Update on an Old Post
So, this post. A while back, I was looking through an online criminal database to see if any of my old friends had popped up. I found what I believed to be Nero, and a series of completely unsurprising and escalating arrests, culminating in sexual assault of a minor, and, a year later, a paternity suit. This didn’t surprise me because Nero was A) a drug addict, B) violent, C) paranoid and aggressive, and D) hateful and coercive towards women.
I noticed recently that Nero had popped up on Facebook. If you’re wondering how I “notice” these things, it’s because I’ve developed the habit of constantly googling people that I consider to be potential threats to my privacy, to see if they live near me, work near me, talk about me, or need to be bumped higher or lower on my list of “People What Might Fuck Up My Life.” There’s also a smaller, more mundane reason that I think most people have, the general “How’s so-and-so doing these days?”, except for me, that mundane feeling is coupled with, “Is he still on coke? Did he ever come back from that foreign country I was pretty sure he’d die in? Oh, look, he has a girlfriend. Jesus christ, I hope he got some help.”
ANYWAY. So, finding Nero on Facebook, I immediately blocked him, then went to double-check his rap sheet to see if there was anything else I needed to consider about his potential proximity to my life. I did a little deeper digging through his records this time, and discovered that (I’m 98% sure) the record I was looking at before was not actually him, but somebody with an identical name, very nearly identical address, and very similar birthdate. The only reason I can say I’m 98% sure is because, buried deep in the records, I found a racial identification field. I hadn’t bothered checking these before, because the few I looked over were all empty, along with a note stating that this field was not always filled in. So I figured it was a no-go of a field. Not so! The Nero-clone I had been looking at was labeled African-American. I did some checking of other people I knew who had records, of varying races. Inevitably, if they were white, the field was blank. If they were not white, or appeared not-white, the field was filled in, sometimes with wildly inappropriate guesswork. Nero’s white, but more than that, he is unmistakably, blindingly white. So, I’m pretty sure the Nero I found was not the Nero I knew.
I had to dig around to figure out how I felt about this. My first feeling was that I was glad my blog was anonymous and I had given him an alias. Even if my blog wasn’t anonymous, and you all knew my name, I would still give aliases to anybody I mentioned here, because that’s just neighborly. But I did feel mightly chagrined that I had come close to maligning somebody. Even if the correction could be easily sought out and easily made, you know, still.
That’s a reasonable feeling. But, if there’s one thing dealing with abuse taught me, it’s that reasonable feelings apply to reasonable situations, reasonable relationships, and reasonable people. Applying reasonable standards to somebody who is behaving abusively results in nasty platitudes that cleave people to their sources of torture. For example, I think it’s reasonable to expect somebody who has just been dumped to be emotional, say a few angry things, and perhaps reveal a few TMI details of the relationship. I also think it’s reasonable to expect that later they will be embarrassed about this and either apologize or just generally shape up. It’s not reasonable to expect somebody who has just been dumped to destroy their lover’s belongings, spread rumors, stalk them, and attempt to sabotage their relationships with others. But when reasonable people get ahold of the latter, they end up saying the same thing as they would in the former: “You can’t hold it against him. He’s just really upset right now. Break-ups are hard on everybody. He’s a good guy, at heart. Give him some time. Maybe you should go to coffee with him?” Reasonable standards are not an across-the-board sentiment; they only apply when they’re reciprocated.
So, Nero. Reasonably, I would feel bad that I nearly slandered him. But everything I said about him in that previous post, those weren’t cases of mistaken identity. Those were things Nero — the real Nero — actually did, and they were fucking unreasonable. And because of those actions, when I read that a Nero-clone had committed an ever-escalating series of violent crimes, and eventually rape of a minor, I had absolutely zero surprise. I mean, you know what zero surprise feels like, right? It’s like this clanging echo, like a tuning fork that’s hit the right spot. Nero raped a girl? Let me attempt to feel less kindly about him than I already do. Nope. We’re already at the bottom of the barrel.
