4082 Is that really what you think? You know you could be wrong?

Monday, August 3, 2015

"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."

--John Kenneth Galbraith--

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I've been trying to ignore all the internet comment on the  Bill Cosby allegations, because mostly it's younger folks saying "These women didn't report it when it happened, therefore it can't be true."  They have no idea what it was like then.  In some states as late as the '70s a woman had to have a minimum of two MALE (not female) eyewitnesses to even bring charges, or she had to be so badly beaten she could barely see or walk.  Otherwise no one would believe her.  Then if she actually managed to make it to court, her reputation was raped again by the courts.  So reading the ignorant comments royally pisses me off.

But I m reading some articles, especially those with substance.  One article quoted from the court documented testimony of Cosby himself, wherein he details his "seduction" techniques.  He said, quoting from the deposition, on the question of consent, "I think I'm a pretty decent reader of people and their emotions in these romantic sexual things."

At that point I said to myself, "Yep.  He did it.  He did it all.  No longer any question in my mind whatsoever."

Sexual predators (wolves) are very good at identifying and selecting the lambs among us: the women who are low in assertiveness, who are eager to please, who are cowed by authority, who are afraid of male power, who are impressed by success, who are unlikely to cause trouble.    They scent blood, they know who they can attack.

Secondly, in sexual matters, I am very well aware that men thinking with the wrong end always think that women want whatever they want them to want.  In my dating days I got so sick and tired of fighting off men who informed me that "You want it.  You know you want it", no matter how loudly and angrily and definitely I said no, stop, go away.  Hands up, Ladies --- how many times have you heard "You want it, you know you want it"?

The line I heard more times than I can count, from different men in different areas, in exactly the same words, which made me wonder whether it was born in male minds, was "You can't walk around looking like that and not want it all the time!"

Huh?  I've always dressed rather modestly.  But even a mother Hubbard can't hide a big bust.  I guess that's what they meant?

So, yeah, Mr. Cosby.  I'll bet you believed you were a "pretty decent reader of people and their emotions".  Too bad it was all coming out of your own mind and applied to others, without bothering to actually ask.

---------------------------------------------

On the subject of consent, men claim to be confused as to what it means, when do you have to get a verbal yes, when can a no mean yes, whatever it is that their testosterone-fueled minds can't quite grasp.  A woman has written an excellent illustration of exactly what consent or lack thereof means, that even the densest should understand:

http://www.theloop.ca/this-woman-just-explained-consent-with-the-most-perfect-metaphor/ 
It's short and amusing.
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3741 Potato

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Whenever anyone says "theoretically", they really mean "not really". 

--Dave Parnas--

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I normally would be very annoyed by the current fad for using "z" instead of "s" on the end of plural words, like "kidz".  I figure that at least it discourages those people from adding the superfluous apostrophe, like "kid's" as the plural form.

I am, however, very annoyed by PC people who insist that ALL rape is about power and coercion, that NO rape is about sex, ever.  Bullpoopy.  I want to slap them.  Some is absolutely about sex, about wanting something so badly that the perpetrator actually hears no objection, interprets all resistance as a game that he is expected to play to reach the goal.  Like the sex-want takes over his mind and everything is interpreted in a way to get him there.

--------------------------------

 I was peeling a squash last night, using a potato peeler.  I was thinking about how easy it was, compared to using a knife.  Then I had one of those flashbacks.

Daughter says I hold onto stuff from my past, that I should just let it all go.  (This from the 37-year-old who tells me all the stuff I did wrong when she was a kid.)  It isn't that easy to let stuff go, because I never got what the shrinks call "closure".  These are things that formed me, made me what and who I am, and with most of it I never found out why, whether it was something about me, or the other person, or what, that caused it.  I never got apologies.  Apologies and/or explanations are very important.

