I'm a 24-year-old woman who's never had any kind of partnered sex or been in a relationship. Until very recently, my libido was like a quiet walk in a very dull park. I had to make a serious effort to become sexually aroused, and was attracted mostly to men, but not very many men. I would masturbate maybe five or six times a month, and never orgasm. Intellectually I knew there was nothing wrong with that, but I felt freakish and insufficiently sexual.
I recently learned how to give myself an orgasm, though, and now I get incredibly turned on sometimes when I'm not even thinking about sex. I've gone from quiet walk in the park to stuck on a runaway train. It's distracting, embarrassing, and physically exhausting. When given the chance I will masturbate about fifteen times a day. On top of all that I've started noticing women as sexually attractive, and more men as attractive than I did before. This all happened within the space of three days. I know sexuality can be fluid but I kind of assumed the changes were gradual.
Why am I suddenly insatiable? I'm worried that either this will continue and I'll spend my days in perpetual need of a cold shower, or I'll go right back to being mostly desireless.
From SlutWalk Manchester by Man Alive!On Monday, I talked about some of my own life, and the central, very personal, issue which kept me from attending one of the SlutWalks, an issue which also central to the walks themselves. On Tuesday, I brought up what appears to be a clear misrepresentation by the media, especially visually, of the walks. In both pieces, I expressed unwavering support for the walks.
While I did not agree with a good deal of it, I appreciated Rebecca Traister writing in the New York Times magazine last week.
But at a moment when questions of sex and power, blame and credibility, and gender and justice are so ubiquitous and so urgent, I have mostly felt irritation that stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts is passing for keen retort.
To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women. Scantily clad marching seems weirdly blind to the race, class and body-image issues that usually (rightly) obsess young feminists and seems inhospitable to scads of women who, for various reasons, might not feel it logical or comfortable to express their revulsion at victim-blaming by donning bustiers. So while the mission of SlutWalks is crucial, the package is confusing and leaves young feminists open to the very kinds of attacks they are battling.
The above is, from everything I can gather, not a critique of the walks, but of the way the walks have been represented, more by the media than by the organizers or the majority of attendees of any of the walks.
In fact, when she wrote, "The most sophisticated attempts elicit just as much derision and, frankly, receive a fraction of the attention," I thought she was going to address that what she was criticizing was the media representation. But then she didn't, which confounded me. It seemed like she became part of the media misrepresentation herself, and took part in solidifying that simplification and misrepresentation. I also wondered if she was asking the organizers or attendees to somehow control the media, something none of us have the capacity to do, and even when we try, our efforts are most typically in vain. We can respond to the media -- and I do think more response is something missing from this picture, a part of the movement that could stand some work -- but that's all we can really do is respond. Activists are not responsible for how the media chooses to portray them, especially when the media chooses to misrepresent. Are we even remotely surprised that a movement in which young women are making themselves visible around issues of sex, violence and appearance has gotten the kind of coverage it has? If we are, how can we possibly still be surprised by reactions that are such literal representations of exactly what the protests are about?
She calls these efforts clumsy (but also necessary: "while clumsy stabs at righting sexual-power imbalances may be frustrating, they remain necessary.") I'm not so sure that they are. Rather, I'm not so sure that they are any more clumsy than a great deal of activism tends to be and has always been. By all means, I think more advance and in-depth organizing with this could have been helpful, especially strategies around dealing with the highly predictable media response. At the same time, sometimes effective activism is about seizing a moment -- a moment like Sanguinetti's comments -- and moving as fast as you can. Taking more time to organize can be of real use, but it can also happen that in doing so, you lose essential momentum. It's a call that is easy to err with either way.
Traister also says, “I found myself again wishing that the young women doing the difficult work of reappropriation were more nuanced in how they made their grabs at authority, that they were better at anticipating and deflecting the resulting pile-on. But I also wondered if, perhaps, this worry makes me the Toronto cop who thought women should protect themselves by not dressing like sluts.” I appreciate her honesty and her introspection.
I do think there have been some possible missteps around the walks, though I don't think that's about how some attendees of the walk have chosen to dress. And like Traister posed in that last quote, if we start thinking that way, I do think we have to take a good look in the mirror, whatever we're wearing, and look for how much of the harmful and patently wrong-headed messaging about dress, "asking for it" and sexuality we've internalized.
Samhita brought the issues around the media up in the Feministing response to and roundtable of Traister's piece, and I agree with what she said there in saying that "Activism and social change are not as much about what you meant to do, but instead what you do do, and what is Slutwalk doing in the mainstream media? Are people rethinking the role victim-blaming plays in sexual assault or are people too caught up in the term “slut?” I am not really sure." Media pushbacks are important to assure your message doesn't get lost or you don't wind up letting the media rewrite your aims. This is something Courtney also brought up in her commentary at Feministing.
Maya also voiced something in that roundtable I really appreciated about the Traister piece when she said, "to some extent, it’s inevitable that a grassroots protest movement, organized entirely on the local level, and filtered through a mainstream media that latches on to the word “slut” and images of half-naked young women, will struggle with message control. (My own limited experience with protest organizing definitely reminded me why I, like Traister, embrace a medium like writing that allows for so much more precision.) I just wish Traister had acknowledged that inherent challenge more, instead of reinforcing the idea that SlutWalk is just about women “stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts” – when she clearly knows that it’s about more than that and, at most protests, the hoodies probably outnumber the skivvies."
There's the issue of if a "dress code" should have been suggested or enforced. I can see how, when we're working around the issue that "slutty" dress has zip to do with sexual assault,some being playful with that can be seen as sending a mixed message, or as reinforcing the message being protested. I do personally think that someone presenting like this creates a more powerful statement about dress and victim-blaming than someone showing up without a sign, who isn't a survivor, wearing the kind of clothing most often considered (in the west, anyway, and even though it's often an error) to signal indiscriminate sexual availability.
Yet, at the same time, suggesting or enforcing a dress code for the walks stands counter to the core aims, like making clear there is NO way of dressing or not dressing which will "get you raped" or protect you from rape, but also no way of dressing or not dressing in which someone cannot or will not perceive you as sexually available. As well, it's clear that some attendees who came to the walks in whatever their "slutwear" was experienced something powerful in doing so. We always have to remember that when a movement is made up of people it is also attempting to serve, that what experience the activists have is no less important that what impact it has on those who are not directly participating.
Again, people are sexually assaulted wearing everything, anything, and nothing a person can possibly wear, and there is no one way of dressing which makes rape a victim's fault or responsibility because there is NO way of dressing which makes rape a victim's fault or responsibility. If any way of dressing really, truly protected us from violence, don't you think we'd all have tried dressing that way already? We only need one victim's story about how the way they was dressed didn't make any difference for them. We have millions of these stories: they are all of our stories.
As a feminist and activist who works primarily with sexuality but also with sexual violence, I also know how tremendously challenging it can be to try and address both of these things at once, and the ways that they intersect, especially in a world and a culture which often does not recognize that -- and sometimes even purposefully blurs and obscures -- consensual sex and sexual violence may not be things we can completely separate from one another, but they are also incredibly different, usually for the perpetrators of this violence, and most certainly for victims. We are going to stumble, because it is rocky terrain. The only way to avoid that completely is to not take steps at all, which is just not an option if we want any kind of change. Could folks organizing have asked for more help with that tricky balance? Probably. Would the walks and SlutWalk as a movement have benefitted from that? I have no idea.
As another maybe-critique, I've heard people voice a wish that there was, for all of the walks and their various self-produced web media as a whole, a lack of shared, stated core values and aims. I, too, can see how that could be valuable. At the same time, I wonder if the lack of that was what allowed this to become such an international movement, with communities, cities and cultures feeling a flexibility to adapt the walks to suit who they were and what they wanted and needed to address. Unilateral core aims, especially if done without an exceptionally diverse group of people taking part, could have created very real barriers to that, barriers which have long been problematic within feminism and other social justice movements.
I keep saying possible missteps, because the fact that myself, or Traister or any number of people think errors have been or are being made, or that all of this could be done better or worse doesn't mean we're right. We could be. We could also be wrong. It could be that despite it seeming like this thing or this other way of doing or saying that would have been the better move, that doing a given thing differently would have less impact.
I've been part of activist efforts and movements myself that fizzled, crashed or burned, even one or two that blew up in my face; actions or movements which were planned to death, actions or movements which were very spontaneous. I experience activism as being an awful lot like working in chemistry with elements and formulas which are experimental, untested or not entirely understood. You can try mixing things via various formulas we already have, and sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't: it makes a huge mess of things or does nothing at all. Sometimes you try new formulas, with the same array of results. When we're working in and with activism, we are usually working with unstable, unpredictable elements.
