HahahahaWHAT?!?!

From Nicholas Sparks's interview with USA Today:

“I write in a genre that was not defined by me. The examples were not set out by me. They were set out 2,000 years ago by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. They were called the Greek tragedies. A thriller is supposed to thrill. A horror novel is supposed to scare you. A mystery is supposed to keep you turning the pages, guessing ‘whodunit?’

“A romance novel is supposed to make you escape into a fantasy of romance. What is the purpose of what I do? These are love stories. They went from (Greek tragedies), to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, then Jane Austen did it, put a new human twist on it. Hemingway did it with A Farewell to Arms.”

Sparks pulls [a book] off the shelf. “A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway. Good stuff. That’s what I write,” he says, putting it back. “That’s what I write.”

When asked about his favorite coming-of-age tale, Nicholas Sparks NAMES HIS OWN BOOK. And then, Nicholas Sparks, author of A WALK TO REMEMBER, levies a scathing criticism on the winner of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Cormac McCarthy:

“Horrible,” he says, looking at Blood Meridian. “This is probably the most pulpy, overwrought, melodramatic cowboy vs. Indians story ever written.”

NICHOLAS SPARKS.  Perhaps you are on strong medications?  Or deranged.  But ok, you brought it up - you're asking for it.  So here we go.  A quote from your book, The Last Song:

Ronnie stared out the window, knowing full well that her mom's lips had just formed a tight seam.  Her mom did that a lot these days. It was as if her lips were magnetized.

And a quote from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridien, which I, Gayle Force, have personally found completely breathtakingly genius:

They moved on to the public baths where they descended one by one into the waters, each more pale than the one before and all tattooed, branded, sutured, the great puckered scars inaugurated God knows where by what barbarous surgeons across chests and abdomens like the tracks of gigantic millipedes, some deformed, fingers missing, eyes, their foreheads and arms stamped with letters and numbers as if they were articles requiring inventory.   Citizens of both sexes withdrew along the walls and watched the water turn into a thin gruel of blood and filth and none could take their eyes from the judge who had disrobed last of all and now walked the perimeter of the baths with a cigar in his mouth and a regal air, testing the water with one toe, surprisingly petite.

You're right, Nicholas Sparks.  NO COMPARISON. 

To clarify: I got this. But not well.

Seriously, Readers, today? Ehhhhhhhhh.

So, I finished my previous post last night at 2 am. I am best at writing posts either late at night or early in the morning, when I am too tired to have erected filters for my thoughts. And, in the interest of whatever reason it is that I have this blog (to document what a rape survivor goes through? To help myself recover? To reach out to other rape survivors? or d. all of the above?) I should kinda explain what happened post-post (oooh, clever) last night.

Which: the post ending was hopeful. I said I got it! And I do. But: WOW am I a mess. I wasn't lying last night, and it was true when I said it, but a rape survivor saying she's got it and can handle it is a little like her saying she is going to teach herself a foreign language. She will eventually figure it out, but lordy knows her conversation skills are going to suck for a while.

I know that there are rape survivors who read here, so they may be able to guess what happened after I was totally like I'm all over this, no worries: I couldn't sleep, after I'd pressed "publish post." For a long time. My mind kept running over and over every bad situation that could possibly occur from my rapist finding me. Then, today, because I am tired, I am not holding together so well. I forgot some very obvious, key things (MY LAPTOP, which I take my class notes on) walking out the door to class this morning (normally, I am a tightly run ship - when I start making big mistakes and being forgetful and scattered, it's a big red flag that I am sinking). I cannot get the images of my rapist beating someone else up from the web video out of my head - it is looping, like on infinite replay, as I write this. As I could not play online during the boring moments in class without my laptop, my mind drifted to fantasies of hurting myself, doing terrible, violent things to my body, things I am not even going to describe, because I don't even feel comfortable putting them into words. Everyone around me looked about three feet farther away than they actually were, and I couldn't feel them, like they were paper dolls instead of people.

And this is how it goes. I don't doubt myself any more this afternoon that I can handle this - I am just not exactly going to handle this with panache and grace. There is no smooth sailing out of rapeland (no, seriously, I have begun to think of myself as living in rapeland. It's one of those countries where you feel like you are the sole citizen, except you are not, and you know this, but you never really feel it to be true. Also, it is a little like Hotel California, because OBVIOUSLY). Interestingly though today, I really wanted to be able to make everyone I know, and with whom I interacted, aware that I was having a bad day, without me having to get into it and share something that is almost too prickly for me to reckon with myself. I wanted to be able to tell people, look, I need you to handle me with kid gloves, I feel like I might break. I wanted to be able to explain why I was so distant, so tired, so withdrawn. And I REALLY wanted people to know so they could just say, "I'm sorry," because I just wanted that kind of comfort and support today.

I wanted a fucking rape t-shit.

I am not ashamed of being raped. But there is, as I have mentioned, like, 4 times before, this weird disconnect, where I am really struggling and my depersonalization disorder has made it difficult for me to be present with anyone and I am fantasizing about hurting myself like crazy, but no one knows, and I have to function as a normal human being going about my day, and that is unbelievably jarring and difficult and isolating and lonely. It would be nice if folks knew, without me having to explain and thus triggering myself, because then I think I could stop with the charade of normalcy a little. As I have a hard time bringing up what is going on in my head, a rape shirt would kinda do this for me. I could be all, when asked about it, "Yeah, I know, just: one of those days," and the t-shirt would be like a note excusing me from gym class, but instead of sitting on the bleachers I could just sit out of daily functioning and social interactions for a bit.

Sadly, these shirts do not exist anymore. I know that Jennifer Baumgardner wanted these t-shirts to promote dialogue around rape, but mostly, I want to use it as an excuse. I want to be excused from life for a little bit. Because sometimes, as a rape survivor, you may be handling it, you've got it, but that's only because you know in the long-run, this will not end you. But in the short-run, today, you are just so totally done.

I got this.

I think there's kinda a background I have to paint to make everything in the foreground make sense.

I met my rapist when I was . . . 17? I fell in love with him. I loved him in that magical, intoxicating way that I don't think you can maintain after a certain age, when there are so many more people and things that you love and have or love and have lost that are crowding the field. To give an example: maybe two years after I'd first met him, after we'd had a fight, and we'd gone a bit without seeing each other, I went with a friend to meet him again and call a truce. I was walking with her, side by side, my stomach all fluttery in anticipation. And then I saw him, and we made eye contact, and we both just froze in our tracks. I felt like my heart had stopped, the universe had suddenly shuddered a bit, the very air around us had ceased to move so that I couldn't even breathe. And my friend who was next to me (and who hated him, actually) turned and looked at me and said, "Jesus, dude, I felt that."

So. We loved each other. A lot. And I would love him until the day he raped me.

And maybe after that. Because when he texted me last Thursday night, perhaps my third emotion was: worry. My first was shock, that he could contact me, and my second was a sudden panic of complete vulnerability, that he could find me. And in that mix, there was this habit, almost, the habit of being in love with him for so long, that surfaced. I knew if he was reaching out to me, something was wrong. He was not doing well. He was either fighting against his addiction, or he'd succumbed (I know his addiction as well as I know anyone, really). And for a second, I was worried, and concerned, and I felt that same ache for him that any of us feels when someone we love is in danger.

I had to remind myself that he had raped me. And I wasn't supposed to love him. I wasn't supposed to care for him. But I did. That is not sitting very well with me, at the moment.

There are a lot of other things that came up after that text message. Mostly, I just kept saying, to concerned friends, how fucking WEIRD it is. And it is. Like, there is this VAST chasm between what I am experiencing and what my rapist is going through. Which, for him, is nothing. He is completely outside the scope of the hurricane in my head, not implicated at all in any of the epic battles that I fight every day. The entire fuckton of shit I am wading through, which has taken over my life . . . he doesn't even see it. Or smell it. Has no idea he caused it. And it makes me feel like what I am going through is very small, and I am reminded that no matter how gigantic it feels, it really doesn't extend beyond the scope of my skull. And that is odd, to have the tininess of your all-encompassing trauma illustrated for you like that.

