Entries tagged with abuse

Entry tags:

The Vilification Of Gaslighting

Something I want to be careful of is the vilification of gaslighting. And by that, I mean that I want to draw a line between "this behaviour has harmful effects and we need to stop doing it" and "the people who gaslight are evil manipulators deliberately trying to drive you insane".

The reason why I want to draw that line is because characterizing it as the latter makes it too easy for people to distance *ourselves* from acknowledging when we do it. "I am not an evil manipulator, so I can't be gaslighting anyone." Even "evil" abusers see themselves as the victim in their stories.

The reason they abuse is because they have a *belief* that the actions they take are genuinely right, good, acceptable, appropriate, or warranted. Many of them feel that they are a good influence on others or that they are trying to better their victims or doing what they do for their own good. They can't change until they recognize that they are doing something wrong.

See The Villains As Ourselves

So when we use the latter definition, we give them justification room in their minds to excuse their actions. But if we use the former, then we ALL have to take a look at our own behaviour and keep working on bettering ourselves, and we can do that without the cognitive dissonance fighting us and telling us that we are a "good person" so this can't apply to ourselves. This makes it harder for outright abusers to excuse their own actions if the culture around them encourages this kind of reflection and correction of everyone.

Gaslighting is such a normal part of our society that we're mostly all raised with it all around us. That makes it difficult to identify when we do it ourselves.

One of the classic examples I use to illustrate non "abusive", well-intentioned gaslighting is a mother trying to get her child to eat her vegetables, the child says she doesn't like them, and the mother says in exasperation, "yes you do, now just eat them."

We likely have gaslighted people in these kinds of minor situations many times over our lives and never realized it, so never recorded it in our memories. Why should one of these totally normal conversations stick out in our minds, especially years later? It's *the way things are* in so many circumstances.

I can't remember anything specific but I'm sure I've said to people at various times "oh, yes you do!" when they said they didn't like something or didn't want something, and I'm sure I had good intentions when I did it. I'm not "evil", I'm a meat body driven by a belief engine and a product of my environment, which means I'm flawed.

The best I can do now is to be mindful of my language and try not to contradict people when they tell me their inner landscape. If I have reason to doubt them, such as suspecting *them* of trying to manipulate me, maybe I can ask for confirmation or I can point to conflicting *behaviour*, but I will try not to outright tell other people what they are feeling.

In this post, I want to be clear that I'm doing something that I often rant against doing - stretching the definition of a very importantly narrow term. Gaslighting is not simply remembering things differently, or even *just* telling someone with confidence that their memory of a thing is wrong, even if the "thing" in question is part of the other person's inner landscape. The original term "gaslighting" is, in fact, the second definition I used in my opening paragraph.

In the movie Gaslight, which is where the term comes from, a husband is *deliberately* changing the level of the lighting in the house (created by gas lights, not electric lights), and when the wife comments on the change in light, he *deliberately* says there is no change, so that the wife comes to doubt her own senses over time. The husband does all this *deliberately* so that he can have his wife committed to an asylum so he can access her money. This is a 1940s villain caricature, an evil mustachio'd villain who knows he is doing evil and doing it maliciously and selfishly.

The problem is that this is not how real life "villains" operate. And that's the point that I'm making here. It's important to keep a narrow definition of terms like "gaslight" and "abuse" and not round up just anything uncomfortable to these terms. But we have to *also* make sure that we don't keep the definitions so narrow that it only applies to people in black hats cackling in their lairs and stroking their white cats while they plot world domination.

Because that leads to everyday, ordinary people doing horrible things and justifying themselves because they are not evil villains. We have everyday, low-key examples of people trying to convince other people that they are not experiencing the things that they are experiencing. This is not the same thing as correcting people's flawed memories or understanding of factual claims, although that can also be weaponized. I'm talking about "yes, you do like broccoli!" when you do not, in fact, like broccoli.

These small little disregards of our inner landscape *lead* to large disregards of other people's inner landscapes, because it's the same thing but a manner of scope. The mother *believes* that it's in her child's best interest to eat veggies. And she's right, it is in her child's best interest, and the mother is, in fact, in a position of authority and power over the child to do "what's best" for the child. This is the nature of that relationship.

So it's a very small step to go from a parent / child power dynamic who uses an agency-dismissing tool to manipulate and control one's behaviour, to a romantic partnership dynamic who uses an agency-dismissing tool to manipulate and control one's behaviour *for one's own good*. This is a tool we have been given by our society, so it's a tool we may not even notice that we are pulling out and using because our brains are little more than belief justification engines.

And if our society has also encouraged us to see villains as black hatted evil caricatures of people, then our giant justification engines are going to work overtime to make sure that we are not Bad People(TM). And since we are not Bad People(TM), we therefore cannot be doing the things that Bad People(TM) do.

And THAT is the point of this piece. Gaslighting, the action, needs to be understood as a Very Bad Thing, but it needs to be separated from our personal identities as a thing that only Very Bad People do. The action is a tool that we have all been taught how to use. It's normal and reasonable for people immersed in a culture that uses this tool to reach for the tool themselves. It is an *inappropriate* tool, but the people who use it are regular, everyday people who have understandable reasons for reaching for it.

And now that you know it is a common, ubiquitous even, tool in all of our toolboxes, we ought to be on the lookout for when *we* reach for this totally normal, common but unhealthy tool. Gaslighting is not a tool reserved only for the most evil of all evil people. It's a tool that everyone has been exposed to, and taught how to use. All you have to do now is teach yourself how to put that tool down and reach for another one.

Entry tags:

Stop Rounding Everything Up To "Abuse"

Here's something else I'd like to see everyone stop doing - if someone is mean to you on the internet, stop calling that "abuse".

Yes, there are ways to be abusive on the internet. And yes, there are people who do that. But most of the time, it's not *abuse*, which is about *power*. It's someone being a jerk.

I'm a jerk. I'm mean to people. But don't confuse me losing my temper at something really fucking irritating that you did with "abuse".

When we start "rounding up" behaviours as "abuse", we dilute the whole conversation around abuse, particularly domestic abuse, parental abuse, and intimate partner violence, and also bullying. These are very real, very serious issues that we need to keep talking about and keep talking about. Someone yelling at you on the internet? Not abuse. Even if it hurts.

Did they dox you? Did they reveal personal information? Did they violate your consent? Did they use their position of power and authority to silence you? To turn people or entire communities against you? Did they withhold a valuable resource from you?

These are things that can be discussed in a conversation about abuse.

Did they yell at you? Tell you that you were hurting them? Accuse you of hurting others? Tell you to leave them alone? Call you petty names (but not names with the weight of systemic oppression behind them)? Block you from their personal profile? Use swear words where you could read them? Disagree passionately with you?

These things are not abuse. Depending on the context, they could be someone being a jerk (or they could be a legitimately valid reaction to you being a jerk). But these things do not constitute abuse.

Stop throwing that word around like it's going out of style. You are devaluing a very, very important word.

Entry tags:

Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire - Escaping Abuse & Leaping Into Relationships In Polyamory

OTG don't start a relationship with someone who is in the process of leaving an abusive partner! And for fuck's sake, don't get upset when they act inconsistent or seem to reconcile or "go back" to said abusive partner.  Abuse does all kinds of fucked up shit to a person's head and they really need to find their own identity before beginning a new relationship.

Escaping one abusive partner into the arms of another creates a coercive dynamic because of the fucked up shit going on inside the victim's head, *even if you try very hard not to be coercive*.  The key part here is the loss of identity. Abuse wipes out victims' identities, and without a clear sense of who they are as an individual person, they are unable to create healthy boundaries for themselves in other relationships *which makes those other relationships coercive by nature*.

You cannot force someone out of an abusive relationship before they're ready, and you SHOULD not encourage them to leap straight from the abusive relationship to a new relationship, poly or otherwise.

Be "on call" for them to go pick them or their stuff up at a moment's notice, field or facilitate the finding of a new place to live so that their abuser doesn't find out about it, believe them and give them space, and most importantly, don't take it as a personal rejection or blame them when they inevitably backslide in some way including going back to their abuser.

Abuse does all kinds of fucked up shit to a person's head. If you can't be a proper support system for a victim, which includes not pushing them into leaving before they're ready and not complaining about how hurt you feel or that they "used" you or "played you" or "ditched" you when they end up not leaving or they gradually stop talking to you or they go back to their abuser, then back the fuck out of their lives. Otherwise, you risk making things worse for them.

For a better idea on how to be a "proper support system" for a victim, check out the resources in the back of Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft which includes books on how to be the loved one of an abuse victim.

This was in response to a "couple" who wanted advice on how to start a relationship with "a third" who was trying to escape an abusive partner. Other people's responses were ... abhorrent. Some of them argued for this couple to "just go get her out of there" and a few suggested that it's not the best idea but you can be careful or otherwise not treat this like an actual life or death situation that it could become.

To that, I must give a reminder: escaping from an abuser is the most dangerous time for a victim. This is the time abusers are most likely to escalate the violence to murder.

This is not only dangerous for her, it's dangerous for everyone around her. She doesn't need to escape into your home, she needs to escape to a place that knows how to keep her safe from an escalating, now pissed off abuser and that fully understands the situation she is in.  Every time you hear about some woman and her kids or her parents or her new boyfriend being murdered by an ex, it's almost always during the time she is trying to escape the ex. Everyone around the victim becomes a target for an enraged abuser.

What do you think an abusive ex, hell bent on power and control and now extra pissed off that his little punching bag is leaving, is going to think of the new boyfriend *and girlfriend* who "stole her away"?  He's going to *blame* the couple and polyamory as being a bad influence on his girlfriend and believe that he needs to teach everyone a lesson and reassert his authority. This is the time when previously emotional-only abusers escalate to physical violence too.

I can't stress enough what a dangerous time this is for her and why the concern needs to be what's in her best interest, not what's in your pants. That's also why you can't force her to leave if she's not ready. Only she understands the extent of the danger she is in, and if her mind has to rationalize why she stays in order to keep herself safe, then that's what she needs to do.

Please, everyone, read Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. This is so much more serious than most people who haven't been there really understand.

Entry tags:

But Men Are Not Emotional, They Are Logical!

I tell ya, I'm really irritated at men who think they don't act emotionally.

