#LikeAGirl

I'd been semi-avoiding watching this because I'd heard that it was an ad.

Now I wish I hadn't waited. An ad it may be. But damn! it's inspiring. I teared up.

SCOTUS and Women's Health

I'm going to say upfront this is a reactionary piece. The below opinions are mine and mine only. Sarcasm, bitterness and emotional assertions may follow.

Page break because cursing. A lot. Probably results in NSFW.

I've Been the Lucky One

We have another report of harassment in the skeptic-atheist-sphere. Link Here.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but honestly, I'm just not anymore.

I wish I could say I was disapointed, but honestly? I'm just not anymore.

I wish I could say I wanted to go to skeptic or atheist conferences. But I don't anymore.

The pattern of harassment has become the pattern I expect. 

I've often heard it said that the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Yet women are regularly expected to roll with, walk past, and accept standards of treatment that are unethical, unacceptable and downright frustrating.

I want to be outraged, to have something witty and brilliant to say. I want to add something to this conversation.

But all I can manage is sadness, and a lingering feeling of being a poseur.

I haven't dealt with the career-altering levels of harassment we keep seeing again and again and again. Maybe it's because I'm not in organized skepticism/atheism. Maybe it's because I only just started blogging and talking about these things.

Probably? I've just been damned lucky.

I wrote several days ago about a co-worker of mine who we had to set up an escape plan for since she occasionally rides the train with a harasser. I've never had to do that.

I haven't written about my friend in high school who couldn't go anywhere alone--at school or public--because the school and police didn't take her ex-boyfriends threats of killing her seriously. But it wasn't me.

I've never been turned down for a job to my knowledge because I'm a woman. And at previous jobs, a lack of perceived authority was more likely to come from my age and height, although I'm sure being a woman was also a subconscious factor.

I've only been cat-called to my awareness once.

I've slept over at male friends houses and gotten drunk with them, yet I've never been raped.

I've been the lucky one.

On Mental Health, the Santa Barbara Shooting & #YesAllWomen

The conversation over at Pharyngula with regard to the Santa Barbara shooting really drove home a couple of things to me.

First that the habitual knee-jerk reaction of equating horrific violence to mental illness needs to stop.

And that second, that I need to write and document my travels through mental health care.

Regarding the first point, several commenters brought up that having a mental illness makes it more likely that you will be a *victim* of violence, not more likely to perpetuate it. Further, othering mental illness as default violent doesn't do anyone any good. It just inhibits our ability to have a conversation about the cultural issues that trigger a situation like the Santa Barbara shooting.

I have mild to occasionally severe anxiety. My triggers are often work or stress related. For example, at its worst, needing to perform a telephone call resulted in a debilitating panic attack. That three month period prior to getting a diagnoses I was having one or more debilitating panics a week.

My attacks consisted of shaking, crying and an infi-loop of "I can't do X" where X was whatever task was my trigger. I remember the first one I had (that I realized what it was), I was alone in a hotel room on a business trip. I think that was quite possibly the loneliest night of my life.

I'm lucky. Most of the time my anxiety is not that level crippling. Even luckier, Prozac is able to keep it under enough control that I still occasionally get the brain loops of "I can't do that," but I don't get debilitating attacks anymore.

I'll repeat that. To be able to function "normally" I have to be on an anti-anxiety medication. 

So when you paint this kind of behavior as "crazy" or "insane" you are tarring all of us on the wide spectrum of human experience who don't fall in your little nook of normal with the same brush as a mass-murderer. I don't fuckin' appreciate that.

The guy who did that shooting wrote a manifesto. Was a member of known MRA and PUA websites. No. I will not provide links to those corners of the internet. You go there at your own risk. For certain misogynistic values of "normal" what Rodgers did was the logical conclusion. Because it was never his own fault he couldn't get a date or laid or what-the-fuck-ever his goal was. It was the woman's fault. It was all women's fault.

Fuck that noise. #YesAllWomen have had to deal with smaller slices of that shit on a daily basis. No it's not nearly as much of an outlier as wiping it away with a simple "he was insane" implies. So stop trying to claim it is.

That "Creepy Guy"

UPDATE: I wrote this prior to gphearing about the shooting in Santa Barbara. I don't have a coherent  opinion on that incident. Surprise, sorrow, and anger are all I manage right now. My heart goes out to those with friends and family who were hurt and killed.

---

You know the one I'm talking about. That somewhat friendly guy at work who is ok to have a short chat with in the hall, but has a tendency to insert himself into conversations and then over stay his welcome?

Or if he sees you on the train, he will sit as close as possible and talk over or around other people in order to engage you in conversation?

The same guy has done the former to me and a friend of mine regularly, and recently escalated to the latter with my friend.

This pisses me off because it's a classic case of a WASP not taking women's socially allowed "no's" as the final answer.

She has mentioned several times that she is married, as that is generally the most accepted way to tell someone to back off. I'm taken. I have a boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband. She has tried not being around him, though through sharing a workplace and a public transit method, this isn't really practical.

I'm pissed off because those approaches to 'leave me alone' rarely work. Quelle surprise, it didn't work this time.

I'm pissed off because I had to sit down with her and plan an escape route for the next time he manages to corner her on the train. She couldn't think of a way out because he gets off after her, so he knows where her stop is. Luckily(?) there is a mall only a few stops away from work and before her final stop where we've agreed she can get off if he does it again.

But this means she has to actively change her behavior due to this guys 'social awkwardness'. 

I'm pissed off because her first instinct was to give him the 'socially awkward' pass. As discussions of harassment in the atheist community have evolved over the last few years, I've found that I don't buy this as an excuse.

I am not the most socially savvy person, I have friends some male, some female, some inbetween, who are not the most savvy. We are terrified of violating boundaries the way this guy has on a regular basis. The instant we suspect we've violated a boundary, we're falling over ourselves trying to apologize and make it right.

To be fair, the guy in question has not said to us, "I'm socially awkward, therefore you have to give me a pass." Rather, I think he is either consciously or subconsciously depending on our ingrained  habit of passing off creepy behavior has simply 'socially awkward' to keep us from being able to act or react in the manner we would like, which would be telling him to fuck off.

I want to know why this is the goddamn expectation. Why am I supposed to give him an automatic pass when he's freaking one of my friends out. 

-----
For further reading on socially awkward vs. creepy, here is a great article that is quite probably more eloquent than I.