This is not okay

I have made a post similar to this before but this time I am angry. Let me say this. It is not okay to victim blame. Full stop. No one is ever "asking" to become the victim of abuse, rape or harassment. I am use to getting cat-calls as I walk down the street and I shouldn't be. Unwanted attention is harassment, end of story. If one more male has the nerve to tell me that I should be flattered by the attention I will not hesitate to rip off his you-know-what and tell him that he should be flattered I touched it. I am not flattered by your sexual innuendo that does nothing more than make me uncomfortable and feel unsafe. In regards to victim blaming, it is never someone's fault that they get abused or raped. It doesn't matter how she is dressed, she is not asking for anything.

Let's talk about consent for a minute. Consent is not the absence of a "no" but the presence of a "yes". Once the word "no" is uttered in any situation there is no reason to continue what you are doing. Persuasion ending in an "okay" or a forfeit of resistance is not consent, in the same respect a lack of a "no" is not consent. Additionally, unless it has been discussed beforehand, if you wouldn't let her drive a car she isn't in a state to be giving consent. Wait. There is a lot more that I could say on this but I won't. I just want to finish saying that this is why we still need feminism. Feminism is not asking for women to have more rights than men, feminism is asking for the right for women to walk the streets safely, to wear what we want and to not fear for our lives or well-being simply because we were born female and want to wear a skirt.*


What brought on this rant? This video reminded me of everything we put up with on a daily basis and how scary it can be just to be a girl. 

Note: I recognise that it is not only women who encounter these difficulties, however it is women who have had to grow use to being cat called and harassed. We learn from the time we hit puberty to ignore this kind of unwanted attention and I'm not okay with that. 

*For the record: many of my friends and I deal with this kind of harassment when wearing full length clothing so no, it doesn't matter what she was wearing.