I've never met a femme-presenting¹ person who didn't have a sexual harassment/assault story.
Most have one from within the past week.
My most recent harassment was yesterday (but I haven't really left the house yet today, so there's still time).
My first sexual assault was at ~13².
¹ InB4 some guy hops in to remind us all that men get SA'd too
² that I remember
@alice I don't. I agree with your general premise, that's it's a overwhelming and horrific problem that is egregiously common. And given how most say it's worse as a teen, I avoided it by femme presenting much later.
I only mention this because it's a weird feeling when people talk about this kind of thing as if it is a universal fundamental femme experience and where does that leave the few of us who are fortunate to have dodged that bullet?
It's better than the alternative but also othering.
@ellesaurus @alice the fact you see it this way indicates you see pain as proof & a lack of pain as not having earned your identity.
Such a guideline can mislead you to denying pain when you don't understand it, or denying identity when certain pains are missing.
Here you seem to do both to yourself, possibly seeing it as "possible evidence against inclusion" (a reason to deny your identity), which can trigger a desire to prove your worth to preempt exclusion.
It helps to try & find proof from joy instead of pain so that these narratives lose power.
@ellesaurus I understand you didn't ask & that's why I put a content warning.
I commented because centering your pain from hearing a discussion of other's pain is a function of whiteness.
Calling a discussion of pain "othering" because you're not included, is itself what others.
__
Edit: I will apologize for reacting here by removing ambiguity though. The boundary for me is blurry, between patriarchy causing othering via both violence as a norm & the implications from not being targeted by said violence, & whiteness causing discussions of othering to be seeing as themselves othering. So it's not as certain as this comment implies. My impression was that the emotions were valid (feeling othered by not being targeted by patriarchy), but the explanation seemed rooted in whiteness ("the discussion is the source of othering").
@ellesaurus when I said "never" I suppose that comes with some qualifications.
However, for each qualification—like, say, over the age of 4—I know an exception.
So to say "never" is really to say, "for every person I know, the odds of them having been sexually harassed or assaulted approaches 100% over time, but it approaches 100% far faster for the femme-presenting ones."
Also, I'm sorry for othering you. I understand that (even fucked up) rites of passage are still rites of passage, and I didn't mean to diminish your femininity with my choice of language.
@alice It's quite alright, I entirely get it. It's less you and more that I've seen it over and over how it's suggested to be every single woman (or in this case, femme)*.
The discussion of how it's the vast majority is still really important, and more important than getting it perfect. But I also want others who are in my place to also know they're not alone in that.
*I recognize you also didn't literally say everyone, so that's even more where it's about the recurring convo
As I grow older, I've come to realize that speaking in superlatives is rarely an accurate practice. There's always a caveat, and using terms like "nearly everyone" or, "the vast majority", even when talking about your friends, is the best form of speech.
I'm currently 45, and I'm still learning.
💐☺️💐
@ellesaurus @alice You know those assholes in Washington currently trying to legislate our bodies, objectify us, turn our existence into a "fetish", and use us as political scape goats?
that's a form of sexual harassment/assault, just probably not the more direct kind you are envisioning.
Even if you escape the more direct and personal assault, you can't really exist as a femme presenting person in North America without incurring the abuse of patriarchy directed at your body.
@ra6bit @[email protected] @alice
This is too real. And I have explained some variant of it to MANY people.
Just think about how people INSIST we disclose our medical history to them to even be in the same social circles as them. They accuse us of assault if we don't tell them.
They're just sexualizing us. They're abusing us by forcing us to disclose private details about our bodies just to exist around any of them.
🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)
Elle 💗
Noa
Autumn Thiesing
Rabbit
ChloChloaca