There was something wrong with my father.  He liked to beat Mom and us kids.  We're talking beating to unconsciousness, and when I say "liked", I mean exactly that.  It wasn't loss of control in anger.  It was fun.  He looked for opportunities, and if none presented when he was in that mood, he created one.  Traps.

I was the dinner potato peeler in my teens.   I had to use a knife, and the peels had to be super thin, so no potato was wasted.  It was difficult and time consuming, using a steak, not paring, knife.  When I was done, he had to inspect the peels, and if there was too much white on them, I was punished.  The peels were little tiny nibbles.


One day I was at a neighbor's house, and the mother there was using this marvelous implement:

That evening, I told my father about this marvelous invention, that would make very thin peelings every time and save lots of time.  Zip zip and it's done!

He was furious and beat me for displaying my stupidity and laziness.  I would continue to use a knife, because that's the way it was supposed to be done.

Yes, I am still angry at his unfairness.  Yes, it still bothers me.  Yes, still, occasionally, I am overwhelmed by anger, anger that I am not allowed to express to anyone, and therefore can't release.

I guess that's what blogs are good for.  Maybe it's released now, a little bit? 
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3650 Panic

Friday, October 26, 2012

Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives,

but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.

-- Barbara Bush (Former US First Lady) --

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A lot of freakin' out going on.  Some kind of super storm supposed to hit up the east coast.  The local township is sending out email alerts that make it sound like there will be no food, water, or power available for weeks.  The water-heavy sky is going to fall and flatten us like a pancake and then float it all out into the ocean.

The town of Rhinebeck, NY, near my country house, is also drumming up a panic with email broadsides.  They seem to think that the world is going to blow away, leaving everything flat as a pancake, not a blade of grass standing.

Ok, who's the spoilsport who sued a municipality for not warning people sufficiently about weather, so now they're afraid NOT to scare the pants off people?

This is ridiculous.  Tell us something is coming.  Give us the best prediction as to rainfall, windspeeds, etc.  It really isn't necessary to scream at us.  I'm tired of being treated like an infant.

FLASH:  The NYC mayor is on TV right now talking about precautions and plans being put into place for the storm, and how people can get information and assistance if needed.  He's being matter-of-fact and serious without being hysterical.

You know, his calmness has got me thinking about it, whereas the local and upstate hysteria just had me rolling my eyes and passing it off.

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Speaking of infants, the Nugget is very sick.  She has a cold, it's going into her chest, frighteningly high fever, and she has two infected ears.  Remember I said she's very strong?  Well, it's next to impossible to get medicine into her.  She fights like a tiger.  She clings to Daughter, won't allow any space between them.  Daughter has Hercules and me to help her out with a sick baby.  She asked today how on earth I managed alone.

Well, I didn't tell her, I'll let her think that's how it always is, but the biggest difference is that Daughter would take the medicine if I asked her to.  She was very compliant.  Nugget will not allow anything she doesn't want, that's that, and there's no reasoning with her. That's different, but not better or worse, and I don't want Daughter to wish it otherwise.

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John Scalzi has written a letter from "a rapist" to conservative politicians, thanking them for making his hobby so much more satisfying.  It's sadly funny and it's infuriating.  Please go read it, at http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/10/25/a-fan-letter-to-certain-conservative-politicians/.  You won't be sorry you took the minutes to read it.  An excerpt:

Ah, I see by your surprised face that you at the very least claim to have no idea what I’m talking about. Well, here’s the thing. Every time you say “I oppose a woman’s right to abortion, even in cases of rape,” what you’re also saying is “I believe that a man who rapes a woman has more of a right to control a woman’s body and life than that woman does.”

3601 Legitimate?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Before you fall for the newest thing to come along, ask yourself,
“Is it better than the old?”

--  Me --

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Ok.  We all know about Rep. Akin's stupid theory that women don't get pregnant from "legitimate" rape.  And the Republican Party has castigated and repudiated him.  He has apologized for saying it.

