Wow, you are an amazing woman! How I would love to bury my face in those soft places...
Quick PSA for all occupants of the tumblr-verse [because this is the *least* vulgar/rude/annoying ask that’s still managed to make me roll my eyes–the *really* bad asks I don’t even dignify with a response]:
There is a difference between a well-meant compliment and invasive comments, and it seems like some people [who may not have ill intentions] genuinely can’t tell the distinction.
So here it is, at least according to me:
I don’t want to hear about what you’d do to me or what you want me to do to you, or whatever. I also don’t want to hear about how you fetishize me [or parts of me]–people yammering on about the shrub on my crotch as if it’s a unicorn-stocked Taj Mahal gets old fast, even when it’s meant to be flattering. If my photos prompt you to put my nads on a pedestal, that’s dandy, but it doesn’t concern me and I don’t need to hear about it.
Why do some people [usually men] think that, just because they have a sexual thought, they need to share that thought with the person they had it about? When I’m physically attracted to a stranger, I don’t take that as a license to go barf fantasies upon that stranger.
Save that stuff for the people you go to bed with–or for the people who’ve been flirting back at you and seem to be indicating that they’re receptive to receiving that sort of attention from you.
Desire is natural: people are completely allowed to think and do whatever they want…in the privacy of their own heads, and behind closed doors, and with consenting partners. Fantasies are fine. What all you people on the Internet think about doing to my body is your business…but keep it that way by not subjecting me to it, yo.
Why is this so annoying? Because it’s dehumanizing…particularly when directed at a woman, since we’ve been culturally conditioned to measure our worth by our desirability according to men, and not by our own self-determined metric of value. And I’m using my platform [i.e., modest social media following] to gently call it out.
That’s an important thing for men to understand: if you yourself are not perpetrating these negative interactions, then experiences that are nearly universal to women may be completely invisible to you.
For example, grown men regularly began cat-calling me on the street when I was eleven years old [i.e., before I was menstruating, and before I was even old enough to really understand what they were doing], and several of my bosses and teachers have made uninvited advances towards me in my late teens and early twenties [which is frustrating to a girl who’s trying to earn respect in an academic or professional setting].
This is such a common in-the-background experience for women that it often goes unspoken of. I recently mentioned this offhand to my childhood best [male] friend and he was shocked. He’d never noticed that I [and our female friends/classmates] had regularly received that sort of attention all through our adolescence…it wasn’t really happening much when he was around, because creepy men who know that they are being creepy tend to behave better when other men are around.
So, understandably, women have usually got a bit more of a chip on their shoulder when it comes to not being dehumanized in this way.
Okay, I’m done soapboxing.
Have a good night, everyone. Masturbation-fodder is in the eye of the beholder, and sex-positivity is rad, and there are plenty of exhibitionists on the Internet. Being sexual does not make you a bad person. But imposing upon the objects of your attraction when they DGAF is not flattering, it’s unkind [and obnoxious].
This week, someone very rudely asked about my sex life, another person called my hair “unfeminine”, and two people felt the need to tell me that my photos were affecting their gonads in some-kinda-way. Yo. It’s getting boring.
