swirling thoughts

This is what I have so far. (Trigger warning: rape, rape culture, rape ableism, rape apology)

It isn't just that women's magazines provide rapist language, it isn't just that rape jokes fuel rape culture, it isn't that both make it harder to get rapists convicted. The hardest thing, is that sex culture is rape culture in our society.

My college roommate (the first one) came to me once and told me she'd just had sex with her boyfriend, but she was drunk and didn't want to, but that was okay, right? It had to be okay, right? I don't know why she confided in me. Probaby because I'd just put a man in prison a few months before (though for a consensual encounter) and wasn't afraid to feel about it around her. I was already the first phone call for a lot of the girls on my floor, they called me when they needed a walk home from a party, because I absolutely didn't party. The concept of getting drunk and grinding with people has never appealed to me. It appealed to me far less at 18 than it does now.

The scariest night was the phone call to come help. And I slipped on my shoes, tossed on a jacket, and went and found out that a guy had taken Amy upstairs and none of the other guys were letting any of the other girls go upstairs to check on her. A threat to call the police and get everyone (including myself) arrested/ticketed for underage drinking, got Amyl released from upstairs and a group of left the party, but not before I was verbally abused for what I'd done. And then thanked a million times by Amy before she threw up on my shoes. She didn't remember the encounter the following morning.

It got to be a habit, rescue girls from dangerous situations, walk them home, or just walk them home drunk at all. Some of the police knew me, knew I wasn't drunk when I was seeing my floormates home safely, it became an odd sense of pride for me. It didn't really occur to me that I was rescuing them from sex they didn't want. To me, I was just bringing them home, tucking them in, making sure we all went to the res hall to eat the morning after. I was saving them from a certain ticket if they'd tried to make the walk back alone.

Lisa wasn't even the scariest situation, but she taught me to absolutely always hold my ground with what I was doing to protect these girls. These girls. I don't know when they became that, but I adopted them as these girls, all of them, any of them who needed a walk. Lisa had her walk, and had fallen in the elevator. My roommate burst into my room, telling me that Lisa fell and I needed to help. They were about to arrest her boyfriend because they suspected roofies, and no-one wanted Lisa ticketed for underage drinking. The police told me I had to leave and I asked if I'd be forcibly removed if I didn't, and they said no, and I stayed an advocate for Lisa. Including going outside, tackling her boyfriend, and threatening to beat the shit out of him. Which is where he full on confessed in front of the firefighter who had been very nicely looking the other way, that Lisa'd had a whole bottle of Jack Daniels, and nothing to eat, and he wanted to get her home before anything happened.

So it wasn't roofies, but I was the only one who could drive and her boyfriend was about to get himself arrested. So I advocated for him too, talked the police out of arresting him and drove him to the hospital, going 20 miles an hour in a snowstorm where I could barely see out the front windshield. My roommate? She asked me to sneak her into her boyfriend's dorm. Yes, the same boyfriend who had coerced sex - raped - her earlier. And I complied. I don't know what happened that night. I don't doubt that her boyfriend seems like a good guy, but I'd rather be friends with the one getting arrested because he's trying to get help for his drunk girlfriend after he tried to get her home to bed.

Alcohol. I didn't mean this to become a story of the drunk girls I've known and helped (and the ones I haven't), but there it is. Sex and rape and how it's portrayed is on my mind. My roommate said yes to her boyfriend because she was drunk and she didn't know it was okay to say no to him, and that if she did say no and he still pushed, that he was an asshole. I can think of several movies where the pushy guy gets the girl, despite her protestations. The one portrayed as the asshole? That's the guy bringing his drunk roommate home who gets her ticketed and pumped full of IV fluids. How dare he get her into trouble. Yes, how dare he not leave his girlfriend in a toxic situation and use every opportunity to take advantage of her. She fell in the elevator. He could have propped her up, carried her to her room, and done whatever he wanted. Instead, he sent for help, and somehow, I wound up involved.

Again, I'd rather be his friend 20 times over than be the friend of my roommate's boyfriend (this also wasn't the first, nor the last time that he was an ally for women's autonomy). It doesn't work like that, though. My roommate's boyfriend was friendly, affable, all around a an-all american boy. He was the boy joking at the parties, going just far enough, but not entirely across the line at these parties with the drunk girls. And when it was all said and done, he took my roommate home and raped her. They broke up, he cheated on her. I never asked details. If "cheating" was "raping another drunk woman" I didn't want to hear it. So I willingly remained ignorant.

