It's More Common Than You Think

 Gendered power and violence are things I think may never go away.  As long as society and the media continue to portray women and violence the way they do, I only see things getting worse.  When we are constantly fed images of men in power and women in subordinate roles and as sex objects we can’t really be surprised when certain things happen.  Society tells us these things are ok.  The media reinforces and glamorizes demeaning and violent acts against women.  Since these messages are always coming at us through, tv shows, commercials, etc we take them to be right or acceptable.  Sexual harassment and assault is not as rare as some would think it is.  I know for a long time I thought sexual harassment and assault was something that you only saw on tv or in the movies because that wasn’t my reality or that of anyone I associated with (I was sheltered lol). It wasn’t something that was discussed. Guys hitting me or invading my space in certain way wasn’t sexual harassment to me it was life, and guys being guys, which looking back I realize was harassment because there were many times it made me uncomfortable.  However, it wasn’t until college when I realized sexual assault was common and nowhere near as rare as I thought.  I was taking public speaking and a girl gave an informative speech on sexual assault and how she’d been molested and raped.  The professor then opened the floor for discussion and five more girls stood up and shared stories similar in nature, people were crying and everything, I was shocked.  After class I was hanging out with some of my friends and shared what happened in class then they started revealing things that had happened to them as well.  In a group of 7 of us 4 had been either raped, molested, or both.  Our text tells us majority of the time the victim knows the aggressor and with my friends it was an uncle, family friend, love interest, and a member of a fraternity. Three of them said nothing, one tried to tell but the few she did tell didn’t believe her because they knew him and said he wasn’t that type of guy so she just left it alone. My eyes are now so open to what’s really going on. 

Society Makes the Decision for Us

One of the questions raised during our class discussion on Thursday was, why is there a double standard between girls and boys with pimp/slut? When dealing with terms like pimp and slut, the underlying message of the words is sexuality.  When it comes to men, women, and sexuality there has always been a double standard and I assume there will always be.  As we’ve discussed in class on numerous occasions, society or the big D discourse shows us men are expected to go out and “plant seeds” and “conquer” as many woman as they can.  One can even look in other cultures like countries within Africa where men have and/or are encouraged to have multiple wives or like on TLC’s show Sister Wives where it documents a man and his 4 wives.  With these and acts and others like it society tells us behavior like this is ok for men or what they should be doing, where in contrast women are told to “close their legs” or to “save themselves”.  So when terms like pimp and slut come up it would only make sense that if both words mean multiple sex partners the one in relation to a man would be good and the one for a woman bad.  Some of my classmates said it’s because of what we expect from each other man to man and woman to woman, but is it was really expect from each or what society has told us to expect from each other???? Personally what someone has going on in their bedroom is their business and I could care less, as long as if what you’re doing has no direct effect on me.  Both men and women who sleep around should be viewed the same way, although they never will be, and that’s because society has predetermined that for us.  In popular music we see this all the time, case in point 50 cent’s 2003 song, P.I.M.P.  he raps “ Man this hoe you can have her, when I'm done I ain't gon keep her Man, b_tches come and go, every n_gga pimpin know You saying it's secret, but you ain't gotta keep it on the low.”  As he raps he’s well aware that pimping for men is just something that’s done and it’s not a secret.