Personal Experiences with Rape Culture

aboutmaleprivilege:

I absolutely hated middle school.  And I didn’t really think of it at the time but looking back, I hate the excuse for boys bullying girls in school, which as you can guess is, “well girls, if a boy is picking on you it means he likes you.”’

As much as I hate talking about that school, let me tell you a bit of my experience.  I was called just about every horrible name in the book and I won’t repeat it here.  I was belittled, harassed, and humiliated.  I had things thrown at me.  My life, on a couple of occasions, was even threatened.  Every boy in the school must have been absolutely head-over-heels in LOVE with me, right?!  Yeah, no.  If I’d done the things that were done to me to a boy, or even any other student, I’d have been in a shit load of trouble.  But of course the boys got away with it because they were only being silly because they “liked” me.

Even my own mother supported this.  “Oh those boys are PROBABLY in love with you!!”  I denied it, of course, only to have her shoo me away telling me to stop being so dramatic and “insecure”. 

But my question is: If you or anyone liked a man or woman, why would you go out of your way to make them feel like the most useless person on the planet and completely ruin their school reputation not only in middle school but all the way into high school?  Something doesn’t quite add up.

[Please post anon, thank you c:  Sorry if that was a bit badly written, it’s just something that makes me very angry.  Feel free to edit anything out if I said too many bad words >.<]

Training children that abuse is romantic, that abuse is a sign of affection sets people up to genuinely believe it when they’re adults attempting to navigate serious relationships. We end up with people who honestly believe that their partners only treat them so poorly because they’re so in love with them, we end up with people who honestly believe that rape, stalking, assault, abuse, and harassment are all “really” signs of affection which makes people less likely to take the abuse seriously when it gets reported and makes people more likely to stay in abusive situations because they’ve been brainwashed to believe that it’s actually a positive thing.  Adults telling children that abuse is romantic is one of the most dangerous and damaging things in our current society.