Lucy is an Asshole

When I was in college, I participated in some major victim blaming.

There was a party, which I did not go to. A girl I was friends with, in that small-social-circle, person-I-tolerate, frenemies kind of way that happens in school, was in a room alone with her exboyfriend (who I also didn't like) at this party. The next day, people were saying he raped her.

Actually, people were saying she said he raped her. And because the girl in question was kind of a drama queen about other things, and because I was friends with her roommate, who didn't believe her, and because I'd been told over and over that sometimes women cry rape for attention--I didn't believe her.

I realize now that this was an asshole move, and I was an asshole for not believing her, and I'm still an asshole for making whatever awful thing happened to her about me and my reaction to it now.

Years later, when I was sexually assaulted (which, I realize, I talk about incessantly here, partly because I'm not over it so please cut me some slack) I found I couldn't tell anyone. Why would I want to tell anyone, when in the past I hadn't believed other victims' stories of assault? I'm still trying to sort this out in my head, but mostly I just feel really shitty for all the times I heard about someone being raped or assaulted and I dismissed it.

I'm pretty angry at myself, actually. I'm angry at any of us who've been assholes like this, who've decided that women who don't speak up about their assaults are cowards, but then attack the ones who do as inappropriate drama queens. We're damning ourselves here, folks--if you didn't report your assault, you must not have thought it was real enough to report, but if you talk about it openly, you must be lying to start drama and rumors. What the hell is anyone supposed to do with that?

I just...I'm getting so angry that it's making me inarticulate. I feel pretty disgusted with humanity on the whole.

Edit: Oh, hey! This post on Tiger Beatdown sums up pretty much exactly what I was trying to say, only in a much more eloquent and less choked-with-rage and awkwardly personal way. So you should read that.

If Only...

If only the rest of the world were like the BDSM scene. Seriously. This is something that lots of people have written about, and I can't even say emphatically enough how much I wish it were true this weekend.

Yesterday was the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade. Jack and I have gone for the past few years, but this year a friend and I decided to put a marching group together. It was really fun and exciting to be a part of the Mermaid Parade, with all the amazing costumes and floats and whatnot.

What was not so fun and exciting was dealing with the photographers and random people wanting pictures. It's pretty traditional to, well, not wear much clothing in the Mermaid Parade and this tends to draw some attention from both professional and hobbyist photographers, as well as random people with cameras. It's all part of the experience, posing for pictures, but by the end of the day it gets a little wearying. A lot of the photographers were really considerate and asked before taking pictures, but a lot weren't, like...

-The guy who butted into the middle of a conversation I was having with Jack and our larger group of friends, trying to figure out where to go get food. He stepped right into my face to ask for a picture, then when I said no he yelled at me for "not showing any love."

-The guy who tried to touch my breast. Yes, I was wearing pasties, but for Christ's sake, ASK BEFORE YOU TRY TO POKE SOMEONE IN THE BREAST. He poked and then asked, and as a result I think he got a picture of me yelling at him.

-The many, many people who did not ask to take pictures when we were standing around with our friends who were not in costume, just hanging out. Some of our friends had no interest in having their picture taken and just happened to be standing next to those of us in costume.

At the play parties we regularly go to, shit like uninvited, nonconsensual touching and taking photos without permission (taking photos at all, in some cases) will get you thrown out of the party. And sometimes it's hard to remember that the rest of the world doesn't operate that way. It's actually really nice to know that at a party, you can be as scantily clad as you'd like (provided that you at least have your nipples covered and wear a g-string as per NYS liquor laws, if you're somewhere where alcohol is served) and the majority of people understand that it's not an invitation to touch you.

So yeah...I really wish it were like this everywhere. I wish that dressing however you wanted didn't warrant unsolicited comments stronger than "Wow! I love your outfit!" or get interpreted as an okay to touch. Can someone find me some bouncers to enforce these rules wherever I go?

On Re-Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer

So guys, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I've been re-watching the TV show from the beginning, because it's on Netflix instant and I'm bored and I really liked this show when it was initially on TV. And, well, since I can apparently only blog about things that are not at all new or relevant, I'm blogging about it.

The thing is, I watched this show pretty much religiously for the first two years of high school. And now, re-watching the early episodes, I have to say that a lot of the stuff with Angel and the boys-will-turn-evil-if-you-fuck-them thing is annoyingly heavy-handed, and Buffy's super powers are annoying in their lack of real world practicality and things are simplified and sometimes almost preachy.

