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Because there's more than one truth to every experience
11 years ago
šāæš Trigger warning: While I've avoided graphic detail, if you're sensitive to matters of less than 100% consent, you may wish to brace yourself and/or avoid this entry
First of all, please note that all opinions and experiences recounted in this post are mine and mine alone. I may make educated guesses about the attitudes of others, but I in no way wish to speak for anyone but myself. Also note that I am not speaking in any kind of official capacity; I'm speaking as a tomboy in her late twenties sharing some personal experiences in the hopes that it may help some people. The timing of this post is largely coincidental; the frustration that eventually led to it being made has been simmering under the surface for a long, long time, as my fiancƩ can attest.
I have only told at most a handful of people about these things before. Not because of shame or fear or anything else, but simply because I ultimately don't believe they matter any more than any other life experience, and unlike many other experiences, these may unfairly reflect badly on the other people involved. And I don't want that; I truly believe the worst thing anyone did in these situations was make a mistake. I'm not even sure there's anyone who knows who all the players are, truth to be told. I ask that any comments are kept civil; while I don't normally like to hide comments, I can and will hide any comments that do any of the following:
* Direct threats or verbal abuse at any of the persons involved
* Attempt to identify any of the persons involved (or, hell, that name names in general)
* Attempt to dictate to me how I should feel about any of these experiences
* Attempt to shift focus to other persons or situations
No names used are the actual names or screennames of any individuals involved to the best of my knowledge. I just find it obnoxious to try to tell (or read) a story full of "Dude A" and "Person B" so I'd much rather identify them by random made-up handles. If someone by coincidence happens to share these handles, they are not the person involved in the situation and I will bite your left ear off if you give them any grief over it.
All these situations happen to involve cons and hotel rooms. What cons, hotels, or even countries are involved is not important, nor is the exact point in time at which these events transpired.
Primitus was invited back to our hotel room by one of my roommates, a friendly gal we can call Lassie, and I happened to either walk in or be there when they came. I was rather downcast at the time, as this was back when I suffered from much more severe separation anxiety than I do now, and our other roomie had just left. He was a nice, sweet boy and showed concern when he saw me crying. Hugs happened, progressed into kisses, and at some point Primitus asked about progressing to full-blown intercourse.
I declined, but we continued making out. Hands made it into my pants, and I was asked again, either by Primitus or Lassie, to have sex with him. If memory serves I declined again before finally relenting. Sex happened, protection was used, and we parted ways. Endorphins being what they are, I was feeling a bit less down in the dumps afterward, and when my thoughts cleared I only briefly reflected over how rude it had been of Primitus to ask with his hand down my pants after first getting a no, before shrugging it off and dismissing my eventual consent as "ha, that was stupid of me".
I haven't crossed paths with Primitus again since, but I imagine his memory of the situation doesn't match mine. I'm fine with that. He was a genuinely pleasant person to talk to and I have no doubt he had all the best intentions; I attribute the rest to bona fide miscommunication.
Secundus and my roommate, whom we can call Lady, met in the hallways of the con hotel towards the end of the day, and when I went to find her, she introduced us. Lady being Lady, she said "this is my friend Secundus", not "this is a friendly dude I just met", so I had no problem with her inviting him back to our room with us. She and Secundus made out, Secundus and I made out, and far as I was concerned it was all just friendly cuddling at that point.
Eventually, Secundus and Lady started asking me to sleep with him; she had issues that made her unable to, and she wanted to watch us, and he, well... I think it's safe to assume that he was a guy who was turned on after making out with two girls and who didn't have any particular issue with random con hookups. I didn't really want to, and said so, but after being pleaded at by Lady and asked multiple times by Secundus while at least one of his hands was inside my underwear, I eventually relented and some clothes started to come off.
I did put my foot down in regards to condom usage, so he went back to his room to retrieve one while I cuddled with Lady. She ended up falling asleep partway through my and Secundus's horizontal mambo, which annoyed me a bit at the time since she'd been so insistent she wanted to watch. Eventually things were over, we were both reasonably satisfied, and Secundus went back to his room. To me, this was another stupid decision on my part, and I've long since chalked it up to life experience.
I can't recall if I saw him again before the end of the con, though I do know he expressed excitement about the prospect of a repeat performance when he found out I was going to another con in common with him later on. I spent that con avoiding him. Again, there is no doubt in my mind that if he was to tell this story, he would not feel there was any coercion involved, and from where I'm standing I believe both of these perspectives are the truth.
