Was that a duck?

The following is cross-posted from the Damsel in de Tech blog. Click here to see the original.


Pop quiz! If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a __________.

Can you spot the duck?

Yup. Definitely a duck. Look at that perfect example of a duck. I've got my eye on you, duck. 

Uh... yeah. Still a duck. Just, like, with a nose job or something.

Ah, there we go. Back to the definitive duck-action.

Uh... heh. Ok, you got me. It's a goose. But geese are like ducks, so nice try. 

Ye-ah... ok, so it's a swan. Point taken. Still, it could break your arm if you went up to it and called it a duck, so it's up to the swan to differentiate itself from ducks.

Ok, that's just mean. Yes, it's a duck even if it has mobility issues and can't walk quite like other ducks. Geez.

Uh... that's a movie character. It's some dude dressed up as a duck with animatronics and stuff.

Now you're just being sarcastic.

Ok, ok, I get it. Some animals have duck-like qualities and are otherwise totally not duckish at all.

.... you don't have to be rude ....

What the... what end is the...

To break it down for the uninitiated, when talking about issues including sexual violence and victim-blaming, etc, often we hear the aforementioned justification of "if it looks like a duck." Insert for "duck" anything ranging from slut, whore, n*****, f**, etc.

As you can see, it's not even straight-forward to describe a duck. Is it the bill? Is it the feathers? The affinity for water? Are loons ducks? Are geese just a tall and lankey species ducks? Do all ducks quack?

When it comes to women and the label "slut" (as just one possible example), it's even more complicated. Women and girls are frequently labelled sluts for every manner of perceived indiscretion, from the length of their shorts or skirts, amount of skin shown, number of sexual partners they're perceived to have had (real or imagined, really doesn't matter when slut-shaming), how they carry themselves, their profession, their hairstyle, their makeup, their height, their weight, their breastsize, colour of their skin (racism and exoticism of women of colour is a huge factor), who they associate with and family makeup (if one of their friends or family members has been labelled a 'slut', so much easier to label them as such), if they're perceived as flirty (again - reality doesn't matter so much as perception), marital status, etc etc etc.

This isn't hyperbole. This is what women and girls and queer not non-gendery-binary persons experience. Anyone who declares that there is a solid definition of whom can reasonably be labelled with a slur against their sexuality and that the lines aren't easily blurred to envelope whomever the slur-slinger wants to slander, is either blissfully ignorant or a baldfaced liar.

And, even if one happens to fall under the so-broad-as-to-be-meaningless definitions of slut, what then? If you are saying that sluts get treated as such, then you must have some idea as to what that treatment entails. And, here's a hint, it often involves violence.

If you aren't saying that you are sanctioning sexual violence against any one of the myriad of persons who, at one point or another in their lives or the course of a week, could be called a slut, then you really need to think more deeply about your words and their implications. Words matter. Words have meaning. Words can make the difference between supporting survivors of sexual violence or of supporting rapists.

Please think about your words and their implications, because they matter.

This Past Week in Rape Culture

By: Liberate Zealot
Content Warning: Discussions and descriptions of rape, assault, and rape culture

It's been months since we got a comment on the Daniel Tosh and Rape posts, but this week another one showed up.  Invariably it was filled with rape apologism, and like a lot of the rape apologist comments related to this post, was full of information about how the commenter, or people they knew, were engaging in sexual assault (obviously not calling it such though).  I guess such people didn't like the realization that some feminists on the internet thought they, or their friends, where sexual assaulters.  Though why this commenter felt the need to describe the assault in detail for me I don't know.

Luckily it wasn't triggering, mainly I just despaired for humanity.  And if this hadn't been the 4th instance of rape culture knocking on my door than maybe I'd have deleted the comment and gone on my merry way and  DudeBro could think about the fascist feminists who obvi didn't let his post through because of how spot on it was.   But instead I'll be addressing it, and the other instances of rape culture.  Because this shit needs to be called out, and I'm tired of seeing myself and other anti-rape activists being called overly sensitive when in reality rape culture is all around us and everyone else is just inured from how prevalent it all is.

But, seriously, why can't we just shoot all the rapists?

The following is cross-posted from the Damsel in de Tech blog. Click here to see the original.


*CONTENT WARNING FOR DISCUSSIONS OF RAPE AND GUN VIOLENCE*

As a follow-up to the post "Kill all rapists!...", here are some practical considerations to take into account when trying to tell women that they all should arm themselves as a method of rape-prevention.

