Sometimes I think we are our own worst enemies.
I think that sadly some women have become the enemy of those women who wish to have their basic rights to privacy when undressing respected. It used to be men who were completely ignorant and so hard of understanding that they couldn't grasp that women have a right to have their feelings heard and respected as equals. I grew up in the seventies and dealt with unending amounts of sexism and misogyny from men, over my rights not to be groped, slapped, drooled over, have crude remarks made about my body.
Now when I come on these threads it is largely women or people purporting to be women who are undermining women's rights to bodily autonomy.
I find that incredibly depressing.
This thread has brought home to me what a lot of anti women feeling there is on MN, much of the language used in these posts (that if we wish to exert our right to undress in private we are Victorian, prudish precious, moaners, racist (WT actual F ??)silly, childish, hysterical etc etc) is the language of abuse, the language men use when abusing women, to infantilise them and keep them in their place. I know because I've heard every one of them before. All these manipulative tricks to belittle and dismiss completely valid feelings.
No one is harming those of you who happily get undressed with strange men present, no one is saying you can't do that if you wish. Yet for some reason you are being abusive to those of us who prefer not to do this.
How is our wish impinging on your lives in any way whatsoever ? It isn't. Why do you so desperately want to exert power to deny us something that is a basic right and does you no harm, You don't have to exert your right to privacy - no one is forcing you to, why can you not contemplate the idea that others may wish to exert theirs? Why do you want to force them to put up with behaviour that makes them uncomfortable or uneasy ?
And now I will hide the thread and take my leave. Over the last few months this misogyny has become intolerable to me, I escaped it in my real life, I don't want to deal with it online. I don't want to justify my right to be respected as a woman, I've been there and done that, it is exhausting and demoralising.
I no longer feel this is a place I enjoy spending time.
Many thanks and good wishes to those I've had interesting, funny, supportive and intelligent interaction with over the years. Good luck to you all.
Be safe, be happy.