sexual assault

Use Your Words

You know the saying, “Use your words.” Adults typically say that to small children acting out without words. But maybe we should add some caveats. “Think about how you use your words.” Or possibly, “The words you use can change your life.” Some of us, frankly, would love to stop acting out and would relish the chance to use our words and have them heard.

This was a recent Facebook post of mine:

you know what women like? what really churns their butter? when a person, but really not just any person, a man, especially a white straight protestant man, a religious, dogmatic, raised-to-be-in-control man, can acknowledge, without defense, his unknowing, his failures of understanding, his participation in the system, a man who can humbly take the leap of trying, of trying to feel the world most women and children live in, to think of the experience minorities (as in different from his sexuality, gender, race, religion) live in and realize wow, it’s time for me to slow down and listen because i am ignorant of that world. This woman anyway is into men like that. I’m hoping if anything good can come of this election season it will be from the growing voices of the silent minority whose worlds are starting to be considered if only because of the bravery shown and brutality suffered by the other that is harder and harder for such men to keep hidden. even if just one privileged man (please dear God!) who thinks he knows something about the world of the other (but who actually never asked) is open to change, it will bring me some solace. and to you men out there who are out there trying, and to whomever taught you, I seriously love you!

Okay. First of all, I know I used a lot of words. I guess I’ve been storing them up. Most of my posts are short and sweet, stuff like, TGIF it’s been a long week, but not that week, not this presidential season. I’m joining the ranks of dysregulated people out there who are trying to put some words to the insanity of what is swirling around our country’s political scene. And by last week, I had had enough.

A friend of mine surveyed her book club after the video of Trump and Billy Bush’s vulgar 2005 exchange about sexually assaulting women was released by the Washington Post on Oct 8th. There were six women and one man present at book club that night. “Who here has experienced unwanted sexual touch?” All the women (not the man) raised their hands. Of course, many men have been sexually violated- just not as many. Because let’s be honest, men are not having their bodies groped in a free-wheeling “grab them by the p—y” kind of way like women. My friend was too uncomfortable to share the how and how many times this had happened to her. I understand that.

I work with sexual abuse victims. And yet I could never have anticipated to warn my clients, to predict the re-traumatization that would happen this election term from the mouth of an actual presidential candidate elect. Of course, who could have imagined it? And now, due to the constant barrage of violating words and phrases circulating our feeds, the inconceivable has happened and the trauma seems inescapable.

But I’ve noticed a lot of people are doing something really important in response. We’re talking. And in my profession, talking can cure, talking can get people to change their behaviors because it gets them thinking, connecting; talking makes people see what they might otherwise ignore. We are talking more frequently and more honestly than we ever have about the experiences of the marginalized, and our words are creating validation and change.

Part of the reason why talking is making a bigger impact is the sheer volume of words is greater, higher, louder. And the volume is getting some of those white privileged men I was talking about in my post, to take note. You have to be living under a rock to not know about #blacklivesmatter because the crescendo has been building loud enough to permeate the psyche of our nation. This most recent incident has once again brought sexual assault and the world women live in every day back into focus. These most recent moments are made possible because of the many tragedies over the past several years that have increasingly been given voice. We are tired of not being able to use our words, and we are tired of others using words that don’t represent the truth. Who would have thought we would be adding #nastywoman this past week to words we claim as our own? That’s a triumph.

So yeah, a lot of people have had longer facebook posts this past year, and not just any people, but people of color, women, people that didn’t have a voice until very recently in human history. And you know what? Despite what Trump thinks, his words are working, but not as he planned. And our words, our precious, dysregulated words scribbled on the page, typed and retyped onto social media, in texts, words spoken aloud to the ears that will hear are creating real waves, waves big enough to break barriers many thought unbreakable. Our words are going to usher in the first female president.

So yeah, keep posting people! Use your damn words, over and over. Use them well.

