Rape is a choice made by rapists, not victims

Trigger Warning for details of rape.

When I was 19 my then-boyfriend raped me. It took over 5 years before I was able to call it rape to myself and another year or so after that when I could call it rape to other people. Even now it is sometimes hard for me to refer to it as rape. Why? Because it was "gray."

He was my boyfriend. I went with him back to his room. I drank with him. I made out with him before. I kept on dating him afterwards. I kept on telling myself this and never told anyone else the details because it was just so... gray. Except, it wasn't. What I didn't constantly remind myself, although I never forgot, was how many times I told him no. And how many times I pushed, or tried to push, him off my body. Or how he took off the condom instead of stopping when I told him it hurt.

That five years of not being able to call a rape a rape fucked me up more than the original encounter. People I slept with after him suffered for it. People who actually did care about my consent and couldn't understand why I was suddenly crying uncontrollably when just moments before I was seemingly enjoying sex with them. I couldn't understand it either. I had done this before, after all, so why now was every part of my being screaming no?

Why did it take me more than 5 years to call what happened to me rape? Because I followed the fucking rules. Yes I went with him back to his place and drank with him, but this wasn't a stranger, this was my boyfriend. We had been dating for awhile before this and had been friends for even longer previously. He was one of a group of friends who would walk me back to my dorm at night so I wouldn't have to go alone. No where in those rape prevention rules did it tell me some guys would game those very same rules.


Last week on Fox News, Zerlina Maxwell basically told people to stop telling women what to do to prevent rape and to tell men not to rape instead. For this she was inundated with rape and death threats. How fucked is that? She's right though, the current rules don't work. People can follow the rules and some asshole can still rape them anyway. And what if you don't follow the rules? It's drilled into us throughout life that if you don't follow the rules you need to be prepared to suffer the consequences. But rape is the action of the rapist. Why are we giving (potential) victims rules to not have someone else rape them? The only thing that rules to prevent being a rape victim accomplish is to let society wash its hands of people who didn't follow those rules and had someone else do something horrible to them. It's just an added bonus that it also shuts up some people who did follow those rules and were still raped by someone else because well, I followed the rules so that couldn't have really been rape, right?

We don't lay the blame on sober people who are hit by a drunk driver even if it's on New Years Eve or St. Patrick's Day. Instead there are national campaigns to tell people that buzzed driving is drunk driving, programs are implemented in high schools to warn the dangers of drunk driving, programs like Tipsy Tow exist, cab numbers are plastered in every bar, and even public transport sometimes runs later than usual on holidays associated with drinking. Everyone realizes that the decision to drink and drive lays solely with the drunk driver, but when someone tries to apply the same reasoning to rapists.... butbutbut not all men are rapists and that won't work and you deserved to be raped anyway.

"If you see something, say something."
I've heard this saying in various incantations throughout my life. It's been used by companies I've worked for in regards to safety issues. It's part of the reasoning behind whistle blower laws. It's said specifically by police in my neighborhood in order to reduce the number of car break-ins they've seen recently. The reasoning is that as a society we can help reduce (if not eliminate) some of the shitty things that happen to us just by paying attention and speaking up when other people are doing something that can cause harm. I bring this up because that's what I've always seen the "teach people not to rape" message as. Accountability.

"Teach people not to rape" doesn't assume all men are rapists anymore than MADD assumes everyone is a drunk driver or "No Smoking" signs assume everyone smokes.

Not everyone needs to be told, but you tell everyone because there's no way of knowing before hand who does need to be told.

 Instead, it clearly lets people know (at least some of) the boundaries and gives other people a voice to call out others they see breaking the social contract. Moving from "here's how not to get raped" to "here's how not to rape" not only shifts the blame rightly from the victim to the perpetrator but also encourages other people to step up and say to a (potential) rapist, "hey what you are doing isn't cool and you need to stop." Yet somehow suggesting this shift warrants rape and death threats.

I don't know if that shift in rules and blame would have stopped my college boyfriend from raping me. Like I said, he knew the rules and gamed them to his advantage. But it would have saved me more than five years of hell. And a shift will save future rape victims from the same torment because the blame will be squarely where it belongs, on the shoulders of the person who chose to rape.
***

Related watching: Patrick Stewart on how violence against women is learned.  I know Jezebel is a problematic site for a variety of reasons but this is where I first saw it posted and highlights one of the more pertinent quotes. The way rape prevention rules are now sets up a culture of silence that protects rapists, not rape victims/survivors.

I Have Male Friends, & This Isn't an Anomaly

Seriously. Evidently people are still confused by this whole concept of grown ass people being friends with each other, most recently in this ridiculous article on Role/Reboot ("Make sense of men & women" is their subtitle. I can't even). Let's break down the stupid, shall we?

1) Her opening paragraph describes her amazing friendship with a man. SHE DISPROVES HER OWN FUCKING HYPOTHESIS BEFORE SHE EVEN STATES HER HYPOTHESIS. She answers her own question in the fucking lede but then tries to prove the opposite is true. I just... why did she write this again?

