Can I just say that I am sick and tired of this gender disparity?
Tonight I saw a post on reddit where a guy took a photo of a woman’s cluttered counter in her bathroom with the caption “you left the toilet seat up”. I was totally shocked because in the photo, clear as day, is the woman naked in the background; changing.
I thought “Oh my gosh! He doesn’t know she’s in the photo!” I scrolled through the comments, and to my utter horror he replied to people asking if she knew she was in the photo, with “she doesn’t know and you’re welcome”.
I feel physically ill. I have reported it both on my account and on my husband’s account, but honestly – I feel defeated just from reading these revolting comments. From the men who are cheering on this unapologetic pervert, to the responses from him declaring it fine because “for the record, she’s not my gf she’s my fwb” because somehow, on some far off planet or another dimension THAT MAKES IT OKAY. She’s just a piece of arse, so, like, it doesn’t even matter.
I want to spread it far and wide in the hopes that people will report it, but I also want to protect this woman. The argument arose that “you couldn’t see her face so what does it matter?” That question hit me like a ton of bricks. How could you possibly think that just because you can’t see her face, that it’s somehow less criminal? But is it even? Is it against the law? Do we even have laws, aside from the revenge porn laws, to protect women (and men) who are victims to this perversion?
I’m positive if he were taking pictures up women’s skirts that he’d be arrested – so why is him taking a photo of his unsuspecting woman in this situation somehow less criminal? Somehow less perverted and disgusting? Is it because he has a relationship with her? 9 out of 10 women who are sexually assaulted or violated know their violator. He knew before he posted the photo that she was in it. He ACKNOWLEDGES that she did not give him permission to post it on this global website, yet somehow that doesn’t make him a sex offender?
What really puts the icing on the cake here, what really truly brings me the farthest down, is that he says it’s her dorm room. 1. It’s her personal space – a space where we, as women who brave the outside world every day, lock ourselves away after exposing ourselves to their evils; from people like him – but he’s in there and he violated her trust, her body. 2. Because of the sexual assault and violence young women face on campuses. Because she stands against the statistical odds of 1 in 4 women on college campuses who will be victim of sexual violence; of rape. Assuming she hasn’t suffered already.
Because people like that pervert ruin our innocence and stunt our development and humans. They steal our joy, our perspective and vision and hope. Because people like that pervert taint our view of the world and hinder our progress. 1 in 4 women will not become the doctor they wanted to be. The teacher, the scientist, the social worker, the chef, the engineer, the author, the CEO. People like that pervert will unjustly rob those women, and male victims, of their potential, and yet those victims are still the one’s who pay for the rest of their lives.
I was raped by a footballer when I was 19. I remember thinking I had done everything wrong, even when I had a text from him that said “I am so sorry” – I still counted all the reasons why I had brought it on myself. Flash forward – after a night on the town, my friends and I crashed at one of their houses and I woke up in the middle of the night with a family friends hands down my pants. Who could I tell? Not my mum, his mum was her best friend. Not my brother – he would either not believe me, or kill the guy. I found out the next day that he’d even more grossly assaulted my best friend. But who could we tell? It would cause a rift in our circle and who’d believe us? We had been drinking that night. We “probably said yes and just didn’t remember”. We stayed silent and never talked about it again. We had to see him any time we wanted to see our other friends.
I know so many women who have experienced the exact same thing and I feel so helpless for them. You know there’s a horrific inequality when I write the sentence “I know so many women who have experienced the exact same thing” and it’s about violence and assault. I am genuinely aghast. What is happening?
We’re regressing. For a brief stint, I felt hopeful. Wendy Davis filibustering and empowering men and women everywhere (I know it didn’t end well, but she ignited fire…), marriage equality, Bernie Sanders and his feminism. But now, while we’re busy watching the presidential parade, we’re re-enacting these laws that are strangling our basic rights to health care because we have vagina’s – but we can’t be trusted with them? The terrorist attacks on Planned Parenthood because someone hears a lie that makes them behave erratically and emotionally, yet we’re the ones who are “emotional” and can’t decide for ourselves?
