) I'm used to it. Taking it a step further and indicating that because the girl was fat, it indicates consent for being gang-banged by THREE THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS?
Sweet Jesus. I am so angry right now. This is so far over the line, we can't even see the damn line anymore. This is a defense lawyer looking out at the jury, assuming that none of them would want to fuck a fat girl, assuming that they think that no other guy would want to fuck a fat girl, and thus because this girl didn't meet their personal standards of fuckability that somehow creates doubt that she was raped. Clearly, a fat chick is lucky to have anyone willing to have sex with her at all, even the rat-bastard little shits who just mugged her for her cell phone, so really, when the chance came up she jumped all over that.
I continue to be baffled by the fact that people still think that rape has something to do with sex appeal, that it somehow occurs because the rapist finds his victim attractive, that a guy can't get an erection if the chick isn't hot. And hey, what guy hasn't been frustrated by not having the chance to fuck someone he found desperately attractive? It's soooo understandable, isn't it?
No. It's fucking well not.
Rape has been used since time immemorial to prove mastery over conquered foes and slaves and pretty much anyone that the rapists felt needed to be put in their place. Rape is not about sex. Rape is not flattering. Rape is about proving that someone is powerful, and someone else is not; that one person can force another person to share their very body, and thus prove in a physical way that the other person is lesser, weaker, smaller, that the rapist is bigger, more powerful, more important.
And for the record: yes, being fat can put a certain crimp in one's social life, but I hardly think that leads directly to the assumption that a fat woman would be grateful to be raped. This is like thinking "wow, nobody has hugged me in a long time; sure, it's okay if you hit me in the face!" or "gee, I haven't gotten a present in a long time; hey, it's okay if you rob my apartment!" Just plain does not fucking compute.
Lately, this concept of "fuckability" has been preying on my mind. From Leonard Nimoy's artistic photographs of nude obese women (that one's actually a good thing; good for you, Len!), to this WaPo article demonstrating just how bad for your feet those sexy high heels are, to the new idiocy sweeping the suburbs: all-female pole-dancing parties, to the bizarre concept of the "sports corset" (seriously, WHAT?), to that completely whackjob ad for breast implants implying, somehow, that big boobs = brains, to Joss Whedon's awesome rant linking the new film Captivity to the "honor killing" stoning death of a woman in Iraq, to this thoughtful article on the Girls Gone Wild phenomenon and why a display of female sexuality is seen as more important than the actual experience of sexual pleasure for the females in question.
I haven't yet read Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body by Courtney E. Martin, but I read the excerpt from it on Alternet, and it hit me like a sledgehammer: the shit I went through, the desperate desire for acceptance that drove me alternately to work my ass off to become perfect and to despair and give up-- it's not just me. I'm not alone in this.
And then I read the comments on Alternet, which started with a guy bemoaning the fact that MORE women didn't starve themselves, in order to make it so that there are more women out there that he finds fuckable, and I kind of snapped. It went right back, in my head, to the Dove campaign with the regular-gal models that so many people (mostly men) reacted to with disgust, not having it ever enter their little heads that a company that advertises to a female demographic may not have male preference in visual fodder in mind when creating an advertising campaign.
I'm just... what the hell? Seriously, this is insane. I keep looking at the whole loop, thinking that somehow it's all turned into a situation where it isn't enough to be conventionally attractive, or reasonably trim; there was an article up in the New Yorker a few months ago (alas, they have it behind their damn wall) about how the thing that's in now isn't chiseled abs-- it's chiseled COLLARBONES. And they don't mean just having the little divots at the top show up, either-- they mean having the whole fucking collarbone stick out. IT'S A BONE, PEOPLE. A BONE. ON A PERSON. THOSE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SHOW. OH MY HOLY HECK.
Here's the part where my brain breaks: taking all this together, women are sexy if they're a) putting their sexuality on display and b) skinny enough to have "chiseled collarbones". And since they're sexy, they're "asking for it" in the case of rape. The rest of us, without chiseled collarbones, are fat, and, being fat, are apparently desperate enough for love that we won't mind being raped.
I really hate this world sometimes.
posted by Meg at
11:51 AM
1 Comments:
You rock girl... WHAT A WONDERFUL RANT.... totally behind you 100%. And so true, this world does suck alot, but hey, we are part of it, and must make the most of it while we are here. If you can do something to change the situation, go for it, otherwise chin up...there are just so many bad and sad situations happening all the time, it is impossible to get one's head around it. Try to enjoy life. Have a wonderful weekend.
By
Chris H, at 3:54 PM
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