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#YesAllWomen
Jun. 1st, 2014 08:54 amSo, I've been seeing the #YesAllWomen thing about, as a response to #NotAllMen, and the various discussions about it. And I've been feeling positive and supportive towards the #YesAllWomen response, while thinking that it really didn't apply to me. But, you know, I kept thinking. And began to wonder why it was that I thought it didn't apply to me; why was I discounting or ignoring my own actual experiences?
When I was fifteen, I was a volunteer at the Scaife Gallery in the Carnegie Museum. It was usually boring, averaging about one request for the bathroom per hour, and one request for the mummies per week. One day, a clean-cut, nicely dressed, well-spoken young man started chatting me up. It was surprising and flattering. I didn't get a lot of positive attention, especially not positive male attention. He offered to buy me something at the coffee shop. I think I got a milk shake. He was fun to talk to. He was either on leave from or had just left the armed services. I don't know how old he was, early twenties at a guess. Now, I lived in Penn Hills, and the museum was in Oakland, and there were two express buses (The 72U I believe) in the afternoons. I told him I had to leave, in order to catch the last of the expresses. If I missed it, I would have to take the 73 Highland to East Liberty, and change there, and I would be hours late to home. He gallantly offered to drive me home, and we lingered in the coffee shop a brief period longer. I should note that if he was flirting with me, I didn't realize it, and if I was flirting with him, I didn't know it. But I was very young, and very naive.
We went out to his car. It was parked in a fairly small parking lot. There were some people about, and it was late afternoon. I got in, buckled my seat belt. He did not start the engine. I thought that this was odd. I started giving him directions to my home. He said, "I could rape you, you know." I think I must have been surprised. I don't remember surprise, though, what I remember was a white hot rage. An overpowering fury. It has been more than 35 years, and I don't remember exactly what I said. I do remember telling him that if he tried, I'd scream. He said that no one would hear me. I told him I had a really, really loud voice. I also remember telling him, with absolute certainty, that he would do no such thing. There is a thing I do when I am very angry, where my mouth lives a life of its own. It's prone to, for instance, telling someone the truth about themselves to their face in a way that makes it impossible for them not to listen. I wish I could do this when I'm not enraged, it seems like a useful skill. But when I'm enraged, I evidently have some weird power of voice. I no longer remember what I told this young man, but when I was done, he was speechless. I then told him to drive me home. Which he did. We did not speak for the entire half hour drive.
Of the many strange and crazy things that I've done in my life, not getting out of that car is probably high on the list. Insisting that a person who had just offered to rape me start the car and drive me, well, anyplace at all, has to be an act of monumental hubris. However, for me it was very much a matter of being more afraid of the devil I knew than the devil I didn't. That overpowering rage? That was not because he had offered to violate me. It was because if he did, I would have to explain it to my parents. Being raped didn't particularly sound like fun, you understand, but the idea of explaining how it had happened to my parents was purely terrifying. And if this very scary person didn't actually drive me home, as he had promised to do, I was going to be hours late, and have to explain that to my parents, and again, that was much more frightening to me that what he had threatened to do to me. Indeed, if he did actually attack me, at least then I'd have something distracting to tell my parents when they were upset that I was home late.
About a month short of my seventeenth birthday, I lost my virginity. I tell this story as a performance piece, and it's quite funny. While the actual process was traumatic, the final outcomes were largely wonderful, and the whole thing is part of my incredibly complicated relationship with sex and empowerment. But stripped of context and consequences, there are some bare facts that I rarely draw attention to. I was not yet seventeen. He was twenty-five. I was drunk. He helped me get drunk. He was perfectly aware of my age, the fact that I was a virgin, and that I was drunk. He did not use a condom. Now, it is true that for me, it didn't feel like rape. There are weird, important ways in which I was very much an empowered actor in this story. But there is no getting around the fact that, had he been an even minimally decent sort of bloke, he would not have had sex with me. The fact that the outcomes were largely positive for me are important to me, but were not in the least predictable to him. If someone tries to kill you with a shot gun, misses, and cures your hiccups, you still don't think that what he did was a good thing. He tried to fucking murder you. This man, he could easily have ruined my life. The fact that he didn't is a great thing for me, but no virtue redounds to him.