Growing up in and around activism, being quite literally born out of it, watching it and taking part in it in various forms for four decades now, one thing I know is that effective activism tends to require a sort of perfect storm, an often, if not always, difficult to predict mix of timing and numbers and ideas and actions and people. Even the literal climate -- not just the social climate -- can matter sometimes, as trite as that can seem. My father engaged in one activist movement, the civil rights movement, that eventually seems to have had its perfect storm. Another he engaged in, dedicating years to, sacrificing liberties for, was the movement against the Vietnam War, which pretty much flopped per its ultimate goal. From all anyone can tell, the Vietnam war did not come to an end because of antiwar activist efforts. Even though both of these issues were vital and core human rights issues that highlighted incredible abuses of human rights, even though both involved the dedicated efforts of millions, they didn't have the same impacts, and I don't think that was just about the differences between the two movements and the two issues. I think a great deal of the why of those differences was outside the control of activists entirely.
Traister finished her piece with something I thought was intensely valuable:
Social progress is imperfect, full of half-truths and sloppy misrepresentations. After all, we celebrate the victories of a civil rights movement that was shot through with misogyny, and of a women’s movement riddled with racial, class and sexual resentments. Fighting for power is a complicated, messy process, especially for complicated, messy human beings. Often, the best we can hope for is that our efforts draw a spotlight. Which, I guess, is enough to make SlutWalkers of us all.
Something else I believe to be true about activism, and have found to be so during my life experiences with and around it, and my historical understanding of it more broadly, is that it is often very difficult to evaluate until we have considerable distance -- emotional distance, and the distance of time having passed -- away from it. Without that kind of space so we are better able to see the bigger picture of what progress (or not) or change (or not) and what kind of change it sparked, created or completed, making an earnestly accurate evaluation of an action or movement is precarious.
Frankly, I think those trying to evaluate the results of the walks are trying to do so much, much too soon and with far too small a scope.
Going back to the American Civil Rights Movement, some people will list that movement as being less than a decade long. We can also know that at any point during that movement, a given action was seen or felt as the central action, the apex at the time. But depending on your scope, what you know about, and what you're recognizing, the span of that movement could be more like 20 years, 50 years, a hundred years or longer. I tend to see it myself as spanning over 200 years. Before the March on Washington and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for instance, there was the school desegregation movement, fifty years before that, the formation of the NAACP, before that the civil rights act of 1875, slave rebellions before that and on and on and on. That movement also was sparked and moved by more people than Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rosa Parks wasn't even the first to engage in her most historical action. In fact, she wasn't even the first to do it on that very bus line. There are so many activists who took part in actions that created the civil rights movement as a whole, people like Claudette Colvin, and like Octavius Catto, Gabriel Prosser, Bayard Rustin or Clara Luper, names few people know. There were people whose names we don't know or recognize and may never know. And for all we know, something one of those people did may have had more to do with the actions we recognize and the activists we know about. Trying to track a movement back isn't as easy or simple as it often seems, just like trying to evaluate what alchemy creates progress and change is not, and we are always going to see things differently depending on where we're at on the eventual (and often neverending) timeline.
This is some of what I mean when I talk about perfect activism storms and the scope of activism. When we're talking about activism around sexual violence towards women, already we have a timeline and a larger scope; we already have actions and activists and movements that reach back more then two centuries. Where do the Slutwalks fit on that timeline? What is their import in comparison to other activism around this issue? I don't think we can know that yet, nor do I think it's fair to ask that yet.
But I think that what we can know now, since people are asking, is that so far SlutWalk has been of value and has shown the potential to spark more than one kind of needed, important change.
Just a few relatively young feminists managed to spark numbers in-person, international activists movements largely made up of and led by young women all over the world. There have been alrgely attended walks, but there have also been so very many discussions, discussions and more discussions which have not been insular echo chambers, and where silences are being broken.
We have been able to hear, read and and be part of a real diversity of views, feelings and ideas. with a great deal of variance, many of which have involved a great deal of care, thought and positive intention. These discussions have generally been far more complex than simple yays or nays. These discussions are important, and often about more than either just sexual violence or just the right for women to be able to dress as they choose, and present or express their sexuality, when they do, as they choose without being held responsible for the violent actions of others when they do. From what I can gather, many of them have bounced off the issue of Slutwalks to get at some of the core issues that can create and have created divisions and exclusions in feminism and social justice that get in the way of women's rights and all human rights.
Even comments and discussions which illustrate some of the most ugly ignorance shows up exactly what people are trying to address with the walks is of value. It's tough to get a house clean if you can't see where all the dirt is, after all.
There are still discussions to be had here, issues that are part of the big picture to be addressed, like, for instance, that while blaming a victim -- or blaming someone who isn't even a victim yet -- based on her style of dress is largely, if not exclusively about women, male victims and survivors suffer a similar kind of victim-blaming around they way they present -- or are accused of not presenting -- their masculinity. There's the fact of the matter that, as with so many things, the world at large is often far more concerned, when it is at all, with the victimization of upper-middle-class white girls than with everyone (read: most people in the world) outside those groups. There's also the issue of how groups being presented as without their own sexuality, namely, those with disabilities, are often at the highest risk of, and have the highest rates of, sexual victimization, but also have the least freedom to engage in healthy, consensual and wanted sexual relationships and interactions. As someone who works primarily in human sexuality and hears about people's personal sex lives every day, there is also the incredibly sticky wicket of addressing how many people have sexual violence, exploitation, coercion and lack of real consent -- and not just women -- as part of their ongoing sexual relationships without the realization or recognition it is abuse and assault: who earnestly do not know and can often not even imagine, what healthy sexual relationships and interactions are like.
I think the walks and all of the discussion around them have given us a really great jolt in the arm to start having those conversations more and having them more widely.
The experiences attendees seem to be having vary, and it's clear the walks have offered a range of experiences. Survivors of assault have deeply connected with other survivors, or found a place where they felt able -- and for some of them, probably for the first time -- to feel safe in identifying as a survivor. Others have experienced a powerful and increased awareness about those of us who have survived sexual violence. I expect that someone in a hoodie and jeans walking next to someone in a bustier might have been able to see some common ground they did not before. For others still, the walks have provided an avenue to experience a lightening of the load so many of us have walked around with living in cultures which enable or excuse rape and which make many women feel afraid of expressing their own sexuality or enjoying their bodies. They have allowed women to deeply connect with other women, something which remains a huge challenge for many. I expect that for many participating in the walks, they brought them out to engage in in-person social justice activism for the very first time (something older feminists have been accusing younger feminists of having no interest in doing for a while now, mind you).
We know that how women dress or don't dress neither causes rape, nor can it protect against rape. We know that telling women to avoid dressing a certain way is not about protecting women, it's about controlling women or scaring women (and also about suggesting men need women to try to police or control their sexualities), something anyone who works in or around sexual violence or had education -- or should, like a police officer -- knows. We know that calling women names like "sluts" or otherwise arbitrarily applying perceptions of someone's sexual life or history to suggest someone's value as a person may be lesser is also about social control and can enable sexual violence. We know victims remain held responsible for their assaults far more often than perpetrators of those assaults. We know that calling these things out and stating and restating the truths they obscure is essential to reducing, and ideally, eradicating rape, and also crucial for an environment in which survivors of assault can heal and where people, whether they have been victimized by sexual violence or not, can truly see sexual violence for what it is and learn real ways to be safer.
All of these are aims of the walks; all of these aims are of great value and import, potential avenues to positive social change that could benefit everyone. And I do think that, so far, the walks have provided new inroads and outlets to cultivating these changes.
When thinking about how -- and if -- I was going to get involved with our local walk, I was reminded of Thomas Paine's words about revolutions, to "Lead, follow or get out of the way."
I knew I wasn't going to try to lead: this wasn't mine to lead, so far as I could tell. There were already leaders, and it's also seemed to me that much of Slutwalk as a whole is being led by younger people than myself, something I always want to support and never want to get in the way of. I wasn't going to follow. As I mentioned, there were a couple relatively minor issues with our local walk that kept me away, but also a far more core matter of my feeling that the most powerful way I could take part involved doing something I did not feel strong enough to do.
