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Rape Culture and the Shitty Balancing Act
Dec. 6th, 2018 08:09 pmI posted about Neil DeGrasse Tyson whom I wanted to believe is innocent and may still be innocent of the rape (but definitely not the sexual harassment) and as much as I'm valiantly resisting trying to act like his defense attorney because he has entertained me, I am pretty raw about the whole thing. Not every #metoo is going to be someone I hate (Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose) or someone that I'm pretty indifferent towards (Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K. in the last year when he was losing it). There will be people that I genuinely like acting like shitbags. The last one was Bill Cosby and wow, did I ever want that one to be false. Hell, I heard about the rape trial like everyone else. And ignored it when it was dismissed (the first one). If Cosby never made the pound cake speech would he have ever been caught?
So I post that and my friend Ian (no last name) goes "what did he do that was so wrong" and that's the kind of conversation that I do not want to have. I say that even if he wasn't being harassing, he was being creepy and as much as we want to give him the benefit of the doubt, that shit is not acceptable. I kind of left it at that.
This is not the usual way I deal with people (friends and friends of friends especially) getting all rape apologist. I spent most of September yelling at Kavanaugh supporters including George Murray who was the guy I once talked to about converting to Judaism in Saint Louis Park because he did it first. Anyone else and I would have been nasty and then blocked him or gotten blocked.
But with Ian, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I decided to believe that this wasn't Ian. Ian would make these arguments because he wanted to believe in the goodness of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He would act like the defense attorney, doing all he could to dismiss the original rape allegation (which are still in that he said/she said place) and get into some pretty sketchy territory that betrayed how many of these rape culture attitudes he's absorbed. Then after he argued it out he could reflect and feel ashamed of his thoughts.
Usually my SOP for these situations is "ok, fine, MAYBE you will repent and get out of that shitty mind set but I don't have the time." With Ian, we've been friends since high school. I like Ian. In many years of friendship this is the FIRST time I encountered him talking like this. So I'm giving an old friend who decided to be shitty rape apologist the benefit of the doubt. My patience is not infinite, but there are some people that you put up with.
Does this make me a hypocrite? Maybe. After all, I constantly tell my friends on Facebook that they shouldn't have racist friends if they don't want me calling out their racist friends. I also have little patience for the argument that people should be friends with human dumpster fires in order to bring them around. When you allow your Facebook friends to be racists and rape apologists, you are making things miserable for your non-dumpster fire FB friends who have to argue with that.
So back to Ian. I don't go full fuckyou on him because I know Ian and I like Ian. I say a couple things that I think he can accept and then let my friends argue with him. He's wrong, but I do not have the time or the energy to spend all night arguing with him and that's the kind of mood he's in. Hell, half of my year in therapy was spent talking about how I should NOT be fighting with people online (Is the Required Hate story about how I talked shit at her at 2 in the morning still one of my first hits on Google? I haven't googled myself for a time. And that evil asshole was clever in going after my tweets in support of one of the bombing campaigns against Gaza first).
But of course, I then leave the door open for my friends to argue with Ian. And it went on and on. I wake up to I don't know how many comments in the comment thread but by that point Ian is trying to say that NDGT couldn't have roofied the woman and my friend M getting increasingly exasperated as she tried to explain that there were many other drugs that could cause blackouts.
I probably shouldn't have put a sarcastic gif in response to Ian because then M tags me and tells me to come for my boy (when you've been arguing rape culture all night, that phrase is not out of bounds) and I simply say that I don't want to spend all night fighting with Ian and that she seems to be doing fine.
So now while I'm annoyed with Ian for going rape apologist, M is pissed at me for not doing anything. Or for accepting rape apologists. So I try to say that I think she's got it and that I give him the benefit of the doubt. She says fuck this shit and makes a Facebook post calling me out (without saying my name) and going that you cannot be an ally if you accept your friends being rape apologists.
Probably true.
But I never call myself an ally. Too easy to fuck up when you think of yourself as an ally. And this was not a situation that I was going to get out of unscathed. I deleted the thread and then she got very condescending saying that I shouldn't delete the thread and that she didn't have the time to tell me how I'm wrong.
Thank G-d for the 30 day timeout.
But what the fuck does she want me to do? I disagreed with him. I encouraged my friends to fight with him. THe only thing I didn't do was go full fuckyou on him (as I usually do) and/or block him. Am I supposed to spend all night trying to explain to someone who is perfectly well versed in rape culture as to why he shouldn't be defending Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Should I fly out to his house and punch him in the face?
Usually I'm the other side of this issue, asking my Facebook friends to talk to their dumpster fire friends who are spouting the nastiest racist rape apologist shit. I'm also telling my friends that if they don't want me calling out their friends that they shouldn't have racist friends in the first place. I also strongly suggest that they drop these assholes so their friends don't have to block this shit all the time.
What I don't do is blame my friends for their shitty friends because we all have shitty friends. And many of our shitty friends are saying the kind of shitty things that we once thought and if they want to put in the emotional work of dealing with those people, I'm not going to call them out and say that they are total hypocrites for the one fucking time out of thousand when they didn't go "fuck you, you fucking rape apologist asshole here's a 1000 word essay on why you don't know shit".
Seriously, I get that M was frustrated with Ian, but she chose to fight him. She chose to get into it with a FOAF that was saying dumb rape apologist bullshit. Long after it should have been obvious that he was not listening to reason (at least not last night) she kept going. And then she blamed me for it. Because she knew Ian as this shitty guy who was so stubborn about wanting Neil degrasse Tyson to be innocent that he was going to go into conspiracy theory logic. I know him as a friend from high school who also went to my college. And someone that I've been happy to talk with and fight with (about GMOs for a time there) for years.
