the feminist librarian reads

Women are being harassed, and abused, and threatened, and terrorized. Women have killed themselves. If the word “hurt” is to have any meaning at all, we need to stop saying that things need to change before someone gets hurt, and start saying plainly that things need to change because people are already being hurt. And we really need to stop defining the threshold at which women’s harm matters as the point in which one of the men who’s been threatening them crosses a line into physically harming them. If I need to explain why it’s fucked up to let the harassers define what constitutes someone “really getting hurt,” instead of listening to women saying they’re already hurting, then you haven’t been paying attention.