“Promising Young Woman” is the 2020 “American black comedy thriller” film written, produced, and directed by Emerald Fennell and Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment production company. It’s only a “black comedy thriller” in the way that it “epitomizes being a young woman in the USA and the reality of that is terrifying for most American citizens who prefer to sweep the horrors of society aside and off their news screens in an effort to embody “good vibes only” mentality.” We’re a country that prefers to pretend our wars overseas are universally for “democracy” and hide the reality of our capitalist exploitation of the globe from the majority of citizens. Dunno what I would expect from a country whose education rankings are now below the global average, yet whose last president ran on an “America First!” platform.
Before I dive in, I wanted to specify that I really appreciate, though am simultaneously constantly anxious about, the slow growth of this blog both within the United States and internationally. My life has essentially been one long Shonda Rhimes’ masterpiece, so I enjoy knowing it is being consumed by others. I also enjoy knowing I’ve provided enough Tiger King style quality of writing for true crime podcasts to dive down the rabbithole and uncover the truth if I were to be murdered by some random internet stalker who became enamored by my feet. (Yes, I should probably stop watching so much true crime.) I don’t do much advertising outside of my instagram and a random reddit account where I post to shamelessly plug and occasionally browse popular subreddits from pop culture I also consume (everything from Lord of the Rings memes to politics and My Favorite Murder to Sofia with an F and Berning In Hell), so if you share it with anyone and they get something out of it, feel free to let me know. My website is www.survivalmode.guide and has a contact section. I’m not very good at coding, so it’s incredibly simple, as I wasn’t really allowed to ever have a myspace or anything (overprotective fathers are all the rage, amiright Britney? #FreeBritney). But I do enjoy knowing what you get out of it…when it’s positive. I’ve got enough negativity on my own, clearly.
I also like connecting over topics that people might need to first process by themselves, or in a detached state. It brings me joy being able to put into words things other people struggle with because it hopefully helps them to understand themselves. I should probably put trigger warnings before each episode, honestly, but I also think that is implied by who I am–thus, it’s redundant. I know it helps the people I’m close with to hear about my own vulnerability, and I think it highlights important things we should be considering more frequently.
This piece in particular is going to cover sexual trauma in a fair amount of depth. And how it relates to my relationships. My navigation through the world as a young, promising woman in the United States.
I hope that, whether you read it for yourself or to understand someone you’re in a relationship with or to just be a good friend or to share sympathy and experience with someone and know you’re not alone, that it brings something good to you. It’s my personal belief that it’s more important to be transparent and to embody openness and personal anecdotes. I know it’s uncomfortable for my biological family and previous friends. I don’t expect them to enjoy it, but I no longer can live my life with the culmination of experiences, events, and knowledge that I have and remain silent.
I don’t think the horrors or awful things that are done, said, or happen to you should be hidden. I’m not discomforted by it, nor am I “ashamed”–it’s a part of “me”. And frankly, I love myself. So I don’t want to hide it, or who I am, or WHY I am this confident, secure, powerful woman who refuses to give a damn anymore and wants to speak my fucking mind because not doing so doesn’t help anyone. Nor does covering it up help the world or myself. I would argue that I am more humbled, more driven, and more determined because of the negativity I’ve faced, seen, or been a part of over the years more so than the positives. I might wish I hadn’t had to go through it, but I’m also happy with who I am as a person and what I care about. So maybe I love myself a little *too* much, but Angelica’s mom in Rugrats put it succinctly, “if Angelica (me) is ever going to make it in a male dominated world, she must eat, drink, and breath self esteem”. (We’ll ignore the fact that Rugrats cast the only working/corporate mom as a neglectful villain…*representation matters*)
The past few weeks have been a bit different creatively, for me. I go through waves of absence or artistic passions based around my mood–and I’m an Aquarius so I like my alone time in quiet solitude to regroup. Plus, actual art becomes inauthentic when it is mass produced and rushed. I understand that for larger scale productions there should be more consistency, professionalism, schedule, but this is a strictly one woman show and I don’t want to push content until I’m actually satisfied with the quality. Mentally healing yourself is work. It’s exhausting, but rewarding. And I vowed to be transparent. Is it the masochist in me that needs to remind myself, revisit, and reanalyze the bad, along with the good, because all that I am, I am because of these experiences? To be honest, maybe. Who knows these days? So many confounding factors. Impossible to tell.
Some of you may know that I paint and draw, which I’ve been doing more of. Having something to be busy with constantly and multitasking, like doodling, helped mask my ADHD as a child. I didn’t formally get diagnosed until I stopped running 85 miles a week in college and began to struggle to pay attention in 3 hour lectures versus the 45 minute segments switching from subject-to-subject in high school (and having daily repetition). And women are often mis or under diagnosed for ADHD and many learning disabilities, so I like to plug it. It’s okay to be 21 years old and a junior in college and get diagnosed for the first time. It’s also okay to be in your 30’s before you actually have the stability or healthcare or money to start therapy, see a primary care physician or psychiatrist, and start or try different medications at their recommendation, even if “you don’t think it’ll do much” (especially in the USA who won’t even get their shit together on universal healthcare in a pandemic). Case in point, it’s never too late to improve yourself. Or care about yourself.
Coming from a family that didn’t really “talk about stuff”, I often still feel guilty accessing and seeking healthcare of any kind, but especially therapy. Living next to and often being taken care of by my grandfather, a colonel in the US army, who was taught that mental health was the stuff of psychological warfare and you had to keep quiet and never speak of the evils you witnessed–you’ll just wake up screaming in the middle of the night for the rest of your life and place WAY too much emphasis in the Washington Redskins–combined with a bunch of alcoholism in my family tree and a narcissistic biological father–it’s pretty obvious as to why I am who I am.
I also truly love my current routine. I almost feel guilty for how much I enjoy quarantine. (Albeit, with an epidemiology background and coronavirus contract work, I would PREFER if 500,000 americans didn’t die and half the population didn’t still think they should be allowed to access night clubs “for the economy” which is so imaginary and subjective it’s like The Big Short, The Wolf of Wallstreet, or any of the 3 economic recessions in the last 30 years didn’t teach you this was a failing system and symbolic of late stage capitalism…but by all means, continue to PROVE ITS FAILURE OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND DENY THAT GDP DOES NOT DEMONSTRATE ANY GENERALIZABLE MEASURE FOR THE AMERICAN HOUSEHOLD, instead of just making life easier, happier, and healthier for everyone.
The only thing that could make this time better was if I lived with some friends, had health insurance and could stay on my mom’s farm and continue to not work (because I’m unvaccinated and I don’t actually WANT a cardiorespiratory illness that could scar my lungs even further than my chronic bronchitis did 2 years ago because we don’t know the surely serious latent effects and I refuse to downplay them), or if I had a gym group of workout buddies that weren’t 40 year old dads trying to be the cool kid they wanted to be in high school staring at me run on the treadmill from across the gym. What I miss the most about a college town is being able to workout around people my age. I guess these men must not realize I had high school geometry (and up through differential equations and quantum chemistry calculations) so I know what mirrors and angles you’re using to get the best view of my ass. I am the same age as your daughters, if you have them. And I clearly don’t reciprocate.
Why do you think I have perfected the “resting bitch face”?
Part of why I started writing is, apart from my Lady-Gaga-esque motivation to be fueled by spite, I recognized that I truly loved having the alone time on my mom’s farm. The time and space with the animals. The safety. The connection to the earth.
This is something that is often missing from my life when I’m working in medicine. Or in the public education system. I’m often resigned to work in a metal box with harsh fluorescent lighting. Varying degrees of sterility throughout my time within the box. Maybe a window to the outside if I’m lucky.