2) Queer people, I'm sure you'll be absolutely shocked to learn that you once again don't exist. Following Leslie Rasmussen's train of thought though, you'd have to believe that coupled gay men and lesbians are only friends with people of the opposite gender and bi people have only their partner to rely on because they just can't be trusted around anyone.

3)

"maybe there's a lack of interest because our partner meets that need we have for getting attention from the opposite sex."

I am not friends with anyone just for any (presumed sexual) attention they may give me. And if anyone is friends with me for that reason? Well they're not really my friend because, dude, that's hella insulting. I am friends with the (female AND male!) people in my life because they are awesome people. Awesomness, like shit lordness, knows no gender.

4)

"Or it could be that the wives of our old male friends were less than thrilled that we were in their husbands' lives. I know I wouldn't have liked my husband having a close friendship with another woman, unless she looked like a Furby if the Furby was having a bad hair day."

 Jealous bitches be jealous.

5) There's also this assumption that being "just" friends means there's absolutely no sexual attraction, ever, the entire time you know the person. I am "just" friends with a few of my exes. And with people I used to sleep with, either on the regular or just once and then we realized that wouldn't work for us. And with people I crushed hard on for a bit but decided the friendship was worth more to me than acting on a fleeting crush. And people I did act on the crush on, and we went back to just friends (after some brief awkwardness) when it wasn't reciprocated.

This is probably the place to point out that non monogamous people also don't exist. Or maybe in point 4 where it's assumed everyone (haha ok, just women) gets jealous when their partner is with someone not them.

There's probably plenty more stupid to go around but really I just feel sad that the author holds this rather depressing worldview. To throw away the friendship and love of people based solely on their gender seems like a lonely way to go through life.

Houston's New Sin Tax

Houston politicians seem intent recently on running anyone they find undesirable out of town. First it was the noise ordinance and bans on feeding the homeless, and now it is making stripe clubs solely responsible for ending the city's rape kit backlog. Maybe the city council thinks it is "cleaning up" our city, but somewhere along the line they forgot that homeless people are still human beings deserving of respect, that arbitrary and subjective noise bans are likely unconstitutional, and that the Catholic Church, the military, schools, prisons, athletic organizations, and the police are all directly responsible for more rapes than a strip club.

The flaws in the noise ordinance and food sharing ban have already been covered in detail, but the rape kit backlog hits a lot closer to home for me. I've been raped. I have friends who have been raped. If we go through the grueling process of coming forward and subjecting ourselves to a rape kit, then we deserve to have the evidence help speak for us. The rape kit backlog across the country is absolutely horrifying, and it helps to keep more victims from coming forward. If the powers that be don't test the kits anyway, and therefore the case goes nowhere, then what's even the point?

I completely agree with Ellen Cohen that the city's rape kit back log is something that desperately needs to be addressed, but a sin tax is not the way to solve the problem. For one thing, it's likely that some of the $5 per customer charge will trickle down into the fees dancers have to pay to be on stage. The Houston city council members voted for this tax because they find this particular line of work, and it's customers, distasteful. What they (maybe) don't realize is that they are also effectively saying that women who work in this industry and are also rape victims deserve to have to pay for their own justice. This is also the second "pole" tax that Cohen has put forward. The money from that, earmarked for programs to help sexual assault victims, has been tied up in litigation since the first measure passed. This new tax will likely go down a similar route. Cohen knows that not a dime of this legislation will go towards alleviating the backlog for years, if ever. Yet she still claims that this tax is for victims. Her reasoning behind passing the tax (that there is a direct link between strip clubs and sexual assault) has never been proven, even in the study commonly cited. The thinking behind this measure is the same that went behind our (thankfully now overturned) bans on sodomy and sex toys, that since "good" people don't do these things, we don't have to worry when we punish the "bad" even if they're not actually doing anything wrong.

I am not naive. I know that the adult entertainment industry is not all sunshine and roses and all about empowering women. Sexual trafficking and assault do exist, and they exist in the industry. Those aspects need to be dealt with and shut down, but strip clubs are not responsible for the rape kit backlog, here or anywhere else in the country. They should not then shoulder the responsibility for the city's fuck up. And it is the city's fuck up. If the city council actually cares about this backlog and the people who are now being victimized a second time because of it they would make room in the city budget for it. They don't, so they won't.

The Awesome Diversity of Human Bodies

I found these links in my morning webcomic round-up that were based on these photographs of Olympic athletes.

Like many others I tend to fall into the trap of drawing the same body type over and over for athletic characters. This photoshoot serves as awesome reference reminding us artists that strong bodies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and muscles show up in different ways. It also helps us keep in mind that not everyone who is fit is also lean.
-Nina Matsumoto

These sorts of things are important. Artists: this is a good exercise! It’s good for you.
-Yuko (emphasis mine)

And my favorite headline about this: Do You Want a Body Like an Olympic Athlete’s?

Enjoy!