You may think I jumped from 0-10, but it’s all related. The way we treat women regarding violation, regarding our decision making skills,regarding media, regarding our place in this world. What are we doing? What the actual fuck is going on? We make up HALF the population, but fuck us if we want to have equal rights and to be taken seriously. God damn it. God fucking damn it.
so i’ve only ever talked about this with a handful of people before so for some reason it’s making me nervous to put it out there EVEN THOUGH IT’S NOTHING REMOTELY BAD. but i’m hoping to connect with people who know what this is about and since whenever i talk about this, i always find people who say “SERIOUSLY, THIS IS A THING? ME TOO!” then maybe this might help someone.
for most of my life i’ve told people i “have chronic insomnia” or that i’m “not a morning person” (which is a euphemism, at best). i’ve described myself as a “night owl” since i was a very young child, but i’ve learned in the last year or so that i’m actually NOT an insomniac at all – i have chronic severe delayed sleep phase disorder.
insomnia is difficulty falling and/or staying asleep; i have no trouble whatsoever falling and staying asleep. but no matter what I do, i physically cannot fall asleep before 2-3AM. i’m actually happiest going to bed somewhere between 4 and 5AM. i actually have no trouble at all staying up until sunrise if left to my own devices. usually somewhere between 3 and 5AM, i start to get tired. if i try to sleep before then, i toss and turn for hours regardless of how tired i am, and going past 5AM is always pushing past my limits, but i have no trouble at all falling asleep within that time frame.
if this sounds like you, i want you to know something: you’re not like this due to laziness or a failure of willpower. i say this as someone who’s tried for the better part of two decades to change my circadian cycles and nothing has made even a minor difference. this is normal for people with dspd. we’re just wired this way.
according to what I’ve been reading, there’s a strong genetic correlation to specific genes and your sleep-phase type, and people with DSPS especially in the severe form like i have tend to have an abnormality in the way that their brains process daylight and evening light. for most people, daylight wakes them up and evening light suppresses alertness. that isn’t a thing for me and that’s why i’m writing this at midnight and trying to decide which tv show i’m gonna watch on netflix for the next few hours 🙂
also not helpful: self-induced sleep deprivation (tried that over and over – i just spend weeks at a time miserable and exhausted); sleep aids – i hadn’t realized that was a thing for most people with DSPS – they just make us groggy and dizzy but don’t actually make us sleep. We are perpetually misdiagnosed as having primary insomnia or some kind of psychiatric disorder. Excellent bedtime routines don’t help. Meditation, nightcaps, having no devices, caffeine boycotts – not a shred of difference.
the bad news is that it’s permanent and incurable. both personal experience and the collective body of current medical evidence points to the fact that it’s VERY hard to even make a dent in your natural sleep phase cycles and the best you can ever hope for is a small dent (e.g., if i work very hard at it for the rest of my life – cause y’all know frequent relapse is a thing here – i may be able to move my bed time to 2:30AM instead of 4AM).
the good news is that people with DSPS can live totally normal healthy lives – if they can find a job and a lifestyle AND FRIENDS that accommodates our preferred sleep patterns which – hey, look at that, I HAVE ALL THAT! hence why i’ve been working from home for most of my adult life. the best jobs i’ve ever had have been graveyard shifts. we tend to gravitate toward those. for example, people who work overnight in emergency rooms tend to categorically be dspd folks. lots of us are self-employed and happy and successful that way. (my favorite clients are aussies. 1AM skype meetings= GREAT!)
evolutionary biologists have a theory that us night owls are descended from a long and noble line of early ancestors – basically, that one guy amidst our cave ancestors who got night duty. basically, while the rest of the tribe snored away, that one guy had to stay up and make sure the fire kept going and keep watch so that the rest of the tribe wouldn’t freeze to death and no giant sloths or prehistoric dingos ate the cavebabies. be proud; our species literally couldn’t have survived without night owls like us.
so if you’re a chronic night owl, embrace who you are because you are okay. it’s not inherently healthier, wiser, or in any way better to be a morning person. so don’t beat yourself up because you don’t/can’t get up at dawn to exercise (exercise still counts if you do it at night – god bless 24-hour gyms). plan around it if you can. pick careers that let you sleep in until noon. don’t sign up for morning hikes or crack of dawn college classes or deprive yourself of sleep in order to exhaust yourself into magically morphing into a morning person. take it from personal experience. it won’t work.
you’re just wired that way, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
