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My entire life, I've been told to fear you in one way or another. I've been told to cover my body as to not distract you in school, to cover my body to help avoid unwanted advances or comments, to cover my body as to not tempt you to sexually assault me, to reject your unwanted advances politely as to not anger you. I've been taught to never walk alone at night, to hold my keys in my fist while walking in parking lots, to check the backseat of my car, to not drink too much because you might take advantage of me. I've been told what I should and shouldn't do with my body as to not jeopardize my relationships with you.

I've been warned not to emasculate you, to let "boys be boys", to protect your fragile ego and to not tread on your even more fragile masculinity. I've been taught to keep my emotions in check, to let you be the unit of measure for how much emotion is appropriate and to adjust my emotions accordingly. I've been taught that you're allowed to categorize women into mothers/sisters/girlfriends/wives/daughters but any woman outside of your protected categories is fair game.

So to those of you who think you're being helpful by "protecting" me and my fellow women, you're like a shark sitting in the Lifeguard chair. I wasn't uncomfortable until you showed up at the pool and the only potential predator I see is you.

Your mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives and daughters don't need you to walk them to the bathroom for safety. Your fathers, brothers, friends and sons need to walk themselves away from their own double standards. Women are sexually harassed and sexually assaulted on school campuses, on the street, at their jobs, on the Internet, in their own homes, in ANY public place. And it has been excused or ignored for so long because of what you and I are taught from the first years of our interactions with each other: You, as a male, are not accountable for your own actions. It's MY responsibility, as a female, to not "provoke" you. But then you get to Knight-In-Shining-Armor your way through life for those in your protected categories and I am expected to applaud you. Why the outrage now over bathrooms? Why aren't you outraged every single day?

If you're telling me that there are high volumes of boys and men out there, in schools or in general, who are just waiting for a "loop hole" to sexually assault girls and women, we have bigger problems on our hands than bathrooms. The first problem would be your apparent lack of knowledge of how often it happens OUTSIDE of bathrooms, with no "loop holes" needed. This isn't about Transgender bathroom access. This is about you not trusting the boys and men in your communities and/or fearing that they're all secretly predators. Why do you have this fear? How many fathers have panicked when their daughters started dating because they "know how teenaged boys can be because they used to be one"? How many times have girls been warned "boys are only after one thing"? A mother can bring her young son into the women's restroom and that's fine but a father bringing his young daughter into the men's restroom is disturbing because men are assumed to be predators and "little girls" shouldn't be exposed to that.

So instead of picking up your sword and heading to Target or the girls' locker room to defend our "rights", why don't you start somewhere that could actually make a difference? Challenge your children's schools to end sexist dress codes and dress codes that sexualize girls as young as age 5. Advocate for proper (or any) sex education classes in all public schools by a certain grade level. Focus more on teaching your sons not to rape vs teaching your daughters how to avoid being raped. Stop asking "How would you feel if that was your mother or sister?" It shouldn't take the comparison to clue you in to what's right or wrong. Question why you're more worried about your daughter being around men than your son being around women in bathrooms and dressing rooms. Stop walking by Victoria's Secret with no problem but covering your son's eyes if a woman is breastfeeding in public. Stop treating your daughter's body as some fortress you're sworn to protect as if that's all she's got to offer the world.

CaptHayfever, post: 1596446, member: 25169 wrote:I did not feel insulted or antagonized by this at all, on account of the fact that it is very clearly directed towards a very specific subset of straight men. Context helps.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

I've been told to cover my body as to not distract you in school, to cover my body to help avoid unwanted advances or comments, to cover my body as to not tempt you to sexually assault me, to reject your unwanted advances politely as to not anger you.

Random User, post: 1596448, member: 35827 wrote:idk, to me it sounded targeted towards the kind of people that initiate unwanted advances towards females.

Focus more on teaching your sons not to rape vs teaching your daughters how to avoid being raped.

X-3, post: 1596449, member: 27765 wrote:IRHP gets offended too easily.

Random User, post: 1596453, member: 35827 wrote:I agree that the poster is a bit short-sighted in saying "teach your sons not to rape." Anyone with common sense knows that rape is awful. I would think the issue is that boys shouldn't be encouraged to objectify women. I was never very interested in that sort of thing, but even I recall plenty of times my mom told me I needed to get a girlfriend, or my uncle would ogle over some girl out in public, or some of my peers asking me who I thought the hottest girl in school was and what I rated others.

International Space Stalin, post: 1596455, member: 25415 wrote:Yeah, obviously the problem isn't that bathrooms are a space where women are vulnerable. The root problem is the notion that there are rapists lurking around every corner and we can't prevent them, especially when the majority of interactions women are going to have with rape aren't even going to be these black-and-white scenarios. It's a cultural issue. You can say a law isn't going to prevent it, and that's true, it's a weak-ass bandaid and the culture isn't going to fix itself. That's why social reform is so important. I agree, the tone is aggressive, it's not something that's going to convince people easily. Let's ignore that for now and concern ourselves with the culture it's talking about.

Say you want to discourage bank robberies. You aren't going to make a law banning poor people from banks because you think they're at-risk, but you can acknowledge that crime is tied significantly to poverty and make efforts to engage poor communities and reach out to people who feel like they have no other options.

International Space Stalin]We do keep seeing folks saying things like 'What about the comfort of others' and the people whose concerns we supposedly care about are talking. Everyone would do well to listen wrote:care [/i]about the comfort of others as more than a talking point.

CaptHayfever, post: 1596502, member: 25169 wrote:Not title, context. The whole thing. The author is attacking the generalizations as much as she's attacking the creepy guys. If we eliminate the generalizations that men can't control their sexual urges, or that women are "asking for it, et cet, then male rapists won't have those excuses anymore (not to mention that without those conditioned excuses, men are less likely to become rapists), & women will have less to worry about.

Not sure what sex-ed has to do with SJWs, by the by. We have biology & health classes in schools; sex-ed seems like a reasonable part of those. Heck, I had comprehensive sex-ed in Catholic schools.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"