And, part of me is angry. A little, not much (I wish all the time I could get appropriately, epically, furiously angry. I am not sure that will ever happen). I am angry that he would try to reach out to me to help him, again, that he would try to draw me back into addiction's endless cycle of abuse, abuse that is generously heaped onto those around him, those he loves most. Angry because he has already done more than enough to me, and I cannot believe the fucking gall of him, trying to find me so I can help him claw out of the arms of his addiction. How dare he.

I also, and I mentioned this previously, thought maybe I should shutter Unnatural Forces. Suddenly realizing he could find me, get to me; well, the panic was immense. It is based, simply, on control - I want to control any and all access he could have to me. Which means I want him to have none. I don't want him to know that I am suffering or that he caused it. He may not have that kind of intimate knowledge about me. He used to hold all my most intimate secrets; he can't have those anymore. But I realized that, if he were so inclined to look, and he knew I had a blog, google could pull it up for him pretty quickly. He could figure out the search terms. This loss of control, this realization that he could get to me so easily, nearly panicked me right round the bend (there are a lot of people in my life who would know my rapist by my description, and are in contact with him, or are in contact with someone who could be in contact with him. These people have not been told about this blog, and no one who could ever relate its existence back to him will hear from me about it).

But, ok, I had to remind myself that he doesn't know I have a blog, and he's not going to search for something he doesn't know exists, and also, if I start down this path, I will eventually never be able to leave my house. Also: I love Unnatural Forces. So, I am going to keep this space around, despite the small twinge of panic there still. I am trying to breathe through it.

The first thing I did the morning after the text message was block his number. This alone nearly caused a conniption. This was because two years ago, when I was getting these repeated, annoying, no-one-there phone calls (a robo-dialing type thing) multiple times a day, I called Verizon and asked them if I could block the number. The woman I spoke to said I would need a police report to block the number or report harassment. So I was thinking Friday morning, how the FUCK do I manage that? How do I get a police report? How do I explain this? I never filed a police report when I was raped in the first place - are they gonna question me on that? Will they believe me? The prospect petrified me. Luckily, I could just block the number online (thank you, wireless gods). But now that I have . . . it also makes me nervous. Because if he is continuing to try to find me, then I won't know about it, and I cannot take additional steps to protect myself.

And, I think about that. And then chuckle, hahaha, and think, WHAT NOW, Gayle? Because how can I protect myself? I don't think he's a physical threat to me, so it's not like I can get a doberman. Can I ever really prevent him from knowing ANYTHING about me ever again? Can I really totally control his (non) access to me? The answer, of course, is no, unless I stop going on the webbernets forever, and delete everything I have ever posted and written for others and facebook and gmail and WHATEVER, and then there are still, I am sure, some really nifty ways you could still pull that information up. Delete doesn't mean delete, on the internet, and setting your profiles to private and scrubbing your blog totally clean of any personal information, well, none of that is a guarantee. I am just balancing my personal control and safety with maintaining an online presence that I love, although I know it heightens my exposure.

And ok, big confession: I did a very stupid thing. I googled him. I wanted to try and figure out where the fuck he is on the planet, because that text message indicated that he was two blocks from my parents' house, and I am going back to my parents' house next weekend, and, well, that is not a great feeling, him so close. So guess what google told me? He takes part in mixed martial arts fighting now. YES. He is currently BEATING PEOPLE UP. And TRAINING TO BEAT PEOPLE UP.

This did not make me feel good. It made me feel sick. There was a video. I should not have watched it. But I did - I almost felt like I should know, somehow, that knowing would be better than not and letting my imagination conjure the details. Knowing, Readers, was worse. It made me feel nauseated immediately, watching him violently beat someone up, until there was a shift of gears in my brain, and then I just felt like it was a dream, just a bad dream that's all, and I was watching myself watch the video from just over my right shoulder. The depersonalization disorder kicked in hard, and I am still trying to find my way back into my body today.

So . . . I am disturbed. I am scared. I am confused. I am annoyed at him, and annoyed at myself for caring about him when, what the fuck? I am also, you know, ok. And working, and spending time with friends, and laughing, and talking, and drinking wine and making Indian food and "writing" a "paper." I am thinking and feeling and processing but I am by no means incapacitated or overwrought. That, really, has been the best thing for me. Like, I got this. And that is some pretty fucking awesome, powerful knowledge.

Huh.

A Sane Person tried to warn me, but my time has already been sucked into the fucking-with-the-appearance-of-my-blog black hole. So, I am ROCKING OUT on that paper I need to write, let me tell you.

But, I think I like this? It feels better? I think I can write a post now? I am going to sit with it a bit longer.

Also, can I whinge for a second, Readers? Wait, of course I can, this is my blog! Hahaha! SORRY. Anyway, so this adjunct professor who is grading my paper? He works for the CIA. He works for these terrible people, specifically (that link is important, in the we should all know what our country is really up to way. Please go read it, if you've time). He does not like when the CIA gets criticized, and, you know, it's where his paycheck is from, and the hand that feeds you, whatever. But I am, and this was not one of my more prescient moves, Readers, me picking this topic, writing a paper about how the CIA drone attacks are against international law. And . . . we've been having email exchanges about this, this professor and I, and he is FLAT-OUT WRONG on matters of international law. He's totally incorrect. I ran this by an actual international law professor, so it's not me. Thus, the more right I am on my paper, the lower my grade.

. . .

Which means that I am tooling about on blogger, not writing my paper! Woo!

Like herding cats

So. I have lots of thoughts, and they are all swimming around my head, and it's a little hard to marshal them at the moment. There is a momentous post building in my brain, but there are so many emotions and remembered memories and sudden realizations that I'm having a hard time tackling all of it enough to put it into words.

Also, I spent some time freaking out after the text message in the oh my god my rapist can find me vein such that I considered just shutting down the blog, lest he somehow find it. Because: he's done damage. He doesn't get to share in my recovery. But I have breathed through that, and Unnatural Forces still exists, and will continue to do so, because, you know. Fuck him.

It may, however, change appearance (again, yes). It feels a little claustrophobic to me, with the dark background around a narrow column and text, and I'd like it to feel more open (I am SO LITERAL, I know). This will take me some time, as I: a) do not have photoshop on my computer; b) do not have the time to download photoshop and use it; c) really struggle to make images and pictures look like I want them to look, but not enough to engage with the already mentioned photoshop; and d) am supposed to be writing a paper. So, if you visit Unnatural Forces and we look all wonky for a second, and then change, or whatever, that is what is going on.

Thank you to those who commented and gave support. It means a great deal. Thank you to those who have talked me through this, or listened. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I look forward to the day when my rape is not at the forefront of my brain and I can bitch again about Tom fucking Friedman.

My rapist definitely does not know . . .

. . . he raped me.

He does, apparently, in a complete surprise to me, know my phone number.

Thus, he can text me at 2:33 in the morning to let me know he is doing something we used to do, when we were in love, and he is "thinking" of me.

Readers, I have many thoughts and feelings about this. I have so many thoughts and feelings about this that I actually have none at all, and so I am just going to wait to write about this until I can pin those little buggers down and dissect them.

I do know that it is only 9.30 in the morning, but I am so done. Just . . . fuck today.

Jesus, Amanda Palmer.

Ok, I first saw this over at Sady's place:


Jesus fucking Christ, Amanda Palmer.

Sady does a beautiful analysis in the post before, actually, about a certain type of feminist with white, cis, het, and class privilege who uses feminism to try to fight back against only those issues that apply to HER, and everyone else, other women included, be damned. Shakesville also already commented on this (and mentions Amanda Palmer's Evelyn/Evelyn thing, which is a whole other issue that makes me upset) and sparkymonster jarringly compares Gaga's product placement (which was the subject of the tweet) with actual pictures of what the Klan has done (the link has some pictures that are difficult to see, be aware when clicking over).

Ok!

After Sady's post last night, about feminists who can't seem to get past themselves to see their own privilege or the other ways in which people are marginalized, I spent some time really thinking about that, lying in bed before finally falling asleep. Especially because dealing with rape has made me so very egocentric - sometimes, it takes all my energy just to get my sorry raped self through the day, and maybe that makes me not the best feminist right now? Because I can't get past myself to see anything else? I cut myself some slack here, though, because I think that fighting against the kyriarchy takes all kinds of work, and even surviving can actually be a revolutionary, defiant act sometimes. But, I was really examining my privilege and in my head I listed all the ways in which I was LUCKY, after being raped: I had access to a therapist, and access to health care, had I needed it, and I could have probably paid for an abortion, had I required one, and I lived in NYC, so I could get emergency contraception, and because I am white, I am not socially constructed to already have a deviant sexuality, so if I filed a police report, it is more likely I would have been believed, and I do not live in a culture where I will be blamed, and on and on. Lots of privilege. Right?

