holy crap!
Feb. 13th, 2004 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fearlesstempI've been thinking a lot lately about those ideas that change the way you see the world, those moments when someone says, or refers to, something so simple and profound that you know you've known it all along on some level, but never fully realized it. And how when you do, it colors the way you see the world.
In other words: I went through four years of college and emerged with few marketable skills, but I did have a few moments that changed the way I see the world which I will, for the purposes of this entry, dub "Holy crap!" moments. I've been thinking about them tonight, for whatever reason, and I'd be interested to hear what other people's experiences have been, if anyone's inclined to share.
Anyway, in my case, the three that initially came to mind were:
*Human beings are the only creatures who know they are going to die.
Somehow this had never occurred to me until I was in college, probably because I'd been pretty fortunate and the reality of death hadn't been made known to me. Then I took Intro to Psych and the professor said this on one of the first days and I think I spent the rest of the class with my mouth open.
And I know – it's so obvious! I remember staring at the cats and thinking: They have no idea. They're so happy, eating their Cat Chow, chasing imaginary bugs – they have no idea that they're going to die. That someday they won't exist here. Will they go to kitty heaven? Who knows? They're not thinking about it!
And then there was the long period where I wished I was a cat, but part of me just thinks that was because I hated having to get up early for class and envied them for their considerable amounts of sleep time. I still feel like that sometimes.
*Men aren't afraid when they walk through a dark parking lot.
I read an article my freshman year entitled "Rape: The All-American Crime" which blew my mind, the author of which I would totally give credit to here if I had the article on me – I lent it to a friend last week. All I can find online is an unattributed quote that I just know was the beginning of the article:
I have never been free of the fear of rape. From a very early age I, like most women, have thought of rape as part of my natural environment--something to be feared and prayed against like fire or lightning. I never asked why men raped; I simply thought it one of the many mysteries of human nature.
Like, the author says, I had always assumed that this fear was a natural part of the human condition. When I thought about it more and realized that no, boys generally don't have to check under their cars for lurking kidnappers, or look over their shoulders on city streets, or obsess about never, ever going anywhere alone – well, that friggin' blew my mind. And to this day it annoys me when people talk about rape and always, ALWAYS, it's the women they talk to. Always watch your drink! Never walk alone! Take self-defense! Rarely addressing the fact that guys shouldn't be putting stuff into girls' drinks in the first place, and that there's something wrong about a world where women are always meant to feel like they're playing a high-stakes game against dangerous odds, with their personal safety as the prize. And maybe I'm just more afraid than most women – I am a pretty big scaredy cat – but I do know that sweet relief of getting into your car and locking your doors after a long walk on a cold night, or how scary a big empty house can be on a dark night, or how terrifying it can be when a guy thinks he's goofing around and grabs you and you realize that you can't move. But to put it more simply: Reading this article was the first time that I understood that it truly is a different world for women.
*Most of the people who do the most horrible things are ordinary people.
Picked this up in two places; first my course on The Holocaust specifically, and a later one on the Sociology of Human Rights. In both we read about the roots and causes of things like the Holocaust, and also the mechanics of their horrors. To learn about how the daily matters of killing systems were carried out, and realizing that the people who were doing the carrying out were not, as I'd on some level assumed, evil or crazy, but just people, freaked me out. Not crazy psycho madmen, or sociopaths, or Republicans, but ordinary people did these things. The guys filling the killing fields, the people herding Jews into the chambers – they were just people. How did they get to the point that what they were doing made sense? How can I be sure I'd never be the same way? I'll never get over the fact that most of us have it in us to do such things, were we placed in the proper conditions with a limited set of choices. This was a moment that really colored my moral worldview, the realization that torturers and Nazis are people too, whether we like it or not.
Just so I'm clear -- I'm not condoning those choices, or excusing the behavior of these ordinary people. I do believe in right and wrong, and while I do think there are circumstances where it's significantly more difficult to do the right thing, I'm not sure that's a sufficient excuse for doing the wrong thing. Nor do I think I'm some huge moral giant, or particularly wise -- these are all just thoughts. Ideas! Which I will probably think better of tomorrow.
Anyway, those are my things. Why I thought about this tonight, and spent a sad amount of time writing this up instead of doing fun things, like watching my tape of The OC, or necessary things, like emptying the dishwasher, is unclear to me. But I felt the need to write it and so I'm going to post it, even if I do fear I come off sounding dumb, self-important, or both, because I spent so much time writing it. Also, my life is so boring that I have no real-life incidents to discuss here. And so you get my random core dump!
