Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and experiences.
Hotspring, thank you for explaining some of your previous thoughts a little more. I would like to respond to some of them.
"We have to lock our doors at night, etc. etc." No you do not speak for my viewpoint as a woman.
Absolutely!
What concerns me even more than this slip is the idea that there is no choice in how we live as women - we "have to" lock our doors, travel with others, etc. or pay the price. This simply is not true. We do have the choice.
Again, you are correct, in my opinion. We do have a choice. We choose differently, and that is okay with me.
And yes, I do think that you (we, I, one) reinforces rape by fearing it. Just as I think that you further toxify your food by hating that you feel you have to avoid toxicity. I believe our attitudes very much influence not only our interactions and potentials, but the consciouseness and potentials for all other humans, male and female, and all other beings (human or not). This is just my opinion. If you have another, that is fine. But I hope it serves you well, and I hope that if it doesn't you will see this and choose to abandon it.
I don’t understand how my attitude of fearing rape and rapists and therefore engaging in avoidance behaviors reinforces rape and rapists. I do not decide to rape me, someone else does, everytime. And, I don’t understand how my fearing toxins and therefore engaging in avoidance behaviors reinforces toxins and toxification. I do not decide to toxify the planet, or my food, corporations do.
Yet I still like to believe that if my attacker had suceeded in doing whatever he wanted to do to me, I would still (assuming I was alive) try to see him as a suffering human being acting from a deranged cultural model that certainly didn't serve him. This may sound overly compassionate, but if it comes down to me choosing between a life of vulnerable openness or bitter safety, I'll still choose the former. Because if I don't I'm not fully living as a human.
To be honest, it does sound overly compassionate to me. People who rape humans and who rape this earth are sick, insane, and life-hating. I believe that humans are fully capable of not raping other people or the earth. I believe that compassion for rapists only pushes us further from the task at hand: to stop those who rape and toxify our bodies and our land. I do not believe that compassion will stop rapists.
Our culture is already so disturbed, disjointed, disassociated. Does it really help for us to totally disidentify with our culture?
Who do we think we’re fooling?
We are culture. We must own it.
I have been indoctrinated by this culture, but I desire to disempower the dominant culture within myself and as a whole, and I desire to form a new culture with particular people in a particular place. This is my life’s work. I own the indoctrinations, but I work to change them. I do not own this culture, but I do have a responsibility for taking it down, for myself, my family, my community, and the earth.
Urban Scout, you wrote:
I like the way you liken these civilized predators (rapists, molesters, abusers, cops, etc) to cougars.
Hm… I did call both cougars and rapists predators. From wikipedia: “In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator species kills and eats other organisms, known as prey.” Rapists are in some ways predators, as they often stalk, attack and overcome their prey, sometimes killing them. But, they are much different from cougars. Cougars and hawks, etc., are part of the cycle of life, killing and consuming their prey. The cougar becomes the beaver, the hawk becomes the cottontail. Rapists are never satisfied, and they are feeding an insane, life-hating need within themselves, rather than nourishing themselves and their land. The same perhaps could be said about other predators: corporate CEO’s and politicians raping the earth.
Like all predators, Having an awareness of them and acting accordingly to their behavioral patterns can give you protection against them, allowing one to not live in fear of them.
Indigenous peoples did not live in fear of cougar attacks. They knew where the cougars lived and moved. A skilled person could simply listen to the birds to know the whereabouts of any predator in the area. Simultaneously, I can’t imagine them hating the cougars either. The cougar lives its own life and continues to (as the hodenesone people might say) “follow its original instructions.” Humans on the other hand, can change. They get birthed out of plyable clay which the culture then shapes. I do not believe that evil exists in nature. I believe that only one evil exists, and that evil looks like Civilization.
Yes, awareness and knowledge of a cougar’s behavioral patterns gives me protection, as do awareness and knowledge of a rapist’s behavioral patterns, but often/sometimes rapists’ patterns are unknown, like the rabid coyote or raccoon, less predictable, and rapists aren’t in Peterson’s…there is no description. I fear cougars, but I don’t live in fear of them. It is a healthy fear of them when I am in their environment that reminds me to be aware and act accordingly. I also fear rapists, but I am not constantly living in fear of them. The fear does not permeate my every thought and action. That said, rapists are harder to identify and scarier to me, so I am often in fear of them and therefore alter my behaviors. If a cougar attacks me, then I have the chance to become a cougar. If a rapist attacks me, he violates me in an unnatural, toxic way. I don’t hate cougas, but I do hate rapists.
[quoteI honestly, sincerily, deep-heartedly, unabashidly hate this fucking culture. But for the sake of comparison, let’s say Cops. While I hate cops, and for the most part fear them, I don’t live in constant fear of them. I simply avoid them at all costs. I don’t go to rallies or protests. When I see them I generally turn the other way. I have nothing to hide; I have done nothing illegal. I simply can’t predict their behavior, and so I avoid them. My hatred for them has not furthered their oppression of me and others. They opress people, the act unaccording to any ethic I’ll ever understand, so I avoid them and reorganize my routines around them. I don’t live in constant fear, and I still fucking hate them and the systems them protect. [/quote]
A good example. I try hard to not live in total fear of this culture and its protectors and proponents , but I feel that my fear and hatred and avoidance of rapists and other toxic people and things is healthy for me giving our fucked up culture. I am all about protecting and being protected by in whatever way necessary my family, friends, community. I protect myself, and I will ask others to do the same. I hate that we need protection from insane, unnatural predators, but we do, so let’s do it up. (We being me and people who feel similarly.)
Am I a victim of assaulters/rapists/harrassers, of corporations, of politicians, of schooling, of this culture? Sure, I have been acted upon without the ability, at the time, to stop it from happening. Do I identify as a victim? Sure, maybe, whatever. All I know is that these systems of control need to end, and being a victim/survivor of them does not, in my opinion, make me any less powerful. Am I responsible for rape, toxifying earth, or domesticating children? No, but I am responsible, as a human who cares for her own life and the future of life on earth, to stop these systems and create anew how humans live together with each other and with the earth.