HB2, the Shameful Hate Law of NC

I had been thinking about love, how difficult it seems for people who use online dating to find it, and why that is. I have clients looking and longing for a partner. I love love and believe every human is entitled to know what it feels like to sit across from someone who sees all of you and has your back. That was around Valentine’s Day. And then April hit. April got off to a rough start for my home state of North Carolina. First I suffered through the pain of my Tar Heels losing the NCAA tournament at the buzzer to Villanova, that seemed unbearable in the moment, and then I heard about HB2*, the law passed by NC Governor Pat McCrory in the midst of March Madness in a one-day special session. House Bill 2, or as some refer to it as Hate Bill 2 has created a shitstorm in its wake. Here’s a good article from the Atlantic describing the current measures of the law.

At its contentious core, HB2 requires transgender individuals to use bathrooms in government facilities that match the gender on their birth certificates. What? And how in the world do they plan to enforce that? It also allows for government-supported discrimination against LGBTQ individuals by permitting private businesses to set their own rules, denying the right to sue. Huh? Am I still in America? And just for added measure, it prevents local governments from raising the minimum wage. As it turns out, when law legitimizes hate and fear, our ability to find love is compromised. Now instead of thinking about love, I was thinking about hate. I felt ashamed to be from NC.

As I scanned my Facebook over the weeks after it was passed, I was relieved to see many of my friends and family members speaking out against HB2, but I knew that wouldn’t last. First there was the high school guy who re-posted this fucking clown’s insight. And then there was the well-intended old church friend, who posted this article about the need for separate transgender bathrooms from the perspective of a rape survivor. That bothered me. In the past two days, Triller’s article has been referenced in the Washington Times and other places as support for keeping transgender people in the proper “God-given” restroom. Her description of “the countless deviant men” waiting in the wings like transgender-opportunists is hyperbole and overshadows the actual issue of the rights of the transgender community to use a restroom that matches with their gender identity. Sharing your story of sexual abuse is brave and vulnerable. Using that story as reasoning for upholding the discrimination of LGBTQ rights is problematic.

Sexual trauma of any sort is devastating. I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. I understand the fear of who does or doesn’t have access to me when I’m out in the world. I know the fear of entering a bathroom. In fact, before doing a lot of my own therapy, I had (and sometimes still do) a typical routine when alone in a bathroom- check under all the stalls, pick what I deem the safest one, quickly undress (I’m fast!), hold my breath, squeeze my eyes, cover my ears and try to force my pee out without spraying myself or the seat, all while I am trying to peek for new feet to enter the stalls next to me. A history of being physically or sexually violated causes real issues for any man or woman and not just in public bathrooms. If anyone understands this, it’s the LGBTQ community. However, the actual problem people have in allowing transgender persons into a woman’s restroom isn’t really about bathroom privacy. It’s about fear, fear of the other and most importantly in Southern states like NC, fear of the unregulated black penis. Yep.

There is a “fear of rape” culture that lingers in the Southern psyche that has spread well outside the Mason-Dixon line. I’ve lived in Seattle for over 15 years, and I’m grateful to not feel it in the same way here. In the South, it’s taught, directly, indirectly. It’s generationally passed down. And any Southerner who is honest knows it stems from the belief that black men are predators of white women. I grew up in Durham, NC, and by the time I was 12, I could have drawn lines on a map of where those predatory black men supposedly lived and where it was safe for good white girls like me to tread. I don’t even know how I knew this, but I did. These roots, the fear of black men violating white women, goes back to Jim Crow laws to Reconstruction to the Civil War to slavery. The thought that a white woman would ever willingly have sex with a black man was incomprehensible and deplorable (does that logic sound familiar?) Just like back then- NC in 2016 has created a law to regulate what it doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to tolerate. It makes me so angry.

My generation has fought hard to prove to our parents that we don’t drink the kool-aid they were raised on, and my youngest sister’s millennial generation has done an even better job of breaking down harmful stereotypes while still choosing to live in the South. We have interracial relationships, LGBTQ friends and family, varying religious beliefs and don’t have tolerance for their intolerance and black and white thinking. I wasn’t surprised to read a NYTimes article today describing that growing trend. Although with these changes happening, it makes the passage of HB2 even more confusing. Who was looking the other way? Who chose silent participation? I wish I could hear the conversations Gubby Pat was having with his confidants. I want to understand the logic of such idiocy by people in powerful positions. I know though that fear is a powerful force. HB2 is a giant step backward, affirming those black male myths and reinforcing the idea that difference is scary and there is a rapist lurking in every dark corner.

