Male privilege is rolling your eyes at the teenage girl who hurried her steps and kept glancing over her shoulder at you while she walked to her bus stop and you walked your dogs.
Male privilege is exclaiming, “What? Do I look like a fucking…It’s not that all men are rapists, it’s the fear that the one time you aren’t on guard may be the one time you should be. I’m not a teenager but I hate it when men get too close to me while I’m walking anywhere. I’ve been followed, I’ve had disgusting things whispered to me, and I’ve had some men get way too close. I got honked at and yelled at everyday. It isn’t flattering. I recently changed my route to work because I used to pass a man every day who would look me up and down and whisper things at me. It’s uncomfortable. I just wanna walk to work and back. I get that many men that I pass on the street won’t do or say anything but I’m always on the defensive. I keep my hands in my pockets with my keys between my fingers just in case. Just the other day I had to call 911 in the middle of the night because I heard the most terrifying screams coming from somewhere. I’m pretty sure it was a woman being attacked. My close friend saw someone else get, from what she assumes, thrown into a car and raped (the car drove away with the girl in there so I’m just going to add kidnapped as well) in the middle of the day. I’m not crazy and don’t flip out at every man that says something to me nor do I think that every man is a rapist or will kidnap me but many of them make me feel uncomfortable. So if men feel uncomfortable or hate how women feel about them on street, don’t blame us, blame the men that feel like it’s okay to follow a woman in their car and tell her all the sexual things they’d like to do to her. Blame them, not us.
I’m sorry, but no.
Do I get to blame the 40 Muslim students that ended up leaving Mizzou post-9/11 (due to harassment and death threats) for their own misfortune simply because they shared arbitrary characteristics with the 9/11 hijackers? Do we blame Trayvon Martin for getting shot because he fit a stereotype that his attacker believed made him a danger?
Do you get to compare me to these scumbags you mentioned, simply because I have a penis and like to go out in public and do fun things sometimes? (Sometimes in close proximity with women.)
No. This kind of scorched-earth, ends justify the means ideology is scary to me. If you want to call yourself a feminist, be a feminist and treat people with dignity, respect, and the equality that you yourself desire in this country. Hold me accountable for my actions, and mine alone.
Besides, any way you look at the rape statistics that these idiots on Tumblr throw out to try and justify their paranoia (and it is paranoia), you have to acknowledge that they’re taking a very, very small percentage of men and drawing conclusions that they irrationally apply to the whole, and these irrational paranoid ideologies have real-life consequences. (The highest number I’ve seen is something like 8% who supposedly admitted they’d rape someone if they could get away with it. What about the 92% who wouldn’t?)
