‘Imagine being kicked in the nuts’: An analogy to explain sexual harassment and women’s rage to men

Julius’ analogy is a brilliant way of showing how sexual harassment and rape culture is normalised in our society and how weird it would sound if the genders are reversed. It also sheds light on how it is always the women who have been called out and being blamed instead of the other way round.

Take a look at the series of tweets here:

Hi, guys. Imagine if one day you got kicked in the nuts, really hard, on purpose.

You doubled over. Felt the pain. Nearly passed out. Nearly puked.

Then you got kicked again. And again.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine it happened to you when you were 12.
Imagine it was an 38 year old woman who did it.
Imagine it was your mother’s friend and business partner.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine you told your parents and they didn’t believe you.
Imagine they never mentioned it again.
You learned to keep quiet about it.
You learned to be scared.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine that later your father explained that women just wanted to kick men in the nuts, so as a boy you had to be careful.

Imagine he had very detailed practical advice on this.

Advertisement

Imagine you started spending your life planning on avoiding being kicked in the nuts.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine you became aware that women, including much older women—even elderly women—were always looking at your nuts. Women on the street would follow you. They’d tell you what a nice package you have. They’d tell you you’d be hot if you just showed off your nuts a little more.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine you started wearing clothes to hide them. You bought uncomfortable protective gear.

All the posters and advertisements in all the magazines featured men’s crotches, though frequently not their heads.

Women’s feet were frequently featured in prominent juxtaposition.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine most of your friends all told you about getting kicked in the nuts.

Imagine none of them had ever told anybody else.

Imagine all the older girls at school would make jokes about kicking you in the nuts.

Imagine all the laughter. The jokes are all so funny.

Jokes.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine you went to church and were told that God made girls to want your body, so you should protect your nuts at all costs.

Advertisement

Imagine the minister said it was your responsibility as a maturing boy not to do anything that would make girls think about kicking you in the nuts.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine you found a girlfriend, and you loved each other.

One night, you were fooling around and she kicked you as hard as she could in the nuts, and it all came rushing back.

Imagine she acted like obviously you wanted to be kicked in the nuts,mocked you for getting emotional.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine you told the police, and they asked you what you’d been wearing before she kicked you in the nuts. Asked if you’d had a drink. Asked what you might have been doing before. Had you been naked? Kissing?

You had.

You left.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine there were laws that said that if a wife kicked her husband in the nuts it wasn’t assault.

Imagine you heard about men with ruptured testicles who had to pay for their own forensic reports

Advertisement

Imagine you saw statistics showing only 1% of kickings resulted in conviction.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine a girl was caught kicking a boy repeatedly in the nuts while he was passed out drunk.

Imagine the judge let her off, because she was worried about the damage to the girl’s future prospects. She was a star swimmer with a scholarship.

Imagine this happened all the time.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine if one day men all started talking about how almost all of them had, at one point or another, been kicked in the nuts.

Imagine if women’s main concern was what false accusation might do to their reputations, and whether this new honesty might ruin the mystery of sex.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine a woman ran for President.

Imagine audio came out of her bragging about making it a regular practice to kick men in the nuts without even introducing herself.

Imagine she lost no support for this.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine she claimed the men accusing her were lying.

Imagine she said they were too ugly to kick.

Imagine there had never been a male president.

Imagine she ran against the first major-party male candidate.

Imagine he had experience, and she had none.

Imagine she won anyway.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine she supported a Senate candidate known for kicking young boys in the testicles.

Imagine she nominated a judge.

Advertisement

Imagine the judge was accused of kicking a boy in the nuts.

Imagine the accuser had to hide from all the death threats as a result.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Imagine the President mocked the accuser in font of a crowd, and the crowd laughed and clapped.

Imagine the judge was confirmed.

Imagine the deciding vote was a man.

Can you imagine?

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

Now imagine that being kicked in the nuts might result in you having to create, in your body, a genetic replication of the person who kicked you.

And imagine that the judge intended to make sure you’d have to carry it.

Imagine that was the *reason* she was chosen.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

I can’t imagine women’s rage today, but this exercise, while abstract, helped me get nearer to it than I’d been.

Be kind to women, guys. Today and every day.

If you see somebody being cruel to women, or abusive, or violent?

Kick ’em in the nuts.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018

By the way it’s 100% insane that this issue seems to require an analogy to draw a sharper focus on how wrong our society presently is, but here were are.

— Julius Ghost👻 (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) October 6, 2018