I have been engaged in a round-table argument regarding personal responsibility. It started as a discussion of an article written by a college student, a male, who was really tired of watching everyone around him get drunk to the point of incapacitation and fuck each other (how?), specifically in relation to the cries of rape the next day. His article is not about rape, it's about personal responsibility. It just happened to come up in the context of drunken hookups. As you can imagine, he has a shit STORM descending upon him. Calls for his head, his resignation, his penis; boycotts and protests and marches, all based on something that he didn't even say. After days of watching and listening to a heretofore intelligent and rational group of people take every word he said out of context and add their own wherever they wanted and make insanely far reaching comparisons in order to vilify this guy, I defended him. Clarification: I did not defend him. I defended the words he said, which were true and well written and not at all reactionary. He had done his homework. He strikes me as something of a pompous douchecano, but his article did not say what he is currently having to defend. At all.

In my defense of his statements, I pointed out that he didn't say any of the things he's quoted as saying. I pointed out that he never, ever, insinuated that rape is okay or that victims are asking for it or that you deserve it for any reason. He never did. He never said that taking advantage of women is okay. He never said that Not Saying No is the same as Saying Yes. He never said that men in their own homes have a right to do whatever they want there. He never, ever said that rape victims did something wrong. At all. What he said was that people, men and women alike, have a personal responsibility to take care of themselves and not assume that someone else is going to do it for you. Take care of yourself. Keep yourself safe. Make sure that people know what you're doing and be clear about your intentions and don't send messages that conflict with what you actually think, because people will listen to what you're saying and believe you.

This is where the women went nuts. Shrieking harpies, we can do what EVER we want and no one has the right to rape us. Well, you're half right. No one has the right to rape you. But if 'doing whatever you want' includes having sex with drunk men, then insisting that he should have been responsible enough to know what you wanted and meant and were thinking (even though you weren't and didn't), then no. You are wrong. You are wrong because he did not rape you. And if you are going to fight me on this (and they are, currently) then I will gladly surrender my Card of Sisterhood because that is what's wrong with an awful lot. Having sex with someone does not equal raping them. Giving someone a ride in your car does not equal kidnapping them, and if you are standing on the side of the road with your thumb out, and they pull over and you get in their car and reach your destination and call the cops cause you didn't want to go anywhere, what the fuck? Maybe you didn't, in fact, want to go anywhere but how was he supposed to know that? He said GOING MY WAY, Officer, not DO I HAVE PERMISSION TO TRANSPORT YOU IN THIS VEHICLE. This makes me really, really angry. This makes us look stupid. It makes us look...reactionary. Rape is a real thing. It's a devastating thing. It's a forest fire consuming everything in its path. It is not a label we put on frivolously. Even date-rape, which is a stupid name if I've ever heard one, equating drunken hookups with date-rape is offensive; to the people that have experienced it, to the people that have been accused of it, to the people that are aware of it it is a ripoff of an actual event that drives women to suicide. You cannot make one person responsible for the actions of two people, and when you are engaged in what you're doing and doing it willingly, and so are they, then you can't blame anyone else for your own decisions. We are not talking about Rohypnol or spiked punch or a brick to the back of the head. We're talking about active participants who later say that he Misunderstood. Maybe he did misunderstand. And it's an easy misunderstanding to make, which is the author's entire point. Misunderstandings are easy to make, especially when you are wearing a particular uniform and engaging in particular activities that ninety nine out of a hundred times mean one thing but TODAY ONLY mean something different, and on top of that you are talking about two drunk people. That it is an easy misunderstanding and if you are claiming that you weren't capable of making an informed decision, then how can you insist that he was? I am way too drunk to drive so I am going to have my friend, who matched me shot for shot and is currently engaged in conversation with a gumball machine, drive me home. But he better not wreck this fucking car or I'll see him imprisoned for the rest of his life. This is so, so fucked up. You are not helping women. You are not empowering women. You are not teaching our girls to protect themselves and assess their situations and surroundings and act accordingly; you're teaching them that their rights will protect them. Christians: God will protect you from cancer; light up! Cyclists: entitlement will protect you from windshields, screw the stop signs! Girls: your rights will see you through anything; don't even worry about where you are or what you're doing or who you're doing it with, and anyone who tells you different is an oppressive rape apologist. Just. Like. Me.

why did you lie to me

because I'm a wild animal
you are also a husband and father
I'm trying to tell you the truth about myself
I don't care about the truth about yourself


There is a book that I read some years ago, it is called The Gift of Fear. It's a decent read and worth mulling, but one of the sections of the book deals with our tendency as humans to ignore or overrule our instincts in favor of what has been previously determined to be socially acceptable. The passage that stuck with me regarded a woman alone in the lobby of a building, waiting for an elevator, and when it opened there was a single man in the elevator. Every instinct told her not to get in the elevator, but she did not want the man in the elevator to think that she thought whatever whatever. The author points out that despite your nerves and gut screaming at you no no no, that we will stroll right into a windowless, soundproof metal cage and lock ourselves in with a total stranger that we cannot escape from no matter how we try, simply to avoid giving the impression that we do not trust them. Simply to avoid the POSSIBILITY that this stranger might POSSIBLY be offended by our own need to POSSIBLY save our own life, and that there is no other animal on the planet that would put themselves in that situation.

Sometimes I wonder how we have the balls to call ourselves advanced, to assert that we are higher, more intelligent beings when so often we display not the inability to behave in a natural, instinctive manner, but rather refusal to do so because of rules that we have imposed on ourselves. How many times have I found myself in a situation that I could have avoided if I had only listened to myself at the beginning? How many times should I be dead? How many times, I wonder, did I not even realize I was in that situation but was instead extricated prior to disaster by outside forces? I know perfectly well how many times I have pissed someone off by listening to my instincts, and ended up with no other explanation to offer except Because It Feels Wrong. That number is bigger than a breadbox, but the other number is bigger.

We're conditioned from playground one to be polite and understanding and benefit-of-doubt giving and innocent-until-proven-guilty assuming and above all, let-it-go-ing. I know that the majority of that conditioning is so that we can all live in the same world, and is necessary in order to maintain some semblance of respect among us as people. But there is a part of me that misses the part of me that existed a million years ago, the part that my ex-husband's ancestors lived in fear of, the part that this fucking girl's precursors would have recognized, the part that did not ask Who Do They Think They Are but rather answered the question of Who Do They Think I Am in no uncertain terms. The part of me that accepted my instinctive behavior as, well, acceptable. That part of ourselves that shows up to defend and protect and, sure, I'll say it, teach a fucking lesson. Here is the lesson for today, ladies and gentlemen: I am not fucking around right now. You are mistaken in your assumption that I am going to roll over and step aside and stand down for the sake of your fucking HR report, or your god damned attorney, or your incessant restraining orders. Words, words, words will not protect you any more than they have ever protected me and if you think they will, then you have failed to learn anything from the news. Except here is the real leson for today: there is absolutely nothing I can do, because that would not be polite.