Month: November 2019

I was flipping through the current issue of Runner’s World, and this month’s feature is about women being harassed while running, and the fear women have while running.  It touched a nerve, and I am about to stomp onto my soapbox and rant.  Ready?  Let’s go.

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone offered me unsolicited advice about how to stay safe while I am running, or every time someone said, “Oh, you run on the trails alone?” and then made a face that clearly displayed their disapproval of my choice.

Know what?  Bite me.  The number one cause of rape is a rapist.  The number one cause of someone attacking a runner is an attacker.  How many times have those same people said to a guy, “Oh, you yell stupid shit at female runners?  Oh, you like to grab women?” then made that same judgmental, disapproving face?

STOP telling women they are responsible for some asshole’s behavior.  I am so sick of it.  Can you imagine if the advice doled out to women every day was turned around and applied to the actual population responsible for the problem in the first place?  If we told men they better not go out at night, because they can’t control themselves?  If we told men not to go out alone, because they can’t be trusted without a female escort to make sure they don’t harass, rape, kill?

Everyone would scoff and laugh at the very suggestion, yet telling women that we are not only responsible for our own behavior and actions, but the behavior and actions of men as well, is accepted and swallowed and deemed normal, when it’s not.  It’s bullshit.

I have always believed that hostility toward female runners, and women in general, is a cowardly macho attempt to strip away any sense of power or strength that a woman dares to show.  “Do you feel strong right now?  Well, let me cut you down to size by yelling a comment about your tits, or your ass, remind you that you are just a piece of meat.”

I can’t use the word “men” for the males who do that garbage.  Let’s just call them what they are: wimpy little dumbass punks.  Obviously, not all males lumber about with their knuckles dragging on the ground, grunting and pounding their chest.  My husband would never act like that, and God be with my stepsons if they get the notion to slither that low.

I’m sick of every conversation about violence against women instantly steering toward mandates and directives of how women should rein in and clip their own behavior, limit their freedom, hide in fear and continually peer over their shoulder, even at home.

F*ck that.  Let’s talk about what the flying hell is wrong with these assholes that they refuse to keep their hands to themselves.  Let’s talk about why they are permitted to get away with it, how our system conveniently blames women, how our culture shrugs its shoulders with a “boys will be boys” attitude and casts sideways glances at women for daring to be there, at that time, wearing that, as if any of that is relevant.

If I walk down the street in my birthday suit, high as a kite, no one has a right to touch me, period.  What the hell is wrong with our society that we collectively believe a certain outfit or a gradient of drunkenness or a percentage of skin showing equates with a free-for-all on a woman’s body?  Why is no one talking about the fact that, as a culture, males acting like assholes is so much the norm that we feel it cannot be changed?

Our culture is so hell-bent on not holding men accountable that women are forced to obsess over stupid shit to make sure she didn’t “ask for it” and to avoid disgusting and dangerous behavior by males who need their asses kicked.  Knock off the lame “make sure it’s some other woman who gets raped” advice for women, and let’s start telling the jackass punk boys to get their shit together and stop being predatory assholes, then follow it up with real consequences.

You know…like we should have been doing all along.