ff

whhyyyyyyyyyy be a feminist? it is a surprisingly common question. why be all up and upons about it all the time?) and here's the thing about me:

i have a really great life. i'm not really much of a victim. i have an awesome family who believe in equality and my parents never behaved as if somehow their son was better than their two daughters (even though he is the tallest, and that could put him above us... bah boom! sorry.). i generally go through my days feeling pretty respected. have done all my life. i have awesome friends who don't slut-shame me when i wear little skirts or lots of eyeliner or whatever. all my boyfriends have been kind, thoughtful men who saw me as an equal. blah blah. things are saweet. yeah? yeah. the odd bit of street harassment. sure. i'm afraid more often than i'd like to be when i'm walking alone. totes. but. i've been lucky.

AHA!

and that's it right there.

i consider myself LUCKY because i haven't been mistreated regularly, objectified tooo often or to much real consequence, raped, abused, put aside or made invisible because of my gender... and so many other things that i'm always thinking 'they happen all the time, and i have been so lucky so far'. and that is just CRAZY! (i also happen to have a lot of friends and acquaintances who have not been so 'lucky', and then of course there are parts of the world which are so so much worse than pretty much anything we have a tangible understanding of, although i have the capacity to have emotional reactions to what happens to other humans cause EMPATHY, GUYS, but that's not what we're talking about today. we're talking about me. cause i'm vain or whatever.) (and this is not even really taking into account the level of privilege i've been living this life with. which, hi, i'm a middle class pretty white girl in CANADA, hi.)

this weekend a friend of mine got into an argument at a party. she was trying to explain what rape culture was, and that it WAS A THING, and another girl got so upset that she cried because HER friends aren't rapists, and why would you call her friends rapists, her friends don't think rape is okay, they're NICE MEN!

yes. good. excellent, even. you have a community of awesome people. who don't think rape is great. aces. and they probably don't even think that women are objects, or worthless, or whatever. and that is so great! yay! that doesn't mean that rape culture doesn't exist. it means that you're the same kind of 'lucky' as me. so now look outside your own little lovely world and ask why we all can't be that lucky or what it is that makes your people/life/space so great. try to spread that around! point at the situations that aren't like yours and ask what is happening.

* ask what it means that 1 in 17 women in canada (and 1 in 6 in the usa) will be victims of sexual assault. if you aren't one, how many women do you know? more than 17? probably. probably you do.

* ask why and how and why this tumblr has so much to post about? 

and lots more, forever more.

sometimes i feel so 'preaching to the choir' with these posts. but i think each and everyone of us can benefit from thinking more, learning more, looking more, thinking again, and talking talking talking. so thanks for (a) being good people, and (b) for reading and being open to knowing more, knowing different, and talking talking talking. i'm grateful. even when i'm loud and mad and sad.

happy friday, happy weekend, reader-talkers.