butterfly, dreaming.: Revolutionary Idea Of The Day:

missjalapeno

Men could be held responsible for controlling their own sexual urges.

You know, instead of the girl who showed some cleavage. Or the girl who didn’t wear her hijab “right”. Or the girl that got drunk. Or the girl who changed her mind about having sex. Or the girl that wore booty shorts. Or the girl that wore red lipstick. Or the girl who accepted a drink. Or the girl who walked home alone.

Basically, instead of any girl having to hold that responsibility for him.

It’s actually insulting to men to assume they are such savage barbarians that they can’t even practice some self control, integrity, respect, or any kind of virtue.

…

eyre

ftw

this is what I hate about discussions on modesty. I once heard a guy ramble on about how it’s important to talk about it so that girls know the effect it has on others for ten minutes and I wanted to punch him but it was 2am and I was too lazy to get up off the floor. so much is wrong with the original question starting the discussion, oy.

This has honestly bothered me before I even realized why it bothered me, since grade 6, when they split us up in youth group, boys in one room and girls in another and talked to us about… “sex”, I guess. They did it every year from then on. I don’t know what the boys talked about (don’t masturbate? don’t have sex even though you want to? don’t look at porn?), but we girls got lectured about the importance of modesty. About how guys can’t help being turned on just by seeing some skin. About how their sex drives are crazy. About how they think about sex every seven seconds on average. About how they’re super visual, so they’ll always remember every picture of a naked woman they see. About how we owed them a responsibility as their “sisters in Christ” to keep them from stumbling into sin. There was no acknowledgment of our own sexual desires. It was all about the responsibility we owed men.

You know what? I have a sex drive too. It’s insane. I lust. I think about sex a lot. A LOT. Maybe even an average of every seven seconds. I am turned on by magazine spreads. I am turned on by pictures of naked people. I am turned on by sex scenes in movies. (I’m also turned on by intelligence and eloquence and certain vocal resonances and proper punctuation use, but that’s not what this is about.) And guess what. I’m also a cis-gendered female. That’s right, Christianity/the rest of society, I’ve got a vagina and I ALSO WANT TO HAVE SEX.

You know what else? I don’t rape people who turn me on. I don’t verbally or physically harass people I’m attracted to. I don’t shout at them out my car window or stare at them in the trams or block their way as they walk down the street. I don’t tell them not to wear certain clothes or go certain places or do certain things because it makes me sexually attracted to them. I just don’t take advantage of vulnerable people. I just keep my thoughts to myself.

No one’s responsible for your sex drive and what you do with it but you. It’s not some uncontrollable force of nature. You can control it. Men and women all over the world do it every single day by just not sexually harassing and/or raping their fellow human beings. I’ve been done with being responsible for both my own sex drive and the sex drives of all men everywhere for a long time now, spent a lot of time getting rid of this burden placed on me when I was 11 for something for which I should never have to be blamed.

So how about this? I’ll be responsible for my natural instincts. You be responsible for yours. It’s 2010. Let’s make it happen.