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TygrBright

(20,733 posts)
Wed Sep 26, 2018, 03:23 PM Sep 2018

What's in the woodwork...

I've lost count of the times, over the last few days, when I've heard, heard about, or read about some Pissed-Off Old White Guy (isn't "POOWG" just an adorable acronym?) snarling something to the effect that women 'coming out of the woodwork' to accuse fine, upstanding other OWGs of Stuff That Didn't Even Used To Be Worth Paying Attention To, is some kind of evil conspiracy.

See, apparently in the minds of these POOWGs (spot me on this one, I know it's irrational but I can't make anything rational out of what I'm hearing, so I have to go with 'irrational') "real" sexual assault is very rare-- only at-gunpoint, stranger rape resulting in grievous bodily harm qualifies.

So, obvs, all these women bringing up "sexual assault" are just monkey-wrenching, faking it, and/or otherwise being the kind of nuisances that their husbands should deal with and keep out of the public sphere. They're scurrying around in the woodwork like roaches, chittering together and conspiring to Be Mean to Men for their own malevolently female reasons.

Guys?

Over here?

Down by the baseboard, yep.

Hiya.

You're right about one thing, Old Dudesters: If your Mama told you that old line about "If you see one roach in the kitchen, there's a hundred more in the woodwork?" And that's what you're going by?

Actually, that's a pretty good inference. Except for the scale.

For every one woman popping out of the woodwork to point a finger at her assaulter, there's not a hundred more. It's probably more like A THOUSAND.

Estimates range from one in three to one in five American women has experienced some form of sexual assault. That's a LOT of women, any way you calculate it.

'But waitaminnit', I hear your creaky voices objecting: 'if there's somewhere between 30 and 50 million women who've been victims of sexual assault, there must be that many rapists in jail, and there certainly aren't so you're making this all up.'

POOWG logic.

Gotta love it.

No, dudes ancien, that doesn't follow. The number of perps does not equal the number of victims. Once a skeevy asshole has discovered that He Gets Away With It, he rarely stops at one victim. So, thankfully for us, there are a much higher number of men who don't engage in sexual assault than you might think, by the number of women who've been assaulted.

The fact that the airwaves, Intertoobs, Starbux lounges, print newspapers, meeting minutes, legislative hearings, criminal courts and every other public forum haven't been one long narrative of outrage isn't because sexual assault is "rare".

It's because ENABLING IS SO COMMON.

Many guys who'd never dream of literally waving their weiner in a co-worker's face themselves are reluctant to see the co-worker who DID wave his weiner in a co-worker's face lose his job. Or get prosecuted. He's basically a nice guy, after all, aside from the weiner-waving thing. And the co-worker over-reacted.

Even many WOMEN, god help us, who've carefully warned their darling sons about the manipulative little sluts who are going to try and victimize them, can't believe it when it seems their sweet boychick humped on an intoxicated classmate. And they certainly don't want their offsprings' lives "ruined" by having to take the consequences of their actions. Ah, mother love.

Now listen up, POOWGs, and listen carefully.

All of us here in the woodwork (and I know you cannot even begin to IMAGINE how many of us there are... you remember the scene with the spiders in the Indiana Jones movie? Or the one with the scarabs in "The Mummy"? Did you ever see "Willard"? Yeah... like that, only MORE) aren't gonna stay here.

And here's the deal: Now that we're coming out?

We're not just coming for the perps, wizened bros.

We are coming for THE ENABLERS.

And we're not going to stop.

Not for generations we're not.

Not until the culture changes to grant us full and equal humanity, to the extent that our personhood is not subject to the vagaries of pathetically inadequate masculine ego seeking to bolster itself by sexual domination, subjugation and dehumanization of US.

Get used to it.

Yeah, we're in the woodwork.

Chitter-chitter.

menacingly,
Bright



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TreasonousBastard

(43,049 posts)
1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect you are old enough to remember those days when...
Wed Sep 26, 2018, 03:34 PM
Sep 2018

women who were abused were automatically assumed to be wrong, and had to prove positively they were attacked before anything was done.

And what was done was little enough. Boys will be boys, after all.

The pendulum is in full swing and those POOWGS you speak of are drifting off into the swamp. Maybe not fast enough, and maybe they do still have too much residual power, but this latest battle can't do them any good.

MuseRider

(34,060 posts)
2. Yes they are but not fast enough.
Wed Sep 26, 2018, 03:38 PM
Sep 2018

I think we should now give them one big huge shove and over they go and we can get on with life. Think how awesome it would be if we were all equal, how we could all pull together. Yeah, kumbya but still. Once the POOWGS (I do really like that) are gone there are a lot of people who can all experience equality. It would be so nice.

I once thought they were like Weebles but even Weebles get old and fall apart. Lets help!

TygrBright

(20,733 posts)
3. While the post is addressed to POOWGs, they are not the only problem.
Wed Sep 26, 2018, 03:45 PM
Sep 2018

Lots and lots of enablers are NOT POOWGs.

They're entitled, privileged First Class citizens of the Patriarchy of all ages.

And plenty of women who've decided that being a remora on the Patriarchy is a better deal for them and their daughters than the consequences of joining in the fight against the Patriarchy.

It's gonna take generations, make no mistake.

wearily,
Bright

Johnny2X2X

(18,745 posts)
4. I am old enough
Wed Sep 26, 2018, 03:46 PM
Sep 2018

I was too young to go to parties in the early 80s, but did so in the late 80s, and even then when bad stuff happened the girl was blamed. "Why was she drinking?" "She was old enough to know better." "That's what you get for not being a proper lady."

There were rumors of trains run on drunk girls (gang rape is what it should have been called back then too). And without fail the person who would suffer the consequences after would be the girl who would be called a "slut". "You know so and so, she's a slut, she got so drunk she let 6 guys run a train on her at a party last year." That's how it would be described, without fail.

Now in many cases no such thing happened and it was just a nasty rumor started to ruin a girl's reputation. And in the cases where something did happen the girl would be in fear first and foremost that her parents would find out. Rape wasn't rape in the 80s unless the girl was beaten badly. These girls were drugged and raped and we had a society that blamed them for it until recently.

America really isn't that far removed from the Taliban/Isis like rule where women are stoned to death for the crime of being raped.

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