Sticker from the etsy shop of the amazing Midge AKA ModernGirlBlitz.
So over my apple & coffee this morning I read this article in G2 about teenagers not knowing what consent means. Interesting, given that recently high profile men & what would appear to be the whole British media, are pretty sketchy about what consent means as well. The only good thing about the Julian Assange fiasco is that if it comes up in conversation I now have a great way of telling what side of the "rape fence" someone stands on & can adjust my behaviour towards them appropriately. As in "Wikileaks is more important than whether two women were raped" = spit in face/point & scream rapist.
The sex education in this country (never mind the rest of the world) is appalling. I was shown the same video twice, about cartoons having sex & what this does to their body. We were never talked to about what constitues emotional abuse, or that because boys are often raised on porn nowadays their expectations of girls are unrealistic & that the girls themselves should treat them as such. Basically, to say girls you have the power to say no to anything you don't feel comfortable with because the boy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about or wants anyway.
Recently I've had several friends tell me that guys have taken condoms off whilst they were having sex & although they felt completely violated, they didn't consider it rape. This totally astounded me. All of them are confident, self assured feminist women. It angered me so much that if it could happen to them & they did nothing, then what would these guys get away with, with more vulnerable women? They all agreed in the end that they had consented to one thing & the guy's had crossed the line into something that they had not consented to. Whilst I don't know the technical term for rape, it sure sounds like it to me. & I cannot believe that there are teenagers out there thinking this is ok. That there are guys that do this at all. I just... I can't believe it's so fucking common.
This Julian Assange business has really upset me. I heard on the radio about a protest and I was all, thank god someone is protesting against him. BUT NO, they were protesting for him. They were protesting in support of someone charged with two counts of rape. What is the world coming to?? x
ReplyDeleteIt is actively insane. You just have to hope those are the people who troll & then scream "freedom of speech" rather than like sane rational people who are just suspicious of governments...
DeleteThis post is just, YES. It deeply depresses me that teenagers can get hold of porn so easily. I'm not against porn as such but so much of it is so sketchy and just gives out completely the wrong idea. And there's no way to stop boys finding it on the internet so we do need sex education which can combat what kids see in porn and educate them on what sex is really about and how they should actually treat each other sexually. And I can't actually believe that about the condoms, wtf?! And don't even get me started on the Assange shit.
ReplyDeleteYES JESS!
ReplyDeleteTHANK FUCK FOR THIS. Absolutely, everyone deserves a fair trial without their associations bla bla being used against them when they're irrelevant, but just because someone's famous doesn't mean that they should get away with not being put on trial. What kind of example does that set? Like celebs getting a slap on the wrist for cocaine use and a 'normal' person getting years.
ReplyDeleteThe condoms thing - what the fuck, seriously? That's so disgusting and weird and fucked up! I can't believe there are people out there who do that kind of shit.
Personally, I'm not against porn - but people need to be educated on how it's different from real relationships and real sex. I haven't had a single sex education lesson in my life. The only sex ed we had was a nurse showing A1 posters of STI symptoms. Hooray for shitty sex ed, I completely lucked out on ending up relatively normal in terms of my attitude to sex.
Yes. I'm not against porn in principle at all. I totally believe that people should be able to get off however they like. But it's the thought behind it. Like I know that not every guy has a huge dick or that every woman is just waiting to have sex with whoever turns up at her door, but if teenagers go out into the world thinking like that & there's no barrier of education or information, then FUCK
DeleteYES TO EVERYTHING WRITTEN HERE. God, I am starved for people to talk to about this shit in my everyday life. Everyone just seems to think I'm making a fuss about nothing and that these issues aren't important as they don't affect the majority... TCH.
ReplyDelete