Miriam
SO many everyday sexist things have happened to me, from sexual assault to being threatened with rape in order to make me allow burglers to take my belongings ‘or else’, peeping toms looking in my bedroom at night as a teenager and again ain my 20s, old men perving at me when I was a school girl and trying to get me to go back to their house with them, to all the usual cat calling (less now I that I am out of my 20s and such a relief). But today is the small stuff. I belong to a small social media group for poets. The male members keep using it to share photographs of models, dancers, beautiful celebrities etc, with zero context, just an objectified body. And then the male poets fill the thread with sexist tropes about women, how utterly bewildering we are (UGH), or how beautiful they are (Ah yes the beauty pathway to peace, I’m what?). I came here for poetry, why am I constantly looking at models and celebrations of a narrow beauty ideals? I want to shout “the women in this group aren’t here for this!!!” Of course they have no idea what they are doing, not for lack of having explained it to them, they keep doing it.I am contemplating a little experiment on joining in with a daily naked man post. But – Must. Not. Lower. Self. To. Their. Level, right? I have already tried direct communication. They said it was innocent, not their intention etc, started sprinkling in some actual content, but still the model shots persist. After all the assaults and crap I have dealt with in my life, sometimes this smaller stuff leaves me feeling like I am just swimming in rape culture everywhere I go. No, women are not bewildering, men get bewildered because they aren’t taught to do feelings very well. Yes there are many traditionally beautiful bodies, and so many myriad other ways a body can be beautiful (of course they post only the thin beauty). They are our bodies though, they have agency, intelligence, desires, plans, talents, skills, interests, strength, achievements… and our beauty is the least important one of all. Sucks that society doesn’t tend to agree.