Telling women to "grow some labia" is shaming them for not being as strong as you think they should be. And here's what you said about the freeze response: "The guy with his hand on your ass isn’t quite the same as the guy who’s just shoved you up against the wall with his knee between your legs." Yes, neurobiologically, sometimes it is. It depends on a lot of factors, and you don't get to choose which ones of those are legitimate or not for someone else.

Women telling their real stories of what actually happened to them is not creating disempowerment - my god woman, it's the complete opposite of that! It's taking back the power by standing together to heal and demand change. You really think that pretending this isn't a serious problem is what will make that real? If so, you truly are like the friends of my acquaintance innoculating themselves against fear by pretending that nothing bad could ever happen to them.

I have a sociology background and I look at things through that lens - not only a one-on-one interpersonal lens. Patriarchy is a dominance hierarchy. When it first arose as a social system 6-9 K years ago, that's when social stratification and classes emerged for the first time. It's when the community stopped caring for all of it's members as a survival strategy and a type of feudal system arose where the most ruthless wins and where that is still to this day looked at as a leadership skill. This is what patriarchy actually is in a nutshell - not just a historic power differential between men and women, but a dominance based hierarchy where the most ruthless man is seen as a leader in a social stratification that is established and maintained by bullying and violence. The outcroppings of this are racism, homophobis, sexual harassment, etc. as well as plain old everyday bullying.

Sexual harassment is a power move. It's a way to demonstrate to women that they may be in the office too, but they are still lower on the patriarchal pyramid. "I'm the man here, and women aren't authority figures, they are for sex." That's the message - although it's subconscious. Attraction may play into that, but it's not about attraction primarily, it's about power so pretending that vying for or exerting power isn't part of the equation is leaving out a big piece of the puzzle.

The point is, every thing about our social system is infused with this zero-sum outlook. We are all constantly comparing ourselves to the other person in any interaction. Who is the one-up and who is th one-down because in a patriarchal dominance hierarchy, somebody has to lose in order for somebody else to win. This is all going on subconsciously, but we are always asking ourselves, "Who's got more social clout of the two of us, who's got a nicer car, who's prettier, who's stronger, etc, etc." As I said before, one of the "rules" of this hierarchy is that those with more social power have the right to abuse those with less, who are expected to take it with grace. That's why so much push back to the BLM protests. They aren't taking their abuse with grace so they are seen as out of line.

And the same sociological dynamics are still in play as there are for women reporting rapes -where very often they are the ones who are revictimized by the system because claiming harm challenges the dynamics of the tacitly agreed social system to do so. That doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to empower and encourage women to report rapes right away, but it does mean that we should interface with the realities we have right now and not the ideal situations we wish we had to work with.

I've already said that I agree that it's great to encourage women to speak up for themselves, right away, in the moment, as much as possible. My objection is to your "what's wrong with you, you're so weak" tone as well as your complete disregard for the power dynamics inherent in our culture. We should continue to try to create awareness around those and not to indoctrinate either girls or boys into them as they grow up, but that isn't the world we live in right now. And that's the only world we truly have to work with. Just as BLM protests are vilified for challenging the status quo, there is a lot of misogyny that flares any time women challenge the dominance hierarchy. We still need to challenge it, but not by looking down on women who haven't done so in the way that we think they "should have" - from afar without even knowing any of the actual details.

The women who are agreeing with you are also innoculating themselves against fear by pretending it could never happen to them, and telling themselves they would be tough if it did. And maybe some of them have had actual experiences where they did just as you've said, but jumping on your bandwagon is still a way to shame and Other the ones who for whatever reasons did not - to act like something is wrong with you, the victim, if you didn't. That's not empowering. "What's wrong with you that you couldn't just do better?" is not a supportive or empowering question. It's the ultimate victim-blaming fantasy land and it's not really helping anyone or anything.

I really think you could do a lot of good if you dropped the "grow some labia" rhetoric and took the time to educate yourself more thoroughly, by reading what experts in this field have to say about what is actually taking place in these situations so that you could help women actually learn how to navigate them in a more empowered way. As I said before, "What's wrong with you that you are so weak" is really just more patriarchy, it's more social Darwinism that fosters and continues a culture where ruthlessness is looked upon as a leadership skill.