I Know Your Body Doesn't Belong To Me

And guess what? Mine doesn't belong to you either.

Now first and foremost, since I'm gay, I honestly don't give a shit about women's bodies or what they do with them. I never have (well, unless they were self-harming then yeah I would try to help them stop doing that). But what I want to address is this notion that men feel entitled to women's bodies. With all the social media posts, online articles, and YouTube rants on this topic, I could honestly wallpaper an entire 10,000-square foot home with what's been said, but this is the basic narrative/argument: men don't value women's bodies and their autonomy, the patriarchy constantly objectifies women and ingrains the idea that they only exist for male pleasure/satisfaction (aka the "male gaze"), women are in constant fear for their safety because men might attack them (or, heaven forbid, be catcalled, whistled, or hollered at), and that instead of telling criminals not to be criminals, society unfairly tells women to use self-defensive methods in order to thwart potential predators. This narrative is everywhere, the whole "I don't do this for you/I don't belong to you" trope has been repeated so many times it has become pervasive among social media and discussion topics related to gender. So, as a living and breathing man, this is my response to the authors of these diatribes.

Honeys, I have news for you. Men have shit to do, and your body is not on the list. Men have houses to build, roads to tear up and rebuild, cars to fix, crops to grow, windows to wash, trash to collect, oils rigs to attend to, ditches to dig, sewers to work, papers to push, numbers to crunch, businesses to run, trucks to drive, mail to deliver, students to teach, technology to create and perfect, medicine to create and perfect, sermons to preach, fires to put out, sports to play, and music to perform and compose, wars to fight, and people to save. They have wives, girlfriends, daughters, sisters, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, female cousins, and female friends that they love and support. We fucking know that your bodies don't belong to us, and quite frankly, we don't want them as much as you think we do. You continually cherry pick the (relative) few bad apples in the bunch in order to push this fallacy that men think they're entitled to women, when the reality is that the majority of men value your autonomy and do just fine without your body. The individuals who are harassing others on the street are the ones with the problem: not society, and not men. And while you are blithely unaware of the fact that men are more likely to be killed, assaulted, and receive threats of violence online and in real life, you constantly bring up trivial concerns like whistling, locker room banter, and unwanted comments/attention on the street in order to prove that there's a "war on women". Well, I'm not buying it, and I'm not feeding into it anymore. Not because of my toxic masculinity, but because the facts don't support your narrative.

You want to talk bodies and entitlement? Let's start with the men who have been slaughtered in war in order for you to maintain your civil liberties and the right to demonize an entire gender based on the actions of individuals who don't represent that whole. Not to mention that a good portion of those men didn't even want to fight in those wars, but were required to do so because men in this country are automatically required to sign up for the selective service when they turn 18. If they don't sign up, they face fines and/or jail time, they can't drive, they can't work, they can't vote, and they can't receive federal aid. From the moment men are born, they get their genitals mutilated without their consent, and from the moment they turn 18, their bodies belong to the state. We do not value a man's body and autonomy because whenever men are abused, raped, or sexually harassed, no one takes it seriously (all men really want is sex, right? men can just fight off an abusive partner, right? men can just walk away from traumatic situations without emotional scars, right?). And if you want to keep screeching that women's bodies don't belong to men, well neither do their bodies or their labor. Men built the house you live in, the building you work in, the cellphone you use, the computer you use, the medicine you use, the internet you use, and the beds you sleep on. You have benefited from men's sacrifices and labor your entire life, so much so that it's expected, and their innumerable contributions to society are largely ignored in order to push the idea that men are the sole threat to women's safety. You willfully (and often times maliciously) stand on their back and eat the fruits of their labor just so you can whine about how awful they are. You repeatedly claim that only women understand the perils of sexual harassment and violence, that only women can have a valid opinion on anything gender related. You expect to have respect from everyone you meet and have the sole voice in gendered issues just because you have a vagina. That's entitlement.

Now to destroy the illusion that because I'm a man, I've never had to experience harassment or being objectified. I was the victim of sexual harassment for years in grade school. Yes it was humiliating. Yes I felt horrible about it. Yes I had to deal with the emotional strain of being talked to and acted upon in that manner. I know what it feels like, but guess what? No matter how many times I told my principals and teachers, no one ever did a damn thing about it. I would come home in tears to my parents begging them to home-school me so I wouldn't have to deal with my peers. I didn't have an article published in widely distributed newspapers or online media about how my body doesn't belong to anyone else. I didn't have a voice, and I never received an apology for it (or any of the numerous shitty things people have done to me for the past sixteen years). I don't blame society or an entire gender for what happened to me: I blame the individuals who touched me, shoved their asses in my face, flashed me, taunted me, and preyed on my vulnerability. I don't project my insecurities onto others because I realized that I couldn't be a victim forever. Eventually I had to swallow the harsh reality that no one, male or female, is safe out here.

Get off your pedestal and come back to Earth. Men are completely disposable while women have affirmative action laws, domestic abuse shelters, rape crisis centers, and women's resource centers. Women's issues are at the forefront of our society while men are being left behind for the interest of "gender equality". And while you may think you speak for all women, the harshest truth is that an increasing number of women are done with you infantilizing them and portraying them as helpless victims who are unable of fending for themselves without government intervention. More and more women are distancing themselves from you (and feminism in general) because you do not speak for them, their experiences, or their views and attitudes towards men and sexual harassment. These women are grown adults who don't feel the need to whine about every single instance of them being catcalled, or whistled at, or stared at, or just talked to on the street. I agree with these women, and the male population when I say that your ramblings are demeaning to women and insulting to men. No, men do not feel entitled to your bodies. No, we are not constantly thinking of ways to put you down, objectify you, or harass you. We are all trying to get by here, you are not special.