HOWEVER!  Note that he's in trouble not for believing it, and not for operating on it, but for having been so stupid as to have actually said it out loud, in public, where those pesky female-type people could hear him.

In fact, his attitude (if not his biological theory) is right in line with the Conservative/Republican party.  Check out their platform.  No exception for rape or incest.  After all, I guess, most rape is consensual, and any incest after the first incident is consensual, right?  I mean, if you didn't want to be raped, you wouldn't be out without a blood relative escort, you wouldn't wear such revealing clothes, you wouldn't be on birth control unless you were expecting sex all the time, you wouldn't ever be alone with a man, right?  (Oops - sorry.  That's Taliban thinking.)  And incest, well, of course you would report it to someone the first time it happened, and we all know no one gets pregnant the first time they have sex, right?  So if you got pregnant and hadn't reported it, you enjoyed it, and therefore it wasn't rape, right?

Sigh.  It's really true.  There are Neanderthals who do think like that.  They are legion.  And they vote.  They seldom come out and say it (it's not politically correct, and that's what Akin forgot) but it influences their thinking - or lack thereof.

Akin's statement took me back to a time, in my young adulthood, when the first question asked of a raped woman was, "Did you enjoy it?"  To a time when, in Missouri and many other states, a woman claiming rape had to have TWO MALE witnesses to bring charges.  (Two!  Male!  A woman's testimony cannot be believed, you know.)  To a time when law enforcement would not believe a woman was raped unless there was a weapon involved, or the woman was beaten severely, since, "A woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down."  To a time when "She asked for it" was the usual verdict.  Remember then?

Akin is still there.  That's where the "legitimate" came from.  (I wonder if his idea of "legitimate" rape is limited to miscegenation.)

Yeah, there are still women who will scream "rape" falsely, just to make trouble for some guy.  They are traitors to their sex.  Because they exist, many people take rape claims with very large grains of salt, and that's why people still hang on to the theories above.  That's where "legitimate" comes from.

It's easy to get the impression that Conservatives, and especially those infesting the Republican party, hate women.
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3470 So, will anyone apologize to the hotel maid?

Thursday, February 24, 2012

Competent leaders have always understood the crucial difference
between public proclamations and private bargains.
-- Stephen Jay Gould --

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Remember Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, the guy who planned to run for President of France, but was derailed when the NYC hotel maid accused him of rape? Remember how the case was dropped when the maid's veracity was questioned? Remember when a woman couldn't charge rape without two witnesses? Remember when she had to have a spotless reputation to be taken seriously, and even then the charges were dropped if she didn't have two black eyes and a broken leg? Oops, sorry, I got sidetracked a little there. Back to Strauss-Kahn.

From today's Bloomberg article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

French builder Eiffage SA filed an embezzlement complaint after an internal probe found an employee spent as much as 50,000 euros ($66,000) to pay for women to travel as far as Washington to have sex with Strauss-Kahn.

Investigators are trying to determine whether Strauss-Kahn knew corporate money was used to pay the women and whether he played an active role organizing sex parties he allegedly attended, or knew the women attending were prostitutes.

Prostitution and paying for sex are legal in France, while procuring prostitutes for someone else isn't

Strauss-Kahn was also questioned by agents charged with internal investigations of the French police regarding his ties to a regional police chief indicted in the affair.

Strauss-Kahn has denied wrongdoing in relation to the investigation and said in a Nov. 11 statement from his lawyers that he wanted to be questioned, "to put an end to the dangerous and spiteful insinuations" in the media.

"A lot of other people associated with this affair have been indicted," Mesnooh said. "Their links were a little more direct perhaps than the links of Mr. Strauss-Kahn with the prostitution side and the abuse of corporate assets side."

I don't know how he expects to get out of this one. It's not lowly women complaining this time, others will testify to his presence at the parties and to hotel trysts, he had to know the women were prostitutes, and he had to know someone else paid for them.