I recall once where I was complaining about someone who emailed me to say that they weren't going to buy anything from my t-shirt shop until I included this one gender combination on my shirts that I had left out when I had come up with like a dozen different combinations, and I said that I was going to refuse to add that combination just because he demanded it and if he wanted that combination he would have to request a custom shirt to purchase like anyone else who wanted something that wasn't already in my shop. My partner to whom I was whining pointed out that I was reacting emotionally, and I said "yup! I am feeling petty so I'm just not gonna" or something to that effect.

I had another relationship once where the entire fucking relationship could be summed up as "he doesn't believe that he reacts according to his emotions and thinks everything he does is perfectly logical and reasonable". OTG he was like the most irrational, illogical, emotion-based person I've ever known, he was just really good at *justification*.

Like the time that he got all freaked out when I started dating someone new. He refused to acknowledge it, but he had been hurt really badly in his first serious relationship (and now that I know more about culturally enforced, misogyny-based abuse, I can see now how he did it to himself, but that's another tale). So every relationship he had after that point was arranged to prevent him from feeling that hurt ever again.

So he refused to tell me that I couldn't date this other guy, which is a good thing. And he refused to *ask* me if I would not date this other guy, which is also a good thing. But he couldn't admit that he was *bothered* by me dating this other guy. Instead, one week, before I and the other guy even decided that we wanted to date, my then-partner counted hours.

So, here's the thing... there was a special, one-time showing of an indie film happening in the new guy's town, which was 2 hours away from me and my then-partner. He organized a group of mutual friends to go and invited me along. My then-boyfriend wanted to go too, which I thought was weird because he never expressed interest in that type of movie before or in that group of friends, but whatever, it was a group outing.

So we get to the movie and the new potential moves into the row of seats. My boyfriend cuts me off to get into the row before me and sits next to the potential, so that I couldn't sit next to him. So I stood there, looking at him oddly until he got up and let me sit between them.

After the movie, everybody hugs everyone goodbye as is common in that group of friends and my potential gives me a kiss on the cheek, which is new for us. The rest of the way home was stony silence until I pushed him into an argument. He got all pissed off at me for inviting him along on this "date", why didn't I just tell him to stay home so that he didn't have to watch his girlfriend making out with another dude?

Keep in mind that this guy was a poly *veteran* and I had 2 other boyfriends at the time, one of whom he has watched flog me and make out with me at parties before.

So no amount of explaining or clarifying that this wasn't a "date", that I didn't "invite" the boyfriend, he invited himself, that we didn't "make out", and that I had already told him that the new potential was a potential and we were dancing around the idea of dating. The argument ended, but never got resolved.

But I tell that story not because of the content of the event, but because the 4-hour round trip car trip that I took *with my then-boyfriend* and the 2 hours spent at the theater *in a group not talking to each other* was "counted" among the hours I had spent with the new potential. Which is bad enough on its own, but then he also *deducted* an entire 24-hour period that I had spent with him that week, which was not scheduled and which cut into my crafting time even though I had a con deadline coming up, but that I offered to spend with him anyway because I could tell he was feeling anxious and left out and I wanted to reassure him.

So, if you add up the 6 hours for the movie and take away the 24 hour spontaneous date, that makes 6 hours for new guy and 4 hours for existing guy, so clearly new guy wins and I'm obviously more interested in him than existing guy and planning to dump him soon. Those are numbers! They're objective fact! There are no emotions here! 6 is clearly bigger than 4! You can't argue against that!!! He's not being irrational or lashing out because of his emotions, he's just plainly stating facts. And facts are facts.

I mean, except for the part that his numbers were completely pulled out of his ass, the point is that he couldn't admit to reacting out of his emotions, which don't necessarily reflect reality. No, he had to retreat into "logic" and "reason", which were anything but logical or reasonable. But to him, he had to have an *argument*, a *case* to win. There was no sharing together, no collaboration, no acknowledgement whatsoever that feelings ARE FUCKING REAL THINGS and affect the way we perceive the world and the way in which we see ourselves.

His problems were way deeper than this example, btw, but I don't want to spend any more time on talking about him because it's not just him. One of the reasons why I always identified more as masculine is because I have such little patience in dealing with emotional conflict. Almost every relationship I've ever been in has ended in *his* tears because he has such overwhelming emotions that he doesn't know what to do with them. But, at the same time, these guys just. refuse. to admit. that they're feeling feelz. So I get stuck in HOURS-long debates, day after day, as they try to "reason" with me about whatever the fuck has them feeling insecure. So after a few years, I just threw my hands up and said "fuck, you guys are so fucking emotional!" and stuck with casual sex for a while because I was so damn tired of managing other people's emotions.

Then, I started getting into poly relationships with guys who supposedly are better at communication and not so attached to toxic masculine standards. Nope, same bullshit. Emotion fucking everywhere, but long "debates" to hide them behind. And Cthulu forbid you point out to them that they're having a fucking feeling! Well, anger is OK to feel, and frustration. But being afraid? Feeling not worthy? Feeling small? Feeling unloved? Shit, even the good emotions - happiness is OK (not to my fucked up ex above, though), but tenderness? Vulnerability? Even elation and non-sexual passion is touchy because if you feel *too much*, that's also not manly. Or something.

But feelings are what give us the motivation to act. They're how we prioritize what we want to act on and how we're going to act. We literally cannot make decisions without feelings. And when some guys get it in their heads to do something that ends up hurting someone else, they get really entrenched in the idea that they've logically, rationally, thought everything through and decided this was the best course of action, when in reality, they *felt* something and reacted and then post hoc logicked up their justifications, which they now are invested in maintaining because to do otherwise would reveal the illusion that they are reacting in emotion.

I'm even willing to concede some things if they say "I want it done this way because I'm feeling emotions" instead of trying to logic me into agreeing with them. I had a freakout with a partner a while back, and I asked him to do something for me that, honestly, is a little unreasonable. But I owned it. I knew when I asked him that it was unreasonable, and I admitted it and I admitted that I asked it of him because I was feeling.

So I also said that it was OK for him to say no, and I had to really mean that. Before even asking, I got comfortable with the possibility that he would say no, and I resigned myself to just dealing with the feelings. If this is how men approached it with me, I might be a little more willing to bend on some things. I might actually be willing to do the unreasonable thing, because this kind of self-awareness and ownership is a good sign that they really will work through the feelings and the unreasonable thing won't be a permanent setting or a pattern of the future.

But, in my experience, that's not what guys do. They have an emotion, they react, and they instantly come up with all kinds of "logical" reasons for taking action. We know that people do this all the time, about, like, everything. There are even studies for it. See? Logic & reason & science, so there! So when I get mad about it, we have to fucking *debate* every goddamn detail like it's a fucking courtroom case that can be won or get thrown out for a technicality, and all of it misses the main point - that he's feeling something.

There are 2 other examples here, both from one guy. In one, he refused to admit that he was afraid and that his fear was clouding his judgement. In the other, he owned up to the fear, but then made his partners responsible for it.

The first example: he was absolutely terrified of HSV. Y'know, the "std" that is the most common and least harmful of all of them? The one you can get from your fucking grandma? But not just from fucking your grandma, just to be clear. So, through a long chain of network metamours, he "discovered" (because he forgot that it was disclosed it to him when he became connected to the relevant part of the network) that some metametamour had HSV, but that all the people between him and that person consistently test non-reactive for it.

So he threw a fucking fit over it and the idea that one of his partners was fluid-bonded to someone who was connected to this other metametamour. He didn't want his partner and her other partner to be fluid-bonded because of his phobia, so he bombarded them with "studies" about how latex barriers reduce the risk of transmission. He retreated into "logic" and "studies" and "science" because he couldn't admit that he was terrified of something that actually posed no threat to him (and I mean that literally, he later tested reactive for HSV himself and had it the whole time, he just didn't know about it because he was asymptomatic). It would be like a big manly man admitting a phobia of mice or something. Instead, he had to scour the internet looking for studies on rabies in mice and people who got sick from exposure to housepets. There's even more outrageousness to the story, but this post is already long.

The other example, he was absolutely terrified of his partners having other partners. And by "terrified", I mean that he described his feelings in terms of someone going through a PTSD trigger episode and he used that to justify the use of PTSD therapy techniques to deal with it.

What I mean is that he admitted that he was having a totally irrational emotional meltdown at the very idea of his wife having a male partner. He owned up to that. But then he *used* that to justify controlling his wife's behaviour. He ranked various sex acts from kissing to PIV, even breaking down different *positions* for sex as their own separate item. Then his wife was not allowed to do each act until he went through a "desensitization" process that included first thinking about them doing the act, then talking about them doing the act, then them doing the act in front of him, and then finally doing the act without him present but her describing it afterwards. Each time resulted in shaking and a literal catatonic state, and only when he could do that stage without shaking and going catatonic could the wife and her boyfriend move to the next stage.

However, as the wife racked up individual sex acts that she was allowed to do with her boyfriend, this guy used that as "proof" that he was "getting over it". See? This is how PTSD is treated! There are papers on it! He's following an approved psychological method! It's science! How can it be wrong?

As I read through Why Does He Do That, on the section on how individual psychotherapy and marriage counseling actually enables abusers because it doesn't attack the root issue and instead solidifies the attention back on the abuser (which is what he wants), this is so clearly what's happening here. He's going through the motions of being a "sensitive" man, of acknowledging his "feelings", but then he pawns off the responsibility for dealing with those feelings onto his female partners and backs up his actions with "logic" and "science" and "reason". And he never reached a point at which he had to stop "desensitizing" himself to things, he just got "desensitized" to specific actions. He still "needed" this massively invasive controlling behaviour because he never stopped feeling his feelings. He just moved various activities in and out of the "trigger" category by making his partner responsible for "triggering" him.

He, like so many others, can't just say that he's having strong feelings and those feelings are making him act like an asshole because it's hard not to act like an asshole when you're feeling strong feels. Just, will guys just fucking start owning up to lashing out in feelings for a change? Maybe then we can start moving onto what to do about those feelings so that you don't act like an asshole in response to them, but right now I'd settle for guys who just own it first.

And you? You right there? The guy who is shaking his head in amazement at all the assholes I've known and feeling just a little bit smug that you don't do this (or you stopped doing this)? Yeah, you probably still do.