Ethical Sluts

My friend Kit is hosting a read along of The Ethical Slut right now at his blog. The Introduction, some personal background, and Chapter 1 are already posted, and Kit's thoughts on Chapter 2 will go up sometime tomorrow. Here are my thoughts on what has been discussed so far.

The first time I referred to myself as a slut, I was around 16 years old. You see, that was the first time a boy had gone down on me, and I liked it. In my Catholicism addled brain that obviously meant I was a horrible person and all but irredeemable. Then I went off to college, and while I still wasn't having PIV sex, I was making out with guys and giving and receiving oral sex and going back to the guys' places and all round being a "dirty little slut". And hating myself for it.

It took several years (and breaking with the Catholic Church) before I realized that enjoying sex isn't a bad thing. And neither is being a slut.

My experience with polyamory luckily wasn't as fraught. When I went off to college I broke up with my high school boyfriend because I wanted to experience everything college had to offer (read: make out with lots of dudes) without feeling guilty or hurting someone else. I latched onto the concept of "friends with benefits," even before engaging in PIV sex, and (mostly, see earlier) enjoyed the hell out of it. I certainly didn't have the ethical part down yet though. I got back together briefly with that high school boyfriend and wound up cheating on him, while still caring deeply about him. It was about that time that I realized monogamous relationships weren't for me, but I didn't know yet that there was an alternative. What can I say? I'm not the brightest bulb.

After I graduated, I started casually dating a guy I went to college with. He kept on trying to push for a romantic* relationship with me and I kept on telling him, honestly, that I had no desire to see only one person at a time (in fact, he knew I was also casually dating someone else at that time). Finally one night he said he was OK with that and suggested an open relationship. It took me about 2 seconds to realize that this was the counter option to monogamy that I'd been searching for, and I've been happily polyamorous since.**

Enter The Ethical Slut. I don't remember if someone recommended this to me or if I just stumbled upon it at a book store, but this book was a godsend for me. It may not be the best book on polyamory on the market, but it was the first (or at least the first main stream book) and the books that came afterward, like Opening Up, owe a huge debt of gratitude toward The Ethical Slut. Like the book says,

Ethical slutdom is a challenging path: we don't have a polyamorous Miss Manners telling us how to do our thing courteously and respectfully, so we have to make it up as we go along.

The Ethical Slut is a book about the multiple variations of polyamorous relationships (oh yes, there are several), but really it can be applied to any relationship style (possible exception, asexual relationships) that you want to be based on mutual trust and honesty.

*****
I have lost friendships due to being open about my polyamory. Told that I use people and am, yes, unethical, strictly because of this. But I feel that any relationship based on open communication and meeting (or at least trying to meet) the needs of all participants can't help but be an ethical one, and I have no regrets about no longer counting those people among my friends. Not understanding my lifestyle is one thing; actively judging me because of it is a whole other level.

We see ourselves as people who are committed to finding a place of sanity with sex, and to freeing ourselves to enjoy our sexuality and to share it in as many ways as may fit for each of us.

Sounds totally debased, nefarious, and unethical, right? Sluts are just people. We have the same faults and make the same mistakes as anyone else. Polyamorous people are no better or worse that monogamous people.

I can't wait to see what Kit has in store for us with this read along.

* For the sake of ease, when I refer to "romantic" relationships I mean the typical boyfriend-girlfriend (or boyfriends or girlfriends) / spouses / partners dynamic, and if I refer to "sexual" relationship I mean something more along the lines of friends-with-benefits or play partners.
** Leave it to me to find one of the guys who's all about polyamory but still finds a way to cheat. Word to the wise: Telling one partner (no matter how many times she says it's OK and even encourages you to do so) that you aren't seeing anyone else, while telling your other partner that your first partner is monogamously*** minded and can't deal with polyamory is NOT FUCKING ETHICAL!
*** I can't say how much it amuses me that the blogger spell checker recognizes monogamous, monogamy, and even fucking monogamously, but not polyamory or polyamorous.

Further Proof That Women (Specifically Black Women) Don't Matter

Overheard at the bar tonight:

Everyone's saying how we don't talk about Haiti anymore... Fuck them. They're over there raping and pillaging. Raping all the girls... Let them do their thing. I have no sympathy for them.

Excuse me while I go vomit.

Bus v. Bike: The Full Story

Friday, December 3: I’m riding one of my bikes down to see some friends of mine play at Rudyards. A little before 10PM when I’m on Lawndale by the cemetery, I hear a bus coming up behind me. The bus passes within a foot of me, almost causing a serious accident. And just for full disclosure’s sake, there wasn’t another car on that 4 lane road at the time and I was to the right side of the right lane. The driver intentionally rode as close to me as they could even though they had another whole lane to move into that wouldn’t have slowed them down in the least (not that they’d have an excuse for treating my life as callously as they did even if there was other traffic).

Saturday, December 4: I call into Houston Metro to file a complaint about the driver from the previous night. From the very beginning, Christian seems completely unconcerned that a Metro driver almost intentionally killed someone. He tells me there is nothing Metro can do because I wasn’t able to get the bus number, even though I told him the time and location. I told him I wanted a phone call back from a supervisor and left my contact information. Christian gives me no clue on when I can expect a call back and repeats again that Metro can’t do anything about it.