In the Eighties, I spent a lot of time being very sexually available in fandom. It started out partly because I was unable to conceive of having any other type of social capital. It was also easy and fun. Through it, I learned a huge amount of useful things. It was definitely a tool for me, a way to learn about empowerment, empathy, responsibility, and joy. I genuinely don't regret it. I regret some of the mistakes I made, I regret the people I hurt. I don't regret using my sexuality as a tool to become a bigger, better person. But I do wonder if I contributed to making fandom a less good place for women who didn't make that choice. Women who were shyer, women who found the male gaze to be threatening rather than flattering. Is there a place for both of us, I wonder. A place where I could have gotten the positive male attention that I found so enticing, and ultimately wonderful, and not create an environment in which those same men felt it a right to ogle, proposition, take pictures, and generally importune women who weren't interested in that kind of attention. I think that it might be possible, but only if we require that the men actually, you know, make real attempts to differentiate, to notice which of the women are advertising availability and which are not. And to respect both choices.
And for all that the promiscuity was my choice, for my reasons, and served a bunch of really useful purposes for me, it had its downsides. I sometimes felt like a public utility. My right to choose felt slightly eroded. There was also the memorable occasion where I was at a SFLIS meeting and one of the members demanded, in front of everyone, to know why I wouldn't sleep with him. After all, I'd slept with all of the other men there. I remember looking around and realizing that this statement was correct. And I remember failing to find an adequate explanation. I remember feeling that I needed to have an explanation. Which, in retrospect, I really didn't. It was my choice, and I didn't need to explain it to anyone. Most especially not him.
It's actually rather hard to creep on me. I tend to accept the male gaze as a form of compliment. It doesn't frighten me. Random propositions to go to bed with men I don't know very well rarely insult me. But this is entirely me. It is built from weird building blocks that other people don't have. It comes from a childhood of abuse, where I never learned certain types of self-protective behaviors. It comes from having had sexuality as my only form of power at a critical age of learning, and having had that be a largely positive thing. It comes from never having been actually raped. It comes from having had a number of truly wonderful lovers and teachers. Which, you know, is all very nice for me in some ways, but isn't exactly a recipe for building a better world. I don't particularly wish for a different set of boundaries and triggers, but I think it stunningly important that we all start understanding that other people do have other boundaries and triggers and learning to respect those. Which starts, by the way, with figuring out what they are for each of the individuals that we interact with.
I do think that one of the things that #NotAllMen is about is trying to get us to have a _less_ nuanced view of men. It wants us to divide up the male gender into predators and heroes, and then to laud the heroes. The man I eventually married did many wonderful things for me. He helped me free of my abusive family and my abusive religion. He gave me many intellectual tools for moving forward with my life. He loved me, and helped me find a sense of self-worth that I had never had before. And one of the things I did with that burgeoning self-worth was kick his ass to the curb, because he was also a controlling, sexist alcoholic. There is no universe in which Nigel is the hero or the predator, he is always both.
I wonder, do the people behind #NotAllMen actually think that women have a binary view of men? Or, worse, a unitary view? Are they projecting their unitary view of women on the responses they get from women? Is this actually born of their own inability to see women as complicated individuals with actual, lived history which informs their choices? Do they think that the choices people make, regardless of gender, are somehow choices made in a vacuum, based on ideal forms and not on messy real life? And do they think that maybe, they'd get laid more often if women looked at them as the Platonic form of a man, rather than the person that they actually are? Or am I living in a weird bubble where the women I associate with, when they talk about their encounters with men, tend to talk about it in complicated, nuanced ways, trying to sort out the pieces of their experience which are influenced by their past, by existing social constructs, and making complicated cost-benefit analyses where there isn't a single, obvious benefit, but instead a weird buffet of good and bad outcomes, many of which are not entirely obvious on the face of things?