Watch on YouTube

Entry tags:

Feminist Country Music

Country music has a bad reputation for being pretty misogynistic. The current crop of pop country is especially bad about that, sparking an epidemic of songs about girls in tight shorts who do nothing but sit in the cabs of pickup trucks. But like most genres, country is actually pretty diverse and has a prestigious lineage of feminist music. I've been building a playlist of "feminist" country music and I'm up to more than 50 songs so far.

Unlike Hollywood, however, this list is nuanced and shaded. The movies would have us believe that there are only 2 kinds of feminist representations - the badass Strong Female Character who can kick ass (except when she needs to be rescued by the leading man, of course) and has no other personality, and the man-hating harpy.

But this playlist shows many sides to the "strong woman". It's not all about women beating up their abusive men in retribution, although those songs exist too. In many places, it intersects with classism (although, to be fair, it's still predominantly white, as is the larger country genre, but there is one song in there about interracial relationships at a time when they were still taboo), where sometimes some ideals have to be sacrificed for the more immediate need of survival. Sometimes it's not about triumphing at all, but about existing in a misogynistic society.

There are tales of revenge, of liberation, of parenthood, of singlehood, of being caged, of sexual freedom, of running out of choices, of standing up to authority, of making the system work in her favor, of rejecting her circumstances, of accepting her circumstances and making the best of them, of birth control and abortion and sex, of career options and motherhood choices, of sorrow and pride and love and heartache and loneliness and optimism.

They are all stories of being a woman. This is what feminism looks like.

Watch on YouTube

Entry tags:

Dan Savage's Campsite Rule Is Bullshit

I am not a fan of Dan Savage. He occasionally says something not terrible, but so do a lot of other people who don't fill the rest of their time with toxic nonsense. Just because a stopped clock is right twice a day, it doesn't mean that you should rely on that clock as your timepiece. A working clock is also right those same 2 times a day, but it's right all the rest of the time too.

This rant is brought to you by Savage's Campsite Rule. This rule states that you should leave your partners "better" than you found them, including no stds, no unwanted pregnancies, and no emotional or sexual baggage because of their experience with you. Aside from that being literally impossible to guarantee, the problem I have with the campsite rule is that it relies on the very person most at risk of being the problem to self-evaluate.

I've been involved in identifying abusive dynamics in my communities in the last several years, and what we've all learned the hard way is that abusers see themselves as victims even while they're actively abusing someone. Asking one of them to take on the responsibility of not leaving their partner worse than they found them is like asking unicorn hunters to take on the responsibility of not harming their unicorns, or the police department to evaluate and take on the responsibility of correcting its own level of racism and corruption. We need objective and independent evaluations, not our subjective opinions of ourselves which are inherently biased to think of ourselves as "Good People".

Abusers blame their victims for their situation. The abuser always come away from abusive relationships thinking that *the abuser* was the "good one" and that the victim is worse off without the abuser in the picture. I'm sure we've all heard "what does she see in that loser? She could have a Nice Guy like me! Women just want guys who are assholes! They don't even have enough sense to notice a good catch like me when I'm right in front of them!"

Abusers think that their victims are not capable of making good choices for themselves and they require corrective action from the abuser. The abuser is the one who knows how the victim should live / date / dress / eat / work / be! The victim is lost without the abuser to tell them the proper way to cook eggs and raise children and dress for work and clean the house and think about themselves! So the abusers say.

So I'm not a fan of telling people to leave their partners "better off" than they found them because abusers - the people most in dire need of these sorts of restrictions - honestly think they *are* doing that. They think that their victims *came* to them with baggage and that the abuser is the only one who can "straighten them out".

In the book Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft, we hear stories from the sessions with abusive men. Without exception, they believe that their partners are the fucked up ones, that their partners need their corrective hand to survive, that their partners will ruin their own lives without their personal guidance, and that they are absolutely justified in whatever tactics they employ to "guide" their victims.

We all like to think of ourselves as the heroes of our own story. In my observation, it's the victims who are most likely to think that they are too "broken" to be a good partner for someone and everyone else doesn't really believe at the beginning of a relationship that they will one day become a bad influence on their partners. Even without being an abuser, most of us genuinely do not believe that we will one day break up and our partners will be a bigger mess because of their experience with us.

I know that I've had partners, in my early poly days, who were absolutely not ready to deal with ethical non-monogamy. And to this day, I still do not believe that I treated them unethically. But their pre-existing issues did not mix well with my more advanced relationship skills or my own flaws and some of them probably have some baggage after dating me. I am not a beginner relationship. If you throw someone into a situation that is too advanced or too complicated for them to handle at that stage, they're likely to come away from that experience with a few issues.

*We* are generally not the right people to evaluate ahead of time what will or will not be "good" for someone after it's over. We're not even very good at evaluating what will be good for ourselves, let alone other people.

So I think that is a terrible metric to use in evaluating ethics in relationships. We have more concrete, objective metrics involving power dynamics and domestic violence red flags. We should not be relying on our own subjective opinion of ourselves when it is ourselves that need evaluation for potential harm. We are too biased for that evaluation.

Entry tags:

The Cost Of Emotional Labor In Relationships

I wrote this post on Facebook 5 years ago. It turned out to be disturbingly prescient for a relationship I started after this post was written and ended more or less for this reason.

Me: I need this information to assess where I should place my boundaries.

Them: It hurts me that you would even ask me about that! Don't you trust me to tell you? Your boundaries make me feel bad. Don't you care about me to let me in?

Me: Sure, it's cool, I'll just do the emotional labor so that you don't feel bad.

If people wonder why I'm so standoffish and hard to get to know on an interpersonal level, this is why. It's easier to keep people at a distance than get into fights over who should be shouldering the burden of emotional labor. If I push, I'm a nag or I'm disrespectful of someone's hurt feelings. If I don't push, then I don't feel safe so I place my boundaries farther out and then I'm "cold" and "emotionally distant". Which hurts their feelings.

When I was a portrait photographer in a studio, I used to have lots of clients bringing in their toddlers and babies. It was my job to make their bratty, cranky, frightened children look like the advertisement photos of baby models who were deliberately selected for having traits conducive to producing flattering portraits (including temperament and parents whose patience was increased by a paycheck). I would spend more time than I was supposed to, patiently waiting for the parents to get their kids to stop crying and fussing.

Every single session, the parents would exclaim how patient I was! How did I do it?! What I couldn't tell them was that I had built a barrier in my head to tune them out. I just ... spaced. I did not notice the passage of time and I wasn't really paying them any attention. I just let my muscle memory control the equipment and make the noises that got kids to look and smile. It's an old trick I adapted from getting through assaults by bullies as a kid - tune out, mentally leave the body, make the right mouth noises to get the preferred response.

That kind of emotional labor management takes a toll. I couldn't express any irritation or annoyance at the client and I couldn't leave to let them handle the kid and the photographing on their own. So I learned to compartmentalize and distance myself while going through the physical motions.

But the price? I now hate kids. I used to like them. I was a babysitter, a math tutor, and a mentor and counselor. I originally went to college to get a counseling degree so that I could specialize in problem teens from problematic homes. Now I want nothing at all to do with kids unless it's an environment where I am teaching them something specific and I can give up on them the moment I am no longer feeling heard or helpful.

That's not what made me not want children, btw. I was already childfree-by-choice at that time. I just still liked them back then. Now I can only stand certain specific kids who are very good-natured, interested in my interests, and able to function independently (as in, introverted and not dependent on my attention).

So, yeah, I can do the emotional labor. But the cost is high. Doing the labor for too long, to the point where I have to shut myself off from empathy to bear the consequences of doing that labor, results in my emotional distance. That's what happened with my abusive fiance. He wanted a caretaker, not an equal partner. Everything I did to remain an independent person "hurt" him. I bent a little in the beginning, as I believe partners are supposed to do for each other. But eventually catering to his feelings while putting my own on the back burner took its toll.

So I shut down. In the end, I was able to watch him dispassionately as he lay on the concrete floor of our garage, supposedly knocked unconscious by walking into a low-hanging pipe conveniently in the middle of an argument. And then calmly walk upstairs without even a glance behind me to see if he was following. He described my breakup with him as "cold", like a machine. I had run out labor chips to give, even to feel compassion as I was breaking his heart.

Of course, I didn't recognize his behaviour as "abuse" until years later, or I might have bothered to get angry instead of remaining cold. Point is, emotional labor isn't free, and if you don't pay for it in cash or a suitably equitable exchange, it will be paid by some other means. I don't mean we should never do emotional labor for anyone, just that it needs to be compensated for because it will be paid one way or another.

Since this method has served to end several relationships with abusive men where I never felt "abused" because it didn't "stick" (I just thought of them as assholes), I don't feel much incentive to change it, even though it would probably be better to either not take on so much emotional labor in the first place (which is hard not to do because I *want* to do some forms of emotional labor in the beginning as an expression of love back when I'm still expecting a reciprocal exchange) or to leave or change things before I run out of fucks to give.

But I do eventually run out of fucks to give and I do eventually stop taking on too much emotional labor. And it always seems to surprise people when I do. Because I was so accommodating before so that I wouldn't push "too hard" or seem "too selfish". But that always comes with a price. People are often surprised to learn that.

Entry tags:

We Cannot Extrapolate From Young White Cismen What Everyone Else Would Do

This post was originally commentary I attached to a link to some other article that has since been removed and I don't remember enough of the article to search for an alternate copy of it or a wayback machine archive of it. But I've used this commentary in other discussions since, so I'm archiving it here. If I find a relevant article to attach to this commentary, I will amend this post. I think it might have been the story of the real-life "Lord of the Flies" where a group of boys was shipwrecked but they formed a cooperative culture until they were rescued? But I'm not sure.

I got into this argument with a former metamour once. Apparently she had read some well-written book about the Stanford experiment and waxed philosophical about the terrifying nature of people, and I criticized the experiment for its many flaws which means that we can't draw the conclusion that people are fundamentally evil and corruptible, but that *privileged white boys who want to impress their authority figure who removed their accountability in the first place* are the only ones we can draw that tentative conclusion about.

She also really did not like me saying that.

