IWILLESV is looking for new blog contributors! We are looking for someone who is interested in creating posts (writings, pictures, etc.) for our blog who has a time commitment of about 1-2 hours a week, experience in the field, and a passion for spreading awareness for sexual assault! How? Simply send a resume to [email protected] about your experience and why YOU want to end sexual violence. For any comments, questions, or concerns, feel free to email [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!
Earlier this month, I had an unfortunate conversation with a stranger discussing the idea that if a woman “dresses sexy,” she’s “asking for” street harassment. (The guy didn’t go the extra nine yards stating that women who dress “skimpy” are asking to be sexually assaulted, but the implication was there). I replied that this has never, to the best of my knowledge, been true. A woman never puts on a flattering dress or a low cut shirt and goes, “gee, I hope random men on the street make lewd comments about my body today” or “I’d really love to be sexually assaulted tonight.” He replied, “well, why you dress so sexy then?” This seems to come up a lot in my discussions with others about my work to end street harassment, and is something I’d like to work on developing a unified response to in my upcoming projects. I know what my reasons are, but would like to hear some responses from all of you. So, ladies and gents, why you dress so sexy then?
Lady GagadefendedKesha during a deposition with Dr. Luke’s lawyers, at one point telling one of the lawyers that she “should be ashamed” of herself.
According to The Blast, recently unsealed court documents from a September 2017 deposition between Gaga and Dr. Luke’s lawyers show a heated exchange in which Gaga defends Kesha. Reportedly, the deposition took place a few years after a text message exchange between Kesha and Gaga. Gaga testified that Kesha had confided in her about Dr. Luke’s alleged abuse, but the deposition became contentious when Dr. Luke’s lawyers said Gaga didn’t have any “personal knowledge” of any interactions between Dr. Luke and Kesha.
“With respect to Mr. Gottwald [Dr. Luke] himself, you have absolutely no personal knowledge or information as to any interaction between him and Ms. Sebert [Kesha], correct, physical or otherwise?” the lawyer asked Gaga, according to the documents.
So the tl;dr is that brandy brooks was running as a demsoc candidate for an at-large council seat in Montgomery county, appointed a longtime friend of hers as a staffer, sexually harassed them, went thru a “restorative justice” song-and-dance, had the harassee leak details against her to the wapo, and got her endorsement from the DSA withdrawn
Every time I hear about “restorative justice” in any detail it sounds like some unholy amalgam of arbitration, compulsory group therapy, and PR spin doctoring. The upshot in this case seems to be that she was peer pressured into a long sticky nonpology about how she regrets her actions but also accusing her of harassment is maybe racist. And clearly still left the other party unsatisfied, bc they went ahead and leaked the story to the press! The worlds sorriest excuse for a struggle session
This story has further cemented my intense suspicion of “scenes” as a model for pretty much any sort of employment. Telling your subordinates that you “have a ‘romantic and sexual attraction’ to them… adding at the time that [you] did not want them to respond because [you weren’t] ready to be rejected” and then framing them as the truly powerful party would be completely surreal in the context of most boss-worker relationships but when your colleagues are selected from s preexisting hookup pool friend circle this manages to pull heavy wool over ppls eyes about just how inappropriate it is. (I have witnessed this up close abd it is Bad.) I remember during the dreaded G*merg*TE reading takes about how you can’t judge professional standards wrt sex in a scene like indie game development like you would in normal professions bc it inherently rests on a substrate of informal social networking and thinking… well isn’t that maybe a problem? Theidea of that logic extending to professional politics is pretty bleak
Petty but every single source I have read on this story introduces the harassee as “Sam, who goes by they/them pronouns”. Why exactly is this necessary?? Do you go around reporting about “Joe Biden, who goes by he/him pronouns”? That’s the great thing about pronouns you can just use them
Well yes technically this was a “boss” hitting on her “employee” but like, isn’t the one with real power the one with more axes of privilege who was willing to go to the press about it? Uh, no
Astonishing to me that afaict the consensus seems to be that siding against brooks is the “woke” position when the case for her requires overlooking the perfectly straightforward labour relation between the two parties and involves a bunch of identitarian hemming and hawing
You probably thought of it as a solution to multiple problems. Closure. First, of course, you’d get your revenge. I manipulated you. I betrayed you. You thought we had something special and I destroyed it. Second, you’d save another poor man from suffering the way I made you suffer.