At the middle school I taught at, I actually felt glad that I was placed in the detached trailers. That way, if a school shooter came in, I’d probably be okay. My mom, in the first door next to the office, likely wouldn’t be as lucky, though. But, I grew up with the DC sniper lockdowns in elementary school. This wasn’t “unusual”.
The sense of security I’ve felt, being at home, having my mom and step dad account for me, guns, security alarms, multiple locks on my doors, dogs and other animals that alert with any sign of movement, is novel. Having a multilevel security system, so I’m never at risk of being so tired from my work week and after-hours of studying for the MCAT that I leave my keys in my front door overnight and the door ajar when I lay down to take my scrubs off and fall asleep. (Noodle is such a good boy he just stayed right by my side. Thank goodness nobody came in…Or, maybe they did, idk.) Without currently working, I also don’t have harsh alarms to wake up to, anymore. Jarring me from my recurrent nightmares and further reducing the inevitable shortage of REM sleep I already don’t get. This is honestly what I miss most about dating, too. I (usually) sleep WAY better with a man in the room. If I can fall asleep next to you in a bed, that means I have fully accepted you would be able to kill me and I actually trust you not to. A RARITY. Wear that badge with honor.
For the first time in a while, I actually feel safe when I lay down in bed at night. I wasn’t aware that I’d forgotten what security felt like.
Maybe this was just a factor of my PTSD, but to be honest, I don’t know how any woman in the USA goes to bed at night in an apartment or house she lives in by herself and feels safe, frankly. When anyone with your phone number or first and last name can look up your current address, and when a lot of men feel “entitled” to you. And I have a taser, baseball bat, wasp and hornet spray (more effective than mace because it can spray up to 30 feet away according to law enforcement and their recommendations on effective uses of excessive force are probably pretty well-researched), and grappling experience, but I don’t want to have to need it.
Something to keep in mind is also the harsh reality that healthy relationships will dramatically highlight how fucked up the previous ones were and may bring random memories flashing back as if it were a parallel dimension for whoever knows how long. It’s almost guilt-inducing, re-experiencing the events to recognize and fully comprehend just how fucked up they are after you actually experience healthy, full, love. And a lot of women look for explanations in themselves to explain the shitty behavior of their partners because we are taught to do so.
We are taught that “boys will be boys” and “women are typically more mature for their age”, but not in a way to highlight the reality that over 12,000 men have served in Congress and less than 350 women EVER and for the 117th Congress, only ~a quarter of “representatives” are women. If women are so mature at 13, then why are they not trusted throughout their lives to evoke such authority? Why do we not teach men and young boys to look to females for their role models? Why do we allow men to doubt them publicly over and over again, bullying them through the media, yet then wonder why women don’t come forward?
Kanye West’s mental breakdowns are viewed with positivity for his next album and Britney Spears’ end with her being labeled “psychotic” and in a 12 year conservatorship with a man, her father, who she has no personal or professional relationship with but is allowed to control essentially every fiber of her being. Every move she makes. In 2001 she sang about being “Overprotected” with the lyrics literally saying “I need to make mistakes just to learn who I am / And I don’t wanna be so damn protected” and “ I can’t believe what I hear about the world” and “What am I to do with my life? You will find it out, don’t worry” and yet people label Kanye the “genius” and Britney Spears “psychotic”. I wonder why that is. (*misogyny*) Instead, “boys will be boys” and “women mature faster” should really be reframed as “women will be responsible and publicly accountable, not only for their own decisions and actions but for the decisions and actions of others that affect them, more seriously than men and thus must be more emotionally intelligent because men will capitalize and exploit that naivety and innocence in a variety of ways whereas boys will essentially just be excused for their actions nor will they be socially shamed for those same actions.”
It feels good to channel this power. Though, I’m always weary as to whether it’s powerful in the “brink of madness scientist way of incredible intellect” or the “crazy witch lady who lives in the woods”…until I realize they’re the same people. I’m fine with that. Let’s dive in.
So my topic today is inspired from watching “Promising Young Woman”. Of COURSE, it was produced by Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment film company, because I loved every second of it. I won’t give out any spoilers, so don’t worry. Though it would be worth it to have watched it beforehand. Carey Mulligan stars as a 30 year old woman who dropped out of medical school and lives with her parents. She goes out at night, pretends to be drunk, and waits til guys ignore her (faked) intoxication to take her home and sexually assault her, to “sober up”, sit up, and confront their behavior. It’s also a bit of a romantic comedy. Makes a great date movie in a “Gone Girl” or “Shutter Island” way, but hey–I’m into all of that. Every guy should at least watch it, because the reality of being a woman in the USA is that 1 in 5 are or will be attempted raped in their lifetime and over 80% are sexually assaulted. Sexual harassment is the norm. We’re “lucky” if it’s “not rape”.
If you want to date women, and have sexual encounters WITH women, then you must consider the emotional trauma that MOST women now have.
And yet, men still wonder why I get so disinterested in dating that I simply won’t do it. I’ve gone through two multi-year celibacy phases…and I’m only 28. The first, honestly, was impressive because I didn’t even masturbate. But, I was in undergrad and still didn’t really “do that” because it “felt like I was intruding” (on myself). Latent effects of purity culture, ya know. I was fine letting a guy who smoked cigs, watched me dance with now-NBA players from across the room, and dressed as a cow for Halloween fuck me in the anex of his fraternity house, though. Barf. The current phase is because I FINALLY invested in sex toys and why would I worry about dating when, 1. It’s a pandemic, and 2. I can just watch porn and figure out what I like so the next guy I date, who at this point will have to propose just to ask me out because I’m not going back to casually dating ever again, can fuck me the way I want him to.
And yeah, I unfortunately think I’m gonna date/marry a man out of practicality for feeling safe. Which may seem contradictory with the following stories, but less so when you consider other men respect another male’s presence to back off of me, more so than my own wants or desires. It’s self preservation.
My Knight in Shining Armor
The first “real” boyfriend I had, I started dating the summer going into my sophomore year of high school. We dated off/on until the New Years of my freshman year of college. What started as your typical teenage love affair of first time obsessions (for him, I was the more experienced one, naturally) gradually progressed into knifepoint accusations, threatening me with a gun “as a joke”, stalking my house daily to make sure I was “where I said I’d be”. He’d scour my phone for proof I was cheating. To be fair, I had kissed a guy once about six months in. So I thought his anger and insecurity was justified. I felt like it was my fault. It didn’t matter that it continued for years, got increasingly violent and controlling. My parents didn’t let me have a myspace, and my dad deleted all 3 that I made, so my boyfriend’s ban on social media didn’t seem out of the norm. His ban on me going to parties or talking to my male friends seemed normal too. After all, it was my male friend at my brother’s winter party that made me, at 15, justify all the horrendous shit my boyfriend would go on to do for years to come, because I “deserved it”. (And he kept me from “being distracted.”) My parents also hit me growing up, and my dad screamed at my mom in front of us all the time. My brother chased me with knives and broke down my door and arguably tried to kill me on regular occasions. That was just how people communicate, I thought.
To be clear, I wouldn’t act that way. I would just watch. Observe. Learn.
So when we spoke, I wouldn’t be at any level of anger my boyfriend was at–I outsmarted him enough that I was cunning. I could talk my way out of his rage. Reason with him. It became a power. Natural, yet crafted.
I would argue I’ve liked control from birth. As I grew up, that turned into learning how to navigate situations within the realms of my control. And how to gain back power when I seemingly had none. Luckily, I was used to being multifaceted and my natural talent made satisfying this superficially easy as a child. I was also used to answering to an all powerful man. But everybody was Christian, so this was the norm. Our public high school’s varsity soccer team prayed before every game and if you didn’t, you looked like an outsider. I went to youth group as an atheist just so the terrifying popular girl wouldn’t bully me as much if I was her best friend.
