Dear cousin/nephew/second-cousin,

It’s generally a real pleasure to have you as a friend on Facebook. I appreciate that I can keep up on what the kids are listening to these days on Spotify and I thoroughly enjoy eyeing pictures of high school ragers. But I’ve noticed that lately your taste in “likes” has changed. It’s out with Bieber, in with Tosh.0.

You’ve indicated that you will be attending “Booty Slap Day” and have started to share videos of young men running up to women they don’t know in order to grope their behinds, run away and laugh—videotaping it all for hilarious posterity.

Now, I hate to get all Aunt Feminist Killjoy on you—but I love you and it’s my job. And I imagine you care about me too, at least enough to read on.

Here’s the thing: those guys running up to women just to grab their ass? Stuff like that happens to women all the time. It’s happened to me. When I was your age, guys—from boys in school to men on the subway—used to grope and touch me against my will too. I don’t know if any of them videotaped it or if they did it as a “joke”—all I know was that it was really scary.

Once it happened on my way to school on the train. I was wearing a dress because it was my seventeenth birthday. The subway was crowded and a man—I never saw his face—put his hand up my skirt and grabbed my ass right over my underwear. The memory of it still makes me feel like vomiting. This was just one incident—it’s happened to me at least a dozen times. The girls you know at school—girls you’re friends with?—I’m betting it’s happened to them, too.

Being touched against your will has become a twisted rite of passage for American females. It’s a reminder that you’re never safe anywhere. That your body is not really yours—but instead public property, there to be rubbed against by an old man or pinched and videotaped by a young one.

I know that a quick click on the “like” button may not seem like a big deal to you—but it scares me to think about the larger implications. I think about the high school kid in Steubenville, Ohio, joking and laughing about the unconscious teen girl in the next room who had just been raped by two of his classmates. That may seem a million miles away from “liking” a video—but it’s all part of the same world, the same culture that devalues women. Even laughing at a joke about rape supports the idea that women are less than and makes rapists think that you are like them. And the more you laugh at this stuff, the easier it becomes to take the ideas you’re laughing at more and more seriously.

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Listen, I don’t think you’re an asshole who thinks it’s funny to do something that women find scary. You’ve been raised to think that this sort of stuff is all in good fun. Not by your parents necessarily, but by culture. You’ve grown up in a country where a Super Bowl commercial for Audi suggests that girls your age actually like it when a guy they don’t really know grabs and forces a kiss on them. (Seriously—they won’t like this.) You’ve been raised in a culture that positions women as existing just for sex, for humiliation, for objectification.

So please understand that I don’t blame you for partaking in the only kind of culture you’ve ever known. At least, I don’t blame you yet. Because here’s the thing—if you didn’t realize before that this kind of stuff is harmful and hurtful to women, now you do. So think of this as a chance to make a decision about what kind of man you’re going to be.

As you continue to grow up, you’re going to have plenty of opportunities (too many) to laugh at women’s pain, embarrassment or the sexual harassment and assault we face. These moments will define you. Will you laugh along? Share a video, like a status, laugh at a joke? Or will you say “no,” tell a friend that’s a fucked-up thing to say, and walk away?

Yes, if you choose the latter—the undoubtedly more difficult path—your friends may give you a hard time. They could laugh, call you a “pussy” or accuse you of not being able to take a joke. I’m sure that will be a pain. But it’s still the right thing to do. And you can be secure in your decision to stand with women—to stand with me—because you’ll know that you’re better than all that. Media, sexism, misogyny—all of these structures are depending on the idea that you won’t think deeply about the messages that are sent to you, that you’ll just accept them without consideration or critical thinking. But you’re better than the culture says you are. You’re smarter than that and you’re kinder than that. I know you are.

So please, the next time you’re considering sharing a video or laughing at a joke or saying something unsavory about a female peer—take the action seriously, think about what it really means. And consider your Auntie Feminist who loves you very much.

Read Jessica Valenti’s address to staff and supporters of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston.

Related Topics: Gender and Sexuality | Sex and Sexuality | Society
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Showing 18 of 80 comments

Thinkofany
Very Interesting.
Not the blog entry itself, we had those a zillion times before, but one comment that I have read yesterday. Unfortunately, this comment has been removed.

I would agree that it was a bit sarcastic and dry, but it clearly did not cross any line of civilized conversation.

So, please explain, for what reason?
Merely disagreeing with the author? Or the majority of the other comments?

I always thought that The Nation was a publication with some standards and did not need such things like this form of blunt censorship.

Regards
T.L.

Like Reply
4 hours ago
Origami_Isopod
“Censorship” is what the government does. TheNation.com is a private blog. If enough of its readers complain about a comment and flag it, they will remove the comment. They’re not obliged to host it out of “freedom of speech.”

Like Reply
4 hours ago in reply to Thinkofany 2 Likes
Nick Teller
I agree with rape jokes trivializing rape. It could be funny if our society did not have so many problems with gender equality and sexual assault, but we do, and therefore makes it insensitive and inappropriate to joke about. Almost anything can be made into a joke, but is it tasteful or harmful? That is important to consider.