Which is another point. The willingness to remain ignorant, to close our eyes to what happens when the door to the room with the drunk girl latches shut. 2nd scariest situation with a drunk girl involved just that, and actually choosing to go through the door and find out what was going on. That quickly became a physical battle to keep him off her, ending in a sleepless night and a litany of verbal abuse that only abated when he passed out.

Aside from Lisa, there never was any calling of the cops. The scariest rape situations other than my own that I've been in, and I never called the cops. To be fair, I never called the cops the first time I'd been raped either. It's not that I couldn't have, it's not like in any of the situations, if I desperately wanted to, I couldn't have found a way to get a phone and call them. It's that these were likeable boys, and drunk girls, and what did anyone really expect to happen? How do you explain to the cops "Well, nothing's actually happened, but it might, and oh yea, everyone's piss-ass drunk"? I was shaken up by one of these stories and told a friend, it had been on my mind, all the steps plaguing me, and she said "I have a comment about drunk girls, but I'm not going to make it now because you'll get upset." As if I wouldn't get upset at her thinking that friendly, all-american boys can't be assholes and it's the women who somehow asked for these men to stumble upon them and rape them.

The persistent guy always gets the girl, and for my own rape, on the police report, it says "there is no evidence to suggest that a crime has occured". The all-american boy was home with a girl and decided to be persistent. That's what happens in the movies. How dare I say no to that. How dare any woman rise against that socially ingrained concept and demand their own autonomy. Men don't get convicted of rape because the men who are doing the raping are the men we all either want to be like, or just want to like ourselves. How dare I even talk about what has happened to me, and, more importantly, what has happened to these other girls, my girls, all of them. The 18 and 19 college girls at parties, with roundabout good men, and I come off as an absolutist bitch. Or, more commonly than not, I say something, and people look at these men, these "good" men, and decided that something must have been misunderstood in their stories and actions (studies that I won't link to, but are easy to find, show how this wholly not the case, there is no misunderstanding, there is definitely an intent to rape these girls).

Calling out rapists is exhausting, and seeing them at parties long after you've called them out, smiling and haming it up, the life of the party, going just far enough with these girls is a stab to the heart, over and over and over again.

This is what right here, right now, I can't take. I can't take it being the only one to watch the creeps. This isn't diatrabe against all men, not in the slightest. Lisa's boyfriend was a standup guy, and I wish I'd kept into contact with him (facebook had just barely been invented when I moved off the floor that Lisa lived on). He's the guy you want at a party, the one who leaves all the doors open and calls the police when he needs to. No this has been a diatrabe against the men that someone has come to you and said "hey that asshole raped/almost raped/would have raped my friend" and you still laugh at parties with him, ignoring any and all doors he choses to close.

Maybe I worry too much, think things through too much, let things get under my skin and stay there, sometimes for almost a decade. Maybe. But I doubt it. There are so many reasons why rape is on my mind - Lisa happened about this time many years ago, I went to court for a restraining order around this time so many years ago, I stopped a man from raping a friend about this time so many years ago, I didn't attend a party a week ago because an all-american almost rapist was going to be there, old friends have found me on facebook and asked me "what's new" and I can't bear the thought of telling them, "nothing, it's the same old as it's always been."

Hobo Themed Wedding

Okay, confession time. I follow Regretsy. Don't judge me. I feel you judging me. Sometimes, in this crazy, messed up world, it's just nice to laugh. And no, the site isn't PC, and sometimes it's NSFW. But then there's April's Army, because if you can use your popularity for good, why not? Anyway, it's amusing, most of the time, but if you get easily offended, perhaps don't stray too far into the site.

Okay, that was all the preface to something Regretsy posted earlier - a link to the Etsy blog that featured a hobo-themed wedding. No, I'm not kidding. I like to tell my friends that 'Regretsy means never having to say you're kidding' and that definitely rings true here as well.

