I got into a pretty bad verbal conflict recently. One blogger I had been reading for a while started occasionally posting some fiction on her blog. While I preferred her day-to-day gossip, I liked her texts, because she was really good at encapsulating awkward situations that many people have been in, and there is something really warming when you read a thing like that. As C.S. Lewis once said, we read to know that we are not alone.
In her last piece, she was telling the story of a 16 year old girl who is asleep in a train when a stranger starts to caress her sexual parts. The story goes on with the girl being a bit repelled, but actually liking the stimulation. Since this was a blog on which I often leave a comment, I commented that in my opinion she should not write a thing like this, at least not on such a mainstream forum, because there is a risk of banalising the notion that the victim “likes it”. I don’t really object to erotic writing per se, but I did object to such banalising.
The reason I reacted like this is that the aggression she depicts actually did happen to me. When it did, I felt disgusted and I physically had to hold back vomiting. Until then I had always taken it for granted that strangers would never invade my body. But some stranger had considered that my body was at his disposal. Suddenly, strangers around me were no longer the decent human beings to whom I could call for help if something happened on the street. They could be people capable of such behaviour. The world became a hostile place. The bubble of nurturing love created for me by my friends and family imploded, I lost the impression of being surrounded by a warm glow. I hadn’t realised that I was living in such a cosy, secure glow until I lost it. It took me weeks to recover it.
Back to my blogging conflict. My first comment was to say that writing something like this was fairly irresponsible. That what sounds sexy on the page actually feels horrible in real life and that nobody should romanticize assaults! The reply was baffling: “you, Dany, really mean that you personally find my story disturbing?”. I continued by saying that something fairly similar had actually happened to me, and that when it does, the victim does not “like it”, the ground opens below her feet and she looses all her sense of security.
The blogger then sent me a very placating e-mail, nominally saying that she was sorry something had happened to me but that my emotions were my own responsibility, that she did not want that kind of story propping up on her blog, and that one is responsible for one’s reaction when assaulted and that I could have chosen to… “like it”!
I wrote back saying that I found her comments and her e-mail extremely placating and unbelievably insensitive. Meanwhile, on the blog itself she stated that ONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO WRITE WHAT ONE WANTS! There followed quite a number of people assenting to that point stating: yay, nobody has a right to tell us what to do! One guy said he loves fiction and looks forward to someone writing up the story of a girl being gang-raped “who really actually was begging for it”. Everyone else seemed to agree. A woman left a comment recommending to the author that she try to listen to what was being said by me. The comment got deleted.
Because I hate an open conflict in my life, and because I think that it is my duty to forgive, I replied to the author's e-mail trying to picture her in the best possible light while maintaining my point of view. She wrote back with one line saying I’d disrupted her peace of mind, fouled the atmosphere on her blog and implying that I was no longer welcome (“speak soon… or not”). I'm stuck as to what I should do now.
In her last piece, she was telling the story of a 16 year old girl who is asleep in a train when a stranger starts to caress her sexual parts. The story goes on with the girl being a bit repelled, but actually liking the stimulation. Since this was a blog on which I often leave a comment, I commented that in my opinion she should not write a thing like this, at least not on such a mainstream forum, because there is a risk of banalising the notion that the victim “likes it”. I don’t really object to erotic writing per se, but I did object to such banalising.
The reason I reacted like this is that the aggression she depicts actually did happen to me. When it did, I felt disgusted and I physically had to hold back vomiting. Until then I had always taken it for granted that strangers would never invade my body. But some stranger had considered that my body was at his disposal. Suddenly, strangers around me were no longer the decent human beings to whom I could call for help if something happened on the street. They could be people capable of such behaviour. The world became a hostile place. The bubble of nurturing love created for me by my friends and family imploded, I lost the impression of being surrounded by a warm glow. I hadn’t realised that I was living in such a cosy, secure glow until I lost it. It took me weeks to recover it.
Back to my blogging conflict. My first comment was to say that writing something like this was fairly irresponsible. That what sounds sexy on the page actually feels horrible in real life and that nobody should romanticize assaults! The reply was baffling: “you, Dany, really mean that you personally find my story disturbing?”. I continued by saying that something fairly similar had actually happened to me, and that when it does, the victim does not “like it”, the ground opens below her feet and she looses all her sense of security.
The blogger then sent me a very placating e-mail, nominally saying that she was sorry something had happened to me but that my emotions were my own responsibility, that she did not want that kind of story propping up on her blog, and that one is responsible for one’s reaction when assaulted and that I could have chosen to… “like it”!
I wrote back saying that I found her comments and her e-mail extremely placating and unbelievably insensitive. Meanwhile, on the blog itself she stated that ONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO WRITE WHAT ONE WANTS! There followed quite a number of people assenting to that point stating: yay, nobody has a right to tell us what to do! One guy said he loves fiction and looks forward to someone writing up the story of a girl being gang-raped “who really actually was begging for it”. Everyone else seemed to agree. A woman left a comment recommending to the author that she try to listen to what was being said by me. The comment got deleted.
Because I hate an open conflict in my life, and because I think that it is my duty to forgive, I replied to the author's e-mail trying to picture her in the best possible light while maintaining my point of view. She wrote back with one line saying I’d disrupted her peace of mind, fouled the atmosphere on her blog and implying that I was no longer welcome (“speak soon… or not”). I'm stuck as to what I should do now.
2 comments:
You know, she could be reacting so strongly to you because this was the way in which she responded to a sexual assault. Indeed, this is something a lot of survivors struggle with -- if I didn't want this, why was I stimulated, and so on and so forth. Perhaps your dialogue partner has simply chosen to cope with her own trauma by embracing that part of the event as it occured with her, and hence deciding that she 'wanted it' or whatever.
If that is the case, then I can feel sympathy for her lack of sensitivity to others (for, if she is wrong about what she writes -- if sexual assault is really as horrible as most survivors say that it is -- then she would be forced to reconfront her own trauma without the defences she has established).
However, if that is not the case, then I say fuck all that noise.
I think that you may actually have a point, and if that is the case, then it is fairly scary. I’ve often been shocked by my own callousness and lack of sensitivity to others. On occasions, I felt an hostility which I did not want to feel, I had no idea where it came from, and I could not get rid of it so I stayed away from the people that arose it. Still felt a bit guilty though.
Maybe on some level it reminded me of my own brokenness, and owning it might have solved my problem in a lot of ways by generating solidarity where they was hostility. Maybe most callouness is self-defense. D.
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