And privilege works by making itself invisible, so I have to stop and remind myself of my privilege sometimes. And situate myself with it in the world, and see how it works to position me there, and how I can avoid becoming a monster on someone else's back even while I am trying to get the monster off my own back (thanks, June Jordan).

But no matter how fucking wrapped up I am in myself, no matter how insular and narrow my world has gotten, it would never, ever occur to me that it is ok to use the Klan as a punchline. EVER.

The Klan is not ironic. The Klan lynched and murdered and beat and terrorized. They are still a symbol of white racism and hatred and bigotry, and they have not gone away. So either Amanda Palmer is very confused about what "irony" is, or Amanda Palmer is acting like a giant fucking asshole. Or, actually, I am lying: there is only one option here, as I do not think Amanda Palmer is stupid. No, Amanda Palmer is just being an asshole.

Thing is . . . guys, I used to LOVE Amanda Palmer. I liked how spunky she was, how outspokenly feminist she was, how brazen she was about being herself, how different her music was, how daring it could be.

And Amanda Palmer truly is an awesome advocate of herself. But that's it. She has been dismissive of people with disabilities, and now people of color. She has erased their very experiences to co-opt them into a joke or a sideshow. It would NEVER occur to me, even as a pretty ego-maniacal feminist right now, to joke about the Klan. The Klan is not funny. The Klan cannot be my punchline.

Is there anything that is beyond the scope of joking? I think this question gets asked a lot, especially about why can't privileged groups joke about unprivileged groups, and I think appropriate joking means this: if you are maintaining the skewed societal power dynamics in your joke, meaning that you as a white person feel that you can make fun of black people or whatever, you are contributing to a very harmful dynamic, one that historically has led to things like, oh, lynchings, and contributes to continued inequality. And that's not acceptable. If you are a person of an unprivileged group who wants to poke fun at your own group, or push back and make fun of a group that historically has had privilege at your expense as a way to push back, then go to it, because you are not contributing to dangerous cultural narratives that hurt people.*

Here's how this works in my life. Basically, have I made Jewish jokes, as a Jew? Yes! Have I made Christian jokes? Yes! And when people pointed out I shouldn't make Christian jokes, because I am not Christian, have I told them to fuck off? Yes!** Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick, people, the next time I see Christians as a group becoming the victims of a bigoted society in which they are no longer the powerful majority, I will stop making fun, but as it is more likely that my cats will figure out how to rule the world even without opposable thumbs than Christians will start being institutionally oppressed, I am not really worried about this scenario. As a Christian, you can be ticked at me, and maybe you feel offended, but nobody got hurt. Whereas, a bunch of Christian people making fun of Jews? Well, I could be describing a Klan meeting! Or a Nazi propaganda movie! Meaning: that has never turned out very well. So, Jews being the butt of a joke, and Christians being the butt of a joke - just not equivalent.

Right? You with me? So. Anyway. Given this, as a white person, I don't make Klan jokes. Making light of the Klan only serves to reinforce my privilege; it means that the oppression of people of color is not important, not serious, not real. It's my punchline! Are there appropriate jokes that could be made about the Klan? Sure! But whose job is that to push back at that oppression? NOT MINE.

Because I really did love her, Amanda Palmer's fall from grace in my head has been an especially long descent. And it's a shame, because music that I used to love (and which specifically got me through first year law finals) is now un-enjoyable for me. In reparation, I may just have to donate ten bucks, the amount I paid to download her CD, to an organization that fights against oppression. The fact that I feel the need to give money to fight oppression because I bought the CD of a self-avowed feminist, well . . . let's just say I at least am a little more successful with the "irony" here. In the irony standings, Gayle: 1; Amanda Palmer: 0.


* I also think that those who fall outside the policed boundaries of a privileged group are in an excellent position to have perspective and constructively critique the dominant societal narrative that maintains those boundaries and the identity of that in-group. Which is not to say that people within privileged groups cannot criticize and have perspective; I am just pointing out that those who have been othered and are on the outside looking in have an important point of view to be considered.

** How to make this work? See: Lewis Black

Books I've slept with

Folks around the webbernets are listing their ten most influential books, and I wanna play! I haven't seen any of my favorite ladybloggers participate, so I thought I'd get my two cents in. And yeah, I know, my most influential books are all fiction, but I actually have never been moved the same way by non-fiction. My students used to whine and ask me why they had to read stupid made-up stories, and I would tell them fiction gave them the imagination and tools to deal with real life. I still think that was a decent answer.

Also, a friend and I were discussing how difficult it is to look back and know the books that were the most influential when you were younger - I told him I was just going through the list of the books I have slept with. YES. When I love a book, when I fall head over heels for a book, I will carry it around everywhere, I will sleep with it in my bed, I will want it's beauty close to me at all times. I won't go anywhere without it - I develop a physical bond with the stories and images and meanings between the covers. I'll generally sleep with the book next to me in bed for at least a couple nights even after I am done, until I am ready for it to go onto the bookshelf. Hence the title.

So, Readers, here we go!

1. White Noise, Don DeLillo - This book taught me about what a person can create with the English language - and goddamn can DeLillo write the fuck out of an English sentence. It is still one of the most relentlessly smart things I have ever read. Underworld I equally love, but White Noise changed everything for me - like holy shit, this is what a novel can DO. It also set a very high bar for other books, as far as the beauty of language and the aesthetics of prose and the perfect pitch of tone. This book just captured something perfectly, and when you write, you know how fucking hard that is.

2. The Once and Future King, T.H. White - I read TOaFK the summer before Honors English my sophomore year in high school, and I absolutely fell in love with it. It peopled the Arthurian myth with messy, flawed, funny, human characters, and it was clear the author loved his characters; you ended up loving them, too. The book was also a lesson - T.H. White was a teacher, and he told you to read. He told you to question. He told you there were no easy answers, but you should always be as humane as possible. I have taken all those lessons to heart, and it's amazing how his diatribe against the dangers of rabid nationalism has rung ever more true with me as history marches on.

3. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf -- The stream of consciousness, that "female syntax" of Woolf, that part where she writes about not just seeing the light, but being the light . . . reading To the Lighthouse for me was like someone had ripped me open and perfectly described what they saw. I saw myself all over that book, spread amongst the pages, and it made me feel seen, and known. And that is no small thing.

4. Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie - Satanic Verses is the struggle to understand religious faith as a secular person, and to explain the faith of those who don't actually ascribe to a religion but yet believe strongly. It's renderings of faith, surrender, love, and miracles are still some of the most moving passages I have ever read.

5. Paradise Lost, Milton - Just: LOVE. I love Paradise Lost. When I read it, it felt like a dangerous, daring, adventurous re-telling of that old story; who could read it and not adore Lucifer? Which makes sense, because we are certainly not like the angels, and thank goodness, as Lucifer has always had the more interesting story to tell.

6. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston - A story told in the language it needed to be told in. I also think of it as an incredibly "tight" book - there is not a word in here that is wasted. When I read it amongst Invisible Man and Native Son, it was unapologetic in the strength and centrism of the female character. It also never felt like it was written TO white people (the other two books felt like that throughout, whether to testify or rebuke), but instead relied on the simple belief that the story of a black woman was important enough to be told because she had a story to tell. And that was that.

7. Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut - "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

8. God of Small Things, Arundati Roy - This book has stayed with me. And I do think that it is wonderfully female-and-child-centric and beautifully tragic and soft and gentle, although every once in a while I have met someone who just despised it, so I guess it does dredge up some serious negative reactions in people, even if I cannot quite figure out why. My love is partly because of the brilliant way it works with language, in colonialism, in co-option, in reclamation. And partly it is for a few paragraphs of the book. A white woman has said something racist, something her Oxford-educated Indian husband accepts, in his internalized hatred for his race and country. But the husband's Indian sister, never highly educated, never having left India, fights back against the racism against her,

. . . leaving everybody to wonder where she had learned her effrontery from.