In other words: I went through four years of college and emerged with few marketable skills, but I did have a few moments that changed the way I see the world which I will, for the purposes of this entry, dub "Holy crap!" moments. I've been thinking about them tonight, for whatever reason, and I'd be interested to hear what other people's experiences have been, if anyone's inclined to share.
Anyway, in my case, the three that initially came to mind were:
*Human beings are the only creatures who know they are going to die.
Somehow this had never occurred to me until I was in college, probably because I'd been pretty fortunate and the reality of death hadn't been made known to me. Then I took Intro to Psych and the professor said this on one of the first days and I think I spent the rest of the class with my mouth open.
And I know – it's so obvious! I remember staring at the cats and thinking: They have no idea. They're so happy, eating their Cat Chow, chasing imaginary bugs – they have no idea that they're going to die. That someday they won't exist here. Will they go to kitty heaven? Who knows? They're not thinking about it!
And then there was the long period where I wished I was a cat, but part of me just thinks that was because I hated having to get up early for class and envied them for their considerable amounts of sleep time. I still feel like that sometimes.
*Men aren't afraid when they walk through a dark parking lot.
I read an article my freshman year entitled "Rape: The All-American Crime" which blew my mind, the author of which I would totally give credit to here if I had the article on me – I lent it to a friend last week. All I can find online is an unattributed quote that I just know was the beginning of the article:
Like, the author says, I had always assumed that this fear was a natural part of the human condition. When I thought about it more and realized that no, boys generally don't have to check under their cars for lurking kidnappers, or look over their shoulders on city streets, or obsess about never, ever going anywhere alone – well, that friggin' blew my mind. And to this day it annoys me when people talk about rape and always, ALWAYS, it's the women they talk to. Always watch your drink! Never walk alone! Take self-defense! Rarely addressing the fact that guys shouldn't be putting stuff into girls' drinks in the first place, and that there's something wrong about a world where women are always meant to feel like they're playing a high-stakes game against dangerous odds, with their personal safety as the prize. And maybe I'm just more afraid than most women – I am a pretty big scaredy cat – but I do know that sweet relief of getting into your car and locking your doors after a long walk on a cold night, or how scary a big empty house can be on a dark night, or how terrifying it can be when a guy thinks he's goofing around and grabs you and you realize that you can't move. But to put it more simply: Reading this article was the first time that I understood that it truly is a different world for women.
*Most of the people who do the most horrible things are ordinary people.
Picked this up in two places; first my course on The Holocaust specifically, and a later one on the Sociology of Human Rights. In both we read about the roots and causes of things like the Holocaust, and also the mechanics of their horrors. To learn about how the daily matters of killing systems were carried out, and realizing that the people who were doing the carrying out were not, as I'd on some level assumed, evil or crazy, but just people, freaked me out. Not crazy psycho madmen, or sociopaths, or Republicans, but ordinary people did these things. The guys filling the killing fields, the people herding Jews into the chambers – they were just people. How did they get to the point that what they were doing made sense? How can I be sure I'd never be the same way? I'll never get over the fact that most of us have it in us to do such things, were we placed in the proper conditions with a limited set of choices. This was a moment that really colored my moral worldview, the realization that torturers and Nazis are people too, whether we like it or not.
Just so I'm clear -- I'm not condoning those choices, or excusing the behavior of these ordinary people. I do believe in right and wrong, and while I do think there are circumstances where it's significantly more difficult to do the right thing, I'm not sure that's a sufficient excuse for doing the wrong thing. Nor do I think I'm some huge moral giant, or particularly wise -- these are all just thoughts. Ideas! Which I will probably think better of tomorrow.
Anyway, those are my things. Why I thought about this tonight, and spent a sad amount of time writing this up instead of doing fun things, like watching my tape of The OC, or necessary things, like emptying the dishwasher, is unclear to me. But I felt the need to write it and so I'm going to post it, even if I do fear I come off sounding dumb, self-important, or both, because I spent so much time writing it. Also, my life is so boring that I have no real-life incidents to discuss here. And so you get my random core dump!
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-13 01:38 am (UTC)And the odd thing about that is that statiscally, men are much, much, much, much more likely to get mugged. I forget the stats off the top of my head, but it was in the region of four to six times more likely to be violently attacked. Men, however are much less afraid of physical violence than women, because they are taught to fight back, to get angry, to get even from childhood. If you knock a man down with a brick and steal his wallet, his reaction tends to be anger, rather than fear.
The other interesting side to this is that what men do fear is being *perceived* as a rapist. Male teachers will not remain alone in classrooms with students (male teachers have left the school system almost entirely), male nurses tend to have different, unobtrusively supervised duties, male joggers are avoiding places where they could be alone with females at night on a deserted path, male doctors have nurses/reception staff around at all times, male bosses leave the doors open during meetings.
