You just don't understand

[kengr]

Read this: http://t.co/CyyGWcO7SY
Then come back. I'll wait.

I didn't understand either. Heck, I'd walked late at night thru bad areas of town and I wasn't that worried.

Then came the day a friend gave me a ride to an NWGA (NorthWest Gender Alliance) meeting. I'd gotten rides before, and as I'd done a number of times before, I went en femme.

This time was different. I didn't want to go to the restaurant that most of the others were going to after the meeting. Mostly because I was didn't have the spare cash, and I didn't want to mooch.

And it turned out that none of the people who weren't going to the restaurant were going anywhere near where I lived.

It was already dark by them. I was about three-quarters of a mile from the bus line that ran past my place. So I started walking.

At first I wasn't nervous. Then I saw a group of young men a couple block ahead. I went from nervous to not-quite-terrified. I realized that it was possible that I'd pass. In which case I might get assaulted being a lone "female". And if the assault went far enough and they found out I was physically male? I'd be lucky if I only got raped or beaten. Getting killed was definitely a possibility.

If I didn't pass, the possibility of being beaten or worse was there again.

Luck was with me, they were apparently not interested in females who weren't cute or sexy.

I had some panic at the bus stop when a mixed bunch of teens showed up. But again, I passed (if I hadn't you can be sure the teens would have said something, especially the girls).

So I made it home ok.

But the contrast between they way I'd felt walking thru bad neighborhoods late at night as a guy, and the way I felt walking on dark streets in an average neighborhood in the early evening as a "female" was quite sobering.

I don't think anybody raised male can understand the way women feel walking alone until they've had an experience like this. And most never will.

Trying to do it as a thought experiment doesn't work. I mean in the back of my head I must have known that having to take that walk was possible, but I didn't really think about it.

Once I was doing it, things were suddenly very real. And very scary.And women have to deal with that every single day.

A parting note. T-girls have it worse in some ways. If we get read, we are far more likely to be assaulted or killed. And it doesn't help that we weren't raised with all the warnings women and girls get drummed into them. So we do stupid things (like not having a ride home arranged).

But that doesn't mean things are remotely easy for women.

What it does mean is that female or trans, we acquire a view of things that men just don't get. And aren't likely to get.

If you've been bullied, you have a faint shadow of it. The feeling of being prey and surrounded by predators. But it's still different as the predator you deal with as a victim of bullying are rarely strangers. As a woman or a t-girl, it's everyone.

That makes a big difference. And it's why folks saying "not all men" really and truly don't get it.

It may not be all men. But to be safe, you have to assume that any man you meet is like that until proven otherwise. And it takes a lot of proof.

Guys shouldn't be insulted by this "attitude". They should be insulted that our culture creates AND TOLERATES so many "men like that".

It's not just the rapists. It's not just the catcalls and put downs. It's the assumptions that "they" have a right to sex. That it's our fault if they get turned on looking at us. And all the other things that go with making the way women act or dress "the problem" and not the unrealistic expectations of the boys and men.

But nobody actually tells then that their expectations are unreasonable. "Boys will be boys" and all the other double standards.

Boys/young men having sex are studs. Girls/women are "sluts". Being a virgin is bad for a guy (I recall my "friends" trying to "help" to "cure" this condition *shudder*). For girls, it's a "good" thing.

Heck, teen guys and young men have a definite need for sex (I remember going thru that age. From all accounts, for most girls/women they may be interested but they don't have the need. And even if they did, they have cultural conditioning against it and quite rational fears of consequences.

Boys don't get pregnant. Girls do. And the consequences for a guy getting someone pregnant are pretty minor most of the time. For a gal, they are major. Possibly life threatening.

It's not remotely a level playing field, and guys need to be taught that. Not just that it's different but why it's different. And there should be an attempt to make them understand emotionally the difference.

Comments

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[ebonhost.livejournal.com]

This. Being a t-man, I've had to grow up understanding it because of what my body looks like. It doesn't help that media teaches men that they deserve to have a woman rewarded to them like some kind of achievement. One of the beliefs this leads to is that a man's desire to speak to/interact with a woman trumps her desire to be left alone, making even something that should be so simple a request actively dangerous. You have no idea how he's going to react if you tell him you don't want to talk/are reading/whatever. The number of times that men have insisted on talking to me while I am listening to music with headphones -and- reading at the same time is staggering. Not even wearing a wedding band is sufficient deterrent.

[kengr]

Actually, a big chunk of that is "extrovert" vs "introvert". Because they do it to *everyone*.

It's a cultural "given" that people would rather make small talk than read or listen to music. It's right up there with "you must dislike school".

It's just that if you are presenting male, you are weird if you don't go along. If you are presenting female, it can get really bad, really fast. :-(

I gotta drag fayanora to the next gun show so we can look at stun guns and mace dispensers.

I feel that defense is either lethal or why bother.

[capybyra.livejournal.com]

Less than lethal is not good enough. It's simple= Dead perps are the best kind.