Victim

I was reading Amanda Hess' wonderful blog at TBD the other day, and she's been doing this feature where LGBT victims of hate crimes in the D.C. area tell the story of their assaults. And reading this one, well, I guess how I felt is best described by the word "triggered"--for whatever reason, all I could think about for the rest of the day was The Day I Got Jumped. I was trying to run errands in Manhattan, shopping for books for my one year old niece, and I kept expecting someone to just walk up to me and punch me. By the time I got home, I was freaking out a little.

I started wondering if things would have been different if I'd tried harder to get the girl who jumped me arrested. I started thinking about the first time something like this happened to me, thinking about my personal history of victimhood. Breaking down why I always feel so helpless when something like this happens.

It was sometime in the first few weeks of my sophomore year of high school--I would've been 14. My (horrible, abusive) then-boyfriend and I would go to the park after school and make out. That day, we were approached by four guys from the neighborhood, one who lived on my street hung back. They demanded my boyfriend's watch, a tacky knockoff his dad had bought him in New York. He refused. They asked if I had any money, and when I said no (because I didn't) they turned their attention back to him. He kept refusing to give them his watch--they took his glasses, then punched him in the jaw and took the watch off his wrist.

I didn't want to tell anyone, not even my parents. Technically, I was only a witness, as I hadn't been touched and they hadn't taken anything from me, but I was terrified and shaken up. We went back to the school, where it turned out something like six kids had been mugged by the same group. The police were called, we went and gave statements, they arrested the muggers.

I didn't go to school the next day, I was too shaken up. When I did go back, a girl who was friends with the muggers threatened me. People made fun of all of us for talking to the police, for making such a big deal out of basically having our lunch money stolen on the playground. When one of the muggers plead not guilty and his case went to trial, we all had to testify and the defense attorney tried to make me look stupid, tried to make me out to be a ditzy girl who couldn't keep her story straight. There was a story in the local paper where the reporter talked to the mugger's family, who called us racists and whiners, said it was ridiculous to make such a big deal out of nothing. They didn't talk to any of the victims (at least one of whom was the same race as the muggers).

Years later, when I got groped on the bus, I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to stand up and yell, punch the guy, make a scene--but I looked around the bus, and all I could think was "no one will think this is a big deal. They'll think I'm freaking out for no reason. They'll think I'm a racist." So I didn't tell anyone (except, later that night, Jack), especially my mother, who I knew would want to call the police.

When I got jumped six months after that, and my mother did call the police, all I could think was "Oh, no, not again." I was actually relieved when the officer couldn't find the girls or any witnesses, glad that I never had to deal with any of it again.

And while it seems like I can't shut up about my victimhood here online, I almost never talk about these things in real life, except maybe sometimes to Jack. I'm scared that if I mention them I'll be brushed off, because I'm making a big deal out of nothing. I'm whining. In a world where something like 1 in 4 women has been raped, who cares that some guy grabbed my leg and ass, tried to touch my genitals? It's not a big deal, right?

A friend of mine asked for help online figuring out how to deal with street harassment yesterday. She said it wasn't something she'd ever really encountered before and she didn't know what to do, and she was worried that she was making a big deal out of nothing. I keep wanting to say that it is a big deal, it's not nothing, and if we don't make a big deal out of things like this, they continue. But that makes me feel like a hypocrite.

Guilt and Awkward Confessions and Weirdness and Guilt

You guys know I'm fairly kinky and generally all proud and vocal about it--I'm usually the first person to get upset and insulted and angry when BDSM is portrayed negatively in the media or dismissed as weird or creepy or wrong. If you've been reading here, you've read lots of entries where I've done just that.

But then, as a woman and a feminist--a woman who has been sexually assaulted, a woman who is freaked out and disgusted by our sometimes rapetacular culture, who gets upset and offended by song lyrics and TV shows that imply blurred lines and lack of consent...well...a song came on the radio the other day, a pretty standard, unremarkable blues song, with lyrics that pretty much boiled down to "If you don't give me what I need, woman, I'll take it from you." And it bothered me, kind of a lot. Jack and I sat there in the car talking about rape culture and sexual assault statistics to a third party who kept saying things like "I don't think you're supposed to take this seriously."

