Women have the right to choose for themselves

A lot of people who've read this blog and some of my contributions to online discussions think I hate women. I want to assure them that nothing is further from the truth. Some of the best people in my life are women, from my mom to my grandmother (who died in 2008 at age 99) to my sisters to my best friend.

Some of the people I admire most for their talents and skills are women. My boss is a woman, and one of the best bosses I've had--funny, tough, always fair, and you can't help but like her even when she's calling you on something. At my last job, the assistant manager was a woman. She was the one person in management who made the job tolerable for staff, and it wasn't because she baked us cupcakes and sang kumbaya. We used to call her Commandant Shirley. When she left the position, 2/3 of the staff quit.

A lot of people who've read this blog believe I hate feminism or the idea of equal rights for women. This might be a reasonable assumption given some of the criticisms I've offered of modern-day feminist theory and methodology. But I think the distinction can be made that just because someone has a criticism of a particular Vatican policy, this does not automatically make them an atheist or even a non-Catholic, or mean that they hate God, the Catholic church or all Catholics. It just means you disagree, maybe vehemently, with a particular policy or the mindset behind it.

And feminism has given me so very much. The progress of society from what was before to what is now, largely due to feminist activism, gives me the opportunity to provide a decent life for my children. It gives me equal treatment in the workplace, equal pay, maternity benefits and the legal guarantee that I will not lose my job because I had a child. Feminism gave me the right to express my sexuality openly, and the social freedom to admit to pretty much anyone that I write dirty books for money. Feminism gave me the right to decide who I want to fuck and who I don't, to say "no" and have it mean something, or to say "yes" and not have it mean I'm a whore. Feminism gave me the opportunity to work under some really wonderful women all my adult life, to not always have to talk to a man when it's time to talk to my boss. Feminism has given me choices about how much I want to work and how much I want to stay home. Feminism gave me a political voice and confidence that my voice will be heard rather than silenced or dismissed solely because of my gender. Feminism gave me the right to leave my husband even if he didn't ever hit me or cheat on me, and not have my life be ruined by the decision.

Feminism has given me a lot, and I would never, ever want to go back to the way things were before the women's movement. I feel extremely lucky I live here and now, in Canada today, rather than somewhere or somewhen else in the world where women don't have what feminism has given me.

And I think that's part of why contemporary feminism and I have come to our irreconcilable differences. Because I feel fortunate and blessed by all that feminism has accomplished in the name of women--and therefore in my name. And yet it seems that the better things are for women here and now in the western world, the more unhappy feminism seems to be about it, the more work they insist still needs to be done, the more criticism they have of society and how it needs to change, and how if you don't feel the same way you must be a bigot, or fooling yourself.

Christina Hoff Sommers very succinctly and accurately summarizes my own criticisms of contemporary feminism, when she says it first "takes a very dim view of men; secondly, it wildly overstates the victim status of American women; and third, it is dogmatically attached to the view that men and women are essentially the same."

Anyone less than inclined to consider the epistemological nature of contemporary feminism would do well to look at how quickly and thoroughly she was excommunicated (scroll way down to "anti-feminism", where she is lumped in with conservative traditionalists, and those who opposed women's right to vote) by the movement for daring to speak the truth as she saw it. Whether you disagree with her assertions or not, whether they are objectively true or total bullshit, when any organization becomes so certain of its moral or ideological rectitude that it cannot tolerate questioning or criticisms from within its ranks, when it feels the checks and balances provided by concerned or dissenting voices are not only unnecessary but something to be silenced...at that point, the mandate of the organization has become a totalitarian exercise in blind faith.

I've never been a religious person. Believing in something I cannot prove is anathema to me. I've never hated the idea of god or a higher power--I can see why it gives many people comfort and I sometimes wish I could simply feel the rightness of something without requiring some evidence that I am not wrongheaded in my thinking. Perhaps I have an overly analytical mind, because a few of the tenets of modern feminism, once you dig a little into what can be and has been proved with empirical evidence, what is and is not logical, what you see with your eyes and what you see with your eyes closed, require this type of belief. And contrary to what church elders of whatever religion would tell you, belief is something we should always question. Every day.

That modern feminism does not well tolerate the questioning of its ideologies is an understatement on an epic scale. It is even more troubling that feminism often tells us to "not listen" to the other voices out there, lest we become confused, especially the voices that present data in its raw form. That raw information must be "interpreted" and "filtered for context" before it is considered to be trustworthy...well, it reminds me of the days before Guttenberg, when the Bible was inaccessible to the great unwashed save through its verbal translation into the vernacular by church officials. Don't tell me your interpretation of the data is reliable and contextually correct--show me the damn data and let me make up my own mind what it might be saying.

And I'm not unsympathetic to women's struggles, even in this very liberated, wealthy, progressive part of the world. That women should be--indeed, need be--concerned with the issues, struggles and success of other women is only logical. But that women should not be, or need not be, also concerned with the issues, struggles and success of the other 50% of the human population, that somehow the problems of the other half of humanity are not our problems as well, that they will not eventually have negative effects on us as women, as workers, as wives, as partners, as daughters, as sisters or as mothers, or the impression I get that men's concerns should only be of interest if and when they DO negatively affect women...it's an isolationism of compassion and understanding that worries the fuck out of me as I do what I can as a single mom to guide my boys into manhood.

When I think of all the men in the early days of the women's movement who listened to the concern and frustration of women, examined women's disenfranchisement, and helped those women do something about it, even if they worried it might disrupt their lives...those men were probably seen by other men of their time as misguided or even insane. They're viewed differently now, by both men and women, through the lens of 2011.

Now the roles are reversed, and I feel like it's time for women to return the favor. Some of the best people in my life are women, and many of them would call themselves feminists. But still, I look at some of what the movement is engaged in today, and my response is, "Wait...uh, whaaa...?"

I wrote a post the other day entitled "The Female Privilege Checklist", and posted it on a popular women's subforum on reddit. I got tons of hits, and took a lot of flack from some members in the comments there, who took issue with some of the examples on my list. Fair enough. Sometimes there is no common ground to be found on an issue, and I can live with that, I suppose. But what worries me the most--and the fact that it did not surprise me worries me even more--is that out of 377 mostly women who clicked over to my blog from a woman's issues forum on reddit, only six stayed longer than 5 seconds.

And by 9:00 that evening, the post on reddit disappeared from public view and the search engine, and no other visitors clicked over. Whether this was done intentionally by the moderators, or was function of down-votes of my post by members, in either case I'm kind of appalled. Because if it was done intentionally, my voice was censored as if I'd uttered some heresy. If it was a function of down-votes, well, you need a lot of down-votes to be obliterated like that, and since only six people stayed longer than 5 seconds, members were down-voting something they hadn't even read, let alone thought about.

The message was very clear: no matter what you have to say, if we think we might not like it then we're not listening. And we're not going to let anyone else listen to you, either.

I suppose I understand how feminists, and women in general, might feel the men's rights movement runs counter to the interests of equality for women. I don't believe it does, but yes, I can see how it would seem so. And the fact that many of the voices speaking today for men are...well, religious/conservative kooks, doesn't exactly help, either. I can only imagine how horrified Christina Hoff Sommers was, as a self-identified feminist even after the movement cut her loose, to discover Rush Limbaugh was one of her fans. Who likes to be associated with THAT, for crying out loud?

