Women Are Not the Enemy (Patreon)
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As a child, I’d often hear stories about Mozambique’s landmines because the country is right on my doorstep. Photographs of blown-off legs and bloody torsos made the news all the time. The landscape was covered in them, so a walk through Sofala wasn’t like a walk on Muizenberg beach. The worst Muizies will give you are a few jellyfish. Sofala, on the other hand, could leave you with a lifelong disability. There were, of course, sections of the area that were safe, but the landmines were buried. You had no way of knowing when you might step on one.
This morning, @Sub-Not-Doormat posted this status:
"All men… yes, I said ALL… men are a danger to women. Not all of them prove it to be the case, but all of them are suspects."
Women who live in thriving rape cultures like mine are walking through another kind of Sofala. We don’t know who’s a threat and who is not. All we know is that we’ve been traumatised many times, and we might be traumatised again. The “who” of it is a mystery, so no matter how pleasant the scenery is, we’re going to feel anxious around men we don’t know.
This is not “hating men” any more than feeling anxious in landmine territory is hating Mozambique. I can assure you that Paradise Island is as exquisite as any Mediterranean island, but in the Eighties, you braced for an explosion nonetheless.
And so do we. No matter how beautiful you seem, we’ve got to tread carefully.
Men often find this inconvenient. They say it’s unjust to be distrusted when they haven’t done anything wrong. Sometimes they even want us to stop taking precautions so that they can have easier dating experiences.
Do you know what’s inconvenient? Rape. Sexual harassment. Hell, even those infernal safety precautions are exhausting. None of us want to bother with them, but experience has taught us that we have no other choice. We live in a landmine-ridden country, and blaming us isn't going to take the hazard away.
If I had to ask for anything from men, it would be understanding. Rather than pit yourself against us, join us. Become allies. Gain an understanding of our experiences. Choose to change rape culture instead of trying to change us. Stop blaming us for the landmines. We didn’t put them there. We are not the enemy. We just live in a war-ravaged world.