I had long ago learned how to be quiet and reserved, stoically passing my time. Waiting for the moment to strike, if ever. Yet, I also feel I was uniquely confident and talented enough that I never felt like failure in one thing was “the end”. I always had other things to fall back on. My intellect. My art. My athleticism. I could generally afford to weigh my circumstances and figure out how to engage and know what benefitted me best.
So what happens when you’re no longer in control?
What happens when “failure” could mean “death at the hands of your significant other, your sexual partner”?
You just… adapt. You adjust to survive.
By my senior year of highschool, I led two distinct, separate lives. I had tried to break up with that guy several times, but he kept showing back up, pleading for forgiveness, apologizing. Promising that he was sorry and it would never happen again. And TECHNICALLY, the exact same stuff, didn’t really? I grew up learning forgiveness. The faith that things would improve. People are virtuous. He did so much good for me, at any rate. His presence kept me from being labeled a slut for exploring my options and enjoying keeping my many, many options open (my freshman year) when I first started enjoying my sexuality. He kept me from being distracted by social media by not letting me have any. My grades were perfect and I rarely had to study, so it must’ve been working. He also played for DC United’s Youth team, so the hours he spent playing soccer with me in our front yard just gave me someone better to learn from. My siblings didn’t play soccer, and they liked to be indoors a lot more than I did.
If you’re confused as to WHY I didn’t know this was an “unhealthy” relationship, we had a basic sex ed talk in 5th grade, then the bare minimum and what diseases you might get as a refresher once a year (if that?) in PE in middle school. But nobody listened to our gym teacher because the popular girls heard she was a lesbian from their parents and made fun of her. Then I think we had it once more in high school freshman year.
But we didn’t ever learn about consent.
We didn’t learn about the emotional aspect of sex.
We didn’t learn about how misogynistic slut shaming was and how related to Christianity’s purity culture it is and the overlying narrative towards female sexuality around legality of prostitution.
We didn’t learn about coercion or biochemical attachments or anything of that nature.
Maryland is one of 11 states in the USA that still allows sexual education exemption under “religious freedom”.
Just a heads up–you can still have religion and teach comprehensive sex ed. The Northeast USA has done it, most of Europe has done it. It’s possible. The idea that you shouldn’t is routed in ideology about children being parental PROPERTY versus THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL HUMANS WITH THEIR OWN PERSONALITIES. I don’t care if they’re “living under your roof”. You decided to have children. The literal BARE MINIMUM parental responsibility is for you to provide housing and food/water. They should have a choice and education and upbringing that empowers them to make their OWN choices. The first time they get to decide on something shouldn’t be when they magically turn 18…Especially not in regards to their HEALTH. Instead of being raised in cycles of fear and submission over whether they’ll be worthy of what is supposed to be your unconditional love. The USA not requiring this does NOTHING to protect children and also assumes parents are always beneficial. That abusive parents don’t exist. That children can discuss their lives with their parents rationally. That’s simply not reality. If you don’t like that, don’t fucking have children.
So it took me a while to really understand how fucked up it was. The way he tried to get me pregnant so I couldn’t leave for college. Laughable in theory and everything. The abortion would happen INSTANTLY if my birth control failed. Would not think twice about it.
…I couldn’t blame him though. His older sister was 19, living at home after her boyfriend got her pregnant and his mom had gotten pregnant by his dad similarly. He saw it as a way to keep me.
Or that it wasn’t okay the way he grabbed my arms and bruised me with his grip. They blended in with my bruises from soccer and football anyways, no big deal. It’s not like it hurt. It wasn’t technically abuse. Only once did he swing at me.
Granted, I let him hurt me and choke me sexually, so he got out his aggression, but a lot of people are into that.
I’m still into it ~*~consensually~*~.
The only guy who noticed any of those bruises, by the way–my freshman year homecoming date–has gotten multiple DUI’s and has a heroin addiction now so I’m pretty sure he identified it because of his own home. My dad and brother got in actual fist fights constantly. My brother tried to beat the shit out of me on regular occasions. Watching my dad scream and mock my mom emotionally was a regular occurrence. Did it matter if my boyfriend did it?
How about the way he held my male friend up at knifepoint at soccer practice for kissing me? It was my fault, though. I shouldn’t have kissed him. My ex’s favorite song was Eminem’s “Kim”. I should’ve just stayed at my grandparent’s house–banished so I could actually “get some rest” for my soccer tournament in the morning. As if midnight rendezvous ever affected my athletic performance the past year when I ran away multiple nights a week. I wasn’t a good little girl, though. Just wasn’t my nature, I guess.
How about him having his neighbor hold me and my best friend up at gunpoint “as a joke”? Even though fairly recently, someone in his neighborhood, who he played football with, had gotten stabbed in the abdomen and had tried running home, holding his intestines inside? And an active shooter was frequenting the area?
So why did you date him for so long?
WHY DO PEOPLE STILL ASK THIS QUESTION. It doesn’t start out that severely. Ever. In fact, it often starts out the opposite. Exceedingly nice, polite, rewarding. Go watch Disney Pixar’s Soul or the FKA Twigs interview if you don’t realize how problematic that response is. Even the most confident people can fall under the guise of fear, failed mentors, and slowly increasing control tactics and tying manipulation into your trust so you were conditioned over time to distrust YOURSELF. Within your mind, you have insufficient proof that they’re not the person they tell you, repeatedly, that they are. ESPECIALLY if you’re taught, from childhood, to look for a male savior, to ALWAYS love and forgive, people are good and redeemable no matter what…
It’s more complicated when you factor in that he was the one there to console me after I stood next to my grandma, the matriarch of our family, and watched the last breath she took. He knew and understood the true strength of our familial dynamic and the farm. I stood next to her bed, looking out to the barn, the magnolia trees, watching her breathing become less frequent and more labored. And he was there to help me process that pain. He knew the intimate details of my life.
He was also driving the car when my friend Cliff pulled up to us on his motorcycle at the stoplight. Molly was there too. I’d finally convinced him to take me to a high school homecoming (my senior year), and that none of the guys at my school would steal me from him. We never made it to the dance, because after saying hi to Cliff, I then watched Cliff drive his motorcycle into the back of an SUV parked on the shoulder and die on the spot. I guess that was my fault too, though. I was the one who had insisted on going to the dance, which is why we were at that stoplight or on that road in the first place.
So by senior year, after sports, my boyfriend would come by my house. He went to a high school further away, so he’d just assume he could come over after his practice ended. I should be home, after all. He wouldn’t leave until I fucked him, so I got used to pretending like I still enjoyed being with him even though I had long shut off my emotions. It was a nice hormonal kick, the daily orgasms, though. I figured, if I had to get through this hell, I would at least figure out how it was most enjoyable for me. And he was physically a reliable source of relief for the mental stress he put me through. Like I said, he had a pretty nice dick.
And truth be told, can you really blame my mental health on just him? I mean, I think I manage my mental health pretty well, for the record. Saying I’m “mentally unwell” is actually insulting, because I think this is a perfectly rational response for the things in my life to date. Let’s get that straight.
So, I’d get on top of him, and fuck him on the floor of my bedroom–having to be sneaky and quiet enough not to annoy my various family members. He’d cum, be reassured that I loved him and all was well, then he’d go off to smoke weed and fuck some freshman from his school while I went off to hang out with a bunch of nerdy track guys one county over, playing Mario Party and Just Dance or even charades and irrationally feeling like I should feel guilty the whole time.