So I'm not going to abandon Ian at least not at this point. If he keeps this shit up, sure I will reconsider it. And M shaming me for having shitty friends is only going to piss me off.
So I post that and my friend Ian (no last name) goes "what did he do that was so wrong" and that's the kind of conversation that I do not want to have. I say that even if he wasn't being harassing, he was being creepy and as much as we want to give him the benefit of the doubt, that shit is not acceptable. I kind of left it at that.
This is not the usual way I deal with people (friends and friends of friends especially) getting all rape apologist. I spent most of September yelling at Kavanaugh supporters including George Murray who was the guy I once talked to about converting to Judaism in Saint Louis Park because he did it first. Anyone else and I would have been nasty and then blocked him or gotten blocked.
But with Ian, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I decided to believe that this wasn't Ian. Ian would make these arguments because he wanted to believe in the goodness of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He would act like the defense attorney, doing all he could to dismiss the original rape allegation (which are still in that he said/she said place) and get into some pretty sketchy territory that betrayed how many of these rape culture attitudes he's absorbed. Then after he argued it out he could reflect and feel ashamed of his thoughts.
Usually my SOP for these situations is "ok, fine, MAYBE you will repent and get out of that shitty mind set but I don't have the time." With Ian, we've been friends since high school. I like Ian. In many years of friendship this is the FIRST time I encountered him talking like this. So I'm giving an old friend who decided to be shitty rape apologist the benefit of the doubt. My patience is not infinite, but there are some people that you put up with.
Does this make me a hypocrite? Maybe. After all, I constantly tell my friends on Facebook that they shouldn't have racist friends if they don't want me calling out their racist friends. I also have little patience for the argument that people should be friends with human dumpster fires in order to bring them around. When you allow your Facebook friends to be racists and rape apologists, you are making things miserable for your non-dumpster fire FB friends who have to argue with that.
So back to Ian. I don't go full fuckyou on him because I know Ian and I like Ian. I say a couple things that I think he can accept and then let my friends argue with him. He's wrong, but I do not have the time or the energy to spend all night arguing with him and that's the kind of mood he's in. Hell, half of my year in therapy was spent talking about how I should NOT be fighting with people online (Is the Required Hate story about how I talked shit at her at 2 in the morning still one of my first hits on Google? I haven't googled myself for a time. And that evil asshole was clever in going after my tweets in support of one of the bombing campaigns against Gaza first).
But of course, I then leave the door open for my friends to argue with Ian. And it went on and on. I wake up to I don't know how many comments in the comment thread but by that point Ian is trying to say that NDGT couldn't have roofied the woman and my friend M getting increasingly exasperated as she tried to explain that there were many other drugs that could cause blackouts.
I probably shouldn't have put a sarcastic gif in response to Ian because then M tags me and tells me to come for my boy (when you've been arguing rape culture all night, that phrase is not out of bounds) and I simply say that I don't want to spend all night fighting with Ian and that she seems to be doing fine.
So now while I'm annoyed with Ian for going rape apologist, M is pissed at me for not doing anything. Or for accepting rape apologists. So I try to say that I think she's got it and that I give him the benefit of the doubt. She says fuck this shit and makes a Facebook post calling me out (without saying my name) and going that you cannot be an ally if you accept your friends being rape apologists.
Probably true.
But I never call myself an ally. Too easy to fuck up when you think of yourself as an ally. And this was not a situation that I was going to get out of unscathed. I deleted the thread and then she got very condescending saying that I shouldn't delete the thread and that she didn't have the time to tell me how I'm wrong.
Thank G-d for the 30 day timeout.
But what the fuck does she want me to do? I disagreed with him. I encouraged my friends to fight with him. THe only thing I didn't do was go full fuckyou on him (as I usually do) and/or block him. Am I supposed to spend all night trying to explain to someone who is perfectly well versed in rape culture as to why he shouldn't be defending Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Should I fly out to his house and punch him in the face?
Usually I'm the other side of this issue, asking my Facebook friends to talk to their dumpster fire friends who are spouting the nastiest racist rape apologist shit. I'm also telling my friends that if they don't want me calling out their friends that they shouldn't have racist friends in the first place. I also strongly suggest that they drop these assholes so their friends don't have to block this shit all the time.
What I don't do is blame my friends for their shitty friends because we all have shitty friends. And many of our shitty friends are saying the kind of shitty things that we once thought and if they want to put in the emotional work of dealing with those people, I'm not going to call them out and say that they are total hypocrites for the one fucking time out of thousand when they didn't go "fuck you, you fucking rape apologist asshole here's a 1000 word essay on why you don't know shit".
Seriously, I get that M was frustrated with Ian, but she chose to fight him. She chose to get into it with a FOAF that was saying dumb rape apologist bullshit. Long after it should have been obvious that he was not listening to reason (at least not last night) she kept going. And then she blamed me for it. Because she knew Ian as this shitty guy who was so stubborn about wanting Neil degrasse Tyson to be innocent that he was going to go into conspiracy theory logic. I know him as a friend from high school who also went to my college. And someone that I've been happy to talk with and fight with (about GMOs for a time there) for years.
So I'm not going to abandon Ian at least not at this point. If he keeps this shit up, sure I will reconsider it. And M shaming me for having shitty friends is only going to piss me off.