Which left me with the third option. To get out of the way. Which is what I chose to do and felt best about doing. But after I did that, I realized I wanted a bit of an addendum to that quote, because we can get out of the way without also being disengaged. We can be supportive from the sidelines, which is what I hope I have managed to do with these three pieces this week, and which is what I intend to do -- and hope others who don't feel they can or should earnestly lead or follow will do more of -- as this movement continues.
I want to tell you something very personal about me. Not because I want to. I really don't want to. But I'm going to do it anyway.
It's one of those things where even though it's incredibly uncomfortable for me, I feel like sharing despite my discomfort might be able to make a positive difference. And since this has to do with something where I believe others have been making a positive difference in a way I, myself, have not also been able to, it seems the least I can do. I've been largely silent around the Slutwalks. There are a few reasons for that, but the biggest one of all is that what inspired them simply struck me much, much to close to home. So, my silence has not been about nonsupport of the walks. In more ways than one, it's been about my stepping out of the way of them in part based on my own limitations.
If you're triggered by candid stories about sexual or other forms of assault, this may be triggering for you. I know it still is for me, very much so. Telling this story in this kind of detail remains incredibly difficult for me, despite many years of healing, help with therapy, help and healing found through helping others and a lot of support. It's not a story I tell often, because even just typing it out or saying it all out loud makes my hands shake and my heart race and turns me into a bit of a mess for a bit of time after I do.
I keep hearing or reading people say things like that no one really gets told the way they were dressed makes them at fault for their assault, despite about a million evidences to the contrary, and knowing far more than one person personally who has had that experience.
Conversely (and oddly enough, sometimes from the same people who say that first thing), I keep reading people stating, despite so much great activism around this lately, that how someone dresses IS what "got them raped." Or that they were raped because of their sexual history, their economic class, where they live, how they talk, how they do or don't respond to men, how they identify or present their gender -- anything BUT the fact that they were in some kind of proximity to someone who chose to rape them, which is exactly how, and only how, someone winds up being a victim of rape.
A few months ago, I had an apparently politically progressive blogger who would not stop talking to me on Twitter about the "rape outfit" of an 11-year-old girl whose rape case I had linked to. He, without my asking him anything about it personally, expressed he felt she would not have been assaulted had she been dressed differently. He called whatever it was she was wearing a "rape outfit." Hearing about the fact that I had my own "rape outfit" at 12, or that, when my great-grandmother was raped and murdered in her home at the age of 76, her "rape outfit" was a housecoat, or that the "rape outfit" of young boys sexually abused by priests was often their super-salacious Sunday best; equally not hearing my firm requests to please not keep tweeting me with misogyny which I found deeply upsetting and hurtful seemed to only make him more excited to keep saying what he was. Even reminding him I was a survivor myself didn't slow him down. Only blocking him worked. I'm quite certain he left the conversation with exactly the same beliefs as when he started it.
These things we read and hear don't just come from one group of people: some men say them, but so do some women. Social conservatives say them a lot, but progressives say them, too. People who assault people, of course, will often voice things like this or other things to do all they can to avoid responsibility. But even people who have been victimized themselves will sometimes say things like this. Sometimes -- and, I'd say, probably most of the time -- that's about internalizing the messages they got. Sometimes it's about feeling a need to have another victim be at fault for their assault so that they can feel less like they, themselves, were at fault for their assaults, even though no victim is at fault for being victimized. More unfortunately, than I can express, rape culture is one of the most globalized kinds of culture there is.
I keep reading and hearing and seeing people who, so far as I can tell, and intentionally choosing to misrepresent or deny the core issue of what the SlutWalks are about: activism working expressly to try and counter deeply harmful and endangering attitudes expressed about rape and rape victims like those of Constable Michael Sanguinetti, who, in January of this year, speaking on crime prevention at a York University safety forum said, "You know, I think we're beating around the bush here. I've been told I'm not supposed to say this - however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised." (This is why the word "slut" is so prominently featured in this activism, because it is this comment which directly inspired the first walk.)
I wish I had never heard a police officer say anything like that at all. I also wish that if I was going to hear that, it had been the first time I had.
In seeing so much nonsupport for the walks and people who have participated in them, I started to worry that being silent might be interpreted as being nonsupportive, which is the last message I'd want to send. I'm going to talk a little bit about the walks in this blog post and another in another few days, but I want to start by telling you what I'm about to tell you, if for no other reason than to do what I can do in support, because there are things I can't do yet, things which others can and have.
When I was 12 years old, I was sexually abused for the second time in my life. The first had been a year before, when I was 11. Then, I was molested by an elderly man who cut our hair in the neighborhood. I didn't tell anyone. I wasn't even totally sure what had happened to me, nor what to call it. It was 1981, I was 11, and all I knew was whatever it was felt horrible, scared me intensely, and was not okay. But I also got the message that telling anyone about it wasn't okay, and seemed to feel some message that because it happened to me, it must have meant there was something not okay about me, too. The home environment I was living in enabled these kinds of messages constantly and was itself abusive in other ways, so I did not feel safe at that point saying much of anything, let alone disclosing something like this.
A year later, I was alone cleaning up the art room of the day camp where I was a junior counselor at he end of the day. Because the building was still open, someone was likely at the front desk, but that was very far away, and otherwise, the place was a ghost town. The only reason I was there so late is that I'd often stretch out those days as long as I could in order to avoid having to go home.
I'm going to tell you what I was wearing now. What I was wearing wouldn't matter and wouldn't have mattered, to anyone, in a much better world then I lived in then and we still live in now. But it did matter to someone at the time, in a way that messed me up just as much as my assault itself did. In our cultural context right now, or perhaps in someone else's view, it would seem clear that what I was wearing had nothing at all to do with my being assaulted. In fact, now, in our cultural context about what is and isn't "slutty" dress, what I was wearing may be seen as indisputable proof that I did NOT ask for rape or deserve rape, even though nothing anyone wears or doesn't wear proves or disproves that in actuality, which is clear when people are rubbing more than two hateful brain cells together in their thinking process.
It was summer in Chicago then. It's hot in summer in Chicago. I was working at a camp, and I also had to bike back and forth, so I needed to be work-appropriate, even at 12, but also able to move around easily and not pass out from the heat. If it had been totally up to me, I'd probably have been wearing less than I was so I was more comfortable on the ride home.
But as it was, I had on gymshoes. I had a fairly loose white t-shirt on with the sleeves carefully rolled up, my typical uniform of the time (because big t-shirts are more cool if you roll up the sleeves, everyone knew that). I had on red chino-eqsque shorts that ended just above my knee. I was an early bloomer physically, so whatever I was wearing, there wasn't then, as there isn't now, any hiding that I'm a person with an hourglass shape and curves. Would that there had been: after what happened the year before and having been teased at home about my development, I often tried to hide parts of my body as I could. I probably had on some lip gloss. I had chin-length feathered hair that year, gone blonde from being out in the sun.
A group of much-older teenage boys, probably in their late teens, came into the art room started talking to me, and asked what I was doing there. I told them, then they asked how I got back and forth from the camp to home. I remember that as I said I rode my bike, I'd wished that I could take it back. I could feel a lack of safety in the air right then. I wished I had said someone picked me up. They asked if I wanted a ride. I said no, thank you. They asked a few more times, making a bit of a game of it, but a very pushy game. I said no a few more times then said I had to go get something and ran out.
I went and hid in a bathroom stall down the hall for what felt like hours but which was probably only minutes. I didn't go to the front desk and try to ask for help. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the biggest was probably that I had already learned in my life that being in danger was normal and that not being helped in being safe was what I could most typically expect from people. I had also learned already that sometimes telling when I was in danger only got me hurt more.
When I came out of the stall, I went to the bike rack to get my bike, planning to speed away as fast as I could and unlocked it in a hurry. But those boys drove up behind me in the van they had, physically attacked me and dragged me away from my bike and into their car. (Typical perhaps of a tween mind, I remember having a hard time later figuring out if I should be more upset I got hurt -- assault or rape were not words I had at the time -- or more upset that in the midst of all of this, my bike had been stolen because it was left unlocked.)
I have very hazy memories of what happened next, memories I have never fully either formed or recovered, that only show up in mushy, jagged pieces in night terrors I have had about this over the years. I will honestly say I am glad I have only hazy recall of what happened in that van, and that while parts of my body have always made clear they remember, much of my brain never has. A day later, a big, nasty bump welled up on my head, so I've always figured I got knocked out, and the rest of my lack of memory can be attributed to shock.