When people are raised at or near the top of the privilege ladder;

When they are given absolute authority with no accountability and no personal history of education or exposure to the responsibility of authority;

When their own authority figure involves himself personally in the experiment instead of recusing himself;

When *someone believes their victim is consenting* (because the victim is a volunteer who, presumably, can "opt out" at any time, and they don't understand what happens to a victim's ability to consent *even when they originally volunteered*);

When they believe the whole thing is play-acting and *are told to take on a particular role*;

When they come from a society that says one class of people is subhuman and then they are told to play a character in charge of said sub-human who is also supposed to be a "character";

When all these things happen, as they are far more likely to do when someone is raised white, male, and middle-class than in any other demographic, THEN you get this outcome.

When someone is raised with empathy as one of their highest values, and are taught throughout their life about the responsibility that comes along with authority, and that other people are real people too, and that consent can be revoked at any time but certain times are really difficult to retract consent from, and that rehabilitation is both more effective and more humane (and that it's admirable to be humane) than punitive justice systems - you don't get this outcome.

As we know, because we've seen how other cultures handle their justice system. And not everyone devolves like this.

Entry tags:

What Is A "True Dominant"?

www.quora.com/Is-there-a-difference-between-a-dominant-and-a-true-dominant-in-a-D-s-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Is there a difference between a dominant and a true dominant in a D/s relationship?

A. Yes, a "true dominant" is someone who doesn’t have a fucking clue what BDSM is all about and is using the language and the culture of kink to hide behind and excuse just being an asshole.

Everyone else understands that we all have a variety of tendencies and preferences and kinks and interests, and when someone's tendencies lead mostly towards the collection of behaviours and interests that are generally categorized under the heading "dominant", they can take on that identity label if they so choose.

But anyone who tries to gatekeep what a "true dominant" is, or calls themselves that, is anything but.

Entry tags:

How Can I Make My Child Do My Hobby And Not My Spouse's Hobby?

www.quora.com/What-can-I-do-if-my-wife-teaches-my-daughter-piano-but-I-want-her-to-do-gymnastics/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What can I do if my wife teaches my daughter piano but I want her to do gymnastics?

A. What does your daughter want?

She’s a human being. Her desires for her body, time, emotions, etc. are the only ones that matter here. If you’re funding her activities, you can technically be allowed to place limitations on them based on what you're willing to pay for, but as for encouraging her what TO do (as opposed to what not to do)? That’s all her.

Your interest in your daughter pursuing gymnastics is completely irrelevant. So is your wife’s interest in teaching her piano.

Find out what YOUR DAUGHTER wants to do and stop treating her like an extension of yourself that you get to force into doing whatever it is you’d rather be doing but, for whatever reason, aren’t doing yourself.

If she wants to learn piano, then that’s what she should learn. If she wants to do gymnastics, then that’s what she should do. If she wants to do both, then find a way to allow her to do both If she wants to do neither, then suck it up and treat her like the human person she is, and encourage her in her endeavors like a responsible, loving parent.

She is not your doll, to dress up in the profession and hobby you want her to do. She is a person. She gets to make the decisions about how she spends her time and what she puts her body through.

Honestly, these parents who think their children are extensions of themselves instead of human beings in their own right! This is how you get adult children who stop talking to their parents.

Respect her autonomy. She’ll be a much more loving daughter if you respect her.

Entry tags:

Have You Ever Considered Being Dumped As A Blessing?

www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-considered-being-dumped-as-a-blessing/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever considered being 'dumped' as a blessing?

A. Yes. I was dating a man who was abusing his other partners. I do not feel that he abused me, but only because I, coincidentally, hadn’t done anything that triggered his insecurities that led him to abuse his partners.

Abuse comes from a belief that it is OK to control another person. At the time, how I behaved was exactly what he wanted from me. So he had no need to attempt to exert his control over me because I was already doing what he wanted.

Then he got another girlfriend, and shortly thereafter she started dating someone else. That triggered his insecurities. So he attempted to control her to assuage his insecurities. She resisted that control, so he tried harder to control her, and it spiraled into abuse.

By the time I finally saw what was going on between them, *really* saw what was happening and not just believing what he was telling me about their relationship, I was in a position to be open and available to new relationships myself.

But because I saw how he was treating her, I got angry at him. I decided that I would not coddle him by making any concessions in my new relationship to make him feel better. I was just going to throw him in the deep end by allowing my new relationship to progress however it wanted, with no feedback from him.

He *really* did not like that. He had never before had a partner who didn’t give him a voice in her other relationships. He felt personally betrayed because his vote in my other relationship didn’t count.

Because his relationship with his victim had escalated to a ridiculous level, *all* of his other relationships were suffering. So he was constantly putting out fires - first trying to rein in his victim, and then trying to soothe his other partners (who he had already cowed into submission) who felt neglected by how much time he was spending reining in his victim.

Every relationship in his life was falling apart because of his one partner who kept resisting his control. His other partners had long since given up control to him, and I (until that point) hadn’t needed any controlling.

So his reserves were low. He had no more patience and no more ability to handle a partner who resisted him. And then I came along and did something that freaked him out (I started dating someone new), and not only did I resist his control, but I did so easily and without any conciliatory or apologetic attitude about how my resistance to his control might make him feel.

His victim, who did not realize he was trying to control her and all the drama was because she knew something was wrong but she couldn’t figure out what - she would resist his control but she would feel really badly about it because she couldn’t seem to understand why she kept "hurting" him.

I, however, had no such confusion. When he attempted to insert himself into my other relationship, I said plainly and immediately that he had absolutely no say in the matter of what I did with my body or time or emotions and he certainly did not get a say in what my new partner could do with his own body, time, or emotions.

I stood my ground. This shocked him so much that he dumped me with almost no build-up, surprising everyone around us. To all of us in the network, it seemed that my relationship with him was the only stable one he had. We didn’t have any of the constant drama that came with his victim trying to figure out why the gaslights kept changing levels (that’s a reference to the movie from whence the term "gaslighting" comes), and we didn’t have any of the arguments that he had with his other partners about how they never got to see him anymore because all of his time was taken up trying to manage his victim.

He and I were wickedly compatible in almost every way. We were even more compatible in some ways than he was with his wife of 20 years. So, to everyone in our network, our breakup came out of nowhere. It took one email exchange over this new partner of mine, where he insisted he should have a say in our relationship and I said absolutely not, and then he dumped me.

At the time I was hurt and angry. I had just lost my place to live and had to be "rescued" by a friend offering me a spare room, only to have that "friend" torture my cats while I was away resulting in both of their deaths. That was the 2nd of what turned out to be 7 moves in 2 years. I lost my housing, my cats, my boyfriend, and even my new partner decided to move to another state right when we got started (although we did not break up), and even my local community staged a coup against me when I tried to oust a guy who was beating his wife so I lost my entire social network too.

It was too much for me all at once, and I fell into a suicidal depression. A few months after that breakup, his victim finally escaped and she and I had several opportunities to talk about our experiences with him. I learned about a lot of things that happened in their relationship that I hadn’t known at the time because of the way that he controlled the narrative of their relationship.

So, in hindsight, him dumping me was probably the best thing he could have done. If he hadn’t, I would have stayed with him and continued to try and work with him on getting past his insecurities when he actually had no intention of getting past them because they were too valuable as a tool he could use to control his partners. I would have continued to minimize his abuse of his victim because I couldn’t see her side as clearly while I was romantically linked to him (although I had begun to see more of the truth before we broke up).

I was not ready to leave him, so I would have stayed with an abuser for much longer had he not made the decision for me. And I’m glad now that it didn’t drag on longer. I didn’t get out of there without scars. I’m not sure how bad the damage would be if I had stayed longer. As it is, I’m still not fully recovered. So I can only be grateful that he didn’t string me along any further.

When I look back over my past and think "would I really erase this from my history if I could?", most of the time I don’t think I would. As many people have said in other contexts, the experiences I went through have made me who I am today. Going back in time and preventing myself from having some of those bad experiences means I would not have come out the other side as the person I am now. So a lot of those experiences I would go through anyway.

But not this one. I would erase this entire relationship if I could. I would erase all the good memories along with the bad ones. I would do this for a couple of reasons - 1) I don’t like having all those happy memories tarnished by the after-knowledge that he was ultimately abusive and he fundamentally does not believe his partners can make decisions for themselves; and 2) I do not think that he deserves the memories of our good times or of my intimacy and vulnerability. I would take that away from him if I could.

Since I can’t rewrite history, all I can do is be grateful that he ended our relationship before I would have.

Entry tags:

Performing Arts & Overworked Staff: Let's Not Pretend We're OK

www.theatreartlife.com/technical/performing-arts-overworked-staff

"We need to stop pretending we're okay. We're not. We're tired, and crying in the dimmer room. Let's come out of the shadows into the light and do something about it."

I am pretty sure I know how I will die. It will likely happen one of two ways - I will suffocate to death because of the fucking chronic respiratory problems I developed after getting whooping cough when vaccination rates dropped, or I will be killed in an accident or die from something related to my shitty eating / sleeping / overworking habits on job site.

We have a saying - there are no old stagehands. I mean, of course there are, but so many more of us die early than we should, and most of the time it's preventable. We eat crappy food, we don't sleep enough, we stay awake too long doing dangerous manual labor, we work physically harder than necessary (dude, we have a forklift to unstack those!), we drink too much and do way too many recreational drugs.

One year, I actually stopped keeping track of the number of conversations I got into that started out like "hey, did you hear who died last week?!"

Our employers want to treat us like real employees when it benefits *them*, with dress codes and long lists of behaviour rules, but then turn around and treat us like freelancers in the monopoly days when it doesn't, with "oh, you can just push through one more hour without a break, can't you?" and "the show starts in 2 days so we will stay as long as necessary to get it going rather than schedule an extra couple of days for a reasonable work day length" and "sorry, we don't compensate for the $25 parking fee" and "no you can't wear that piece of clothing for medical reasons because it doesn't match our aesthetic" and and "but we gave you 8 hours between shifts, that should be plenty of rest even though you have to drive 2 hours each way and have things to do when you get home!" and "what do you mean you need a different person for each job position? Can't you do 3 job roles by yourself?"

No, we need a break every 2-2.5 hours, with a meal break on the 4-5 hour mark. We need OT for ever hour worked past 8-10 hours, and we need days that don't go past 10 hours *regularly*. We need enough time between our shifts to GET 8 hours of sleep, which includes our commute time and eating dinner when we get home and doing laundry and showering, not exactly 8 hours from the time you stop paying us to the time you start paying us again.