Eventually, by the spring of my senior year, I started fucking other guys too, but I’d at least break up with him for the day. So I justified his control and incessant obsession with making sure I was staying “in line” and “his”. He never found proof I was also fucking around, I was far too clever (and busy) for that. (Plus, I had learned my lesson telling him the truth the first time.) I grew up with a father who did counterintelligence, after all. Who only found my myspaces because I never really tried to hide them. Who never knew about the sneaking out until I decided I was okay with him recognizing it. To be fair, I never really found “proof” that my high school boyfriend was “fucking around”, either, but if the shoe fits, walk a mile in it, right? I’ve heard enough stories.
I didn’t register, know, or understand what I didn’t like about dating him. How was I to know?
We didn’t learn about domestic violence in school.
We didn’t learn about sexual trauma or abuse in general.
Or pedophilia.
We didn’t learn about consent in sex education or sexual dynamics of coercion.
We learned what sex was and a few diseases you could get and how you might get them.
It was a public school in the way that most girls wore their purity rings (even after they did anal, because everyone knows that doesn’t count) and prayer circles were common. You lost your ability to play sports if you got “too confident” as a teenage girl (read: slutty, biochemically assertive and confident) or had to provide daycare for your younger siblings. My neighbors are Amish and everyone goes to a one room schoolhouse. There’s a JUNIOR naval academy less than an hour from me. I told you, it was a weird place to grow up for as much good as it offered me.
It’s only in my adulthood that I’m learning sexual power has been used both artistically and as a survival method to topple authoritative power structures, government regimes, unhealthy marriages, “perfect families”, and the power struggle by nature in that men are often physically larger. What “misogyny” and “the patriarchy” is, and how it’s perpetuated in symbolic Christianity throughout the USA and related to republican policies? Why do we condemn people to learn about something so prevalent in our societal culture and so unaddressed that most women can and will go through something of similar variation and yet, it’s “taboo” to discuss? That CHILDREN can and will be going through because that’s just life in America, but we don’t want to talk “socialism” because handouts are bad. “Save the Children”–but ONLY if they’re unborn or if we think Hilary Clinton was involved and they’ll take up our religion.
Rihanna loses speaking engagements because Chris Brown beat the shit out of her and they were worried about the OPTICS of having a “domestic violence SURVIVOR” and “accountability” is apparently “cancel culture” for Trump supporters these days.
That was our lives. We’re a rural farming town. Everyone beat the shit out of their kids. It’s mainly military, agricultural, blue collar, or law enforcement to some degree for parents. My mom couldn’t condemn how my boyfriend treated me without exposing or even being aware of and honest with herself about her own marriage, her own upbringing, her own parenting method. She didn’t have the 8 years of schooling that I’ve had since. She didn’t babysit for the families and watch the parenting styles of minimal financial stress. How would I expect her to? She had three children by my current age. And they didn’t have “the internet” at home.
I knew I didn’t like the way my boyfriend treated me. He knew it, too. But he always apologized. He found different ways to hurt me. So I just never hit back. I may have thought often about slitting his throat, mind you. But never when he knew it. Maybe in his sleep, when he couldn’t overpower me so easily. When the text messages from the middle school girls his dad coached in soccer would come through in the middle of the night. I remembered the times I sent the same desperate array of messages as I read them, quietly, listening to his breath softly continuing sleepily behind me. Confronting him and being talked out of believing yourself because “he loves you” and “he would never”. (He was 18, that would be gross.) The reality that maybe “she does this with everyone” (but not being able to admit that without also admitting you know the “but I never respond” is a lie. Men always respond. Such feeble, feeble creatures.)
I would always forgive him. I reacted with love, and swayed him with sex until he was gentle with me. I biochemically trained him to my advantage–my desperate ploy against the rage from his triple x steroid protein powder shit he guzzled down on the reg. I may have been picturing myself orgasming on his cock right as I slit his jugular and finally freed myself of him, but I didn’t have to. I knew I was going to leave him behind soon. That could stay a fantasy.
I knew there was an escape.
It didn’t matter if he tried to get me pregnant so I couldn’t go to college. He wasn’t able to.
It didn’t matter if my homesickness freshman year–for my mom and people I knew and my animals, everything I’d ever known and loved–threatened to compromise my physical separation by 4 hours and 3 states from him, during a weak moment over winter break. Don’t get me wrong, even though I LOVED UNC, it didn’t feel like “home” yet and I didn’t really have a “place”. I knew nobody. It was only 16% out of state. The majority of people came in knowing their entire friend group–much how I imagine my high school peers experience at UMD was.
But where was the room for me?
So, thankfully, when I had to get my tonsils out in an emergency surgery over christmas break of my freshman year–same as my older brother also had, because it turns out college has a lot of germs–my ex blew off coming to see me, even though he had been texting me and capitalizing on my loneliness and the opioid regimen of my surgery. It was the nail in the coffin I needed, thankfully, because I never spoke to him again.
I also later found out he started dating the bitch who would foul the shit out of me from a rival high school’s soccer team. I do not fuck with inappropriate fouling–I broke a collarbone that way. One time, it got so bad and blatantly obvious that I turned and raised a fist. She left me the fuck alone after that. It made sense that she would start fucking my ex boyfriend. They were engaged for a while, I’m pretty sure. I wonder how it compares to the multiple promise rings he got me. It’s no wonder I hate jewelry, these days. I would love for her to actually tell me how much he ended up fucking her over. As messed up as it is, I would love some validation that it wasn’t just me. Even though I know it wasn’t. She used to follow my old instagram but never slid in my DMs so idk if it was hate following or a “I get it now” type of thing. Maybe she’ll find my new instagram and let me know.
I’ve seen my ex only a handful of occasions since. Both times were when I was either in the Target or the Safeway (our grocery store). Both times I turned and walked abruptly away and avoided him quite obviously.
My mom taught his younger brother while I was away in college. She also cared for my boyfriend like a son the entire time he dated me. And my brother has some psychological concerns related to aggression and how my parents raised him, so we can’t really say her limited knowledge (because there was no way I actually told people the full extent of this shit), made him out to be that bad. She may have been terrified he would kill me–revealed to me very recently–so she would always let him into the house …because what if she didn’t? She would talk to him in the hallways at school–where she taught math…because what if she didn’t? Sometimes I wonder if his friends look back and realize how dangerous he is/was? How unhealthy that is? Good riddance.
All I’m saying, is if I had to go to like ten different funerals before the age of 18 for overdoses, drunk driving, and suicides, because of my public school, then we could at least have covered the REASONS for substance use, the normalcy of depression and anxiety and ways your body is changing REALISTICALLY without it being “hilarious”. We had 3 high school teachers get busted for sexual relations with underage students since I’ve graduated and hired a homeland security analyst to our schoolboard to get rid of the predators AND several of the girls I went to high school with immediately became strippers but we can’t learn about or just finally fucking legalize prostitution so we can stop ignoring when sex workers go missing and end up murdered? So we can stop saying they “ran away”. And so we can stop sending children to juvie and succumbing them to the sex offender’s registry because of “child pornography”? That ENTIRE punishment is literally PUNISHING CHILDREN FOR NORMAL SEXUAL PLEASURES OR INTEREST IN THEMSELVES. Which, yeah, should be addressed so we can protect them from pedophilic culture, but this SURE AS HELL ISN’T THE SOLUTION. When the part of their brain responsible for judgment isn’t even fully developed yet and, again, why the fuck would it be developed when we aren’t teaching or talking about this stuff in a healthy and realistic setting? Who the fuck can tell themselves this is logical.
North Carolinaaaaaaaa
Physical separation was my saving grace, though. Out of sight, out of mind, right? And I flourish with that. If I decide I want to forget about something, I can. As I said, I long ago mastered controlling emotion.
I never use it for manipulation, to be fair. Only my safety. I can just hear Holly Flax and Michael Scott singing “let’s get eth-I-cal, ethical”. Or in the new Star Wars generation how Rey was cognizant of both forces but actively chose to do good. The dissociation is a learned skill but so is communication regarding the mental depths inciting my amygdala. I’m working on being okay with vulnerability, ya’ll. In my defense, Americans in general are terrible at that.