The next thing I remember was finding myself back on the curb near the bike rack, scruffed up, shirt ripped feeling incredibly sore and strangely soggy in places. I went back inside to the bathroom and was bleeding from my rectum. I think I managed to wash my face, but that was all I could manage. I was incredibly confused, disoriented and still scared to death, not knowing if anywhere was safe,if those boys had left, nothing. I went to the pay phone and called my mother, who also called the police before she came over. All I was able to voice was that I was very scared and hurt and needed someone to come to get me now.
I went back outside and sat on the curb in front of the park where a lot of people were, hoping I'd be safe there and that my mother would find me. She arrived about the same time the police did, who I didn't know had been called. I know I was completely incoherent, and I don't believe I was able to express anything anyone could understand. I suspect what I said was something to the effect of, "Guys. Said no, no ride. Hid. Came after me. Grabbed. Van. Scared. Hid in bathroom. Woke up on curb. Are they gone? What? Are they gone?" I know, though, however incomprehensible my words, it could not have been missed that I was in shock, nor that I had clearly been attacked in some way. Over the years, I've looked for rationale and reason of why I got so poorly served, but I always give up, knowing all too well how very, very many victims of sexual assault have had the same experience, and that it isn't something with rhyme or reason part how poorly sexual assault is treated in most of the world.
While my memories of my attack are very hazy, my memories of what came next have never been. I've often wished they, too, were hazy.
The police and my mother talked for a while before anyone even talked to me or asked how I was at all. I sat shivering on that curb, holding my knees, watching a crowd form around us, people at the park starting to pay more attention, feeling more and more freaked out. My mother came over and asked if I was just scared, if the van was still there. I looked around. It wasn't. I said no, I thought it was gone, I hoped it was gone, please let it be gone. For whatever reason, she said more than once "So, nothing happened? You just got scared?" and I remember not being sure how to answer that because it felt confusing, and like there was some kind of cue about a right answer hidden in there. Then two of the police stepped over, and talked with my mother again, instead of me, and I heard one of them say, half-looking at me, half-away, that I really shouldn't be wearing shorts that short because if I did, I could expect to have trouble with boys.
I also know and remember that with those words, I suddenly got a little more clear, the clarity you get from having just felt unsafe, thinking you might be safe, and then all the more acutely recognizing you are not, and determined to say absolutely nothing to them or my mother about anything. I agreed that okay, sure, yeah, I just got scared, I was fine, please just get me home, fine. You'll just make a note about the van, and I should call you if I see it again fine (and yeah, right). How on earth could I have felt safe saying to any of them in that space that I was bleeding from my rectum and I didn't know why, something already incredibly vulnerable for me to share in the first place? How on earth could I say that I think what just happened to me was like what had happened the year before that I'd told no one about? So, I didn't say anything. Not to anyone, not until a handful of years later when ever so slowly, I started telling people, scared to death every time I did.
That I didn't say anything at the time and for a long time shouldn't be surprising. It's about all the same kind of things that keep most survivors from reporting or disclosing.
Here's the part where I think it's very, very important that anyone reading anything like this knows three vital things.
These are not opinions. These are facts. I can't stop you from denying they are truths and facts, but you have to know that if you do, you do so from a place of bias or ignorance because we have all the evidence in the world that they are true. We have not just the story of someone like myself but mountain of stories from survivors like myself and survivors different than me, from sound studies and research and loads of "rape prevention" tips that made so many people feel like they were safer who learned the hard way that those tips didn't do a damn thing to protect them. All they did was control them, make them feel more scared of living, more distracted by all the things they felt they needed to think about to be safe and then and they just wound up getting hurt anyway.
The only factual part of disputes to what I am about to say is that it is absolutely a fact that we still have a long, long way to go when it comes to the way most of our world and many of the people in it treat rape and those of us who have been assaulted and abused.
1) I was not assaulted because of how I was dressed. Those long red shorts and sneakers were not why I was assaulted. But. The person who was wearing a short skirt and heels when she was assaulted wasn't assaulted because of how she was dressed, either. Even if I had been wearing something else entirely -- like the housecoat my great-grandmother was, a burqua, a nun's habit, overalls, skinny jeans or business attire; even if I was not a woman with a vulva, but a woman with a penis dressing in clothing I felt was representative of my gender as a woman, but some of the world disagreed with me, and felt I was cross-dressing, how I was dressed would not have been why I was assaulted, nor would my assault have been prevented had I just dressed differently. That's not because there is one way to dress that "gets you raped" and one way to dress that doesn't. That's because the thing that "gets someone raped" isn't a thing, it's a person who chooses to rape you and what you do and don't wear is something we know does not matter and have loads of hard data that has made that clear fro a long time now. People have been raped wearing everything in the world people can wear, and the vast majority of the time people are raped, they aren't wearing what those who blame them consider "provocative" clothing in the first place.
The idea or statement that how a victim was dressed had anything to do with their being raped does not reflect the realities of rape and rape perpetration, only the realities of victim blaming and rape culture.
2) My rape was a "real" rape. It was not a "real" rape just because my attackers were strangers to me, because there was physical violence involved, because I was so young and had not yet chosen to have any kind of sex yet outside of furtive kisses and some clueless dry-humping with a girl friend at 10, because I struggled and probably yelled no, because I was a girl, because I managed to be assaulted in ways that now, at this point in time, most people recognize as "real rape." It was a real rape because people really did something sexual to me without my consent and against my will because they wanted to do it and either didn't care I didn't, or wanted to do it because I didn't want to. That is why my rape is a "real" rape, and is also why someone who is raped by their husband at home after church has experienced a "real" rape; why someone who is out at a party in clubbing gear, drinking cocktails, who says yes to something sexual, but no to something else but whose no is ignored has experienced a "real" rape; why someone who is worn down by verbal coercion and finally gives in to sex they do not want has experienced a "real" rape; why a man who is sexually assaulted, whatever the gender of his perpetrator, has also experienced "real" rape.
Rapes are real in all the ways rape can happen, not just in the ways that some people are most comfortable acknowledging, or the ways which do not challenge people to have to consider that rape culture is not only real, but more pervasive, widespread and more a part of anyone's life, ongoing relationships, and perhaps even personal behavior than anyone would ever like to have to acknowledge.
3) All I have said here has a whole lot to do with Slutwalks and the aim of slutwalks. All I have said here has a whole lot to do with who gets impacted by the kinds of statements and attitudes the walks aim to call out and challenge, how deeply we can be impacted and how those statements and attitudes not only do not help people protect themselves from being victimized, but how they hurt victims and can even put people in greater danger.
All I have said here is exactly about telling women that if they dress a certain way, like sluts (or hos, or harlots or loose women, or whatever word du jour of similar sentiment fits your era, culture or community) they deserve to be raped or are asking to be assaulted. All I have said here is not some kind of strange exception where the woman involved was treated that way but wasn't dressed "like a slut," because all I have said here is a textbook example of the fact that the idea of what "asking for it" is is completely arbitrary except for the part where so incredibly often, the mere fact of having been raped means, to someone, if not a lot of someone's, that a victim must have been asking for it.
I want to finish today by saying one more thing I think is critically important, and another big part of why I'm sharing what I have with you here, despite it all being so difficult for me to say so visibly.
I didn't attend any of the Slutwalks. I probably won't. I'm nearest to Seattle, and had some personal issues with some of ours here that were part of what kept me from it, issues I really think are personal and individual enough not to be relevant or important to anyone but me, especially with the bigger picture in mind. I also have some more political issues, but that's something I'll talk about more in my second post about this.
What I want to mention now is the one big thing that kept me from attending any of the walks, and that is a lack of courage and resiliency. I need to acknowledge that I have lacked a level of courage and resiliency around this which some other people who have attended these walks have had, and which I cannot possibly express my great admiration and respect for. When I see photos of them, read their words, think about them -- survivors like me, who probably have similar or even the same wounds, but went all the same, some even wearing what they wore when assaulted, I am overcome with awe and humility and gratitude.
I know: I have talked about being a survivor very publicly before. In many ways, I am very strong around this, especially since my most harrowing assaults are hardly fresh: they happened a long time ago, and I've had a lot of time to heal. But in some ways, I am not strong around this. In some ways, I am still broken in places that haven't yet become strong or whole. In some ways, I am not brave around this in ways that others have been or can be -- or heck, know they aren't but are so amazing, they do it anyway.