When I was fifteen, I was a volunteer at the Scaife Gallery in the Carnegie Museum. It was usually boring, averaging about one request for the bathroom per hour, and one request for the mummies per week. One day, a clean-cut, nicely dressed, well-spoken young man started chatting me up. It was surprising and flattering. I didn't get a lot of positive attention, especially not positive male attention. He offered to buy me something at the coffee shop. I think I got a milk shake. He was fun to talk to. He was either on leave from or had just left the armed services. I don't know how old he was, early twenties at a guess. Now, I lived in Penn Hills, and the museum was in Oakland, and there were two express buses (The 72U I believe) in the afternoons. I told him I had to leave, in order to catch the last of the expresses. If I missed it, I would have to take the 73 Highland to East Liberty, and change there, and I would be hours late to home. He gallantly offered to drive me home, and we lingered in the coffee shop a brief period longer. I should note that if he was flirting with me, I didn't realize it, and if I was flirting with him, I didn't know it. But I was very young, and very naive.
We went out to his car. It was parked in a fairly small parking lot. There were some people about, and it was late afternoon. I got in, buckled my seat belt. He did not start the engine. I thought that this was odd. I started giving him directions to my home. He said, "I could rape you, you know." I think I must have been surprised. I don't remember surprise, though, what I remember was a white hot rage. An overpowering fury. It has been more than 35 years, and I don't remember exactly what I said. I do remember telling him that if he tried, I'd scream. He said that no one would hear me. I told him I had a really, really loud voice. I also remember telling him, with absolute certainty, that he would do no such thing. There is a thing I do when I am very angry, where my mouth lives a life of its own. It's prone to, for instance, telling someone the truth about themselves to their face in a way that makes it impossible for them not to listen. I wish I could do this when I'm not enraged, it seems like a useful skill. But when I'm enraged, I evidently have some weird power of voice. I no longer remember what I told this young man, but when I was done, he was speechless. I then told him to drive me home. Which he did. We did not speak for the entire half hour drive.
Of the many strange and crazy things that I've done in my life, not getting out of that car is probably high on the list. Insisting that a person who had just offered to rape me start the car and drive me, well, anyplace at all, has to be an act of monumental hubris. However, for me it was very much a matter of being more afraid of the devil I knew than the devil I didn't. That overpowering rage? That was not because he had offered to violate me. It was because if he did, I would have to explain it to my parents. Being raped didn't particularly sound like fun, you understand, but the idea of explaining how it had happened to my parents was purely terrifying. And if this very scary person didn't actually drive me home, as he had promised to do, I was going to be hours late, and have to explain that to my parents, and again, that was much more frightening to me that what he had threatened to do to me. Indeed, if he did actually attack me, at least then I'd have something distracting to tell my parents when they were upset that I was home late.
About a month short of my seventeenth birthday, I lost my virginity. I tell this story as a performance piece, and it's quite funny. While the actual process was traumatic, the final outcomes were largely wonderful, and the whole thing is part of my incredibly complicated relationship with sex and empowerment. But stripped of context and consequences, there are some bare facts that I rarely draw attention to. I was not yet seventeen. He was twenty-five. I was drunk. He helped me get drunk. He was perfectly aware of my age, the fact that I was a virgin, and that I was drunk. He did not use a condom. Now, it is true that for me, it didn't feel like rape. There are weird, important ways in which I was very much an empowered actor in this story. But there is no getting around the fact that, had he been an even minimally decent sort of bloke, he would not have had sex with me. The fact that the outcomes were largely positive for me are important to me, but were not in the least predictable to him. If someone tries to kill you with a shot gun, misses, and cures your hiccups, you still don't think that what he did was a good thing. He tried to fucking murder you. This man, he could easily have ruined my life. The fact that he didn't is a great thing for me, but no virtue redounds to him.