But here's the thing...watching the early episodes of this remind me so clearly of what it was like being in an abusive relationship. Not so much the actual relationship part, as, well, to paraphrase what my lovely ex said, my ex wasn't possessed by a demon or put under a spell, he was just a dude who treated me like shit. No mystical, magical excuse needed. The stuff Buffy deals with after killing Angel, though, is like the writers looked into my head and wrote down exactly what it was like to get over my ex. Buffy's nightmares, the fear that Angel will come back mixed with wanting him to come back is like seeing myself on screen. I remember feeling that! Lonely and scared at the same time! My ex may not have actually been an evil demon-type vampire, but the nightmares I had about him for years afterwords turned him into one sometimes.

What's even weirder is that these episodes were on before this happened to me. I was, in fact, either not-yet-dating that guy or still with him when this stuff was on TV. How on earth was I so completely oblivious? At the time, I saw all these things and they just didn't connect at all. Now, I see these interactions, these moments where I can't trust Angel even when he really does get his soul back and it's deeply scary and awful. How could I not recognize then that the same thing was happening to me?

Also, I find it interesting that I can't deal at all with Angel anymore. The first time around, I watched this and I had no difficulty suspending my disbelief that Angel lost his soul, got his soul back, and so on and so forth. Now I see David Boreanaz on screen (I swear I don't actually have anything against David Boreanaz as a person or an actor, he just gets cast in some roles I find unfortunate) and my abuser-radar is pinged and I'm afraid of him. Like, I have an actual, visceral reaction to seeing him and it's all I can do not to yell "Don't trust him!" at the screen. I don't trust him, and I feel like he's making excuses with the whole soul/soulless thing, and it creeps me the fuck out.

I guess I'm still angry with myself sometimes. Actually, I'm angry with myself a lot of the time. I should be smarter than to get hurt, I should be cooler than to let things bother me. And I don't know why it should seem so bizarre that the 25-year-old me can see things the 15-year-old me couldn't while watching re-runs of a TV show about vampires. But it kind of does.

Carnival of Kinky Feminists

Hey, guys! After a comment from one of the admins, I submitted the first entry I wrote about "Bones" to the Carnival of Kinky Feminists. And they accepted it! Woohoo! I'm excited to be a part of this brand new blog carnival.

I'm reading through the other blog posts that are in the first edition, and most of them seem to be much more interesting and well-put-together than my angry little post. So go check them out--if you're reading me, you'll probably enjoy them much more.

What Upset Me About "Bones"

So I wrote a post about that episode of "Bones" with the pony play and the murder and stuff, and I mentioned at the end how completely enraged I was and how Jack kept saying he didn't understand why I took it so personally. I always take stuff like that personally, and I'm trying to figure out why.

I used to be really, really goth. I was a clove-smoking, Cure-listening, dressed-like-Stevie-Nicks goth girl...and then Columbine happened. And being a goth kid in high school in a post-Columbine environment was really scary sometimes. Because of the rumors, the media information that said the Columbine shooters were goths themselves, (rumors that have since been refuted) you got the feeling people viewed you with suspicion, that people were scared. And not in a superficial way, in a way that made me think of witch hunts and the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

I got yelled at by the principal for wearing my long black raincoat to school on a day when it was raining. Kids who didn't fit in, like the one cool punk guy, or me and my asshole then-boyfriend, got singled out for punishment for things that the "normal" kids got away with. Eventually, there would be mandatory five-day suspensions and the police showing up to search your house if you made an offhand comment at school that contained the word "kill." One dude got this treatment for saying "I'd kill for a lollipop right now."

I know now that, being a cis, white, mostly-het (perceived as het, anyway) chick, that my life has really been pretty full of privilege and free from oppression, but at the time, I felt pretty persecuted. 15 and 16 year old goth girls are not exactly known for a lack of dramatic reactions to things. I wrote research papers about bullying and school violence, about McCarthyism and in defense of media that's been blamed for various violent incidents. Eventually, I got the hell out of high school and went to a liberal college where no one even noticed when I wore a cape to class. It was a huge improvement.

But what I took away from that whole mess was that news stories and dumb movies and poorly-researched TV shows affect people's perception. It may be just a silly TV show, but if that's all someone sees of goth kids or kinky folks or sex workers or furries or whoever, then that will affect their perception. If your only frame of reference for bondage porn is how frequently it turns up as evidence on Law & Order: SVU, then you're probably not going to have a very high opinion of consumers of bondage porn.

It's one of the things that I was trying to get at when I was angsting about coming out a while back--if people only see portrayals of kinksters as freaks and murderers and rapists, or as pathetic targets of humor, as something damaged and twisted and abnormal, then that's what the perception of us will continue to be. How could I not take it personally when it seems to me that the writers who penned that speech at the end of that episode of "Bones" were saying to me "This is what we, the normal people, think of you and your friends and your relationships."