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The patriarchy hurts us all. I’ve had this line of thought in my head for a while, my experiences as a cis woman have made it hard to really articulate where I was going with it. @izs hits the nail on the head. @izs/953535888600035330
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I’ve had “grey area” 🙄 experiences that weren’t grey at all. They were rape. I’ve also had experiences that were traumatizing. I didn’t want to participate in a sex act, or feel I had a choice or an out. There’s a point where I don’t want to debate the legality of my trauma.
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What matters for for the point of this particular conversation is that those men were trained from a young age that sex is a prize to be won, not an act two people share. If they had, they’d have understood my communication, both spoken and unspoken.
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It’s hard for me to say I have much compassion for these men. That kind of trauma changes how one interacts with ALL men. (And for good reason, but that’s another thread) But I do feel for the little boys who are being raised to traumatize their partners without even being aware.
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Boys are set up for failure by not being encouraged to love openly and freely. To show their emotions and actually understand them. To be vulnerable and lower the stakes of a “no”. To seek reciprocal enthusiastic consent.
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This isn’t *quite* the world I’m trying to build, but to paraphrase Jello Biafra paraphrasing @FINALLEVEL, wouldn’t it be nice if the stakes were so low that this was a safe conversation? 1: “Hey, let’s get butt naked and fuck!” 2: “no thanks” 1: “okay cool. Wanna be friends?”