And maybe I am just a victim of a patriarchal culture and unable to empathize enough because the detailed description of being groped under a skirt on her underwear was a turn-on, almost like the beginning to a sleazy porno. As an American I am eternally conditioned to be turned on by degrading patriarchy, sigh. (sarcasm)

(Edited by a moderator)

Like Reply
1 day ago
JimmyOlsenCubReporter
All of the following feminist and/or critical theory notwithstanding, I am wondering what kind of parents “nephew” has. Hasn’t either Mom or Dad informed “nephew” that you don’t go around violating either the bodies or the personal space of either females or males without expecting at least a punch in the nose in return? Good grief! Do parents nowadays depend upon Audi commercials to teach morality and interpersonal skills to their children?

Like Reply
2 days ago
Origami_Isopod
Certainly, his parents should say something. I was going to say that kids do a lot of things that their parents don’t know about, but if they can view this Facebook post of his, then they really ought to set him straight.

Like Reply
4 hours ago in reply to JimmyOlsenCubReporter
Thinkofany
Oh this infamous Audi commercial.
Please explain what you think was wrong with this commercial…

Like Reply
4 hours ago in reply to JimmyOlsenCubReporter
Calverhall
Flip the roles, could you imagine if it was a girl who randomly kissed a guy and swooned? Does that seem a likely thing to happen in reality? Does the roles in this ad seem more likely? The trouble is that we have seen this kind of scene many many times now in TV and film that most won’t think twice about it. It’s all implied, a woman can be a mans if he has the right car, shirt or device. This kind of advertising, using sex to sell a product is so ubiquitous that the absurdity of it passes most people by, we are conditioned this way. Obviously the ad isn’t gonna have any groping or be explicitly edgy. The controversy may never have crossed the producers minds when it was made.

Like Reply
1 hour ago in reply to Thinkofany
Guest
Comment removed.
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2 days ago
CloudyKatz
That’s bullshit. Men are not mindless sex-starved drones who can be described by a simple meaningless cop-out like “boys will be boys”. File that under “most ridiculous defense ever”. Most men are intelligent enough, and compassionate enough, to listen to another human being’s ideas. To not support misogyny and sexual harassment should not be complicated or controversial. You astound me, sir.

Like Reply
2 days ago in reply to Guest 23 Likes
Thinkofany
The original comment here, now missing, god knows why (Hint: It’s obvious), did NOT state that men are in fact “mindless drones”.

“Boys will be boys” is a proverb, idiom, figure of speech or an aphorism. Whatever you may want to call it, the definitions overlap a bit.
But these things are part of a common knowledge and they exist for a reason.
Because they are true. Not in an absolute sense, but statistically.

And all of this has nothing to do with something as diffuse as human intelligence.
Some of the brightest minds have been sexists, or any other possible -ists you can think of.

Misogyny, for example, ist almost always a matter of opinion, and with sexual harassment it is often the same.
These things exist, obviously, and are a problem in some cases, but judging from articles like the one above this all gets totally out of proportion.

These are no threats to the peacful coexistence in any “modern”, western society

Like Reply
4 hours ago in reply to CloudyKatz
Origami_Isopod
“Common sense” is essentially the biases and anecdata one has accumulated over a lifetime. We have scientific research because “common sense” tells us things such as that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it, or that maggots spontaneously generate within meat.

The rest of your comment is nothing more than the usual privileged baying of a man who doesn’t suffer from misogyny so is all too happy to write most assertions of it off as “overreaction.”

Like Reply
4 hours ago in reply to Thinkofany 1 Like
canaduck
“boys will be boys” = “i’m a lousy parent”

Like Reply
2 days ago in reply to Guest 16 Likes
Thinkofany
Sure…

Not trying to force change upon things nature intended makes you a bad parent?

Hey, the eugenics movement would love your way of thinking

Like Reply
5 hours ago in reply to canaduck
Origami_Isopod
LOL “nature.” Kindly acquaint yourself with actual science, rather than with just-so stories masquerading as science.

Like Reply
4 hours ago in reply to Thinkofany 1 Like
Aija Rae
PIS
Public Internet Silliness

Like Reply
2 days ago in reply to Guest
Thinkofany
Now thats what I call a valuable and insightful contribution…

If theres one thing that proves you always right its such ad hominem remarks

Like Reply
5 hours ago in reply to Aija Rae
Guest
Comment removed.
Like
2 days ago 3 Likes
Seanzo
I can’t believe you wrote a response that is basically you complaining about women because you have had little success, as if that means they’re manipulative and awful. No one is obligated to want you, and rape culture shouldn’t exist just because you blindly believe that women just can’t see how great a guy you are.

If you’re looking for reasons why they might not think you’re what they want, maybe you should re-read your response. Also, before you write something about how you were once a feminist, supportive of women, etc., etc. realise that no matter how much of a feminist you claim to have been, or how attractive, well endowed, interesting, funny, or charming you are, no one is obligated to date or have sex with you.

(Edited by author 2 days ago)

Like Reply
2 days ago in reply to Guest 33 Likes
Origami_Isopod
What else is new. Internet articles on misogyny always draw the whiny arses who think that the world’s biggest gender priority should be their getting their dicks wet.

Like Reply
4 hours ago in reply to Seanzo
Ann, Brooklyn ex-pat, now in the Midwest.
Liking an article isn’t the same as liking a page, they could be liking a video to bring attention to it.

Like Reply
2 days ago 1 Like
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