When I went back to UNC for the Spring semester, tonsil and abusive ex-boyfriend free, I was still vulnerable. Mentally, emotionally, and physically. I never had therapy, throughout any of this. I had to look out for myself out of necessity.
The thing, above all, that brings me power at any moment, is trusting myself to be okay alone.
I know that I have so many talents that SOMETHING in this body has to be of worth and will pull me wherever I’m intended to be at that moment. That no matter what I’m facing, it’ll all work out. How could it not? At this point, I seem to have a lot of quantized energy on my side. My intuition has kept me alive thus far. Thriving, even, if I dare say. In regards to relationships, I’m sure my exes knowing I’m fine without them, better, even, is hard. Nobody likes to admit someone else’s life will be of a higher quality without them in it.
Flash forward a month and I met one of the great loves of my life when he chased me down in the Lenoir dining hall. Nothing like an alpha male capable of subsiding power and begging for your time. I never dated him, formally, and he transferred the following year, thus, the timing, ya know? He’s fairly irrelevant to this story but I went on to date him on/off through several moves in and out of NC and I’m gonna call it dating because I don’t give a fuck–we were mutually exclusive (at his request) for 8 months at one point and sleeping over 4 nights a week while I worked in MEDICINE AND DID NOTHING ELSE BUT WORK AND HIM. The audacity of men these days.
My sophomore year, I spent a year and a half being celibate, not really drinking (the ~1 year I did it was enough for me. I’ll sip the occasional drink but I’d rather just watch) and running 85 miles a week just to focus on myself and channel my anxiety and energy. Plus, my parents didn’t expect me to get a job (and maintain my biochemistry degree) if I was also doing a sport.
Junior year, I fell in love, got my heart broken…on Valentine’s day, in fact…How topical. I didn’t even think about the timing of this when I started writing.
The summer following Junior year, I grabbed a butcher knife and ran outside my house, screaming at the two 40+ year old men who walked up our driveway and were peeping in our windows when I lived with 3 girls. I held the knife up, and aggressively said “if i EVER see either of you over here again you will not live”. I never saw them again. It was VERY effective.
November of my Senior Year I began dating a guy who went to University of South Carolina with my younger sister. He was with me that New Years Eve when an asshole preditor reached under my legs, in a bar, fingering me while I was literally walking across the dance floor.
I was wearing a tight little red dress, and 4 inch wedge heels. So I bet you think I was asking for it, right?
Never mind the fact that if you aren’t wearing a helmet down a street it doesn’t give me the right to bash your head in with a baseball bat, does it? It’s the same logic.
Cause I “should’ve known” that I’d be sexually assaulted mid stride at Top of the Hill, a prime Chapel Hill landmark on the corner of Franklin and MLK. The bar pictured in every historic photograph of Franklin Street after one of our many national championships or Duke victories. He was sitting on an ottoman that is around a pillar. He was not a student. Hunched over, pretending to be drunk or tying his shoe etc. I walked, he reached out, into my underwear, and put his fingers into my vagina. I turned around, thinking it was my boyfriend, who was right behind me–prepared to scold him on how inappropriate. Time and place, buddy…Only to realize he had my drink in one hand and his in the other. There was no way. My mind did 2+2 whilst seeing the guy recoil, and my skin got this weird sensation and I knew it was him. My body just knew.
I jumped on top of him, pinning him behind the table and beat the living shit out of him for as long as I could until my VERY confused boyfriend got me away from him. The guy didn’t even try to stop it. He knew he deserved it.
I left in tears. Got in the shower immediately, crying for hours when I got home. I didn’t know to call the police. I didn’t think to preserve evidence. I don’t know if I would’ve even felt confident that I got a good enough look at him to identify him later on in different clothing. Who was going to believe me? The security footage was shotty at best. I had been drinking. It was New Years. I was in a tight red dress on a crowded dance floor. I was a skinny, pretty, young, blonde, college girl. Who I am is just “asking for it”, apparently.
I’d only been dating the guy from South Carolina for a month or two at that point. Truth be told, it’s probably what kept us going long after we should’ve broken up. Trauma bonds people.
So, is it really my fault when his sister spent the ENTIRE day the night before her wedding asking me why I was with him and telling me how much better I deserved? Or how, later that night, when his friend “Matt” texted him at 2 am asking him how far he was from Charlotte, even though he had been living in New Jersey so the only way this “Matt” would have known he was in the state was if he had been planning to meet up with them? Why would you need to do that if you had your girlfriend coming to be your date? And why would you then have the audacity to lie to my face when I saw the fucking message and knew it wasn’t “Matt” and could see your pathetic attempt to formulate any thought other than the truth even after saying “you have one more chance before I leave”. And THEN you STILL had the audacity, KNOWING the intimate history of my relationship abuse and my worry over my parent’s divorce (because I stupidly opened up to someone YET AGAIN), just so he could then corner me in the very tiny bathroom, shutting the door behind him and towering over me like Gandalf when he screams at Bilbo Baggins with his 6’4” frame, somehow finding a way to yell at ME, calmly backing my belongings quietly, even though HE COULD’VE JUST BEEN HONEST 5 MINUTES BEFORE FROM THE BEGINNING.
So did I give a flying fuck if his screaming woke his entire extended family filling the rest of the suites in the five star hotel’s hallway? No.
Did I have too much pride to wake his mom so she could have his dad physically restrain him so I could leave? No.
Do I feel bad that I drove to Chapel Hill 45 minutes away at 2 am and hit up the aforementioned great love for the first time in several years, fucking him and crashing on his friend’s couch he was couch surfing on? nah. “No ragrets.”
I figured his family and him would thank me in the long run for not being present in the memories of the actual wedding, nor would they blame me. Especially not after the way he handled it. Sucks I met his ENTIRE extended Italian family at the rehearsal dinner earlier in the night, but, maybe you shouldn’t have hoes in all these different cities when you’re in a committed relationship. Idk.
Less than a year after that, while once more at Top of the Hill on Valentine’s Day with my best friend and her boyfriend, an NBA player and Chapel Hill great, disaster struck. My best friend was roofied and we are almost entirely certain it was her boyfriend’s best friend, a former Chapel Hill football quarterback, who did not like her and spent the entire night trying to convince her boyfriend that “he shouldn’t be with someone who gets so sloppy”.
A few months later, the maintenance guy from my apartment complex in Shadowood, a popular (cheap, old, shitty) student housing option in Chapel Hill across from the Carolina North forest, crossed 5 feet of pavement between us as he approached me while walking in the downtown area on a night out, felt up my body from my knee to my tit, and proceeded to continue down the street like nothing happened while I turned around and screamed at him and my roommate identified him as our maintenance guy.
I will thank my shitty complex. Not for keeping an eye out for my safety, but for refusing to revoke his access to my apartment until I had secured a temporary restraining order from the Hillsborough courthouse. Not to mention, when the management told him that I notified the complex, he waited on the stairs outside of my apartment and screamed at my friend who also happened to have long blonde hair as she was leaving. Still not enough to take his keys away, though. Or when he sat in uniform at the pool after seeing me present, on the clock, one chair away just staring at me, in a bikini. He was technically also a resident of the complex. They didn’t want to take away HIS rights or violate his lease in any way.
Florida Man
When the issue with my maintenance guy happened, I was dating the ex from Florida who would eventually go on to try to buy me a house. At 24, it was a nice offer. But if someone has a 10, 15, and 20 year plan including exact timelines for marriage, kids, etc. before they actually meet their spouse, that’s not really a “partnership”. That’s you planning your entire life and just walking down the aisle at the grocery store and choosing whichever spouse is on sale.Whatever, he bought my dog for me.