The life wrecking allegation of sexual misconduct is putting fear into the hearts of men like they've never felt before, and it's such an interesting, frustrating example of gender politics. Men have no fear for their bodies, but threaten their livelihood, reputation and ego and they start quivering in their boots.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-13 08:38 am (UTC)This is such an interesting point, and I wonder if it's a recent thing, because the article I referred to in my entry was written years ago -- I'm thinking the 60s or 70s and GDit, but I'm annoyed that I don't have it to refer to -- and in it the author argued that men who don't rape actually gain something from the fact that other men do. She said that because women are afraid, they look to men to protect them, and men who are able to fill that protector role get a charge out of being the good guy. I'm not arguing that that's true now or even that it was then (mostly I'm just thinking out loud), but part of me does wonder if it may be something in our culture that's changed over time.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-13 07:05 am (UTC)I mean, this is because we live in an area where scary crack addicts (really, actual crack addicts) come out at night, and people get held up at gunpoint, so, in some ways, it still stands. I think the Bandit is worried about getting mugged and beaten and all, but not especially rape.
Still - I think; okay, I have a watershed moment that pertains to this, and that was the time my mother said to me, in essence, getting raped is not worth your life. And should you find yourself in that situation, your priority is not to get killed. This sounds cold, and perhaps it was cold, but she said, look, you can get therapy. And at that point I'd heard so much rhetoric about women who would rather DIe than be raped, and it really helped me articulate the fact that what frightens me so much about being raped is not the horribleness of rape, even though it's, obviously, very bad - it's the idea that if we're talking about stranger-parking-lot rape, your rapist will probably kill you.
And when I thought about it, the idea that the worst thing that could happen to a woman was rape almost insulted me - and the idea of women who'd rather die than be raped is almost medieval, as though your, er, personal area is the only part of you that matters.
People get so (rightly) infuriated about rape that I think it's bred a kind of hysteria, that women fear it so much, and - oh, I'm articulating this badly - but there's something anti-feminist about it, to me, the faint idea that the reason it's so horrible is not because it's a violation of you, but because it taints you in some way.
The point I'm making is, do I want to be raped? Er, obviously not. I'm not sayin' it's a walk in the park. But I'd rather be raped than killed. I'd rather be raped than beaten to the point of permanent physical or mental damage.
um, that's all I got.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-13 09:16 am (UTC)That said: I do agree that some men are afraid, often a lot of them, walking through dark parking lots and stuff -- perhaps I should have worded what I said differently, and said something like men aren't as afraid as women when walking through dark parking lots, or like women are a different kind of afraid when walking through dark parking lots. I think there's a difference between worrying over being robbed or mugged and worrying over being kidnapped, raped, and/or killed, and I do think the latter is a fear that's more familiar to women. Not that being robbed or mugged isn't awful, but I do think that it's something situational for men and people in general -- if you feel like you're in a bad neighborhood, for instance -- whereas women are more likely to feel unsafe in general. The idea that there's always the possibility of someone out to get you -- not what you have on you, not the money you're carrying, but you -- is the kind of fear I was trying to talk about in my entry. I'm not sure if I was clear then or am being clear now.
Mainly, I was trying to say that the spectre of rape and violence so informs how a girl is raised, and how she sees the world, that I think it makes it much more difficult for her to feel safe. I know growing up that my parents always told both my brother and me to be careful, but I was the one always being asked if I walked places alone, or if I parked in a well-lit area, or if I locked my doors at night. And really, isn't an example of one family enough to justify an entire belief system?
Anyway, that said, I agree with you on the rape-or-die thing (I've never come down on the side of wanting to die), and what you said here was really interesting. I would say more but the people here have the audacity to expect me to do work while I'm here (bastards!), so I must end my long-ass rambly comment.
I HATE THIS!
Date: 2004-02-13 09:51 am (UTC)I hate that sometimes men assume that women are afraid of them. Not so much those that use it for some kind of power advantage, although that is just terrible, and stems from their own insecurities. I mean those that know it and so don't know how to act, they don't want to scare women. And I think race can play into this. If I pass a black man on the street or ride in an elevator with him, often I get the feeling that he is thinking, "This white woman is afraid of me and I don't understand her and let's just get this over with and get away from each other." The idea that we are too different and there's no way we can relate. And I suppose I don't really do anything to help these kinds of situations, but I just HATE it, hate that women are taught to assume a man is dangerous until you know otherwise. Guilty until proven innocent. I think it just promotes certain behavior in men, makes them live up to bad expectations.