Of course, he might be one of those unfortunately too common men who regard ALL women as prostitutes or potential prostitutes, just that some are cheaper than others. Like "free" hotel maids.
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3393 The boys in the club

Friday, November 11, 2011

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same
time, will that it should become a universal law.
-- Immanuel Kant, the categorical imperative
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals --

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Happy Nerd New Year! (11/11/11)

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I left a comment on Becs' post re the Penn State mess, and I decided to just copy it over here as a post. She wondered why that graduate assistant (now an assistant coach, I believe) is not being charged or fired, and what is wrong with people who allow things like this to happen.

Yeah, I wondered about the grad assistant, too. He's apparently the only one who actually SAW something. For everyone else, it was a case of second or third hand information, possibly watered down, easily denied by Sandusky. And yet, the grad assistant is the only one not in trouble.

BTW, there had been several accusations in the '90s. The local DA (who mysteriously disappeared a few years later) had investigated. Mothers (the kids were fatherless) had confronted Sandusky and participated in the investigations. But it was all dropped, no charges, because there was no proof. "He says/he says" kind of thing. That grad assistant's eyewitness testimony could have made all the difference. And yet, the grad assistant is the only one not in trouble.

As to what's wrong with people, when people (and particularly men) belong to a tight-knit group, they will defend the reputation of the brotherhood at all costs. Threats to the group are quashed. People also tend to see things through filters - there's a psychological term for it, "motivational bias" - such that things that don't fit our world view are simply not given credence, or are reformatted with excuses, or made to go away. We all do it, but fraternal groups in group think do it more.

The randomly generated green quote at the top of this post seems particularly apt.
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3387 Damned if you do and....

Friday, November 4, 2011

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the heart of a heartless world,
and the soul of soulless conditions."
--Karl Marx --

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I will reserve my thoughts on Herman Cain's sexual harassment problems, where the claims came from, who dug it up and why, whether it means anything or not, blah blah blah.

But listening to some of the arguments, I've concluded that in general, victims can't win.

If they report it to HR, they might get some money from a settlement, but it comes with a requirement that they can't ever talk about it. Companies often settle these claims because it's cheaper than the legal fees of fighting it would be. Almost all individual victims end up settling, because they'd be an individual fighting a company/corporation in court, and who's going to pay their legal fees if they lose against a corporate army? Companies often settle without the permission of the accused harasser, and a settlement is therefore not an admission of guilt.

The end result is that the accused harasser can claim that it never happened, that the accuser is a liar, and the accuser/victim, we don't know which, really, cannot refute that under the terms of the settlement.

Either way, settlement or go to court, the alleged victim will be either branded forever a money-grubbing liar, or face a high probability of bankruptcy.

If they don't report it to HR, if the victim realizes there's no way to win and it's a sure way to lose a job, and good luck getting a good reference when you look for another, then when she (or he) finally does report it, everyone assumes that it's obviously not true, because if it were true, why wasn't it reported earlier? Therefore it didn't happen, and the accuser is a publicity-seeking liar.

All accusers who can't afford to fight an army of lawyers in court become a liars, regardless of the truth.

It reminds me of rape accusations, back in the 50's. In most states the victim had to produce TWO witnesses to the rape, or a bruised and battered body she could have acquired in no other way, otherwise she was lying. Most victims never reported the rape.
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2139 The Incident - Part 3 of 3

Sunday, November 30, 2008

(Read 2134, Part 1 and 2136, Part 2 first.)

In 1966 it was next to impossible to make a rape charge stick without witnesses ((unless the guy was black, the only human less believable than a woman, nice period in our history)). In most states, if the guy was white, a woman needed a minimum of two witnesses. Even if she had witnesses, her demeanor, clothing, makeup, and sexual history were pertinent to the case, even though the man's were not. The second wave of feminists got us a lot more than almost equal pay, folks. The only way we were more free then than many of the world's currently "oppressed" women is that we didn't have the burka.