I don’t feel bad for dragging him to hell and back in my “Religiosity is to blame” Donald Trump piece, because after 2-3 months of us not having sex (because I had caught him compulsively and inexplicably lying to his friends about me, my friends, and my grad school program, including some rhetoric around his friends talking about stopping in and “servicing” me when they were in my college town for work) I woke up in the middle of the night to him fucking me. In his defense, he’s a good ole Catholic boy and marital rape wasn’t even illegal until 1993. I love waking up to some sexual play, too, under normal circumstances. We’d been dating for like a year and a half at that point? However, I think even the biggest idiot should know that 2-3 months of no sex because I emotionally can’t stand you is not grounds for “start fucking her when she’s unconscious and hope she’s into it”.
And teaching women they must forgive and teach men how to treat them makes it so even when stuff like this happens, if they’re apologetic WE OFTEN EXCUSE THEIR BEHAVIOR OVER OUR OWN SAFETY. We reinforce or feel obligated to answer that “it’s okay” when it SHOULDN’T be. We convince ourselves they really couldn’t have known better and they weren’t thinking about it like that. And you don’t see why this is a huge fucking problem that we as a society are not talking about enough?
When I called him out on the fact that he raped me, which I have proof he admitted should I need it, he started slapping himself and trying to get me to hit him. I guess me confessing about how I started therapy in college after finding tinder on my ex’s phone while blacked out at a Valentine’s day cocktail and punching him in the face made him think that was how I wanted to solve my problems? Do you know how disturbing it was to watch someone say they love you, but try to get you to feel as guilty as they feel instead of just learning how to absorb the emotional pain? Or how fucked up it was that you could confide some act of drunken response and the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life, which is saying a lot because of all the above and the medical injuries, and then have someone TRY and WANT to bring you back to that mentality? Do you know how confusing it is when societal expectations for success point to him as a “good person” and “everyone makes mistakes”? How that further compounds your (unreasonable) guilt and natural attempt to reason or explain the situation with logic, even though the logic is just that a lot of men suck?
I told you all I wasn’t fucking around. I may be “mean” but it’s never unprovoked.
How is it fair when the statute of limitations expires before you learn that what happened is “wrong”?
Or you lack enough proof to convict and rape kits are expensive and often cost THE VICTIM thousands of dollars–not to mention all of those still untested (#endthebacklog)?
How about concern over financial kickbacks because he managed your IRA?
His best friend sent me three pages of texts mocking me for saying Trump was going to try and undermine the election back in October so honestly I don’t give a flying fuck about whether this makes them uncomfortable or whether his identity eventually gets exposed. Maybe don’t be so afraid of accountability that you do things and pray for forgiveness later because that’s all you’ve ever been taught by your holy priest.
Cause it’s your reckoning day, bitches.
How about a few months later, after you have broken up, when you finally start hooking up with someone regularly again. You’re honest with them and that’s all you expect from him. He’s a 5th year senior which is kinda nice, because as a 2nd year grad student it gives you a little bit of an edge over his cockiness, because he knows you’re smarter than him and can’t deny it. (Why do you think I chose the majors I did?)
So when he’s super rude to you and pretends you don’t exist seeing you in person on a gameday–after fucking you that morning, all because he’s with a girl who is also in a similar grad school program and lives only a few houses down from you, you wait til they get back to his apartment, (also in the complex) before you send her screenshots of all his messages asking me not to tell her. But I’m the messy one. When Taylor Swift said “I never trust a narcissist, but they love me”? I fucking felt that. And that definitely “deserved” him coming, coked out of his mind, to my apartment, screaming at my door, threatening to shoot me, pacing up and through it for hours, wrecking some of my stuff and punching multiple holes in the wall. I’m the one to blame, sure.
He’s in Sigma Chi at UF, by the way. Nasty little fraternity. One of my friends was raped by a sigma chi at uf and her sorority told her to not press charges because it may affect their date functions and partnership with them. But you wonder why women don’t come forward?
After several continued days of intimidation, I confided in our security guard police officer who lives in the complex and thankfully, because of Floridian law, he was immediately removed and processed.
Did it stop him from telling and insisting to all of his little friends that I was “Crazy” and lying? No. I didn’t expect it to.
Did it stop him from coming into the pool area, choosing the location directly adjacent from me in the largest pool complex in Gainesville, only to sit and stare at me the ENTIRE TIME he was in the pool? No.
Did it stop him from manipulating that stupid fucking girl into dating him for over a year? Also no. I hope he learned a lot from his domestic violence group and court mandated anger management.
When he broke the restraining order several times and was seen stalking my house, I didn’t call the cops, though I did speak to the boys across the street about looking out for me. I was scared to escalate the situation. He was already mad enough that he had to leave the pool or a bar if I showed up. What happens if I had taken away his education? His housing? How would that have wired in my favor? Remember–I lived alone. And he had a gun. I had to tread carefully.
I’m not saying people can’t change, either. I get it. You can do crimes and unspeakably awful things and decide to be a completely different person eventually. You can also decide to be a good person from the beginning, fyi. It’s not actually that fucking hard and ethics aren’t that subjective, despite what the GOP would have you believe.
However, you also can’t expect your behavior and decisions to not follow you when they actually hurt people. You don’t get to decide how someone else responds to it or how long it takes them to heal or what that looks like. Especially not when that pattern of behavior is problematic on a larger scale and was definitely not an isolated incident. It’s not enough to make your friends cut you off, to be fair. They won’t really like you, but they’ll never tell you that to your face and they’re too cowardly to be lonely as an adult to expand their social circle outside of their small Tampa highschool-turned-college-fraternity-pipeline.
I’ve been a big part of sorority/fraternity culture, despite not being in one myself. I like the parties and themed functions. Most of my friends from both colleges are in some version of one. And I would go out with a group of 4 guys every night who were in the same fraternity (one was from my grad program), who would literally encircle me and keep people away from me, make sure I was safe, make sure I always had my card and a buddy, when I went out for the rest of the year. I’m not saying Greek life is universally bad…But it IS universally bad at actually drawing the line for problematic behavior or setting up a system to actually help and address truly problematic behavior and not just behavior that bitchy girls embodying Chanel Oberlin find “uncool” because it’s “dorky”. Did none of you watch Amanda Bynes in that “Sydney White” movie? The Hot or Not version of Mark Zuckerberg’s facebook that rolled through in Sara Paxton’s post-Aquamarine Barbie doll days? Have we not learned anything over the years?
While we’re on the topic–I do want to give a shoutout to OX at UF. My best large group of friends is from there and they seriously made me feel so safe, so included, and so welcomed in Florida. And Skyler and the bouncers at Fats and Rowdys never made me pay and always kept me safe from being roofied and let me sit on the bar so I could watch the crowd and the guys could stand in front of me and keep me from being touched undesirably.
If anyone has seen a video of UF girls dancing on a bar, it’s typically at Fats.
These are not bars I recommend you bring your family to, either. (Though I have.) These are bars that don’t have doors on the toilets or a lock on the main door and the men’s line can literally just look in and see you pee on game day so you better hope you’re not wearing a romper that has to practically come all the way off to pee. You have to love college towns and game days.
In case you wonder why I never feel safe, let’s not forget when I moved back to Chapel Hill and was working in surgical dermatology, and had to move into a new apartment. My internet technician from AT&T, while in my 1 bedroom apartment, alone, with just me. Who was standing in my bedroom doorway, while I showed him the ethernet cable plug, in the corner of my fairly darkened bedroom, blocking my way out. Who mentioned in passing that he knows who I am because he follows me on instagram because of my ass on a pizza floatie being posted to Barstool’s account. I understand he was maybe 30 years old max and men might not have to think of how unnerving that scenario can be. Setting up my internet. Knowing, seeing, and accessing my apartment and knowing I am alone and live alone all the time. Implying you’ve followed me on social media for years even though I just moved back to Chapel Hill for the first time in three. Blocking the only escape route I have so I’m mentally contemplating what I could use as a weapon if needed while keeping a straight face and pretending not to acknowledge how weird that is for me. All the yikes.
