Feminist friends, sexual assault and harassment is not just a women’s issue. People of all genders are assaulted, harassed, and raped.
This includes: straight men, cis women, trans women, trans men, girls, boys, GNC people, genderqueer people, gay men, lesbians, butches, femmes, bois, queens, drag kings, fairies, androgynes, enbies, bigender people, people who are agender, asexual, bisexual, queer, transmasculine, masculine of center, genderfluid, third gender, two spirit, fa’fafine, kathoey, hjira, guevedoce, muxe, intersex, fems, ETC.
ALL OF THE GENDERS experience sexual assault and harassment.
What is wrong is a patriarchy system of violence – rape culture – which permits or ignores when someone in a position of power feels entitled to another person’s body and sexuality.
Please, let’s not be stupid about this. Women do not own these issues. We may experience in them in greater numbers, but the shame for people who are male-identified and/or masculine is pretty goddamned significant and I’m sure we have no idea what those numbers are really.
I know women have significant trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and the rest because of this violence or the threat of it, but that doesn’t mean people of other genders don’t. They often expect to be heard and listened to and believed far less often than even we do, and that’s a problem.
Surviving sexual assault and harassment doesn’t have a gender.
Yes, thank you. Solidarity means we will prevail.