Maybe out of my head it'll do some good.
Or just get me unfriended. Either way, moving on will happen.
I met her at a Karaoke bar, just out for fun.
When interest became apparent, I told her flat out that I was taken. I also told her that playtime was a possibility if a few simple rules were followed. Said simple rules mostly boiled down to, "Want to play with one of us? you need to ask both of us."
When I met her again another night, she decided said rules shouldn't apply to her. When coercion and appeals to alpha-male standards didn't work, she settled on crossing my physical limits anyway.
In hindsight, she was probably counting on my dick to veto the oath I'd sworn to a lover.
She was wrong.
I remember not expecting that particular throw to work when we were both in a hot tub.
As I staggered into the parking lot, shorts in hand, I heard her yelling something incoherently about telling my girlfriend. Which made no sense to me at the time.
I got my shorts on, drove to a parking lot in another area, and called my girlfriend, telling her what happened. I was more pissed than anything else, mentally dropping the lady in the "thank you for trying to play, but you're disqualified" bin.
Report it? HA! GA's sexual assault laws are so badly worded it's legally impossible for a male to be raped in the first place. Let alone come to a county I didn't live in with a description that included "a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than me." And what was I doing at the time? "Oh, hot tubbing in the middle of the night."
It took me a few minutes to realize that I'd not only turned her down, I'd turned her down forcefully. And I didn't stop to see if I'd left marks.
And the last words I heard was her threatening to tell my girlfriend.... what?
Cue the next two weeks worrying if ~I~ was going to be rolled up on an attempted rape charge. Any marks I might have left combined with our genders along with her apparent willingness to lie out of sheer spite made it a distinct possibility. And if I went in front of a grand jury, that scary look that gets me so many auditions would be working against me full time.
No idea if she did or not. I was never charged. The one time I saw her again was months later. She scowled and walked away the second she laid eyes on me.
So there you have it, folks.
Both why I didn't report, and why I DON"T automatically believe victims.
Because here's the ugly, nasty, threefold path of fuckery that nobody wants to admit.
One, there's a lot more sexual assaults than anyone realizes.
Two, there's a lot more questionable encounters (bad sex, miscommunication, regrets) than anyone realizes.
Three, there's a lot more false accusations than anyone realizes.
(Spare me your statistics because they're all worthless. NOBODY out there knows even a ballpark number of each. The closest we come to solid numbers are the FBI's, and they're hampered with a number of agencies failing to report in over and above the number of attacks that are never reported. One in five, one in four, three in four, don't care because you're either blindly guessing or quoting someone who is. Don't bother doing so here.)
Someone pointed out to me that we don't have a justice system, we have a legal system. Sexual assault cases are brutal on both ends. DA's have a responsibility to spend their limited resources prosecuting cases they have a good chance of winning, period. Which means law enforcement treats every case as if it will be defended by Brock Turner's legal team. Which turns into a degenerating cycle of less cases reported, then more attacks happen, and so on down.
There are no true havens. Not families, not schools, not activities, not community groups, and definitely not government institutions. Wherever there is power, there is scum that will hide behind power.
Unfortunately the attempts to get justice when the law can't are even worse, like the bullshit title IX tribunals that are cropping up all over academia. Professors and administrators playing at being judges and lawyers, while sucking at being both. In the process, they stomp all over the very idea of due process, and there's often a side of racism in there too.
Despite numerous lawsuits after the fact, these tribunals keep going out of some misplaced notion of justice.
Like all misguided dreams of justice, it ignores the injustices in it's wake. The Duke Lacrosse team, mattress girl, "Jackie" from the rolling stone article, George Takei's accuser, the false accusations keep piling up and keep getting ignored, lest justice be denied the more prioritized victims.
Oh, and why would anyone falsely accuse someone of such things?
Someone (probably Marc MacYoung) put it succinctly as "get someone in trouble, or get themselves out of trouble."