I had a small moment of feeling some kind of relief that Nero hadn’t raped a girl. But then, I had to correct myself. I was feeling relieved because I didn’t know for a fact that Nero had raped a girl. He may have. He may have and I just don’t know about it. And, considering the fact that I felt zero surprise when I thought he had raped a girl… how much of a difference is there, as it applies to me? There’s a big difference, obviously, in whether or not there is a woman out there who has had to survive a terrible attack. But since I don’t know that potential rape victim, since she’s out of my sphere, whether or not she exists isn’t the issue. The issue is whether or not I believe Nero is capable of such a thing. There’s no real relief in knowing he hasn’t actually raped somebody if I believe he’s a person who is completely capable of raping somebody. He may not be an actual rapist, but if it’s something I think he’s capable of, then I trust him as much as I trust a real rapist. I trust him that much, because I know he’s capable of violence, I know he considers that violence to be a masculine feature (conversly considering the object of violence to have less-masculine or feminine traits), I know he uses drugs as excuses for his behavior, and I know he isolated, browbeat, and consistently ignored the boundaries of a friend of mine in an attempt to coerce her into sex. That friend of mine was savvy enough to get up and run when he started trying to take off her pants, and had enough of a solid sense of self-worth that she didn’t let herself be intimidated when Nero spent the next year or so punishing her publicly. But a girl without that luck, ego, and speed would have been Nero’s rape victim, though I’m quite sure that’s not how he’d think of it.
This made me think about what I was talking about here. I used to feel that a person had to actually commit some kind of inexcusable evil before I could consider not having them in my life. That’s a really low bar to set, especially for access to something as invaluable and irreplacable as my body, my life, or my sanity. A person only has to not hurt me to pass the test; if they make me live in fear of being hurt, well, I don’t have any right to just drop them as friends for no reason, do I? They haven’t even done anything. So what that I’m constantly appeasing them, avoiding topics, tiptoeing, saying things I don’t believe to avoid the punishment I feel they are capable of doling out? A filter set that low allows all kinds of shit to cling to your heels. A husband who threatens to strangle me? Well, he didn’t actually try, did he? I can’t leave him just for talking, just for words.
As the years have gone by, I’ve raised that bar, and developed a longer list of expectations I have for the people in my life. Some of the expectations are vague, some very specific, and some are negotiable. There is only one standard I have that is completely and 100% non-negotiable. It seems like a very low standard, very simple to pass, something that would hardly weed anybody out at all. But, of all the friends I’ve ever made in my life, from the most brief of acquaintances to the closest of friends, I can only think of nine that pass my only test. Here it is:
You can only be my friend if you will not tell me that I wasn’t raped, and if I was, it was my own fault.
That’s it. That’s my only requirement, and it’s been responsible for the loss of 90% of my friends.
I used to believe that this requirement necessited me disclosing my rape. I mean, how can a person pass my test if I never tell them I was raped? The incident that triggered me starting this blog made me realize that if I don’t want to tell you about my rape, you have already failed this test. If you live in that Schroedinger’s Box — you may blame me for my rape, you may not, and I won’t know until you choose one or the other – you have already failed this test. I need to know which one you’ll choose, and if your actions, beliefs, and behaviors haven’t already made it reasonably clear to me, then it’s not reasonable for me to stick around waiting to see if you’re going to hurt me in the most vulnerable way I can be hurt. I can decide not to tell somebody about my rape because, say, they are my barista, and the small window of our acquaintanceship doesn’t really include the opportunity or need to talk about my sexual assault. But, assuming someday that opportunity arose and I don’t want to tell you, it’s because I know you’re going to fail, and I want to protect myself from you.
That might seem really offensive. I imagine it feels the same way that Nice Guys, real or (TM), feel when they realize that women are sizing up their potential to rape. “I’m a nice person!” you might think. “I would never do that!” Okay, sure, your experience of yourself is valid. But I’m not in your head. I don’t know you as well as you know yourself. I only know what you have chosen to show. And if the behaviors and actions you have chosen to commit in public make me think that you would fail my test, well, my experience is valid, too, and it’s the only valid experience when it comes to the decisions I make about my life. I don’t make my decisions based on your experiences. If you want to pass my test, you have to make an active, conscious, committed effort to do so. You have to stop assuming that your niceness, your I-don’t-blame-you-for-rape, somehow leaks out your pores or floats through the air like pheremones, unseen, unheard, but somehow known. If I don’t think you’ll pass my test, you’ve done something to make me believe that. I may be wrong. In a mythical, purely objective world where everybody’s true feelings, intentions, beliefs, and needs are transparent and known at all times, I might know for a fact that I was wrong. But the world isn’t objective or transparent. The world, for me, is a collection of observations of behaviors that you have chosen to display. And if I believe you will blame me for my rape, or believe I am lying, you have been putting out some ugly behaviors, and you haven’t cared enough to notice.