And truth be told, it was no small wondering matter.

Because Ammu had not had the kind of education, nor read the sorts of book, nor met the sorts of people, that might have influnced her to think the way she did.

She was just that sort of animal.

9. Beloved, Toni Morrison, and Dubliners, James Joyce - These two books made me understand that, in brilliant literature, the more you gave, the more you got back. They were the first I read CLOSE - and they yielded infinite gifts, unlocking all these secrets of breathless beauty and truth if you only took the time, and if you knew how to look hard.

10. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace - Yup, I read the whole thing, every page, every footnote. I laughed out loud. I cried. I nodded and understood. This book taught me about empathy. This book taught me about addiction - and it helped me understand my rapist, and I stopped believing that I could have ever beaten the drugs and feeling like I had failed for losing that fight. This book helped me survive sexual harassment and an attempted assault last summer. This book made me a better, more humane person. This book taught me about myself. I cannot think of a book that has ever been so dear to my heart as this one.

Joe Biden pulls a Joe Biden. Also, tomorrow will be named a word that ends with "day."

Readers, let's be real:

The only reason I was actually pleased that Joe Biden was chosen as Obama's running mate was because as VP he would have the ability to stick his foot in his mouth in even MORE fun and hilarious ways. He, sadly, hasn't really lived up to my expectations here, so, this is long overdue, and not even that bad. I think, mostly, Joe Biden still doesn't understand how microphones work, in that if you stand near them, even if you don't want them to catch what you say, they cannot read your mind and will broadcast it loudly anyway. Given Biden's understanding of TV's, I think this is plausible.

A pundit who earns his paycheck? No, really!

Readers, I heart Bob Herbert.

He gets no love. As an op-ed columnist at the Times, I think he may be one of the least influential, least linked, and least re-quoted of the columnists, and I think that's a shame, because he says some really good things, all grounded on a belief of basic human decency and its necessity in a democratic society.

And this, in the media echo chamber, is rare.

I was reminded by this column yesterday why I heart him so hard. Feel free to click on over and nod passionately along with what he is saying while you read.

Oh, what now? We passed health insurance reform? Woo, I guess.

Ok, let me make a couple of things clear: Nancy Pelosi is indeed a rockstar, and I sincerely hope that this bill does a lot of good for some people.

That being said, some folks who usually say pretty smart things on the left have gone off their nutter: Ezra's all on about how special interests have died, when special interests like the insurance industry LOVE this bill, because it forces us to all buy into a really corrupt, fucked up system, so . . . perhaps he has hit his head? And Yglesias thinks Obama is going the be the BEST! PRESIDENT! EVER! when really, I think the White House handled this TERRIBLY, and considering a supermajority of the American people wanted the public option, it's pretty clear how they let the message and the bill get away from them, and this fucker passed despite the White House using the pretending-to-be-deer-in-headlights approach (which is really the never-wanted-anything-but-the-corporate-interests-to-be-happy approach) they have adopted on everything since taking power (like, come on guys, go back Eric Holder up already, jesus).

And, in theory, we cannot all* be kicked off our health insurance for pre-existing conditions, except there's no legal mechanism in this bill to prevent this happening, and I assure you those health insurance industry lawyers are already writing the holes into the law before the ink has dried. Also, women got thrown under the bus. Which, it makes you wonder what "people" this bill is supposed to help, when we are not yet at the point where "people" includes those of the female persuasion, too.

Ultimately, I wish I could be happier about this, but it's not a very good bill, and it just reminds me of how inexorably broken the American political system is. Like, we had a Democratic president and control of both houses. And there was a supermajority who wanted a REAL fix to healthcare, with a public option. But the politicians compromised a real possibility to get at the root of the problem, and instead gave us as far from what we all wanted and need as possible. This is not a healthcare bill. It is health insurance reform. And then, of course, there's my worry that 10 years down the line, when we realize this bill didn't go far enough, then the Republicans will have control of the government and be all SEE SOCIALISM IT FAILED and then we will all go bankrupt from our health expenses after we've been refused coverage because we got that cold once.

In public interest organizations in DC, there is a strong belief that, no matter what human rights or civil liberties or justice thing you want to achieve or prevent, you hope the issue will NEVER go through Congress, because Congress will inevitably just fuck it up. Those of us doing counterterrorism and national security law and human rights have been praying to our dear and fuzzy lord that there will never be a detention bill, because it will just be terrible. And the health insurance reform bill is a good example of this. Remember when we were all idealistic on the left and saying, right after Obama was elected, well, ok, since we probably can't get single payer, then at least we'll get public option? And then Congress worked on this for months? And lookit what we got in the end.

I am not necessarily saying this bill SHOULD NOT have passed. I am saying THIS BILL should not have passed. And it deeply saddens me that an opportunity to help all American people has been frittered away.

Which means no matter how exhausted we are from this bullshit, and I know we are exhausted, the fight is yet to come. Get a good night's sleep tonight. But tomorrow, we must pick up our weapons again, my fellow angels. It's time for us make this right.



* Ok, which is actually not true. We cannot be the victims of rescission ONLY if we are under 19. So, like, everyone reading this is fucked. And I want to point out, under this bill, I could still be denied coverage if I had reported my rape, because rape is still considered a pre-existing condition, and that won't change under this crappy bit of legislation. Just another reason why I am not so thrilled here with this bill (and, I know the Senate may change it, reconciliation, blah blah, but we're not gonna get a public option, the Senate is a circus filled with clowns, so whatever).

UPDATE:

Although, given the chance, I maybe wouldn't mind passing a bill like this every week just to throw these ignorant assclowns into a tizzy. I heart the Tea Party video so hard.

Seriously, Readers?

How do I not own this t-shirt? It is amazing!

Because there is nothing I would like to convey more than that I am property, and owned my father! Until I will be owned by my husband! We can buy such things in 2010! I love being post-feminist!

But no, really, I want one. In pink.

My rapist does not know

It has occurred to me recently that no matter the size of the storms raging in my head or the deepness of the fissures that have rent through my soul, my rapist does not know he raped me.

My rapist was someone with whom I had been in love for 10 years. He was the only person who could make my stomach start fluttering at just the thought of him. For Christmas, that first year I met him when I was 17, I fell asleep downstairs and left the back door open, as he had asked me. He woke me to a room filled with hundreds of lit candles, and gave me a journal filled on every page with poems he had written me. He was so beautiful. And until the night he raped me, we would say that we loved each other more than we would ever love anyone else.

He also had a mental illness, my rapist. He struggled with drug addiction. The drugs almost always won. He had stolen a car, assaulted people, landed himself in jail, ended up in a halfway house in Florida. It was always worse when I would go abroad. He would call me from across one or several oceans, send me emails when he was suicidal, and I would cry that I was so far away and couldn't help. Then he would get his life straight again, try a program again, get clean again, in that never-ending cycle that addicts are on until they hit bottom and clean up for good. If they hit bottom and clean up for good. There is unimaginable damage they leave in their wake.

When my rapist raped me, he was completely drunk. He was out of control. He was on drugs. I had never, ever, seen him on drugs before. He was a monster. He became sad and pathetic and weedling and weeping, or furious and threatening, depending on the minute. He screamed at me that he would lose me, his only one true love, I was killing him. He raped me, and I didn't struggle too much in the hopes he wouldn't assault me. He beat me afterward anyway. But the next morning, when I came back to my apartment and I told him to leave, he looked blank. I asked him if he remembered what had happened, and he shook his head slowly, stolidly. The night before was a blank for him - I could see that in his eyes, lost, searching for a memory that just wasn't there. I told him he had assaulted me and to get the fuck out and I never wanted to see him again. But I never said the word "rape" to him. I was not saying the word "rape" to myself. I would not say it until two and a half years later, when I explained to a friend how I felt like I was falling apart and kept having flashbacks to that night and she said, "You know that's rape, right? That's rape. You need to deal with that."

My rapist tried to friend me on facebook. My rapist tried to friend me on facebook. My rapist does not know he raped me.

Maybe this is ungenerous, but I do not want to know if he has finally beaten his drug addiction. I do not want to find out he has gotten better. I cannot bear to discover he is in a happy, loving, stable relationship with someone and has found peace in his life. Maybe there will be a time, when my head and my heart do not feel blasted to pieces, that I will wish him well. This is not that time. I cannot even begin to fathom the depth of my anger that he may be well and recovered and happy while I am trying to manage my days broken.