So what are we to do about men and their dangerous penises? (Take note that the further I explore the undercurrents behind the law the further I get away from anything connected to transgender rights). My mind goes to another NYTimes article I read last week, Teaching Men to Be Emotionally Honest. It’s about, well, how hard it is for men to be emotionally honest. What we believe about men and their capacity for emotional honesty has big ramifications- in my opinion, ramifications like HB2. I mean clearly Pat McCrory is emotionally stunted. This quote from the story jumped out to me. It’s from sociologist Robin W. Simon, and it almost seems to be a contradiction. She reports from her research, “Boys are not only more invested in ongoing romantic relationships but also have less confidence navigating them than do girls…romantic partners are their primary sources of intimacy.” Wow. Can we read that line again? Which is it? Are men more dedicated to intimate relationships or are men terrible at intimacy? Is it both? Why aren’t we talking about the major disconnect between the internal and external worlds of men? What I hear in my counseling office from women is about the high quantity of low quality men online- men that won’t commit, men who don’t care about emotional intimacy, men that relate best to their dicks. The men on the other hand seem completely baffled at what women actually want. Feelings of fear, confusion, shame and disappointment that are not explored or understood can generate hatred toward those that don’t “conform” to the expected gender and sexuality norms of culture. We wrongly believe that following the norm will keep us safe, happy and loved.

I thought about the data in my own house. I have two teenage aged sons. I have watched my boys go from walking around the elementary school playground arm and arm with their close male friends to now only speaking to their male friends about sports or shouting and grunting with them while playing online video games. And yet both of my sons send well over a thousand texts a month or is it a week? Who are they communicating with so frequently? “No she’s not my girlfriend. She’s my best friend!” They each have friends that are girls who play huge roles in their lives via instagram and texting. I am grateful for what they are offering my sons, like the freedom to use cute, sad, happy, silly emojis, the practice of putting emotional words to the big and small moments of their days. These vital communication threads are helping my teenagers stay emotionally open while the wave of macho is pounding at the door, telling them not to feel. And let’s be clear. If you can’t feel and express your own feelings, you won’t give a shit about others. Sadly, I’ve watched firsthand boys of all demographics bullied by adult men into becoming feeling-less, winning machines. And though my boys are some of the lucky ones (they have friends, financially and emotionally secure parents, smarts, looks, athletics, white skin), they still seem to be growing in their insecurity about how to navigate intimacy. And why wouldn’t they when the only pushback voice to that macho world is coming from mom or through text exchanges with their secret best friends?

I asked my oldest if the HB2 law offended him (okay a bit leading, but still). “Why would I dress up and go into a woman’s bathroom if I wasn’t transgender? It’s a stupid law.” Now that makes sense. But I wonder what this law is teaching him about his gender and sexuality? There are many outspoken, budding feminists at his middle school, which I love! But the good message of feminism has somehow been misconstrued and absorbed by my sons as misandry, man-hate. Learn that word. Misandry is the evil partner to misogyny. We know that word. Misandry we don’t know. My boys actually thought the definition of man-hate was feminism. What?! Does HB2 and the logic used to support it create some type of man-hate shame that just spawns more of the same? Does the shame spiral into various forms of misandry and misogyny in some terrible unending cycle of fear and hate? When will we stop using fear to shame and control people?

So there it is. My train of thought this week and all its complicated layers. As long as our society allows laws like HB2 to pass, both sexes will feel insecure and hated and love becomes more and more of an illusion.

Here’s hoping NC wakes up this election season and makes me proud to be a sweet tea drinking Carolina girl again.

*Just in case you google HB2- there is another heinous HB2 law that was passed in Texas in 2013 that makes access to abortion nearly impossible for poor and vulnerable women.