I once read this book called Citizen Girl (warning: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!). It's a pretty simple little book about a 20-something EveryGirl struggling in the Corporate World in New York City. She gets hired by a sketchy company that lies to her, she gets used by them, she faces a world in which all other women are beautiful and vapid, or beautiful sellouts to the patriarchy, or (in one scene) butch, unshaven feminists. There are no in-betweens in Girl's world, no shades of gray.

Girl goes to a burlesque show, and it is Horrifying and Wrong! Girl goes to a woman-friendly, woman-run sex party, and it is A Phallocentric Tool of the Patriarchy in disguise. I don't think the authors ever actually use the term "patriarchy," but the attitude throughout the book is that everything either puts women down, brutalizes them, objectifies them in the worst way, or it is good and true and holy and pure. Penises are Bad. Dildos are Worse. Burlesque is the Enemy. Mascara also may partly be the enemy. Actually, kind of the only thing that isn't the enemy is Ms. magazine.

The climax of the book is a double-whammy:

1. Girl's boyfriend nonconsensually ties up her hands with some silk bondage rope from the goodie bag they gave her at the aforementioned Evil Sex Party.

2. It turns out her job was all kind of a scam, and the website she was working for is being redesigned as a rape-fantasy porn site where men can watch actresses dressed as high-powered business executives get fucked. Roughly. They even talk about men choosing the clips with the actress who looks most like their boss. Because women don't ever watch porn.

I cried when I finished this book, and I felt screwed up about my whole life for days afterwords. And this was years ago, before I moved to New York or started going to kinky parties or got especially educated or informed on feminism beyond the 101 level. I still feel kind of screwed up about it, even though I can tear it apart now as simplistic and devaluing the voices of sex workers and sex-positive feminists and women who wear make up for being the wrong kind of women.

But it still bothers me.

The problem is, how can I be upset by rape culture, by objectification of women, by images of brutalization, when I am sometimes aroused sexually by these images?

I mean, where do I draw the line? Clearly it's not okay to just say that whatever turns me on is okay. I mean, I delight in the clips at the end of Kink.com previews where the model smiles and talks about what a great time she had--yay! Consent and sexy times! But what about things like...The Story of O, which I've read and found hot and also pretty fucked up most of the time? Or stuff like some of the Wonder Woman art posted here, which I agree is creepy and fucked up in many ways, but I also find kind of hot?

It gets to a point where I start to wonder if there's something wrong with me.

I don't hate myself. I have some body image issues, I was in an abusive relationship for a while where I really did hate myself, and it took me a long time to get over it, but these days I mostly think I'm pretty awesome. I don't actually think that when Jack ties me up (which he does with my explicit, enthusiastic consent, because negotiation and communication are awesome, authors of Citizen Girl) it inherently makes him a misogynist and me a helpless collaborator with the Patriarchy to oppress all women everywhere.

But sometimes, while I'm simultaneously railing against people who treat women as objects and for my right to sometimes think of myself, a woman, as a sex object in certain situations because I think that's hot...well...I know that it's all about consent. I know that consent is the thing that makes all the difference in the world between rape fantasies and real rape, between kidnapping scenes and real kidnapping, between SM and actual torture...but sometimes I still secretly think I'm maybe a little bit fucked up.

The problem, for me, is fiction. Fictional things--movies, books, what-have-you--in which BDSM is depicted often don't bother with explicit and continuous and enthusiastic consent. It's a fantasy, is often the argument, so why does it matter? I mean, the scene in 9 1/2 Weeks where Mickey Rourke convinces Kim Basinger to stay with him by raping her squicked me the fuck out, but I've heard it described as hot and defended this way--it's fantasy. It's fiction. But I'm turned on by the idea of extremely bad things, so does it make me a hypocrite to also think that these images can be damaging to our view of women on the whole?

I think I'm really worried that something may be wrong with me after all. I sometimes am scared of the Patriarchy, I sometimes feel so hopeless because of rapey song lyrics or upsettingly sexist movies that I feel like the whole world is against me and nothing will ever change and we'll never win. And then I worry...is the enemy in my head, too? Is the Patriarchy so completely in my thoughts and my brain that it controls my sexual preferences, my responses, what turns me on? Am I kinky because I've internalized the world's fucked up view of women in general?

