Monday, May 6, 2013

Cerulean sins--chapter 47. Triggers. Consider yourself warned.

Edit 3/13/2015: Yeah, can we please, really PLEASE STOP DOING THIS? 

Edit 11/10/2014: You know, I really, really, REALLY did not want to revisit this. When it died down I was like yes, now I can get back to normal life. And then it came back up again.

Guys, believe me, I KNOW that she did some really awful shit. I KNOW that she hurt a lot of people. Answering hate with yet more hate is not the way you fix this problem. If she's just trying to evade everything, all you're doing is confirming her bias. If she's genuinely sorry, you're doing the exact same shitty thing that she did to me. 

In her mind, at the time, I deserved what I got. I don't doubt that at all. I also know that I did not deserve it. So by the same extension she does not deserve this.  I am going to keep these posts up because they document a thing that happened that needs to be documented. But my heart goes out to her. I don't want anyone to go through what I went through with her. That includes her. Pain is pain is pain is pain is pain. It doesn't matter who inflicts it or how, and inflicting pain is wrong.

Yes. She needs to be held accountable for her actions. But there's a difference between accountability and being shits to other people.

In other words, my lovelies, knock it the fuck off. 

Edit 10/20/2014: Okay. This post has gotten a lot of attention over the past couple of days. A LOT. And it's stirred up a lot of feelings that I really didn't want to deal with and made me angry and hurt all over again.

Short version: The Unnamed Friend AKA Requires Hate AKA a name I'm not linking up to the rest of it because she doesn't deserve that got outed in her professional writer's persona. And the entire internet collapsed on her because holy shit how do you be an asshole for FIFTEEN YEARS.

I just read her apology post. It's over here. 

My thoughts on the matter are over here.

Forgive me for this opening, guys, but I need to point something out to my darling lovely unnamed friend. Something that they probably ought to know, given that I've talked about this on the blog before. So if you do not know much about my history, This will probably be highly disturbing. I am very sorry if it disturbs most of you. I will probably regret doing this, my wonderful unnamed friend will probably bat it around with her friends for the next several weeks, but you know what? I'm done. I'll play your game, my darling unnamed friend. You finally pushed the button that gets a response out of me.

I would like to have been real friends with you, princess. Before you started showering me with attention, I respected you. I reacted the way I did to our first encounter because I wanted to be a good person in your eyes. And for several months afterwards I thought that I did deserve every awful, soul destroying thing you said about me. Because I thought you were more than a good person. I thought you were the best person. And if the best person thinks I am a piece of worthless white shit, that must mean that I am utterly irredeemable, without value or merit, and that I am so far gone I can't even try to get better without destroying the value and self esteem of millions of other people.

I thought you were all powerful. All knowing. I thought you were actually good.

So I want to thank you.

Thank you for calling me an awful human being because I wrote that rape recovery makes people stronger, and that I find that recovery to be a sublimely beautiful thing. Thank you for believing that means I glorify rape and abuse. Thank you for making assumptions. Thank you for taking your own cause and turning it into something that's all about hatred and not about dialogue, because that sure as shit stinks will make humanity better. Yes, I am sure it will. Answering hate with hate, murder with murder, and violence with violence has always solved all of the worlds problems.

Thank you for deciding that I don't deserve to have a voice.

Thank you for showing me that you really are an inconsiderate, un-self-aware, remorseless piece of shit.

Fuck you for making me talk about this.

I was sexually assaulted three years ago by a man in a black pickup truck who asked for directions to an electronic store, asked for me to get into his car and show him where that place was, drove out into the middle of nowhere and made me give him 100 dollars and a blow job.

 He criticized my performance.

He gave me instructions.

As a courtesy, he didn't even make me swallow.

We got interrupted. He took me home.

I told the police. They told me "Well, that counts as consent, so it sucks to be you," and drove away.

The fact that you think I am a horrible person for believing that recovery can be beautiful just fills me with all the warm fuzzies. Kind of the way the assault did. I guess the only other option I have is to be a broken mess of an individual who rocks quietly in a corner every time something triggers that memory. Somebody says "blow job" and I'm back in the truck. The other day I heard the song that was on the radio during the assault and boom, I was back in the truck.

Having you go "OH MY GOD SHE IS GLORIFYING RAPE YOU CAN'T SAY RECOVERY IS BEAUTIFUL WITHOUT GLORIFYING RAPE"...yep, that puts me back in the truck.

I'm really sick of being back in the truck.

He made me weak. He made me kleenex. He broke me. He turned me into nothing. It was the worst day of my life, and for him, it was just Tuesday. I mattered that little.

I make my recovery beautiful because it denies him any right to it. Any right to my memories. Any right to me. It means that my rapist is not allowed to define me.

And I choose to write about it, and to say "rape recovery is a beautiful thing, and being stronger is a beautiful thing" because I wish to God one person would have said that to me. That just one person could have told me that I could be proud of the days and weeks that followed. That I could be proud of myself for still being alive. That it was even possible to take those hours back and make them be mine again. That I have every right to isolate that hour in that truck like the piece of cancer it is and refuse to let it have any more of my life, time or energy.

What happened to me was wrong. And I'm choosing to grow from that, and grow beauty from that, and grow stronger from that, and to tell other people that it's possible to go through an assault and come out the other side whole. I'm choosing to make recovery praiseworthy.

