Fucking harden up, blokes, and get your shit together.

A very nice male friend posted this on facebook tonight:

It occurs to me that I have never ever had to consider the fact that at some point in my life I may be raped. It’s just so improbable that it would ever happen to me that it’s not worth considering.
The fact that around half the planet are confronted with that very real possibility blows my fucking mind.

I commented there (though I should have just gone straight here to my blog):

I sometimes think the only possible response is deep, dark depression, crippling anxiety, or manslaughter. I remember reading in Adam Gussow’s book ‘Seems like murder here’ a story about the song Crazy Blues. In the south, lynching and violence were so common, black lives so curtailed and repressed, that ‘going crazy’ was sometimes the only response – a young man or women would ‘go crazy’ and talk back, hit back to a white assailant, triggering a horrific violence for themselves and family. Because they just couldn’t stand it any more.

When I think about the awful shit that that men do to women and children every single day, I get so angry. I get so angry I can’t even move. Because if I didn’t get that angry, I’d fall into a pit of depression and never get out.

I think that this is the truly unbelievable thing: that women deal with the constant threat of violence, the constant sexual harassment and bullying, the absolute curtailment of our careers, our physical liberty, our creative lives, and we just continue on. When you think of this, eating disorders and self-harm seem the only real way to gain control of your own body and life. The other amazing thing is that women don’t end up hating men. But of course we don’t, we’re trained to blame ourselves and hate ourselves instead. So maybe it’s even more amazing that feminists don’t just hate all men.

This is why men don’t need more male role models to improve their behaviour. They need to look at the women who do get up every day and go to work or become leaders or raise families, and think “I want to be like her, because she did all this despite the daily threat of rape and violence.” They need to look at women in our lindy hop scene, and think, ‘Holy fuck. She’s standing up there on stage DJing, singing, judging, teaching, organising, drawing attention and making herself visible, and she knows there are men out there in the crowd who are thinking about raping her, and she does it anyway, because fuck. A life lived in fear is a fucking waste and fuck that shit.’

Me, especially now I’m older, I’m both burning with rage, and also deeply patient and prepared to do most anything to fix shit. This is why I don’t give second chances to sexual harassers in my lindy hop scene, this is why I call out fuckwit men who make sexist jokes, this is why I am prepared to stand up and call BULLSHIT on event organisers who don’t have sexual harassment policies and don’t hire women DJs, this is why I have no fucking patience for whingey arse men who sook about not getting their own way in the lindy hop world. Compared to the way I worry about my own safety every day in my own home, some arsehole man giving me shit on the internet is nothing. NOTHING. I’m here to make things harder for them, and easier for women. Straight up: I am a pain in the patriarchy’s arse. Because I am so fucking done with this shit.

What I don’t understand is how a man can like a woman (any woman!) just even a little bit, and not step up and do whatever he can to make her life better for her. Why don’t men tell men around them to quit groping women, to stop the stupid sexist jokes? If I can do this, with that fear of violence, how fucking slack are the men in our world, that they can’t overcome the inertia of their own privilege to speak up for me and for other women and girls? What the actual fuck are they doing with their time?
I’m still really angry and disappointed in my male friends that I have to confront a man to tell him to stop groping women. I have to risk him threatening me in public. I have to risk him coming after me when I’m alone. I have to choose to look over my shoulder at dance events forever. When the men who would be risking so much less won’t even come and stand next to me when I confront him because they are ‘too scared’!

One of the things I’ve learnt about stepping up is that I’m actually fucking brave and fucking fierce. Sure, I’m more visible, and I may be increasing my risks. I sure as fuck risk my professional reputation, because stepping up actually loses me teaching and DJing gigs. But FUCK it. I’m really tired of being careful. I’ve decided to be a pain in the arse. Because yolo. I’m a middle class white woman, and I have a degree of power. It’s my responsibility to use it. And it makes me fucking strong, and fucking fierce. I have to remember that the next time a scary guy tries to touch me on the train. I can fuck his shit up if I need to.

It’s at moments like this that I get far, far angrier at the men I know who don’t assault women, but are also NOT taking half the risks women take every day, to stand up, and get fucking useful. Wearing a stupid white ribbon on your shirt doesn’t make a man a useful ally against violence. Standing up and getting in the way makes a man a useful ally. Speaking up and interrupting yet another sexist joke makes a man an ally. Learning to follow makes a man an ally. Shutting up and letting a woman speak makes a man an ally.

Jesus christ. It’s not that hard. Fucking harden up, blokes, and get your shit together.