In the Eighties, I spent a lot of time being very sexually available in fandom. It started out partly because I was unable to conceive of having any other type of social capital. It was also easy and fun. Through it, I learned a huge amount of useful things. It was definitely a tool for me, a way to learn about empowerment, empathy, responsibility, and joy. I genuinely don't regret it. I regret some of the mistakes I made, I regret the people I hurt. I don't regret using my sexuality as a tool to become a bigger, better person. But I do wonder if I contributed to making fandom a less good place for women who didn't make that choice. Women who were shyer, women who found the male gaze to be threatening rather than flattering. Is there a place for both of us, I wonder. A place where I could have gotten the positive male attention that I found so enticing, and ultimately wonderful, and not create an environment in which those same men felt it a right to ogle, proposition, take pictures, and generally importune women who weren't interested in that kind of attention. I think that it might be possible, but only if we require that the men actually, you know, make real attempts to differentiate, to notice which of the women are advertising availability and which are not. And to respect both choices.
And for all that the promiscuity was my choice, for my reasons, and served a bunch of really useful purposes for me, it had its downsides. I sometimes felt like a public utility. My right to choose felt slightly eroded. There was also the memorable occasion where I was at a SFLIS meeting and one of the members demanded, in front of everyone, to know why I wouldn't sleep with him. After all, I'd slept with all of the other men there. I remember looking around and realizing that this statement was correct. And I remember failing to find an adequate explanation. I remember feeling that I needed to have an explanation. Which, in retrospect, I really didn't. It was my choice, and I didn't need to explain it to anyone. Most especially not him.
It's actually rather hard to creep on me. I tend to accept the male gaze as a form of compliment. It doesn't frighten me. Random propositions to go to bed with men I don't know very well rarely insult me. But this is entirely me. It is built from weird building blocks that other people don't have. It comes from a childhood of abuse, where I never learned certain types of self-protective behaviors. It comes from having had sexuality as my only form of power at a critical age of learning, and having had that be a largely positive thing. It comes from never having been actually raped. It comes from having had a number of truly wonderful lovers and teachers. Which, you know, is all very nice for me in some ways, but isn't exactly a recipe for building a better world. I don't particularly wish for a different set of boundaries and triggers, but I think it stunningly important that we all start understanding that other people do have other boundaries and triggers and learning to respect those. Which starts, by the way, with figuring out what they are for each of the individuals that we interact with.
I do think that one of the things that #NotAllMen is about is trying to get us to have a _less_ nuanced view of men. It wants us to divide up the male gender into predators and heroes, and then to laud the heroes. The man I eventually married did many wonderful things for me. He helped me free of my abusive family and my abusive religion. He gave me many intellectual tools for moving forward with my life. He loved me, and helped me find a sense of self-worth that I had never had before. And one of the things I did with that burgeoning self-worth was kick his ass to the curb, because he was also a controlling, sexist alcoholic. There is no universe in which Nigel is the hero or the predator, he is always both.
I wonder, do the people behind #NotAllMen actually think that women have a binary view of men? Or, worse, a unitary view? Are they projecting their unitary view of women on the responses they get from women? Is this actually born of their own inability to see women as complicated individuals with actual, lived history which informs their choices? Do they think that the choices people make, regardless of gender, are somehow choices made in a vacuum, based on ideal forms and not on messy real life? And do they think that maybe, they'd get laid more often if women looked at them as the Platonic form of a man, rather than the person that they actually are? Or am I living in a weird bubble where the women I associate with, when they talk about their encounters with men, tend to talk about it in complicated, nuanced ways, trying to sort out the pieces of their experience which are influenced by their past, by existing social constructs, and making complicated cost-benefit analyses where there isn't a single, obvious benefit, but instead a weird buffet of good and bad outcomes, many of which are not entirely obvious on the face of things?