In those days, "date rape" didn't exist. There was no such thing. If she knew the guy, and was with him willingly, then it wasn't rape. She obviously led him on, she wanted it or she wouldn't have been with him, and if she yelled rape after, it's just because she's mad at him. All rapes were violent by definition, and by strangers, and if the woman wasn't badly injured, then it was all her fault because she didn't fight hard enough. After all, we all know "a man can't run with his pants around his ankles." She would get no sympathy from anyone. This is absolutely true. Women didn't report rape because they'd be torn to shreds if they did.

As the deputy had pointed out, the desk clerks would testify that I went to the room with him willingly. I didn't need to think about that. It was just the way it was. I had bruises. No broken bones, no cuts, no bullets. A few chunks of hair missing. End of story. Stand up and move on.

I had completely forgotten about Jean. Didn't think of her until Saturday morning, when I realized I needed to talk with someone. I needed support and sympathy. I also needed to apologize for leaving her in the lurch.

As it turned out, she had arrived at the hotel only a few minutes after I'd left the bar. Believe it or not, before she even sat down, her brother showed up, and she left with him. She thought I was late, so she'd left a note with the bartender (who denied I'd been there), to tell me she'd found a ride. She asked me why I was late.

I said, "Well, Deputy So-and-so ....", and I got only that far when she laughed, "Oh, Deputy Dawg! Yeah, I can see why he'd slow you down. Every woman in town gets hassled by him if she's alone in a car at night. The SOB tries to get sex services in exchange for dropping bogus charges. Everybody knows about him. He stopped So-and-so just the other night, and when he made her get out of the car and grabbed her breasts, she kicked him in the crotch. I don't know why he thinks he can get away with it. Well, it's ok. I got home. Sorry it was a problem for you."

I was stunned. I didn't tell her what happened. How stupid I had been.

So it really was all my fault?

I crashed and burned. "They" were right. This was the proof. I was stupid. I couldn't do anything right, and others could tell that just by looking at me. That's how he knew he could get away with it. That's why whoever had called him to the hotel knew that, too. It was all my fault. There's something very wrong with me, and everyone can see it.

I lost me for the next fifteen years.

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The first ten years were very bad. I was raped (technically) more times than I care to count, and it didn't take physical violence to do it. I thought it was pretty much my lot in life. Like that was my role, to be the victim. Somebody has to do it. What's weird is that there are men who make it a habit to victimize women, and those men can unerringly identify women who can be used - the naive or needy women who need only a few kind words to turn their heads, and then are easily coerced. Like wolves can sniff out rabbits. They know exactly the right words to say, precisely how to defuse her feeble defenses.

What you need to understand is that I, my mother, and my siblings were all regularly brutally beaten by my father, told how stupid and useless we were, how everything that happened to us was our own fault, and we deserved it. I'd been beaten to unconsciousness many times. My next younger brother and I tried to get help - police, teachers, doctors - and we were always told "just don't make him mad". Which was a way of telling us that it was our own fault. Note that "domestic violence" wasn't known then - the term didn't even exist as a concept. The prevailing social attitude was that a man had a right to beat his wife and children to "keep them in line", and in fact even had a responsibility to do so. If a man didn't beat his family, it was because they were well behaved.

In high school, outside of the home, I had a pretty good life. I had good friends, and dated some nice boys, and none of them ever acted even remotely like my father. In 1966, in that small town, where I was liked, and appreciated, and successful, I thought maybe I was not stupid, not useless, that maybe I did deserve a good life. Maybe I could really do it. Maybe my father was wrong.

And then the deputy, the symbol of town authority, took that silly dream away from me. Over the next decade I met many men like him. Most were more subtle. They'd tell me they liked me. I'd think they liked me. They didn't. They just wanted to get me alone, just once. And then they'd say, I heard it over and over so it must have been true, right?, "You wanted it. You know you wanted it. You can't walk around looking like that and not want it."

I looked and smelled like rabbit.