Sunday, December 5: I call back into Metro and again speak with Christian. I ask why I haven’t received a call back yet and then am told that the supervisors don’t work on the weekends and I’ll get a call within 3 days starting on Monday. I immediately ask him, “You are saying that I’ll get a call back no later than Wednesday?” and he agrees, I’ll get a call within 3 days. Then I say I have the bus number now (I looked up bus routes as soon as I hung up from the 1st call and found out that there is only one bus that goes down Lawndale), before I can say what it was Christian interrupts me and says that he knows, it’s the 36 and that’s the only bus that goes that way…. OK, that’s not at all what he told me the day before. I again tell him where the near-accident happened (this time I told him the closest bus stop) and what direction the driver and I were heading (he didn’t bother to ask that the first time) and now Christian tells me they can find the driver who I said did this and investigate the situation.

Thursday, December 9: After receiving no phone call from Metro the previous 3 days I call in and again speak to Christian. Now he tells me that I’m supposed to receive a phone call within 3 to 5 business days of the original complaint.

Friday, December 10: Call back into Metro again in the afternoon since this is day 5 and I don’t want to wait until Monday to find out what’s going on. I finally speak to someone besides Christian, who now tells me I’m supposed to have a complaint number. What? I was never given one in my previous 3 phone calls. She’s able to look up my complaint anyway using my name and tells me that no supervisor has even looked at it yet. She offers to put me through to someone’s voice mail and I lose my cool. I yell at her that it’s absolute bullshit that Metro doesn’t seem to care that one of their drivers almost killed someone, and why is it taking a week for someone to even look into this? She says that I must have misunderstood her and I let her patch me through, but I understood perfectly. She wasn’t putting me through to someone who could finally get to work on my complaint, she was putting me through to someone’s voicemail, when who knows when that person would check their messages. As it turned out, I couldn’t leave a message anyway. A menu would cut in after a second into my attempt to leave a message asking me to send the message as is or rerecord. It was impossible for me to leave a message past, “hi, my name is –“.

I hang up and call back into Metro again, this time getting Erica. This is the first person I talk to at Metro who actually sounds concerned about what happened to me and my lack of getting answers. She tells me that Christian should have never given me the (multiple) time frame(s) he did, that it’s actual Metro policy to return a phone call within 3-7 days (sigh). She then offers to transfer me to her supervisor but when I tell her about what just happened with the previous person I talked to and the nonexistent voice mail she actually stayed on the line with me until her supervisor was actually able to take my call without sending me to voicemail.

Now I’m talking to Antoinette and repeating my original complaint and all the new complaints I have about the misinformation and runaround I’ve been getting from Metro for the past week. Like Erica, she seems legitimately sympathetic to me and apologizes to me profusely. Antoinette also tells me that there was a note in my complaint file that someone tried to call me for additional information but that person was unable to get a hold of me or leave a message (remember I was told not half an hour before, that no one had even looked at my complaint yet). Now, I did receive a missed call earlier in the day, but there was no message left and the number wouldn’t accept incoming calls and I told Antoinette this. Whoever called me before was perfectly able to leave a message for me, they just chose not to. She then offers to transfer me to Carla R., who is allegedly the person who is actually handling my complaint. I stop her and tell her about the voice mail debacle earlier and she assures me that Carla’s voicemail works and that she is in charge of my complaint and will get back to me as soon as possible. I let her transfer me and I leave a message, explaining the clif note’s of what’s happened and asking her to call me back ASAP.

Monday, December 13: I finally receive a call back from Metro, but it’s not from Carla R. (unfortunately I missed this guy’s name at the beginning and didn’t think to ask him to repeat it), it was from possibly the smuggest asshole Houston Metro employs. He apologizes for how long this has taken, but he was out of town and then he had jury duty and call backs usually take 8 days (lolwut?) anyway. He says that they talked to the driver and the situation has been handled. I ask him how it’s been handled and he tells me he can’t tell me that. He then sighs and says, “Well would it make you feel better if I told you the guy was fired?” Thanks asshole, this has nothing to do with my feelings, and has everything to do with how I was almost killed the weekend before and Metro seems utterly unconcerned about it. I then ask him what kind of training their drivers have to share the road properly with cyclists and it’s clear from this guy’s answer that he has absolutely no clue about the legal rights of cyclists on Texas roads. Great.

*******
So a Metro driver intentionally tries to run a cyclist off the road. It takes over a week and 6 phone calls for anyone to take it seriously and then… they still don’t take it seriously. I was just expected to take this guy at his word that the driver involved was disciplined after being repeatedly lied to by Metro employees. And the worst part is, I will see that driver again, unless he or she was actually fired. If I want to ride into downtown or Montrose (where I spend most of my time when not at work or home), I have to take Lawndale or else go several miles out of my way. I’m going to fear for my life every time a bus passes me in that area when I’m doing something I love to do and doesn’t hurt anyone. Thanks Houston Metro!