As far as some of the female voices that speak for men's issues? It's hard for someone like myself to take any woman seriously when they want to go back to the way things were 100 years ago, where gender roles were clearly defined and unassailable, a woman's reproductive rights did not exist, and women's sexuality consisted of the advice of brides' mothers to "lie back, close your eyes and think of England, dear." I don't want my daughter to have any boundaries but her own when it comes to exploring her sexuality as she grows into a woman, or to not have a choice as to the kind of relationships she wants. I want her to feel perfectly entitled to enter a physics program in university if she decides she doesn't want to be a kindergarten teacher after all, and not have anyone try to railroad her into nursing instead. I want her to feel like her body is something she owns that she can share or not, as she wishes. I want her to use her astounding talents in math and science exactly as would fulfill her best.

But I don't want her to forget that there's another half of humanity, either, or that we need to figure out some way to coexist with them that is healthy and fulfilling for both, or that we all have rights and those rights mean something, even when they're someone else's and they don't affect us as individuals. I don't want her to think that because she is told men have not historically been disenfranchised (which is inaccurate, but whatever), that men never CAN be disenfranchised. I don't want her to grow up to believe that the gender differences we've relied on for millennia for our survival as a species are a pathology to be cured, or an oppression to be eliminated. And I don't ever want her to stop questioning what she is told. Even by me.

I think one of the things that bothers me most about contemporary feminism is that it vilifies the Patriarchy for engineering society and gender roles to look the way it wanted them to look. But even if you don't believe, as I do, that human society took what differences already existed as biological tendencies and sort of agreed en masse to formalize and restrict them for the sake of social stability, even if you believe gender roles are 100% socially constructed--if engineering those roles into us was wrong, why isn't engineering them out of us also wrong?

That is, isn't any sort of social engineering kind of an exercise in megalomania for people in charge who don't entertain the tiniest possibility that they got some aspect of their vision wrong? Hell, half the time I'm unsure whether I'm making a right decision for my kids--I don't even pretend to be sure enough of my rightness on anything to decide for all of society. And it's one thing to adjust public policy to give everyone the freedom and opportunity to be who they want to be, and even propagandize the message by portraying men and women as successful and happy in gender-subversive roles and jobs. But when you try to cram society into a certain model--always 100% certain it's the correct one--through legislation, incentives, quotas, demands for equality of outcomes, etc...isn't feminism now putting unfair expectations on people to subvert gender norms? Isn't feminism saying, "sheesh, we don't see women in 50% of elected offices or chief executive positions, this means we've failed as a society?"

There seems to be no room in feminism to say, "hey, let's just open up opportunities for everyone, remind them that women can be truck drivers or executives and men can be kindergarten teachers or nurses and that's awesome," and then let people do what they want to do. The girl who grows up today thinking she can't be a doctor or a scientist or a welder if she wants to...well, that girl hasn't been paying attention, has she? So if that girl--heck, if most girls--just aren't doing those things, maybe we need to accept that it's because they don't fucking want to, you know? If those girls don't want to grow up to work 60 hour weeks and give up any semblance of a work-life balance, and they feel they don't have to because they've never had to before--what's the problem? Instead of trying to convince them to give up a decent relationship with spouse and children in favor of work, shouldn't we be holding them up as examples for men to emulate? "Hey dudes, you won't get quite as much career glory, and you give up $20k/year, but it's fucking worth it"?

I hear men in the MRM say women have a right to opportunity, but not to success. I would tell feminists women have a right to opportunity, but no obligation to take it. MRAs will say, women have a right to equal treatment, but not to equal results. I would say to feminists, maybe the results aren't worth it anyway, once you consider the cost involved. MRAs tell feminists, women have a right to pursue happiness, but not to find it. I would say to feminists, we all have a goddamn right to pursue the happiness that is right for us--even if it isn't the happiness men choose to pursue.

Why are we always judging ourselves against men's definition of success? I don't have any interest in that kind of success. I'll define it my own way, as I always have, and other women have every right to do the same, even if it means they'll tend to make different choices than men historically have.

Mother's Day

No matter what many people might tell you, being a primary parent isn't the hardest job in the world. Even being a great parent is not that hard. The hours are long, but the work is not especially physical. It doesn't take a lot of brain power. The skills are varied, but not difficult to learn. It's really not as difficult as so many mothers make it out to be.

However. Being a good parent is an exercise in putting others before yourself much of the time. When I cook breakfast, whether it's eggs or pancakes, I am the one who eats last, every time. If someone needs something during dinner, it is me who goes to fetch it from the fridge. My first child was born in 1994, my second 15 months later. From the moment my son arrived, drinking an entire cup of coffee while it was still hot became an impossible dream. It wasn't until May of 1998, during my first day back in the paid workforce, before I enjoyed that experience again.

Your kids will feel that their things are their things, but will presume that you will share what you have with them. Even now, if I come home from work with a meal--even if they've eaten, and even though it's sometimes after 9 at night--they'll swarm me like locusts and pick my plate half-clean before I even realize what's happening. Restaurant food is still enough of a treat to them that they want in on it, any time they can.

Being a good parent means the same shit, different day, over and over. It means telling your kids the same shit, over and over, until you sometimes feel like you're talking to a brick wall.

Being a good parent means you have to say no, even when it makes your kids scream that they hate you. Sometimes you have to make them cry, even though your child's crying is a wonder of evolutionary biotechnology designed to be psychologically painful to the people who hear it. And you know, even when you're doing it for their own good and they'll one day appreciate that your discipline taught them right from wrong and good decisions from bad, well, that appreciation is going to be a long time coming. It's a deferral of thanks for all the things you did that they didn't like at the time, and that you didn't like to do either, but that helped shape them into decent human beings.

It's an exercise in frustration. The number of times my children have clamored for a specific food they love--be it pizza pops, yogurt tubes, a specific kind of breakfast cereal, pepperoni sticks--only to decide they're sick and tired of it two days after it went on sale at Costco and I bought two months' worth of it...well. It's years of hearing "just a sec" whenever you ask them to do something, and "but I want it now!" whenever they ask you to do something. And while parenthood isn't as intellectually gruelling as many occupations, well, the work is boring as fuck at times. If it weren't for the internet and TV, I'd lose my mind some days.

And you don't get paid for your efforts for years. And I'm not talking money, I'm talking about the moment your kids realize the breadth and depth of the job you took on when you had them, and how thankless a job being a good parent is at times.

So until that day arrives, the day my kids say, "You know mom, all those times you pissed me off because you wouldn't let me do what I wanted, all those times you put me in time out because you loved me enough to not indulge my bad behavior, all those times you didn't buy me that designer whatever because it was too expensive, all those times you ate last...well, thanks," I'll take a day a year to let other people pat me on the back.

Happy Mother's Day to me. And to all the other moms and dads out there who are the primary caregiver to their kids, Happy Mother's Day to you, too.

The Female Privilege Checklist

In discussions of social and legal issues, I have frequently heard feminists (and gays and lesbians and transgendered people and people of ethnic minorities and, well, pretty much any identifiable group) tell others to "check your privilege", especially in cases where other individuals offer viewpoints that differ from accepted norms. 


This can be valuable advice, when it is given in good faith. We should all examine not only the ways in which we are disadvantaged, but take the time to really look at the areas in which we have advantages others do not--even when those advantages are the result of measures taken by the law and society to alleviate a disadvantage. As I told the teenage busboy at work last night when he was complaining the truck his father had given him was several years old, "You should get down on your knees and thank your dad, you ungrateful brat. You know what my teenagers get? $20 shoes and a goddamn bus pass." He was offended at first, but after he thought about it for a while, he realized just how lucky he is and actually thanked me.