I cannot be friends with my rapist on facebook because I cannot know that he is fine. That, to me, seems like another kind of violation - he has moved on, while I am only still picking up all the pieces of me and trying to hold together. I don't know if I actually wish him ill - maybe sometimes. But his happiness and well-being make his violation of me complete. He wished to destroy me for not being able to control me, contain me, keep me, make me his. He wished to assert his power over me. He wanted to show me he could own me. So he raped me. And for me to find out that, in the end, he truly had such power to destroy me and walk away unscathed? Would mean that he was right. It would mean that he had won.

It would mean that he still owns me.

And that is something that I cannot ever bear to know.

Saturday morning cat blogging

Wow, Readers, has it been an eventful, exciting morning over here at Gayle's house. Because with the weather nice, and the windows open, you know what that means:

SQUIRRELS!!!!

But then, of course, the windowsill just above my bed (because this is WAY more fun when they can trample on my head while I am trying to sleep) just isn't big enough for the two large cats in town.

FACE OFF!!!!

And just when you thought the showdown was going to get ugly . . .

BIRDS!!!!

Spring cleaning

An old poem, and one that I am happy to set free.

No Name 8

craving a sip of the oceans / between your breasts and your navel / moses parted the read sea but i prefer / the tide between your hip bones / the love handles that make you pout in front of the mirror / until i assure you such flesh is beautiful. i like waves.

the whale swallowed jonah and i wish to consume you / make your home inside my ribcage / as i linger over your taste on my lips / your flesh bleeding like a vagina / a cut / a wound / a birth / as i chew on your curves your back the way the surf runs over your tailbone / the lord is in his heaven between your shoulder blades.

in the beginning there was hunger and there was thirst / god made the day and the night and the desire to eat. you never / eat much i always noticed the way starvation was constant as a daily prayer / a secret a shrine hidden in the closet / next to old luggage full of scars of previous lives / you are proud of the scars i leave on you. tissue beneath my fingernails / they could extract your cells and clone you from my body.

dna duplicates after angels implant a fetus / as i am replicating myself in you / in your eyes / your mind / pregnant with who i want to be. skin grows over things that live against it / perhaps one morning after dreams we will be unable to get up and face the cold / our skin has grown together / so we will stay among the rumpled sheets where we made love / playing with hands, muscle fibers moving in synchronicity to make fingers dance / your forearm is where i'd start to eat you / your blood running over my chin and down my body / a river flowing to meet the ocean swell of my belly/

and god saw it and it was good.

A walk

Readers, I have the world's worst memory. I often have to have other people remind of things; and then when they remind me, while it may seem vaguely familiar, like I might have read about it in a book many years ago, I still can't quite really grasp it. Part of this is trauma, and part of this is having depressive periods since I was 14 - your brain doesn't encode memories such that it can retrieve them when you are depressed, and it can leave big holes in time when you try to reconstruct the past.

The period after my rape, for instance, when I was refusing to deal with it, or acknowledge that I was raped at all? I remember I was depressed. And I remember I watched a lot of movies then - but I cannot remember the movies at all. I cannot remember the plot, the characters, the scenes, the endings. Nothing. Big black holes. Also, any memory in which my rapist was involved (I knew him for over a decade before he raped me) is completely gone. Just, I try to remember back, and I get nothing. At all. Like someone has gone through and scrubbed it all right out.

It's always a little unnerving, suddenly realizing pieces of you are gone.

But recently, and maybe this is a sign of healing of some sort, all these memories of high school have come flooding back. In images, but mostly in feelings. I can recreate the memory for each and every sense.

I was just walking home from the metro when I remembered, and felt again, all the feelings of sneaking out of my parents house and seeing the car of the boy I was dating parked around the corner. I remember his car, I remember the emotions it conjured in me - happiness, anxiety, excitement. He was waiting for me, in the shadows. It must have been midnight. I had told him I'd take him for a walk through the woods.

Ok, this is a wee little wood, in the middle of a suburban South Jersey development, but there were plenty of little windy paths through brush, and then a field with low bushes and scrub and pine you could stand in the sandy middle of and not see a single house or hear a single car. Just birds and the loud silence of trees. And us. That was the plan. On the other side were tall trees and an easy walk out to a well-lit street. But we weren't walking that way. I had played in this wood as I child; I could walk in blindfolded. I would walk him through the thin, windy, almost nonexistent way to the field, where we would lay down and look at the stars and kiss and lie next to each other just to feel the other breathe.

So, I took his hand, and he didn't really trust me, and that gave me a sudden twinge of nerves - what if I did get us lost? He'd brought a flashlight, but I immediately told him to put it out - flashlights can make it harder to see in the dark and find my way, because they make me blind to everything outside the light of the beam, and it made me feel like I was in a foreign place, some strange, scary woods waiting for me just beyond the light. We had the moon. These were my woods. I knew my way. He hesitated and I could see his face no matter the dark, so I laughed at him and called him a chicken, and he chuckled and flicked the flashlight off, and I took his hand and led him forward to be swallowed into the tall reeds that reached far above our heads to the night sky.

I pulled him behind, knowing just when to warn there was a branch to step over or the ground buckled a bit. I did not stumble once. I was in love. I was taking him somewhere magic. The air was cool and soft and the woods were welcoming us, holding us gently in an embrace that made everything else outside the bounds of the trees cease to be.

We emerged into the field. He moved to walk beside me instead of behind me, and put his arm around my waist. We walked up a sandy incline where kids had built a bike ramp and a jump out of the earth. The stars were sparkling crisply against the black. Leaves breathed softly. We sat down Indian-style on the ground, on a tiny patch of grass, facing each other. I looked up at the stars so long I got a little lost in them, and then I looked down, and then I realized he was just looking at me.

The only world that existed was he and I in that field that night, pared down to just this small little universe all our own, but there are few times in my life I remember my love and joy ever feeling so huge and infinite.

Can I just say?

OH MY GOD MY FUCKING HEADNOTE.

GAH.

. . .


That is all.

Responding to Rape: Etiquette 101

You know, every time I type "etiquette," even though it is spelled correctly, it just looks wrong.

ANYWAY. Hey, everyone! Someone, and this someone was male, recently emailed me saying he was trying to figure out a non-mansplainy way to talk about rape with me, and, look, if you are reading my blog and emailing me with the self-awareness that you COULD be mansplainy, nothing out of your mouth (or keyboard!) is going to be offensive or wrong, period. And being that there are no perfect responses, sometimes even from other women who have been raped (that book Lucky: A Memoir? I hated that book), I think you are fine.

Ok, the most important rule ever ever ever here? NEVER, under any circumstances, ever, no matter who is around you, rape survivors or no, EVER say, after maybe let's say a physically strenuous boxing class, "You guys, I am so sore I feel like I've been raped." NEVER. EVER. Because then you are probably my former roommate from South Africa with whom I was stuck last summer, and/or a really terrible human being.

But, here's the thing: a lot of very nice people do not know what to do or how to act upon finding out that an acquaintance or friend or someone they love has been raped. So I thought I'd try to do my best to explain what could be appropriate or helpful. I will be drawing from my own experiences, so understand that some of these will be very specific to me; I by no means can speak for all rape survivors. Also, I will try not to be too gender essentialist here, because women aren't necessarily better at dealing with this than guys (although most are, for reasons I'll get to in a second) and I do know a man who has been raped. So, if I am using a certain pronoun in places, it is probably more because I am retelling something that actually happened.

Many of my friends ended up finding out I was raped incidentally, because I dropped it into a conversation, usually to prove a point or give a perspective. Most guys, in my experience, do not handle this well. I have been told it was "unfair" for me to just put that out there and expect everyone to finish the conversation. Or I have been informed I just "killed" the conversation. And, fuck you all: I have been raped. This is a fact. It is a fact like the fact that I have two cats, my grandmother died last year, and evidence class is so boring my brain contemplates how to escape my skull and make a break for the lecture hall door. I understand this may have great impact on you, the listener, but to me, it just is. And if I have just thrown it into a conversation to make a point, it is probably that I would like you to react like I have just made a point. Because sometimes, I would like my rape to be just that, a fact that occurred, and sometimes it just is, so, you know, go with that.

