The rape culture of the 1980s, explained by Sixteen Candles

The fact that Christine Blasey and Julie Swetnick did not, at the time of their attacks, have available to them the concept of “date rape” to describe their experiences is an example of what the philosopher Miranda Fricker calls “hermeneutical injustice”: being deprived of the resources with which to interpret your experiences of harm both to yourself and to others because of a gap in the collective understanding. The introduction of concepts like date rape and acquaintance rape, street harassment, microaggressions, and even mansplaining are all instances of an amelioration of hermeneutical injustice.

So I’ve probably talked about the kind of strange phenomenon of men I dated, or even just went on a few dates with, getting in touch with me years later. There’s one guy I went on a few dates with in 2013 but haven’t seen since who keeps sending me Facebook messages at random intervals. I haven’t replied in a couple years. He’s married; he even gave me a last-minute invitation to his wedding. I didn’t go, obviously. Anyway, I posted some pictures on Facebook from my Renaissance fair outing, including this one of me attempting archery:

And, presumably in response to this photo (or maybe the one of me eating a turkey leg, I don’t know), he sent me the message: “Hey! Your renaissance faire pictures just showed up in my feed – you like like you’re in killer shape now! Clearly moving to Canada agrees with you haha”

Which I found especially creepy, because most of his random messages aren’t specifically commenting on my body. And also this photo, since it’s in profile, clearly displays how thin I am, which is actually not good because I’ve been unintentionally losing weight due to depression and anxiety. But thanks for reinforcing my latent eating-disordered thought patterns by telling me how great I look when I’m unhealthily underweight. That’s really what I needed in my life.