However, in almost every instance I see the phrase, "check your privilege," used by a member of a group that is considered to be disadvantaged, it is used to convey victim status in relation to the dissenter, and to shut down all discussion other than that which confirms the group's beliefs. Moreover, they will often insist that because they are disenfranchised by virtue of their membership in the group, there is no way they could also hold privilege due to their membership in the same group. This is so not the case.


Privilege is largely about the real-world consequences of stereotyping and prejudice. Stereotyping and prejudice may be disfavored as a way of determining the true characteristics of a given individual, and thus be a "bad thing"...but at the same time, they don't always result in negatives for the people stereotyped, and when they result in positive effects, many are entirely prepared to take advantage of their privilege. Consider: Asians are likely to be assumed to be bad drivers = negative effect on individuals. Conversely: Asians are likely to be assumed to be good at tech and math = positive effect for individuals in certain contexts, such as when s/he is applying for jobs in these areas.


And while privilege is a complicated thing--affluent, white, straight, well-educated, able-bodied males being "at the top" in most contexts, middle class black males inhabiting a huge gray zone with upper class, white gay males somewhere down the privilege ladder, and mixed race, overweight, disabled, poor, uneducated, transgendered lesbians stuck right at the very bottom...well, it all gets complicated when you start considering just who has more advantages and disadvantages than whom. 


It's a contest these days, and to hear people talk, everyone's vying for the prized spot at the very, very, very bottom. Discussions of race, class, sexuality, gender and gender identity, disability, economic status, education level, all seem to devolve into a bizarre exercise in "one-downmanship", where everyone clamors that they are a more victimy victim than everyone else.


But some things really are black and white--at least they seem so. When considering things like male/female gender privilege, you need only consider the bilateral--that is, how does one play out in relation to the other? That is, what privileges do men enjoy solely due to their gender that women of similar economic class, education level, race, able-bodiedness, sexual orientation, etc etc, do not?


And conversely--and contrary to what many feminists believe--what privileges do women enjoy that men do not, all other things being equal? I was asked by a feminist to provide a list, and I did. She dismissed it as a "failed experiment." But I wonder what all of you might think of my female privilege checklist. Feel free to suggest more in the comments, if you think of any--I'll update the list as necessary.


Women are requested to consider whether they can answer "yes" to these questions:


1) People are likely to assume I am a warm and empathetic person.


2) People are likely to assist me when I must perform a physically arduous task.


3) If my car breaks down or I am otherwise in distress, people will be more likely to stop and help me.


4) If I am being physically assaulted, no matter the gender of my assailant, it is more likely that passersby will intervene.


5) People are likely to assume I am a competent parent, unless and until I prove otherwise.


6) People are more likely to respect my right to be offended by inappropriate or impolite behavior.


7) If I yell, people are not likely to believe I am going to hurt them.


8) Dress codes in the workplace and in leisure contexts are more likely to allow me to choose clothing that emphasize my most attractive features and minimize those I am unhappy with.


9) I am allowed by society to wear make-up to make myself more attractive without anyone questioning my sexual orientation. I am given a large social leeway in the kinds of hairstyles I can choose that will flatter my facial features.


10) If I work in a profession that is dominated by the opposite gender, people are likely to see it as "heroic", or a sign of social progress, rather than that I am deficient in some way.


11) If I show weakness, the first response of most people will be to console or help me, not criticize me, ignore me, or dismiss me as pathetic.


12) I am not expected to make the "first move" when meeting members of the opposite sex for the purposes of dating.


13) Members of the opposite gender are expected to make the first move; therefore, it is less likely I will be sexually rejected by those I come into close contact with in a dating context.


14) I am not expected to spend a significant portion of my yearly income on a token that accompanies a marriage proposal.


15) I am less likely to be expected to spend a significant amount of money on gifts, tokens, and activities during courtship and dating.


16) If I am having dinner with a member of the opposite gender in a dating context, and I do not reach for the check, people are unlikely to assume I am cheap.


17) If I am having dinner with a member of the opposite gender in a non-dating context, and I do not reach for the check, people are still unlikely to assume I am cheap.


18) If I earn less than my partner, no one will look at me funny.


19) If I earn nothing and my partner supports me, no one will look at me funny.


20) If I am unemployed and my partner is supporting me, people other than my partner are unlikely to pressure me because I am "not trying hard enough" to find employment.


21) If I earn less than my partner, people are unlikely to expect me to contribute equally to our living expenses.


22) If I am skilled in activities/hobbies that are commonly attributed to the opposite gender (kick boxing, operating power tools, shingling a roof, knitting, scrap-booking, floral arranging), people will see me as admirable. No one is likely to think I am a weirdo or wonder if I'm gay.


23) If I am completing a task with a member of the opposite gender, it will be expected that they take the greater physical burden--such as carrying the heavier boxes.


24) If I cry or am hurt, men and women are unlikely to tell me to "suck it up".


25) If I choose to stay at home with my children while my partner works, people are unlikely to think I am a deadbeat, unskilled, or shirking my responsibility to my family.


26) If I choose discontinue, temporarily leave, or reduce my participation in a high-status career in order to spend time at home caring for children, people are likely to consider it a "noble sacrifice" rather than a waste of my talents. 


27) If I work and have a family, my employer will be less likely to require me to work overtime or bring work home with me. This will be the case even if I equally share domestic duties with my partner, or have outside domestic help (housekeeper, nanny).


28) If an employer claims to have "non-sexist" hiring policies, I can assume this to mean that members of my gender will be more likely to be hired, rather than less.


29) If I choose a career in early childhood or elementary level education, or volunteer to work with youth, no one will wonder if it's because I am a pedophile. They will trust me, even if they are aware that members of my own gender can and sometimes do use these positions to facilitate their sexual abuse of children.


30) If I commit a crime against children, even before details come out, people are likely to want to believe I have been falsely accused, was "failed by the system", or was somehow "driven to it" by factors outside my control (such as mental illness, poverty, lack of social services, childhood abuse), because members of my gender "just don't do stuff like that". It is unlikely they will automatically attribute my actions to unprovoked aggression or hold me entirely responsible for them.


31) If I am a victim of domestic violence, there are many services in my community that will help people of my gender. It is unlikely I will be denied services based on my gender.


32) If my partner physically abuses me, I will be believed by the authorities. Their belief will not depend on whether I have physical signs of injury.


33) If I physically abuse my partner, people--including the authorities and victim's services personnel--are likely to assume it was in self defence. Even if I tell them I hit first and my partner is non-violent, they are likely to wonder if my partner did something to instigate the assault, like cheating on me, yelling at me, or otherwise provoking me to lose control.


34) If I physically abuse my partner, and they reciprocate, they are as likely or more likely to be the one arrested as I am, even if my partner's reciprocation was in self-defence.


35) If my partner physically abuses me, and I reciprocate--even if I admit my reciprocation was not in self-defence but out of anger--it is unlikely that I will be arrested.


36) If I am divorced, and my ex-partner earns more than I do, it is more likely I will be awarded spousal support, even if am employed and self-supporting, than if our positions were reversed.


37) If I am divorced, the default assumption in the family court system is that I will have primary custody of my children. This will be the case, even if my ex-partner and I shared breadwinning and childcare duties roughly equally during the marriage.