I don't know. I don't think so, but I don't know.

I do, however, think that it's probably really good to examine and talk about this stuff. I actually feel less fucked up and filled with guilt and confusion for writing this.

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.

Street Harassment

So guys, let me tell you about street harassment. It's really, really shitty. It happens a lot to the women-folk (and to the LGBTQ folks, but I think maybe in a different way sometimes?), and it doesn't get talked about enough, and it very often gets dismissed as not a big deal. After all, they're just words, right? It's not like being attacked or anything.

Here's the thing, though--words can be used in awful, scary, hateful ways. And, I'm saying this as someone who has been attacked by a stranger on the street, it's pretty awful. Back when I was in high school, I was sometimes uncomfortable leaving the house because I knew some guy on the street would say something to me. The summer that I was 17, a guy looked at me and said "I'd like to get my cock up in that," while I was walking to the bus on my way to work.

But that's harmless, right? It's not like he actually tried to touch me, so I (a 17-year-old) had no reason to be scared of him (an adult, male stranger). He was just saying I was attractive--it's practically a compliment!

Today, Jack and I went for a walk. Actually, I went for a walk while he ran ahead because he's doing this thing where he's running. And while I was walking, I passed these guys in a green van. Not a mini-van, a big, industrial-looking, no-windows-in-the-back van. And they said something. I actually didn't hear what they said, because I was on the phone and not paying attention. A few minutes later, they drove past me pretty slowly, making kissy-noises out the window.

Now maybe it was because the street was deserted, or maybe it was because they were driving a van, but I got really creeped out. I was really relieved that I was on the phone and had an obvious reason to ignore them. I caught up with Jack, and we walked around a bit, and there was a lovely park and some roses...but when we were going to head back, Jack said he wanted to run back. I said (kind of forcefully) that I didn't want to walk back alone because of the van dudes. And, well, we had an argument. And Jack, who is a really awesome feminist dude who's usually really understanding about things, who was in fact the first person to say I was sexually assaulted when I got groped when I was reluctant to put that label on it, said that he didn't really understand street harassment, that it didn't seem like a real thing because it doesn't happen to him and he doesn't see it happen to other people.

The thing that's scary for me about street harassment is that you never know where it's going to stop. If a guy would say to me that he'd "like to get his cock up in that," it already seems to me that he's not seeing me as a person, that he's seeing my body as public property to comment on--so how can I know whether he's going to take that idea further? And some guys, unsurprisingly, will just not take no for an answer--"I was just trying to talk to you," they say, "can't you even say thank you?" And if a stranger would grope me on a bus, if a strange guy would follow me down the street late at night, is it really so surprising that some stranger on the street talking about fucking me would ping my defense system and read as "Danger!"?

Jack got angry with me for being creeped out. We talked about it, and I pointed out that his "street harassment doesn't happen to me so it's not a big deal or concern" view is pretty much the definition of male privilege, and he said he really needed to examine why my being street harassed made him angry with me and his other feelings about it.

What I took away from this conversation is that we're not talking about this enough. Clearly we need to talk about this more, need to make this more visible. If you think street harassment isn't a big deal, or that it's not happening, go read a few posts over at Holla Back NYC and then tell me it's not a real problem.

Becoming Sally Bowles: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Me

When I was in high school, I saw the 1972 film version of Cabaret for the first time.

Like probably every other teenage musical theatre geek and outcast, I was immediately seized by an overwhelming desire to be just like Sally Bowles. Only maybe without the cocaine and the unplanned pregnancy.

Sally is flashy and dramatic and decadent, and flashy dramatic decadence was incredibly attractive to me (my other film obsession at the time was the Rocky Horror Picture Show) and I wanted to be just like her, to be flashy and dramatic and decadent and maybe just a little bit doomed. But how, exactly, does one go about being just like Sally Bowles? Especially if one wishes to avoid the cocaine addiction and unplanned pregnancy. It's difficult, since, well, Sally the character actually admits to the fact that she herself is attempting to deliberately cultivate a projected image of mystery and glamour.