The alternative is to let rape be about the rapist, rather than about the survivor. The alternative would be to let him have power, and to keep that part of me.

The alternative would make survival a duty, and not a triumph.

Fuck that. And fuck you. Fuck you for not understanding that. Fuck you for deciding that recovery and survival shouldn't be something worthy of praise just because the thing we survive is a nightmare. Fuck you for deciding that I can't take MY OWN ABUSE back and make my recovery be something beautiful. Fuck you for invalidating my recovery. In fact, how about we just go with, "fuck him, and fuck you too"?

Also: Thank you for e-stalking me for six months. Thank you for posting something from my blog that you find problematic every time I post a goddamn page. Thank you for reminding me what a horrible, worthless human being I am. I am sure this accomplishes something in the betterment of the universe.

You triple the traffic my blog gets every time you link to it, and you make up, oh, about 45% of my traffic every time you tweet a direct link to a page. And hiding your tweets only works when all your friends do it too.

You are the ONLY PERSON ON THE INTERNET who is talking about me. Not an exaggeration. I get referral links from spam websites and from you. You are still my primary source of traffic. You latched onto me within twenty-four hours of me posting on LKH_Lashouts, you've continually criticized every single word I say because I happen to be white and live in the states. I am actively anticipating when you finally tackle one of my books because I know that's coming next (yeah, hiding your tweets was the big clue that you were about to move back into my life again. Thanks for the warning) You've called me an illiterate fucktard, which is true given that YOU could afford a college education and I could not. Thank you SO MUCH for lording that privilege over me.

And now you just spent the last day criticizing how a sex-abuse victim--namely, me--handles her own recovery on twitter.

Because it made you feel all happy and superior and it made me look like more of a shit.

You really are the superior person.

 I fucking dare you to link to this post, you insensitive fucking troll.

(But you're right about the spelling. I hate spelling, I always have hated spelling, and not right clicking under every batch of wavy red lines is my way of sticking it to Queen Elizabeth's arbitrary rules about where letters are supposed to go.)

Okay, I feel better now. So where were we?

Oh, right. The wolves show up. Richard is going to pull a power play to try to take his wolves back from Jean Claude. Because undermining the biggest power in your city when he's facing down a rival who is worse than he is, is the absolute smartest thing he can do.

...This book is a piece of trash.

 Richard yanks all the wolves away from everyone who isn't a wolf, including Gregory, who is still comforting Stephen. Then he demands Anita stand with the pack because, technically, she is pack.

Anita says "what the fuck is going on" and the audience says "The writer forgot how to plot." because there is no logic behind this, at all.

Anita and Richard face off, Richard gets all imposing and...fuck me, this happens:

I looked up the length of his body and met his eyes with the knowledge in my eyes that I knew what was under that conservative suit, every inch of it.

I am probably not in the mood to discuss this tonight. Anita raped Richard. And now she's reminding him of their sexual relationship. The one that ended with rape. She's trying to make him do what she wants him to do by reminding him of the sexual power that she once held over him. That she once used to rape him with.

I now actively want to hurl.

Richard gets angry, and of course it's wrong for him to be angry at Anita, because Anita is only the person who violated every promise made and boundary established during their relationship twice, including that all important one of "DON'T HAVE SEX WHEN I SAY NO"

So Musette is amused, and Richard says "Go away, this is pack business," and Musette just laughs until Belle shows up and tells Richard, basically, "Sit, boy, I need to play with Asher right now."

Richard goes "Uh...what?"

And then Asher starts screaming and the chapter ends with Anita thinking about how much she's going to hate Richard in a few days.

This book needs to die in a fire.

Sorry for hijacking the review to vent my ire at a non-related issue, but I'm getting really, REALLY tired of being this person's favorite chew toy. I'll let her sit all over me re: race and GLBT issues because I am an idiot when it comes to that, and I know it. But you don't get to tell me how I feel about MY recovery from MY OWN SEX ASSAULT is invalid.




41 comments:

  1. Oh Jesus, is that hate-monger still linking through so her blog-followers can piss on you? And WTF are they twitter-stalking you? Hopefully they get distracted by a shiny object soon and move on with their life.

    You've called me an illiterate fucktard, which is true given that YOU could afford a college education and I could not. Thank you SO MUCH for lording that privilege over me.

    For someone like this, privilege is just a checklist full of reasons why everyone else except them is wrong. They might theoretically acknowledge that they have some form of privilege, but will always have a reason as to why it doesn't really apply in this case. Privilege only really applies to other people, and feminism is just a useful excuse for policing other women's behaviour. No different from MRAs or TERFs or any other hate-group.

    And right now this person and her followers are looking at this post and dreaming up rape-apologizing excuses as to why you deserved to be attacked, and why your experiences and recovery don't really count. Because they don't like you, they've decided you're the enemy, and they cannot allow their self-chosen enemies any humanity.

    You do not deserve this shit.

    You did not deserve to be raped, and you did not deserve to have the cops shrug it off.

    And I'm very happy that you survived, and that you're owning that as a triumph.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. She never went away. I just stopped talking about her. And I don't think she's going to go away. Not after six months. I'm her favorite toy.

      But it's getting old and I'm almost to the point where I just want to pack up and quit because the anxiety is getting to me.

