This is your trigger warning.

Scroll fast if you need to because I'm not cutting this.

Before this case came about, I'd heard of Steubenville from a lovely older couple (the Enditches from Steubenville, which is how I remember) on a bus tour I took roughly twenty-two years ago.

I didn't know about the football program there or how it was basically the only thing that held the town together.  However, when I heard it, it didn't surprise me because of how utterly beyond the pale OSU fans are.  They riot sometimes when they WIN, :/.

For those of you who are either not in the U.S. or who have been living under a large boulder for the last few months, a young woman of sixteen got drunk at a party last August and was dragged, semi-conscious and unconscious to several locations, where she was sexually assaulted multiple times.  She didn't know she'd been attacked until the next day, when she discovered multiple text posts, pictures, and videos about/of the assaults had been posted online.

Sunday, two football players, Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond, were convicted of "digitally penetrating" her. There were at least two dozen other witnesses/possible assailants, but these two were (in my opinion) the sacrificial lambs.  I wonder how good they were on the team?  I wonder how many more players/bystanders actually assaulted this young woman?  These two young men were convicted in juvenile court despite their ages (seventeen and sixteen, which in a lot of cases would have them tried as adults), which means that once they're over twenty-one, their records could be swept clean.  Yes, they have to register as "juvenile sex offenders" and yes, their pictures have been plastered all over the media, (we'll be talking more about the media in a moment), which will hopefully help to save future victims, but they still won't have ADULT criminal records.  This still won't necessarily ruin their lives forever in the same way it's affected the life of their victim, who has been shamed in court and received death threats from two other young women via social media sites.  Ohio's Attorney General is charging those who made the latest threats, but where are the charges against all of those who watched this young women be raped?  Not only that, but made videos in which they were laughing about her being raped.

To be clear, I think that this young woman can overcome this, but she might not.  She might not be able to come back from what they did to her.  Her life might spiral out of control because of the control that was stolen from her that night.  She's a survivor either way, but whether this rules her life forever or she's able to put it behind her, the fault still lies with those who, according to the prosecution, "treated her like a toy."

Where is the outrage?  Oh, that's right.  It's being directed towards the RAPISTS, in that media outlets like CNN think it's a shame that their lives were ruined by all of this. (Here's a petition you can sign to tell them what you think of their coverage of this issue.)  And the fucking Onion predicted all of this two years ago.

So what am I taking away from all of this?  I'm not a person once I get drunk.  Hell, I'm not a person if I'm out after dark alone or forget to lock my door or to set my alarm or am not careful enough with my surroundings or wear pants that are "too tight," a skirt that is "too short," or a burqa that shows "too much ankle."  You see where I'm going with this, right?

We teach men that women are "asking for it."  We teach them that they aren't responsible for their actions and that their "innocent lives" could be ruined by "giving in" to a girl who was too drunk to say no.  We shame rape victims so much that someone made a video called, "Shit Everyone Says To Rape Victims," and I'd heard them all before.

Our society doesn't teach men not to rape. Look at what happened to the woman who dared to suggest that we do so on Fox News - she was vilified and got both rape and death threats. Bullying is a part of it - men are bullied by their peers into going along with behavior that makes them seem "manly" to said peers. Even now, we're telling them to "man up," as though being a man is automatically strong and capable.


However, young men are also bullied by their fathers who bullied them, "Don't be a [misogynistic slur]" if they dare to express their emotions. They are bullied by a society that tells them that they aren't "real men" unless they attract as many women as possible, by any means possible. This is not peer-on-peer bullying. This is bullying at every level, from every angle, every day from the moment these young men are born.


If this is not 100% clear - I'm not excusing their actions, but until the rape culture stops telling women how they can avoid rape instead of telling men not to rape, cases like this will continue to happen.  People are starting to think this way (in Vancouver, an ad campaign entitled "Don't Be That Guy" has helped to reduce sexual assaults there by 10%), but the process is entirely too slow.   Also, the myth of the stranger attack needs to go away. Most women are raped by men they know. The Steubenville survivor even testified that she "thought she could trust" one of her rapists and didn't realize that she couldn't until she saw all of the social media about her attack the next day.

