changeyourstars8

ficangel has one of the best posts I've seen about the whole mess and the slew of "OMG she soooo had it coming!!" bullshit that's sprung up around it.

It doesn't matter if you do your very damnedest to not be her, to be quiet, to be good, to not make a fuss, to be thin, to be chaste, to be a good mother, to keep a clean house, to not break a single one of the eggshells that you walk on every single day. It doesn't matter; it's not about you. If he's going to hit you (if he's already hit you), he's going to do it no matter what you do.

Most of you on my flist have been around long enough to know my general opinion on matters such as this. For those of you who are new--

I do not tolerate victim-blaming. EVER. If you read up on this story or others like it and your first instinct is to scoff about how she must've provoked him and he never would've done it if she hadn't been a slut/too mouthy/such a bitch; if your response is to say, "Well, I'm not trying to blame the victim, but" or if you think, "Well, she must be exaggerating"; if you believe Team Chris icons are cute and shirts saying "Rihanna deserved it" are funny . . . then kindly remove yourself from my flist. Thank you. ((I sincerely hope this didn't need to be said, but once in a while people surprise me.))

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Thanks for the link. And I should clarify (probably in the post as well) that the member of my flist was linking to the shirt to show how horrifying it was, not because she agreed.

Oh, I figured that! (largely because you didn't say 'an ex-member of my flist'. lol)

Post made because I had a conversation about a rape case unexpectedly turn into, "Well, I don't mean to blame the victim or anything, but sometimes clothing can send mixed signals. . ." a while back, and it's just like, if I'm going to get unpleasantly surprised again I'd rather it happen through a simple defriending than a huge rise in my Rage Level, y'know?

Yeah. I had to defriend someone a while ago. A guy I'd 'known' for, wow, YEARS due to online gaming. He'd been, you know, apparently a nice guy.

Then one day he asked me to explain feminism to him, because he didn't "See women having issues".

In about a month he started posting in LJ about... how girls who get drunk/let themselves be drugged deserve it. And how men need to watch out for their rights because women want to totally dick them over, and how his mom had been an abusive ho and therefore, I guess, all women were... and...

Yeeeah. Rage levels. High. Defriending, Instant.

Oh geez. I'm sorry. :-P

how girls who get drunk/let themselves be drugged deserve it

I'm not sure there are enough cuss words in the universe for an attitude like that.

Yeah it was like a Twilight Zone episode, with extra angry.

There were nowhere near enough cuss words.

Oh, fuck, the "well, if she hadn't worn that" excuse. I've seen men wearing clothing that just makes me want to nibble on them. (And there's probably a post about the different ways in which women and men objectify each other, because sometimes I wonder.) I managed to restrain myself, because, gosh, I am not a sexual predator. Didn't even break a sweat doing it. Likewise, I have a dress that I have to constantly be careful in and wear thick leggings under, because it's made of sweater material that, yes, has a tendency to leap up. No one has ever made an untoward gesture towards me while I wore it. The last time that I was sexually harassed in public? Tank top, jeans, leather jacket, and not a speck of makeup on my face.

*nods* I remember I wrote an essay a while back talking about how if it's actually the clothing that matters, I never would've gotten harassed when I was wearing my husband's bulky coat, hair soaking wet, no makeup. It's not the clothes, it's the chance to intimidate and power-trip; the assholes just use the "But look how she was dressed! I couldn't help myself!" excuse because they know that way. too. many. other people will go, "Well, she was kinda dressed like a slut, wasn't she?"

Valentined!

I always hate to be the one to point this out - but you *know* that there would be an even louder outcry if it was [insert white, adorable girl here].

Part of the problem is the still overwhelmingly silent, but present idea that WoC either "ask" for bad treatment, or have earned it, which is as old as slavery/Jim Crow.

There are a lot of issues surrounding this, which is why I'm not really up to discussing it with whites right now, but this (http://exittheapple.com/applesauce/2006/07/we-still-wear-the-mask-william-jelani-cobb/)says a lot of what I'm thinking.

Edited 2009-02-14 19:43 (UTC)

you *know* that there would be an even louder outcry if it was [insert white, adorable girl here]

Honestly, this was my mistake . . . I didn't know she *wasn't* 'white, adorable girl'. I'm out of the loop of current popular music and I only know about this because of a couple of Yahoo headlines and essays from people on my flist. I hadn't seen pictures of either of them.

Though it does make sense, considering the especially nasty vitriol of the "OMG she had herpes and passed it to him no wonder he was mad!" unfounded rumor crap. *sigh*

Thank you for the link to the essay.

Rihanna

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