As I’ve learned to trust my instincts, I’ve stopped requiring “proof” of a person’s intentions before I judge the quality they will add to my life. Waiting for “proof” is waiting to be strangled before you dub somebody a strangler. It’s waiting for somebody to rape before you admit that they’re dangerous. It’s waiting for a fire to start before you buy a fire extinguisher. I’d like to say I’m glad to know that Nero didn’t rape a girl, but I don’t know that. And considering the way he acted, I really don’t know that. All I know is that if he raped a girl, nobody has told me yet. That doesn’t mean he has. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t. So in the meantime, Nero is Schroedinger’s Rapist, relegated to the box of the unknown. The thing about the unknown is, it’s not known. That may sound obvious, but let me put it this way. If I don’t know, one way or another, if you could rape, that means I don’t know that you couldn’t. There are people in my life that I know could not rape. If you are Schroedinger’s Rapist, I don’t know that about you. This is one expectation in my life that is non-negotiable. I have to know that you could not rape. If you are an unknown, potentially, you could not rape. But I don’t know that. And not knowing that is a good enough reason to keep you away from me.
I do not let people into my life unless they are firmly out of Schroedinger Land, unless I can’t say, “I don’t know if he’s a rapist,” “I don’t know if she intends to make me cry,” “I don’t know if he would tell me it was my fault and I deserved it.” It’s within my rights to pre-emptively exclude anybody in the Box from my life. If I have any doubts at all that you can’t pass my test, you have failed my test, and I refuse to consider that unfair. It’s my body, my life, my sanity we’re talking about, and somebody who thinks I ought to consider my body, my life, and my sanity as worth less than the chance to let somebody abuse me has failed my test. Somebody who lives outside of Schroedinger’s Rapist Box is somebody who will understand my test, and understand that I have the right to exclude whomever I wish from my life. Not understanding that places you firmly in the Box — maybe not the Rapist Box, but definitely the I Might Hurt You Unbelievably And Not Be Sorry Box. If I don’t know that you will pass my test, if you are an unknown, then you have not differentiated yourself enough from a real rapist or a real rape-apologist to be a part of my life, and that is reason enough to keep you away from me. If I don’t know that you will pass my test, it’s because you have not done enough to make the silent rape victims around you know, which means that we are just biding our time until you decide that rape is important enough to give a shit about.
Comments are closed.
I totally understand this post, and completely support it. I agree that you have an inalienable right to decide who’s not in your life, and your reasons are completely valid.
I could use some help understanding “There are people in my life that I know *could not* rape.” How do you know that? Is it an absence of bad behavior, or a presence of good behavior?
In other words, how do I let the Harriet Js in My Life *know* that same thing about me? How do I avoid the quantum rape state?
Please don’t post this comment if it’s too OT. I definitely am not interested in threadjacking. Maybe what I’m asking for is not appropriate for this discussion, and if that’s true, I won’t complain.
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I struggled with how to phrase that, because of course you can never really know anything about another person for sure. But I can think I know something enough to meet my requirements (though I can always be mistaken). For me, it’s a presence of good behavior that helps me know this, rather than an absence of bad behavior.
Let me try to think of some specific examples of how my bear made me “know” he was safe to disclose to, and “know” he was safe to be around. My bear, before we were dating, never accepted even the smallest amount of boundary-crossing as appropriate. If I told him something small Flint had done, like go through personal things of mine without asking, things that I would have let him go through if he had asked, my bear would strongly state that that was completely wrong, no matter what the justification. Or, if I told him something I believed that he strongly disagreed with (even very emotional things like, “Nobody will ever love me”), he never told me I was wrong, or stupid. He would ask me a lot of clarifying questions about why I felt that way and how I came to feel that way, then he would tell me that he disagreed and describe to me why he felt that way and how he came to feel that way. He never asked or demanded that I feel differently, and always always always made sure to say something like, “The way you feel is valid, there’s obviously a reason you feel that way, but I think that maybe if you tried X you might feel differently.”