We need enough guys on site to accomplish the job safely, not as few as is *possible* to set a Guinness record. We need equipment that works. We need heavy equipment to do the heavy labor, like forklifts and scissor lifts, not rickety A-frame ladders and 4 tall dudes just because you think "tall" = "strong enough to lift this case that you used a forklift to stack back in the shop".

WE NEED ACTUAL MEAL BREAKS. 30 minutes is barely sufficient if food is provided and sitting there, hot and ready, the moment we go on break. An hour is the minimum if we have to go off property to find our own food, because it's still a 10 minute walk to the parking lot and another 15 minute or more drive to find food. And no, the solution to a crew who is not doing a satisfactory job is NOT withholding meals, but sending them home. If the crew is truly doing a poor job, you don't get to keep working them 10 hours without food. Fucking send them home and hire another crew.

And the clothing! We're fucking backstage! As long as our clothing is protective and not hindering our abilities, IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER WHAT WE LOOK LIKE. I can lift the exact same amount of weight in a polo shirt as I do in a tank top. Except in a tank top, I won't overheat when I lift. I can run my camera to the exact same skill level in a jacket as in a dress shirt. Except I won't be shaking the camera with my shivering if I'm warm enough and I can focus slightly better when I cut the wind from the a/c blowing in my face and drying out my eyes. When we are not in a public-facing customer service position, our attire does not matter past the point of legality or job performance.

If you want to pretend like you're a &"regular corporation" with all the rules and shit, then I want a fucking annual job performance review where someone sits down with me in an adult fucking manner and goes over my accomplishments and my areas for improvement, training opportunities, and a goddamn annual raise every year I work for you. I want anonymous supervisor surveys. I want salary standardization. I want an HR department that holds the company accountable for not treating people well. And I want some structure.

If the company can't provide all that shit, then don't pretend you're like a regular job. We're freelancers, either we get the benefits of freelancing that go along with the shit, or we get the benefits of a regular corporation that goes along with that shit. We should not get the shit of a corporation with the shit of freelance.

So stop treating us like shit.

#backstage #AVTech #AVLife #roadies #stagehand #entertainment #IMayHaveSomeOpinionsAboutThis #SoTired #AndYetStillSoPoor

Entry tags:

Abusers Do This Thing, Except When They Do The Opposite

I just read a thing that said "abusers are good at making your anger seem worse than their abuse." And I thought "yes! They do!"

But then I thought a little more about my last abusive ex. See, he would do this thing, where he would try to control his partners' behaviour, and they would do a thing that resisted that control, and then he would get angry at their resistance and call it "abuse" and accuse them of hurting him, of not caring about how their actions affected him, of destroying the relationship, etc.

If anyone accused him of "overreacting" or of blowing things out of proportion or of doing anything at all that was "too much", he threw it right back at them that they weren't allowing him to have his feelings (because all feelings are "valid", yo). He was VERY good at making it seem as though his victims were making his anger seem worse than the so-called "abuse" his victims were doing to him when they resisted his control of them.

I still remember the day one of them called me up in tears, hyperventilating, totally freaking out because she may or may not have broken some fucking rule they had, depending on how the rule was interpreted, and she was upset not because of what he might do in retaliation for breaking the rules, but because she thought she was a horrible, thoughtless person for 1) breaking the rule and 2) not knowing if the rule had been broken because she didn't get clarification on this point.

I made a blog post a while back where I used actual quotes from one of our email exchanges post-breakup where I told him that I did not want him to contact me again except to apologize for one very specific act he had done during the breakup, and he responded quite indignantly about how he didn't "consent" to me placing "limitations" on the conditions under which he was allowed to speak to me.

Dude, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

So, I realized that it's not so much that abusers do particular things like making your anger seem worse than their abuse. Because someone skilled in abusive tactics will make it seem like YOU are making THEIR anger seem worse than YOUR "abuse" of them, when in reality, their anger is part of the abuse.

And also, as I've learned, we all have abusive tactics that we have learned just through exposure to it throughout our lives, from our families and our culture. So when we are mistreated, we ALL reach into our own bags of tricks, and some of the responses we pull out can be pretty shitty too.

So sometimes (in my experience, basically all the time), it can be really difficult to tell who is the abuser and who is the victim, even if you apply the axioms "follow the lines of power and see who has the locus of control" and "the one who is trying to run away is probably not the abuser".  In this same relationship example, we all thought that the victim was the abuser at first because she was the one doing what seemed like controlling things. You see, he was also deeply fearful of losing the relationship. Abusers are in real pain and feeling real fear. What makes them abusers is how they deal with that pain and fear.

So, to prevent her from ever getting up the courage to leave him, he would play on her fear of losing the family group, which would fuck her shit up, thinking that she could lose everything at any given moment, and it would trigger her anxiety about being "left out".  To relieve her feelings of being left out, she would request that no sex happen among anyone unless the door was left open in an implicit invitation for her to join, even if she didn't want to join.

To me, that seemed incredibly controlling. But he was desperately afraid of losing his relationship with her and he desperately needed to make this a whole group thing with no individuality or independent-ness, so he made it seem like he was "acquiescing" to her demand to control the sex he was allowed to have, even though "everyone subsumes their identity into the group relationship and we are all one Borg, resistance is futile" was exactly what he was going for.

I'll be honest - the reason why I had a hard time believing that she was being abused is because I had a history with her as a metamour through another partner, and she tried to control our relationship then too. So it seemed totally in character to me that she was being controlling, even though it was contrary to every value she *spoke* for.

But her controlling behaviour was a *reaction* to HIS controlling behaviour, just as it was the last time (she had just gotten out of a relationship with an abusive metamour and used controlling tactics as a survival technique). Most of us develop toxic coping mechanisms to prolonged exposure to abuse. He provoked it by preying on her fear of being alone, left out, of losing the family group. And then, when things escalated to a level where I could more clearly see who was pushing whom, he strung her along by making it seem as though she were the one dismissing his anger to make it seem worse than her "abuse" of him.

So, it's not that abusers do any particular thing or particular tactic. It's that abusers flip the script. They take whatever tools you give them, whatever scripts that society gives them, whatever is available, and they flip it to make it seem like their victim is the "bad guy".  Some abusers are sophisticated about it and it can be really hard to tell that this is what they're doing. Others, like a particular villain in a TV show I'm watching right now, are really fucking obvious about it (#ProTip - if someone says "the whole world is against you / doesn't believe in you / is holding you back, and I'm the only one who accepts you / believes in you / trusts you / encourages you / is not holding you back", then they're being abusive, just FYI).

This is why I am not a fan of Non-Violent Communication. It's a ridiculously easy tool to convert into an abusive weapon, and we ALL have abusive tendencies - yes, even you, dear reader, you are not above this shit - so I've never seen NVC used in a healthy way.

And I don't need anyone to tell me "but I use it all the time!" 1) I'm sure there is someone out there somewhere for whom it has never been warped into a tool of abuse - statistics guarantees that this must be true somewhere - and the fact that someone like this exists is not the point; and 2) I just got done pointing out that we all have abusive tendencies, so in this rant, I am dubious of anyone's claim that they have never misused a communication tool because I believe we all have, either knowingly or unknowingly, simply because we are all fucked up and I'm not letting you off the hook for this.

I'm digressing. The point is not NVC specifically. The point is that abusers flip the script. The point is for them to make you question your reality, to question "who is the bad guy here?" and to come up with the wrong answer. And they will use whatever script they have access to in order to flip it.

So, an abuser may make your anger at them seem worse than their abuse of you. But they may also make it seem as though YOU are making their anger at you seem worse than your resistance to their control of you.  Sometimes anger is the correct and necessary reaction. When someone is trying to control you, your anger is appropriate. Anger is my primary defense mechanism, so let me tell you how hard it is for me to admit this next part... But sometimes anger is also a weapon, and you are totally correct to resist their anger at you, because their anger *is part of their abuse* and their efforts to make it seem like you're the one minimizing their anger *is part of the abuse*.

And I don't have an answer for you. I don't have a checklist for you. I don't have a listicle for how to make it easier to tell which is which. We can follow the lines of power (if they control your income, if they are your superior or supervisor in business, if they own the place where you live, if they influence who your friends are, etc.) and we can try to tease out who is running away and who is doing the chasing.

But those have limitations. Many abuse victims do not try to run away for a long time. Many of them are only *capable* of being abused because they're desperate to hold onto this relationship so they submit to the abuse out of fear. Or out of grooming - where they get the victim to submit to a small violation, and then the next larger violation is excused because it's so close to the first one the victim let through, and how can you let one go and not the other, you hypocrite?

And many people gain power over a romantic partner in ways that are invisible to outsiders. How many of you ask your friends the details of their economic situation? How many of you know who controls the income? When romantic partners are business partners, can you really tell, from the outside, that a division of labor based on skills doesn't have an element of power built in, such as one person controlling the money?

How many of you have witnessed those private conversations where one person steered another away from building intimate friendships with people the first person didn't approve of, and they did so subtly, without overt threats?

How many of you can *really* tell the difference, from the outside, between "that person makes me uncomfortable, so if you are friends with them, I will have to not be around them, but it's totally without expectation or obligation and your choice to be friends with them is OK with me" vs. "that person makes me uncomfortable, so if you are friends with them, I will have to not be around them, but it's totally without expectation or obligation and your choice to be friends with them is OK with me, except I know how desperate you are to please me so that even mentioning this will make you choose the option I prefer even though I have said it was OK to choose the other option because we both know it's not really OK to choose the other option"?

In fact, how many of you can really tell the difference between those two things even from the inside, when you're right in the middle of it? From either side? The human brain is not logical or rational, it is a justification engine. We are very good at justifying all kinds of things to ourselves and others.

And abusers are particularly good at this. Which means that, since our brains are optimized for it, we are all capable of abuse. Abusers flip the script - whichever script we have, an abuser will turn it around to justify their control of their victim. And even they might not realize that they're doing this, because of that justification engine thing.

But they will take whatever is handed to them and use it to control. If that means they use your desire to seem "fair" and "impartial", if that means they use the "all feelings are valid" principle, if that means they ride the coattails of the #MeToo movement, if that means they flip the gender script, if that means they *use* the gender script, if that means they use social justice language like my ex, if that means they use their social capital, if that means they use your good faith - whatever it means for them, that's what they'll do to come out looking like the "good guy", or if they can manage it, like the "victim" themselves.