38) If my ex-partner sues me for custody, they are unlikely to be as successful as I would be were our positions reversed. The burden will be on them to prove I am an unfit parent, rather than that they are more fit, before this likelihood tips in their favor.


39) If I am divorced, I will in almost every case be awarded child support. If my ex-partner does not abide by the terms of the custody/child support order, they will face legal consequences as serious as a prison sentence. They will face these consequences even if their reason for not paying is that their financial situation has changed since the marriage. They will face these consequences even if I do not fulfill my own legal obligations spelled out in the custody order to permit or facilitate their access to my children--my right to distance myself from my ex-partner is likely to take precedence over my children's right to involvement with their non-custodial parent.


40) If I am divorced and my partner is awarded primary custody of my children, I will only rarely be required to pay child support, even if I can afford it. If I am required to pay child support and I do not, for whatever reason, it is unlikely that I will face any legal consequences.


41) If I abuse the legal process during my divorce by obtaining a fraudulent temporary restraining order, misrepresenting my financial status, hiding assets, or otherwise perjuring myself, it is very unlikely I will be charged with a crime. In fact, my abuse of the legal process--even after it has been discovered by the court--is likely to benefit me in matters such as custody. Moreover, "the good of the children" will be treated as a reason to not penalize me monetarily--such as by reducing my share of joint assets.


42) If my ex-partner abuses the legal process in the above ways, they are more likely to be penalized criminally by being charged, or monetarily through reduction of their share of our joint assets. 


43) If I have consensual sex with my partner and we are both underage, and a charge of statutory rape is filed, I will never be the one charged. This will be the case even if I pressured my partner to have sex and they objected.


44) If I am raped by a member of the opposite gender, and I am not below the age of consent, no one will tell me such a crime does not exist.


45) If I am raped by a member of the opposite gender, knowledgeable members of the medical and criminal justice communities are unlikely to consider my body's involuntary and automatic responses to sexual stimuli as "proof" that I gave consent.


46) If I am the victim of a statutory rape committed by a member of the opposite gender, and it results in a pregnancy, I will have a choice as to what my parental responsibilities to that child will be. I will not be legally required to be financially responsible for a child that results if I have been raped by an adult.


ETA: 

47) irregardless of my parents' culture or religion or any small beneficial side-effects, I am protected by the law from any genital cutting until I am an adult and request it for myself. If I have been cut, my peers will universally agree that I have been a victim of a heinous crime.

48) I can openly state a sexual preference for members of the opposite gender who had significant portions of their genitals removed at birth, and not immediately be called out as crazy by most of society. I can request a sexual partner who has not been cut to become cut for me, and that partner would most likely not immediately leave me.

49) I can cite my own sexual preference for members of the opposite gender who had significant portions of their genitals removed at birth as the sole reason for requesting the same done to my newborn child, and my child's doctor will comply without arguing with me or reporting me to the police. My health insurance will even pay for it.

50) It would be career suicide for a doctor or politician to recommend cutting off significant portions of my genitals to reduce the chance of catching STDs or having other medical problems with my genitals.

51) There's little debate as to whether or not cutting my gender's genitals is bad.


***Please, if anyone wants to add more items, just let me know in the comments, like Beanie Appa did. This list is a work in progress. :)


When I proffered some of the second half of this list in an online discussion, one feminist scoffed, "Women's privilege is exclusively when we are raped, physically abused, or divorced? Wow, lucky me."


What feminists--and many groups claiming disadvantage in whatever area--don't seem to consider is that privilege is an inherently oppositional and proportional concept. In order for men, for instance, to have male privilege in a specific context, it requires that women's disadvantage in that context be in opposition in relation to that privilege. If everyone had equal status under the law and in the eyes of society in relation to each other, even if our circumstances were terrible, no one would be more privileged or disadvantaged than anyone else, right? Privilege of one group requires the disadvantage of another. And when you have gender privilege, it is the other gender that is, perforce, disadvantaged.


Feminists of today still see the wage gap as a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. Feminists believe that the wage gap is a product of sexism in the workplace and unfair social expectations placed on women. The more libertarian view is that it is largely the result of women's choices in regard to work-life and home-life, and that most choices involve prioritizing one thing over another, even if we may desire and value both equally. But whatever you believe, the wage gap has been narrowing and will continue to narrow, because feminists decades ago believed it was a problem, and other people believed them and did something about it.


Feminists may scoff that it's no great shakes to have gender privilege when they are being victimized, raped, beaten or going through the difficult and emotionally devastating process of negotiating custody agreements. I find it quite alarming that they don't seem to be able to look at the situation from the other side. That female privilege, by the very nature of what privilege is, lies in direct, proportional opposition to male disenfranchisement in these very same areas. The greater the female privilege, the greater the male disenfranchisement. And female privilege in these particular areas--sexual assault, domestic violence, divorce and child custody--is HUGE. And in some areas, it's only going to get huger as due process in rape cases erodes at the behest of feminists.


So in these areas where lives are often shattered, where people suffer enormous physical and emotional pain, where their relationships with their partners are dissolved and their lives turned upside down, and the their relationships with their children under threat, where they are charged with crimes or are the victims of them--where they are going through an already horrible experience--these are the very areas where men suffer the greatest disenfranchisement in our society. 

Way, way, way up at the beginning of the post, I mentioned privilege in regard to an Asian applying for a tech job. It's foolish to think that if he beat out a black or white candidate who was better qualified for the job, even if he knows it's due to stereotyping and the privilege that derives from that, that he will he will take the boss aside and say, "Hey, you know, I think that other guy is actually better than me. Just because I'm Asian doesn't mean I'm great at fixing computers. You should probably hire him instead." The more of a positive effect a privilege has on an individual, the less they are inclined to give it up. 


And in horrible situations, like divorce, DV or rape, how likely is any individual to say, "Hey, I think you're making your judgments of the situation based on gender privilege. I'd like you to be more fair to the man I say raped me and respect his due process rights"? How likely is an individual to say, "Well judge, you know, I realize everyone assumes mothers should get custody, and as a feminist I find that stereotypes based on socially constructed gender norms are harmful. So I'd like you to forget all that, even if it means I may lose custody of my children"? How likely is an individual to say, "Listen officer, I actually hit first. Arrest me too, please"?


Individuals take advantage of their own privilege. They do. And they do it all the more when the stakes are very, very high. Feminists--hell, all women--would be advised to consider what it would be like were the gender privilege reversed in these situations, if they suffered the same level of disenfranchisement men currently suffer in cases of rape, DV, and family law. 


If women were assumed by the authorities to be making it up when they make a claim of rape, and predisposed to believe the accuser if they themselves were charged; if women were assumed to always be the aggressor in domestic violence situations and treated accordingly by the law, and if women were turned away from shelters because those shelters only serve DV victims of the opposite gender; if the family court system tore children from their mothers because the default assumption was that custody should go to the father and your rights as a parent--even a weekend one--didn't matter to anyone... ?


If women suffered this obscene and unconscionable level of disenfranchisement in these terrible and potentially life-destroying situations, and weighed it against the current wage gap, which would feminists consider the bigger problem?