I have actually been thinking about this lately because of a scene I watched the other day. A girl, about 14 years old, maybe, was walking her dog and a man passed her on the sidewalk. He was kind of a body builder type, with a shaved head. He stopped and smiled and was asking her about her dog and seemed genuiinely friendly. This was in broad daylight in an open area and there were other people around. The girl answered quickly and I could tell she was just thinking, "Please go away, I can't talk to a strange scary man." And this made me sad that two people couldn't just have a brief friendly exchange because they both like dogs and were just passing on the street and would then go on their separate ways. I know you will yell at me for this, you will say, "Good for her, young girls should not talk to large male strangers, her mother taught her well." Maybe it has to be that way, maybe that's the way the world is, but I think it is way too extreme and we have this whole culture of fear, and I JUST HATE IT.
And so I refuse to be afraid. I feel very safe, maybe I am being naive, but I refuse to miss out on the world.
Sorry this is so long. Please don't think I'm attacking you or your beliefs. You know I love you, Jess! I just feel strongly about this and I've been thinking about it lately.
And that is all.
Re: I HATE THIS!
Date: 2004-02-13 11:55 am (UTC)And here I think we agree – even if you don't necessarily feel it yourself, it sounds like you know the kind of fear and caution I'm talking about from recognizing it in others, and from hearing the way girls are taught about it. In my entry I wasn't trying to say that this fear is a good thing, but just talk about the fact that it exists, and how it affects the way a lot of women live their lives. How by reinforcing it in the way we talk about rape and violence against women (as if it's just a natural part of the world that needs to be avoided), we imply that the world is meant to be an unsafe place for women. A place that doesn't belong to them. This also, as you said, makes disturbing claims about the nature of men by acting as if violence against women is a natural part of masculinity.
The place where I think we differ is in the very fact that, like you said, you've never felt this way. And I think I have a different idea about fear – I'm not sure you can refuse to be afraid. I feel like you're either you're afraid, or you're not. I am sure that you can refuse to let the fear run your life, and refuse to let it dictate the decisions you make – even if it's a really difficult thing to do. The old "you can't control how you feel, you can only control how you act" thing.
I will 'fess up that I would have had a different reaction to the muscle guy talking to the young girl. First because I understand the young girl's reaction, especially within the context of recent events (the young girl being kidnapped in Florida in broad daylight, on a security camera). I don't blame her for wanting to walk away, or for being nervous. I would have felt the same way, were I her age and a random older guy came up to initiate a conversation. Because – and here's where I feel really hypocritical, but I'm just trying to be honest even if it doesn't show me in a flattering light. The rules of social conduct in these situations may be messed up, and may center around an irrational fear, but most of us know them. As
(Okay, and I already replied once and deleted it because somehow the update removed all of my paragraphs, so if this just comes up as one big mess of sentences, I may just leave it)
Re: I HATE THIS!
Date: 2004-02-13 12:30 pm (UTC)It is different for women, me included. I admit, I do sometimes feel a little afraid. Or sometimes I tell myself that I should be afraid. Because sometimes I'm a little too fearles in those kind of situations (but certainly not all situations in my life, at times I can be a real wimp and have to call you up and whine and/or cry).
And actually, I don't think you can refuse to be afraid. I am just pig-headed sometimes (most of the time), as you know, and make bold proclamations like that. Really, I'm just full of shit. :) I am afraid about plenty of things, although usually more in an emotional sense than a physical sense, and I can't always just make it go away. I think sometimes you can try to be rational about your fears or at least, as you said, alter you behvior despite your fears, but that doesn't mean they just go away. I like the way you put things, actually. What I am refusing is to believe or support that the world is not a place for women, not a place for me.
And as for the girl and the sketchy man, I certainly don't blame her for her reaction, and the guy WAS weird, he did keep asking about her dog, and I DID actually stand there and watch them because I thought it was a little weird. This was a bad example, and too extreme. But I have been that little girl, there was a time when if any man I didn't know adressed me (even when I was an adult, even if he was my age) I would get scared or annoyed because I assumed he had some evil intent. And that's what I hate, is that we women assume, are expected to assume, need to assume, or whatever, that men are up to something no good unless you know otherwise. I have just recently gotten over this (I think).
I just think it's so sad that there is this communication gap between men and women. Some of it is just natural because of the way we're wired, but I think it mostly a societal thing, a lot of it that women are afraid of men and men know it.
And that was kind of your point. This is an interesting topic, thanks for bringing it up.
And yay, we agree, as we often do. I will bring this up again, wouldn't we 04 0 wonderful partners in world domination?