Also, we, the audience, never get to find out what's going on inside Sally's head. She's kind of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, in that she is quirky and strange and sexy and lifts Brian/Christopher/Cliff/whatever-the-hell-his-name-is out of his dudely doldrums. Of course, Christopher/Brian/Cliff is asexual or gay or possibly bi, and so is not entirely won over by Sally's Manic Pixie charms, but still...she's empty. She's all style and no substance, all frosting and no cake. What the Hell is going on in Sally Bowles' head? We don't get to find out, because Sally is only dealt with through observation, from a distance. She's not a thinking, feeling person, she's a decoration, a glittery butterfly. The only time we maybe get to actually hear Sally's own voice is in the song "Maybe This Time," and then I would argue that it can only be interpreted as her voice in the 1997 stage musical, in which she sings the song outside the Greek-Chorus-otherworld of the Kit Kat Club stage. In the film, it's more of a projection of what she should be thinking, a comment on female loneliness and expectations of couple-hood.

Sally Bowles has been one of my only ongoing female role models. All the other film characters and celebrities I've wanted to be just like have been male, from David Bowie to Frank N. Furter to Sir Percy Blakeney to Adam Ant. And I think this is because they have that same flash and drama and glamour that I want combined with an actual voice. That's the thing about Manic Pixie Dream Girls, about female characters in movies observed through the male gaze, is that they don't have voices, or thoughts. They're a sparkly, completely empty construct that men get to put they're own ideas and feelings into. Christopher/Cliff/Brian may be a camera, but his observations of Sally Bowles come uncomfortably close to making her an object.

This makes it hard to figure out who you are as a girl. I remember years of writing stories in high school in which someone else observed the character who was supposed to be me, and rhapsodized for pages about how pretty and charming and fascinating she was. I also clamored for friends to use characters based on me in their stories, so that I could read someone else's observations of me and use them to figure out who the hell I was.

The closest I ever came to being Sally Bowles was my sophomore year of college. I was actually not especially tormented about this at the time, was just sort of bumbling along, being myself, doing dumb, quirky shit like leading around a female friend on a leash (I totally didn't know or acknowledge that I was kinky at the time). And then, second semester, I started hearing rumors that one of my male friends, we'll call him...Cliff, had a crush on me. No, wait, he was in love with me. There were livejournal posts that were unsubtly disguised, rumors and weird conversations and even weirder conversational pauses around me. And suddenly, without any regard for what I actually felt or thought or the fact that I was, in fact, already in a relationship, it seemed like all our mutual friends had decided that Cliff had found the perfect girl for him and that perfect girl was me, though when I heard about it all, the girl they were talking about didn't actually seem to share my thoughts or feelings or much else. They had decided I was Cliff's Magical Pixie Dream Girl, and that he and I should be together, with no actual thought or regard to the fact that I wasn't interested.

It felt creepy. I felt violated. I told my dad about the whole dramarama, which ended with Cliff awkwardly confessing his love for me via IM, and he said "Yeah, Lucy, that's kind of what 'objectification of women' really means." I felt like my friends had tried to shove the thoughts and feelings and personality they wanted me to have inside my head, inside my body, with no regard for the thoughts and feelings and personality I already had.

I don't want to be Sally Bowles anymore. I may paint my nails green, or sing "Maybe This Time" at karaoke, or ask Jack "Doesn't my body drive you wild with desire?" but it's a pose, a character I play at sometimes. Being Sally Bowles is being empty inside, a flashy sparkly package with nothing in it. It's not being a real person. Instead, I'm looking for female role models who are real, for female voices. They're hard to find sometimes, but they're out there. And I want to be a real person, like them.

Coming out of the kink closet, pt. 2

So Jack is thinking about coming out to his mom.

I totally understand this, as I think we're feeling a lot of the same things in respect to people who know/people who don't know.

I know I feel kind of cut off from people I'm close to but don't talk to about this sort of thing. My best friend from college, someone I used to talk about every single thing with, doesn't know. And I feel like I'm isolating myself from her, even though I know I can trust her and she's seen me crying over dumb stuff and falling down drunk. I know I need to talk to her about this, but I'm having a hard time finding the way.