      And actually, they're saying I'm shaming women who haven't "recovered" from rape. Because of course recovery is a one time deal. It's not like it's something you have to do every single solitary day.

      I guess telling a rape survivor "I'm glad you are alive, and I find the fact that you made it to today a wonderful, beautiful thing, fuck your rapist" is the ugliest thing anybody can say, ever.

      But I guess the internet needs its punching bag.

      Delete
    2. I love the ridiculous irony of someone who is apparently on some kind of 'activism' crusade using the term fucktard to do it.

      then again as a disabled person I find most self described activists to be ableist as fuck, so there you go.

      Delete
  2. I am so sorry that some random fuckwit decided that instead of trying to make the world a better place like a rational human being would, that tormenting someone they found on the internet was a logical and useful way to spend their time. I am so sorry that no one told you that you are brave and strong for recovering from a horrific assault. You did not deserve to be assaulted. I am proud of you for making your recovery your own. I am proud of you for finding pride in your strength as you recovered. I am proud of you for figuring out this person is a human skidmark and calling them out on their bullshit. I am looking forward to seeing you go from strength to strength as your life unfolds.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I didn't, and still don't, feel that it's a big deal, given that she's been doing this for SIX FUCKING MONTHS, (oh, and the handful of times the quote she's quoted out of context has been actually right, and somebody's pointed this out, she shuts up faster than the bank on a holiday). I'm wrong a lot, she's good at pointing out when and how frequently I'm wrong, and I've managed to make it through six months of continual criticism without relapsing.

      I just couldn't let this one float by.

      It took me a year to accept that it actually was an assault, that I was raped, that the way I felt about it did count, and that it wasn't just me being an idiot and letting someone else take advantage of me. Between my dad and my councelor ("Don't you see now, how you draw in bad events?" I stopped going shortly after that) I was pretty much on the "Let's just forget this ever happened" boat ride...which didn't work. At all.

      Unfortunately calling them on their bullshit is going to make it worse. It always does.

      There's no way to win with internet bullies. You just have to sit there and take it until they get board.

      Delete
    2. she's good at pointing out when and how frequently I'm wrong

      Of course she is. Pointing out how other people are wrong is her entire schtick. It's all she does. Like I said, for her feminism and privilege are just checklists of other people not doing it right. Her own obvious privilege as a wealthy person with higher education in a horribly poor country goes completely unexamined.

      And yeah, Hatemonger and her followers are watching you pretty damn closely. Her latest Twitter-moanings about your posts went up almost as soon as your posts went live. She obviously bears a grudge over that one time you disagreed with her, which takes us right back to her use of social-justice language to police other people's thoughts.

      Charming person.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, but (and I am dead serious) I don't feel that her life should be under a microscope. Any more than mine ought to be.

      The fact that she chooses to make my personal life her business does not mean that I should violate the same boundaries.

      And I don't think the disagreement over the word "bitch" was what started this. Something else did. She had to be on the blog, looking for something to complain about in order to find it.

      Whatever and whoever she is has every right to go unexamined. I have no more right to question and/or examine who and what she is than she has a right to explore who and what I am.

      Just because she violates me does not give me the right to violate back. I'm not playing that bullshit game.

      Delete
    4. And I don't think the disagreement over the word "bitch" was what started this. Something else did. She had to be on the blog, looking for something to complain about in order to find it.

      Good point.

      The fact that she chooses to make my personal life her business does not mean that I should violate the same boundaries.

      Another good point. On the other hand, knowing where a troll is coming from and understanding why they do things the way they do is just self-defence. As I pointed out in a post below, Hatemonger has a long history as a troll who has been banned from multiple communities. It's not violating boundaries to point out that her trolling of you is nothing new.

      Anyway, I'm off to work. Hope you have a good day.

      Delete
  3. Will you accept internet hugs?
    Good for you for rejecting such a toxic person. It's not hijacking if it's your own post!
    And people can just keep their privileged mouth shut about how victims can or cannot react if they have never been assaulted. Yes, people who have not been assaulted are privileged. Hell, even if they have, they should have no say in what's appropriate or not. I'm just flummoxed about this, this is just horrible and enraging and I wish I had more to say to soothe :/.

    Right there's a review...
    *sigh* This book :/

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    1. Yeah, but I need to keep MY mouth shut, apparently, because what I've said is exclusionary to people who haven't "recovered" from rape. Because you get a certificate and a gold star, apparently, that tells you "HEY, YOU'RE DONE! YOU NEVER HAVE TO DO THIS AGAIN!"

      Which sucks. Where's my gold star? I never got a gold star...

      It's not a big deal. I probably shouldn't have posted at all. I'm just really tired of dealing with this and having no recourse. But it's the internet! There are no consequences for being an asshole. Just bigger readerships.

      The irony here is she's picking on somebody that nobody would ever hear otherwise. I'd be that tree falling in the forest, otherwise. "Hey, here's this blog of concentrated awfulness, now lets all talk about it and make sure the whole world knows its just awful, because GOD KNOWS we wouldn't have heard about it before."

      ...

      Serious. Decoupaging a toilet. I don't think I could put anything in the bowl though. It'd just flush away and wind up clogging the sewage pipe, and clogging sewage pipes is giving LKH too much credit.

