(no subject)

It is more than a little well known that I do not consider myself to be a feminist. While women, on the basis of their gender, can get the short end of the stick on many things, I have also seen hundreds of situations where men have had the same thing happen to them. I don't want equal rights for women. I want them for everyone. Everyone else is more than welcome to label themselves as they see fit, this is just how I view the issue.

That being said, I'm a bit irked by something I saw while journal-hopping. I had spring-boarded to someone's personal journal from a pagan community, interestingly enough, in which a debate was taking place about the use of the words 'womon', 'womyn' and 'gyrl' to replace the properly spelled words because of negative implications the words may hold. That's a load of bollocks I'm not going to get into at the moment because, quite simply, I don't have the energy for it. However, you can make note that I think that practice is utterly ridiculous for a number of reasons.

In this person's journal, they were discussing their experiences at Womongathering and how wonderful of a time they had in such a safe space.

Buh?

Safe space? What the crap is that?

Reading on, I discovered that 'safe space' was a term that described a place where no men were allowed, by virtue of having a penis, and women would finally be able to feel secure because of the lack of penises in the surrounding scenery. This is a concept that truly boggles my brain.

If you want to hang out with a thousand other women, all half-naked and menstruating freely, fine. Great. Have a fucking ball. Sit around, eat nasty-ass vegetarian food and talk about how your mother never loved you and how you strive too hard to please your uncaring father. Get all googly-eyed about some vague concept of universal sisterhood. Lovely. You can even have a drum circle, if you wish.

But, when you start throwing around terms like 'safe space', I'm going to wish I could throw a brick right at your throat. 'Safe space' implies that women are, as a gender, completely helpless and constantly preyed upon by insidious men. Using that term makes the user appear to believe that men are simply libido-driven knuckle-draggers who want nothing more but to leer, humilate, control, rape, and kill. The term 'safe safe' holds the connotation that it is something we, as women, need.

I don't know about any of you, but I have lived in some seriously nasty neighbourhoods. I've gone to sleep with gunshots peppering my dreams. I've watched news casts about serial rapists in my neighbourhood. I walked past construction sites and through parks at night time. Not once did I ever feel like men were out to get me and not once did I ever feel like prey.

Mind you, I've been harassed by men. I've been shouted at from cars, been asked out by rather aggressive complete strangers, had 'How're you doin', shortie?' said to me more times than I can count, and been mugged at knifepoint. I lost my virginity by force to a boyfriend who didn't understand the word, 'no'.

I don't think the men who did these things did them because they were misogynists. They committed those acts because they're assholes. They had no respect for anyone else on the face of the planet, regardless of gender. Human filth, plainly.

Did they hurt me? Some of them, yes. I have a particularly growl-inducing memory of being thrown in some thorn bushes after being mugged by some pony-tailed jerk, praying that he wouldn't discover my last fifteen dollars in my shirt pocket after I told him I had no money. The sticker bushes ripped the stockings I was wearing, my last good pair, and I wouldn't have the extra money to buy more for a long time. The forcible removal of my hymen is something that I'm not ever going to forget and now that I am older and stronger and smarter, if I were to ever see that guy again, he'd be lucky to come out of the situation with all of his body parts still intact and in working order.

Never, in any of these situations, did I ever feel like a victim. And that is what the use of terms like 'safe space' imply. That we are victims, plums ripe for the plucking, and that we are constantly threatened by the horrors that await us in the hands of men. This, above all else, sets back the notion of equality a few hundred years. You want to be equal? You've got to act equal. And cowering with one's head in the sand isn't the way to go about things.

Every time I've been hurt or harassed, I've fought back like hell. And I didn't allow myself to wither away and whine, like some flailing Victorian heroine, about how persecuted I was for having the misfortune of being born with a cunt.

Fuck that noise. I'm nobody's victim.

So, you can take this concept of 'safe space' and cram it in your goddamn ass, sister. I don't need it.