If anyone sees a Houston Metro bus driver take the lives of cyclists or pedestrians into their hands, or you just want to know why they didn’t take seriously what happened to me, please contact them at 713-658-0180 or http://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/ContactUs.aspx

The Good, The Sad, and The Ugly

Since I still have bike in the blog title and a bike picture as my avatar I figured I should give an update on things bike related in my world for the last few months.

The Good
Some generous soul has taken pity on me and filled a hole in my heart I didn't know I had by donating to me a unicycle. Now I just need to learn how to ride a unicycle.

The Sad
I gain one wheel and lose 2. I sold my pink baby to a friend of mine. Hopefully she can treat her with the respect she deserves and actually get her out on the streets of Houston more than I ever could (doing 15-20 miles round trip on a cruiser that's not quite my size is not something I want to do, no matter how pretty my ride is).

Farewell, my love. You are in good hands now.

The Ugly
I'm currently in a fight with the bus system (Metro) of Houston. See, I am of the belief that I shouldn't have to worry about being intentionally killed by a bus driver when I'm utilizing my legal right to ride a bicycle on a city street. They evidently disagree. Or at least are undecided... I'm still waiting on a call back from my complaint.

Seriously, last Friday a bus came within a foot of hitting me. 12 fucking inches, and yes, it was intentional. Let me count the ways this driver could have killed or seriously injured me:
*Could have clipped me with the side mirror.
*Could have startled me enough to make me veer off course, either causing me to crash into the curb, or crash into the bus and end up getting run over.
*Could have sucked me under the wheels of the bus with the draft as the bus passed (seriously, I was fighting the draft hard).
*Could have misjudged their distance from me and hit me straight on, or run into me as they passed.
It was my ability to confidently ride a bike and pure fucking luck that kept me from being killed last Friday. The driver intentionally tried to drive as close to me as they could and it could have easily turned into a disastrous situation for me.

I've called into Metro 4 times now and each time I get different information about when I should be receiving a call back about what they are doing about this situation. Up until my last phone call with them yesterday afternoon, I have gotten nothing but the run around and false information about what is happening with my complaint. The last person I talked to even claimed that there was a note in my file that someone did attempt to call me but they were unable to reach me and leave a message. Bullshit. I did get one missed call on Friday, but whoever it was that called then did not leave a message, not could not.

It's not that hard Houston Metro. (At least) One of your drivers is intentionally endangering the lives of other people on the road. It shouldn't take a week or longer to try to "resolve" this. Get on the fucking ball.

Oh Joy

Another social medium for me to get sucked into for a short amount of time before I just kind of forget about it like all the other ones! That's right, I be atwittering now.

Shoop

I did a lot of coming of age in the mid 90s, which meant that for an R&B fan like myself, I had a lot of strong female role models to listen to at the time. En Vogue, TLC, Queen Latifah, Salt N Pepa. Their songs helped form the soundtrack of my life before college. One friend even bought me a Salt N Pepa cd she found at a garage sale one time for a buck... until she got the urge to open it before giving it to me and realized she bought me a Salt N Pepa cd case for a buck. I love their music and I never thought I'd ever get the chance to hear any of them live.

Imagine my surprise today when I found out that Salt N Pepa are playing in Houston this Saturday night! And it's not just them, they're headlining for Doug E. Fresh, Naughty by Nature, Kid & Play, and a few others. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!? Holy crap, it's like someone went into 12 year old me's brain and pulled out a Best Of compilation concert.

But I'm not going to the concert.
record scratch
Whaaa?

You see, that same night, at the same time, in a different part of Houston, Loretta fucking Lynn is also playing. And I'll be soaking up her awesomeness instead.



Seriously though, couldn't their camps join together and put on the most awesome concert ever instead? There's still time!

2 bicycle videos and an update to the employment update

Pure awesomeness (via chic cyclist):


And after going through a ton of Mark Ronson songs on youtube yesterday I'm going to have to go and buy some of that fool's music.

******
New helmet design (via Toxel):

I like that people are trying to come up with alternatives to helmets (full disclosure: I usually don't wear a helmet myself unless I'm going for a long distance ride), and after seeing this video, I have more faith in this design than I did just hearing about it.

Two things in this helmet's defense that I've already seen people question:
1) It's a one use thing. Well yeah. Technically a normal helmet is too. You should get a new helmet after a crash because the structure has been damaged.
2) On the face plant crash, the helmet ended up not adequately protecting the dummy. Same thing for a regular helmet. I knew a guy who had his jaw wired shut for a month because he hit the road face first in race crash. Unfortunately nothing's going to really protect you in that kind of crash.

Now for the downsides as I see them. Obviously there is the cost, but if this design picks up and really becomes feasible, the cost will drop. My second concern is if people decide that this design means they can wear normal hats or have some extreme updo (such as the super high ponytail in one of the pics at the link). In the video on one of the slo-mo shots you can see that for just a fraction of a second, the helmet catches on the smooth head of the dummy as it inflates. Hopefully the designers have or will test out the helmet with stuff that will impede the inflation so they see if it still works just the same. Lastly, and this one's mostly personal, I live in an area where it's 90+ degrees for half the year and always significant humidity. I'm not wearing some thick ass thing around my neck as I bike!

