Thoughts on #YesAllWomen.

Admittedly, for my first ever post this is quite a brave topic to be tackling, however it is one close to my heart and one which has been spoken about a lot recently in the media. First of all I would just like to say that I am in no way a doctor, or a trained professional of any kind – I am simply a seventeen-year-old girl with some thoughts. If you have twitter or facebook you will – more than likely - have seen the ‘#YesAllWomen’ hash tag trending. If you are not familiar with this, it is basically millions of women and men tweeting about the harsh realities of being a woman in this society, and these tweets range from ‘#YesAllWomen because society would rather tell women to show less skin than tell men to show more respect.’ to personal stories from women who have experienced sexual harassment first hand and who are brave enough to share their stories. However small the stories or statements, they all add up to a much bigger, and clearer picture of what society is really like for women all over the world.

Despite these stories, there have still been criticisms of this movement – some understandable and some not so understandable.

A picture has been taken in Sheffield of a woman completely topless with ‘still not asking for it’ written across her body, as a way of expressing the fact that some men’s excuse for rape and sexual abuse is that the woman was simply ‘asking for it’ by the way she acted, or the way she was dressed, and the woman pictured is simply showing that there is no excuse for rape. Despite this being a small minority of men who do say this, and despite not all men being violent and abusive – some men are violent, and do blame the victim for their crime. Criticisms of this picture and the movement as a whole have been saying that the desires men have are natural and that “there is nothing we can do about them”, and the way to combat this is to “cover up and have modesty to protect yourself from lustful gazes”. I, personally disagree with this statement completely. Naturally, people do have desires towards others, however they should be able to control themselves until the situation is completely consented and comfortable, and everyone should be able to wear whatever they choose without living in fear of someone else’s actions or comments – after all we live in a free world whereby under the law we can say, believe and dress however we feel comfortable. Although despite there being laws allowing this, many women and men feel as though they can’t express themselves because of the threat of what could happen to them. Despite this woman’s message being directed to a minority of people who claim that rape is the woman’s fault, the message is still relevant to the argument that women are still treated differently to men, and that we can’t live in a world of complete equality if we are still blaming the victim. We as a society should be able to know the difference between consent, and not saying ‘no’, basically anything other than ‘yes’ in an unpressurised situation is not consent, and we should be able to have enough respect for ourselves and the other person to not go through with any unwanted actions, despite these ‘natural desires’.