Windows to the Soul

If you can't say it with words, say it with memes!I feel happy when I can take care of stuff by myself. So I went out and fetched myself a ladder from the hardware store so I could safely change a lightbulb or two. Because I am short and have poor balance (my Mummy says I’m top heavy ‘cuz of all the brains), I reasoned that I needed more than the stepladder everyone was telling me to pick up. Quite correct, I did *not* want to be the posthumous punchline in a joke about how many dominants it took to change a lightbulb or rely further on tall friends.

My apartment, though lovely, have very little natural light. Think living in the bottom of a lightwell or a basement. It’s got excellent privacy, but this gets dark at times. One other draw back about my wonderful life I feel embarrassed to talk about is the window problem…

Or rather the people on the other side of the window problem.

I like nice, open windows with a breeze flowing through. Unfortunately two incidents with strange men with sexual impulses appearing on past balconies means I’m really jumpy about open windows after dark, but only when I’m alone. Being without roommates suits me dandy, and I really like the privacy, except the moment in the night where my curtain goes clonk-click and I’m wide awake, even if logically I know the construction of my building means my balcony is difficult to access. Of course closing the window deals with much of this. Which pisses me off, when it’s a nice late spring night when the humidity has cracked and I want to air the place out. Really, really pisses me off. I dislike anything that detracts from my independence.

If I were a man, of course, I might be burgled. But I can be burgled as a woman. It’s one of those deeply troubling things with no solutions. In theory I’m even pushing my luck by mentioning that there’s single occupancy in my living space. I’m pushing my luck by even acknowledging I have sexuality in a public space, much less imaginative sexuality, through means that a particularly dedicated stalker could probably triangulate to my geographic location and real identity (TM). Living in a species with that sort of bullshit is not something that impresses me, oh no it doesn’t.

Being dominant adds an extra layer of frustration to the safety dance because of the troglodytes who conflate social dominance with sexual dominance or think all sex is M/f to some degree. and a certain sort of non-kinky sexist person too. Look at me, the financially self-supporting, strong independent female who don’t need no man! Somewhere, a MRA is leaking precum and he types away about a fantasy society collapse where we wimmens are taught a lesson about escaping from beneath his clammy hand.

Well, actually a female roomie would be fine, or a medium-to-large sized dog. So it’s not about the presence of men, as much as having Strong around brightened up the place in a way that even lightbulbs can’t. But the “because I can rape you, you are not my equal” part of human social dynamics (also commonly man-on-man, aren’t we just the cutest little species ever!) gives me a little bit of pause. Well, it causes the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up, my lips to pull back into an animal grimace and me to shout obscenities, but maturity is not always my thing.

(Of course the victims of female-on-male or female-on-female rape have their own shit piled on them. I do not want to avoid mentioning them, but they have their own weirdness to wrangle.)

The other day, some dummy on reddit asked me what was so bad about sexual assault, anyway. He was trying to argue that his self shame about feeling creepy was equal to my discomfort when a strange man started to follow me under the convoluted logic that he (the redditor)can’t help being slightly creepy, just like I can’t help that being female causes men to follow me.

Sexual assault, and the threat of it, robs you of your sense of security. In Canada, we set the bar to mean any unwanted physical sexual contact, so technically I’m a victim of sexual assault (I could use the non-victimizing language of “survivor” but that’s not quite right, it’s not cancer). I don’t know why, as a species, we seem hardwired to be particularly sensitive about people trying to make non-consensual whoopie on or at you- maybe because the ones that didn’t had no control. Do ducks get PTSD?

I’m relatively unruffled thus far. Except for windows in the night, because one of the worst parts of any sort of sexual intrusion is that you never know when it’ll stop or where it will stop.

Anyway this has gotten rather dreary for a Tuesday morning. The point being that I wish we lived in a world where I could enjoy the breeze and get a good night’s sleep.

Go on, say what you think!

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