I thought about attending a walk wearing something as similar as I could find to what I was wearing that day when I was 12. And I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't open myself up to even one person, saying or writing in a place I could hear anything at all about the way I was dressed and my assault, whether the statement would be that I deserved to be raped because of what I was wearing, or that I didn't, but some other woman did. I am just not that strong, mostly because hearing what I did, when I did, how I did wounded me just that deeply, that almost 30 years later, I can't even put on a damn pair of shorts to wear in public without a meltdown, even though I am comfortable naked or wearing anything else there is I'd want to wear.
I need to say this twice: there are women who attended Slutwalks who DID wear exactly what they were wearing when they were assaulted; who did wear what someone told them made their rape their fault, despite it undoubtedly being scary and painful, because they recognized how powerful it could be for them and for others.
I had to stop for a few minutes after I typed that again, because the bravery and integrity of that action literally makes me breathless. There are survivors who did what I could not do, cannot do, because they know how important it is, to them, to people like me, to everyone. There are those who did what I could not do, who I firmly believe have done something that might seem small, but which is, I think, major. Something that will make it less and less likely a 12-year-old girl, wearing whatever it is she is wearing, who already has been done the grave injustice of rape, will never, ever hear anyone say that their clothing -- that ANYTHING -- made being raped their fault.
Any of us can have whatever options or ideas or feelings about this activism that we like. We can disagree about some of it, or the way a given person has or hasn't executed it, but I just don't know how it's possible not to recognize the potential power of what so many people have been part of with these walks, nor to ignore how much participating must have required of some of the speakers and other attendees.
So, if there is anyone out there who organized or attended a walk who interpreted my silence as nonsupport, I hope you know now that it wasn't. If there is anyone out there who feels worn down or unappreciated by the critiques or the resistance, know there is someone right here whose s/hero you are, in a way that someone who usually has no shortage of words has a hard time even articulating the depth of. If there is anyone out there who was brave in a way I couldn't be, and who got torn down for it or spoken to in exactly the ways that I feared I would, I can't tell you how sorry I am that after all the courage you probably had to muster up, anyone around you couldn't manage to have just a fraction of the integrity and care and inner strength you do.
But know, too, there is someone sitting right here who believes that while you should not have ever had to take yet one more hit around this, I believe that in taking the risk you did, you've done something that not only will help make it less likely others have to, but you've humbled someone who sometimes arrogantly thought she was as brave around this as someone could be by raising the bar.
(P.S. I ask that you please tread gently in the comments on this, if you're going to leave one, and in whatever you might say if you're going to blog about my story at all. Like I said, this is something where I feel incredibly vulnerable. I think it's safe to say it's something where anyone would, so I'd hope anyone addressing any candid story from any survivor would be sensitive, cautious and thoughtful. I hate to even have to ask something like that at all, because, you know, we shouldn't have to. But like all too many survivors, especially those who tell their stories and speak up, and as someone who has been burned before when being visible and vocal about her rapes, I know that we do have to ask, and that even then, sometimes even just asking winds up resulting in harassment. I sincerely hope that doesn't happen this time around, but feel the need to make that ask. Thank you.)
I am 22 years old and have been with my one and only boyfriend for over 2 1/2 years now. I love him very much and we get along well, but our sexual life has always had problems. These are the main issues: 1) I cannot orgasm except through the use of a vibrator, 2) I'm often not interested in sex/don't really feel anything enjoyable from sex, and 3) I never initiate anything, which makes my boyfriend very frustrated. We've been having sex for about 2 years now, and these issues are as much of a problem as they were when we first started. Regarding the problem #1 (no orgasm except with vibrator), my boyfriend has tried everything. He will pleasure me for long periods of time, try to make me feel sexy, but NOTHING happens--I don't even come close to orgasming (in fact, I usually just get sore from the contact). I've tried to pleasure myself, but this is even worse--I hate the feeling of masturbating and don't derive any pleasure from it. When we discovered that I CAN orgasm via a vibrator, we were both thrilled; however, it usually takes me a good 15-25 minutes to orgasm from the vibrator (on the highest setting), and the orgasm usually lasts only a few seconds--it just feels like a lot of work for barely any result to me. Because I'm not interested in sex very often and I cannot orgasm via penetration or manual stimulation, my boyfriend believes I'm not sexually attracted to him and is quite upset. I don't know what to do and it is ruining our relationship. I am religious and come from a home schooled background where sex was not talked about much, and so I often feel awkward when my boyfriend tries to discuss it with me (and going to a sex therapist is out of the question).
I had a favorite line, in high school, when debating people on the subject of abortion. It was "Hey, that thing in your stomach's not gonna come out a toaster, right? It's a baby!"
Oh, I thought I was really, super clever with that one. Because I loved talking about the babies. I talked about the babies at the high school Young Republicans Club--not only was I the president, but also the founder. I talked about the babies at Club 412, the evangelical punk teen hang-out in Fort Worth I frequented with my friends. I talked about the babies in class. I cried about the babies while I strummed my guitar. I wrote songs about the babies, imagining myself as a broken, murderous whore who regretted her abortions.
I didn't have an opinion one way or the other on abortion until I started hanging out with right-wing punk rock kids in high school. Then, somebody -- probably one of the older teenage punk rock boys I would later fend off in the back of a car or behind the chapel at church camp -- handed me a pamphlet with an aborted fetus on the front. The pamphlet told me abortion causes breast cancer and how women who abort can never be redeemed in the eyes of God and will live with heartache and depression for the rest of their lives, a shell of the beautiful thing they could have been if they'd only carried to term. I was outraged. I couldn't believe women were killing members of my own generation -- my sisters and brothers! -- just because they couldn't keep their legs together.
Because while I said it was about the babies, it wasn't. It was about slut-shaming.
I absolutely loved slut-shaming. Because I was saving myself for marriage -- well, oral sex doesn't really count anyway, does it? -- I knew that I would always be right and virtuous and I would never be a murderer like those sluts. The issue couldn't possibly be up for real debate, to my mind: either you were a baby-killer slut, or you behaved like a proper Christian woman and only let him get to third base. Babies were simultaneously women's punishment for having premarital sex and beautiful gifts from Jesus Himself. That didn't seem like a contradiction in my mind. It was just another one of God's perfect mysteries.
After all, I was 16, 17, 18. I knew everything. And what I knew more than anything else was that anyone who got herself into the position of having an unwanted pregnancy was filthy in body and soul. And again, since I would absolutely never have premarital sex, I would absolutely never make the decision to murder my child. Because I was pure, and so were babies, and together, me and the babies and my perfect hymen, we were all going to be fine if we could just fight the ignorant sluts. So that's what I did. I talked and argued and cajoled and pontificated. I ministered to the heathen nerdgirl sluts in Telnet chats and online bulletin boards. I stood up for what I believed in, which was: If you do not believe like me, you deserve whatever brand of God's wrath comes your way.
But, you know, to hear me talk, it was all about the babies. The innocent children. The mass genocide! Perpetuated, of course, by millions of American women who I imagined happily scooping out their wombs with ladles before heading back out for another gang-bang. In private, my anti-choice friends and I would laugh and laugh (or, in some cases, LOL and LOL, if we were chatting online) about how stupid women were for having premarital sex. How evil they were for not being able to control themselves. How great I was for not having sex with my boyfriend. How loved and special I was in the eyes of God because I didn't let my boyfriend, you know, do it with me.
If I'd thought about it any, I might have realized that it takes two to create an unwanted pregnancy. But the conversation was never, ever about men or their behavior. It was only about women.
So, what happened? How did I come to be editing a lefty, pinko-assed feminist blog?
Well, I got off my religious high horse and on to a sex life I enjoyed and found fulfilling.
At college, I met a wonderful, sweet Jewish boy who fell in love with me and who I fell in love with right back. And he didn't have any hang-ups about sex, though he was also a virgin. And we did all of the things except for The Big Sex, and the more I grew to love him, the more I thought back on those people I knew back home who told me sex was awful and would break me. How could sex with this guy, this absolute sweetheart, break me? And so we had The Big Sex. And it was great and fun and loving, and we kept having all of The Big Sex, for about three weeks, until I realized it was about time for my period.
Suddenly: I was the dirty, filthy slut. I was the horny bitch. I was the callous murderer-in-training. What, did I think my womb was going to grow a toaster if we had a condom mishap?
Of course not. I didn't think babies were toasters and I didn't believe I was going to birth a toaster if I got pregnant, so how had I managed to belittle women for years with this condescending, patronizing line about a small kitchen appliance? I was frozen in a kind of moral limbo: I couldn't believe I found myself simultaneously relieved that I could access an abortion if I wanted to, and saddened and stressed out by the possibility of having to make that decision.