Basically, he showed in a lot of ways, big and small, that he respected my feelings as legitimate, and believed I was a whole person who was capable of making my own decisions for valid reasons. That made me feel like he wouldn’t tell me all the things I should have done to avoid getting raped, and wouldn’t push me to talk about the rape when I couldn’t, and wouldn’t push me to go to the police when I had decided not to, because he obviously believed I had the right to make my own decisions and the right to not be berated when he disagreed.
He also showed me that he understood the importance of boundaries in relationships. He told me a story once about a fight he’d had with his ex-girlfriend, one of the worst they’d ever had. He had a glass of water in his hand while they were fighting, and he was so angry that he turned around and threw the water at the wall. Not the glass, just the water. I was used to a husband who said things like, “I want to beat you so much right now” and punched walls during fights, so I thought this was an adorable story of how sweet my bear was, restraining himself enough to just throw water. But he didn’t think it was sweet at all. He really regretted it and was terribly ashamed; to him, any kind of physical aggression in a fight — whether directed at a person or object, and whether or not it caused any damage at all — was creating a physical threat and intimidating atmosphere. It was saying, “I have chosen to express anger through violence,” which was only a difference in degree from “I want to beat you so much right now.” He was aware that his actions, as the larger and stronger person in the relationship and as a man with the social privilege in a heterosexual relationship, meant that his very minor act of physical aggression had a disproportionate intimidation and threat tied to it, and he was ashamed that he had behaved that way in front of somebody that he loved and wanted to feel safe.
He also expressed to me his respect for and awareness of women. He didn’t call women sluts — he went to greath lengths to find other ways to describe women who had a lot of sex. He didn’t call women bitches, was actively uncomfortable with the word. He had a lot of female friends, and kept tampons in his house in case one of them got caught on their periods. He had made an effort to educate himself on female anatomy and health, and told his female friends about alternative menstrual products, if they hadn’t heard of them. He was interested in hearing about and talking about feminism. When he first told me he liked me, he took great pains to make sure he told me that only after he had gotten to know me well enough that he thought he could gauge my reaction, and only when neither of us were drunk, alone, or isolated, because he wanted me to feel safe if the whole thing creeped me out. When we were friends, and when we were becoming more than friends, he always asked my consent before he touched me, even in innocent ways (like leading me through a crowd). He told me a story of a woman he had met who very bluntly propositioned him for a one-night stand during a time when he’d not had sex for a while. He was really attracted to her, and really tempted, but in his brief interaction with her, he’d determined that she had a lot of very bad self-esteem issues and engaged in a lot of hateful destructive behavior as a result, and he didn’t want to add to that; he felt she didn’t want him to have a consensual sexual encounter with her, but that she wanted him to hurt and abuse her. Even though she was asking him for sex, he felt she wanted it because she knew it would hurt her emotionally, and he wasn’t willing to do that. So instead he spent all night talking to her.
My bear was also very comfortable with queerness. He’d had many close gay and lesbian friends in his life. He was open to discussing his own sexuality, and whether or not it was fluid, and in what ways. He would discuss this with his other heterosexual male friends, and if they were uncomfortable, he would discuss with me how disappointed it made him that they were uncomfortable.
You notice that I haven’t mentioned anything about rape or sexual assault yet. I’m trying to establish that there’s a lot of ways to express your safety without directly touching on rape. He did express some things around rape as well, though. The bear and I used to work together, and there was another employee who was a well-known problem (management refused to take action). This employee was a thief, very violent and aggressive, frequently and loudly racist, and sexually harassed boatloads of the female employees. I told my bear a story I had heard about this employee that, in my mind, was clearly sexual assault, as it had involved a woman that passed out partway through sex and remained passed out and was left naked in a semi-public location afterwards. The person who had told me this story felt that the worst thing about it was that the employee had left her there passed out and naked — he should have at least covered her up. Other people expressed similar sentiments: he should have tried to wake her, he should have called an ambulance if he was going to leave her, he should have dragged her to his couch and let her sleep it off, etc. When I told my bear, the first thing he said was, “That’s rape. That guy’s a fucking rapist.” Everybody else was able to recognize multiple ways that this employee had done something terrible, and my bear went on to discuss those as well, but before he got to any of that he identified the first and foremost problem: having sex with a woman drunk enough to pass out was rape.