      Delete
  4. Having some time on my hands this morning I did a bit of reading about Hatemonger. She turns out to be the LJ troll formerly known as Winterfox, who I remember being banned from various fandoms. Other people remember her as well (Read the comments): http://www.journalfen.net/community/unfunny_fandom/21226.html

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Oh, I already know all of that. Read the wiki pages. Did the googling. I know about her history. My favorite is her statement that Russian white people are the only white people who can write POC characters right, because Russia has never oppressed POC in a systematic way.

      It's what she does. It's how she chooses to live her life and that's fine and dandy. Seriously. If you want to be an ass on the internet and use a good cause to keep people from calling you on being an ass, you've got every right to do it, you're helping your cause in the short-term, and it's none of my business how much/how frequently you want to hurt me for being an idiot. I'm the idiot. I deserve it.

      I just don't like it because I don't have the tools to rationalize it and handle it in a healthy way. If I were a stronger personality I could probably ignore it and not let it get to me. I'm not.

      And for the record? Let's not call her "hatemonger". She's "Unnamed friend". Hard rule, mkay? Let's not be hateful back.

      Delete
    2. Saw this right after I posted another comment using'HM'. I sincerely hope I never have cause to refer to her again, but if I do I'll use your preferred name.

      I'm the idiot. I deserve it.

      You internalize other people's bullshit way too easily. Which you already know, but bears repeating.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, but if she's telling the truth about things, I have to take it to heart.

      If she's not...well, I should take it to heart anyway because it will keep me from hurting people.

      That's my logic, anyway.

      Delete
  5. What's confusing here is that you can clearly see what the criticisms are of what you've been saying, but not why they're important.

    First-off, I've gone through sexual assault as well (more than one, in fact). From what I saw, no-one was mocking your experiences or devaluing them. No-one is disagreeing with the idea that recovering from sexual assault and rape is a good thing. No-one is saying it's an easy, 'oop, now I'm better again' issue.

    But what you think you've been saying and what you actually said are two different things (also, this 'I'VE BEEN A VICTIM OF HER STALKING FOR SIX MONTHS' thing is bullshit. This is only the second time I've seen your name come up in as much time).

    "I guess telling a rape survivor "I'm glad you are alive, and I find the fact that you made it to today a wonderful, beautiful thing, fuck your rapist" is the ugliest thing anybody can say, ever." — That is a massive straw man and not what you actually said.

    Here's what you actually said:

    "In short, I don't find a character with rape in their backstory offensive. It happens in real life. Not writing about abuse isn't going to make abuse magically disappear. Keeping fictional women from being raped isn't going to keep real women from being traumatized. BUT, and here's the thing, it only has value in the aftermath. In getting over it. In recovery. In standing up and saying "That happened, here are the scars, I still have these issues, but you're not getting anything else from me." Abuse doesn't make a character strong. Getting over abuse makes that character strong. Getting over abuse, and trauma, and difficulty, is what makes a person strong. I find abuse and violence to be hideous, awful and monsterous, but I find the growth of the human spirit after an event like that to be the most glorious thing I've ever seen. I wish we didn't live in a world where survival and recovery had to be part of our daily vocabulary, but we do. Rape and violence exist. Erasing that in fiction won't fix it; the only counter I can think of is to show the beauty that defeats it.

    Or to quote a dead white man, Fairy Tales don't teach children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy Tales teach children that dragons can be killed.

    Replace "Dragon" with "rape". You'll see what I mean. The status of victimhood is a transitory state, and when it's over, it's over. It does not consume you. You are allowed to get up and walk away. But sometimes hearing that isn't enough. We have to be shown. And stuff that won't penetrate in a heart-to-heart talk might maybe, please God, hopefully, get through in the theater of a story."

    ReplyDelete
  6. I can see what point you're trying to make — that assault/rape doesn't have to define a survivor for the rest of their lives and that being able to deal with it is a good thing. The way it's written, however, is done completely without thought for anyone whose experiences differ from your own. Firstly, you might find reading about rape/sexual assault cathartic; I can assure you, that is not the case for me or every other survivor.

    "it only has value in the aftermath. In getting over it. In recovery." -- NO. What this is saying is, 'what, you haven't gotten over your SA/rape? You didn't survive? THEN YOU'RE WEAK. ONLY RECOVERY MAKES IT WORTH ANYTHING.' Not everyone does survive. Not everyone has 'recovered'. And that isn't our fault. Placing all the emphasis on victims and telling them 'OK, SA/RAPE IS OVER. NOW IT'S YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO HURRY UP AND RECOVER, GET ON WITH IT' may not have been what you intended to say, but it's what you ended up with.

    "Getting over abuse makes that character strong. Getting over abuse, and trauma, and difficulty, is what makes a person strong." — no, it doesn't. You can be strong before, during and after SA/rape, and it is not your fucking place to slap other survivors round the face with this victim-blaming bullshit. I'm not over my assault. I can't even talk about it without getting hideously triggered and being incapable of looking at/touching my own body/shaking for hours afterwards. Am I weak because I haven't recovered? Will I develop magic strength the day I decide to stop saying 'my reaction to it is not what should be being criticised here, but the fact that it should never have happened in the first place'?

    "Or to quote a dead white man, Fairy Tales don't teach children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy Tales teach children that dragons can be killed.