Can you imagine that?  Finding out you were raped (and that multiple bystanders, many of whom were your classmates, stood around ENJOYING your rape as though it was entertainment) via fucking Facebook and Twitter?  Can you imagine having two supposed friends of yours call you a liar and end your friendship because they wanted you to leave the party and you didn't do so, ergo what happened to you was your fault?

I've spoken about this before, but seeing what this sixteen-year-old woman is having to go through, with 18,000 townspeople she's known all her life and thousands more strangers online all acting as though this situation came about because she was drunk and not because those young men are fucking rapists, is making me sick on a level I can't begin to express.

She deserves better.  She deserves to be believed, to be supported, to be cared for, and, above all, to be told it was NOT HER FAULT!  But we don't do that in this country, or apparently any other, if Steig Larson and recent reports out of India are accurate, which I'm certain they are.  And those are only two examples - if anyone knows of a country/culture where rape is considered SOLELY the fault of the rapist, I would certainly love to hear about it, as I could use some good news on this front today.

The worst part - everything I've linked here is the barest tip of an iceberg so huge it could sink a million Titanics.  I could find dozens more links, all telling me that in the eyes of the world, my bodily autonomy is subject to the whims of others.

Society doesn't see me as a person.  I'm going to fight to change that.

ETA: Henry Rollins' commentary is rather similar to mine.

So about 18 months ago, I defended someone who was using a "Grammar Nazi" icon.  It was a shitty thing to do, I was rightly called out for it and since then I've become more aware of the word and have started calling people out when I see them using it to mean anything other than "people who support or supported Hitler". 

So now, 18 months later, someone's passing around a spelling meme on Facebook and captioned it, "For all you Grammar Nazis Out There".  I said something to the originator of the meme.  Was argued with.  Twice.  And so posted the following as my status:

Things that are Nazis: People who support or supported Hitler and his ideology.
Things that are not Nazis: Everyone else.
Please do not confuse one with the other. Thank you.

The following conversation ensued:

( Cut for length and epic stupidity. )( ETA: Random Commenter #2 )( Cut for length and epic stupidity. )


( ETA 2: The Jackass' response and more conversation. )
( ETA 3: Yet another response from the jackass and my response. )( ETA 4: Deep. Hurting. Yep, he responded again and derailed the conversation so far off the original point that I have no clue how to get it back on track. I tried, though. )
( ETA 5: Jackass: I understand that you're offended by me using the term "IT Nazi". Well, I am not going to change it. )

*************************************************

Here's the thing, 18 months ago, I was that jackass.

( Cut for length.  )
Warning: Possible triggers for slurs in both the comments and the post.  Also, general asshattery. 

87% of the counties in the United Fucking States of America lack an abortion provider.

87%

I just...

I give up.

Obviously, the religious extremists in this country have won and I should just accept my fate as a broodmare.

Neigh.

Oh, and I happen to live in one of the 13% of counties that actually has an abortion provider.  That doesn't make me feel anything but numb.

87%

Fuck me sideways.

That's what this bill is telling me.  It's telling me that because I have a uterus, my rights don't matter.  It's telling me that if there's something inside of me that could potentially become a human being someday, I'm not a person myself.

I've never been more aware of my status as a second-class citizen simply because of my gender than I am right now.  Right now, someone could break into my house and rape me.  Right now, my husband and I could have sex, but have no way to support a child because of the shitty economy.  Right now, I'm taking medication that is counter-indicated if one is pregnant and could wind up getting pregnant with a child with severe birth defects.  Right now, I could go off of my meds, our financial situation could improve and we could try and succeed in getting pregnant, but then I could have complications that endanger my life.

Right now, I could get pregnant and once I did, I would cease to be a person in the eyes of many.  I would become an incubator, an animal, a broodmare, a vessel for the survival of our species.  I would become something, rather than someone.  

It almost makes me wish that the doctor had had to perform a hysterectomy when I had my myomectomy nearly three years ago.  It makes me wish that I never get pregnant because I will cease to be a real human being once I am and will instead be considered an incubator.  If I get pregnant, I will have to worry about my doctor considering the potential life inside of me instead of mine.  I will have to decide if I'm willing to sacrifice my life to bring another one into this world, because my life won't be considered as important as the potential one inside of me.