Key example, the Rosewood massacre.
I don't think Fannie Taylor planned on wiping out an entire Florida town the night she claimed a random black man had invaded her home and beaten her. The rumor had barely left her house before it also included rape. Admitting that the white guy she'd been cheating on her husband with for however long had done it probably wasn't on her possibility list.
The official death toll stands at eight (six black and two white). But since the town was effectively wiped out, survivors scattered all over Florida, and it was decades before any official notice was given, we'll never know exactly how many were killed.
There was a long conversation last year over why I don't automatically believe victims.
Because I'm not smart enough to tell who really are victims at a glance.
Because there are names for men like me who do.
"Proxy weapon."
"Dupe."
"Doing twenty to life while she walks away."
Because on those occasions where I am convinced, I'm not only comfortable with justice but vengeance. In a "I'll bring the duct tape and butane" sense.
And that doesn't mesh well with automatically believing victims.
I'm picky about who I accuse and even pickier about who I attack.
Don't like it? Tough. Deal with it or die mad about it.
So now that we've weeded out everyone butthurt about not being able to weaponize me like a good dupe, how the fuck do we deal with this problems variety pack?
Quite frankly, I don't know.
I'm at the point where I can see all three puzzles, but I don't think I can completely solve one.
I can say that if your solution fits on a bumper sticker, it's too simple.
I can say that rape culture needs a good hard dismantling. And so does victim culture.
I can say that we need to realize that any institutional policy exists to protect the institution, not the people within or without it. And that includes those yet to be written.
I will say that our stories need more people who respect other's autonomy. We need more Tyrion Lannisters looking Sansa in the eye and saying, "and so my watch begins."
I can say that America hasn't developed our sexual taboos so much as collected them. And knocking that shame down is gonna have to come piece by piece, subculture by subculture. We can't crack down on turned down suitors committing acid attacks on one hand and give grooming frat boys a pass with the other.
I can't solve the puzzle today. But I can move a piece.
We move enough pieces, who knows?
Or just get me unfriended. Either way, moving on will happen.
I met her at a Karaoke bar, just out for fun.
When interest became apparent, I told her flat out that I was taken. I also told her that playtime was a possibility if a few simple rules were followed. Said simple rules mostly boiled down to, "Want to play with one of us? you need to ask both of us."
When I met her again another night, she decided said rules shouldn't apply to her. When coercion and appeals to alpha-male standards didn't work, she settled on crossing my physical limits anyway.
In hindsight, she was probably counting on my dick to veto the oath I'd sworn to a lover.
She was wrong.
I remember not expecting that particular throw to work when we were both in a hot tub.
As I staggered into the parking lot, shorts in hand, I heard her yelling something incoherently about telling my girlfriend. Which made no sense to me at the time.
I got my shorts on, drove to a parking lot in another area, and called my girlfriend, telling her what happened. I was more pissed than anything else, mentally dropping the lady in the "thank you for trying to play, but you're disqualified" bin.
Report it? HA! GA's sexual assault laws are so badly worded it's legally impossible for a male to be raped in the first place. Let alone come to a county I didn't live in with a description that included "a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than me." And what was I doing at the time? "Oh, hot tubbing in the middle of the night."
It took me a few minutes to realize that I'd not only turned her down, I'd turned her down forcefully. And I didn't stop to see if I'd left marks.
And the last words I heard was her threatening to tell my girlfriend.... what?
Cue the next two weeks worrying if ~I~ was going to be rolled up on an attempted rape charge. Any marks I might have left combined with our genders along with her apparent willingness to lie out of sheer spite made it a distinct possibility. And if I went in front of a grand jury, that scary look that gets me so many auditions would be working against me full time.
No idea if she did or not. I was never charged. The one time I saw her again was months later. She scowled and walked away the second she laid eyes on me.
So there you have it, folks.
Both why I didn't report, and why I DON"T automatically believe victims.
