I’d make a #metoo post, but that’d be kind of a downer so instead here’s Wonderwall.

I Wonder How Many Other

Sexual trauma survivors have sexual fantasy lives that feature almost no fantasies with themselves in them. I fantasise generally about two or more people who are not me. I fantasise sexually in the third person most of the time, especially when I’m having a hard time coping.

Thinking about the whole “Consent Is Sexy” Thing

And how people were like “No, consent is mandatory” and also like “but like we shouldn’t say that because it pressures people to consent because we’re telling them that otherwise, they’re not sexy” (whereas no one read “Consent is Mandatory” as “giving consent is mandatory”)

And like how there’s a cultural idea (protestant in origin I’d say) that what has the potential to be pleasurable must by nature be frivolous/unnecessary and it’s really interesting to me.

Also like the way things are phrased seems to come in for a whole lot of attack a lot of the time, and the thing with people reading things in “off” ways that seems almost intentional a lot of the time.

(Just a note: I am a survivor, I’m allowed to talk about this shit)

IDK I feel like the way discourse around sexual assault currently stands is pretty fucked because it’s so performative and unhelpful and like weirdly witch-hunty and there’s a sort of weird focus on “right” phrasing and “right” thought in a way that feels very much like a sort of magical formula but also the terms are often really ill-defined and in flux (like radical definitions of rape and sexual assault are very vague and weird) and like you can’t even discuss what they might be for fear of being branded a rape apologist (even if you’re a survivor and you’re talking about ways stuff has been handled around your own experience and how various radical communities have failed you or failed to handle things in a sensible way) and like IDK sometimes it feels like the current culture in terms of dealing with rape (which fails routinely to deal with the systemic problem of sexual violence) exists in this like “Satanic Panic” space where you can’t ever question it or its efficacy in dealing with the problem it purports to be about without being branded “One of THEM” and like what makes it worse is sexual violence is a real thing, and a genuinely systemic issue but we’re coping with it with strategies that belong to witch trials which don’t actually solve the problem and in fact in many cases allow and perpetuate abusive behaviors and harm survivors.

But you can’t reduce nuance and complexity to a slogan that fits on a sticker so y’ know… fuck that, right?

Also why are MRAs like “MEN GET RAPED TOO!”

Like yeah, they do, motherfucker, but not at the same rate as women, and if they were raped at the same rate as women well then Jesus H. Christ the problem we have in terms of dealing with rape in this society would be even more endemic.

You know I think one of the problems

Leftist orgs and communities have with handling sexual assault is that we just kind of believe we all automatically have the expertise to deal with those situations because we hold certain ideals. Like no, there’s a traumatized person who can respond in all sorts of ways including not wanting to talk about it or have anyone know about it (and not even because they feel unsafe disclosing, but like sometimes you just don’t want to think about it ever again) and balancing the needs of survivors with people’s safety and shit is hard and sometimes situations are complicated like when two people got blackout drunk and neither remembers what happened and yet we’re just like “we know how to deal with this situation because we’re morally good and oppose rape culture” and it’s like… you can really have those ideals but that doesn’t mean you’ll have a fucking clue how to help or what to do if something like that happens?

Like we believe because we hold certain beliefs we automatically know what we need to do to help survivors of rape and abuse but like no, even if your heart is in exactly the right place most people don’t have the knowledge and experience to know how best to proceed.

Like our DIY ethic ain’t really doing us a lot of favors here. This is a skill we need to get training on. I’m a survivor myself and I don’t have a fucking clue most of the time. I feel like a lot of leftists believe that ideals can replace expertise… like because we want to eliminate scarcity or whatever we automatically know the best way to do it, or like because we take the hardest line anti rape stance we know how to prevent it or handle the fallout when it happens

As A Rape Survivor

thepeacockangel:

I find it really icky and uncomfortable seeing people who aren’t survivors get super into the whole like “vengance porn” thing. I don’t want to be your vicarious “I Spit On Your Grave” thrill. I don’t