If it is bothering you, feel free to ask later. "Can I ask you about your rape?" is a perfectly acceptable question. Or, "Would you feel comfortable talking about being raped?" Something like that. The woman (or man) might say no, because they don't feel like talking about it, or they don't want to tell you, or whatever. Don't take the answer personally, because it may have nothing to do with you; I usually calculate how much emotional time and space I can give myself later if I start freaking out or have a bad night. If I have a lot of law school reading to do, I will say no. Please do not just ask, "So what happened?" This puts the rape victim in the uncomfortable position of having to fend you off, and then maybe feeling bad for not wanting to talk about it. You would never ask a friend out in public over lunch, randomly, "So tell me about your favorite sexual fantasy!" So don't ask about her worst.

Also, you might not want to ask when there is a group of people listening, because while the rape survivor may be happy to share with you, there may be someone else she does not feel comfortable speaking in front of. So just be aware of that.

Guys, for the most part, treat rape like fucking Voldemort, the Evil Whose Name We Shall Not Speak. And guys mostly do this because they can pretend rape is a rare and terrible occurrence. Women know better. We also negotiate our entire lives around the threat of rape. We watch our friends and our drinks like hawks at bars, get jealous of seeing men jogging at night without a care, purposefully change our schedules so we will not be walking in scary places after dark by ourselves, and negotiate our safety with every new man whom we may allow access to us alone. I do not think I know a single woman who hasn't been sexually assaulted, harassed, or raped (see Chloebug's comment). So while many guys get overly precious about oh my god how horrible . . . yeah, it IS horrible, but let's not act like this is a rare, unspeakable evil. 1 in 6 women has been the victim of attempted or completed rape. So gentlemen, sack up a bit, please.

If someone does decide to sit down and tell you her story, just listen. Rape survivors often struggle with blaming themselves, so, "Why would you do that?" or "Why didn't you do this?" questions are so not welcome. Do not put the rape survivor in the situation of having to defend the fact that it was, indeed, rape. When she is done, you can ask questions about her reaction or how she is dealing with it if you want to get a better handle on how she is. And when she is done, don't suggest ways she can cheer herself up, or distract herself. Believe me, she's already thought of whatever you could suggest, and is perfectly adept at managing her shit as best she can. You could ask, "Is there anything I can do to help? What would be most helpful to you?" Those are good questions. I wouldn't really recommend telling her, "I really feel _____ after hearing this," because then, if she is me, she will feel bad for making you feel bad, or she will quickly try to change the subject because she feels like she may now be burdening you. This is just one of those conversations that I think has to be so not about you at all. If you are one of those gentlemen (ahem) who cannot ever be so not about you all the time, don't begin this conversation in the first place.

For me, at least, after I have initially told you the story, I will not explicitly tell you how I am coping with my trauma. This is mostly because I feel like a downer bringing it up later in normal daily conversation, and I don't really know how to say, after you told me about partying all weekend, "Hey, so updates on my rape brain . . ." If you are wondering how someone is managing, you may have to ask them directly. In fact, I will never tell you unless you ask directly, because I will feel bad bringing up something so depressing and difficult. But if you ask me, "How has the working through trauma been? Are you ok? Anything I can do?" I will answer honestly and explain. Other rape survivors may tell you not to ask. But to me, it is touching when someone is thoughtful enough and brave enough to bring it up and want to know.

If a partner tells you that she has been raped, there may be a lot of things that you both need to work out, or not many at all. It will depend on where she is in her recovery, which is not always linear, so recognize that she may go from getting better to worse at points or have flashbacks. Consensual, safe sex has been a large part of my recovery. Having a male partner ask explicitly for permission to do each and every thing he wants to do in bed with me makes me feel like I am safe and in control. It feels like I am reclaiming the act of sex. Then there are other little things that are me-specific - being submissive helps me rewrite the rape narrative in my head, because it is now safe and healthy and about my pleasure and I can have control over the person "ravishing" me, whereas playacting as a dominant for whatever reason triggers me (yeah, I dunno).

Oh, and this is a biggie for me: if you are my partner, do NOT initiate or attempt sex when I am asleep, or half asleep. First off, just because we may have had sex a number of hours ago does not mean I am consenting now. There is no open access to my body, and when you do this, it makes me feel like I have just been made invisible. It means that you are acting out your desires on me, instead of with me as a willing participant. There should be no sex without enthusiastic consent, every time. Second, if you know me at all, and you know how much I do and how little sleep I get, this sleep I am getting right now may be the most exciting thing I have done all week. So piss off.

Ok, I may think of more, but I have kind of stalled out here. If you have any questions, feel free to email me or write them in comments and I will be happy to address them. Or, if you are a survivor, feel free to put your own experiences in comments.

And, also, a final thing: I am no expert on this. I am not even an expert on myself. One of my favorite reactions is a friend of mine who listened, and heard me, and then got craaaaazy angry and furious. Like, yelled and stomped and growled and was just SO MAD that that had happened to me. I loved it. Because, weirdly, one of the emotions that rape survivors may have the hardest time accessing, even though it would make the most sense, in reality, to have, is anger. I have never managed to really get angry at what my rapist has done to me, what with being so busy putting all kinds of blame on myself. So here was someone getting that kind of angry FOR me. Readers, I just loved it. And I would not have been able to guess that I would have adored such a reaction until I was watching it before my eyes. We are all just guessing and feeling our way through this. As long as there is understanding, and communication, and support, and however much space we all need, we'll manage to make it through to the other side.

On being an "angel"

I just watched the movie (500) Days of Summer. And, there it was, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (TM) trope. Like, you know, the fae girl who exists to transform the guy's life, and even though she is enchanting, she is still pretty much a plot device, there solely to teach the male protagonist about the beauty of the world and how to embrace it, blah blah blah? I was being annoyed about this as I was watching the movie until I realized:

I think I may also be that Manic Pixie Dream Girl (TM).

Ok, I am not very fae. And unlike the movie girls, I am very opinionated, and I am pretty cerebral, and I am not always bathed in soft lighting. Or, like, have cool, alternative, emo-but-not-too-emo music accompanying me throughout my days. But I realized that I am othered by my partners all the time because they make me out to be this ethereal, magical creature.

It is rather unlike the movies. In that it sucks.

Let's talk about this trope in real life, my life. When I was in high school, you know what my nickname was? "Angel." People referred to me as this all the time. I was magical. I was other. I was different. I was valued for being different, and let me not give the impression this was all bad, because this was a wonderful thing, too - I mean, how many awkward teenagers who feel different and like they don't fit in get told how appreciated they are for it? A friend of mine once told me in biology class, "Dude, you're totally not like everyone else. You're on, like, a different plane of existence. But that is why everyone loves you!" So, you know, yay! I am valued for being different! People talk about me in their life-changing youth group speeches and call me their "angel!" People who swear they've never written poetry before in their lives are suddenly writing poetry about me as an "angel!" And, you know, yay!

Holy shit was that lonely. Being on a pedestal robs you of your basic messy personhood. It robs you of your self. I felt like I couldn't cry in front of other people, I couldn't be sad or moody. I believed I always had to be there for people who were so overly kind to me in saying such things about me; it was my job now to offer wisdom, offer a shoulder to cry on, listen and understand, be that magical creature in their lives I kept being told I was. I was so good at being ethereal that I had a hard time allowing anyone to see my pain, or help me tend my wounds. I think it also meant that people sometimes forgot I could get hurt. After all, statues on pedestals don't have souls. And when you cut them, they don't bleed.

I think people were careless with me. I think people are still careless with me.

My partners have been. Not all of them, but many of them. Some of them fall in love with me quickly, and I am suspicious of that love, because I think they are in love with the Magic Pixie Dream Girl (TM) and what she brings to their lives, instead of me. And I think this, because I have yet to show them all of me, so I am unsure of who they have fallen in love with. But they're sure I'm the One. I have been asked to marry more times than I will ever admit.