You probably thought I deserved it.
You were probably smiling while you wrote those degrading words, while you picked those private photographs, when you posted them. Were you considering how much damage you would do, how much pain you would inflict, with just a few simple messages?
I bet you thought I deserved the anguish. Earned it.
I earned the scarring conversation with my family regarding what you had done, when I had to ask whether or not I would need a lawyer. I earned the look of utter disappointment and disgust from my father when I had to tell him the mistake I made which allowed your actions to even take place. I earned the embarrassment, the shame, the panic of considering how this experience, how these photos, could affect my future. You accomplished your goal: I did earn it. I earned the pain and suffering for the mistakes that I made.
I deserved it.
But just like you made your decision to send the messages, I made a decision to send some of my own. Over the course of a few months, you watched your future fall to pieces in front of your eyes. Do you think you deserved it? Do you think you earned it?
Is it my fault?
I’m sure you’re happy to know that I still struggle with that question. Did I bring it on myself? The report, the interviews, the trial. All the re-lived suffering. Is it just my own punishment for ruining your life?
But… did I ruin your life?
The thought originated in your mind to post the degrading messages and photographs. It was your hands that wrote the words and your hands that took the photographs. It was your hands that sent them off. It was your idea to do what you did.
Therefore, it is you who deserves the consequences of what you did.
And it is also you who can decide how you react to these consequences. Continue to believe I ruined your life, destroyed your career, ended all hope of your future goals being accomplished. Continue living with this misery and hatred and bitterness.
Or, instead, you could try to look inward and attempt to understand why you did what you did. Why did you think so poorly of someone you didn’t know? Why did you become so fixated on them, even without seeing or interacting with them? Why was your instinctive reaction to cause harm instead of prevent it? Answer these difficult questions for yourself and lift the weight of this misery from your shoulders. Understand why you acted the way you did. Prevent yourself from thinking this way in the future.
You deserve your consequences. But you deserve help and improvement and happiness just as much. Learn from these mistakes and let yourself feel the remorse of your wrongdoing. Go through the labor of accepting your faults and learning to correct them.
You deserve the consequences of what you did. But you also deserve the opportunity to feel remorse, learn from your actions, and grow into a better person.
The government-commissioned report from Louise Arbour, who also served as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, came during a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against top military leaders that have rocked the armed forces and eroded public trust.
“The exposure of sexual misconduct in the [Canadian Armed Forces] has shed light on a deeply deficient culture fostered by a rigid and outdated structure that did little to modernize it,” Arbour wrote in the report.
A danger of the military’s operating model, she wrote, is a “high likelihood that some of its members are more at risk of harm, on a day-to-day basis, from their comrades than from the enemy.” She said the crisis “has caused as much damage as defeat in combat would have to demoralize the troops and shock Canadians.”
Among the report’s 48 recommendations were calls for sexual harassment complaints to be turned over to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and for officials to explore whether there should be an alternative to military colleges, which Arbour wrote “appear as institutions from a different era.”
I am a third shift employee at a gas station, my employer often schedules me to work alone on shift for upwards of six hours in the middle of the night. For the most part I don’t mind. And then…… (the following are actual things men have said to me at my job while I was on the clock and did nothing more suggestive than saying “have a good night” after I ring their purchases up.)
…And then I put lotion on my hands which happens to be scented, and a guy walks in and says “Ooh girl you smell nice” Me: oh, thanks, it’s just lotion. Him: “You smell SO good. You’re LUCKY you’re on the clock.”
…And then a customer comes in the door behind me and stands at the counter to my back. When I tell him the register is around the other side, and ask if I Can help him find anything, his response is “no, baby, I’m just enjoying the view” while staring at my ass.
….and then I ask a guy if there is anything else I can get for him along with his purchase and he responds “I’ll take YOU home with me.”