There was a high-profile case in our town at one point about a woman who had made a false accusation of rape. The general narrative on this, wherever you went, was that ladies are bitches and liars and what a stupid crazy whore she was. When this topic came up between me and my bear, before I was able to launch into my usual tangent, he took the words right out of my mouth: “I don’t know what was going on with that girl, and it’s none of my business, but the worst thing about that was having to hear the whole town go around talking about how women are liars.”
When my bear discussed an ex-girlfriend who had hurt him deeply, he never insulted her. He talked about the ways he could understand what she had been thinking, what she had been going through, and ways he had made mistakes. He also talked about ways he could see that they just weren’t right for each other, and how he would have needed to change to be right for her, and how he didn’t think he would have been happy that way. He also described their break-up, and how he had handled it, which had been very quietly and maturely — he cried, he moped, he cried some more, he told her when he was comfortable talking to her and when he wasn’t, and he slowly moved on. Hearing about some of the things she’d done, I got pretty angry at her, and I probably would have let it slide if he had started making gendered slurs at her. But he never did, and as time went on, I came to see his point of view pretty clearly, to the point where when I finally did meet her, it was very cordial and polite. All this showed me how the bear dealt with anger towards any given woman. He didn’t let it descend into stereotyping about WOMENZ, but dealt with each woman as an individual. I was able to see what it might look like, if the bear and I ever broke up, and it didn’t look anything like the abuse-abuse-rape-escape I’d had to deal with. I could feel safe dating him, because I knew he could handle a break-up without frightening me.
When my bear and I started getting sexual, he would verbally prelude what he was going to do, saying, “I’d like to kiss you” or “I’d like to touch you,” giving me a chance to say, “No.” Or, he would set boundaries verbally: “I don’t want to go beyond this.” He would frequently ask if I was okay. If he felt things were getting too heavy and he was about to cross a boundary he had set, he would physically get up and go to the other side of the room and verbally confirm with me what I wanted to do. I will admit that sometimes he didn’t get to the other side of the room because I would tackle him, but even while getting tackled, he would be trying to verbally map out what I was okay doing next.
Whenever we watch a movie that my bear knows might have a trigger scene in it, he tells me in advance. If a trigger pops up as a surprise, he asks me if I’m okay. To be honest, that kind of annoys me sometimes. I am trying to watch a movie! Sometimes he is more sensitive to my rape than I am; but all that means is that he’s thinking about it, he’s aware that I can be triggered, and he is willing at any moment in time to try and help me with whatever has triggered me. He doesn’t forget that I’ve been raped, and that’s nice, because I don’t ever forget either. I didn’t have a choice in that, but he did.
You don’t have to address rape specifically to show that you are a safe person. I have known plenty of people who will, of course, loudly denounce rape as horrible and awful and I could never do that, and then turn around and browbeat women into accepting a drink, or dancing with them, and calling them bitches when they won’t. That person has undermined their ostensible hatred of rape by illustrating that they feel it’s appropriate to coerce somebody into sexual contact, and it’s appropriate to dismiss them as less than human when they resist.
There are certain beliefs people hold that allow them to commit rape or excuse rape, and showing that you don’t hold those beliefs — in any circumstance — is one way of showing that you are a safe person. The positive beliefs, the anti-rape beliefs I’ve tried to illustrate here are:
1) Respect of boundaries, no matter how large or small the issue
Refusing to engage in the denigration of women, whether encouraged by other men or other women to do so
2) Treating another person’s beliefs and feelings as valid, and not dismissing them if you disagree
3) Being aware of your power to physically intimidate, and mitigating the way you behave so as not to create intentional or unintentional fear in somebody who may be vulnerable to you
4) Feeling that any amount of physical intimidation in a relationship is wrong, at its core, on principle
5) Avoiding gendered insults
6) Fostering close friendships with women, outside of your partner. If women aren’t a part of your life unless you’re having sex with them, you’re giving a pretty clear illustration of what you think they’re worth.
