gyzym:

You know, a few months ago this dude friend of mine showed up to hang out with me all dejected. Over a couple of drinks he explained his long face — earlier that night, he’d been walking down the street behind this really cute girl, and when she looked back at him over her shoulder, he thought it was in interest and smiled at her. Now, this guy is tall and skinny, can most commonly be found in glasses and t-shirts scrawled across with math jokes, is kind to animals, considers himself a feminist. What he doesn’t consider himself is threatening, so he was surprised, confused, and even hurt by what happened next: the girl in front of him responding to his called greeting of, “Nice skirt,” by taking off down the darkened street in a dead run. 

“Yeah,” I said, “she probably thought you were going to rape her.” 

“But that’s not fair,” he said. “I’m a good person; I’d never rape anyone! How could she think that? She doesn’t even know me.” 

Out here in the wilds of the internet, I often find myself making arguments about shit like feminism and rape culture unilaterally. For one thing, there’s so much (like, so much) out there arguing unilaterally against this shit that I feel it’s necessary; for another thing, ‘round these parts there’s a lot of people jumping to hostility when it’s painfully clear they don’t have a handle on all the facts. But I’m more lenient with the people in my real life, especially dudes like the one mentioned above. I’m willing to extend to them a patience that I wouldn’t with strangers on the internet, because they matter to me, and it matters to me that they understand. So when my friend sat there that night, whining over his beer and responding to my attempted explanations with, “But I’d love it if a girl smiled at me on the street, or even catcalled at me! Fuck, even if a dude did it, I’d be flattered,” I decided to spend some time thinking about how to clear things up for him. It took awhile, but I finally came up with a metaphor to get the job done:

Consider the bank. 

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itsvondell:

i have a basket with 10 apples in it and a basket with 20 apples in it and i want to make the baskets equal

so i figured i have 10 more apples, ill put 10 more apples into the first basket and no more into the second basket

but its weird because when i reach over to put the 10 apples in the first basket the second basket starts crying and says “why don’t i get 10 apples too”

(the baskets have little faces and can talk to me)

i try explaining to basket #2 that it already has 20 apples in it and i want to make them equal

“if you want to make us equal then give me 10 apples too! i want it to be equal too. 10 apples for both baskets. that’s equal. don’t you know what equal means?” the second basket says

i try explaining to basket #2 that he has an incorrect understanding of the situation but it insists that if i don’t give 10 apples to both baskets, i’m showing disproportional preference for basket #1.

i try to just put the apples in basket #1 and bypass basket #2’s opinions and be done with it but this time when i reach over, basket #2 throws itself at basket #1 in frustration and knocks the 10 apples out of my hand onto the floor and knocks a bunch more apples out of basket #1 in the process

basket #1 has a hard time picking the apples back up off the floor because every time basket #1 picks one more apple up basket #2 yells and cries and says “look! look! basket #1 got another apple! look! someone give me another apple too! it’s only fair!”

i say, “basket #2, youre a terrible basket and i hate you” but it wont stop and it wont be quiet. this has been a story about my talking baskets.