It's telling me I'm not a person. 

If you can't tell, I'm heartsick over this.  I want to cry and rage and scream, but it feels like screaming into the wind.  It also makes me realize that it doesn't matter how many glass ceilings are broken or how many positions of power we hold, women will never be anything but second-class citizens so long as abortion can be debated like this, so long as our bodies don't belong to us when they are capable of bearing young.

It tells me that we are not an advanced species; we are only animals, with procreation our only goal.  The problem I have with that is that survival of the human species is not at issue right now.  Or if it is, it's because of overpopulation, not under.  

But those in power don't care about reality.  They only care about keeping the power they have and the best way to have power over someone is to control their ability to breed.

Look at the Catholic Church's stance on birth control.  It's only about power and control.

And that's all the abortion "debate" is.  One side wants to control what people do with their lives and bodies.  The other wants everyone to have the individual freedom to choose what's best for them.

And the side that wants control is always going to win because people like telling other people what to do.  They like being able to say that their way is the only way.  They like forcing people into roles with which they aren't and will never be happy because they aren't happy themselves or it makes them happy to see others miserable.

I'm so very tired of other people getting to decide who and what I am as a person without consulting me in it whatsoever.  I'm tired of other people presuming that they know better than I do what is best for me and my life. 

I'm tired of other people.

Inspired by more than one comment on the post that this post links to, I'm finally going to weigh in on the whole anti-PC, thought-police, this-word-has-another-meaning-and-no-one-can-own-a-word, I-don't have-to-change-simply-because-you're-offended school of thought.

I'm going to begin by saying that I'm guilty of using pretty much every word that is at issue at one point or another, some as recently as last year, so I'm not saying that I'm not in a glass house here. 

However.

For those who are against changing their language to remove certain words from their vocabularies because another person is offended by it, I ask the following question:

Who does it hurt? 

Seriously, who does it hurt to make the effort not to use words that others have found offensive?  I know that it's an effort to do so, so I guess someone could argue that it's hurting them by virtue of the fact that changing one's vocabulary and deleting certain words is hella difficult...  Well, I have to say that it's more difficult in the offline world, but online?  It's as easy as being careful of what one types.  I realize that for some, who type as quickly as they think, that could be a challenge, but seriously?  Who does it hurt?  Why is it such a big deal to just not be an asshat when someone asks you to do so?

( Cut for possible triggers and an incomplete list of incredibly offensive slurs that everyone should know not to use. Ever.  )And because I've been educating myself a bunch lately, here are a bunch of links that all say all of this a lot better than I just did.

101 Primer

sparkindarkness' entire journal.

Read all of that and then come back to discuss, if you wish, :).

ETA: Proof that not being an asshat is an ongoing battle: Weak is ableist.  Thank you to 51stcenturyfox  for letting me know, :).

ETA 2: My comment thread on the post that started all of this is here. 

ETA 3: Drama communities are probably not the best place to start, lol, but if it were not for them I never would have found most of this stuff out, which is why I mentioned them.  The best place to start is with the 101 Primer and go from there, :).

This post has now been edited because my essential message was being lost and I was doing more harm than good by defending my position on one phrase.  Most of the comments regarding that phrase have now been screened.  I'm not a PoC, so my feelings on that phrase don't matter whatsoever and continuing to argue about it only detracts from the essential point of what I was trying to say. 

I apologize for the drama.

For the record I am US-born, white, queer though I easily pass for both female and straight, and able-bodied.  I have no personal experience with physical, racial or ethnic discrimination and I apologize for speaking for those groups as if I were personally invested in those particular slurs not being used.

The areas in which I have personal experience and/or a personal investment include: feminism/sexim, sex work, body image/food, sexual freedom, BGLTQP rights/homophobia, bullying, child abuse, the US foster care system, the US health care system, PTSD, anxiety, depression and mental health.  

There has been a lot of fail going on in the header sections of some stories in a specific fandom.  However, while the fail seems to be more widespread in that fandom, this is a multi-fandom issue.  Not to mention that these are the contents of PM's and as such, I feel are due a certain level of anonymity, which is why I've removed all identifying names from them before posting them.  (They're backdated to make things easier on me.)

