I decided to create this post because of a campaign I noticed on facebook claiming that the sleeping beauty is a story that promotes rape. They justify it because as the princess was sleeping when she was kissed she couldn't consent to it. The authors claimed this was a feminist reading of the tale.

I actually read the fairy tale by the brothers grimm and it is quite interesting that this would be a story that would mobilize feminist critique. It's a story about a 15 year old girl that falls asleep in a castle that get surrounded by thorns. Many princes die trying to reach her, and the only one that manages to do it does so after 100 years of her sleeping, like the fairies foretold when she was a baby and was cursed by an evil fairy that wasn't invited to the celebration of the bith of the princess.

Another interesting detail is that the curse had foretold that she would prick her finger on a spindle to realize the curse. The king bans all the spindles from the kingdom, but when she turns 15 she somehow manages to find one and prick her finger on it.

The interesting thing is that it is metaforically a story about a girl goint through adolescence and coming to terms with her own sexuality and becoming an adult. The evil fairy is a figure of her own sexuality that couldn't find a healthy expression and expressed itself in the curse and the thorns. It is also a referenco to an unhealthy model of femininity she had inherited from her mother, besides all the virtues and good things from the other fairies. And this topic is quite actual considering the video that went viral about catcalling according to which saying good morning counted as harassment.

I agree that men should be polite when aproaching women, but the same expectation of politeness should be placed on how women respond to men, not only to how women approach men.

But there is a double standard in our culture where it seems plausible that a man saying good morning to a woman has crossed the boundaries and is being impolite, while a woman on a situation where a guy politelly tries to approach her feels entitled to behaving like a child.

And now to the most controversial part. If a guy politely tries to approach a woman and she gets terribly offended like we were on the XVIII century it is already wrong. In the same way that if you feel unconfortable when near black people or gay people it is already wrong.