Yes ALL Women

#YesAllWomen  Even the fat ones.

I remember being a teenager and hating myself and my overweight body.  But in kind of a sick way, I was also grateful for my unattractiveness.  Why?  Because, "well, at least I won't get raped."

I was still afraid when walking alone at night, but I had a measure of reassurance that if there is a rapist creeping about, he would probably not be interested in me and would wait for the next female to come along.

Then I found out that someone close to me HAD been raped.  This sickened and maddened me, and my heart broke for her.  But it also kind of served to confirm what I believed.  She was what I'd consider more attractive than myself.  She got raped cause she was more desirable to men than I was.  She was the next female to come along.

With this kind of environment and fear, is it really any wonder I never fully had the body transormation I longed for, and still haven't?  I'd like to know that a guy loves me for who I am, not what I look like.  What better way to weed out the shallow guys than to just not be that physically attractive to them in the first place?  Decent guys can look past physical flaws and get to know a person, and shallow guys never will.  It's safer to stay fat.

I just read this Blog about Misogyny among nerdy guys, and it brought me to a realization.  My role in relationships and society in the past has been to be the backup plan for those guys who couldn't get the girl they really wanted, because of their nerdy or otherwise "lesser" status.  But being with a guy who doesn't *really* want me is better than being alone, right?

And there is an even darker side of #YesAllWomen for fat girls, as talked about in this other great blog post I found: Fierce Freethinking Fatties.  The perception that a fat girl who gets raped is lucky, cause at least SOMEONE wanted to have sex with her.  This is the poisonous flipside of what I grew up believing - if I was safe from rape because of how unattractive I looked, naturally, I should also be grateful for a sick, depraved rapist willing to lower his standards to take advantage of me, so I can get SOME action.

Is this really what people believe?  Is this really what we want girls growing up now to believe about themselves?

That blog pointed out a t-shirt that says, "Fat Girls Can't Say No....(and when they do it still means yes)."  Are men actually being taught to believe that they will be less to blame for raping a fat girl than a thin one?  That's kinda what it's sounding like to me.   Men are getting the message all over the place that women actually WANT to be raped.  (Hello, pornography?)  But fat girls apparently want it even more, cause it could be their only chance.

Please, people, stop believing these kinds of lies.  We need good people - and, I'll just come out and say it: we especially need MEN - to stand up against this garbage.  It isn't just rapists who are the problem.  When you make jokes with undertones of rape, or simply laugh at or tolerate those jokes, you are partly to blame.  (FYI: Rape is- any form of not getting consent, or of ignoring a "no" from the person you do sexual things with!  It doesn't matter if you know them or not, what they look like, what they're wearing, how much you think you're not in control of yourself, etc.)  This is really no different than any other issue of social inequality in our past.  It's not much different from white supremacy.  It's male supremacy.  The only way for that to stop is for men to stand up WITH women to fight against it.  Please....do what's right.