Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Bus stories
As some of you know, you see the craziest things on MUNI, and today was no exception. I was heading home when a group of middle school students got on the bus. It was crowded for an evening bus, so we were all smushed inside. A seat was vacated later on and one of the girls sat down. Then one of the boys sat on top of her, and all the other teens started yelling "RAPE!" First of all, the comment was completely inappropriate. It reminded me of the "That's so GAY!" comment. Other passengers stayed quiet and didn't say anything, even though they repeated it several times. The boy sitting on the girl said that it was not rape because she was younger than he was. Throughout this incident, I really wanted to say something about rape and how it isn't something that you can joke around with, but I didn't know how to approach it without it sounding like a lecture. It goes to show that even in San Francisco, people still have uninformed perspectives on rape, as seen in the Steubenville rape case. There is no education on sexual issues, apart from a college setting, even though we live in a sexualized environment. I believe that a movement has to be created to educate the youth about sex and all other issues that relate. Like Swati Parashar said, we have to be uncomfortable and angry at these issues to stimulate change. I wish I would have said something, but the issue is too complicated to explain in a 30-minute bus ride.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think this encapsulates much of what we have discussed in class very well. Everything from taking women's lives seriously to the continuum of sexual(ized) violence, to domestic violence being a domestic issues, to male hegemony being so much the norm that it doesn't need its own categorization, to a broader understanding of what constitutes peace, violence, and terrorism.
ReplyDeleteYour recall of Swati's point, that we have to be uncomfortable and angry is great. It also compliments Enloe's feminist curiosity well. After all, why don't these sorts of things get the sort of reaction they should.
I also liked your point about it being in San Francisco. Just goes to show that we can't start pointing fingers until we examine ourselves first.
To add my own anecdote: on my high school cross-country team, a certain number of the women tried to appropriate the phrase "We run this town" by writing "We rape this town," on the plain-T shirts that we frequently embellished. It required enlisting the coach's authority to stop them from wearing the shirts to practice, though nothing could cease their oral repetition of the phrase.