Violence...

First of all I would like to apologise for the ridiculously long time since my last post. I recently started a college course in computing and for some reason I've not written a post since then.

Something BJ said to me last night struck a cord with me - she said that the world is "such a dangerous place for women at the moment". And something which happened this morning really demonstrated that statement to have some truth to it. One of the women in my class had taken the elevator down to the lower floors and whilst in there a man, accompanied by his friend, had pointed a video camera at her. She said "don't point that thing at me" - she clearly didn't want to be filmed without her consent even though, as one of the other passengers in the lift said, "it was just a bit of fun". *rolls eyes*. Yes, just a bit of fun filming someone without asking them first. Anyway, on being told to turn the camera away the friend said "don't talk to my mate like that", and he started threatening her, calling her "just a little girl", at which point he even threatened to kill her. All because she had told him to turn the camera away from her.

This disturbed me considerably. I mean, men do not have the right to do whatever they like to women and then threaten them should they tell them not to, yet for some reason many men seem to think that they do. I have noticed many times that when women tell a man that his attention is not welcome they react as if somehow she is insulting his masculinity, and in order to defend one's masculinity one must blatantly show it. And what counts as masculine behaviour? Threats of violence, swearing, etc. In the elevator once she had reacted negatively to the man pointing a video camera at her, it was almost as if he and his friend felt they had to defend themselves as heatedly as possible - perhaps they did not like being told off by a female. Perhaps they thought it somehow demeaned them as men to have a woman tell them off in front of other people. Hence the threats.

And all this is in a world where women are constantly told that they've won the war. We haven't won the war, we've won a few battles here and there, but as the above story shows we certainly haven't won the right to consider our bodies our own. Men and women are not at the moment equal, no matter what anyone may say. Women are constantly demeaned, objectified and treated as if they can't do anything quite as good as men can. We are considered the lesser sex, and when we try to gain some advantage we are threatened.