    Replace "Dragon" with "rape". You'll see what I mean."

    Are you for fucking real? Are you cheapening survivors' experiences by modifying a shitty, irrelevant quote and making things ~whimsical~? READING ABOUT RAPE IS NOT A MAGIC CURE-ALL FOR STOPPING IT. The vast majority of people liable to commit rape/SA are not going to read your books or any books that tackle rape/SA in a decent manner (I haven't read your books; I don't know how you tackle it, but I'm not hoping for much if these blog posts are anything to go by). They're cismen. They're mostly straight cismen. The person who assaulted me said he was straight (I am a cisman myself). He was also a supposed friend. Maybe if he'd just read your books it would never have happened, huh?

    Nope. Your books are not aimed at potential rapists/assailants. The people most likely to read your stuff are survivors. Slapping all the responsibility of our assaults on us is not going to end rape/SA. Sorry.

    "the only counter I can think of is to show the beauty that defeats it"

    You know what defeats rape? Telling people (men in particular) to stop raping. To stop assaulting. To start treating women (in particular) as equal human beings. That they aren't entitled to other peoples' bodies. There is no 'beauty' in 'defeating' rape and sexual assault. Stop placing the emphasis on fucking survivors, start placing the blame on rapists/assailants.

    And yes, I do see your point, again. That we do need more narratives of survivors not being crushed by their assaults and not having them be the sole defining point of their lives. It is quite possible to say this without throwing all other survivors (or victims) under a bus, and acknowledge that that is a failing on the part of society/media, not survivors.

    But you know what? For some people, it does become the biggest thing in their life for a long time/the rest of their lives. For some people, it's too much and they might not survive. And they deserve your sympathy too, not your shame.

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    1. So basically you've posted a long comment shaming a rape survivor for not conceptuaizing recovery in the way you think it should be? And then you blame her for shaming others? Have I missed anything? Like maybe you accusing her of blaming rape victims for rape?

      Slapping all the responsibility of our assaults on us is not going to end rape/SA. Sorry.

      You're a nasty piece of work, Anonymous.

      Delete
    2. Whatever chip you have on your shoulder, you read things into her blog that weren't there--something that psycho from Requires Hate does very often too. You had no problem quoting blocks of her text--please, can you show me the quote where she said the people who don't survive are failures? Where they should be ashamed?

      Everybody experiences and reacts to trauma differently, and I fucking dare you to argue with this point. She never said, "This is only way to get over it. This is the only right way to feel about it." She was writing from her own personal experiences, and letting others know how she was coping with her sexual assault--the group of fuckheads from that website were the ones saying that her way was wrong. That her thoughts and feelings were invalid. Which is beyond sick. Most people who go through abuse try to offer support, and compassion, and commiseration to other people who have experienced it because they know how fucking horrible and difficult it is to live through.

      "You know what defeats rape? Telling people (men in particular) to stop raping. To stop assaulting." Ha, yes, this is good fucking advice. That usually works so well. Because a person committing sexual assault is going to hear that "no" and stop. Because that isn't like the definition of rape or anything...

      I agree with her entirely. I've read plenty of fictional books that cover rape as an "edgy" topic. They go into sickening, horrific detail of the event for the sole purpose of showing how "bad" their world is, and then completely ignore the aftermath--they don't show the consequences to the survivors, or how it impacted every facet of the survivor's life. The act was all that they needed, because they were doing it for shock value. So yes, I do think she was right--using rape doesn't have any LITERARY MERIT unless it is going to take an honest look at the consequences of it and how the characters change as a result of it. I think this is where you got sidetracked. We're not talking about real-life here, we're talking about books. Perhaps you didn't realize, but this is BOOK BLOG.

      CW was trying to explain that any sexual assault in her books isn't there for shock value, its to explore her own feelings on the topic, allow readers to better understand it (from her own perspective), and to explore how the character deals with it. If you don't want to read a book about where the characters are able to continue to function after abuse, then don't. There are plenty of other books about how someone was abused and completely goes to pieces, turns to drugs, and eventually self destructs. This was the story of my own best friend growing up, and it was fucking horrible. I've already lived that, and don't want to read about it. There's nothing to learn from that story.

      I could go on and on about how you misinterpreted things, but I honestly think you already know. I think you just came here to be a twat.

      Delete
    3. The only way someone can't be a rape survivor, and be in recovery from rape, is to be dead.

      If you are dead, you did not survive. You did not recover. And I am sorry to speak ill of the dead.

      If you were raped and you are still alive, you are a survivor, and you are recovering, and you are awesome. Even if your recovery is not healthy, you're still recovering. You also will probably never be "done" recovering, but that's fine. Alcoholics are never "done" recovering, people with severe depression sometimes have to deal with it the rest of their lives, I still have to fight the urge to cut every damn day. The fact that anybody who went through an assault is still here and still alive in defiance of their rapist is the beautiful thing I'm talking about.

      As for telling people "Don't rape" and expecting that to fix things...great, I wish we did that too. It doesn't help the victims. But I guess we should just ignore them, because they're unimportant.

      That was sarcasm, by the way.