Why I advocate for men's rights

I'm not a traditionalist woman. I'm bisexual. I'm kind of a dirty old man when it comes to my attitudes about sex, and I'm masculine enough in some ways to pull it off without ever having been burdened with the label of slut. Moreover, I write erotic fiction, much of it with bi-male and bi-female themes (and no, I'm not telling any of you all my pen name, so don't bother asking). Though I was a stay-at-home mom for the first five years of my marriage, and though I found that role fulfilling and the work intrinsically valuable, I did not feel myself again until I got back into the paid workforce. I am the last person on earth who would wish to return to the world of a hundred years ago.

I've been sexually assaulted. I was sexually harassed as a 23 year old woman to the point where I left a job I'd held for four years. I would even regard the last six years of my marriage as emotionally and psychologically abusive.

I'm divorced, have three kids, and grievances against my ex that any reasonable man or woman would likely see as entirely justified. I still struggle with my anger over things he did during our marriage, and tried to do after it was over. The fact that after two and a half years, the only money that has ever changed hands between us has been from me to him only adds insult to injury.

During my travels online through the rugged and often inhospitable landscape of the Men's Rights Movement, I have been required to "prove my credentials" as a logical and reasonable human being more times than I care to mention. I have had to "prove my credentials" as a woman who did not screw over her ex during her divorce. I have had to "prove my credentials" as not merely a traditionalist woman who wants to go back to men supporting women while women stay at home. This is an environment that is often hostile to women until they have paid their dues. And even when your dues are paid (and paid and paid, lol) you pay in other ways.

I have had to sit and grind my teeth when men in the movement complain that "That bitch got MY house. It was MY property because I paid for it while SHE stayed home," and resist the urge to remind them that unpaid domestic labor has value too, and that women's denial of that value in the early days of feminism is part of why men and women are in this mess today. That if she was the kind of wife and mother I'd been when I stayed at home, and he'd had to pay her a fair-market wage for her child-care, housekeeping and maybe even home/yard maintenance duties, her income might have been almost as high as his own during the marriage.

As the survivor of a sexual assault that I suffered as a 14-year-old virgin who hadn't had her first period yet, I've had to sit and grind my teeth time and again at the glib attitude many in the movement have toward rape. If the system has a default assumption that all accusers are telling the truth and all accused are lying pieces of shit, many in the MRM have a bias that leans too far in the opposite direction. I am a firm believer in always believing an accuser--when it comes to providing victims' services such as counselling and medical treatment. I am also a firm believer in the due process rights of the accused during police investigations and criminal trials, feel a university's involvement in a sexual assault case should be limited to dialling 911 and letting the criminal justice system take it from there, and that the identity of the accused should be withheld by authorities until he's convicted. I believe feminism's elevation of rape-victim status to a bizarre combination of almost religious idolatry and kid-glove handling harms women in very insidious ways. But at the same time, the way some in the MRM talk about rape...well, it upsets me.

I've had to wade through dozens of news pieces about female perpetrators of spousal assault, stalking, hideously violent assaults on innocent people, sexual and physical abuse of children, infanticide, premeditated murder of husbands and boyfriends, atrocities beyond counting, held vengefully aloft by the MRM as proof that women are as likely to be sociopathic, psychotic, hateful, brutal, selfish assholes as men are. Story after story after story about yet another woman's unsubstantiated claims of abuse leading to yet another man losing his kids and yet more kids losing their father, more lives destroyed by women who weren't even the ones scorned because THEY are more likely to initiate the divorce. A steady diet of misdeeds perpetrated by women on men and innocent kids, enough to turn anyone's stomach.

It gets tiresome. It gets disheartening. It gets burdensome. It even gets a little scary sometimes, when I realize just how angry some of these men are. Given that many of my personal experiences with men have been...ahh...less than wonderful, given how initially hostile the MRM can be to anyone with a vagina, and how insensitive they can seem on issues that have affected me very deeply from the opposite side of the gender divide, why do I do it? Here's why:

I used to live in a tiny, isolated town with a resource-based economy--mostly logging and sand/gravel. When the construction industry in the US went kablooie in 2008, most of the jobs in that town disappeared. I work as a server--tips are a huge portion of my income, but that portion depends on how many people eat out. In late 2008, people where I lived stopped eating out, and my income started to go down. And down. And down. 

My ex has never paid child support, and had always enjoyed unlimited access to our kids, at my expense, because my kids love their dad and have a right to see him. He exercised that access an average of one night every 6-8 weeks. My nearest family--my parents and sister--lived 2000km away in a city with a robust economy, but the few times I'd suggested moving there, my ex wouldn't hear of it. His assertion that "How do you expect me to pay child support? I can't even support myself around here. I don't even have food in my fridge," without extrapolating from that just how impossible it would be for me to support four people on my own in the same local economy, and how no food in my fridge would mean his own kids going hungry...well, the level of his tunnel-vision and selfishness was almost surreal to me. I felt like my ex had not only effectively abandoned my kids, he'd abandoned logic, reason, reality, sanity.

In February of 2010, I finally looked at my mounting debts and decided there was no way I could continue to live where I did, supporting four people on my own, and not go bankrupt. That staying solely so my kids could see their dad one night every couple of months, if and when he could be bothered, wasn't worth the price I and my kids were paying. My debts alone, not including my mortgage, had climbed to almost twice my yearly income at the time. I was paying the mortgage with my Visa card. There were no jobs to be had. And my nearest family lived 2000km away--I really was going it alone. 

I finally had to concede that my choice was either move or starve. My ex's objection to the very suggestion was well-documented in the correspondence between our lawyers, and he had repeatedly threatened to bring legal action if I tried to move, action that would cost me thousands of dollars and might take a year or more to play out. 

I was stuck between survival and my own honor. If I stayed, my family would be destroyed. If I did the honorable thing and informed him of my decision, he'd bring an action that would only force us all to stay where we were until I'd spent thousands I didn't have in legal fees just to get it on a judge's desk, which would only destroy us all the faster. 

So I packed up my house and my kids and I moved. Without asking him. Without even telling him. And then I prepared for a legal Battle Royale to prove to a judge that I was justified in what I had done, that I'd had no choice in moving, and no choice other than to do it when and how I did. That my only reasonable option was to move to the city where my parents and sister live so I and my kids would have help and support nearby--a city where the economy was healthy, but that also happens to be 2000km away from my children's father. I'd documented the ways I'd encouraged my ex to spend time with his kids, and how seldom he'd actually done it, and how his right to see them every 6-8 weeks when he felt like it should not outweigh their right to not be raised in poverty. I had a six-page affidavit prepared, with which to argue my case.

And my ex's objections to what I'd done were dismissed out of hand. I'd moved his kids 2000km away from him, without even informing him I was doing it, and I didn't even need to present my affidavit to the judge--all I had to say was that I'd moved for work. She took it as a given that she should side with me over him, and made her decision with a sanguinity and certainty that I found appalling, even as I almost wept with relief.

Shortly before I had moved, I'd re-entered the sexual marketplace. I had a brief fling with a married man. I was his first affair, and he struggled with his guilt over stepping out on his wife, even though he'd been sleeping on the couch for two years. Conversely, his wife had been cheating on him for years--remember, this is a small town where everyone knows every bit of dirt about everyone else. I don't suppose she struggled very much over her own guilt feelings, since she didn't care to hide her infidelities. He was so unhappy in his marriage I can only describe it as despair because he couldn't see any way to fix it, but he stayed because he was terrified--not worried, not scared, but terrified--of losing his children.

It wasn't until after I moved and the judge made her 8-second ruling that I realized just how justifiable his fear had been. 

