Schrodingers Rapist

[tiredvommachine]

This came up today on my FB, it's nearly a decade old but just as relevant, if not more today.

Post here

I always liken it to trying to free a rabbit that has its leg stuck in a fence (or whatever): YOU know that you are there to help it; YOU know that you don't mean the rabbit any harm. But all the rabbit sees is that you are big and scary and could easily hurt or kill it, and you are approaching it while it is vulnerable and cannot escape.

Do you get offended when the rabbit is afraid of you? Are your feelings hurt when it panics as you reach for it? When it tries to bite you? And when you manage to free it, do you get angry when it runs away from you as fast as it possibly can, without so much as a thank you?

Of course not - or, if you do, you need to grow up. The rabbit has no way of knowing what your intentions are. All it knows is that it is trapped, and that if you decide to attack it, it will likely die.

Obviously not a perfect analogy, but still. Women cannot read minds, and our predators look no different from any other man. Approaching a woman when she is alone or otherwise vulnerable is going to freak her out, and it doesn't matter if you're just a big teddy bear on the inside. You are big and scary and you are approaching her when she has no means of escape should you attack her.

Do you get offended when the rabbit is afraid of you? Are your feelings hurt when it panics as you reach for it? When it tries to bite you? And when you manage to free it, do you get angry when it runs away from you as fast as it possibly can, without so much as a thank you?

It might be Gift of Fear but the author basically said "do what you need to feel safe, any decent male will understand and anyone else you should be getting away from"

Beautifully put.

I think there's another thread with this article too, but it's so, so important. This is the absolute essence of the problem and sometimes I think the only thing that needs discussing. Even if by some miracle our brains were found to be pink or blue (!) it would not negate the point of this article. It describes the reality for many women. And that reality has a basis in fact - that the overwhelming majority of people who perpetrate violence against women are men and those men aren't helpfully labelled. We look to their actions to begin to label them ourselves. Words are less likely to help. What merits discussion is that it sometimes takes a while for this to click for both women and men. For me it wasn't the events of my various assaults that woke me up to this. It happened much later. I suddenly realised these repeated boundary violations by men, of all strains of severity, were not OK.