Memo to Writer Dudez, aka Fuck You, Rape Culture

[caitri]

Dear Dudez,

Please, please stop trying to write stories in which dystopian worlds are best articulated through who owns the female body. We realize that as bearers of penises, the thought of one's body not belonging to you is exotic and more than a little bit creepy, but to FIFTY PERCENT of the POPULATION of the fucking GLOBE, it's a brutal fact of life that is a very real struggle.

You realize the shit you write about is real, yes? That women are raped every day? That in an "enlightened" (ie "Western") culture, we are "only" held up to impossible standards of beauty, BMI indexing, expectations of dress and hygiene, social mores, and that AT ANY FUCKING TIME AT ALL, a man can decide that we don't meet them and then write about it on the internet or on newsprint or talk about it on the air, or physically accost us (and again, thanks to rape culture, it will ALWAYS be our fault), or hell, go into the fucking gym and shoot us. This doesn't even touch on issues of obtaining birth control, rape kits, health care,etc ad nauseam.

And everytime you say what you're doing is a "critique", even as your main characters are flawlessly sexualized or appear to have minimal problems dealing with their horrible pasts, I really just want to throttle you.

(And yes, Mr Itoh, I know you died of cancer two years ago. YOU ARE NOT EXCUSED.)

So, in short: Dudez? Go fuck yourselves.

Love,
Me