Why Jennifer Masse Marches On
Let me just start of by listing a few recent items that make me want to march. Rapist Jacob Walter Anderson served no jail time. Rapist Brock Turner only served three months in jail. A rape victim gives birth in a care-home after being in a comatose state for over 20 years.
I'm a life-long feminist. I was raised by a feminist (thank you, Mom). And I’ve had people, including (white) women, tell me that women already have equal rights so I should just be quiet and enjoy it. And it’s true that our grandmothers fought for and won our right to vote, the right to own property, the right to hold bank accounts in our names, the right to earn degrees and have careers, the right to decide how many children we want to have, and a lot more.
But are we truly free when our society teaches us from a very young age to be afraid and even terrified? To never go anywhere at night alone. Not to drink too much at parties. Not to go jogging in public with ear buds. To carry mace. To learn self defense. Never to sit in a parked car alone. How to hold our keys so that they can be used as a weapon. And on and on it goes...
Are we truly free in a society that teaches girls to be terrified but never bothers to teach boys to respect women and control their impulses? I can hear them now, the (white) women shouting at me that they DO NOT live in terror! And I will acknowledge that I am privileged enough to no longer feel the terror constantly myself. I am fairly economically secure, middle-aged, white, and happily married. These factors reduce my chances of being sexually assaulted. But do they make me completely safe? We all know they don’t. And just because I don’t always feel the terror doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
When we hear the latest news story about a woman being raped or assaulted, the terror roars back, whether we acknowledge it or not. And that’s when women are most at risk of helping the rapists escape punishment. Because when we hear these stories, we don’t want to feel the terror and so we try to shape the story so that we can believe it never could have happened to us. And so we question why she was out so late by herself, why she got so drunk, why she didn’t have her mace… These questions help protect rapists instead of protecting women.
If we could learn to feel our terror, and to teach our daughters not to run from it, maybe we could find a way to help us all defeat it and we could learn to truly support victims. Maybe we could even teach our sons to bear witness to it. Maybe, just maybe, they need to.
I march to trample the terror. Mine, and yours
Are we truly free in a society that teaches girls to be terrified but never bothers to teach boys to respect women and control their impulses? I can hear them now, the (white) women shouting at me that they DO NOT live in terror! And I will acknowledge that I am privileged enough to no longer feel the terror constantly myself. I am fairly economically secure, middle-aged, white, and happily married. These factors reduce my chances of being sexually assaulted. But do they make me completely safe? We all know they don’t. And just because I don’t always feel the terror doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
When we hear the latest news story about a woman being raped or assaulted, the terror roars back, whether we acknowledge it or not. And that’s when women are most at risk of helping the rapists escape punishment. Because when we hear these stories, we don’t want to feel the terror and so we try to shape the story so that we can believe it never could have happened to us. And so we question why she was out so late by herself, why she got so drunk, why she didn’t have her mace… These questions help protect rapists instead of protecting women.
If we could learn to feel our terror, and to teach our daughters not to run from it, maybe we could find a way to help us all defeat it and we could learn to truly support victims. Maybe we could even teach our sons to bear witness to it. Maybe, just maybe, they need to.
I march to trample the terror. Mine, and yours