But even without Regretsy, I'd have found this offensive. Just the title of the post got that yucky feeling starting gnawing its way from my stomach. Then it got worse. As we prepared to make everything for our wedding, we collected feed sack dresses and old work boots, antique hand-stitched quilts and jug band instruments. And then I could actual taste vomit. The attire was hobo casual! They destroyed antique quilts! They had garbage can fires!

I know I don't need to remind people that we have an incredibly fragile economy right now, the unemployment rate is way too ridiculously high, the underemployment rate is even higher, people are losing their homes left and right, and we have a Congress that took us to the brink of disaster for shits and giggles. Even without that - even if our economy was robust and unemployment was ridiculously low - invoking a time and period in our history when things weren't just bad, they were about as low as one could go is just sick. Because this had nothing to do with fashions of the times. No, this was entirely about the culture of the times. Sick sick sick.

Not to mention, it took a while for the comments to turn, and that, that is why I'm writing about this, and my utter contempt for humanity. It takes until user kaytaa for the tide to start turning and people to stop heaping praise over spending $15 grand to dress up like poor people. Seriously, scroll up. It's sickening.

I just have no faith in anyone or anything right now. It's not a good idea, it's not creative, it's not chic, and if you're thinking of saying it is, you need to examine your privilege. And then you need to stay the hell away from me.

call it what you want, it's an elite super congress, and it's wrong

If my Representative isn't in this elite group of 6 House reps, then what use is he? If all he can do is vote yes/no on these recommendations OR vote yes/no on BBA, then why bother having him there at all? If he can't advocate for me, for the people of his district, in the shaping of these huge, sweeping cuts that will affect his district, then how is he doing the job for which he was elected?

How are the other 429 Reps? This country is about to be represented by 12 people instead of 535.

And that's beyond sick.

And if those other 429 Reps reject that only 6 of them have any power, their fallback is BBA.

What the hell is this country?

boehner's bill

I'm watching the live vote of the House bill. I like watching votes, no matter the bill - I enjoy the adding up of numbers to get to the magic pass number.

It passed 218-210 - one more than needed to pass.

It passed because Boehner agreed to add the constitutional amendment provision: that the debt ceiling cannot be raised a second time UNLESS Congress approves and sends to the states for ratification, a balanced budget amendment.

As if anyone needed any more proof that the Tea Party is willing to hold anyone - even their own party and leaders - hostage to get what they want. Which makes me feel sorry for Boehner, even if just a little. Because I think it's safe to say that without those tantrum throwing Tea Partiers, we wouldn't be on the brink of default. Is that really a risk to take simply to get everything you want?

Especially as it's a futile want, as the bill now heads to the Senate to die?

I understand politics better than most of my friends, but this I can't even comprehend at all.

Oslo

People were asked to leave their roses all over the city.

And they did. And they marched, and they filled their streets carrying makeshift torches. The police estimate that around 200,000 people gathered in Oslo alone.



Some of these images are incredibly beautiful. Some of these images are incredible sad. Some are both.

here, in Norwegian, but the google translator does an okay job with the translation

nice dose of humanity

Okay. The Asian markets are on their own, Boehner seems pretty damned determine to stomp his feet all the way through the crash of the fragile global economy, and things are just not happy in Norway. So I figure we could use a nice dose of humanity. Y'know, the good stuff. Feel-good things are perfectly okay right now.

So here it is:

Cadel Evans wins the Tour de France and holds the stuffed lion he won.

His nickname is also Cuddles.

My google news has Norway, the Debt Talks, and then a picture of a man in a yellow jersey holding a lion. Awww ....

on norway

“Then the devil took him into a high mountain and showed him the kingdoms of the world and said that he would give them to him if he would fall down and worship him. But Jesus said: Get thee hence, Satan. That’s the end of the story according to the good simple Matthew. But it wasn’t. The devil was sly and he came to Jesus once more and said: If thou wilt accept shame and disgrace, scourging, a crown of thorns and death on the cross thou shalt save the human race, for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Jesus fell. The devil laughed till his sides ached, for he knew the evil men would commit in the name of their redeemer.”

-The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham.

I find I don't have very many words to say.

Except - that in the face of such extreme violence, and a manifesto of violence, the reaction of the Norwegian government was to say more democracy, more humanity.

There is so much hope contained in those four words; so much promise that violence never has to define us.