Assumptions

[teddywolf]

When people look at me, they see a man.
Obviously I earn decent money
Obviously I have not been raped, let alone sexually harassed
Obviously I will demean women without a second thought
'Cause ain't I a man?

When people look at me, they see a white man.
Obviously I have not been discriminated against
Obviously I live only with other white people
Obviously I am dangerous
Because I am The Man, right?

When people look at me, they see a large white man.
Obviously my broad shoulders mean I'm strong
Obviously I have never been bullied
Obviously I eat too much fast food
What else do you expect from a large white man?

When people first hear me, they hear a normative large white man.
Obviously I am a Christian
Obviously I have a college degree, probably advanced
Obviously I'm socially involved
I must be as normal as an apple.

When people see me walk, they watch a normative, large, generally-healthy white man.
Obviously I am not in pain
Obviously I am not sick
Obviously I am mentally stable
I'm such a healthy, healthy man.

I have suffered in my life.
You have suffered too
and I will not deny your suffering.
That is my assumption.

I don't assume that you assume all of the above
but you may.
Some of your assumptions may be correct.
But.
Even if you know me
Even if you know me well
Even if you know for sure, I have one charge for you:

Question your assumptions.

Comments

[catalana.livejournal.com]

I agree we should question our assumptions, but this smacks of "Oh, white men have it so hard, QQ." People assuming you're financially stable really doesn't concern me nearly as much as the amount of crap people assume about PoC being criminals, lazy, worthless, etc. People assuming that you haven't been raped doesn't concern me as much as people assuming that if a woman has, she was asking for it, a slut, is lying about it, etc.

Assumptions are dangerous, but some are vastly more harmful on a societal level than others. I don't feel like you're recognizing that here (or at least that's the impression you're giving.)

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

There have been some minor edits; you may want to give it a second look.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that white men as a whole get to take advantage of white male privilege, white privilege, and male privilege. I think breaking them out makes important distinctions.

Rape is a touchy and triggery subject because there are the (male-dominated) societal assumptions about a woman getting raped ("she was asking for it somehow") and because so many women have experienced the pain of it in person, or viscerally via a friend, and so often are ignored about it being a problem, or at least that much of a problem.
Have you heard any societal assumptions about a man being raped? Simple question on a touchy and triggery subject.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Have you heard any societal assumptions about a man being raped? Simple question on a touchy and triggery subject.

Alas, I have, some truly horrible ones, such as that it's impossible for a man to be heterosexually raped, that men only get raped in prison, and that that's a deserved consequence of getting put in jail.

More hopefully, when I volunteered at The Women's Center in Cambridge, they had some resources there geared specifically towards men as well as an emphasis on making many available to men that people wouldn't've thought of, due to the center's name and focus.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, definitely - men who get raped are generally put in the place of women: so they must be gay (and thus lesser). Or else it's just not possible - after all, every "real" man is always up for it, right? (So much sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell - I really really really don't believe any of that.)

So there definitely are assumptions and talking about it is good. We just devote a lot of space to men and to white people and to middle-class-seeming people etc. I don't want to risk over-shadowing women, people of color, poorer people, etc.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. Most of the dialogue and monologue and general social "there-there"ing is for, by, and about white people, particularly white men. I do not want to take away from the experiences of people not in this set of circumstances, and I do not want apologists to be able to paper things over. However... sometimes, somebody who might look to be of the dominant paradigm does Get It, and possibly even for the same reasons of people who are obviously not part of the dominant paradigm.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, definitely - men who get raped are generally put in the place of women: so they must be gay (and thus lesser). Or else it's just not possible - after all, every "real" man is always up for it, right? (So much sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell - I really really really don't believe any of that.)

No, it's OK, I could smell the sarcasm :-)

Thing is... when I was raped (by a woman, who was not inserting things into me), since I had a male response despite having said No multiple times, the woman did not listen. I was quite unwell at the time and flat on my back. She did take advantage of the "flat on my back" part.

To this day I am not sure if she realizes that she, y'know, raped me.

It definitely did not have the extra agony a woman feels when a man rapes her, because there's the whole "violation of interior parts of the body" bit that I did not personally experience. This might be a big part of why I don't feel unduly scarred by the experience, actually: as a kid I'd been beaten, I'd been teased, I'd been harassed, and as an adult I still got treated poorly by a number of other adults who didn't seem to want to listen to me. In short, the spirit of it wasn't particularly new to me, and the physical part was not particularly onerous.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we had a discussion along these lines in our living room after Tigerlily and I read the first draft of Wolf's poem here.