…and then a guy asks for my phone number. Me: “Oh, sorry, no. I actually have a boyfriend.” Him: “Oh really. What other excuses are you going to make up for me?” Me: “It isn’t an excuse. I have a boyfriend. WE have been together for eight years.” Him: “Uh-huh, so if I come in here and you don’t have a boyfriend tomorrow?” Me: “I will have a boyfriend tomorrow.” Him: *walks off muttering at me while his friend behind him starts in with comments about my looks*
….and then a guy comes in on a night when I am not alone and have a guy coworker with me. And he proceeds to interrogate my coworker about me. And lewdly gesture to me and make allusiosn to whether he and I have sex in the store. And when my coworker says no and tries to end the conversastion he continues with “come on, why not. I know you gotta set of keys to the store.”
These are just a few glaring examples of the way I am treated. Every night. In my work uniform while I am just trying to do my job and not get hit on by random ass guys who apparently don’t respect “no”. These are not compliments. Some of them are flat out threatening. None of them respect the fact that I have made it clear that I am not interested. This i why I need feminism.
I got out of a very abusive, controlling relationship a few years ago with very little money to my name and moved back in with my parents. I’ve been saving to get an apartment, which is about $1100-1300/month here, ever since. I got a job that allowed me to save up, but I was also relentlessly harassed, bullied, overworked, and sexually assaulted to the point where I had a series of mental breakdowns that ultimately led me to quit.
I lost my new boyfriend a few years later due to my father’s interference. My father doesn’t want me here. Before I moved home he actually hadn’t spoken to me in three years, because my previous boyfriend was black. He says I deserve all the abuse “that n*gger” put me through, which included complete alienation of all my friends, complete control and exploitation of my finances, brief homelessness, and the death of my child. He tried to throw me out a month into dating my new boyfriend because “he can put you up now.” Between my job and my father, I was always stressed and miserable, and my boyfriend couldn’t take it. Then he got cancer, and told me he couldn’t deal with my problems on top of his own, he couldn’t take my father anymore, and we couldn’t do this anymore. We broke up. All his friends, even the ones who were supposedly my friend too, sided with him.
I lost a tooth at the beginning of the pandemic, right in the front of my face. It was a crown that had broken. I can’t afford to fix it - I need an extraction of the remaining tooth and an implant, which is $6k total. I only have Medicaid, which the oral surgeon doesn’t take and which doesn’t cover implants anyway. My self esteem tanked.
I don’t have any friends. I’m autistic and have never been great at making them in the first place, and wasn’t able to repair the friendships I lost because of my ex. I don’t talk to my extended family, who my father has been telling for years that I’m an ungrateful, horrible bitch he wishes he never had. They agree with him. Talking to my mother is like talking to a brick wall. She’s so burnt out putting up with my father’s abuse that she can’t even pretend to be a support for me. She never has been anyway.
Most of the time I feel like a glitch in a computer program. I’m not supposed to be here, so people ignore me until I cause problems (whether I actually did or not). No one cared when I was being abused by my ex, even when I came to work crying every day and couldn’t afford to eat. No one said anything in my defense when I was being harassed at work, and after I was assaulted HR told me it was all in my head when I’d report things like “Joe and Brian are telling people they fucked me in the stock room.” Sometimes I’ll vent on social media - both where I know people and where I’m anonymous - and get no response, except maybe “stop saying xyz about people, be grateful for what you have.” I had to delete Facebook because it added to my depression.
I can’t hold a job anymore. I’m terrified of people and being outside. I recently got a freelance gig doing transcription but the pay is very low and only per minute of audio, and I suffer from migraines which makes it difficult. I’ve posted on social media that I can also do editing and proofreading, with no takers. My health has always been very poor and my mental health is trash. No therapist near me takes Medicaid and I’m afraid to go out and talk to one anyway. I’ve been denied state assistance, though I was recently approved for food stamps. I can’t get cash assistance. I’m burning through all of my savings with student loans (which apparently can’t be put on hold because they’re all private) and the rent my dad demands.
On top of all this, my mother just told me she’s divorcing my dad, because he’s abusive and cheats constantly. She’s disabled and won’t be able to keep the house so she’s moving out. She’s the only reason I’ve been able to stay here. I’m pretty sure my father will kick me out, or tell me I can only stay if I become the maid and yard caretaker. He’s already trying to sell my car (which he had to put in his name because my ex destroyed my credit), which will leave me trapped in the house, and my mother has made it clear I can’t move in with her.