I don’t like it when people take up their torches and pitchforks without asking the survivor what they want and need and the way stringing up the person the mob is mad at (is relatively simple and emotionally satisfying to people) often takes precedence over caring for the person who’s been traumatized (which is hard and kind of a bummer)

And yeah I dunno when people are like “Awww yeah” to a rapist getting killed or whatever I’m like “…” because like I’m glad the they can’t hurt anyone else but like ultimately the thing is, there’s still this profoundly traumatized person out there and it still *happened* and it feels like IDK people sometimes almost like that there are monsters like that so that they can enjoy watching them get their comeuppance and that feels icky to me.

Vengeance doesn’t fix PTSD, doesn’t heal trauma, doesn’t undo what’s been done and so like I wanna see you cheer for survivors getting what they need on their own terms. I wanna see you cheer for efforts to prevent this shit from happening in the first place. I want to see you cheer for breakthroughs in the treatment of trauma, but people don’t cause it doesn’t satisfy them as much as seeing the villain getting thrown off a cliff.

I don’t like my pain being used as a justification for other people’s violent catharsis, an excuse to indulge in their worst impulses

And sometimes I wonder if because rapists and so on are the current acceptable outlet for all those repressed aggressive impulses if at least some of those people who’ve never been raped, cheering on the beheadings and disembowelment of rapists and what have you, sort of tacitly approve the existence of rapists and/or on some level oppose or refuse to support the prevention of rape or don’t believe in the possibility of prevention because for them it’s emotionally inconvenient not to have a group that it’s justifiable to torture.

As A Rape Survivor

I find it really icky and uncomfortable seeing people who aren’t survivors get super into the whole like “vengance porn” thing. I don’t want to be your vicarious “I Spit On Your Grave” thrill. I don’t

I don’t like it when people take up their torches and pitchforks without asking the survivor what they want and need and the way stringing up the person the mob is mad at (is relatively simple and emotionally satisfying to people) often takes precedence over caring for the person who’s been traumatized (which is hard and kind of a bummer)

And yeah I dunno when people are like “Awww yeah” to a rapist getting killed or whatever I’m like “…” because like I’m glad the they can’t hurt anyone else but like ultimately the thing is, there’s still this profoundly traumatized person out there and it still *happened* and it feels like IDK people sometimes almost like that there are monsters like that so that they can enjoy watching them get their comeuppance and that feels icky to me.

Vengeance doesn’t fix PTSD, doesn’t heal trauma, doesn’t undo what’s been done and so like I wanna see you cheer for survivors getting what they need on their own terms. I wanna see you cheer for efforts to prevent this shit from happening in the first place. I want to see you cheer for breakthroughs in the treatment of trauma, but people don’t cause it doesn’t satisfy them as much as seeing the villain getting thrown off a cliff.

I don’t like my pain being used as a justification for other people’s violent catharsis, an excuse to indulge in their worst impulses

One Of My Male Friends

Is being accused of assaulting the woman who assaulted him.

And seeing him breaking down because no one will believe him sucks. Her behavior has been consistently predatory. She habitually pursues men who are too intoxicated to consent and there are other victims who can confirm this.

And people still won’t fucking believe him.

I’m so sick of the idea that drunk women are incapable of consent but it’s just fine to take advantage of drunk guys.

Fuck that.

Real life is complex. Predators will accuse victims to cover their tracks. My abuser did that to me.

Also Please Protect Men Who Have Been Victims of Sexual Violence By Women

It happened to someone very dear to me recently, and people are saying all sorts of horrible shit to him (and these people call themselves feminists and would never dream of saying this shit to a woman in the same situation) “Well you shouldn’t have been that drunk” “why didn’t you push her off” “why did you keep talking to her after” “why didn’t you confide in someone” (he did, the day after) and now people are accusing him of being the aggressor when the perpetrator has a pattern of taking advantage of seriously intoxicated men and it’s just really really fucked up.

Admit women are human and capable of doing the same evil shit as men please. We’re not perfect just cause we’re oppressed.