I started back at uni this past week. This year I’m doing 200 level papers, and I now have a new understanding as to what it means to be a full-time student.
In light of that, I will probably only be posting on Sundays (potentially staggering them throughout the week, if there are enough of them).
In the meantime, here is a picture of a cute owl:
There have been a number of conversations lately regarding consent. After reading this article by Tracy Clark-Flory about safewords being ignored, I decided it was time I talked about my own experience.
TRIGGER WARNING: Rape
When I was 23, I was raped.
It took me a long time to realise what happened was in fact rape. I had thought just acknowledging it would be enough to come to terms with what happened, and it did, for a short time. I hope by talking about it now, it will give me some closure, and perhaps stop the same thing from happening to at least one other person.
I was young, inexperienced, naïve and in my first BDSM relationship. French was my Master, and I was his submissive. I was completely infatuated with him, and trusted him completely. I couldn’t talk to anyone else about the relationship, because I was French’s secret mistress, and he didn’t want it getting back to his partner. I got it in my head that because they were having problems, he would leave her for me, and to help that happen, I would do anything to please him.
One night French sent me a text to say he was coming round. I was to meet him at the door completely naked, or we would have anal sex (which we had not had together up until that point, because I was not ready, and had told him so, repeatedly). That was the whole extent of the negotiation. No discussion of safewords, hard limits, or anything else. I didn’t think I would ever never a safeword. Why would I? I (thought I) was in love with French, and trusted him completely. He would never force me to do anything I didn’t want to do. Would he?
I was living in a flat by myself at this point. So I had no safety back up, someone to help me make sure nothing went wrong. Again, I didn’t think I would need to.
I sat on the couch, naked under my bathrobe, eagerly awaiting French’s arrival. He knocked, I disrobed, and opened the door. I thought (mistakenly) that this would show him that I truly had no desire to engage in any anal sex with him that night.
French led me to my bedroom. Some foreplay ensued. He grabbed a condom, put it on. Then it happened. He flipped me over onto my front and pinned me down. I tried to get away, while saying “No! I don’t want to!” He ignored my pleas, even though consensual non-consent was not part of our dynamic (I didn’t even know such a thing existed). There was no preparation, no lube. I stopped struggling, and lay there silently, trying to move into a position where maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much, just wanting it to be over.
When he was finished, I felt numb, unsure what had just happened. Rape never even crossed my mind, after all, he was my boyfriend. Boyfriends don’t rape their girlfriends.
I ignored whatever I was feeling. Dirty. Used. After putting my bathrobe back on, I joined French on the couch, and we watched Project Runway together. And he went home.
A couple of weeks later, French and I parted ways. I had met J, and, after falling for him completely (for real this time), wanted to be exclusive.
About two years later, French got in contact with me again. By this point I had realised the true extent of what had happened, and I told him as such. He sheepishly said he didn’t realise, and had just gotten caught up in the moment. I believe that was his “apology.” I have not talked to him since, and have no desire too.
I know now that I, in no way, deserved what happened to me. I had followed the rules, and he had taken advantage of my innocence.
I don’t regret what happened though, it has helped make me who I am today, and I’m pretty ok with that person.
Snagged from Jetta Vegas via Tumblr:
PLATO: For the greater good.
KARL MARX: It was a historical inevitability.
MACHIAVELLI: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken’s dominion maintained.
HIPPOCRATES: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
JACQUES DERRIDA: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
THOMAS DE TORQUEMADA: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I’ll find out.
TIMOTHY LEARY: Because that’s the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
DOUGLAS ADAMS: Forty-two.
NIETZSCHE: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
OLIVER NORTH: National Security was at stake.
B.F. SKINNER: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
CARL JUNG: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN: The possibility of “crossing” was encoded into the objects “chicken” and “road”, and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
ARISTOTLE: To actualize its potential.
BUDDHA: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
HOWARD COSELL: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
SALVADOR DALI: The Fish.
DARWIN: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
EMILY DICKINSON: Because it could not stop for death.
EPICURUS: For fun.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON: It didn’t cross the road; it transcended it.
JOHANN VON GOETHE: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die. In the rain.
WERNER HEISENBERG: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
DAVID HUME: Out of custom and habit.
JACK NICHOLSON: ‘Cause it [censored] wanted to. That’s the [censored] reason.
PYRRHO THE SKEPTIC: What road?
RONALD REAGAN: I forget.
JOHN SUNUNU: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
THE SPHINX: You tell me.
MR. T.: If you saw me coming you’d cross the road too!
HENRY DAVID THOREAU: To live deliberately … and suck all the marrow out of life.
MARK TWAIN: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
MOLLY YARD: It was a hen!
ZENO OF ELEA: To prove it could never reach the other side.
CHAUCER: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
WORDSWORTH: To wander lonely as a cloud.
THE GODFATHER: I didn’t want its mother to see it like that.
KEATS: Philosophy will clip a chicken’s wings.
BLAKE: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
OTHELLO: Jealousy.
DR. JOHNSON: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
MRS. THATCHER: This chicken’s not for turning.
SUPREME SOVIET: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
OSCAR WILDE: Why, indeed? One’s social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience – although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
KAFKA: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
SWIFT: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
MACBETH: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o’er.
WHITEHEAD: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
FREUD: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)
HAMLET: That is not the question.
DONNE: It crosseth for thee.
POPE: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
CONSTABLE: To get a better view.
How could I have been so completely blind? Living in my own fantasy world!?
Thanks to Stuff.co.nz, people now have the tools to tell us fatties what we obviously did not already know.
To quote Tallulah from over at The Lady Garden:
Because there’s no such thing as a stigma against fat people, some days, it slips my mind that I am overweight. You see, I don’t ever get random abuse shouted at me on the street. The fact that I can only shop in about 5% of the clothes shops in my city in no way makes me feel like I’ve been corralled off into some paddock where the un-sexy fatties go to pig out and wear unflattering clothes. Buying clothes on the internet, and the extra cost involved, and hit-and-miss nature of it, passes me by. Going on that traditionally “girly” expedition, Shopping, with friends of “normal” sizes, in NO WAY feels like torture. I don’t ever end up buying, like, a $100 scarf, just to feel like “one of the girls”. And I certainly don’t own masses of shoes and scarfs and jewellery, because they’re the Fat Girl’s Consolation.
Read the rest of her post here.
Apparently “most adults do not see a problem in themselves but will see it in somebody else”, but ‘experts’ also say, “you should tell overweight friends or family that they need to slim down.” Do they not see the slight conflict of interest here? Or is it just me?
Ah, concern trolling. Who has not experienced some form of this? They mean no harm of course, they’re ‘just concerned about you.’ Some even go as far to say that you must be suffering from some kind of body dysmorphia, seeing beauty where, you know, it just isn’t there. How dare you be happy with the way you look, or even consider getting upset when you are told that you shouldn’t be.
People have no right to their own ideals on others. This counts for religion, political beliefs (not always separate), preferred hair colouring, music tastes, body type… the list goes on and on.
Why must we always feel the duty to pass judgment on each other?
H/T Tallulah
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