Yes, Feminism Again. Suck it up.

Last night I had the most surreal online discussion about... well, a lot of things. Read it here if you want. But the whole thing bugs the shit out of me. One, why do we just accept that men are shitty and that women need to be protected from them? Doesn't that piss you guys off, that the kind of default belief is that you're going to hurt each other and us? And, to go back to our previous discussion, this is exactly one of the reasons we're afraid of you, because you tell us that we should be afraid of you. Shoot, it's clear to me that we still so desperately need feminism because we women are so fucked up in so many ways. But Christ Jesus, this whole conversation reaffirmed to me that we really need to chuck the whole system for the sake of everyone. And two, again, feminism is not a moral position. Part of the work we have to do is to insist that women criminals be seen for what they are, criminals. Shit, apparently, we have to insist that people recognize that women are capable of committing crimes at all. This idea that a thirteen year old boy isn't really the victim of a crime when a 27 year old woman has sex with him is flabbergasting. Of course it's a crime that has the potential to do a lot of damage to him. Which brings me to three. It's very interesting how we're right back to the idea that, with sex crimes, somehow the victim "deserves" it. Sure, it's slightly different. A woman who's raped "deserves" it because she led the man on or dressed provocatively or whatever. A boy who is raped "deserves" it because of his presumably voracious sexual appetite. Her rape is a punishment for who she is. His rape is a reward for who he is. But still, we're talking in terms of "deserves." I wonder when we'll be able to just assume that children deserve to be free from being used by adults for their own sexual pleasure and that any adult, regardless of gender, deserves to have his or her ass carted to prison for a long time for fucking with them.