It’s been 3 years, or a millennia depending on how you look at it.
#metoo started gaining momentum in October 2017.
I don’t think the world suddenly turned into a better safer place, but at least it isn’t some dirty secret we are forced to keep anymore. It was never my dirt. I don’t want it.
There’s been charges laid. And there is a dialog.
I think its all of us. Or close to all.
Statistics say 1 in 4 before the age of 18.
But I was 15, 16, 26, 40, 42. Just the bad ones. Not counting the little pressures or the friends that got drunk and took it too far. Or the boyfriends who didn’t listen when I said not now.
Its overwhelming.
Facebook says I posted this 3 years ago today.
I remember the sting from the proverbial slap in the face when I saw my mother post ‘me too’. And I think I know who, but maybe I am wrong. Doesn’t matter if I know, she does. We all know the names of our harassers and rapists. Maybe not all, but a good portion of us do.
That is because, if 98% of women have been harassed or assaulted, there are men doing this to us.
Not all men, see what I did there?
There is an antiquated belief that men who hurt and rape women fit a certain stereotype; scruffy, trench coat, lurking in the bushes or in the shadows. Stranger danger.
I have been assaulted a dozen times and they were never wearing trench coats.
They weren’t strangers either.
Yes, there are the scrubs who can’t get no love, hanging out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride trying to holler at me…the unwanted attention, the feigned ‘accidental’ grab at a bar in the dark. I am not talking about those, although those really suck too.
I do not understand why tolerating harassment is the price I have to pay to exist as a woman.
I lost a person about a week ago. We were very close. Loved each other even. Never dated exactly, like most of the men from the last 7 years of my life, we had dates nights, but we weren’t dating. We fooled around too. Never quite got to the sex part, he loved cocaine more than me and sex was a physical impossibility.
That’s neither here nor there.
He posted a meme that I won’t bother reposting, regarding Baby it’s Cold Outside versus WAP.
This rings the same as republicans defending Donald Trump ‘grab em by the pussy’ by saying well, y’all read 50 Shades of Grey.
Let me make it abundantly clear. Consensual BDSM is not the same as assault and battery. Never has been, never will be. There is even a sub category of BDSM which is called ‘consensual non-consent’, but there is a safe word that still means no.
Just because I want to have sex, doesn’t mean I want to have sex with you. Just because we have had sex before, doesn’t mean I want to right now.
There is no Golden Ticket, all access pass to enter a woman’s body whenever you want. If that’s your thing, get a sex doll.
A dude not taking no for an answer is not in the same conversation as a woman needing a bucket and a mop for her wet ass pussy. In fact, that whiny cajoling tone makes me drier than the Sahara.
I jumped on the thread of the BICO versus WAP and said plainly, while I don’t think BICO is the worst thing ever, it does insinuate pressure sex. Personally, I have acquiesced to sexual acts for reasons other than a resounding yes, because it was safer to do so, because I felt obligated or pressured.
Yes, all women in this instance.
And it happened with him too.
I was drunk, I said no. I said no more than once, and things went further that I wanted.
Am I mad about it?
No.
We were both drunk and things got carried away.
Had I been sober would I have consented, also no. But all in all it was not some terrible traumatic experience. We talked the next morning and I said plainly, that was not what I wanted nor expected from you and he apologized. It’s water under the bridge and I valued his friendship more than one irritating night of drunken stupidity. I never went home with him after that incident either.
Cut to last week.
So I jump on this thread, tell the truth about other experiences I had, not even hinting at what happened with him and instead of being the supportive male friend I knew and loved, he threw me under the bus, and let a bunch of rednecks mock me.
So I left.
Unfriended him unceremoniously and sat on this for about a week.
Then I get banned from Facebook for the men are trash statement and everything came bubbling back up.
If you are not trash, you won’t mind me pointing out that a lot of your gender are. Once again, someone is doing the raping.
If you aren’t guilty of pressure sex, you won’t mind me bringing it up.
The onus is placed on women way too often. The language has to change. From ‘she was raped’ to ‘he raped her’. We carry all of the responsibility for an act we obviously do not choose to participate in, that is why it’s rape.
Madonna once said that “a woman could be naked, drunk, passed out in an alley in a bad neighborhood and still not deserve to get raped”.
Its true.
Why is this about our life choices as women and not about their choice to hurt us as men?
They make a decision to do harm.
We don’t choose to be harmed.
I really loathe this rhetoric wherein if a woman owns her sexuality, enjoys sex or shows even the slightest hint of using men for pleasure the puritanical collective loses its fucking mind.
When is this going to stop?
How do we stop it?
I raised my son to know that consent is mandatory and can also be revoked at any time. He knows this. This is gospel.
I also saw this last week, and it made me cry bitter tears of relief.
In a world full of mansplainers and men who are guilty of some level of assault who refuse to own the things they have done, there is this guy.
Men who assault women, don’t listen to women, hence the assaulting.
Every single man has either done something or knows someone who has. Just like every single woman has had something done to her or knows a woman who has.
Make the world into one giant airport. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.
Sit in your dark truth gentlemen. Realize it’s you or someone you know, do better, be better.
The world isn’t going to end if you realize and internalize that one of the girls you banged didn’t really want to participate. Learn from it.
Stop this.
And at the very least, don’t try and talk over the women who are finally feeling safe enough to talk about this. From personal experience, I know it’s a heavy burden to carry and it’s not even my burden.