I was raised by parents who told me to never only read the headlines or listen to the soundbites, but to read the entire article and think rationally about things before I formed opinions. To not only regurgitate the information I am fed, but to thoroughly digest it, apply logic and my own experiences to what I hear and read, and then decide if it makes sense. To question. To examine. To look at problems from many angles. To seek out differing points of view because, hey, you just might learn something--even if that something is that people can be full of shit. 

They taught me words like "sophistry" and what it means. They taught me that evidence is everything, and statistics can be made to say anything you want, depending on your agenda. They taught me that sometimes people lie so convincingly to themselves, that even when they're lying to you they feel like they're telling the truth. 

As a teenager, I mostly hung out with guys, because guys were more accepting of the ways I'm different. Because I'm more guy-like than girlie, they never guarded their speech around me, nor do any of my male coworkers now. And though I've been deeply wronged by a few men, I know from my other experiences with men that that the vast majority of boys and men are more good than bad. They're flawed, but they're still human. They're not women, but they're still human.

I have three children. Two sons and a daughter. And as much as I may complain about how much trouble they can be, and despite the fact that I've been known to threaten to knock their heads together when they annoy me, I love them and am as proud as fuck of them. I want them to be happy and to succeed in life, however they choose to measure their success. 

But I look at the world they are growing up in, a world where my boys will soon be facing the same problems men face are facing now, only worse. A world where my daughter also will be reaping the consequences of living in a society that values the rights of one gender over another and no one seems to give a shit. A world where everything women naturally are is seen as admirable, and everything men naturally are is seen as a pathology to be cured. A world where even women who commit the most heinous and atrocious acts are instantly assumed to have been failed by the system or somehow justified in their actions, while men who commit similar acts are instantly assumed to have done it out of jealousy, anger, a desire to control, aggression, or just...well, maleness. I don't want my sons to live in a world where no matter how good they are, they will be told they are bad--or my daughter to live in a world where she will always be able to blame someone or something else for her decisions and actions. 

I want my daughter to grow up to be a woman who owns her own shit, and my boys to grow into men who are not forced to own everyone else's shit on top of their own.

The voices that speak for feminism are millions upon millions. They are so legion, they need only whisper to be heard. The voices speaking for equality for men and boys are so few, they're drowned out by the opposition even when they scream. I don't know what I can do other than raise my kids to be able to think on their own, and add my voice to the issues I believe in that I feel are underserved. That more people advocate for, and sympathize with, animal rights than men's rights is a travesty that stymies me. I suppose if men could somehow make themselves look as cute and as helpless as a baby seal, things would be different, but they can't. Men and boys are in jeopardy--really and for true, honest, not just kinda-sorta jeopardy--and they deserve more voices speaking for them.

So that's what I'm doing.

Shut up and come back when you can ask nicely...

In an online discussion, a feminist recently asked my boyfriend (oops, partner) to tell her of some things he considered to be "female privilege". Believing she was asking in good faith (which she might have been, who knows?), he asked *me*, from my arguably less biased position as a woman, to provide a list of what I felt were privileges women benefit from.

I posted a "checklist" of 17 items similar to the one frequently used to determine male privilege, concentrating on issues where women's privilege most seriously disenfranchises men, and asked her if she could say "yes" to any of them.

Items included:

-if I physically abuse my partner, people are likely to believe my partner did something to deserve it, like hitting me first.

-if my partner physically abuses me, even if I have no physical signs of it, I will be believed by the authorities.

-if I physically abuse my partner, and they reciprocate, it is likely that they will be arrested/charged and I will not.

-if I divorce my spouse, the default assumption is that I will have primary custody of my children, even if my spouse and I shared breadwinning and child care duties during the marriage.

-if I divorce my spouse, I will be awarded child support, and if my ex-spouse does not pay they will face serious legal consequences. They will face these consequences even if they cannot pay because their financial situation has changed since the marriage.

-if I divorce my spouse, and they are granted primary custody of my children, I will rarely be ordered to pay child support, even if I can afford it. If I am ordered to pay, and I don't, it is unlikely I will face serious consequences.

Her response, after giving a couple examples of what she considered female privilege, was to call my list a "trite rehash of the MRA agenda", express her "disappoint[ment]", and actually "feel bad for [me]" that I had "bothered to type it up." Her two examples of female privilege were:

-people will assume I am a warm and empathetic person

-people will be more likely to assist me when I must accomplish a physically arduous task

Um. Okaayyyy. Way to dismiss, shame and distract. And while I agree with her examples, I'm pretty sure she suggested them because they are seemingly innocuous, in order to present female privilege as essentially a non-issue. The extrapolation of these privileges to their inevitable real-world consequences seemed beyond her.

Her first example is almost certainly a major contributing factor in the current gender bias in DV law. And it didn't occur to her that people would be more likely to assist her when she must accomplish arduous tasks that are not physical (such as, say, negotiating a custody agreement).

Weary, but not prepared to give up, I presented more examples I thought would be less apt to provoke a defensive response, some of which include:

-dress codes in the workplace are more likely to allow for me to emphasize my more attractive physical features and de-emphasize the ones I'm unhappy with (if a man looks like a pear in a suit, tough luck)

-if I work in a profession dominated by the opposite gender, I will be seen as "heroic" or an indicator of "social progress", not an indication that I'm somehow deficient (think Meet the Parents--"You're a male nurse? You must have failed the entry tests for med school.")

-if I earn less than my partner, no one will look at me funny

-if I earn less than my partner, people will not automatically expect me to contribute equally to our living expenses

Her response was this:

Do you notice that anything either of us has come up with is actually a feminist issue? Gender roles, the beauty myth, wage disparity...not a terribly successful experiment.

Sigh. Now I am not only weary, but frustrated. I feel like I am banging my head against the wall. I responded:

I know! All issues, when you really think about them, are feminist issues. Wow! I just realized: there are no men's rights issues. In every instance that a man is disenfranchised by virtue of his gender, it's actually an oppression of women.

But if feminism is, as you imply, THE ANSWER to all gender equality issues, I wonder how long men will have to wait before feminism seriously addresses the issues that concern them? And when feminism does decide to tackle them, which will they tackle first? The man who loses access to his kids because his ex's new boyfriend lives in another state and the courts don't take his rights as a father (or his children's right TO a father) seriously? Or the fact that he's expected to carry the heavier bags when it's time to bring in the groceries?

Her response?

My life has been touched by custody issues more than you can ever know. Your attempt to shame me with your personal story is inappropriate and is starting to piss me off. This isn't a sorrow and woe competition.

Re-read the article. If you want to get feminists to champion your cause, show how it is a feminist issue, don't just rage and blame. Spouting rhetoric isn't the same as engaging in dialogue.

"I'm a victim and you're not being nice to me. Shut up and go away and come back when you can ask nicely."

My reply to her:

When did I ever claim to want feminists to champion any Men's Rights cause? What I want is gender equality, and if I want that I would be ill-advised to rely on a movement that prioritizes social and legal change in areas where women are disenfranchised, no?

And please don't get me wrong. This in itself is not a criticism of feminism. It would be kind of retarded for me to expect women in the movement to feel as strongly about male disenfranchisement as they do their own--especially when I have been told by (some) feminists themselves that it is not a reasonable expectation, that feminism may ally itself with other rights movements, but it is understandably concerned with women first.

And it would be equally retarded to assume that any political movement will be as interested in taking privileges away from those it champions as it is in elevating them to an equal status. This too is only understandable--it is a both a vagary of human nature and a political reality.