To start off, here are some quick groups that armament won't help, that I really don't think need any further clarification (or least I sincerely hope not):
- infants and children below the age that are legally able to carry firearms
- persons with disabilities that prevent them from being able to handle a firearm
- persons with mental health issues that would make possession of a firearm exceptionally unsafe and irresponsible

I hope we can agree that persons from those groups should not have to arm themselves. Unfortunately, those groups make up a large portion of the victims of sexual violence.

Next, there are some people who may not want to have firearms:
- pacifists who do not believe in responding with violence under any circumstances, including those whose religious beliefs dictate such
- parents who are afraid their young children may get a hold of their weapons
- persons with abusive partners that have not been able to move out and have reasonable fears around keeping weapons in the household
- persons who are not comfortable around guns due to a history of family violence, PTSD, having lost a loved one to gun violence, or any other of a million valid reasons

Now that we've got those groups out of the way, we'll assume that the advice of "carry a gun" is just being directed at this time towards women who are old enough to legally own and responsibly handle a firearm, who want to carry a firearm, and who can conceivably arm themselves at all times because of the particular gun laws where they live.

Let's say that I'm walking through an alley (I know, I know - why would I do that if I value my safety and vagina?) Let's just say that there's construction on the street and all foot-traffic is being diverted through the alley. Let's say I hear footsteps coming up quickly behind me.  I'm armed, I'm alarmed, and someone grabs my arm! I turn and fire off a bunch of shots into... a nun who was trying to return the wallet I dropped. Well, that was a justifiable homicide, right?

Ok, let's be more serious. Let's say that I'm on the subway and it's later at night, maybe around 8 or 9pm, and this far up on the line it's deserted except for me and a man who is staring at me. His stares are making me quite uncomfortable, so I try to keep myself occupied by reading Facebook on my phone. Then, I realize he's masturbating. Can I shoot him, yet? Do I have to wait to see if he approaches me? If I wait, am I just giving him signals that he's safe to assault me because he's already violated my boundaries and I haven't done anything about it?

How about I'm at a house party and a friend is drunk and being really overly friendly and handsy with me. She pulls me in for a kiss, even though I've been trying to keep her at bay all night. Do I shoot her now? Do I wait until she tries to stick her hand down my pants? And if she does, is that enough to shoot her? Or am I only supposed to be shooting men? And what if it's a woman sexually assaulting a man? Can he shoot her? Is this just the kind of protective violence we sanction in theory coming from straight ciswomen to straight cismen, or can people of any gender identity shoot anyone else who attacks them without concern for how the law sees them?

Let's say that I'm fast asleep in bed at home and I wake up and my husband of 20 years is having sex with me in my sleep? Can I casually reach over into the nightstand and grab my gun and shoot him? Do we run drills like we would fire drills so I can practice going throught the motions of shooting someone when suddenly woken up out of a dead sleep?

What if it's a Thursday afternoon and I'm catcalled on my way home from work? Can I shoot the catcaller in the face? I don't know if I ignore him or respond if he'll react with anger. I don't know if this interaction will escalate. I don't know if I'm in physical danger or if he just wants to spook and publicly humiliate me. How long do I have to wait to make sure?

What line has to be crossed before I get the go-ahead?

What threshold has to be met in order for me to shoot any of the people who make me sexually threatened in the course of a day or a week or a month or my lifetime?

Do I have to wait until it's "too late" and they've already penetrated me? How is carrying a gun then a prevention measure as opposed to a measure of vegeance and inhilliation afterthefact?

Does the advice of "carry a gun and shoot all rapists" have anything at all to do with a realistic notion of safety, or is it a gratifying way for people to feel like they're adding something constructive to the conversation without having to do any of the heavy-lifting of understanding how rape happens?

I don't know if the people who give the advice of "carry a gun and shoot all rapists" know how often women feel sexually threatened. The thing about sexual violence, is it's a part of a continuum of unwanted sexual behaviours, and we never know whether or to what degree it will escalate. That's not because we're not aware of our surroundings, or we're inexperienced, etc. It's because the degree of escalation is not up to us - it's up to the perpetrator.

Things like peeping, public masturbation, groping, breaking and entering, etc, can all be a pre-cursor to more extreme levels of sexual violence. Or the perpetrators may not escalate. The people they target do not know whether or not this will escalate, because we are not psychic.

If you really, sincerely think that giving a good number of the population access to and permission to use lethal weapons against people who they fear will rape them, then be prepared for a lot of bloodshed, because these transgressions against our physical boundaries happen to a lot of people on a regular basis.

Or, you can passing along some tangible, effective safety advice that can start working right now, today, towards reducing the instances of sexual violence, and that doesn't require people to kill each other.