I found this article to be very well written and insanely poingant and it made me say, ironically enough, me too, a few times. Except I did say #metoo because I am part of this. I am a victim even if I don’t feel like one or act like one. And my kind of victim counts. My kind of victim is the kind who might not speak up when asked.
I know that even though the time I was forced to do something sexual was with a girl who was caught in a cycle from her female cousin doing the same thing to her, and even though I was confident enough to tell my mom right away and my mom believed me and took action and I haven’t really had to “live with” that having happened doesn’t mean it’s not a real part of my story or a real part of this larger problem.
I know that even though I can’t pinpoint all the times when innapropriate things have been said to me and that those things have been normalized as expected behavoir, or even earned or deserved, or in some cases a badge of honor, since I have seen women commenting how they can’t say #metoo and that makes them feel unattractive because they have never experienced harrassment. I know that because I considered adding into my original #metoo confession that it was because of certain aspects of my body that I was trained to expect these comments, to disregard them, to brush them off, to take pride in them, to laugh at them. That is part of the systematic problem and it needs to have a voice in this discussion.
I know that even though the time I was raped it was consensual until it wasn’t and the police told me I didn’t have enough evidence to make a case in court even though they made me waste my time at the hospital and I nearly got sent to collections because the hosiptal couldn’t figure out how to bill the Crime Victims insurance I received from L&I to cover those expenses, and even though I took the opportunity to put a restrainining order on my ex and it wound up keeping him out of my life – so far, which was something I had been asking him to grant me for months by the time he “didn’t know what I meant when I said no” that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. #Metoo
I found this article to be very well written and insanely poingant and it made me say, ironically enough, me too, a few times. Except I did say #metoo because I am part of this. I am a victim even if I don’t feel like one or act like one. And my kind of victim counts. My kind of victim is the kind who might not speak up when asked.
I know that even though the time I was forced to do something sexual was with a girl who was caught in a cycle from her female cousin doing the same thing to her, and even though I was confident enough to tell my mom right away and my mom believed me and took action and I haven’t really had to “live with” that having happened doesn’t mean it’s not a real part of my story or a real part of this larger problem.
I know that even though I can’t pinpoint all the times when innapropriate things have been said to me and that those things have been normalized as expected behavoir, or even earned or deserved, or in some cases a badge of honor, since I have seen women commenting how they can’t say #metoo and that makes them feel unattractive because they have never experienced harrassment. I know that because I considered adding into my original #metoo confession that it was because of certain aspects of my body that I was trained to expect these comments, to disregard them, to brush them off, to take pride in them, to laugh at them. That is part of the systematic problem and it needs to have a voice in this discussion.
I know that even though the time I was raped it was consensual until it wasn’t and the police told me I didn’t have enough evidence to make a case in court even though they made me waste my time at the hospital and I nearly got sent to collections because the hosiptal couldn’t figure out how to bill the Crime Victims insurance I received from L&I to cover those expenses, and even though I took the opportunity to put a restrainining order on my ex and it wound up keeping him out of my life – so far, which was something I had been asking him to grant me for months by the time he “didn’t know what I meant when I said no” that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. #Metoo