      What motivated my original comments was Laurel K. Hamilton writing two of her major recurring characters as rape victims for the sole purpose of retraumatizing them, one to the point of catatonia, and then having them get rescued by the main character. She retraumatized rape victims so that her main character would have somebody to rescue

      Not to grow their characters. Not to possibly give hope to somebody who's been through that crap. To create designated victims incapable of rescuing themselves so that the so-called "hero" could sweep in and rescue them.

      I might be wrong, and I fully accept that I am wrong, but that's wronger.

      And fuck yes, she's been stalking me for six months. Am I a victim of her stalking? Nope. She hasn't put dead cats in my mailbox or harrassed me by e-mail. But she's criticized, belittled and demeaned every word I've said since December 16th, 2012, which incidentally was two days after I posted in the LKH Lashouts community for the very first time. She went away for about a month, in March (...incidentally, the only month I didn't have a book coming out) and then came back, and it's always the same. A random, out of context quote, a twitter link, her and her friends giggle over how awful I am, another random quote, another twitter link, more giggling, four or five times a day. And that's not me talking, that's the number of different t.co links I fish out of my referal lists every morning.

      She dedicates a good solid hour or so of her day talking about how awful I am. If I were an amazing bestselling author I could justify that, but I'm not. I'm a shitty self published waitress who is praying that she'll break 300 sales total by the end of the month. Somehow she's decided I deserve more attention than Jim Butcher and R.A. Salvatore. Going by her own behavior there.

      IDK what else to call it. Other than stalking.

      Also, to the other anon: Calling somebody a twat is like calling them an elbow. It's a little on the pointless side. Let's not do that, okay?

      And her name is "Unnamed Friend". I don't want to give her blog any more traffic or search strings than it's already got. (...not that I know why I bother, seeing as half my traffic comes from her anyway...)

      Delete
  7. I deleted your comments because you insulted other people. These people are trying to protect me. I don't think they need to do that, but it's not fair to come into my house and throw rotten fruit around, and then expect everybody to sit there and smile while I try to get my act together. I do not know who the anon is. Ian is a personal friend IRL that I've known for years.

    I don't want that language, and I don't want personal attacks, being perpetuated on my blog.

    I have, however, saved your comments, and read them through three times, and I'm going to attempt to paraphrase them WITHOUT the nastiness, because you do deserve to be heard. But my friends also deserve not to be called names and told to go away, when it's my house and I'm the one who invited them here.

    I would have simply edited the nastiness out, but Blogger won't let me do that.

    You are welcome to leave if you wish to, and I apologize for any triggers, or any hurt feelings.

    So this is what I understand you to have said. Please correct me when I am wrong.

    If I understand what you said: you agree with me on the important point, which is that LKH had a disgusting portrayal of rape victims. You would like to see more positive portrayals of rape victims. Your issue is with the emphasis of recovery, and the implication that rape survivors who do not "recover" is insulting to rape victims who still have issues with their rape. You feel that having that emphasis shames people who have not recovered to their satisfaction, and that it might drive these victims to suicide.

    You would like to be heard and acknowledged.

    Am I right, or am I wrong?



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I believe the confusion is that I'm using recovery in the chemical dependancy sense of the word. In that you have to do it every day.

      In that it is never over. Ever.

      People heal. If you have a rape victim and you have a pulse, you are recovering from your rape. Full stop.

      That's EVERY victim. ALL OF THEM ARE RECOVERING FROM RAPE. It's not for me to decide how good or not good said recovery is, or to call one journey a success and another a failure. ALL OF THEM ARE ON THAT JOURNEY. ALL OF THEM ARE RECOVERING. YOU. ME. ALL OF US. We are ALL recovering from our rapes.

      And there will NEVER be a day where we can stand up and say we're done. There will NEVER be a day where I can stand up and say I won't ever want to cut again. An alcoholic will never be able to stand up and say they don't want to drink. We are recovering. We are not recovered, and we never will be.

      And I object STRONGLY to the idea that a rape victim who suicides is a failure in the process. Suicide is not a choice. Suicidal ideation is a temporary seizure of the brain triggered by depression and depression-related chemical deficiencies (IE Serotonin and Dopamine). Continual suicidal thoughts are comparable to a continual Grand Mal seizure. It's a medical condition that indicates the individual is in severe distress. A suicide is no more at fault for their death than a cancer patient is at fault for their tumors.

      The depression would not exist if the victim were not raped. The rape victim hasn't failed to recover if they suicide, any more than they "failed" to recover if they contracted AIDS and died, or if the rapist murdered them in the process.

      They were murdered. It isn't failure or weakness to be killed by a rapist. It's a crime. It isn't failure or weakness to suicide after rape. It's still the same crime.

      If you make it four hours, then suicide, you made it four days. That's success, not failure. The failure is on our part, society's part, for not giving you the support system to make it for five.

      Delete
    2. You could also argue that the idea that a rape victim can be "recovered" and should work towards that goal is an extension of that rape culture thing everybody keeps talking about.

      Same thing for the idea that a rape victim who suicides is a victim of themselves and not a victim of both their rape and of a social and medical support system that would rather blame them for their suicidal ideation than attempt to treat it properly. It's not an issue of "strong enough" to handle it. PEOPLE WHO CONSIDER SUICIDE ARE SICK. We don't blame people for contracting the flu. Why we elect to blame people for depression and suicidal thoughts is beyond me.