7) Independently learning about women’s lives, bodies, and experiences in the world
9) Ensuring consent before any physical touch
10) Illustrating an awareness of a woman’s need to feel safe and have exits available when alone with a man
11) Having an active interest in and care for other people’s emotions, male or female
12) Showing knowledge of and acceptance of feminism. You can come from a really early place in the journey here, but as long as you know something about feminism besides what filters to the news, and as long as you understand the basics behind why feminism exists and why it’s necessary, you fulfill this, I think. What I mean is, don’t go around saying, “But aren’t we post-feminist now?” and “But you got abortion in the 70s, I don’t think you need feminism anymore.” You don’t have to agree with all of feminism — nobody does — but you do have to understand that the genders aren’t equal and that’s not right.
13) Show an acceptance of fluid sexualities. The less a man has invested in traditional masculinity and femininity, the less he’s likely to try and enforce that traditionalism on others.
14) Call rape, rape
15) Call rape, rape
16) Call rape, rape
17) There is no gray area in any form of sexual assault. There are no mitigating or mediating factors. If it’s sexual assault, it’s sexual assault. If it’s what others might consider a “lesser” form of sexual assault (such as leaving a woman naked and passed out in a semi-public place), do not give it any passes, any “that’s not as bad…” or “at least he didn’t…” A person who engages in a lesser form of sexual coercion is somebody who is willing to rape; don’t hem and haw about that.
18) If a woman makes you angry or hurts you, treat her like a person who has made you angry or hurt you. Do not use gendered insults to describe her, do not generalize her behavior to an entire gender. She is an individual who made you angry or hurt you, not a bitch.
19) Do not make or laugh at rape jokes.
20) Recognize that we live in a culture that is far too full of casual references to or depictions of rape, and most of these are horrible. Recognize that you may be surrounded by women who are reliving their rapes every time somebody makes a prison rape joke. Show, somehow, that you are considering how this makes the possible victims around you feel; show that you have made the choice to think about it, when you didn’t have to, when you could have just laughed at a rape joke without thinking about it, or watched a rape scene in a movie without considering its appropriateness or necessity or effect on others.
21) Constantly reaffirm consent for sexual activity. This doesn’t just mean asking a woman how far she wants to go or how she feels. Talk about how far you want to go and how you feel. Show that boundaries and verbal affirmation and confirmation are important to you by engaging in them yourself, and not waiting for her to be the gatekeeper of “is it rape or not.”
Others, feel free to jump in!
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I really appreciate the eloquence with which you speak. The concepts you talk about are very hard to address with clarity and purpose and you are really good at that. I’m glad you aren’t disappearing.
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Thank you for saying the following, ’cause I needed to hear it from someone else: “my experience is valid, too, and it’s the only valid experience when it comes to the decisions I make about my life. I don’t make my decisions based on your experiences…
Waiting for “proof” (that someone might hurt/rape you) is waiting to be strangled before you dub somebody a strangler. It’s waiting for somebody to rape before you admit that they’re dangerous. It’s waiting for a fire to start before you buy a fire extinguisher.”
I remember when I was in a situation where my boss made me very, very uncomfortable but he wasn’t directly hitting on me. I felt unsafe objecting to his behaviour and in the past I’d been fired for “incompetence” after resisting a business owner, so I did everything I could to be as competent as possible, even in the face of overt sabotage. Most times, this meant insisting on access to resources, in the face of anger and resentment. I got fired for my “attitude” instead… specifically because I was “assuming things” (my boss had told me he wasn’t getting sex at home and mentioned my boyfriend had told him stuff about how I was in bed – so I was “assuming” he was interested in sex with me when he didn’t actually say it in so many words. He said I had no “proof” of his intentions).
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Nothing to add. Just letting you know how much this post means to me.
Thank you.
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I know that it is IN the comments, but Harriet, that needs to be a POST! PLUS it should go in your BOOK.
For many, just hearing about what it is like to be around a man who respects boundaries is going to read like Science Fiction, but it is Science Fiction that needs to BE READ. Because often one doesn’t know how low one’s standards are until you know how much they can be exceeded.
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Agreed – the comments section on your posts are often full of an absolute wealth of insight, to the same degree as the posts themselves, and I hope people find the time to read the comment threads to find them.
