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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow a man might relate to the woman's perspective
From twitter feed of one JuliusGoat
[link:https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1048547179193946112.html]
Hi, guys. Imagine if one day you got kicked in the nuts, really hard, on purpose.
You doubled over. Felt the pain. Nearly passed out. Nearly puked.
Then you got kicked again. And again.
Imagine it happened to you when you were 12.
Imagine it was an 38 year old woman who did it.
Imagine it was your mothers friend and business partner.
Imagine you told your parents and they didnt believe you.
Imagine they never mentioned it again.
You learned to keep quiet about it.
You learned to be scared.
Imagine that later your father explained that women just wanted to kick men in the nuts, so as a boy you had to be careful.
Imagine he had very detailed practical advice on this.
Imagine you started spending your life planning on avoiding being kicked in the nuts.
Imagine you became aware that women, including much older womeneven elderly womenwere always looking at your nuts. Women on the street would follow you. Theyd tell you what a nice package you have. Theyd tell you youd be hot if you just showed off your nuts a little more.
Imagine you started wearing clothes to hide them. You bought uncomfortable protective gear.
All the posters and advertisements in all the magazines featured mens crotches, though frequently not their heads.
Womens feet were frequently featured in prominent juxtaposition.
Imagine most of your friends all told you about getting kicked in the nuts.
Imagine none of them had ever told anybody else.
Imagine all the older girls at school would make jokes about kicking you in the nuts.
Imagine all the laughter. The jokes are all so funny.
Jokes.
Imagine you went to church and were told that God made girls to want your body, so you should protect your nuts at all costs.
Imagine the minister said it was your responsibility as a maturing boy not to do anything that would make girls think about kicking you in the nuts.
Imagine you found a girlfriend, and you loved each other.
One night, you were fooling around and she kicked you as hard as she could in the nuts, and it all came rushing back.
Imagine she acted like obviously you wanted to be kicked in the nuts,mocked you for getting emotional.
Imagine you told the police, and they asked you what youd been wearing before she kicked you in the nuts. Asked if youd had a drink. Asked what you might have been doing before. Had you been naked? Kissing?
You had.
You left.
Imagine there were laws that said that if a wife kicked her husband in the nuts it wasnt assault.
Imagine you heard about men with ruptured testicles who had to pay for their own forensic reports
Imagine you saw statistics showing only 1% of kickings resulted in conviction.
Imagine a girl was caught kicking a boy repeatedly in the nuts while he was passed out drunk.
Imagine the judge let her off, because she was worried about the damage to the girls future prospects. She was a star swimmer with a scholarship.
Imagine this happened all the time.
Imagine if one day men all started talking about how almost all of them had, at one point or another, been kicked in the nuts.
Imagine if womens main concern was what false accusation might do to their reputations, and whether this new honesty might ruin the mystery of sex.
Imagine a woman ran for President.
Imagine audio came out of her bragging about making it a regular practice to kick men in the nuts without even introducing herself.
Imagine she lost no support for this.
Imagine she claimed the men accusing her were lying.
Imagine she said they were too ugly to kick.
Imagine there had never been a male president.
Imagine she ran against the first major-party male candidate.
Imagine he had experience, and she had none.
Imagine she won anyway.
Imagine she supported a Senate candidate known for kicking young boys in the testicles.
Imagine she nominated a judge.
Imagine the judge was accused of kicking a boy in the nuts.
Imagine the accuser had to hide from all the death threats as a result.
Imagine the man who had been kicked testified, providing sworn testimony.
Imagine the judge gave an vindictive rant in response.
Imagine he was derided for providing no evidence.
Imagine if they looked for no evidence.
Imagine the judge was given an op-ed to explain herself.
Imagine the President mocked the accuser in font of a crowd, and the crowd laughed and clapped.
Imagine the judge was confirmed.
Imagine the deciding vote was a man.
Can you imagine?
Now imagine that being kicked in the nuts might result in you having to create, in your body, a genetic replication of the person who kicked you.
And imagine that the judge intended to make sure youd have to carry it.
Imagine that was the *reason* she was chosen.
I can't imagine women's rage today, but this exercise, while abstract, helped me get nearer to it than I'd been.
Be kind to women, guys. Today and every day.
If you see somebody being cruel to women, or abusive, or violent?
Kick 'em in the nuts
dawg day
(7,947 posts)"Imagine if many of the people who might kick you in the nuts would follow that up by murdering you."
rurallib
(62,416 posts)BigmanPigman
(51,608 posts)but it was all on separate tweets. It is very powerful, thanks for putting it all together since it is easier to read.
elias7
(4,007 posts)So I just went to thread reader app and copied without checking to see if it had been posted...
procon
(15,805 posts)You itemize some things like the physical and monetary impact of a rape, but you missed the larger part rape trauma that affects most women for the rest of our lives; the devastating personal violation of our very being. The aftereffects of sexual violation runs deep, the emotional and psychological reactions that victims of rape and sexual assault experience remain long after the man has wrested power from us and taken physical control of our bodies and lives.
The Psychological and behavioral symptoms of rape are often worse than the physical wounds, leaving us with a pervasive sense of loss, we feel less than we were before, diminished, worthless, helpless and hopeless. Like those who suffer from PTSD, the problems are generally invisible to others, but our lives have been irrevocably altered forever on so many levels that there is no escape, only a respite punctuated by recurring triggering events that take us right back to THAT moment.
I don't think most women expect, or even want men to "be kind" to us simply because of our gender; can you not see how that says we are 2nd class citizens too fragile to exist on our own without a man's protection? That's not our culture anyway (at least not yet) so why not just be normal, civil and polite, just as you would be with any other human being? Maybe a little equality wouldn't go amiss...
elias7
(4,007 posts)I agree, though, with your critique.
fierywoman
(7,684 posts)for a woman to be raped, the perpetrator actually enters inside her body. That's different than having a body part kicked (bad as that is.)