      Delete
  8. And again: I'm not tolerating abusive language directed at my friends OR AT YOU. Hence why I deleted Ian's comment as well (Sorry, Ian. Do not call other people Unnamed Friend's "parrots". We will work from the assumption that they are valid people with valid points.)

    If you want to have your comments stick around, do not apply demeaning names to other people. At all.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I apologize for stepping over the house rules. I'm getting a little heated here, so I'm going to step back from this thread for a while. I'll repeat my suggestion that you might want to disable anonymous comments though.

      Delete
    2. I apologize too for being insulting. I'm an adult, I should act like one. Internet bullying is just such a crappy thing to do. You see those things on the news all the time where people really do kill themselves from it (I don't know if you saw that thing a while back about "Unnamed friend" harassing some author so bad she tried to OD? Reading about that right before commenting wasn't a good idea.) Anyway, I'm sorry. Your blog, your rules. Typing in anger is always a bad idea, it won't happen again.

      As an aside, I honestly have no idea where I "shit all over" their experiences. I didn't talk about them at all, I tried to keep it away from anything personal (aside, you know, from the fact that I thought it was stupid to come onto someone else's blog and purposefully misunderstand them). I do have sympathy--abuse/assault is life altering. And if I did inadvertently say something insensitive, I'd like to know (aside from the name-calling). I'd offer an apology to the person if they have a valid point.

      Delete
    3. Yeah. I read about that. Though I think it was a combo of Unnamed Friend and a professional author who should have known better...and probably underlying issues too. Speaking as somebody who came awful close to an attempt, suicide attempts aren't usually any one thing. More that perfect storm of stress and depression and that one inciting incident.

      In other words: Yes, but I'm not giving her that much power over other people. She's not God.

      I would love to overpsychoanalyze what's going on here, but that'd be disrespectful to everybody involved. Including the people who (turns on angry switch) came into my house, shit on my floor, and then demanded that I treat them respectfully(turns off angry switch). Despite that, they deserve more respect than they were shown here on the blog. Not because they are right or wrong, but because they are people who went through a shitty time and have to live with that.

      I think my big problem with the vitriol is...you tend to lose the actual, valuable points in the middle of all that screaming. Put somebody on the defensive, they push back. Be nice, you open a dialogue where everybody might learn something. It's not nearly as much fun as pushing, but dialogue changes things. Pushing just starts wars.

      People deserve respect until they prove they don't deserve it. And nasty as Unnamed Friend is sometimes, she's not nearly that bad.

      Delete
  9. And I just re-read your comments for the fourth time, Anon, just to make sure I didn't miss a point, and boy did I miss a big one.

    Yeah, shitting over your experiences is not cool. I'm sorry I did not catch that. It's my bad. I caught the "twat" because I was watching for insulting comments, but I didn't catch the gist of what was being said to you because I felt strongly put onto the defensive. When we feel the need to defend ourselves, we tend to do really stupid shit. And it's my bad.

    That said, there was something about infrequent comments from Unnamed Friend re: me, and all that tells me is you don't glue yourself to her twitter feed for hours at a time. From Mid-January to February 22nd this year, she tweeted about me every day.

    This link? Has a screen shot of my traffic refferals for that day.
    http://creativedoubledipper.blogspot.com/2013/02/just-little-thing.html

    ALL of those twitter links are her. ALL OF THEM. I checked, and I blanked out the ones I could not confirm as coming directly from her twitter feed. Between January and Feb 22nd, this happened every single day. In those tweets she called me illiterate, racist, stupid, hilarious and "fun". Not my words, mind, but making fun of me. That was the fun.

    Oh, but she tried to call me out on saying that JK Rowling chose to go on welfare. And then somebody pointed out that yes, Rowling did, and she was all "Huh" before she moved on to the next out-of-context quote.

    After I posted that screenshot and told her that this wasn't cool? She stopped doing it for a month.

    She protected her twitter feed a week before she started posting about me again.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Speaking of which...*waves at twitter* Nice to see ya'll. Hope you're having fun at my expense!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Nobody gets to tell you how to deal with your own assault and recovery. NOBODY. Even therapists, the good ones, help you find your own way rather than imposing their beliefs on your journey. And if someone is indeed hiding behind 'activism' in order to cut you down, then they're misusing the concepts therein. You are not automatically an asshole because you're white and live in the U.S. That's not how privilege discussions are meant to work. That is however how some truly shitty people appropriate activism language in order to hide their sociopathy, though.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Well said, Tiger. *polite clap*

      As an aside to CW, I was the anon and I'll stop doing the anon posting. I just wasn't sure how to do it without including a link before, and was too lazy/pissed/dumb to figure it out. Again, sorry for rising to their bait. This person said it much more eloquently than I did.

      Delete
  12. Oh also in case it needed to be said I am a rape and assault survivor AND I need to write and read about rape and assault. Anyone who says those topics are off limits misunderstands what it is to be a writer (though as LKH has shown perhaps cheap portrayals of the same should be off limits), as well as what it might mean for others who survive differently than they do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LKH's type of portrayal are explosive sticks of mental dynamite, and they need to go away.

      As for the rest...thank you.

      Delete
  13. Gee, don't read a blog for ONE day, and things explode. I am sorry that Unnamed Friend has been mocking you on Twitter -- that's not cool. I admit that I did find your blog via her mention of you (the first time), but I have stuck around to read it because I like the cut of your jib and I enjoy your synopsis of LKH's books. So at least one true admirer has come from her efforts.