Abusers flip the script. Even if they have to use "flipping the script" to flip the script, as long as it makes you question who is the abuser and who is the victim, they're doing it right.

Entry tags:

You Cannot Consent If You Cannot Say No

I don't know why this is so difficult for some people to grasp. If you are unable to say "no", then your "yes" is meaningless. If you *need* to stay with someone - you are financially tied to them and can't untie yourself, you are emotionally or physically threatened, the thought of not being with them is the worst thing you can possibly think of including being alone - then you can't really give consent to the relationship.

If you are free to leave a relationship, then choosing to stay is much more meaningful than being forced to stay by circumstances, emotional chains, or power.

So I'm going to say this slowly because it's apparently a VERY difficult concept:

This. does. not. mean. that. people. who. are. free. to. leave. a. relationship. and. choose. to. stay. do. not. commit. to. their. partners.

For some reason, some people hear "I am free to leave a relationship because there is no power forcing me to remain, yet I choose to stay because I am happy here and I love my partner", and translate it as "eh, I'm here because I have nothing better to do, but I don't have any commitments or expectations or intentions to stick around and if literally anything slightly more interesting comes along, I'm outta here."

It's like, in BDSM, some people engage in power exchanges. No, let me talk about something that's actually one of my own kinks: Bondage. I like being restrained under certain circumstances. I am literally being held by force. Except it's an illusion. At any point, I can tell the person tying me up that I don't want to be tied up anymore, and my partners are trustworthy enough that they will instantly release me (if I couldn't release myself - one of my superpowers is that my hands are almost the same size as my wrists so I can slip out of most restraints if I really want to).

But I'm here for the experience of being restrained. I'm in it until the end. Unless something goes wrong, I'm committed to sharing this experience. I prepared for it. I recognize that this may trigger some difficult emotional processing (for either of us), that there may be injuries, that shit may hit the fan and I'm here for that too.

But if things get *too* bad, if they cross boundaries, if they go *wrong*, not just challenging or difficult, I can leave.

I make a lot of commitments to my partners. I quite often stick around, often enough past the point where I should have left. My partners aren't disposable. They're not replaceable. They're not interchangeable. They're not *convenient*.  But I still have the ability to leave. And yet, I have chosen not to in many cases.

This is a False Dichotomy and a Straw Man, perhaps even a Motte & Bailey switcheroo. It's not *either* "you have the autonomy to leave a relationship" OR "you have commitments to your partners". Those are are not opposing things on a single scale, they're two different axes in the giant complicated chart that makes up all of any given relationship. I'd even argue that having the freedom to leave and choosing not to actually enables you to better live up to your commitments because you're not being forced against your will.

I am with my partners, committed to the various things that I commit to, such as operating in good faith, trusting that we are on the same team, supporting them, being there for them, sharing the joys and the trials of life together as *partners*, precisely because I don't *have* to be, BUT I CHOOSE TO BE.

My mom held a job for something like 15 years because she *had* to. She lived up to her obligations - she performed her job to the best of her ability and she did the things she had promised to do when she got hired for the job.  But she was miserable. She hated her job and hated her boss. Her boss did not value her and often made her job needlessly more difficult. They did not have a fax machine, for example, because he felt more traditional methods of communication were better. She had to walk down the hall to another company's office to fax invoices and other correspondence that needed to be faxed. She told me once how humiliated she felt at having to beg fax time from another company. He would have still had her keeping the books in a literal ledger if he could have.

After several years of watching her misery, we (her family) finally convinced her to look for another job. She resisted because she felt that she had to stay - she made a "commitment" to work for this employer, she needed to help provide for her family, etc. The threat of poverty is a pretty strong motivator and forces many of us to do a lot of things we would rather not do, some of which actually compromise our values and our integrity and our sense of self.

So her best friend told her about a job opening at her own place of employment and we all pushed her into applying. The job was a stretch for her - she had no computer skills thanks to her employer, and she had wicked low self-esteem thanks to her boss telling her that she wasn't worthy of anything more than being a "secretary". But we encouraged and we supported and she told her boss she had a dentist appointment one day and went downtown to apply for the job. She got called for an interview, and a follow up interview, and she eventually got hired.

At the first job she applied for after taking the leap to leave and find another job.

She was terrified and nearly turned down the offer. She just did not feel that she could leave. But she did. She went to work for this other company, and learned a whole bunch of new skills and made a whole bunch of new friends, and 20 years later she finally retired from a job that she felt brought her happiness and growth but that she was ready to leave and join her husband in retirement.

Once she left the abusive job, and she learned some skills and gained some self-worth, she worked for 2 decades at a job that she felt she *could* leave if she needed to because she had already left one job and the world did not end for her. In fact, it got better.  So she had the freedom to leave her new job, but she chose not to because it was a job that she felt happy and satisfied in. She threw herself into that job, often working overtime and taking on duties that weren't hers just to help out and generally contributed to a successful company and productive work environment.

And after she retired, her company begged her to come back when the person who replaced her went on maternity leave because she was so valuable to the company. So she did - on a part-time, temporary basis, but she still did. And she will leave again when her contract is up.  She *committed* to this job - to doing her best, to working in the company's best interest, to providing a salary for her family, but this time without compromising her integrity.

This freedom to leave was part of a general attitude on behalf of both her and the company that allowed her to truly commit to the job, rather than being forced to do the job that she left as soon as she could.  My mother, for all our differences, is an amazing woman who imparted many of my values and ethics on how to relate to people. She has had the opportunity to leave a variety of situations over the years, yet she chose to stay because *that's what commitment is*.

And now she sits, in the sunset of her life, deliriously in love with her husband, in complete adoration of her grandkids, with a long career and strong bonds with her coworkers behind her and two adult daughters who credit her with instilling the values we are most proud about ourselves.

Having freedom of autonomy does not mean having no commitments. It's *how* we are able to truly commit to relationships. Because we are not forced to remain in unhealthy, toxic relationships, our commitments actually mean something.  If someone were to slap me across the face because someone else held a gun to their head and made them, I wouldn't hold the person who slapped me accountable. They had no choice. That slap doesn't *mean* anything coming from them.

But if they slapped me because they *wanted* to, then it would fucking mean something and you'd be damn sure I'm going to hold them accountable for it.  That's a negative example of basically the same thing. Actions taken when there is no choice but to take them render the decision to do them meaningless. Actions taken when you have a choice imbue them with meaning.

My partners choosing to stay with me and honor their commitments to me gives those commitments *meaning*. Choosing to stay when they actually do have a choice does not negate their ability to make commitments, it makes their choice to honor the commitments more meaningful.
And the people who think that there is no power imbalance, and therefore no consent violation, when one's ability to leave is restricted frighten me. These people also tend to view having free will and choosing to exercise it as being "broken". That is a direct quote from a conversation I just read.

Considering that my abusive ex also feels this way, I shouldn't be at all surprised at how fucked up this is. He literally thinks that it is a broken worldview to believe that having the freedom to leave a relationship and choosing not to leave makes for more ethical relationships.  And I'm dumbstruck as to how I could have possibly missed this attitude before we started dating and horrified that I was ever with him at all.

But what's more horrifying is how many people who I once considered friends or close relationships of some sort also hold this position. There are an awful lot of reasonably intelligent, rational people out there who don't believe you should have any autonomy in your relationships, who don't see how coercive the lack of freedom in a relationship is, and who think this freedom / lack of freedom / consent / non-consent issue is an either/or with the ability to make commitments in interpersonal relationships. That, somehow, making a commitment *means* that you no longer have the freedom to leave, and that *this is a good thing* because otherwise people would just up and leave whenever.

And they think that *I'm* the "broken" one.

Just like courage means being afraid and doing something anyway, commitment does not mean being unable to back out. It means having the freedom to back out *and doing it anyway*.

I think I need to go to bed now, because I'm feeling a little nihilistic about the fate of our species after this.

Entry tags:

Would You Be The 4th Female?

www.quora.com/For-women-would-you-move-into-a-house-with-a-couple-that-share-a-3rd-female-and-that-would-make-you-the-4th-female-All-share-a-bed-and-have-sex-with-each-other-Why-or-why-not/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. For women, would you move into a house with a couple that share a 3rd female and that would make you the 4th female? All share a bed and have sex with each other. Why or why not?

A.

I could not live with people who “share” other human beings like they’re a milkshake to be shared on a date. I could not trust them to treat *me* as a human being, because they have clearly shown they are willing to dehumanize people for their own gratification.
I could not live with people who call women “females”. There’s a whole body of literature on what’s wrong with that term.
I could not live with people who assume that cohabiting automatically means “would make you the 4th female”. The question assumes that “move into a house” necessarily implies a polyfidelitious arrangement. I’m not sure what kind of houses y’all have been living in, but I’ve had a number of roommates and housemates, some of whom were also romantically involved with each other, and never was simply “move into a house” defined as “would make you the 4th female”. In order for that to happen, there would have to be an invitation to join their polyfidelitious relationship, not just live under their roof.
I am straight. I am not sexually attracted to women.
I have autonomy. To require me to have sex with anyone, even if they were the gender of my orientation, is coercive. Even when I do enter into a romantic and sexual relationship, I still retain the ability to give and revoke consent at any time. Sex is never a *requirement*. If, at any time, someone is required to have sex with anyone in order to maintain their housing, that is deeply coercive indeed. Certainly I would never get into a relationship with someone where sex with *other people* is required in order to maintain the relationships I want. That’s really fucked up.
Even though I do enjoy group sex, I do not enjoy it all the time. Every relationship needs to be nurtured on its own, which means that each of the 4 people in that house needs to be able to explore their individual relationships with each other person independently and each of those relationships needs to be able to grow in whatever ways that relationship wants to grow. Forcing all of the relationships to be the “same” is also coercive and codependent. So even assuming my orientation matched *and* I was interested in a sexual relationship with each person, I still wouldn’t join a group that expected group sex all the time.