Tertius, finally, shared a room with me when I came to another con. He was footing the bill not only for the room but had also covered my flight tickets, and we were decent friends. I was aware that he wanted in my pants, and equally aware that he was married with a wife who would not approve of extramarital shenanigans, and so I'd made it clear ahead of time that I wanted nothing to happen which his wife would object to.
We went to a pub with his two friends who were also attending that con, and over the course of the evening they all had ample amounts of beer while I had two screwdrivers or tequila sunrises or other OJ-plus-booze drinks. I have the alcohol resistance of a fasting shrew at the best of times, so I was pretty drunk, but this is not something I expect other people to realize; I'm also a fairly high-functioning drunk. Mostly I spent the time we were at the pub giggling my head off (totally normal behavior for me even when sober) and lightly punching Tertius in the arm at regular intervals.
Once Tertius and I got back to our hotel room, we did some hugging and cuddling, which I felt fell into the "acceptable" category in regards to what I expect reasonable people to not have a cow over. Things progressed south pretty gradually, and I was too caught up in the moment to call it off. If I had, I do expect he would have stopped.
Afterward, I was a bit disappointed in Tertius, since he knew I didn't want part in his cheating, but I knew he was a cad, and we were both inebriated to one extent or another. I lay on him the blame for asking the question, but accept my own responsibility to pull myself together (which I can do; first time I got hammered my mom wouldn't even believe I was drunk despite both me and the person I'd gone drinking with telling her so) and assert my position, which I failed to do. Other things eventually ended this friendship, but these events were no significant part of it. He did a shitty thing in the same way it's shitty of a friend to ask you to accompany them to the doctor's office if the place gives you the heebie-jeebies; it was thoughtless, but not abusive.
So what's my point in all this? Well, there's a few of them.
Firstly, I was young and stupid. Hell, I still am, just less so on most counts. The way to get over being young and stupid is to accumulate life experience, and I'm perfectly happy attributing all three of these instances to that. We all make decisions we regret, and have our moments of poor judgment; it's part of growing up. Importantly, though, none of these experiences were traumatic. I may have found it uncomfortable that Secundus expected a repeat performance when we next had the opportunity to potentially cross paths, but I also get uncomfortable speaking out loud about sex, getting compliments on clothing I don't normally wear, and getting blood drawn (understatement of the year!).
Secondly, what has scarred me to some extent about these events is constantly hearing others who've gone through the same thing being told they were raped, with an expectation that they should be traumatized. I'm not a rape victim. I'm not a rape survivor. I'm someone who happened to have a few experiences that involved sex and hesitation, in which I arguably didn't make the smartest decisions. I've honestly got more trauma associated with accidentally cheating in a tournament chess game in 4th grade. (Yes, that still eats me, to this day, and if I could get a hold of my opponent to apologize I'd do so.)
I'm not in any way saying it's not okay to be supportive of people who've been through this kind of thing and do consider it rape. By all means, have their back! I'm not even saying it's not okay to attempt to expand people's views of what "real rape" is. By all means, make sure the people around you know that rape is not just jumping out of the shadows and brutalizing some poor soul! But, here's the kicker, do not impose the "rape" label on other people's experiences.
If someone were, against all odds, to figure out who any of the guys (or gals) mentioned in this text are, and tried to use these experiences against them, I would be absolutely furious, and would step up to defend them against those allegations without hesitation. I hate being told what I'm supposed to feel about things, and this is one of those things. If I don't feel I was raped (and I'm not in any kind of relationship at all with the guys that might skew my perception), I don't believe anyone else has the right to impose that label on the events. That, to me, is far more of a violation than anything I experienced, effectively saying that my opinions and feelings on the matter are irrelevant.
Thirdly, I believe it's important to remember that not everyone has the same level of social skills that you do. I'm by no means a wizard of interpersonal relationships, and I've had enough experience in the course of just living life dealing with individuals who are socially inept enough to make me want to bang my head against a wall to realize that. Please do not assume malice where simple ineptitude would do; please do not assume lies are being told when the alleged liar may just have a different interpretation of the situation.
First of all, please note that all opinions and experiences recounted in this post are mine and mine alone. I may make educated guesses about the attitudes of others, but I in no way wish to speak for anyone but myself. Also note that I am not speaking in any kind of official capacity; I'm speaking as a tomboy in her late twenties sharing some personal experiences in the hopes that it may help some people. The timing of this post is largely coincidental; the frustration that eventually led to it being made has been simmering under the surface for a long, long time, as my fiancƩ can attest.
