Yesterday’s social media posts were swarming with me too stories of sexual assault which counted to varying degrees, from the wolf whistle to all out rape.
I got in on it as it seemed the perfect time to commiserate but honestly at the end of the day, all of that, that which I knew–was probably only alarming to a small faction of men ignorant to their own gender and the ways in which they manipulate things. And I wrote my thing about my jesus year rape, which, truth be told, I am not sure I even wrote about before. Maybe I did, maybe I alluded to it, maybe I just don’t want to think about that shit anymore.
As it is, given my initial experiences with sex were kind of warped (in ways I don’t really want to discuss)–I learned long ago how to extract parts of my own history to not hurt myself or those around me. You do kind of separate yourself into pieces, a kind of before and after version of yourself you really never fully imagined. And I have been splintered several times in a lifetime of people who abused my trust, people who I have a small space to fuck me over inside of and still took full liberties to do that and you know what? Americans and humans themselves are all about gratification and let’s not be surprised if people have taken advantage of or abused their positions to enable that. People are actually sometimes just garbage.
So I shared my thing but it didn’t give me the peace of mind I thought it might. It’s like, oh yeah, we all are sitting up here telling our stories, seeming to dilute the affect and effect with every story, a further numbing or dumbing down of spirit eschewed as humanity. Does anyone ultimately care? One would think it should signal a sociological or psychological shift to not perpetrate the crimes of previous generations..but that is not what will happen. The craziest thing is I just shared ONE of them. I had several more encounters, drugging, an attempted rape and I shared ONE and felt “not for me.”
In fact, nothing will happen, ultimately. We’ll all just remember that day we all raised our hands in rape or harassment, ten sixteen seventeen. Can it change anything? I really don’t think so ultimately. The shift is going to have to be bigger than that and somehow capture it up in its net–our focus right now is too wide to understand what needs to be done…
So I took it down, because that is one club I don’t feel better being reminded of the scope of membership. If it helped anyone feel better for five minutes, great, but who the hell feels better reading about someone else’s assault? Nobody you really want to know.
Oh world, will we ever survive. Surely you will and better still without us…but the roads we are on–ignorance and recklessness–always a quick road to an undoing.
oh my god I am being gassed out of my place right now…waterproof sealant from the concrete brick and sandstone is wafting in and making us miserable…time for an adventure with the Duke–look for photos later on that…
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