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The actual post wasn’t that interesting for me (since I’m male and I generally have strict boundaries for myself) but that comment/reply was pure gold! Harriet, I would be very interested in finding out more about Bear’s past, maybe you can suggest that he should write a post for No-Name Blogger. I’m curious if there was any specific experience(s) that influenced him to disconnect from social stereotypes and realize the value of women; or was that simply from a heavy dose of self-education and personal curiosity?
By the way, I’m glad you’re back. I read your blog quite frequently and I wish you all the best.
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Aw, for fuck’s sake, everybody ignore the emoticon out of nowhere. That was supposed to be the number 8, but HTML jazzed it up, ’cause even HTML knows it’s soooooooo cool to refuse to denigrate women.
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Could I also add one thing for guys?
If you keep your mouth shut when some guy is going off on a rant about women, makes a rape joke, etc. I have no choice but to believe you agree with him.
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Ms. Jacobs, if I may, your reply is a well-written article in and of itself. I want to print it out and frame it. It’s something that should be shouted from the rooftops and resyndicated in other writers’ blogs.
That’s pretty much the only comment I can make; everything else I try to say seems anticlimactic. Some things just cannot be added to.
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Confidential to you-know-who: accidental posts deleted, but I will take advantage of the link, thanks!
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As usual, I think this post is fantastic and have shared it with many friends, both feminist-identified and not. Harriet – your explanations of how you came to trust your Bear is a lot like what I went through soon after my rape when I realized that I could trust some men, but I had no fucking idea which ones. I still go through the same thought process – I don’t think that ever ends – but I understand what I’m looking for now.
Your words explain it well, which is something that I’ve had trouble doing. Thank you.
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Thank you so much for this post; it’s made me understand something that I struggled with for years.
I had a really dear friend who disclosed to me that she was a survivor of an abusive relationship. I tried to give her the reaction she needed; I did not doubt her, or blame her, or try to give her useless retroactive advice. Although I was fairly clueless, it seems that I initially passed her test. Some time elapsed, and we continued to be close.
Then she started dating my male best friend. She chose not to disclose to him that she had been raped, a decision I completely respected. But he kept inadvertently doing things that she found triggering, and she would often complain to me about what an inconsiderate bastard he was for doing those things. I tried to be sympathetic, but I was incensed that she was all but accusing my best friend of abusing her. I thought he couldn’t possibly know he was reminding her of her ex, unless she told him; she argued that he should just do what she asked without needing to know the reason. And it was incredibly uncomfortable because she was making all these accusations about my best friend, and at the same time complaining to him that I wasn’t being supportive and sympathetic enough.
It all blew up when she called me in the middle of the night to cry and rail at me, for the fourth time in a week, and I tried telling her I had important stuff going on at work and couldn’t manage yet another 3 am emotional conversation, but she was too upset to take that into account. Among other things she was angry with me because I talked about her on my blog. Just perfectly ordinary things, like “oh, it was nice to see my friend ___ the other day”, and always using her online handle not her real name. I didn’t understand that I was making her feel unsafe even with these very minor mentions. Because I was really short of sleep, I ended up yelling at her and hanging up on her.
The next day I woke up and realized that I’d been absolutely horrible and quickly wrote to apologize for saying things I shouldn’t ever have said. I also removed all mention of her, even indirect, from my blog. But all I got back was a note saying that I should get out of her life and she never wanted anything to do with me again. Two years later I wrote her a letter apologizing again for the quarrel and asking if she couldn’t think of forgiving me; she claimed I was stalking her and threatened to call the police if I ever contacted her in any way again.
I was just devastated by this. I knew it wasn’t very nice to yell at her, but I couldn’t believe she was still that angry with me, years later, because I made one slip-up. But now I’ve read this post I completely understand. I failed her test. I still really terribly miss her, but at least I understand better how my minor mistake could be such a big deal for her.
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Every time I come here I get clear, or at least clearer, on something that’s been bothering me. No wonder you’re so popular.
For me, the test is that if people don’t get that putting sexualized content in a film or television role amounts to sexual harassment, regardless of intentions, and if people don’t get why I get so upset about it, how can they possibly be my friends? It’s so nice to get clear on why my bottom line matters so much again.
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