I was actually in a relationship that did that in a defacto way. It was quite toxic and insidious. They never said that group sex was expected or required, but they all insisted on spending so much group time together that nobody ever really got any alone-time with each other, and every time someone had sex without the others present, somebody would have some kind of emotional crisis about being “left out” or “abandoned” and it took weeks of tears and arguments to make everyone feel better again. It was so bad that I eventually lost interest in sex completely because it was a minefield.
I have several sleep disorders. I do not co-sleep well. I always have my own bedroom for my own health and sanity.

In short, there is absolutely nothing about that scenario that is appealing and everything about it is a red flag for an abusive situation. And I say this as someone who has a spouse that is a straight man who has (at least) 2 other partners where the 4 of us get together and have some kind of kinky group sex.

The difference is that there is no cohabitation, no expectations or requirements of co-sleeping, definitely no coercion where everyone is required to all have sex together (the 3 of us women are not actually in direct sexual relationships with each other, we are just all in a relationship with him), and none of us are treated as objects to be “shared”. We all respect each other’s autonomy and see each other as human beings, not “female” animals, sex objects, need fulfillment machines, nannies, bang-maids, harem members, or possessions.

Every word in this question drips with entitlement, assumptions, misogyny, and co-dependence. I wouldn’t enter into a scenario like this if I was homeless and desperately needed a place to stay for survival.

Entry tags:

PSA: How To Not Be An Asshole Using The Postal Service

#PSA: The United States Postal Service offers a special service, free of charge: If you receive mail for someone who does not live at your address, you can write on the outside "return to sender" and "addressee unknown" and put it back in the mailbox. The post office will then return it back to the person who sent it for no additional charge.

If someone who used to live at your address is now currently doing everything in their power to not be contacted by you, the correct thing to do when you receive their mail is to return it to sender, not contact everyone you know who knows them and tell them you have their mail.

If the mail is important and it gets back to the sender, then the sender will try alternate means of contacting them.

Too many people use mail or packages as a tool to further contact someone who is trying to escape them. Don't do that.

Return that shit to sender and let them figure out how to get it to the addressee.

I know it's not possible for people to remember every single lesson they learned in school for their entire scholastic career, but this is something that was actually taught in school. If you've forgotten it, now you know it again.

#InOtherWordsStopMessagingMyFriendsTryingToContactMeYouFuckingAsshole

Entry tags:

Review: Cobra Kai - Season 1 (no spoilers)

I've been watching Cobra Kai. I hesitated to watch it because, even though I was a Karate Kid fan, I a) didn't want them to screw it up and b) had some complicated feelings about making the villains into the protagonists. As I keep saying in my Poly-ish Movie Reviews, I am character-driven. If I don't like the characters, I won't like the story no matter how well it's told, and if I do like the characters I will probably like the story no matter how terribly it's told.

Which makes unlikable protagonists very challenging for me. And Cobra Kai is about an unlikable protagonist.

One of Franklin's favorite books is about an unlikable protagonist. He holds it up as an example of how to write that kind of character well. I disagree. I hated that character from the beginning, I never felt sympathetic towards him, and I wasn't surprised at all at how bad he turned out to be (I may have not guessed the very specific details of the ending, but I wasn't surprised that he turned out as evil as he was).

Some unlikable characters are popular because we love to hate them. Bestor from Babylon 5 is one of these for me. He's written in a pretty nuanced, complex way, and yet I still hate him no matter how many little humanized tidbits the show throws at us to make him relatable. I think those humanized bits make him so deliciously evil that I really enjoy hating him. I want him to suffer and I enjoy every time he loses.

Then there is the "flip the script" or "mirror" method of telling a tale from the other perspective. Such as in Maleficent, where we are presented with an origin story or "reasons" why someone's actions may have been interpreted as evil depending on the perspective of the storyteller.

If you look at a war in progress, the "other side" is evil because they're the other side, but if you tell the story from that other side, then the first side is evil because THEY are the other side. Maleficent waging war on humans makes complete sense when those humans keep coming into fae lands to massacre all the fairies. But to the humans, she's an existential threat.

Johnny Lawrence is not Maleficent. There is even an episode where he tells someone else the story of Karate Kid but from his perspective, where Daniel LaRousso was the bully. And I can see how he reached that conclusion. But he's actually wrong. It's like how I can see how Republicans reach their conclusions, but they're factually wrong about them.

Johnny Lawrence is an asshole. He is the bad guy. No amount of "understanding his reasons" changes that. And yet, I care about what happens to him. A lot of the time I want him to suffer, but I want his suffering to teach him a lesson so that he'll stop being an asshole.

This isn't an origin story. But it kind of is. Now that Johnny is an adult, he is able to perpetuate the abuse that he suffered as a kid onto a whole new generation of kids. So we can see exactly how you can take someone who is kind and compassionate and considerate and slowly warp him into someone who is cruel. And how that can be done without even necessitating malicious intent.

Johnny Lawrence is, and always was, an asshole. But it's possible that he may have a redemption arc. What I'm liking about this show is that it's not a clear arc. It's also possible that he will never find redemption, depending on where they take his character. As long as his methods result in what he sees as success, he has no reason to see why he's a bad guy. Both possibilities is what makes this story interesting for me.

That's where the conflict really is - will Johnny redeem himself, or is this just a Walter White or Thanos situation? He succeeds and yet remains a bad guy with no redemptive arc? Some people will just straight up tell you in what way they are evil and completely believe they are in the right. Nazis, racists, misogynists, domestic abusers, etc. Johnny could be written by people like that, or by people who want to tell that kind of character's story. Or he could be written by people who want to believe that even those kinds of people can see the light. Which character is Johnny Lawrence? We'll find out.

I think the actor playing Johnny is pretty brave to bring back this character and tell his tale. At least, in the way that it's being told. If this had been basically like that one space movie where it's just a 2 hour ride justifying violence and violation because reasons, I wouldn't be saying this. I think this show (so far) stays on the right side of the line between *explaining* violence and *justifying* it.

After completing the first season, I don't like Johnny Lawrence. I'm not supposed to like him. And I dislike him enough that I'm not even rooting for him. He could change, and I would be glad to see that change, but I don't root for him to win the fights he gets into or hope that he comes out ahead in his interpersonal conflicts. I want him to get his ass kicked. I want the people in his life to leave him. I want him to fail. But if he somehow manages to learn from those failures and become a better person, I'd like to see that too. He is simultaneously an exercise in hope for growth and in schadenfreude. He's Schrodinger's anti-hero.

I don't like him and I'm not rooting for him. But I'm *invested* in seeing what happens to him.

And *that's* how you fucking write an unlikable character.

Everyone else is fairly boiler-plate, and yet also still well written and acted. Each of the characters has a predictable path or an archetypal role. But there are a *lot* of them. This isn't a black hat-white hat good vs. evil story where everyone is basically the same character (or no character) except for the one rogue they throw us as a bone.

There are several different archetypes in the show, each with their own arcs and developments, and each face enough nuanced conflicts that their arcs have several pivot points that could take them in one of several directions.

But this show is really about Johnny Lawrence, an unlikable character as the main character. This is more than just an anti-hero story. In all the anti-hero stories that are popular right now, they're anti-heroes but they're also somehow likable. They're bad guys but they're charming, or they're ethically grey but sympathetic, or something along those lines.

We've been "flipping the script" for a while now, telling anti-hero stories or telling a story from the villain's perspective. And in order to get the audience to be invested, ultimately we end up making those characters likable who just make poor decisions or who have something terrible happen to them. While terrible things did happen to Johnny that molded him into the person we see now and who makes poor decisions, he is ultimately someone who is not likable. He is toxic masculinity personified.

They had a difficult job here, because the '80s movie was pretty standard with writing the antagonist as a clear-cut villain. Johnny was a bully and there was no real reason for his bullying other than he was an asshole. Yes, his sensei made him an asshole, but he was definitely an asshole with no depth underneath.

Now we want to tell his story? Not how he became an asshole, but to tell the story OF an asshole? How do you give depth to a character originally written as shallow? He has to really be an asshole, even with that depth. There has to be a reason why he seemed to take pleasure in beating the shit out of Daniel and why he treated Ali the way he treated her.

He is very much like a lot of my backstage coworkers, who are assholes and, honestly, unlikable, but I can get along with them fine because they're real people and real people are messy, complicated creatures.

Johnny Lawrence is an asshole. I don't like him. I'm not supposed to like him. I'm probably supposed to root for him? But the writers and the actor keep him as an asshole so maybe I'm not supposed to root for him. Either way, I'm not rooting for him.

But I am invested in him and his outcome.

I think this show is exploring a lot of complex themes and emotions and ethical dilemmas. In some ways, it's still a little heavy-handed, like the original source was. But by telling the story from the antagonist's perspective while still maintaining those same morals and themes, it complicates the story and gives it a lot more character and a lot more grey areas.

And I really liked the pinnacle season conflict in which it didn't matter how that conflict was resolved, Johnny Lawrence could not win either way. So how do you root for him when both outcomes would suck for him? You choose which moral lesson you want him to learn from the two possible losing options?

In anti-hero stories, we root for the protagonist to succeed at, what is actually an "evil plot" - we want Danny Ocean to rob the casino. In Bandits, we want Joe & Terry to succeed at robbing banks and to "get the girl" Kate. We want Dexter to continue to kill people, or at least not get caught for it. We want the bad guys to get away with what they're doing because they're the protagonists and we get attached to them.

But I don't want Johnny Lawrence to succeed. I'm not rooting for him. I don't like him. And I'm not supposed to. At least, not yet. So they gave us a conflict in which he can't win, even if he succeeds. He is still unlikable. Anti-heroes are likable. Or, at least, sympathetic.

I do not like stories with unlikable characters at the helm. I like to dislike certain unlikable characters as foils or villains. And I really strongly dislike stories that romanticize or justify unlikable characters ("but he was abused!", "but she wanted it!", "but he started it!"). I'm also totally over "privileged white man has some kind of challenge that actually a lot of people have but his challenge turned him into the asshole he is today, so let's spend yet another show explaining his story" kind of tales.

But, at least through season 1, I think Cobra Kai does an excellent job of creating a realistic, nuanced unlikable protagonist that is keeping me engaged and invested in the outcome. And I have to say that I'm impressed. I heard good things about the show, but I was still expecting to not like it, or at least find it meh. Instead, I actually think it's really good. I'll get back to you after a few seasons before I go so far as to say it's brilliant. But it could be.