Because here's the ugly, nasty, threefold path of fuckery that nobody wants to admit.
One, there's a lot more sexual assaults than anyone realizes.
Two, there's a lot more questionable encounters (bad sex, miscommunication, regrets) than anyone realizes.
Three, there's a lot more false accusations than anyone realizes.
(Spare me your statistics because they're all worthless. NOBODY out there knows even a ballpark number of each. The closest we come to solid numbers are the FBI's, and they're hampered with a number of agencies failing to report in over and above the number of attacks that are never reported. One in five, one in four, three in four, don't care because you're either blindly guessing or quoting someone who is. Don't bother doing so here.)
Someone pointed out to me that we don't have a justice system, we have a legal system. Sexual assault cases are brutal on both ends. DA's have a responsibility to spend their limited resources prosecuting cases they have a good chance of winning, period. Which means law enforcement treats every case as if it will be defended by Brock Turner's legal team. Which turns into a degenerating cycle of less cases reported, then more attacks happen, and so on down.
There are no true havens. Not families, not schools, not activities, not community groups, and definitely not government institutions. Wherever there is power, there is scum that will hide behind power.
Unfortunately the attempts to get justice when the law can't are even worse, like the bullshit title IX tribunals that are cropping up all over academia. Professors and administrators playing at being judges and lawyers, while sucking at being both. In the process, they stomp all over the very idea of due process, and there's often a side of racism in there too.
Despite numerous lawsuits after the fact, these tribunals keep going out of some misplaced notion of justice.
Like all misguided dreams of justice, it ignores the injustices in it's wake. The Duke Lacrosse team, mattress girl, "Jackie" from the rolling stone article, George Takei's accuser, the false accusations keep piling up and keep getting ignored, lest justice be denied the more prioritized victims.
Oh, and why would anyone falsely accuse someone of such things?
Someone (probably Marc MacYoung) put it succinctly as "get someone in trouble, or get themselves out of trouble."
Key example, the Rosewood massacre.
I don't think Fannie Taylor planned on wiping out an entire Florida town the night she claimed a random black man had invaded her home and beaten her. The rumor had barely left her house before it also included rape. Admitting that the white guy she'd been cheating on her husband with for however long had done it probably wasn't on her possibility list.
The official death toll stands at eight (six black and two white). But since the town was effectively wiped out, survivors scattered all over Florida, and it was decades before any official notice was given, we'll never know exactly how many were killed.
There was a long conversation last year over why I don't automatically believe victims.
Because I'm not smart enough to tell who really are victims at a glance.
Because there are names for men like me who do.
"Proxy weapon."
"Dupe."
"Doing twenty to life while she walks away."
Because on those occasions where I am convinced, I'm not only comfortable with justice but vengeance. In a "I'll bring the duct tape and butane" sense.
And that doesn't mesh well with automatically believing victims.
I'm picky about who I accuse and even pickier about who I attack.
Don't like it? Tough. Deal with it or die mad about it.
So now that we've weeded out everyone butthurt about not being able to weaponize me like a good dupe, how the fuck do we deal with this problems variety pack?
Quite frankly, I don't know.
I'm at the point where I can see all three puzzles, but I don't think I can completely solve one.
I can say that if your solution fits on a bumper sticker, it's too simple.
I can say that rape culture needs a good hard dismantling. And so does victim culture.
I can say that we need to realize that any institutional policy exists to protect the institution, not the people within or without it. And that includes those yet to be written.
I will say that our stories need more people who respect other's autonomy. We need more Tyrion Lannisters looking Sansa in the eye and saying, "and so my watch begins."
I can say that America hasn't developed our sexual taboos so much as collected them. And knocking that shame down is gonna have to come piece by piece, subculture by subculture. We can't crack down on turned down suitors committing acid attacks on one hand and give grooming frat boys a pass with the other.
I can't solve the puzzle today. But I can move a piece.
We move enough pieces, who knows?
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