A woman’s worst nightmare? That’s pretty easy. Novelist Margaret Atwood writes that when she asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women, he answered, “They are afraid women will laugh at them.” When she asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men, they said, “We’re afraid of being killed.

http://www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/articles/nightmare.html (via alullaby)

That sums it up

(via erikawithac)

This reminds me of a discussion we had in school, and one girl was talking about living in fear of her safety because she is a girl, and this guy chimed in and was all “It’s hard for guys too! I’m so awkward around girls! It’s embarrassing!” Yeah, not the same thing, exactly?

(via tulletulle)

Wow.

(via kittencoaster)

This reminds me of an article about online (heterosexual) dating that I read a while ago. It listed men’s and women’s worst fears about meeting someone from online. The highest ranked fear that men had was that their date would be fat, whereas the highest ranked fear that women had was that their date would turn out to be violent and kill them. 

I think that says a lot. 

(via kaitg)

This is a pretty classic privilege dynamic I think, and one that we as a society tend to downplay in order to give the privileged even more volume.

Men are afraid women will laugh at them or won’t have sex with them, women are afraid men will kill them.

Rich people are upset that everyone else is calling them “greedy” instead of “job creators”, everyone else is upset that they can’t afford health care.

White people are afraid of being called racist by people of color, people of color are afraid of being killed by white people (especially white people in positions of authority, like police).

Straight people are afraid of having their “marriages ruined” by other people getting married, queer people are afraid of being beaten to death.

Cis people are afraid of having to share a bathroom with someone different than they are, trans people are afraid of being murdered.

This is really just a perfect X, Y statement to sum up the most basic tenet of privilege: if you are privileged, the majority of the time you don’t fear for your basic survival.

(via stfusexists)