Entry tags:

Dear Current Girlfriends Of My Exes

Someone shared something on Facebook that has since been deleted or made private or something so my share of it says that the content is not available. Judging by my commentary, it was probably something about "what kind of advice would you give to the current partner of your ex-partner?" So, here's mine:

As long as you don't actually expect him to be present or do any work to maintain the relationship, things will be great, because he's genuinely a nice, friendly, charming person. He just wants things to happen without any effort on his part.

#MostRecentExAnywayBecauseIHaveHadMoreExesThanMostPeopleCertainlyMoreThanMonogamousPeople

He's actually a pretty decent guy. He does a fair amount of Relationship Maintenance. Our breakup was amicable and due mostly to outside political pressures. If you have enough in common with him to like him for dating in the first place, he'll probably be a good boyfriend for you. I was recently reminded to thank him for being a good boyfriend, actually, thanks to a comparison to the most recent ex.

#2ExesAgo

Oh sweetie. Well, good luck! And here's a domestic abuse hotline, just in case. And remember, going catatonic every time you have an intense disagreement is not normal and you should not end up apologizing for bringing up your concerns over his need to control your body.

#3ExesAgo

Just remember to never date anyone else who might make him feel threatened (i.e. anyone else) and to magically divine what he wants of you, because he won't actually tell you if something about you bothers him since he's so concerned with not "making" you "change who you are" for him even if it's literally not a big deal that you wouldn't mind compromising on, but he will dump you for not having made those changes anyway.

Oh, and don't be a feminist. Things will go much more smoothly if you can only see how much shit men get for being men.

#4ExesAgo

Congratulations! He's one of the good ones. If he wasn't so damned monogamous, I'd probably try to get back with him myself.

#HighSchoolSweetheart

I hope you aren't one of those people who needs "closure". He likes ghosting. And if he does it to you and comes back to say he made a mistake, he didn't. If he did it once, he'll do it again.

#MoreThanOneExFitsThisDescription

Don't ever leave your computer or devices out where he can get them unattended. He works in IT and knows how to install keystroke logs and doesn't see anything wrong with using them. Also never tell him about any fantasies involving coercion - no "scary burglar takes advantage of the poor helpless college student" role play or whatever. He can't tell the difference between "fuck off, I said not tonight" and "oh no! There's a burglar in my house who bears a striking resemblance to my boyfriend! Whatever shall I do?!"

#IAmLosingCountOfHowManyExesAgoTheseAllAre

Cupcake, his 20-year-older, Scottish truck driving buddy who thought hanging around with a high schooler in his thirties was a great idea and who sounds suspiciously like him talking with a bad Scottish accent with the phone pulled away from his mouth while you're on the other end wondering where the fuck he is, is not real.

Neither is the extremely jealous ex-girlfriend with the body of a professional weight lifter who somehow has natural DD cups and who magically seems to find him and try to "win him back" every time you have a fight who he has to "protect" you from by never letting you meet her because she's such a badass fighter who has spent time in jail that she would kill you.

Neither is his dead ex-baby-mama from middle school (yes, she got pregnant, lost the baby, and then died of cancer all before she could legally drive) who is the most delicate little feminine doll of a girl who nobody will ever live up to because she died so she's fucking perfect.

His disapproving, old-fashioned, stay-at-home mother whom he expects his wife to emulate, however, is very real.

#MyAbusiveExFiance #ThisIsWhyWeNeedDomesticAbuseEducationBecauseNotAllAbuseIsPhysical

Actually, since he threatened to kill me and has been stalking me for most of my life, the fact that you use access to your children as a method of controlling him and keeping him near you is kinda helpful for all the other women he can't tie down because you keep cockblocking him, and also for me because he won't leave the state to come find me as long as his kids keep him there. So, I'm worried about those kids of y'alls with the both of you being such shitty people, but honestly, you're doing me a favor, so carry on.

Unless you finally wise up and just have him put in jail. I'm sure you can find some legitimate reason. And then maybe get some therapy.

#MyExStalker

Entry tags:

Friends, Drugs, And Bodily Autonomy

https://www.quora.com/My-friend-fed-me-a-pot-brownie-knowing-that-I-hate-drugs-and-am-an-athlete-This-was-a-month-ago-and-Im-still-furious-Am-I-overreacting-or-should-I-involve-her-parents-school-officials/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. My friend fed me a pot brownie (knowing that I hate drugs and am an athlete). This was a month ago, and I'm still furious. Am I overreacting or should I involve her parents/school officials?

A. Let me tell you a little something about the kind of person who would do this sort of thing.

I react poorly to alcohol. I do not get a “buzz” or any of the euphoric sensations that other people get. Instead, my core body temperature actually rises (which is different from simply feeling warm or “flushed” - a core body temperature change is a serious problem, which is why getting a fever is a serious symptom) and I get a burning in my shoulders very similar to a lactic acid burn. At its best, this is an uncomfortable feeling.

Because of how common alcohol is in our society, people have a really hard time accepting that I do not like to drink. They see it as “harmless”, which makes people feel entitled to try and push alcohol on me. With the rising acceptance of marijuana, I am seeing this same trend with pot, which I similarly react poorly to.

So, in my early 20s, I dated a guy who thought of alcohol as completely harmless and didn’t understand how I could react the way I said I did. He did not believe me, and so took it upon himself to lace some strawberries with alcohol and dip them in chocolate to cover the taste, knowing that chocolate covered strawberries were one of my favorite treats and that chocolate covered strawberries are generally considered one of the more “romantic” foods that a man could offer to a woman.

I noticed the taste right away, because I also strongly dislike the taste of alcohol. It’s kind of like the thing where some people think that cilantro tastes like soap. I’m just not wired to enjoy alcohol - it doesn’t react normally with me and I definitely don’t taste it the way other people do.

At the time, I was annoyed that he did not believe me and that he would try to trick me into getting drunk by feeding me laced strawberries. Alcohol being as culturally accepted as it is, however, I did not recognize the extreme consent violation for what it was. I mean, even his mother thought it was funny!

He and I did not work out for a variety of reasons that I only later recognized as his refusal to accept my autonomy. We broke up eventually, but remained on speaking terms.

One day, years later, we were having a phone conversation, and we had gotten into what was becoming our “regular” argument every time we spoke - he insisted that I was The One and why couldn’t I just see that and come back to him, while I insisted that I was quite happy where I was, thank you very much.

But this argument was different. Somehow we ended up on the subject of what if I had gotten pregnant while we were dating. He told me the next thing in a way that was not a confession, but managed to come across as threatening. He admitted that he had been sabotaging the condoms while we were dating, hoping to get me pregnant so that I would have been tied to him forever.

I told him that I had always been pro-choice and I would have had an abortion if I had ever gotten pregnant when I was not planning on having a child at that time.

He got really quiet for a moment, and then when he spoke next, his voice was low and intense. He very calmly said that if he ever found out that I had aborted “his child”, he would hunt me down and kill me.

This is the mindset of a person who does not believe in bodily autonomy.

His brother, by the way, was at this time serving time in prison for killing his own wife and infant child. So this was not an idle threat. And he phrased it in the future tense, meaning that if he ever found out even sometime in the future that I had hidden an abortion from him, even some 30 years later he would still hunt me down and kill me.

Of course he would have no issue with drugging me with alcohol without my consent. He fundamentally did not believe that I am a person who is entitled to make decisions about my own body. In his very core, he believes that what he wants for my body trumps my own wants for my body.

Your friend might not actually believe she has the right to murder you if you do something to your body that she doesn’t like. But she still does not believe that your wants for your body are the only wants that matter. She still believes she is entitled to do things to your body, not only without your consent, but against your express consent.

This is a dangerous person. You were fortunate that no lasting harm actually came to you, either in the form of injury under non-consensual drugs in your system or with regards to your athletic endeavors. You got an empty chamber in that Russian Roulette game.

But she’s the one supplying the gun and the bullets. You, or someone else, might not be so lucky next time. And there will be a next time, because she doesn’t see anything dangerous with holding a gun to someone’s head. It’s just “pot”, right? What does your right to your own body matter, when her beliefs about your body contradict it?

Maybe nothing extreme or serious happened as a consequence of this one situation. That’s not the point. The point is her beliefs. She does. not. believe. in. your. bodily. autonomy.

This is a very dangerous person to be around. You are absolutely right to continue to be upset at this. I won’t tell you that you “should” involve any set of authorities, because only you can decide how invested you want to be in holding her accountable. But I think she *ought* to be held accountable and she needs a very hard lesson in what autonomy is and why she is not entitled to anyone else’s, before she harms someone else.

Entry tags:

When The Patriarchy Backfires And Men Get Abused #maybeshedoesnthityou

I've lost track of how many conversations I've had with my male coworkers where I had to say "dude, what do you think this would be called if you did that kind of shit to her?" and they just kind of blink at me as they realize that, were the genders reversed, they would have no trouble labeling this behaviour as abusive.

Physical violence is not the only kind of abuse.

While men are significantly statistically more likely to abuse women because of the power structures in our culture that support, encourage, and enable them to abuse with impunity, abuse still happens across genders, across gender roles, and even across relationship categories. And it doesn't even look all that different, once you account for gender expressions.

Men, in particular, are vulnerable to abuse in ways that other people are not because toxic masculinity culture encourages the power supremacy of men, which leads to the dismissal of any abuse accusations because of the lesson that "men are too powerful to be abused", therefore men who do get abused either "aren't real men" or "deserve it" for not being "real men". It's a cycle.

Culture says you must be powerful and designs the culture to give you power. Someone exerts *individual* power over you (rather than systemic power), so culture says it can't happen because you are culturally powerful. So if you are not powerful, then culture says it's your own fault because you must be powerful.

It can't happen, but if it does happen, then it's your fault it happened, so therefore it must not have happened.

Suddenly, someone who is not culturally powerful now has a powerful weapon they can use because the culture can't even see that it exists.

Other genders, and other types of relationships besides cishet romantic ones have different structures in place to enable and support abuse for their given circumstances.

In the case of women-on-men abuse, the very system that gives men as a group power is what disempowers individual men from the tools they need to protect themselves from abuse and the structures they need to escape and heal from abuse.

#WhenThePatriarchyBackfiresOnItself #AbuseIsWrongNoMatterWhoDoesItToWhom