My cousins all have their lives figured out. They’re all married with kids, as I’m constantly being reminded of, with their own houses or apartments and good jobs. They’re not afraid of people, or struggling with money, or having a panic attack at 1am on a Wednesday because they don’t know how they’re going to get through the next week, let alone the next year. It feels like the cat is the only one on my side and the only one who actually wants anything to do with me. Ten years ago my father called me a failure as a daughter, an adult, and a human being, and it’s just… true.
I got out of a very abusive, controlling relationship a few years ago with very little money to my name and moved back in with my parents. I’ve been saving to get an apartment, which is about $1100-1300/month here, ever since. I got a job that allowed me to save up, but I was also relentlessly harassed, bullied, overworked, and sexually assaulted to the point where I had a series of mental breakdowns that ultimately led me to quit.
I lost my new boyfriend a few years later due to my father’s interference. My father doesn’t want me here. Before I moved home he actually hadn’t spoken to me in three years, because my previous boyfriend was black. He says I deserve all the abuse “that n*gger” put me through, which included complete alienation of all my friends, complete control and exploitation of my finances, brief homelessness, and the death of my child. He tried to throw me out a month into dating my new boyfriend because “he can put you up now.” Between my job and my father, I was always stressed and miserable, and my boyfriend couldn’t take it. Then he got cancer, and told me he couldn’t deal with my problems on top of his own, he couldn’t take my father anymore, and we couldn’t do this anymore. We broke up. All his friends, even the ones who were supposedly my friend too, sided with him.
I lost a tooth at the beginning of the pandemic, right in the front of my face. It was a crown that had broken. I can’t afford to fix it - I need an extraction of the remaining tooth and an implant, which is $6k total. I only have Medicaid, which the oral surgeon doesn’t take and which doesn’t cover implants anyway. My self esteem tanked.
I don’t have any friends. I’m autistic and have never been great at making them in the first place, and wasn’t able to repair the friendships I lost because of my ex. I don’t talk to my extended family, who my father has been telling for years that I’m an ungrateful, horrible bitch he wishes he never had. They agree with him. Talking to my mother is like talking to a brick wall. She’s so burnt out putting up with my father’s abuse that she can’t even pretend to be a support for me. She never has been anyway.
Most of the time I feel like a glitch in a computer program. I’m not supposed to be here, so people ignore me until I cause problems (whether I actually did or not). No one cared when I was being abused by my ex, even when I came to work crying every day and couldn’t afford to eat. No one said anything in my defense when I was being harassed at work, and after I was assaulted HR told me it was all in my head when I’d report things like “Joe and Brian are telling people they fucked me in the stock room.” Sometimes I’ll vent on social media - both where I know people and where I’m anonymous - and get no response, except maybe “stop saying xyz about people, be grateful for what you have.” I had to delete Facebook because it added to my depression.
I can’t hold a job anymore. I’m terrified of people and being outside. I recently got a freelance gig doing transcription but the pay is very low and only per minute of audio, and I suffer from migraines which makes it difficult. I’ve posted on social media that I can also do editing and proofreading, with no takers. My health has always been very poor and my mental health is trash. No therapist near me takes Medicaid and I’m afraid to go out and talk to one anyway. I’ve been denied state assistance, though I was recently approved for food stamps. I can’t get cash assistance. I’m burning through all of my savings with student loans (which apparently can’t be put on hold because they’re all private) and the rent my dad demands.
On top of all this, my mother just told me she’s divorcing my dad, because he’s abusive and cheats constantly. She’s disabled and won’t be able to keep the house so she’s moving out. She’s the only reason I’ve been able to stay here. I’m pretty sure my father will kick me out, or tell me I can only stay if I become the maid and yard caretaker. He’s already trying to sell my car (which he had to put in his name because my ex destroyed my credit), which will leave me trapped in the house, and my mother has made it clear I can’t move in with her.
My cousins all have their lives figured out. They’re all married with kids, as I’m constantly being reminded of, with their own houses or apartments and good jobs. They’re not afraid of people, or struggling with money, or having a panic attack at 1am on a Wednesday because they don’t know how they’re going to get through the next week, let alone the next year. It feels like the cat is the only one on my side and the only one who actually wants anything to do with me. Ten years ago my father called me a failure as a daughter, an adult, and a human being, and it’s just… true.