These are all random and unrelated events that compound the severity of needing to address and requiring teaching consent.
Requiring people to stop glorifying the purity of innocence in children like we live at Disney World and start teaching them how to healthily handle actual life so your sons grow up and don’t molest and rape and assault women. So drinking culture is not so normalized that you think the only time you should and can function hooking up is when you’re uninhibited, instead of prioritizing sexual connection when sober or when you’re with someone you trust to at least wear a condom when he fucks random girls from dating apps on the nights he isn’t seeing you. I’m kidding…They never wear condoms. They’ll throw a fit about you asking or imply you’re unreasonable for expecting it.
I also study infectious diseases. Rick and Morty’s “Anatomy Park” episode is what I based my epidemiology graduation cap design around. Only now there is drug resistant super gonorrhea, just an fyi. And many states don’t have laws that prevent or protect you from someone knowingly and purposely giving you a sexually transmitted infection. Birth control is not freely available or over the counter. Women’s rights all over the globe are apparently up for discussion and some states in the USA still don’t seem to grasp that abortion is fucking healthcare. Or that healthcare shouldn’t be tied to jobs and that 33 of the 34 developed countries in the world have figured out universal healthcare so maybe we could get on that. Or maybe the worst country in the developed world for worker’s rights wouldn’t function without healthcare being a GOAL for employment. A way to keep you in the workforce, because god forbid you need paid time off, sick leave to actually be sick, your mental health could be threatened because of your work environment, but you can’t quit because then you won’t have access to affordable insured mental health care. Don’t even get me started on paid maternity leave or how we think it should be legal for politicians to be ignorant to progress and science in a country that forced itself as a dominant world power on a universally large stage so other nations and people do look to us as examples and use it to justify their continued ignorance.
Our current culture and the influx of ignorance in administration is a danger.
Not just to our societal infrastructure.
Or the world.
But to women especially.
We are not protecting women. We keep prostitution illegal and go fight wars overseas on account of “freedom” and refuse to actually protect those within our borders. We prevent regulation on account of “small government” and refuse to demand public transparency and for government officials to ignore the lobbying bullshit and work for the healthiest environment. We don’t even assign law enforcement to most sexual assault cases or empower victims or create a social safety net to where they’re able to leave without months of devious, quiet planning and anxiety. Without further risking their lives because of “survival of the fittest” and threats to how legalizing prostitution will prevent capitalism from exploiting how easily sex sells and the purging of innocence for not-yet-legal teenage girls.
So as a 28 year old very cynical blonde lady living with my parents after leaving the healthcare field, watching Promising Young Woman struck me.
And the biggest way was it felt like justice, as tragic as it was.
And that there truly are no victors.
Nor is anybody innocent.
It felt real.
Every single woman I’ve ever met has some variation of a story like mine. Watching HBO’s “Big Little Lies” was hard to have seemingly long-forgotten scenes flash back, paralleled on screen. It’s overwhelming. And most of them never reported any of it, so I don’t think twice when I see that the already high statistics are likely underreported.
But in an age where this is common, what does one do? Dax Shepard had Carey Mulligan on his “Armchair Expert” podcast and mentioned how he isn’t surprised anymore when women come forward because that seems to be the norm. Why aren’t more men saying things like that?! Why are men, instead, confident enough to doubt the women and then also wondering why their friends have never opened up to them about a time they were sexually assaulted? Where porn addictions and violence through sexual trauma are normalized for men because of our porn industry, yet we keep prostitution illegal and women are taught they should keep themselves “pure” and “ladylike” because their physical body and sexual pleasure is always framed in reference to someone else often within the bounds of reproductive purposes only. Where dating is hard because men will laugh at how suspicious you are of them and you don’t know how or when or why you should even have to launch into this explanation. When I’ve gotten screamed at on a third date by a guy who was 29 who was upset I wasn’t as emotionally invested as he was.
One of the guys who has since confessed his pregnancy and twin fetish for me, almost choked me out the first time we hooked up. Truthfully, he should be GLAD that we have most of the same friends (we ran in slightly different circles before). After he walked me home, which was an idiotic move on my part… I was half convinced he wanted to kill me and yet I still let him walk me home over a mile in the dark because my logic was I wore sneakers and was pretty fast if he tried anything. However, that did not stop me from telling one of our mutual good friends, the house dad of this kid’s fraternity, that he was a “liability”. Rick and Morty included Summer’s helpful line of “Nobody chokes me without consent!” And I KNOW he loves Rick and Morty so even if a fucking cartoon had to teach him to ASK WOMEN BEFORE YOU CHOKE THEM BECAUSE THEY WILL ASSUME YOU ARE FOLLOWING A POTENTIAL PATTERN FOR THE SERIAL KILLERS WHOSE TRUE CRIME STORIES THEY FOLLOW DILIGENTLY, I’m still glad it’s there. He may claim he’s a highly sociopathic introvert but I know he’s just an INTJ with dark familial history (this is the Confederate slave family one) because unlike MANY of his Floridian friends, he openly criticized the GOP and is adamantly communist and votes democratically. And he goes to therapy. Which made me really happy that he felt he would tell me that. He has a strong, feisty mom who defies her family’s traditions, though, so between that and my friend’s reassurances I’m slightly less skeptical he’ll Ted Bundy me one of these days.
Our current society makes the people who are trying to make the world a better place seem like the crazy ones–The people who value human life over money. Where alpha males are flaunted through sporting culture and legal issues and character are negated “for the love of the game”. Where most men have likely had encounters like the far too many examples above and may not think anything of it because we value women and children like property and chess pieces for men to move around the board of life at whim. To sacrifice as needed.
In 2020, the USA didn’t rank in the top 10, or even the top 50, for the World Economic Forum’s gender equality.
In “The Genius of Dogs” by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, the field of evolutionary anthropology is explored. Particularly highlighting the behavioral differences in two of our closest primate relatives: bonobos and chimpanzees. The authors explain
“the highest ranking bonobo in the group is always a female, and females are close friends. Male bonobos do not beat up their mothers…male bonobos do not use physical aggression to control females. These tight bonds between female bonobos are the secret to their success. Although one female is less powerful than any male, if one female is being harassed, all of her female friends will come to her defense. In this way, females work together to protect one another from male aggression. Male bonobos can no longer force females into mating with them. Female bonobos have more freedom in choosing with whom to mate with as a result. Instead of bullies, females prefer to mate with more gentle and peaceful males.”
Who wants to explain to me why the USA is so insistent against progressive policies that make it easier to live and our males and military choose to resemble the chimpanzee relatives instead?
“Gangs of male chimpanzees cooperate in patrolling their territory borders, opportunistically kill their neighbors, and subsequently take over their territories. These gangs typically target males and infants when they attack. Females are normally spared… ” (If by spared you mean, forced into servitude.) “All chimpanzee groups have an alpha male, and it is the aspiration for every male to reach that position. The main prize for alpha males is sexual control over females. Unfortunately, males often force females to mate with them and prevent them from mating with other males by severely biting and beating the females.”
Empowerment through feminism is necessary for global stability, and the USA needs to address the violence towards women and stigma towards sexuality of females across the country. We can’t afford not to. Emphasizing sexual fluidity and empowerment, as well as its exploitation through pop culture, is important. But empowering women to try anal for fun when they’re actually ready, instead of as a “loophole” or to try and desperately keep a sub-par boyfriend from cheating, or how Call Her Daddy’s host Alexandra Cooper endorses choking someone out haphazardly without the consent, awareness, and intent behind healthy BDSM culture and is going to get women killed and traumatized irreparably and her audience is largely college aged females in the midst of drinking culture. It also includes the generation that ate tide pods so we can’t expect them to know better. Not with our public education system. From a platform whose main public figure openly makes rape jokes, I wouldn’t expect anything less.
