elisian fields

enjoli:

I didn’t attach this to the post that prompted it because better and more important points were made in response to it and also I don’t want to be responsible for any of you having to read more stressful shit at the end of a long day.

But can I say something to you as someone who grew up in a “safe” suburb just outside Atlanta? Next door to a middle class professional woman who had to keep coming to our house to use the phone because when her son wasn’t in jail he was over there pistol whipping her and yanking the phone out of the wall so she couldn’t have his ass escorted back there? Across the street from another mom who kept waving guns around at her daughter like it was her fault she was being molested by her husband? I would just like for people to stop acting like bad things only happen “in the hood.” I would like that very much.*

And you know what? During and immediately after college, when I lived in downtown Atlanta, I wasn’t just walking through the hood after dark looking to be raped. Those were the hours available for me to work. Dumb ass.

And you know what? What if I wasn’t going to work? Why don’t you ask yourself why you’re willing to accept that possession of a vagina automatically means you have to live the rest of your life with a curfew and a chaperone whenever you leave the house after dark for the rest of your life, like a child? We say that like it’s natural, like that’s the way it has to be, and people are going around saying that the penalty for trying to live any other way ought to be your life? Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

(And! And! Yeah, it also irritates me when people are yelling in my building and they seem to be throwing things and possibly physically fighting and, okay, I’ve talked about how abnormally jumpy I am, but if you’ve been reading my Tumblr for any amount of time, you can see why, but I hate when I get my phone and express concern about their safety and am debating whether to call 911, and my idiot roommate goes, “It’s not like this is the ghetto.” As if the only people with guns in their homes are people in the ghetto. STFU. Get a clue. Do that for me. Please.)

Best post of the day. I’ve been standing on a soap-box, yelling about our culturally-imposed curfew for those with vaginas for years. It’s nice to see other people speaking up about it.