I spent much of my adult life afraid of men. I was deathly afraid of angering men. I acted, behaved, became whatever seemed to elicit approval from men. I lost myself.

I was 37 years old before I figured out that it wasn't me, that I was neither bad nor stupid and never have been, that the problem was all in them, they were the bad people, and yes I was wrong to believe them, but that's the only way I was wrong.

The real me, the me I am inside, is pretty darn ok.

Since that realization, no man has coerced me, physically or mentally, into doing anything I myself didn't choose to do. I have been lied to by men, and misled, and taken advantage of, but that's different, because there was a grudging acknowledgment of equality in there. That's human, not rabbit, so that's ok.
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2136 The Incident - Part 2 of 3

Saturday, November 29, 2008

(Read 2134, Part 1 first.)

I stared at the deputy. It took a few seconds to realize what he'd said. I turned to the bartender, but he wouldn't meet my eyes, and went into the kitchen. The three guys at the other end of the bar downed their drinks and hurried out. It was just me and the deputy left.

He said, "You're the new high school teacher, eh?"

I said yes, and I asked what he meant by solicitation, and explained about waiting for Jean, and the book, and about sitting in the light, and the request to the bartender, and no drinks, and....

He cut me off, and told me that none of that mattered. All that mattered was that he'd got a complaint, and he had to take me in and charge me and book me, and I could explain all that to the judge.

He then went on to tell me how bad this was. What was the school board going to think, when their new teacher was arrested for prostitution? What would the parents think? What about my students? Oh, wow, you're in big trouble.

I protested that I didn't do anything wrong, but he again cut me off, and suggested that we use one of the hotel offices to discuss this further. Maybe I could convince him.

[Ok, I hear your alarm bells going off. But this was 1966. I was young and naive. I was emotionally and psychologically fragile. I did what people told me. I had even married Ex#1 even though I didn't want to because everyone expected me to. I was a good girl and respected authority --- because I had none of my own.]

So we left the bar. As we walked past the desk, me trailing along behind him, the clerk tossed the deputy a key, which he caught in the air. That made me wonder. They knew he'd want to use the office? How often did he do this?

He unlocked a door around the corner from the desk and pushed me into the room. It was a regular guest room. It had not been cleaned. There were used towels on the floor, and the bed was torn up. Remember, this was about 9:30 pm.

And then he raped me.

I don't remember much of anything, except that he said that if I made any noise, he'd think of something worse than prostitution and make it stick. It was unnecessarily violent and more degrading than any experience I've had since. He was over six feet tall. I was 4'10", and maybe 101 lbs. He threw me around a lot. I cried a lot. It went on for over an hour.

I remember all the details leading up to it, but I remember nothing else about that night. At some point my mind turned off. I don't remember leaving the hotel or going home, and I don't remember what I did later that night.

It gets worse. Part 3 tomorrow.
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2134 The Incident - Part 1 of 3

Friday, November 28, 2008

In an earlier post (2129 Living a Reality Show) I mentioned an incident that had messed me up for the next umpteen years. In 43 years, I have never told anyone about this, no one, ever. Not even the psychiatrist.

I was a few months over 21, and nearing the end of my first year of teaching high school math in a small tourist town in Pennsylvania. I was doing well, loved most of the kids in my classes and they liked me. Even though it was only my first year, the principal had told me that I would be the head of the 5-member math department the following year. They liked my methods. I pretty much pioneered what is now called Master Teaching. I'd been married about 9 months to Ex#1, who was in the Army, in Germany. I was beginning to like me. Beginning to feel like maybe I could control my life after all.

One Friday evening my friend Jean had to work late in the next town over, inventory at a shoe factory. Jean didn't drive, and the person she usually commuted with would not be working late. She could get a ride to the outskirts of our town with a coworker, but he turned north then, so she needed a ride from there to her home. She had asked me to meet her in the bar of the hotel at the intersection. She wasn't sure of the time, "probably between 9 and 9:30." (This was in 1966, before cell phones.)