******
And now for the update to the employment update:
I'm staying employed at my current job through the end of the year. Woot!

Happy Columbus Day!

via feministe, transcript available at the link.

More information on the worthlessness and insult of this holiday at Racialicious:

In my opinion, it’s not as if the information does not exist out there which explicitly states that no, Columbus was never even near the continental mass of what’s now known as “America”. The “great” navigator that he was didn’t even know where he was going and never washed up here – ever.

What he did do with the full backing of the voyage was ensue genocide, apartheid, and colonization – all whose affects are deeply entrenched in existing assimilative federal policies, hierarchical societal structures, and the realities of Indigenous communities here and around the world.

Employment Update

I mentioned a little over a month ago that come October 1st of this year, I'd be out of a job. Well, it's October 9th now and I'm still employed. For now. I got a one month reprieve that keeps me working until the end of October, and there's a chance I can get another reprieve that take me out to December, possibly even next March. I'm not out of the woods yet, but it's nice to have even just a little more time to hunt for a new job and save up money in the mean time.

*fingers crossed*

Rape

When it comes to naming sexual violence, too many of us are like frogs in a pot of slowly heating water – by the time the violation rises to the level of rape, the victim-blame has been heating around us so slowly for so long that we don’t even notice we’re boiling. And so, when an interviewer asks us if we’ve been raped, we say no, even if we’ve just described to that interviewer the details of a rape that was perpetrated against us. -Jaclyn Friedman

People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored. -Harriet Jacobs

Both quotes pulled from Thomas's post. Please read all three links.

I've mentioned before here, other places on the web, and in face-to-face interactions with people that I've been raped. But I've never given any more detail than, "I have experienced rape." I've also mentioned here and everywhere else that I've experienced attempted rape. That one I'm not hesitant at all to share all the details. The assault itself, the subsequent trial, the shame I felt, my distaste for a "justice" system that would parole a serial rapist after only 5 years of an already pitiful sentence and why there had to be another victim before he got the life sentence he deserved.

The attempted rape is easy for me to talk about. Fuck, change the line of trees he jumped out from behind to some bushes and I actually experienced a stranger jumping out of the bushes with a weapon. Give me back my virginity and my attempted rape is a goddamn trope people. But that one's easy, because that one was "acceptable". My actual rape... not so much. And it goes back to what Jaclyn and Harriet talk about.

Here’s a situation every woman is familiar with: some guy she knows, perhaps a casual acquaintance, perhaps just some dude at the bus stop, is obviously infatuated with her. He’s making conversation, he’s giving her the eye. She doesn’t like him. She doesn’t want to talk to him. She doesn’t want him near her. He is freaking her out. She could disobey the rules, and tell him to GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER, and continue screaming GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME every time he tries to step closer, or speak to her again. And then he will be all, “I was just talking to you! WTF!” and everybody else will be all, “Yeah, seriously, why’d you freak out at a guy just talking to you?” and refuse to offer the support she needs to be safe from dude. Or, the guy might become hostile, violent even. Ladies, you’ve seen that look, the “bitch can’t ignore me” look. It’s a source of constant confusion, as soon as you start budding breasts, that the man who just a moment ago told you how pretty you are is now calling you a stupid ugly whore, all because you didn’t get in his car.

OR

You could follow the rules. You could flirt back a little, look meek, not talk, not move away. You might have to put up with a lot more talking, you might have to put up with him trying to ask you out to lunch every day, you might even have to go out to lunch with him. You might have to deal with him copping a feel. But he won’t turn violent on you, and neither will the spectators who have watched him browbeat you into a frightened and flirtatious corner. -Harriet Jacobs

I was taught to scream "No!" and fight back.... when a stranger popped out of the bushes at me. So I screamed no and fought back when a stranger popped out of the woods at me. But I was also taught to be deferential, to be "nice", to not interrupt other people but to not say anything when men interrupted me, that my opinions don't matter, that my boundaries don't matter, that I don't matter. And I learned those lessons just as well as I learned the scream-no-and-fight-back lesson. Better, actually, because that was was drilled into me every day of my life. So I followed these other rules, and a man was able to rape me because I followed those rules. My first PIV sexual experience was rape.

And I couldn't even see it as rape! It took me years of uneasy feelings about it to realize why it was those experiences never sat right with me. And like the women mentioned in Jacyln's piece, I thought I wasn't affected by what had happened to me either. Again, the attempted rape was "easy". There were the nightmares that were an obvious PTSD result that I still have from time to time. There was the immediate rage, and the depression that took a little longer to materialize, but all of that was obviously and justifiably tied to what happened to me. The actual rape? It's not like I went through years of self loathing and self destructive behavior when I first started having sex. Or like I flinch any time someone touches my arm or leg uninvited. Or that I get incredibly uncomfortable when a date or lover tries to kiss me repeatedly in public. Or that I still feel like I have to play nice with some guy who won't pick up on my obvious cues to leave me alone (or ignoring it when I flat out say, "I am not interested in you.") when what I really want to do is break his face on the fucking bar. Oh wait....

