Slap and tickle?
Mar. 24th, 2009 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueSo, listening to the radio on the way in this morning, the subject was 'feminism' (0900, "Call yourself a Feminist")
Thing is, it's a term that comes loaded with lots of 'baggage' from the way things were. But it's actually quite a simple notion - that your gender shouldn't matter in the choices in life open to you.
That is all really - whether that's what you wear, where you work, who you have sex with, how you vote or ... well, anything really.
Women and Men alike should be free to choose - even if that choice is 'no different'. There's a lot of fuss made about clothing - dressing 'provocatively' or particularly recently wearing a burkah, and how they're 'feminist statements'. Thing is, they're really not - how you dress isn't important, it's whether you are truly free to make that choice for your own reasons.
Anyway, that wasn't really what I wanted to write about. The thing that really bothered me in the program, was one of the statistics they quoted.
From this survey (PDF) from February 2009.
I was shocked to find that it's actually some 21% (23% of males, 17% of females) who think it might be acceptable (either 'acceptable' or 'acceptable in some circumstances') for "a man to hit or slap his wife or girlfriend in response to her being dressed in sexy or revealing clothes in public?"
Words fail me. They really do. It is NEVER acceptable.
An intimate interpersonal relationship - such as 'boyfriend/girlfriend' ... well, carrys with it a degree of trust. I mean, such a relationship simply cannot exist without it.
To betray that trust is wrong. To have a society that has a significant proportion finding that betrayal 'acceptable' is extremely disturbing.
(As a footnote, I am aware there are people with unusual lifestyles, and who consent to 'things that could include pain'. I don't wish to pass judgement on those people - what is done between mutually consenting adults in privacy is their own business. But that wasn't what this poll was about)
Thing is, it's a term that comes loaded with lots of 'baggage' from the way things were. But it's actually quite a simple notion - that your gender shouldn't matter in the choices in life open to you.
That is all really - whether that's what you wear, where you work, who you have sex with, how you vote or ... well, anything really.
Women and Men alike should be free to choose - even if that choice is 'no different'. There's a lot of fuss made about clothing - dressing 'provocatively' or particularly recently wearing a burkah, and how they're 'feminist statements'. Thing is, they're really not - how you dress isn't important, it's whether you are truly free to make that choice for your own reasons.
Anyway, that wasn't really what I wanted to write about. The thing that really bothered me in the program, was one of the statistics they quoted.
From this survey (PDF) from February 2009.
I was shocked to find that it's actually some 21% (23% of males, 17% of females) who think it might be acceptable (either 'acceptable' or 'acceptable in some circumstances') for "a man to hit or slap his wife or girlfriend in response to her being dressed in sexy or revealing clothes in public?"
Words fail me. They really do. It is NEVER acceptable.
An intimate interpersonal relationship - such as 'boyfriend/girlfriend' ... well, carrys with it a degree of trust. I mean, such a relationship simply cannot exist without it.
To betray that trust is wrong. To have a society that has a significant proportion finding that betrayal 'acceptable' is extremely disturbing.
(As a footnote, I am aware there are people with unusual lifestyles, and who consent to 'things that could include pain'. I don't wish to pass judgement on those people - what is done between mutually consenting adults in privacy is their own business. But that wasn't what this poll was about)
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-25 09:53 am (UTC)