In 1966, women never went to bars alone. It just wasn't done. I couldn't get anyone to go with me. I tried waiting in the car, but it was cold. There was nowhere to sit in the tiny lobby. So I shrugged and went into the bar.

The bar was very dark. No TV. There were maybe three men in the bar, all together at one end. I sat down at the bar, at the other end, by the register, where the bartender had his stool. There was a bright light there. I had brought a book with me.

I ordered a screwdriver, and told the bartender that I was waiting for a friend, and would appreciate it if he could kind of watch out for me. I didn't want to talk to anyone, just read my book, and please, I did not want any drinks bought for me (I'd noticed the heads go up at the other end of the bar when I walked in). If anyone offered, tell them "no thank you" for me. "I don't want conversation." And I opened my book and stuck my nose in it.

Sure enough, within minutes, there was another drink in front of me. I did not look at the other end of the bar. I just said to the bartender, "Thank whoever bought this, but I cannot accept drinks." I didn't even look to see where he went, who he talked to.

No more than fifteen minutes later, I became aware that someone was standing at my elbow. He reached over and closed my book. It was one of the county sheriff's deputies, the one who patrolled the town.

He informed me that I was under arrest for solicitation of prostitution.

It gets worse. Part 2 is here.
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1829 Rape and stuff ...

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Caught a few minutes of the Montel show this morning. Montel isn't looking good. It really does look like the pain is getting to him.

Anyway, the topic was child molestation, and his guests were women who had been molested by fathers or step-fathers. He said that 1 in 4 women will have been raped at some time in their lives. I don't know where he got that figure, but it seems to me like it should be higher. Much higher.

Of all the women friends I've talked with at an intimate level, about half say they were were molested to some degree as a child by a family member or close friend of the family. Of my four closest female family members and myself, all five of us were molested as children, by family members or neighbors. And by the time we realized it was wrong, or that we wouldn't be punished for telling, it's too late and there's no objective proof.

Almost all the women I know intimately have at one time or another as an adult been coerced into sex, to the point where it IS rape, but we didn't press charges because it wasn't stranger rape, it was date rape, and maybe we could have avoided it but it was safer and easier to acquiesce, because we felt guilty for things getting to that point, and therefore we know that there's no point in reporting it, because the only person who will be punished is ourselves. So instead, we believe the men who tell us it was our own fault, that we were "asking for it" (simply by existing, I guess), and we blame ourselves. Especially if we're young.

By the time I was in my mid-20s, they had beaten me down. I'd been forced and emotionally coerced and told it was my fault for "leading them on" so many times I was afraid of men, and I had no self-respect left. I thought it really was my fault. And back then, women and women's magazines didn't talk about it. It was a shameful topic. None of us knew that it was happening to anyone else. So we thought "It must be me. I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I AM bad, and they see that."

I think Montel's number, 1 in 4, is too low. That's probably what "they" know about. I think a lot more children are molested than anyone will ever know.

What the hell is it with men?

Things may be better now for adult women than they were when I was a young woman. Back then, men seemed to think they could get away with anything as far as women were concerned. Not so very long ago, wives were chattel. Men were literally allowed to beat their wives and children. I'm not blowing smoke. Through the late '50s and early '60s my brother and I tried everything to stop our father's abuse - we told police, teachers, doctors, neighbors, everyone - and they all just shrugged and told us to obey him and keep out of his way. The workers in the hospitals had to know where the injuries came from, but they never said or did anything. The term "domestic violence" hasn't been in common usage for very long. "Women's liberation" was REAL. Young women today have no idea what was accomplished, and it distresses me when I see them throwing it away.

Oh, well.

Re an Ex -
Q: Why on earth did you marry the guy knowing he was completely impotent?
A: I didn't know he was impotent. I thought he was the only man I'd ever met who respected me.
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