The Outspoken Opinion

This is a conversation that I had with someone this week.

"You have a lot of opinions on a lot of stuff"
"Yep"
"Your Twitter feed is full of things you are spouting off about.  Don't you get tired of being an angry person?   Chill out for a while"
"I'm not an angry person at all.  But if I see something shitty, I am going to say something about it.  That is just who I am"
"So you are a social justice warrior then right?"
"Well if giving a shit about important issues makes me an SJW, then yes, that is what I am".

I thought about this conversation for a while.  Am I an angry person?  I would have to say no.  I am a happy gal.  My Twitter feed has a lot of things that I have shared that I disagree with, yes, but you know what?  Twitter takes up maybe thirty minutes of my day.  The rest, for all you know, is playing with bunnies and singing "The Hills Are Alive With The Sound of Music".  

So I decided to take a look at my feed over the last week and see what "controversial" things I had shared.  In reverse order:

• 9 women's refugees in Lancashire facing closure because of budget cuts.  Shared a petition - please sign!!
• Adam Johnson appealing his verdict.  Dude, you admitted child grooming and sexual activity with a CHILD.  Shut up.
• That 8 out of 10 most abused writers on the Guardian were women.  No surprise there.
• That body shaming is not ok.  
• That Dennis Skinner called David Cameron "dodgy Dave".  LOVED this.
• Laughed at the idea that the films that MRAs cried about were some of my favourite films.  (A woman, being the lead in a film: misandry!!!) lol
• A guy on a dating website who went full throttle psycho on me within two messages of speaking.
• That 5 horses died in the Grand National meet.  Find a ray of sunshine in that.  I dare you.

• That Missouri Republicans want Planned Parenthood to provide a list of any woman who has ever had an abortion and that the woman who is refusing, is facing jail.
• That being blocked, is not the same is being censored.  Brilliant article from Clementine Ford who rightly points out her right to block a man from her own page who says "Good job you slimey fat cunt, I really do hope you are the next one raped."  Or that she deserves to be gang raped.

So there you have it.  Ten "controversial things I have tweeted about in the last seven days.  Look at them.  All of them.  Then put them together.  

So lets summarize.  Women losing a safe place to go when they have been abused.  A paedophile,  Women being abused for saying what they think.  Calling out body shamers.  Dodgy Dave (enough said).  MRAs moaning about women being a lead in a couple of films.  A misogynist guy who messaged me (and after that message, offered me money to go out with him).  Animals dying for human entertainment.  Women losing client confidentiality because the Republicans think the rights to a woman's body belongs to a man.  (A percentage) of men thinking that losing the right to threaten to rape or kill a woman online on her own page is a loss of a freedom of speech.

You know what?  Fuck that.  I am angry.  

Yes All Women

When you look 20 or 30 years into the future, what do you envision?  Flying cars?  People living on other planets?  Teleportation?  Well if you look back at the movies of a few decades ago, this is the kind of thing that they expected us to be doing.

Next year we will hit the year that Marty McFly travelled to in Back to the Future 2.  I don't see many hover boards floating around but they are a few things that they were pretty spot on about; like video calling.

In essence, when you look towards the future, you see progression, things that are better than the way they are now.  

29 years ago "The Breakfast Club" was released.  Here is a quote from the movie when talking about women and sex:

Wow, you think, what backward thinking I'm so happy times have changed!  Oh wait......  Actually that thought process is still as much in play today as it was then.  

Girls are sent home from prom because their outfits are "causing young men to have impure thoughts".  In rape cases victim blaming is rife not only in the media and on the social network sites but also in Court (this is only one example of many out there).  Songs like Blurred Lines become bestsellers.   People like David Starkie get to go on Question Time saying things like "Violence, not consent, should be the classification of rape."

We still live in a society where when you get unwanted attention from a man "I have a boyfriend" works better than "No".  

The hashtag on Twitter #yesallwomen which has followed after the killing spree of Elliot Rodgers has done much to highlight what attitudes women face on a daily basis.  

My own experience is of men thinking that because I have large breasts, I am automatically "up for it" or I'm "easy".  I have been grabbed in bars more times than I can count but the thing that scares me the most is the perception of others that this is somehow acceptable because "well they are so big".  It is NOT alright to touch me without my permission.  It isn't okay; it's a sex crime and I shouldn't be told I am overreacting if I label it as such.

It doesn't matter how far we have progressed in other aspects of our lives, like with the technological example.  A woman may be able to give testimony in a rape trial by way of video link, but until what she was wearing or how much she had to drink is no longer relevant; we are still living in the stone age.