My cool MIL and more about # metoo....

[kseenaa]

I must say I have a really cool mother in law. Well, she's not officially that yet, but she still in is in all practicallity. :-)

My LJ is unlocked and anyone who wants to can read it. So does my mother in law. As I found out today, because she wanted to give me praise for my post about the # MeToo hashtag and my reactions to it.

And she totally agreed! We're both annoyed at all the hate this movement has brought. She listens to the radio a lot and had heard about an older gentleman who didn't dare talking to women anymore, afraid they'd take that wrongly. And I see that online to! Young and old.

I mean, yeah. There's a shit-ton of asshole men. As we all know. But, to use a phrase that is almost forbidden today, not all men are assholes!!! Nor are they rapists! But the # metoo hashtag pretty much says that 'all women have had this experience', which isn't true, and that 'all men are rapists and abusers', which isn't true either!

Another friend of mine made a post on instagram, it was a screenshot from Facebook, where a protest in Stockholm was going to be held. I'm going to translate it straight up.

Comrades in arms!

WE HAVE OUR PERMISSION!

The police has just allowed us our permit for demonstration! There's nothing that can stop us now! ❤
In other words, on Sunday it will happen. 2pm on the Main Square.
The demostration march against sexual molestation, against women, trans-people, none-binary and others who can't even walk the streets, in school, to work, to the pub, to the bus, at home without their bodies being abused by cismen.
We all know it - there's a change in the air. And the chagne must happen and it's happening NOW.
We're not going to be silent any longer.
Cismen: It's time to sit down and listen.
Women, trans-people, none-binary and others: It's time to rally, to support each other, to share your story if you wish.
But above all. It's time to be seen.

(My friends instagram post, in swedish, is HERE.)

I'm not the only one who see the hate there, right? And, like my friend said, for FUCKS SAKE! STOP THE HATE! Seriously. It's not helping anyone. :-/

And I'm asked why I don't like calling myself a feminist. I prefer humanist, to be honest. Equality in all things for everyone. *sigh*

This entry is cross posted between LJ and DW. Comment where you are comfortable.

Comments

[lynnenne]

The hatred isn't against men. It's against a legal system and a culture that lets abusers get away with sexual assault unopposed. I don't think anyone is saying "All men are abusers." What we're saying is that the men who ARE keep doing it over and over and over and OVER again, and getting away with it.

I'll give you an example:

In my city, a former, high-profile politician was accused of serial rape and abuse. There had been rumours about this man for decades, but everyone who knew about it kept quiet because of his public position and his place within the legal system. About a decade after he left politics, a police investigation found 14 women willing to testify in court that he had raped or attacked them... including one who was only a teenager at the time of the attack.

At trial, defense lawyers attacked the credibility, memories, and reliability of every single witness. The judge dismissed the charges because there were no third-party witnesses to any of the crimes and the victims' memories were decades old.

When 14 women testify under oath that the same man attacked them, is there any reasonable doubt in anyone's mind that he's guilty? And yet, it didn't meet the court's criteria for conviction. The guy is still free. He's in his 70s, and recently hit on one of my friends. Luckily there was a cameraman standing next to her so a physical assault was out of the question.

He invited her back to his place. She politely declined. If she didn't already know about the court case, she would have been his next victim. He has threatened to sue any media outlet that accuses him of past or future attacks.

Sexual assault has the lowest conviction rate of any major crime. Victims are torn apart, humiliated and re-traumatized on the witness stand. There is absolutely no incentive for them to come forward, and so these repeat offenders (and they are nearly ALWAYS repeat offenders) continue to roam free, assaulting more and more victims as they go. That's why it seems like every woman you know has been a victim: because a perpetrator might attack scores of women over a lifetime.

That's the system that I hate. That's the change that victims are demanding.

(And yes, men are victimized, too, and keep quiet for the same reasons - along with the added stigma of "weakness" that macho culture places on men who are assaulted by other men.)

[kseenaa]

I know! And all these protests started like that! And that's GOOD! Protesting against the legal system and the culture that allows all that is GOOD! It needs to be a protest against it. And it NEEDS to change!

But the metoo protest has morphed. To something else. It started as just what you're saying. But that's not what I'm seeing today.