*****

But the issue of boundaries is not an individual issue of what one rape survivor did or didn’t do. .... Rapists look for the spots where boundaries cannot or will not be enforced. They don’t really care why. They are opportunists. They do what works. They can’t be changed. And we sure can’t wait around for the people who can’t defend their boundaries to change it; they’re doing what they can with what they have where they are. More than that, the boundary violations tend to work by degrees, so that the little ones build the foundation for the big ones, and by the time the rape happens the rapist stands on a stepladder of disempowerment. -Thomas

It's a societal problem, yet somehow again and again the entire onus of responsibility is put onto the victim (usually women). Yeah, tell me one more "joke" about how women control sex and access to it. Tell that to my face when I've told you I've been raped. When I say I still can't enjoy sex as openly as I would like because that makes me "unrapeable" in some people's eyes.

The one thing that every rape has in common isn't the clothes the victim was wearing, or the height of the heels on the victim's feet, or the presence of violence, or alcohol or drugs, or the gender or orientation of the victim. The one thing that every rape has in common is the presence of a rapist.... and a society that will support the rapist more quickly and more often than the human being who was victimized.

So I had this dream last night

I was hanging out with Tyra Banks and some other people at a beach house. We were goofing around swimming and such when I realized I really really had to pee. I figured it would be bad form to pee in the pool with Tyra Banks right there so I start trying to find a bathroom. Then the typical dream shit started happening where all the characters and settings in your dream somehow conspire together to fuck up your chances of doing whatever it is you want to be doing, whether that’s running from something, trying not to be all naked in front of everyone, or in my case, trying to take a piss. So like I said, Tyra wouldn’t leave the pool so I couldn’t just pee there, and I didn’t know where the bathroom was, and then the doorbell kept on ringing and for some reason I had to answer it every time. The first time it was someone selling gallon jugs of water door to door and I tried to tell her that we were good on the water front when Tyra and all the other people came up behind me like, “No, we could really use some water right now!” and I was stuck between the door and this woman selling water to Tyra Banks and her friends. Then I just decided to take a piss in the kiddie pool that was hanging out on the front stoop of Tyra Bank’s beach house when another woman showed up, this time selling tamales. It was around this time that I actually woke up and realized that I needed to pee so bad in my dream because, well, I actually needed to pee that bad. No clue on what the tamales meant though.

I’m pretty sure that at some point during the night I also had a dream about cleaning my toilet. Really subconscious? This is how you choose to entertain yourself at night? More Tyra and tamales and less toilet scrubbing next time, please.

Proof I (used to) Have Some Artistic Ability

I never actually took a drawing or painting class until I was out of college, so when I was growing up I had to improvise in my art "lessons". A lot of my early sketchbooks (and class notes) are filled with the backs of peoples heads or clandestinely drawn figure drawings of people laying down in a park. When I was in college I decided I needed a little more practice drawing faces and fine details but you can't really do that and expect people not to notice you staring and subsequently get creeped out by you. Instead I took to my collection of CDs and LPs and recreated the images that fascinated me in some way or another. Here is my collection of that cover art.


Audio Adrenaline's Underdog



Urban Cowboy, John Travolta



Fleetwood Mac's Rumours



A Man and a Woman (still one of my favorite drawings I've ever done and a damn good album to boot.)



Happy Days Are Here Again (couldn't find an album image online)
This woman that I painted from the cover of the Happy Days album (The happiest record ever made!) was only my second attempt at water colors and while there's certainly plenty of mistakes in it, namely the foot and face, I'm strangely attached to it. Especially considering my first attempt at watercolors ended up looking like this:


The ugliest water color flower known to man.


Thanks to Tony for taking all the pictures.

Now I just have to figure out what I really want to do

Since I seem to be on a posting storm right now anyway...

I went to the Women of Texas Art Show in Houston on Friday, the day I found out I was getting laid off. I found this painting waiting there for me and knew I had to take it home with me where it could give me inspiration.



If you get a chance, check out the rest of Jennifer DeDonato's stuff. It's amazing.

Yep, It's Like That

Street Harassment, Barry Deutsch
Click picture to see full cartoon if it's cut off for you like it is for me.

Nooooo!

Sooo. Yeah.
On my second day back at work from my vacation my manager called me into his office to let me know I was going to be in the first round of layoffs as our contract ended. As of right now, come October 1 I'll be unemployed.

This news wasn't completely unexpected. I knew our contract would be ending soon and I haven't been completely sitting on my ass about finding a new job (only mostly). I do have a backup, "crap" job lined up that will keep me paying the bills on time and on insurance. And I got a full month's notice, a lot more than most people get when being laid off.

But I'll be unemployed in a month. And I don't have a lot is saving right now. And I don't want to have to work that crap job if I have an option not too (it's crap for a reason). And I am terrified.

