Free association, go.
Me, too. Every girl who’s ever lived has experienced sexual harassment. My theory, something something stupid apes mired in millions of years of evolutionary history. What I don’t think will happen is anything resembling “it getting better.” Share. Keep sharing. I think the guys who sexually harass will say, “Remember when Tracy said she was sexually harassed? Let’s see if she’ll post another status.” This isn’t to sandbag my female friends, but I think statuses like that are part of that cultural mythology I hate. Let’s pretend we haven’t figured anything out about where we come from or how to do cause and effect. Everybody playing along? Okay, cool, now pat ourselves on the back.
It doesn’t get better. If getting older has allowed me anything, it’s the impossible to ignore perspective that adults are just dumber children. Children, we like to say, don’t know better. Adults just don’t know better with dozens of more excuses as to why. Key word, excuses. They can read the statistics and ignore them. They can hear the morality parables and scoff. They can cry and laugh with hundreds of characters across the ages and turn right around into feeling like the loneliest most self-important thing that ever did live. You’re not finding your dream mate. You’re not getting that financially secure. You’re not going to status update away eyes from your tits or lecherous creeps from going too far. Do you want to help, or is the camaraderie of collective mockery what it’s really about?
While I’m not going to hold a candle for the dead or carry on like I’m somehow trying to defend sexual assault, I have my own crosses to bare and naive flickering flames too. I don’t mean to dismiss any shot you take at solidarity or in “bringing awareness” as completely pointless. But I can’t help feeling it’s mostly pointless. Like being a TV or movie critic. Hundreds of negative opinions just like yours aren’t going to stop them from making Fast and the Furious movies. There are deeper financial and cultural perspective qualifiers at play of greater consequence. Are you willing to look for them, or simply admit to yourself it’s not really worth having too strong of an opinion about a movie that’s not made for you?
“Sexual assault isn’t movie preferences, asshole.” Nothing is something it’s not, so fuck ever making analogies, right? They’re influenced by money, no? The richest are rarely prosecuted. The poorest are completely ignored. There’s a resource allocation underbelly that gets completely bypassed. Do you know what prevents sexual assault? If you don’t have an answer reflexively, it’s a wonder what links of support for educational and data driven advocacy groups could do instead. I’d like to see discussions about better ways to condition or reprimand that doesn't devolve into petty dissections of one particular idiot’s lack of tact. But, don’t let me carry on too long, I’m not of the opinion that “anything” gets “better.”
Recursive problem solving. The idea being that you use a past solution to a problem and apply it to the next set of problems until they’re all solved. For those who think the universe is some kind of simulation or algorithm, think of how horrifying that process could be. An impartial universe with no connotative care for “sexual assault” running through every lamentable sexual experience between every person who has or will ever live. Only to find out what? What any one individual could have told it from one unwanted sexual encounter.Yet, don’t we seem to adopt a stupid computer-like approach to solving the problems in our own lives? We address the lies with more lies. We claw at the wind and then ball up our fists to give it a good whoosh. We run from difficult questions and feelings into ever-complicated problems that leave us lost in a new rush of questions and feelings.
I fashion myself a pattern seeker. I try to hurt myself in ways that make it so I don’t hurt the same way again. This stops me from viral empty status sharing. This stops me from reflexively throwing 5 bucks at Puerto Rico. This stops my allegedly liberal or woke heart from bleeding out. Do I avoid all stupid patterns? Next time you catch a drunk blog, obviously not. Am I trying to fix anything but myself for its stupid feelings in the moment? Not really. Do I think you’re trying to fix sexual assault with a status update? Of course not. Do I think you want to reduce the care or concern you might have for the issue to the level of disregard I have in posting a drunk blog? God forbid.
It can only come from a selfish place. You can hunt down the kind of men that are exceedingly unlikely to make you feel violated, but the others aren’t going away. You can think you’ve spoken up and been brave and advocated for a lifetime, but you’re competing with structures in the brain older than trees. I’m not speaking as to whether shitty behavior is justified, nor do I think it is. I am trying to shine a light on the fast and furious forces that will continually profit until there’s nothing sexually motivated left on the planet.