Female sexual empowerment is undeniably imperative to combat purity culture and conservative mentality.
However, it cannot be done without also:
– addressing unrealistic standards for professionalism and misogynistic mentality towards sexual freedom negatively impacting women
– the necessity for comprehensive sexual education BEGINNING IN YOUTH AND INCLUDING CONSENT in all 50 states and territories REGARDLESS OF RELIGION
– restructuring our law enforcement and public defense budget so we actually prosecute people who are a danger to others, testing rape kits, not charging or relying on victim’s health insurance to process one to begin with, mental health being regularly accessible and a norm of society
– exploring and developing birth control and hormonal monitoring that doesn’t solely target women or treat single moms as the “problematic ones” riding the “alimony pony” instead of “providing valuable and necessary education and care to OUR children”
– abortion is healthcare. We need to stop “debating” this, it’s 2021. Get rid of the fucking billboards lining the highways in the south. Stop “protesting” outside planned parenthood which is really just harassing and intimidating people seeking affordable medical care.
– Accountability for rapists. Actual education and reform programs for social welfare over the current prison system. Chemical castration for multiple offenders seems reasonable.
These other topics are just as important. A holistic approach is necessary and national government regulation and emphasis is needed.
Maybe one day in the future, I won’t be afraid to be labeled a “radical liberal” or “drama queen” for listening to true crime podcasts and scouring documentaries so, in the likely reality that someone next follows me home, down the street, or while I’m running, I will have had every method of defense possible to give me the upper hand, should I need it.
People following me running is a common occurrence, by the way. You don’t know fear until a 45 year old 6’ + guy starts following you on a wooded trail in the Umstead forest near Raleigh, matching pace as you speed up, pushing with you, just for you to stop and jump off the trail to face him when your lungs are burning and for him to smile and say “good work” because he just enjoyed being pushed. SIR. We are IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WOODS. WHY WOULD I JUST BE COMFORTABLE WITH YOU CLEARLY FOLLOWING ME WHILE I’M IN A SPORTS BRA AND SPANDEX. This is why I got a mace bracelet.
Disney attempted to make Cruella de Vil the villain by her phrasing of “more good women have been lost to marriage than war, famine, disease, and disaster. You have talent, darling, don’t squander it.”
So what happens when these men, who society tries to tell women are marriage material through its rose colored glasses, are the greatest threat to squander the talents of these promising young women?
Women need to work together. We need to protect ourselves. And we need to start holding men accountable. At every step. Because it’s not just you that they do it to. And they did know better. They chose not to do better. There’s a difference.
Maybe the lady who yelled at me outside my freshman football locker room for sending a nude to her son should’ve taught him how to respect women. Maybe if they’d done that, instead of placing the blame on “respect”, they wouldn’t have had to pay off 2 of his underage victims years later who he drugged while partying with them.
But you know what they say… karma’s a bitch. And thanks to Tina Fey, we know “bitches get stuff done.”
Navigating this shit SUCKS. Having it impact my emotional and sexual expression and having to choose every day to not let it affect me because someone else chose to not care about how it made me feel a long time ago, SUCKS. Trying to date in the modern age and knowing a guy can look up your address with just your cell phone number or even your last name SUCKS. And seeing people try to downplay it, deny that it actually happens to this extent, excuse and proclaim how and why the MEN are being treated unfairly or demanding evidence when often nothing concrete can exist SUCKS.
It doesn’t mean I can’t love. It doesn’t mean I can’t have a healthy relationship or learn to build a life with someone. It just takes empathy. Which, apparently, is learned. Please start educating yourselves.
Next time a partner or friend or coworker, whoever, mentions difficult relationships passively, don’t respond with “it could always be worse” or “but they’re still your parent” or whatever variation of essentially gaslighting that is part of the already extensive web of reasons people do not come forward or report trauma. Why they do not seek help.
And if you’re a guy, who is insecure and trying to date, just know that the bar is on the actual ground. And let me remind you we still loved Stanley Yelnats in middle school and he dug further into the ground. Women want someone who will not murder them, or abuse them, who will not body shame them or make them feel “unlovable” because their weight fluctuates with hormonal changes and just aging. Every single woman is capable of being a sexual freak to some capacity, but don’t push BDSM or assume they like to be choked without clear consent. I GUARANTEE you, if a guy asked me if he was allowed to do something, like pausing right before he went down, I would be MORE turned on if he clarified consent. Women need to feel confident about themselves, about their bodies, about what they fucking want in any setting and they need to know it’s okay to demand that from who they let in their lives, mouths, assholes, vaginas, and body in general in any capacity.
I won’t date again until someone actually wants to date ME, not just “to date”. So yes, my friends are aware they are responsible for setting me up in life with their friends later in life. This is mutually beneficial for all parties involved. They get a hot, educated, crazy gal to conversate with about literally everything and convince them to finally go to therapy because everyone can talk about SOMETHING, and I get set up with their just-as-well-educated friends who don’t claim to be “apolitical” on Bumble just to really be a Republican disguised as a misinformed libertarian…You’re all liberals if you like drugs. You can’t have decriminalization of drugs and improvements with reference to crime and violence without universal healthcare, criminal justice reform, and ultimately more regulation of dangerous corporate practices and disregard for health in the name of ~*~capitalism~*~.
Stay focused on your studies, ladies, and just remember, all men are murderers or rapists until proven guilty. If they’re not, they’ll have no problem recognizing the state of the world for women and respecting your pace accordingly. If they are, well let’s just be grateful for true crime podcasts who will do the work law enforcement agencies haven’t devoted funding to for ages. (I guess you can’t really police your own, after all.) While that is a tactic that will help your safety, I will say I’m tired of the outrage of “what if men are falsely accused”. The aforementioned great love who transferred was involved in a national scandal for his false accusation and it involved his father losing his job and all. Yes, some men are falsely accused. We need to do things like preventing your mug shots from being printed until you’re guilty, castration and severe enough punishments to deter multiple offenders, not letting universities charge you for the honor code without also requiring actual courts of law to also be involved, not victim blaming and denying.
Men–consider this perspective next time a partner wants to share a previous experience in a relationship and your insecurity cries “comparison” instead of “sharing”. It’s not “bringing it into your relationship”. That’s a shitty and immature and senseless view. Healing is not linear. And it is not simple. Build a friendship with women with genuinely no sexual pressure, even if you “would if you could”. Either way, you’ll be introduced to more women and gain emotional support that male friendships often lack because of “the patriarchy”. And for the love of all the gods, don’t ONLY hit on them when you’re drunk and then also ask them why they only fuck shitty guys. Or the first time you hand them a stack of money and teach them how to make it rain on strippers which is QUITE POSSIBLY my new favorite hobby, don’t take them home and then ask them to fuck “because you’re so horny” versus “because I’m your best friend and you’re in love with me”. It’s hypocritical.
Enjoy your week, everyone. Sorry I keep dropping bombs on you. Must be that military family background, guess it’s just genetic.
Sources:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9620292/
https://www.verywellmind.com/add-symptoms-in-women-20394
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-rankings-by-country
https://www.thebalance.com/the-u-s-is-losing-its-competitive-advantage-3306225
https://genius.com/Britney-spears-overprotected-lyrics
https://www.rainn.org/about-national-sexual-assault-telephone-hotline
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/sexual-violence/index.html
https://wallethub.com/edu/best-and-worst-states-for-women-equality/5835