No, Nicole — it’s from this article and from your comments to me about it. The title itself is unbelievably condescending. “Speak up at the time” — wow, I hadn’t thought of that before, but now that you mention it, I will! And even though you’ve conceded that Cuomo had a reputation for nastiness, and it probably would have been difficult to stand up to him in the moment without paying a huge price for that, you’ve still used his picture as your story image, which conveys that you actually do believe the women who have accused him should have done so at the time, no matter the cost to them.
You said in comment to me, “So many feminists immediately default to the worst case scenario and cite the hashtag where women got smacked down or worse for standing up to male power.” As if that were a stupid and weak thing to do, to interface with the very real potential for serious repercussions based on the evidence available to us that it happens and happens a lot, even if it doesn’t happen every single time. Sharks don’t attack every single person that they encounter, but if a shark swam up to you, you’d have some fear, right? Right?
“Grow some labia” is the equivalent of “grow some balls.” You picked that phrase for that exact reason, and yet that’s a social Darwinist phrase, in other words a patriarchal phrase. It’s a “stop being so pathetic and weak” phrase, which is shaming and victim-blaming. You are essentially exorting women not to challenge patriarchy but to try to “win” by its rules. No thanks!
Your belief that naming what has actually taken place is playing the victim is another page out of the patriarchal dominance hierarchy. The WHO says that 1/3 of women world-wide have been subject to violence, including sexual violence. That’s a statement of data/fact. Sure, it means that 2/3 have not been, but do you really want to take the position that we shouldn’t discuss how to improve life for over a Billion women? Or shall we blame them for that instead?
Saying, “I’ve been hurt and I’m not going to stand for it any longer ” is a brave and empowered thing to do. It’s the only way that positive change has ever taken place — ever. It’s not weak or whining. You are so, so steeped in patriarchal dominance hierarchy thinking that it kind of takes me aback at times. You’ll say something like, “I’m not judging anyone. Good reasons abound why one might not speak up at the time, and Andrew Cuomo is Exhibit A” but then you turn around and tell me I’m taking a victimhood stance by pointing out that it is quite often very risky and very costly to speak up for women and that we have ample evidence of that. You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time, but the one that I hear loud and clear is the one that wants to live in how you’d like to imagine the world to be rather than to deal with the way that it is. You’ve never had a serious fall-out to setting boundaries so it must not really be happening all that much in real life??? That’s not exactly the scientific method, now is it?
Women get killed for rebuffing men’s advances or telling them to stop. How are we necessarily supposed to know whether this time is one of those, or one where the guy will do as requested and just let it go? Sometimes you can reasonably assume it will be fine, but a lot of the time, who knows? It’s rolling the dice. How is a woman to know which one is which? Why don’t you focus on that?
Tiarah Poyau was a 22-year-old graduate student and aspiring accountant when she told a man at a dance party to “get off” after he started to grind on her. His response was to shoot her in the face.
Iowa college student Mollie Tibbets was killed by a man she told to leave her alone when he approached her while she was jogging.
A Detroit mother of three was killed because she refused to give a stranger her phone number.
A New York woman had her neck slashed when she declined her attacker’s offer for a date.
Sure, those things don’t happen to every woman who tells a guy “No, get off me” but they do happen. Not every woman who complains to HR gets marginalized or fired, but it happens to a lot of them. You’ve said, “Don’t put yourself in danger,” but given no criteria for how someone is to know when it’s likely to be dangerous or not. This is a major part of my beef with what you’ve written. You haven’t offered anything that would assist a woman to be better able challenge this behavior other than to tell her to stop being so weak and pathetic while giving lip-service to the idea that it can be dangerous to do so.
I challenge both women and men to push themselves out of their culturally imposed comfort zones every day and I never blame men as a gender, I blame the society that taught them to act that way, although sometimes people are assholes all on their own, including men. Why isn’t that OK to state that when it’s true and readily apparent? Why isn’t it OK to name factual instances of when someone has been harmed? Pretending it isn’t happening isn’t what makes it go away. Engaging in the patriarchal game of never showing any vulnerability or need or fear doesn’t make you inspirational. It makes you a part of the problem because you are upholding the same destructive system.
I’ve never once said anything about not being self-responsible. In fact, that’s a trait that I think is really valuable but the way that you are using that concept is out of line with the reality of how far it can truly take you in a dominance hierarchy. Do you also tell Black people that they’d never experience racism if they just stood up for themselves more proactively? Puhleeze…..
What if your title had been, “Here’s how to stand up for yourself more often when men get handsy” or something like that? What if you then went on to say the things you did which acknowledge that a guy like Cuomo would be hard to stand up to, but then talked about how we can help to create a culture where guys like him are less tolerated, both by setting better boundaries with men, and also teaching young men that it’s not OK to act like that? What if you had given concrete suggestions for how to reasonably know when it’s safe for a woman to stand up for herself? If you’d done any of those things, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because I’d be right there on-board with you.
You’re right that this was a more compassionate story in many respects than some you’ve written but based on the condescending title and the other things I’ve just named in the paragraph above, plus all the patriarchal victim-blaming, refusing to deal with the realities things you’ve said to me in our conversation so far, that is what I’ve based my response on.
I don’t know what value, if any, there is to continuing this discussion. I doubt we are going to materially change each other’s perspective. I’ve kind of said all I want to, although you are certainly welcome to reply. I’m not sure if I will or not.