What I want is for ANYONE to listen and take these issues seriously. Sometimes that means shouting and even blaming. I would advise any feminist who tells any group that if they want to be listened to they should stop shouting, that I am sure men and conservative women said the same thing to suffragettes--"Sheesh, you gals are strident and shouty. If you're nice, and you ask a certain way, maybe we'll listen." I'm also pretty sure that if suffragettes had stopped shouting (and blaming), women still would not have the vote. Telling people that their issues are not issues until and unless they present them "nicely" and politely and according to this rule or that rule or the other rule is a silencing tactic used on feminists so frequently, even now, that I am constantly amazed by their inability to recognize when they are trivializing and dismissing others' issues in the same damn way.

And oddly enough, the only issues they want people to stop being shouty about are issues that--if addressed--will negatively affect some individual women. "Gay rights are cool--hell, we'll shout with you. Equal rights for people of color or the poor are cool--don't stop shouting until they listen. Hell yeah! Equal rights for men? Shhhhhhh! No one will take you seriously unless you're pleasant." How often have strong, capable, aggressive women in the movement and the business world heard that one used against them, and how insulting is it to them?

It's disingenuous of anyone to believe that any group advocating for radical social change is going to be listened to if only they are calm and reasonable. Since the mid-80s, academics have been quietly, calmly, convincingly and reasonably publishing 159 surveys, studies and papers tabulating data on domestic violence based on community samples (general population, rather than police records or otherwise skewed or self-selecting samples) of 109 000 men and women, that quietly, calmly, reasonably and convincingly disconfirm the "patriarchal [terrorist]" paradigm of intimate partner violence. Yet who's talking about them--or rather, who's talking about the half of the data in them that disproves the notion that men are the only perpetrators and women the only victims? The criminal justice system? Nope. DV awareness and prevention groups? Nope. Feminists? Nope. These academics have been nice, calm, reasonable in their approach to these issues, imploring judicial officials, government agencies and victims' rights advocacy groups to only consider the data and adjust policies to protect all victims. It's been 25 years, and what has this calm, reasoned approach got them?

When justifiably angry early feminists were told to be "nice", to be "pleasant", to "calm down", that their justifiable and righteous anger at women's disenfranchisement was "unbecoming and unfeminine" and they "should be quiet and go home until you can be nice about it", what do YOU think their response should have been? And yet when it comes to issues where men's disenfranchisement has often been life-destroying for individuals--domestic violence and father's rights--people, not only feminists, tell them they should be more "stoic", to "suck it up" to "deal with it", that their anger is just typical "male aggression" and that they should "go away until you learn how to be nice."

What do you think their response should be? What do you think it will be?

I hope--hell, if I believed in god I would pray--that men will not be quiet. That they will not stop shouting. That they will not settle down and focus solely on compromise, calm debate and pleasant discussion prematurely. That they will not shift from a stance of anger to one of begging. The time will come for settling down, but considering the resistance of those in power--in all defiance of a mountain of empirical evidence and sometimes even their own deeply traumatic personal experiences growing up without fathers or with abusive mothers--their acceptance of a reality that doesn't conform to what is currently considered politically correct isn't coming anytime soon. 

All political movements advocating for meaningful social and political change have had to shout to be heard and taken seriously: The environmental movement, the feminist movement, the equal rights movement, the gay rights movement. There were marches, angry chants of "Hell no, we won't go!", strongly worded placards and slogans, yelling and fist-slamming in venues of political debate, and all manner of unruly, angry, righteous protest.

Contrary to what the feminist above claims, when people are accustomed to the comfort of their status quo, they need to be shouted at before they will be motivated to change it. Sometimes getting people to take you seriously is as much about making a nuisance of yourself until the powers that be finally throw up their hands and cry, "All right already! We'll give you what you want if that's what it takes to shut you guys up!" as it is about logic and evidence and reasoned arguments. Sometimes it requires extremist movements like those of Malcolm X to threaten the masses with a real shake-up before the powers that be are willing to opt for the saner option of Martin Luther King.

However this kind of change happens, it always, always requires shouting. So please, guys, don't stop shouting. Please.

My path to recovery from sexual assault

Uhm, when a guy is inserting his penis into your vagina without your consent, he is taking away your worth as a person. 

Why do you think most victims of rape or molestation feel so fucking terrible about themselves after it happens? That is the most common reaction of a victim: not "I'm still totally awesome even though I was just used as a cum bucket!" That type of reaction can take months, years, therapy, or may never come...

This is the response of a self-identified feminist to my assertion in a recent online discussion that: "It's a vagina, it's not who you are, ffs. If you get raped, it will always be something bad that happened to you, but shit, it isn't who you are. It has nothing to do with your worth as a person. No one can take that unless you let them."

Later in the discussion, she dragged out that most useful and well-worn of feminist silencing devices:

Wait, have you been raped before?
Whether you have or you haven't, you should probably be quiet.
You can't tell anyone else how they should feel about being violated and that is the bottom line.

Let's set aside for now the glaring fact that she had only just finished telling me how women (including myself, I suppose) should feel about being violated--like a "cum-bucket"--but she had also just told me that a woman's worth (and MY worth, presumably) as a person is, in fact, taken away when a man rapes her. You can imagine how relieved I was that the attempted rape I experienced as a 14 year-old virgin didn't culminate in that whole "inserting his penis into [my] vagina without [my] consent" thing, since this is all it takes, according to some feminists, to erase every positive character trait a woman has.

My assault happened in a playground at about 10:30 on a Sunday night. I had just taken up smoking a few months before, and was craving a cigarette, but the corner store was closed. On the drive home from a visit with my grandparents, I'd spotted two boys, whom I knew smoked as well, hanging out near my neighborhood's Catholic school, and I decided to take my dog for a walk and see if I might be able to bum a cig off one of them.

I didn't know these boys other than by name. I knew their names, because they had a bad rep around school, but I hadn't seen any of the bad behavior (fights, stealing, etc) they were rumored to have engaged in, and like any young teenager, I had the typical overblown sense of my own immortality and invincibility--bad things happen to other people, not to me.

I found them in the playground sitting on the swings. It was very dark, and I didn't realize right away that they were passing a mickey of vodka back and forth between them, but they had cigarettes and gave me one. I stayed and chatted--only polite, right?--and tied my dog to one of the posts of the swingset. They offered me a sip of vodka, and I accepted--again, it seemed the courteous thing to do, and I was neither a teetotaler nor a teen drunk.

I'm not even sure at what point I began to feel uncomfortable. It was dark enough that I couldn't see their faces--any leers they might have worn went unseen by me. But the conversation became incrementally more stilted, and the space between us grew heavy with a sense of febrile expectation. I made my excuses, "It's a school night, and my folks are probably wondering where the hell I am," and started to leave.

Next thing I knew, I was on my back in the sand under the swings, my shirt over my face and my arms pinned over my head by boy 1, while boy 2 tried, unsuccessfully, to get my pants down. It amuses me to this day that in my case, a rape was prevented by an example of 80s fashion so absurd it paled in comparison to such staples as shoulder pads, or the mullet--that of the waist-to-hem, double side-zippered jean.

I was lying there, my face covered, while boy 2 pawed ineffectually at the top of my jeans, looking for a front-fly that wasn't there, pondering the farcical nature of the situation with a detached calm, even as I struggled and repeated the phrases my mom and the media had taught me to use: "No. I don't want this. I mean it, no." I wondered what kind of person would do what they were doing to someone so young she hardly even had breasts. Hell, I hadn't even started menstruating at that point, and though I wasn't scared of sex, I sure as hell wasn't ready for it.