Even my grad school plan (which I still very much want to do) has to be put off for at least another year because I freaked myself out looking at admission rates for the programs I'm interested in and ended up not doing the things over the summer I wanted to do that would have made me a better candidate for applying this fall.

I don't know. Maybe this is the perfect time to get out of Texas, or at least back to Austin (I love you Houston, but you and I need a break). I just hope I at least have a few options to choose from as September ends. In the mean time I'll be plastering my resume anywhere and everywhere... Anyone know of any engineering openings right now?

So that's my depressing post for the month. But isn't this at least better than having me write about pegging like I've been thinking about doing? ;-)

Yesssss! (Part 2)

When we hit Watkins Glen (the town I was going to spend the night in a hotel in), the brothers headed on to the camp site while the rest of us headed to Watkins Glen State Park to see the water falls. Um yeah,it was gorgeous and well worth the side trip.



The next morning I set out to rejoin the group, after backtracking a tad to pick up the sunglasses I left at the place I ate the night before. It was a short but hilly ride, especially towards the end. I did have to walk up a few more hills but I figured out a strategy that ended up working fairly well for me. I would ride until I felt like my quads were about to pop out of my skin, usually focusing on a point on the road and telling myself I had to bike until at least that point, if not farther. Then I would get off the bike and walk, stopping and resting whenever I felt I needed it. And as soon as the hill started to level out, or at least get a shallower grade, I would hop back on the bike and start the process over again.

The rest of the "rest day" was fairly uneventful. A few of us drove into Ithaca (Eric's wife was with us now with her car) and grabbed a few more groceries. When we got back to the campsite, we found that the guys who had stayed behind had found a lot of blackberries and apples in the forest. That night we had berry cobbler and apple sauce to go along with the evil corn whiskey and various boxed wines we picked up in Ithaca and it was all delicious (even the corn whiskey).

Day 6 continued the turnaround for me and was awesome. I was really hitting my stride and didn't have to walk up a single fucking hill all day long! Hooray me! We did have a strong headwind that day, but it was nothing compared to the climbs of the previous days. This was also our longest day but I was feeling so good I was able to pull our pace line for a good 5 miles, my cadence and speed staying pretty steady.

Back to the headwinds for a moment, these are their own form of torture for cyclists. You feel like you've gone pretty far based on the amount of effort you're putting out, but then you look down at your bike computer or map at a rest stop and realize you've only gone 2 or 3 miles, if even that much. Disheartening.

The night we camped um, somewhat illegally, on the coast of Lake Ontario. We didn't even start a fire that night took make it that much harder for any wandering rangers to spot us. In the middle of the night we figured out why camping isn't allowed in that particular park. Evidently there's some prehistoric creature that roams around at night, making lots of noise, sniffing around, and generally scaring the shit out of unsuspecting illegal campers. Or it was some deer. Whatever.


Our night time friend.

On the last day of riding, this weak ass managed to conquer all hills again! There was one last vicious hill just a few miles from Eric's house that I had to stop about 2/3rds of the way up, but that was less due to ability and mostly because I turned to look back and when I turned around again I realized I was about to run into the curb. I took a few seconds to regain my breath then started pedaling again and finished that shit. A few more miles and that was the end. Over 300 miles in one week.

A few end of trip notes:
I think my bike computer tops out at 42 mph. I hit that speed at least twice, possibly 3 times (I didn't look down again after I hit 40 that last time) and I swear I was still accelerating one of those times I looked down and saw 42. What the hell bike computer?

I need (OK, just really really want) a touring frame the next time I do something like this. I don't think it's a coincidence that the only 2 people who got flats (raises hand, twice) were the people on road frames with road tires.

I did a much better job of packing for this trip than I did for Texas 4000 where I mailed a box of stuff home halfway through the trip and left some other things in a church donation box. The only clothing I didn't use was my bathing suit (bike shorts and sports bra FTW) and the only things I over packed on were food and fuel for cooking... 2 things I'd much rather over pack than under pack. Also, forgoing the sleeping bag for this summer trip ended up being a safe bet. A sleeping bag liner and thin sheet, combined with my spare clothes on the colder nights got me by just fine. The one thing I do want to get for future trips is a headlamp. It's an additional thing to pack, but they're small, and it would have been so much more manageable than the bike headlight I was using. Having both hands free can be a useful thing. I should probably also invest in a one-person tent at some point in the future. The 2-person I have is surprisingly small and light, and it was great on the two nights it rained when I could just bring my gear inside with me, but it's still way more space than I need when I'm the only one in it.

All that said and done, I'm already planning my next bike trip.

The rest of my time in Rochester once the biking was over was slow and relaxed and oh so pleasant. The entire trip was a blast and a much needed break for me. I'm glad I got the chance to hang out with old friends and to just get away from the hecticness that has been my work recently. I was joking around with Eric and the others that since my work contract ends soon I was going to go back to work on Thursday to find a pink slip on my desk. Sadly, I wasn't that far off.