I give up.

I give up on the idea of changing people's minds on a widespread level. 

My initial idea was to change the 'warning' field to 'contains' so that there would be no value judgment placed upon any of the contents.  That was immediately shot down on another thread as 'devaluing the warnings'.  And the more I thought about it, the more that having anything consensual on the same line as non-consensual activities is a bad thing all around.  Even so, it still seems better to have a content advisory rather than a warning.

( Cut for length, repetition, triggers and rambling. )

In a perfect world, people wouldn't care about a header being 'too large', they'd just put warnings and triggers on a separate line from other content and they'd ONLY "warn" for non-consensual triggers.  

I'm also going to go through and find that story that warned for 'boy kissing' and PM the author.  We'll see what happens.

So, any ideas as to how we can get fandom to be better about this?   Crap, I know I said I give up, but I really don't want to.  I'm feeling bitter, disillusioned and disgusted right now, but I think there must be some solution that I'm just not seeing that could stop people from being so utterly stupid and disrespectful towards other people.

ETA: I sent a 'heads up message to the mod that I corresponded with, letting them know that I was posting the correspondence publicly and telling them that they should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to allow people to warn for slash in their community.

This is what I just got back:

The message was:
This is [name redacted - a different mod than responded before] responding on this occasion. The bisexual mod, seeing as that appears to be so important to you.
( In which I get called a raging militant and threatened with being banned for pointing out reality.  )

*********
Never been called a raging militant before.  I find I rather like it.  And if it's being a raging militant to point out complete and utter fail, I can live with that.  As for the community - if I get banned, I get banned.  Given that it would be for my behavior outside of the community, rather than anything I actually did in the community itself, I'd say that that would speak for itself.  :)  In fact, I feel that it only proves my point further.  Not to mention that I don't write for that fandom and even if I did, I'd post my stuff elsewhere. 

ETA 2: The "Happy Holidays" was the way they closed their message.  After all of that vitriol, they put that at the end.  Wasn't that sweet of them?
 

As everyone who reads this should know, I'm pansexual.  I am attracted to personalities, not physical appearance.  I can appreciate someone whom society tells me is beautiful, but their gender enters into it only as an afterthought.  In addition to this, I don't believe in monogamy.  While I'm very committed to those whom I love, I don't allow jealousy or possessiveness.  Period.  I'm not an object - I'm a human being.  And so are those whom I love and/or have sex with.

There are those who feel that my identity as a human being is immoral, that a person should only love one person of the opposite gender (or only one person, as I am discriminated against by some gay, lesbian and bisexual persons as well for not being monogamous).  People look down on me for being free with my sexuality. 

They tell me that I'm immoral, but they never adequately explain how or why.  Why is it immoral for me to love more than one person?  Hell, so long as everyone practices safe sex (in the interests of public health), why is it immoral for me to fuck every person I feel sexually attracted to?  

Who am I hurting?  So long as I am not an unsafe sex-practicing carrier of disease and make no promises that I can't or won't keep, how does my identity as a human being hurt anyone else?  I'm honest, up-front and completely open with who I am.  

Who am I hurting?  No one.  But there are those who feel that my sex life is their business and that they have a right to control me in the name of a morality to which I don't subscribe.

To me, something is moral if it causes no direct harm to anyone else.  It is moral if everyone is adult and it is consensual.  It is moral if it is honest. 

My identity is moral.  Period. 
(  Under the cut is an incredibly long exploration of possible reasons why our society sees certain identities as immoral, as well as the possible causes of GLBTQP identities. (WARNING: This will likely be offensive to some of you, but I do have a method to my madness. I hope. If I fail, please let me know how, because I tried really hard not to fail with this post.) There is also an examination of the differences between civilized and uncivilized human beings.  )
So when you tell me that I'm less than human because your 'morality' tells you so, I reject your morality.  I reject your primitive version of civilization.  I reject your identity as an asshat, because again, unless you are a born asshat (i.e., a psychopath), you can choose to be a decent, civilized human being instead.  

I didn't choose my sexual identity, but I did choose my identity as a decent, civilized and ultimately (despite my many, many failings) moral human being.  