So I went right the heck out and got myself some hormonal birth control, is what I did.
I marched into my college women's health center -- oh, thank God they had one -- and I got my first pap smear and the Ortho-Evra patch and talked to the nurses about STD's and pregnancy and how to take care of my body. I had never had any of those conversations with my family or church or friends or teachers back home in Texas. I learned more in a two-hour visit to that college women's health center than I had in the 19 years leading up to it. And yet as a passionate anti-choicer, I had considered myself an expert on sex and reproductive health -- my own and everyone else's -- because of a few pamphlets and preachers.
Today, I see that nothing about my religious anti-choice views did anything to prevent abortion. They did a lot to shame myself and my friends, but nothing to prevent abortion. Today, I hear anti-choicers talk about the babies and the unborn and the American genocide, but what I really hear beneath all that is slut-shaming and fear of female sexuality. I hear that language clearly because I spoke it once, myself. It is a familiar language to me.
And I even have a little bemused sympathy for old men who try to pass anti-choice legislation. Because they really will not ever have to worry about abortion. And once, I thought I wouldn't, either. So I see where they're coming from. I see how blind to the experiences of others they are. Privilege does that to people. If they weren't so damned full of themselves, and so damned politically powerful, I might even find them funny.
What saddens me more than anything else are women who want to make abortion either so inaccessible as to render it impracticable, or who want to outlaw it altogether. Because I truly believe that most women, anti-choice or otherwise, who've experienced even a flicker of uncertainty about a pregnancy in this country since 1973 have been glad, in their hearts, to have a choice. I believe wanting to take that choice away from others is deeply about shame and punishment and judgment, and not about righteousness and love. I believe that because I rarely see those who want to outlaw abortion doing anything to combat its cause: unintended pregnancy, and I see them doing a lot to punish and shame women.
There is nothing "pro-life" about sonogram bills and denying Medicaid funding to (some!) rape victims or allowing doctors to opt out of giving pregnant women life-saving abortions. I know that what has kept me from having to make a decision about an unintended pregnancy is not the prospect of hearing a fetal heartbeat or having to go through a 24-hour wait period, but safe, easy and affordable access to contraception and good, honest medical information disseminated by doctors and medical professionals without religious agendas.
I was a girl growing up in Texas who was failed by abstinence-only education and soured by extreme religious dogma.
I don't want other girls to go through that, too. And so if you've gotten through this whole essay, consider donating to Planned Parenthood. Get on a NARAL mailing list. Fight HR3. Stand up against empty religious and political pandering and stand up for real solutions like affordable health care, comprehensive sex education and contraceptive access.
Originally published at Hay Ladies.
My boyfriend (20) and I (19) have been together for three years. We really do love each other and so we decided to have sex about two years into our relationship. First things were great, but a few months after we had been having sex regularly he changed his mind. He said he liked me better when I was innocent and that he hated what we did. He stopped all those cute romantic things like telling me I was pretty and writing me love notes. No matter how hard I try, I can't get him interested in me again. He used to tell me he was going to marry me and we always talked about the future and everything but now he just says he doesn't know what the future will be. Obviously, had I thought this would happen we wouldn't have had sex in the first place but since I'm stupid... we did. What do I do? To call it quits after three years is just too much for me to handle... but I can't live like this anymore. HELP!
This is a guest entry from Shanna Katz, M.Ed, as part of the month-long blogathon to help support Scarleteen!
When I was 10 or so, I discovered the wonders of the internet. It was back in the mid-90s, before most people had access, but my father was a computer scientist, and I was rocking out on Mosaic, way before IE or Eathlink or Netscape or AOL made their brands so popular. I didn’t use it for much, as there wasn’t that much info out there pertaining to me, but I did have an email, and learned how to search.
Around the late 90s, I was in my “oh em gee, want to learn everything possible about puberty and sex” and after my parents exhausted the info available at the local library, I was lucky enough to discover Scarleteen.
It was still quite young back then, but it was knowledge, and that was something I was desperately hungry for. More importantly, it was more than just information; it was interactive. I could learn from older teens, from educators, from people my age. I became obsessive about checking the forums every day. It was a way for me to connect, to get information, to teach myself about sexuality, to have my questions answered, and to get to know my body.
I didn’t really get any sort of sex education from school until I was a Junior in High School (age 14), and accidentally ended up in a Parenting and Child Development class (amusing, since I definitely didn’t want and don’t want children). In that class, we spent a good week or two on birth control and contraception. I got 100% on every assignment, and impressed the teacher, as I already had learned most of this info from Scarleteen.
High school was hard for me. I graduated at 16, so I was always about 2-3 years younger than most of my peers, and that caused endless taunting and worse, being ignored. I had my inner circle of friends, of course, but more importantly, I had the knowledge that on Scarleteen, I was equal. My questions and answers were just as valid as a popular cheerleader, or another braniac. To me, sex education was my great equalizer. I might not be cool, or popular, or the social ideal of beautiful, but because I had information that no one else had, I was still interesting. I might get teased, but people still wanted what I had (knowledge) and so I wasn’t the brunt of as much hate as I might have been.
Sex education made me a better person. I understood my body more, and I chose to respect myself more. Not in the “I’m going to wait till marriage” kind of way, but in the “I’m going to do what I want to when I’m ready, and not when everyone else is” kind of way. I was sexually assaulted when I was 17, and my knowledge of sex education, paired with what I was learning in my Human Sexual Behavior class, and then compile all that with my info and ability to talk to others on Scarleteen, and I made it through. It was so easy to just curl up and want to die, but my knowledge of sexuality made me want to live again.
I wanted to learn more, and to teach others in order to help them know more, and love themselves more. I joined the sexual assault prevention and hotline group, V.A.T. I trained on how to talk about sex with others. I drove friends up to Denver to buy their first vibrators. I bought book after book, searching for more knowledge. I experimented a bit on my own, and wrote a lot about virginity — what was it, why the hell did it exist, what did it mean to “lose” it and so on. Because of all of my background in sex education, by the time I chose to have intercourse (what many people define as “sex”), I had just turned 20, and although I later realized I wasn’t really interested in men, it was actually quite a good experience. It didn’t hurt very much, we used lube (as I had learned to do) and pillows to prop up my hips. I went in really WANTING to have sex, with knowledge about how to protect myself from STI transmission and pregnancy, and tips on how to make it as comfortable of an experience as it could be. I have met few people that had such a communicative and fairly enjoyable first time. While that friend with benefits didn’t last long, I’m forever grateful to my sex education (and his willingness to cooperate) for helping to create such a positive experience.
Sex education made me feel powerful. Knowledge IS power, and even more so when it is about your own body, choices, options, etc. Sex education made me feel as though I belonged, as though I was just as good as everyone else. Scarleteen made my life so much better than it could be. It made me more confident, it helped me to know myself and respect myself more, and to make the healthiest decisions for ME about myself and my sexuality.
I actually did my thesis on sex education in middle and high schools, and how it helped college women to view their bodies. Not shockingly (back in 2005, although I doubt much has changed), the more information on sex education that the subjects I interviewed received in their teens, the more confident they were about themselves and their bodies, and of course, their sexuality. It is proven, and not just by my tiny study, that sex education is crucial to our society. People with sex education are armed with the power to make the best decisions for themselves — whether that is waiting to start sexual activity, providing protection for their own activity, education their friends, and exploring their sexual identities. Without sex education, we leave youth without the tools for good decision making, and take their agency away.
Sex education should be available for everyone. Scarleteen is such a place where EVERYONE can learn, can share, can ask questions, and can be an equal. Scarleteen saved me from some dark places, and I know it has helped countless others as well.
So please, if you can spare something, ANYTHING, please keep Scarleteen going. Even $5 or $10 can help to create change. I donated what I could. It wasn’t a lot…but if it means not eating another cupcake until 2011, it was worth it to support such a great site. And if you can’t afford anything, then please, spread the word about this amazing and FREE resource we have in our community.
What Scarleteen Needs: Last year, Scarleteen needed increased donations in order to get through the end of 2009 and into 2010, in large part because private donations for a few years previous had been so low and left us in a very financially precarious position. We increased our financial goals to reflect the need for a minimum annual operating budget of $70,000. Thanks to generous contributions from our supporters in response to that appeal, while we were not able to reach that level, we were able to raise what we needed to not only get through 2009, but were able to use the funds wisely to sustain the organization through 2010. Our goal now is to continue to work toward that annual operating budget. Ideally, we would like to see a minimum of $20,000 in individual donations each year to combine with funding from private grants. In order for that to happen, we need for current donors to keep giving, and we also also need to cultivate new donors.