Other partners have left because they are "afraid." No, really. My being "scary" is the number one reason I am not capable of being partnered with (and it's not just romantic partners; I have had friends throw up walls between us and speak of me as becoming "too dangerous.") Do you know I have been broken up with not once or twice, but thrice, when I was not actually in any relationship whatsoever with this breaker-upper-person? YES. But they were so sure of the deep, magical connection (which, huh?) and they were just overwhelmed by me and I was "too much" and they didn't think they could handle me or "this relationship" or this kind of "intensity" in their lives. I was "too much!" And sadly, none of these guys had it really even occurred to me to date! I barely knew them! It was bizarre! Yet here they were, breaking up with me (this has thankfully all three times been over the phone, so I am free to make faces and put the phone on mute and yell at it, "What the fuck are you talking about????). But I was the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (TM), and they did not want me as a plot device to further their lives at the moment. I was a little too magical for them to handle. I was inconvenient, just then.

My last partner, he was atrocious to me. We had to have conversations about how I am a person. With feelings. And he would say things like, I'm sorry, I forget you are not invincible. I forget you are just human. Because you are like a divine thing. And I would make a joke, and say dude, if I was a divine thing, I would have smote you down already, and we would laugh, and it would feel like my heart was bleeding into my chest. In the end, this partner left me because he said, "I was never able to believe that you were quite real. I was so busy waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the dream would be over. I just never allowed myself to really give in and love you. I kept waiting for the magic trick to end, and you would disappear in a cloud of smoke."

The tears just fell while he told me this.

I had a partner leave me because she told me everything with me was "too good" and it scared the shit out of her. Another partner said she always felt like she'd never be good enough for me, and I gave her a chip on her shoulder, so her breaking up with me was really my fault. Another partner was always fearful I would leave him, because I was going to do great wonderful things in the world because of course I would, because that was my destiny as an angel (he also calls me an angel), and so he never really committed. Or the friend who thought I was so mighty, when I told him I was still dealing with my rape, his response was, "Really? You're so strong. I thought you would be over that."

I cut. I cut to show I hurt. That I bleed.

I recognize that this little blog post here could come off horribly wrong. Someone could read it and think that the poor little girl who gets called magical and angelic all the time is whinging about how terrible that is, poor thing, awwww, someone call a WAAAAHmbulance for her. And, if I were reading this post, given that I have shit self-esteem, I might want to punch me in the face, too. But of course, that's the thing. I am not whining about this because it is true. In fact, I think it is not true, I think it is the opposite of true, I think it is totally false and I can't understand who the fuck it is these people think they are seeing in me. I am writing about it because it is dehumanizing. I am writing about it because I think there must be something wrong with me, how easily I am dehumanized. Because it happens again, and again, and again.

It makes me not want to go on dates with new people, lest they fall for some person I don't even recognize. I am afraid to get too close to someone, lest they hurt me later because they think I am invincible or extraordinary. I am petrified to show anyone the wounds and the scars once they have started on that angel shit, because they have already rendered me in their minds smooth and marble and cold. It means that every time someone tells me they like me, it makes me just ache beneath my ribcage.

What is this post about? I don't really know. It is about me playing connect-the-dots with my life and coming up with a disturbing pattern. It is about me watching a movie with a two-dimensional character, and realizing I am often treated as a two-dimensional character by other three-dimensional people.

Or maybe it is just about me wondering why, if I were really so magical and angelic and dreamy, I was watching that movie alone.

I don't know how it got to be Sunday night already, either

So . . . the least we can do is watch some Eddie Izzard and laugh.

Have a lovely night!

No, I will not play nice, motherfucker

Dear Professor,

I know you just gave me an A- on my presentation. And, you know, yay. But you included this in your evaluation of my presentation:

Also, when discussing a topic that has great interest and passion, you need to be careful that your responses remain professional and substantive. There is a fine art of learning how best to channel this passion without losing some of your credibility with the entire audience, to include those that disagree with you. This is not say that you were not professional or substantive in your responses, only that there were times when I could tell that you were tempted to lift off the venear of non-partisanship. While this may have been personally satisying, it would have lost some of your credibility with the audience.

Excuse me?

OK, I have a couple of points here.

First, I have to say, fuck you.

Second: fuck you.

Third: WHAT????

"Personally satisfying?" Pardon me? I fight these fights because is it "personally satisfying?" Who the FUCK do you think you are? Our project was about a proposal to keep the CIA from rendering prisoners to other countries to be tortured (which is against domestic and international law, so, we were not exactly going out on a limb here). I don't argue that we shouldn't torture people because it is personally satisfying. I argue this point because I am a human being who has not lost my humanity nor has a broken moral compass.

And why the FUCK should I engage with people who don't agree with me on suchlike issues? Why should I be nice and "non-partisan?" Because first off, being against torture should NOT be a partisan issue. That veneer of non-partisanship I was tempted to lift off? Is not a veneer. It is the heart of the issue. The fact that whether we should torture or not has become a partisan issue so certain people can score cheap political points at the expense of breaking (almost always innocent) human beings is an entirely new and disgusting development.

When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture, the President said:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

And which President was that? Ronald Reagan.

Secondly, anyone who thinks we should torture? Doesn't deserve my engagement. I am not going to try to have a professional, substantive discussion with them. Why? Because that gives their views WAY too much credit. It makes them seem like they have a legitimate take on the issue, instead of the truth, which is that they are just horrible fucking people. In my favorite Thers post, he says:

Actually, I curse online as a conscious choice. Back in the early days of blogs I used to go into comments sections and try to, you know, persuade conservatives that, like, the proposed invasion of Iraq was perhaps not such a great idea. And what happened was, after a colloquy that sometimes lasted literally weeks at a time, what resulted was my interlocutor politely informing me that we would "agree to disagree" and that he (almost always "he") had quite enjoyed "breaking a lance" with me and that he fully expected me to join hands with him and sing a solemn hymn to Comity and then we’d go light a candle upon the altar of Civilized Discourse.

And, privately, I was thinking to myself, this is fucking insane. A lot of people are going to die for no rational reason, and here we are acting like we’re all hot fucking shit because we don’t say "fuck."

And you know what I did next?

I started to say "fuck" quite a lot, and I began to tell the people who were deliberately fucking up my country and causing a lot of fucking pointless carnage that they were a bunch of fucking horrible sociopaths and that I fucking hated them.

And it’s been clear fucking sailing ever since.

I am not discussing issues rationally with people who are clearly not rational. It's not like us discussing things will get anywhere, what with their irrationality. I am not responding to a worldview that includes killing millions of innocent people or involves torturing other human beings with a thoughtful, nuanced response. Because what happens when you do that? You end up with Overton window problems that completely throw off the discourse, allowing things that were previously non-partisan to become partisan, and you enable it. You enable it.

And then we also have to talk about your complicity here. Because you know who I trust least in the class, Professor? You.

You work for the CIA. You've been working for the CIA for the past ten years, while it has done some REALLY APPALLING SHIT. You never mention this. You never locate your bias, but believe me, it shows. I mean, we are quite a few decades into post-modernism now, Professor; the idea that anyone can be "objective" has been roundly, by study and by scholarship, debunked. So, the fact you don't locate and admit where your bias could be? Means it is everywhere.

Let me contrast this with how my counterterrorism professor handles this. He has litigated for the DOJ 90% of the cases in our casebook. And he is very upfront about it. He puts it right out there. He will tell us which cases he litagated, which cases he won but they don't sit right with him, which cases he litigated because it was his job but he thinks the DOJ was on the wrong side. And he owns when he thinks he was on the right side. And because he owns his bias, he acknowledges it, it isn't the big elephant in the room. He knows he can't be objective, but he doesn't then teach his class like he is, while all the while his views are infecting everything he is teaching.

Whereas you? Don't say a damn word about the fact that there are probably some serious conflicts of interest. So here's my question, Professor: why do you think you don't have to own that? Because in the way you argue certain things, emphasize certain points, dismiss certain ideas, it's clear you are not objective.

But also, it makes me wonder what you were doing at the CIA, Professor. It is known that the CIA wrote plenty of legal memos about whether the torture they were doing could be legally justified. And you work as a lawyer for the CIA. So did you write any of those memos? Did you see others writing those memos, but didn't really openly disagree, because you were practicing that "fine art" of of inclusion? Were you attempting to be "non-partisan" and therefore didn't call anyone out? Did you keep your mouth shut because you were a "professional?" Because if you either participated in such things, or allowed them to go on without getting angry and yelling and causing a big ruckus and saying the word fuck a lot, not only are there no Civility Awards for you, but you are complicit. There is blood on your hands, sir. Because the sad fact is, those who did not raise holy hell, those who did not fight back, those who were practicing the "fine art" of engaging politely? Those who still practice that "fine art?" Are responsible for this:

Chris Bartlett / Detainee Project from Chris Bartlett on Vimeo.

