finally picked up the feminist killjoy handbook today - enjoying it so far - and i wanted to repost this definition of sexual harassment that ahmed mentions in the first chapter:
unwanted conduct of a sexual nature that has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment
since i started running this blog i've been really noticing how ubiquitous sexual harrassment is on here, and i'm noticing that a lot of it is coming from people who would never openly condone such behavior in the abstract, yet either assume or actively frame their own sexually harassing "jokes" to be a moral and political good.
the logic seems to boil down to this: "if somebody is a prude, it's good for me to push their sexual boundaries and go out of my way to make them feel sexually uncomfortable and unsafe".
some people seem to be doing this on a relatively minor scale without really thinking about it, but others are intentionally weaponizing this logic to justify and minimize overt harassment (e.g. image-based abuse, rape threat botnets). i've seen it on both "sides" of the transandrophobia discourse in various forms, and it needs to stop.
the fact of the matter is, for real feminists, there is nobody who deserves to be sexually harrassed. sexual harrassment of a "bad person" is still sexual harrassment. if your clapback or vaguepost or anon hate relies on sexually humiliating someone to be "funny", don't make it.