This minimum budget is exceptionally cost-effective for the level of service we provide, especially compared to other organizations and initiatives whose budgets are far higher, including those which do not match our reach and our level of direct-service. If you would like more details about our budget and expenses, just contact us via email and we’ll gladly share that information with you.
Unlike many other organizations often in a bind because they are solely or highly reliant on foundation or public funding, Scarleteen has always been primarily supported by generous individuals like yourself and small community groups. While this requires we operate at a far smaller budget than other similar organizations, it also allows for a high level of freedom and autonomy and the ability to best provide young people with what they want, rather than seeking to create or adapt content and services primarily to suit what funders want. This approach to funding also allows our staff to put nearly all of our time, energy and money into directly serving youth, rather than into grant seeking, writing, schmoozing and administrating.
We’re asking for your help in either giving a donation of your own or encouraging your readers, colleagues, friends and family to donate. Given our visibility, tenure and traffic, with your help, meeting our goal should not be particularly challenging. A $100 donation can pay half of our server bill for a month, or half the monthly cost of the text-in service, or can fund any kind of use of the site, including one-on-one counsel and care, for around 10,000 of our daily users. However, we very much appreciate donations at any level.
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In hindsight, I knew when I was around ten or eleven that I was queer: that I had and was experiencing growing sexual and romantic feelings for people of all genders, not just those of one of for those of a different sex or gender than me, feelings I'd continue to have throughout my teen years and my adult life to date. I didn't have the language for it then, though, even though there were queer adults in my orbit I could have gotten it from, adults I naturally gravitated towards without realizing a big part of why was because I saw myself in them and I really needed them. Looking back, others identified my orientation before I did: a homophobic grandparent, an uncomfortable parent as well as a comfortable and readily accepting parent, and, most important to this particular tale, a group of teenage meanies in the blessedly brief time I spent in a suburban public high school in the 80's who sometimes whispered but other times yelled, "Dyke!" or "Lesbo!" as they passed me in the halls.
In that high school, I had a tiny but great handful of friends, all of us outcasts in one way or more: because we were queer, because we were punk, because we had less money, because we were just different and either showed it outright or couldn't pass as "normal." When any of us got harassed, we often had each other to blow off steam with, to find solidarity with, but we couldn't always be there for each other, and even when we could, that didn't make the harassment and bullying any less scary nor did it sting any less.
I remember a particular bunch of girls, junior cheerleaders, especially their nasty ringleader. Jill was the one who instigated most of the harassment, who'd walk by me the most often and bark homophobic slurs, who spread the most gossip about me, even though I'd never done anything to her, or even had any interaction with her at all outside her bullying that I could recall. Heck, I never even talked back when she harassed me: usually I simply scurried into the bathroom or a classroom, flew out unto the smoking lot trying to puff out my upset, or just pretended I didn't hear her and kept on walking. When my boyfriend violently and unexpectedly committed suicide, it was probably Jill who started a very deeply painful and fast-spreading rumor that I'd shot him myself because I was really a deranged, man-hating lesbian.
I'd made myself go to school the day after he died because I was worried I wouldn't be safe for myself home alone. As awful an environment as that school had been for me, I didn't anticipate that even after something so terrible had happened to me, I couldn't count on it to be safe for just one day, or that such a terrible tragedy would be seen by anyone as an opportunity to bully me more about my orientation, of all things. The suggestion that I'd done something so terrible to someone I loved so much, and was reeling so much over the loss of, to the point of being catatonic was beyond outrage; even knowing full well it wasn't true, even knowing the likely source knew nothing about me, it made something already so traumatic so, so much more painful. Maybe to Jill and those like her, any of this seemed harmless or minor or even funny, but it wasn't any of those things for me.
Luckily, I was able to get out of that school shortly thereafter. I switched to a small performing arts school in Chicago, where there were just as many queer kids as straight kids, where queer teachers were out, where I was in a safe community where sexual orientation and all kinds of other perceived weirdness was pretty much a total non-issue. A place where everyone was generally wonderful to each other, perhaps because so many of us had been treated so badly by others in other places before. That school, for so many of us, was our safe haven, and it was very much mine.
Around a year later, I was out with a bunch of friends, including a girl I really liked, at an all-ages club on the north side of Chicago. It wasn't a queer club specifically, but it was a place more meant for misfits of every variety than for girls like Jill; a place where it was also safe to be queer and out. I felt able to be who I was there, including being the girl who really liked this other girl and wanted to keep my lips attached to her face as much as was humanly possible.
So, when I was inside the club making out with my I-so-hope-she-becomes-my-girlfriend and I heard someone behind us squeal, "Oh my GAWD, it's that fucking dyke! I knew it! DYKE!" I was pretty surprised. When I turned around to see that it was Jill and her mall-haired gaggle of flying monkeys, I was even more surprised.
But perhaps the most surprising thing of all was that what she said didn't hurt, not even a little. It wasn't scary. It didn't make me feel small.
It was pathetic, really. It felt like merely a statement of fact, said in such a way that made her look like an idiot, and in a place where the only person who got outed was her: as a bully and a jerk. She was trying to announce to the world I was queer, which seemed a mighty silly thing to do when no one could announce it more than I already had with my lips and hands all over another girl in a public place. Not only did I not care if everyone in the club knew, I knew that what she'd telegraphed most was not how I didn't belong, but how she didn't; not how I wasn't okay, but how she wasn't; not how outnumbered I was, but how outnumbered she was. I wasn't in her space anymore: she was in mine. She hadn't made me unsafe or unwelcome: the only person she made unsafe and unwelcome in that moment and place was herself, made so by herself. I didn't feel embarrassed myself; even despite strongly disliking her, for a nanosecond, I actually felt embarrassed for her.
I grinned. My girlfriend and our friends grinned and then we just laughed. I gave Jill a thumbs up, and then the girl I was with decided she'd had enough of the unwanted interruption and pulled me right back to what we were previously doing, with Jill's continued whine of dykey-dyke-dyke waning like a car running out of gas and feeling more like a cheer for my home team than a jeer. Getting very well kissed while someone (someone who is NOT being kissed, thankyouverymuch) weakly calls you a dyke, The Smiths blaring in the background so you're thinking that in that moment, maybe even Morrissey is happy for once? It really takes the edge off.
It took a while for things to get better for me in a bigger way, but that was the first moment where I remember strongly and firmly feeling that it was going to get better, that it already had, and that it would keep getting better; that people like Jill were going to have less and less impact on and power over me and everyone else as time went on. You know, just writing about all of that brought sharply back how much it hurt: it's gotten better enough for me since then that without dredging it all up again, I earnestly forgot just how very painful it was. It getting better can not only make your present life a lot better, it can also make the times it wasn't better hurt a lot less and have a lot less impact. It gets harder to remember the bad stuff when the better stuff has been so great. And once it has gotten better, even when the jeers or the harassment or the bizarre accusations still happen, it gets a lot easier to brush off and a lot harder to let it get you down.
Admittedly, when it came to my orientation (as opposed to other areas of my life and person), I didn't have it as bad as some other kids I knew, certainly not as bad as most queer people in the many generations before me, and not as bad as plenty of young people today still have it. Not everyone has queer friends or friends at all, not everyone lives in or very near an urban area, not everyone is afforded an opportunity to find a school like I did, not everyone has at least one supportive parent, not everyone even knows one other queer person, and not everyone has even one place they can make out with -- or even hang out with -- someone of the same-sex or a similar-gender and feel or earnestly be safe.
It turns out that Dan Savage and I grew up in and around the same neighborhoods (and now live in the same far-flung state, how weird is that?). Dan, like I did, found that it got a lot better, and Dan, syndicated sex columnist and the editorial director of The Stranger, just started a new project, It Gets Better, to help support young people in knowing that it can get better, and for so many of us, has gotten better, something it can be so hard to know or believe sometimes. Like Dan, I really feel confident saying that for however bad it is now, the chances are extraordinarily good that it will get better.
Billy Lucas was just 15 when he hanged himself in a barn on his grandmother's property. He reportedly endured intense bullying at the hands of his classmates—classmates who called him a fag and told him to kill himself. His mother found his body....
I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.
But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.
Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.