And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. Shall I go on? And these links are all the work of your employer. This is on YOUR hands and conscience, Professor. You enabled this. All the while feeling, no doubt, very self-satisfied that you were objective and non-partisan and comported yourself properly.

So you think I give a fuck about my credibility?

Listen, Professor, thanks for the A-, even though I know the - is because you saw me "tempted" to take down the idiot at the back of the room with a "partisan" argument, even though I could have refuted it with a cold, hard fact (after all, even facts have become "partisan." As Stephen Colbert says, reality has a well-known liberal bias). But, frankly, you can keep the mantle of the "professionalism."

I'll prefer instead to keep the blood off my hands.

Fuck you, again,
Gayle

Friday cat blogging

Life is hard, I tell ya.

Happy wee birthday to us!

Well, it has been officially a month since my first substantive post on this blog! Woohoo! Remember when I swore I'd post at least once a week? Ha ha ha. I clearly had trouble meeting THAT empty promise.

Anyway, in a whole grand month of blogging (I am a little proud, Readers, I am), there are a couple of things I have realized:

1. The posts that people like the most? Are not the ones they comment on. And they are often not the posts that I think are the best or the strongest (like the dreamblogging one, which I almost didn't post at all).

2. My friends have refused to enter into the computer-twitter-facebook age. After revealing that I had a blog to folks over email, they called me.

3. Every time someone tells me I write well, or they enjoy my writing, I want to squeal with joy and do a little happy bouncy dance. This feels so good. I am notoriously bad at accepting compliments, but this one I love getting and accepting.

4. I am writing this post in counterterrorism law. I love counterterrorism law, but I wish I were having a drink instead.

4.5 No, wait, I'm finishing it at home, I had to start raising my hand and speaking because people were saying the most unfounded, inhumane things. Everyone in that class is fucking slathered in Crazy Sauce. And I still need that drink.

5. Blogging means I sleep considerably less, but I have also been less anxious and angry, so sleep is probably going to continue losing out here.

6. I am amazed at the community that blogging has brought about. Blogging is not at all like the dude (imagined for the purposes of de-legitimizing bloggers as writers) who lives in his parents' basement and sits in front of his computer all day in his pajamas because he has no social skills. My parents don't even have a basement, you guys. Instead, I started talking about rape online, and all these real-life, actual, breathtakingly beautiful women opened up to me or shared with me or said thank you, and old friends called to talk about it and see how I was doing, and people have discussed posts with me over lunch. So, blogging not only has cost me sleep so I can type, it has cost me sleep so I can connect with others. And that is AWESOME.

7. Oh, and even a little comment, after I have written an extremely personal, difficult post, such as an affirming, "Yes"? Can mean the world. It is astounding to me, really, the power of a single word left by a stranger.

Thanks for surviving the first month with me, my friends! I know I may hit a wall at some point (and that wall may be FINALS next month) but I think there is so much for me here I know I won't have trouble sustaining it (I say now). After hiding away so much pain and fear for so long, to have a space to share, and be listened to, and read, and respected, and supported, is, quite simply, a gift. Thank you. I am so, so grateful.

Don't put a ring on it

Right before I went for a run, I read Amanda Marcotte's post this morning on the stereotype that all women are desperate to get married while the men to whom they are attached are trying to escape matrimonial hell, and then I thought about it for the entire jog. And I was thinking how funny that was, and how that trope has worked in my life. Or not.

Because it hasn't. Or, look, I see all the media representations of women who want nothing more than to get a ring, lest they end up terrible old spinsters and without validation of their worth as women. I remember clearly that, growing up, there was some serious attempt to get me to swallow the idea that my worth as a woman was tied to male validation and acceptance. In high school, how sought-after I was by boys pretty much determined the level of my self-esteem.

No, wait, I am lying. It was a combination of being sought-after and how many men I could wrap around my little pinky finger, either by seducing them or stringing them along. I was a little vampy. And this was a (decidedly not well-thought-out, but, you know, I was 15, people) feminist take on things, because I decided I wanted to have access to that kind of sexual power, too. [TANGENT WARNING] 'Cause after I lost my virginity, here's what my first thought was the next morning: that. was. awesome. Like, losing your virginity is supposed to be this huge loss in a woman's life, because it gets "taken" from her, right? Whatever to that. My brilliant realization was, I could have my virginity "taken" from me only once, whereas I could take other people's virginity and infinite number of times! MWUA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

I was really into figuring out how to own my sexuality, Readers. It took me awhile.

ANYWAY. Back to culture telling women their worth lies in marrying. RIGHT. So, people have written whole books about how shitty it is to never just settle for Mr. OK and then end up unmarried and old, because that is the worst hell on earth or something. There are romantic comedies all about women trying to trick men into proposing, as if the men could never, ever propose of their own volition. And I have met women who worry about the years ticking by, because each year passing increases their chances of becoming crazy old cat ladies who die alone amongst the mountains of kitty litter.

But, ok, in my personal life? This has never been true.

The last three men with whom I have been intimate? One of them agonizes about not having a family, because he misses that imagined structure and support in his life. One felt like his life wouldn't feel "real" or "grown-up" without a wife and kids to support. And one continually feels like he must have made some mistake in his life, to not have a wife and kids by age 27, because he always assumed that that's how Things Should Go (and I am 30, so he can just bite me on that one).

And all of them can be all reminiscent of what they think they are missing, because, let's face it: getting married is a jackpot for men. They are happier, do less housework, etc., whereas marriage is actually a really bad deal for women. But also: the marriage and then the kids maybe? Those are icing on the life cake for them. They have careers and things they want to accomplish. They have full lives. They do NOT define their self-worth as men by their married status. No, they just want the imagined, fairy-tale like benefits that come from having a wife (who will inevitably do more housework, let's be real). It's like those people who reminisce over how great America used to be, in that magical era in the '50's or something, when child and spousal abuse was invisible and gay people had to live in the closet and black people knew their fucking place, amirite???? (Seriously, if you ever meet those people, tell them to go read this).

My point is, it's always been the men in my life who have worried about marriage, or have fallen for me first, or have proposed, or who have gotten really wrapped up in the subject of Where We Are Going. And I am kind of an unrepentant bitch, but I don't think that's why. Or maybe it is, but it's also because I have always had to fight against the message that a man choosing me would determine my worth. I have known for ages the whole kit-and-caboodle of the yay-marriage industry in the US was crap. I stopped giving a shit about that ridiculous rot, and instead I have busily spent my time asserting and building my accomplishments and abilities in order to show my worth as a person, because I knew as a woman I would have to prove it over and above men even to be handed a nugget of respect. Women know this - we don't even have to as good as men, we have to be way better to get any credit.

But the men in my life never had to work like that. They didn't have to struggle to get any respect as intelligent, capable people despite their gender, and they certainly didn't struggle against a societal norm telling them the only way they'd be assured of their value is by being chosen by a woman. And so men can just moon over their non-marriage, whereas I must continually prove my intelligence and capabilities and general ninja-skills, because I have an uphill battle to get respect, what with having breasts and all. So I'm going to pine over a marriage where I have to do MORE housework? Fuck that.

Also, the women my age or older I know who are not married or have children yet? We are over the moon about that, frankly. We have made a conscious choice to be unwed and barren, either because we want to remain unwed and barren, or because an attractive opportunity to be otherwise has not presented itself. Given everything from social conditioning to annoying, patronizing elders who assure you, "You'll change your mind when you get older," being female and unwed and childless is not just a life accident, but a position you have had to stake out and then build a trench around and defend with all your might.

So, do I think there is any real truth to the whole women are chasing and men are running away thing? Of course not. Do I understand that some women can buy into that, and I feel a little sorry for them that they place their value as women on receiving shiny rings?* Totally.

But the men in my life whinging about not being married? Can just shut up.



*Not that I am knocking shiny rings. In my past life I believe I must have been a magpie; I am compulsively attracted to shiny things. In fact, if anyone wants it to give me shiny jewelry, I will happily accept it, unless there is a white wedding dress involved in the bargain.