Wednesday, January 10, 2007

More on what women should do

The same journalist who wrote about how women are responsible for not getting raped, is now overwhelmed by the responses to her article, the comment field to it is closed and she needs to explain what she really said.

Problem is - it's not really getting any better.

Rather than agreeing that yes, it might have been badly written, what she meant to say that was of course, you are not guilty of your own rape even if you happen to walk home from a party and be drunk and wear a short skirt and high heels, she keeps on talking about responsibility, and women's responsibility to be careful. As if we don't know we have to look out?

Statistics shows that women are not more often victims of violence than men. Actually, it's pretty much 50/50. The difference is that women are a lot more afraid of violence than men are. We are already scared into submission - the girl who happens to be walking home at night isn't a common sight.

Anyway, once she has done a pretty good job saying that of course women can't be blamed, I am just saying "be careful", the editor does something really interesting.
De som i feminismens navn fraråder kvinner å selv ta et ansvar for ikke å bli utsatt for voldtekt, gjør kvinner en bjørnetjeneste. Det er voldtektsmenns eksistens som fratar kvinner friheten, ikke restriksjonene kvinner legger på seg selv for å unngå å bli voldtatt.
She claims the feminists are telling women not to take responsibility.

Feminists have taught women self defence, been promoting comfortable shoes easy to run away in, made it clear that being a woman isn's something that needs to be advertised through make-up and provocating dress, built shelters for abused women, worked for the rights of rape victims - the list of what has been done in the name of feminism to support and promote responsible behaviour by women is long! The editor has the right to get education, hold a job, own property, wear pants and vote because of feminists and feminism. Attacking feminists by claiming they - we (I am a feminist in this!) - are telling women to act stupidly is just ridiculous. No feminist I know of has ever said a woman should refuse to take the responsibility for her own life. Perhaps some feminists have refused to judge when others have displayed "unacceptable" behaviour. Being non-judgemental is, I hope, not something special for feminists.

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