If you haven't taken a look at the videos in the project, you really should, whatever your age or orientation. They're powerful, positive and full of love, hope and all the other good stuff everyone needs. If you are queer and young, know that a lot of those powerful-sounding, happy people looked and felt a whole lot like you do once, and as much as it hurt like hell to get through it, they did it, and they want to do what they can to help you get through it, too. Dan took the time to answer some of my questions about the project this morning, and here's what he had to say:
Heather: In your own life, before it really did start to get better, did you have any cues or glimpses that it might get better you didn't recognize at the time?
Dan: It turns out there were gay people in family's orbit—priests, mostly, and a couple of waiters (my mom and dad ran a restaurant for a while)—but they weren't open about it front of us, "the children," because... well, you had to be discreet, right? Because then they would've been shoving it down our throats, etc., etc. And my parents believed, at the time, that they could protect us from becoming gay—me, the momma's boy, in particular—by keeping information about gay people, and gay role models, away from us. They were, as it turns out, pretty spectacularly wrong, huh?
The first clues I got that it wouldn't be so bad came when I was old enough to explore the city on my own. I grew up in Chicago and by the time I was 15, in 1979, I was riding my bike through the gay neighborhood, and I could see gay men and women. But this, of course, was back when gay neighborhoods were still pretty marginal, and most people who were gay were still closeted. So I wasn't seeing a representative sample of gay men and lesbians. I was seeing guys with huge mustaches on their way to the baths. And that wasn't what I wanted for myself. I remember thinking, "But this is all I can have," and being depressed.
Heather: I know I deeply benefitted by changing my community and my school, something I was lucky enough to be able to do. But I also was able to recognize that the problem WAS my community and my school, and not me or my orientation, something not everyone can recognize, especially without family or other supportive people around who are accepting of every orientation and sexual identity. For those who have really internalized every negative message around them, for whom positive messages don't seem real or are hard to hear, what can you offer?
Dan: Look around, look at the people who disprove the lies that you've internalized. Either they're crazy — all those openly gay, happy, successful people out there — or the people who told you being gay is a sin are crazy.
You know, I've always said that what saved was a little voice inside myself that kept saying, "You're fine, Dan, everybody else is fucked in their fucking heads." I don't know where that voice came from. Maybe my mom, maybe my dad, maybe even my Catholic education. I kept saying to myself, "Being gay hurts no one, so it can't be wrong. I don't want to kiss boys who don't want me to kiss them, so where is the harm in this? How can it be evil?"
Heather: Of the videos done for the project so far, which are your favorites?
Dan: Oh, my god. The one with the two guys who realize they're making a video for 15 year old boys and they need to think about what interests them. And suddenly there are really hot gay boys in the room dancing around in their underwear. The one made in SF with crowds of people chanting "IT GETS BETTER!" The one with a gay couple with a daughter named DJ. My son is named DJ. The rural lesbian farmer. The gay Muslim teenager. And on and on.
Heather: You're a writer, so video isn't usually the way you do your thing. Is there a reason you picked video as the medium for this project?
Dan: Yes, because I wanted to show them our lives. And kids use YouTube and understand social media. I wanted adults to talk to them about their lives, to share pictures, to look into their eyes and say, "It gets better."
Heather: I do agree that it usually does get better over time, often a lot better. But in the meantime, what do you suggest for young people trying to cope with the fact that it's not better yet, or where it feels like it's going to take an awfully long time for things to get better, or like they never might?
Dan: You know, if you're in an impossible situation—violently homophobic parents, small town, anti-gay peers — don't kick down the closet door and wind up on the streets. Wait it out. Find the stuff you enjoy, for me it was reading and theater, and pursue that, your interests, while your straight peers are pursuing each other. Instead of bemoaning what your life is like at 15, start laying the groundwork for the life you could have just a few years later at 18.
Leave the house, get involved with something, anything, that you find rewarding. It might be working in a foodbank. A lot of gay kids excel at non-team sports: biking, tennis, swimming. Whatever it is, go and do that. You'll be healthier for it and you just might meet some other gay kids.
Heather: How can young people act in their own interest to MAKE it better, both queer young people, but also young, straight allies? What about older LGBTQ people for whom it is now better: how can all of us best help young people for whom it's not better yet?
Dan: If you're going to a public school, form a GSA. If you're discriminated against, reach out to the ACLU for help. They do amazing work with and on behalf of LGBT teenagers. You have rights. Look around your school for straight allies and friends. If there isn't a community for you at your school, try to make one. If your school environment is so hostile that you can't make one, go find one outside of school.
And if you're being bullied at school and at home and at church, and in despair, reach out to the Trevor Project for help and support. And remember: it ends. School ends. It gets better.
You can also reach out to the people who are posting videos at the It Gets Better Project. If you post a comment to a video, it goes right to the person who posted it. That's one of the really amazing things about IGBP. Mormon teenagers can reach out to the gay Mormon adults whose videos they've watched online, gay Muslim teenagers can reach out to the Muslim gay adults, young trans kids can reach out to the trans adults, and on and on. It's linking people up, giving them help in addition to hope.
Heather: What can we tell schools, specifically, about making it better now? So many schools still are not safe spaces and still outright refuse to be safe spaces, not just peers, but administrations, too.
Dan: Make it better or we're going to sue your asses and it's going to cost you money. Really, that's what it's going to take.
Heather: Which is something young people can do: again, for students in the United States, that's the right time to contact your local ACLU branch and they will help. For students internationally, Amnesty International is a good place to start.
How do you feel about the fact that one way for queer young people to protect themselves is simply not to come out? Do you think the downsides of staying in the closet are worth the protection it can offer?
Dan: I think it's really irresponsible to tell all queer kids to come out without first advising them to take a long, hard, cold look at their particular circumstances. If a 14 year comes out because he's been told that he must, or should, or that's how it gets better, and is thrown out of the house, what then?
Some kids are just not in situations where they can come out. Most of the kids who are being bullied to death were the ones who couldn't hide. I'm sure there are other gay kids in those schools, gay kids who can pass for straight. Would we advise them to come out?
Heather: Working with young people internationally, I have to know that there are many for whom it won't actually get better unless they emigrate elsewhere or completely divorce themselves from their families and cultures, something that's a lot easier for people of privilege to do than for those without. I don't know about you, but I always struggle to know how to best support young people in whole countries or cultures in which the treatment they get in high school really is indicative of -- if not more benign than -- the treatment they'll get after high school. Obviously, just saying, "You need to move far, far away," is only so helpful. Any ideas? (Besides an underground railroad, which I think about every day, but can't visualize how we'd do it yet. Unless you have ideas about how to make that happen.)
Dan: We've seen some gay and lesbian people from repressive societies successfully claim asylum in countries that recognize the humanity, if not the full civil equality, of LGBT persons. My heart aches for LGBT kids condemned to grow up in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately the best advice — even though it's not always realistic — is to get out. Flee to a country like the UK or the US or Canada, come out, and file for asylum.
Check out the project. Make your own video if you can, or make your very own project to be supportive: this doesn't just have to come from adults, after all, and hopefully we don't have to tell you about the power a peer talking to another peer can have, something often even more powerful than what older adults can offer.
If you've been at Scarleteen before, you've already identified one safe space for you online. If you're new to Scarleteen, welcome in! Know that this is a safe space for you and we'll always be committed to keeping it that way. Most of our staff and volunteers are queer ourselves, and our straight staff and volunteers are fantastic, supportive allies, as are many young adult users and members of our community. We're not only committed to helping things get better for you and helping you make them better as much as you can, but to listening to you, holding your stories, and giving you whatever support you want that we can give while it's still not better at all. But this isn't the only safe space, nor the only resource available to queer youth. Want some more?
Online, you can check out:
There are some great hotlines that you can use when you need to talk to someone:
Want some books to help you through it? See if you can't find a copy of:
My girlfriend and I are both non-op transsexuals; (i.e., she's MtF, I'm FtM, and we haven't had "the surgery" and don't intend to.) On a visit with her a little while ago, she and I were sitting in her car and talking about our feelings regarding sex. When our relationship started over a year ago she asked me to wait, which I was fine with, but didn't know she had been open to what we considered "in between" kind of stuff like oral (she doesn't want to go "all the way" because she was raped a little while before I met her and she feels like penetrating me is putting me in her position--it isn't, but I'm not going to pressure her), and while we had been discussing it we realized we were both in the mood and I asked her if she wanted to find some place more private and explore, and she said "only if you want to." I did.
Before we got started, I asked her if she still wanted to continue and if she had any other boundaries she wanted to set in place, and she said no. I reminded her that if she wanted me to stop at any time she could say so and I would stop everything.
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