The “Game” Women Play Every Day (Now in Handy Game Form)
Here’s a sad and infuriating fact:
Among the women I know, not a day goes by when one or more of them isn’t in some way harassed, threatened, bullied, stalked, badgered, endangered, or even subject to physical abuse or violence at the hands of a (usually, but not always, male) member of our misogynistic culture. Think about that. Literally not a single day. When this stuff happens to women, it’s terrifying, it’s enraging, it’s demoralizing, it’s wrong, and sometimes – often, even – it’s deadly. And nobody who supports feminism needs to be told any of this.
But recently, another angle of why this behavior is so fucking insufferably awful, why it routinely sucks the very life out of women I love and want to protect, has been particularly visible to me. I’m thinking about the rote exhaustion and boredom of dealing with misogynistic behaviors day in and day out. And yes, for any readers who are wondering: it is indeed possible to be simultaneously afraid for your life/safety and bored to actual tears. Welcome to the living nightmare experienced by roughly 50 percent of the human population at least part of the time! Continue reading