    Speaking as an abuse survivor, I did find your wording in the comment about "recovery" slightly problematic, but I accept that you meant something different from what I took from the words the first time I read them and I do like what you meant.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think part of the issue is, I was raised by two chemical abuse councelors, so my language is pretty loaded. I forget that some people think recovery comes with an end date.

      My wording frequently sucks. I am a lazy ass, and I'm usually writing these things after a long shift at work, and more often than not, after a couple beers. (because knowing I can have a Blue Moon when I'm done with the shift is the only thing keeping me from vomiting in the rich lady's lap when she says "We're doing APPIES" at 8:59 on a thursday.) I think if I let the posts sit for a week I could catch every error in wording, but that would not be optimal.

      That was actually a fun argument (fun in the "Let's pop popcorn from the bomb shelter" Sense of the word) between my dad and my mom's relatives re: recovery. They once asked him when he'd be done recovering from alcoholism and he tried to explain that's not how it works.

      It did not go well. They offered him a beer every time he came to visit for the next twenty years. Have I mentioned that for most of my childhood my dad avoided my mom's family like they had plague?

      Delete
    2. That said...if and when I say something you find problematic, do not hesitate to let me know. You guys have a blank check to call me on my shit. Whenever and wherever you want to.

      Delete
  14. I only check this blog about once a week, so I missed this discussion. I just wanted to say that I largely agree with your opinions as stated above. I'm not going to say more than that; I've been fortunate that I've never had to deal with rape of any kind. I do write characters who have been raped in their past, and I would never trivialize their recovery in a story. Anyone who has suffered from sexual assault of any kinda has my best wishes for recovery.

    Having said all that, I really don't know how to finish - social awkward for the win! So I'll just say: keep writing. We're still here, reading and rooting for you. :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. She sounds like a real bitch, I hope she becomes a good person and realises what a bitch she was and angsts about how horrible she was and developes self-esteem issues because of it and relapses into her bitchy persona only to feel even more remorse for it and then I want her to break down in therapy and...
    (Two Hours Later)
    ...and then after the divorce I want her to loose custody of the kids because of a stupid mistake she made because she was feeling so sorry about what she did to you that the house caught fire cause she wasn't paying attention to the stove and...
    (4 Hours later)
    ...And then once the cult has kicked her out, I think she should be questioned by the police because she's still carrying the ritualistic duck statue hollowed out with powdered drugs at the airport and so she ends up in this really backwards jail for like a month but it's okay because her rich german friend comes and bails her out and then...
    (3 Hours Later)...so it turns out that he was actually a spy for the other organized crime group pretending to be a police officer pretending to be a mole in the first organized crime group so like...
    (5 Hours Later)
    ...Now Lassie takes pictures of porcelain dolls for a living and so when she first came to Lassie's house there were rows and rows of the creepy things on the shelves and it made her feel really paranoid also it totally smells like old person even though Lassie is only like 27 and doesn't have nearly that many cats...
    (7 Hours Later)
    ...But it turns out that this wasn't really a possessed doll as she and her partner first suspected but actually a doll given life by the care and attention of it's owner and it wanted revenge on the Dolan family because their great great great great great great...
    (2 Hours Later)
    And that's how humanity finally achieved world peace.
    I hope that bitch gets what's coming to her.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I'm so late to this exchange, but seriously, focusing on recovery shames victims who haven't recovered? Really? That's the premise being taken by the critics?

    Not all variant responses in the realm of human experience are cause for shame, and recovery stories from sexual assault should be represented in literature more than they are. Recovery and a focus on recovery should not be shamed.

    I have the privilege of not being a victim of sexual assault, but I did somehow find myself in a longterm relationship that was emotionally unhealthy, belittling, dismissive of me as a human being, and where my personage was treated as an inconvenience.

    For me, emerging from that relationship and recovering from it has been *dependent* in every way on reading and hearing about other people's experiences with similar things. Particularly reading and hearing about how others *recovered* from those experiences and relationships. I can't tell you how much hope and help reading and hearing recovery stories has given me. Part of my journey was to participate in a group that included survivors of sexual assault, where the focus was on sharing stories of recovery from these experiences. Simply said, this focus laid a foundation of hope for those in the group.

    Seriously, why would you ever bash or shame someone for discussing a focus on recovery?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Good grief. I don't know what to say. When she had a go at me, and everyone justified it on the basis of my being a straight-white-guy, that at least made some kind of internal sense. But this...

    How has everyone supported and allowed this for so long? What evil superpower does RH have that brainwashes everyone?

    I'm very sorry to read about your experience and then having RH pour more woe on top of that. My own experiences at her hands are trivial by comparison, and I know the impact they've had on me.

    I really do not know what to say to you.

    I hope your writing and your recovery go well in the future. I hope she's gone from your life forever now.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Wow, I just wanted to say that I will try to remember your words about recovery and strength. They are an inspiration. And so is how you fought back and stood up for yourself against a hatemonger's attacks. Thank you for your moving words.

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  19. I hope I don't say this wrong, but the fact that you are here is beautiful. Blessing / good vibes / whatever a strange woman can do to support you to you

    ReplyDelete