What makes me even more upset than the few close friends I haven't gotten around to telling yet is that I believe in kink. I know that sounds really silly when I say it like that, but I believe in being sex-positive and talking about sex and that talking about kink is part of that. Whenever I see a movie that portrays BDSM in a negative light, or read infuriating, biased blog posts on the subject, it makes me want to tell everyone that I'm kinky. Because I feel like the best way to counter all the misconceptions and stereotypes and shaming is to actually talk about things.

The problem, of course, is that I'm terrified of my parents finding out. My parents are generally pretty liberal, and don't generally get upset over sex-related stuff...unless it also involves me. Their take on sex seems to be that everybody does it, except their little girl. And beyond that, they seem to think that a lot of kinky stuff is, well, kind of silly. And the thought of my parents knowing and judging me and possibly disapproving makes my skin crawl. I love my parents, I think they're really cool most of the time, and while I don't think they would disown me I can't help but think of the people I know who haven't spoken to their families in years because they came out or were outed as kinky.

So that leaves me feeling stuck. Because you can argue that while BDSM is something between you and your partner and, like your favorite sexual positions, not necessarily something to share with anybody and everybody, that argument doesn't work as well when...well...it's not something you do in your bedroom with your partner. What if it's something you do in a bar twice a month with your friends? What if it's actually how you know most of your friends? I may have gone to a sports bar for beer and wings, eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant for the first time, and gone to a Korean bakery in the past week (as well as going to a play party) but I did all these things with friends I made in the scene.

So yeah...I pretty much don't know what to do. I'm lucky in that I'm not at risk of losing my job or my nonexistant kids or anything like that if I did decide to come all the way out of the leather-lined closet, but I still cringe at the thought of my parents finding out. I just...I want us to be in a world where this wouldn't be a big deal. But if it weren't a big deal, I wouldn't feel as much of a need to talk about it, to try to counter the misconceptions.

I don't know what to do.

Creepy Dudes (and the people who defend them)

So there's been a lot of semi-heated debate in a lot of the groups I'm in online lately about creeps. Particularly about creepy dudes, though of course ladies can be creepy, too. I've contributed, and listed off the attitudes and behaviors that I, personally, find creepy, as did lots of other people. I feel like no one actually said anything about looks, and yet there's this pervasive, infuriating idea that when a woman (and always, only, specifically a woman) says a guy is creepy, it's because she's decided he's "not hot enough" to be "worthy" of her.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is complete bullshit.

It is sexist, entitled, bullshit, which perpetuates the idea that men are allowed to treat women however the hell they want and women are supposed to be flattered by the attention. And I'm pissed off and sick of it.

The main interaction that I think of when I think of a creepy dude at a play party was a guy Jack and I once chatted with at one of our favorite monthly parties. He was an ordinary-looking guy, in semi-dressy clothes, around our age. It was his first party, and he told us how he wound up there and we told him how cool the group usually is...and then the conversation turned to our specific kinks. And I remember the way this guy looked at me as he said to Jack "What's the kinkiest thing you do to her? Does she let you do anal?" At that point, I made some sort of excuse and got the hell out of there.

What I felt at the time, and what I feel in other interacting-with-creepy-dudes situations, was that this guy wasn't really thinking of me as a person. It would have been far less weird if he'd actually engaged with both of us and talked about...well, whatever. If he'd said "Are you guys into anal? 'Cause that's hot!" it would've been much less creepy. But instead I felt, well, objectified. Like a thing rather than a person.

So basically, what I'm saying is that women are people. And people like to be talked with, and looked at, and generally interacted with as if they are people--with thoughts and feelings and things like that. Not like objects onto which someone else's fantasies are projected. And not just that, but it's totally okay and acceptable to NOT like it when someone treats you as less than human.

So no more of this "She's only saying he was creepy because she doesn't think he's hot" nonsense, okay guys? If Mr. Does-She-Let-You-Do-Anal had looked like Johnny Depp, it still would have been an intensely uncomfortable situation. And that's a general "guys," not a gender-specific "guys," since it seems like other women say this even more often than men do. Saying that is kind of creepy on its own.