I've always had a fair ability to remain calm in a crisis, and it has served me well over the years when dealing with my children's illnesses and injuries, or friends in trouble. The time to be upset and break down is when, for good or ill, the immediate crisis is over, right? But while it was all happening, all I could think was how ignoble it was that my virginity was about to be forcibly taken by two Neanderthal buffoons who were not only ugly but stupid, and I was going to get a butt-crack full of sand into the bargain. That their justification for what they were about to do was that they'd given me a cigarette and a sip of vodka, and I therefore "owed them" something. And that what would save me, if anything, were those ridiculous jeans.

What saved me, in fact, was not the jeans, the intricacies of which boy 2 finally managed to unravel. It was a passerby, walking along the other side of the park, whose attention was drawn by our voices and my barking dog just as boy 2 was working my panties down my legs.

Boy 1 let go of my arms and muttered, "Oh shit." I sat up, pulled my shirt down, and we all peered across the playground at the silhouette of a man now halted near a copse of trees, who was, in turn, peering back toward us. I seized on the boys' sudden unease and told them, "It's really late, I bet my dad's out driving around looking for me by now."

They helped me up and dressed, all apology now that the prospect of discovery was made real to them. Boy 1 told me they didn't want me to get in trouble with my dad. I almost laughed at the projection inherent in that statement. They didn't want me to get into trouble? They helped me straighten my clothes and pressed a few more cigarettes into my hand as if that made up for everything, before skulking off into the dark, in the opposite direction from where the passing man stood.

I stayed for a moment to collect myself and dusted as much of the sand out of my hair as I could, and waited for the man to continue on his way. As I untied my dog and started walking, reaction set in. My legs shook so hard they almost couldn't carry me. And the entire time, I kept asking myself "What the hell do I do now?"

My recovery was surprisingly short. It took about fifteen minutes, actually. Fifteen minutes where I played out the entirety of what my parents would have told me, were I to tell them what had happened.

First would come the hugs and reassurances that everything would be okay, that it wasn't the end of the world even if it might feel that way, that they'd do whatever they could to help me get past what had happened. That despite what had happened, I was still the same bright, beautiful, wonderful girl I was a few hours ago, because no one has the power to change something like that other than myself. That no one has any right to do what those boys had done to me, and that they wouldn't rest until those sons of bitches were put in juvie where they belonged--at which point my dad would have muttered under his breath, "if they live that long..." And then?

Well, then they'd make me own my part of it. Maybe not right away, but eventually.

"Oh, honey! How could you do something so stupid? And over cigarettes? What were you thinking? You knew those boys were bad news, yet you hung out with them alone in an unlit playground? Even after you realized they were drinking? Haven't you listened to anything we've told you? In a perfect world, you should be able to walk down the darkest alley, pissed-drunk and buck-naked, and be safe from rape, but we do not live in a perfect world. If we did, we wouldn't have to lock our doors at night, or have bouncers at bars or drunk driving laws. We do all those things because we can't dictate the behavior and decisions of other people. We can only dictate our own."

As feminists are so fond of saying, we don't exist in a vacuum. We are never the sole arbiters of our fate. Other people will sometimes have their way with us if they can, and we need to make our decisions with the understanding that not everyone lives by a code of ethics, not everyone will respect our right to decide what we wish to do with our property or our bodies. But I have by far a greater effect on the direction my life will take. I have the biggest say.

That night, my parents told me three things without even having to speak:

That I can't make decisions for other people, only for myself.

That my decisions can't completely dictate the course of my life, but I am an effectual human being.

That there is a difference between taking blame for something bad that happens to you, and taking responsibility for yourself and your decisions.

I was raised to believe that my self-worth is exactly that--mine. And though we all measure ourselves against others in order to determine just how worthy we are as people, the opinions of bullies, assholes, and fucktards don't count. As that feminist I quoted above had told me, rape is often about dehumanizing a victim, that someone who disregards your right to autonomy and ownership of your own body is indeed indeed telling you your personhood is worth nothing to him--but guess what? No one's personhood is worth anything to someone like that, and the opinion of a piece of shit, waste of skin rapist as to what I'm worth as a woman and a person doesn't count. He doesn't get to tell me how I will see myself.

And on my walk home, with my parents' voices echoing in my head, I internalized the other lessons they had taught me all my life. I owned my part in what had happened. I owned the fact that had I made any number of different decisions that night, I could have avoided the assault. I could have stayed home and gone without a cigarette rather than seek out two older boys I knew had a bad rep. I could have left as soon as they handed me a smoke. I could have not taken that sip of vodka and lingered to talk. I could have not tied my dog to the swings, but continued walking toward the street while chatting, so as not to seem rude while at the same time maneuvering us all into a more safe, public place.

I had a part in the sequence of decisions that had led to my assault. I was not to blame--those boys were to blame. No one deserves to be sexually assaulted. But I had to own some of it, too. And the more I thought about this, the stronger my legs got as they carried me home.

I can't control what other people do, but I can control what I do. I was not a passive victim of my assault, I was a participant in it. There were decisions I made and actions I took that affected the outcome of that night, and if I was smart enough, I could learn from the errors in judgment I had made and make it less likely that something like that would ever happen to me again. Owning my part in what had happened didn't make me feel like it was my fault. It made me feel strong. It made me feel effectual. It made me feel like a whole person, an active participant in what happens to me, good or bad. When you don't own your life--all of it, even the parts that suck--you walk around feeling powerless, as if everything that happens is simply happening to you, as if you have no say whatsoever. And though there have been times in my life that sucked ass and I felt a very human urge to blame anyone and everyone else for my troubles, the times I've succumbed to that urge have been the lowest of my life, and things never improved until I accepted appropriate responsibility for my circumstances.

By the time I got home, I decided I didn't need to tell anyone about what had happened. I didn't need to have that conversation with my parents--I had already had it with myself. Did I want those boys to pay for what they'd done? Certainly. But they were young and stupid and drunk, and by the time they'd left the playground, they'd been as scared as I'd been. And maybe, just maybe, they were having a similar conversation with themselves on their way home--"What were you thinking? Shit, no one's going to give you a slap on the wrist over rape, because rape is some fucking serious shit. You almost got caught, and it wouldn't be community service if you did, the way it was when you were caught throwing rocks through junior high school windows. Man, if she tells her dad, you are in for a world of hurt."

I slept peacefully that night, and woke the next morning feeling fine. I didn't wall myself inside or start dressing in sweatsuits or stop wearing make-up or stop talking to boys. I continued to explore my sexuality, had make-out sessions at parties, hung with my mostly male friends, continued my habit of walking my dog at night. I didn't avoid the Catholic schoolground, even when it was dark. But I did become more aware of everything around me. Fear is unhelpful, but acknowledging risk certainly is. I've since lived a life of calculated risk, and nothing like that has ever happened to me again.

Over the next few months, those two boys avoided me like the plague. But I didn't avoid them. Whenever our paths crossed, I made sure to catch their gazes, look at them long and hard, and then smile that kind of evil, unpleasant smile that tells someone you know something that has the potential to destroy them. By the end of the school year, they looked like they were going to shit their pants whenever they saw me. And you know what? That helped me feel stronger, too.