Listening...

A few weeks ago I wrote a semi-coherent blogpost about what should seem like common courtesy: not threatening to rape people you disagree with.  Apparently, though, this is not common sense or basic decency or whatever else it may appear to be, since it apparently happens enough to warrant a call to action.  I don't normally write about sexual politics on my blog.  In fact, I'm not sure that I ever had before that post.

And I'm going to level with you: it was hard.  Damn hard.  So hard, in fact, that I felt obliged after hours of writing and re-writing to ask one of my female author friends, Claire Ashby, to review it for tonedeafness.  And good thing I did, because she recommended I cut more than a couple of tonedeaf bits out.

But, as tough of an issue as it was to wade into, I'm glad I did, tonedeaf or not, because when someone says, "Hey, if you're against threatening to rape people, please write a blogpost about it" I sort of feel obliged to follow through.  Like, who wouldn't do that?

Well...lots of people.  Because it's hard.  Hard to write, hard to post, hard to read, hard to comment upon.

It's much easier to remain silent.  The easiest thing for me would have been to read Keene's call to action post, nod along, perhaps mutter "That's despicable" and then go about my day.  Which is what most people do.

And herein lies the problem.  I have once again reached a juncture in the sexual politics zeitgeist where the easiest thing would be for me to shut the hell up, not get involved, and silently agree with the consensus opinion.  If you haven't guessed by now, I'm referring to the #yesallwomen movement.

What I outlined in my call to action post (you can probably guess why I'm super hesitant to call it "my rape post") was that, long story short, I'm a privileged male and I don't even know what I don't know, but I try my fumbling best to show solidarity.  The #notallmen hashtag showed, I think, how easy it is to fall into the trap of being tonedeaf on women's issues.

So, I was more or less going to let this all pass me by.  But then I was chatting with another female author friends, Kate Moretti, who wrote her own excellent post on the subject.   But she also sent me this link which basically addressed all of the concerns I had.

So, I don't really have anything super poignant to say here.  I don't really have any thoughts on women's rights that haven't been expressed better elsewhere.  What I do have, though, is an obligation to listen.  So I'm listening.  And what I do have is an obligation to speak out.  So I'm speaking out.  Because just silently nodding along is not okay.