ETA: I'm rather glad that I thought of something cool to post about for my 600th entry, :).

To all of you out there reading this, I'm not normal.  I'm not neurotypical and I'm on the autism spectrum.  I've always been this way - I just didn't have a name for it until very, very recently.

Before you ask, I'm self-diagnosed.  But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's fucking Aspergers, m'kay?

Am I bitter?  Little bit.  All my life I've been fucking weird, felt like an outsider and like there was a whole world that I just couldn't understand and I just got to find out that I probably never will.

There's no real treatment for what I have, no magic pill or therapy to make the walls come down and help me to actually understand what most of the population takes for granted.  

I never get to know...  So many fucking things.  I get to feel like I'm on the outside looking in and never really understand...  I'm repeating myself there, but I'm typing this while I'm crying and just...
( Holy fuck this is long. Possibly the longest post I've ever put up here that wasn't a story. So long that I don't even know if LJ will take it. And I'm not reading over this before I post it, so there will be typos liekwhoa. Also, non-graphic trigger warning for those who have ever felt like outsiders or like the world could never understand them. Read at your own risk. But you should be doing that already if you're here, so I guess that read if you want to would be more appropriate. )

I have this odd urge to just write "The End," even though it would be abrupt and odd. 

The End.

...

PS I'm screening comments, 'cause that's just how I'm rolling on this one.

That's what we all want to tell everyone who's ever been bullied.  It gets better.  At some point in your life, you'll look back and realize that those who hurt you were small-minded, stupid asshats who are probably unhappy with their lives now and who will never feel as good about themselves as you do now.

It's a beautiful sentiment and I've really loved seeing the outpouring of similar messages all over the internet. 

That said, I'm sorry.  I'm sorry to be the cynical, depressed voice that cuts through all of the love and says, "Hey, wait a second..." 

To someone who is being bullied, no amount of 'It will get better' from random strangers will necessarily help.  To someone who's in that dark place, they feel as though their pain is unique and nothing and no one could ever understand it, even if the person telling them has been in the exact same situation before.

Because the pain of someone else isn't mine.  What I went through and got through doesn't mean dick to someone who's still going through it right now.  All the, 'there's light at the end of the tunnel's' in the world don't make a difference to someone who's being systematically tortured every moment of every day.  

Again, it's a beautiful idea for people who aren't in that place any longer to reach back and try to pull someone forward with them, but speaking as someone who's both been in that place and had people tell me that it'll get better....  I was going to say that I can say that it might not help but then I realized - I'm speaking for those who are in that dark place.

I'm saying that my pain was comparable to theirs and because all those 'it gets betters' didn't help me, it won't help them.

I'm wrong. 

I'm depressed right now and it's clouding how I'm looking at the world, but not so much that I don't realize how wrong I am.  

Just because 'it gets better' didn't work and doesn't work for me, as a rule, doesn't mean that it won't work for someone else.  So if you have a chance to tell someone it'll get better, take it.

They might be lucky enough to be nothing like me, :).

With today's failure of the Senate to repeal DADT, with my right to choose constantly under attack, with people saying that the Pope should have been treated with more respect during his visit to the UK, with morons equating the building of Park 51 to a KKK rally (a thread I saw recently on a friend's journal that I'm not going to link to without her permission) - I'm weary. 

I feel as though I'm screaming into the wind.  I feel as though individual rights have never and will never be a priority of humanity as a whole.  For every one thing you see me screaming about here, there are ten times as many things that I repost on facebook because it's a LOT easier to do so there and the overall reach seems to be wider when people share the things I've reposted.
( tl;dr )

Those on the other side are so very loud, though.  They're screaming with the wind and their screams carry so much further, to the point where it seems impossible to scream over them. 

That's okay though.  They have a right to scream.  And I have a right to tilt at my windmills and scream right back at them.

I'm to the point now where if I cause even one person to think critically about an issue and stand up for the freedoms of everyone, regardless of which invisible man they pray to or who they love or what they want to do with their bodies, I've done all I can do.  

So I'm going to keep screaming into the wind, regardless of how sore my throat gets, and I encourage all of you to do the same.