I have only told at most a handful of people about these things before. Not because of shame or fear or anything else, but simply because I ultimately don't believe they matter any more than any other life experience, and unlike many other experiences, these may unfairly reflect badly on the other people involved. And I don't want that; I truly believe the worst thing anyone did in these situations was make a mistake. I'm not even sure there's anyone who knows who all the players are, truth to be told. I ask that any comments are kept civil; while I don't normally like to hide comments, I can and will hide any comments that do any of the following:
* Direct threats or verbal abuse at any of the persons involved
* Attempt to identify any of the persons involved (or, hell, that name names in general)
* Attempt to dictate to me how I should feel about any of these experiences
* Attempt to shift focus to other persons or situations
No names used are the actual names or screennames of any individuals involved to the best of my knowledge. I just find it obnoxious to try to tell (or read) a story full of "Dude A" and "Person B" so I'd much rather identify them by random made-up handles. If someone by coincidence happens to share these handles, they are not the person involved in the situation and I will bite your left ear off if you give them any grief over it.
All these situations happen to involve cons and hotel rooms. What cons, hotels, or even countries are involved is not important, nor is the exact point in time at which these events transpired.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~Primitus was invited back to our hotel room by one of my roommates, a friendly gal we can call Lassie, and I happened to either walk in or be there when they came. I was rather downcast at the time, as this was back when I suffered from much more severe separation anxiety than I do now, and our other roomie had just left. He was a nice, sweet boy and showed concern when he saw me crying. Hugs happened, progressed into kisses, and at some point Primitus asked about progressing to full-blown intercourse.
I declined, but we continued making out. Hands made it into my pants, and I was asked again, either by Primitus or Lassie, to have sex with him. If memory serves I declined again before finally relenting. Sex happened, protection was used, and we parted ways. Endorphins being what they are, I was feeling a bit less down in the dumps afterward, and when my thoughts cleared I only briefly reflected over how rude it had been of Primitus to ask with his hand down my pants after first getting a no, before shrugging it off and dismissing my eventual consent as "ha, that was stupid of me".
I haven't crossed paths with Primitus again since, but I imagine his memory of the situation doesn't match mine. I'm fine with that. He was a genuinely pleasant person to talk to and I have no doubt he had all the best intentions; I attribute the rest to bona fide miscommunication.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~Secundus and my roommate, whom we can call Lady, met in the hallways of the con hotel towards the end of the day, and when I went to find her, she introduced us. Lady being Lady, she said "this is my friend Secundus", not "this is a friendly dude I just met", so I had no problem with her inviting him back to our room with us. She and Secundus made out, Secundus and I made out, and far as I was concerned it was all just friendly cuddling at that point.
Eventually, Secundus and Lady started asking me to sleep with him; she had issues that made her unable to, and she wanted to watch us, and he, well... I think it's safe to assume that he was a guy who was turned on after making out with two girls and who didn't have any particular issue with random con hookups. I didn't really want to, and said so, but after being pleaded at by Lady and asked multiple times by Secundus while at least one of his hands was inside my underwear, I eventually relented and some clothes started to come off.
I did put my foot down in regards to condom usage, so he went back to his room to retrieve one while I cuddled with Lady. She ended up falling asleep partway through my and Secundus's horizontal mambo, which annoyed me a bit at the time since she'd been so insistent she wanted to watch. Eventually things were over, we were both reasonably satisfied, and Secundus went back to his room. To me, this was another stupid decision on my part, and I've long since chalked it up to life experience.
I can't recall if I saw him again before the end of the con, though I do know he expressed excitement about the prospect of a repeat performance when he found out I was going to another con in common with him later on. I spent that con avoiding him. Again, there is no doubt in my mind that if he was to tell this story, he would not feel there was any coercion involved, and from where I'm standing I believe both of these perspectives are the truth.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~Tertius, finally, shared a room with me when I came to another con. He was footing the bill not only for the room but had also covered my flight tickets, and we were decent friends. I was aware that he wanted in my pants, and equally aware that he was married with a wife who would not approve of extramarital shenanigans, and so I'd made it clear ahead of time that I wanted nothing to happen which his wife would object to.
We went to a pub with his two friends who were also attending that con, and over the course of the evening they all had ample amounts of beer while I had two screwdrivers or tequila sunrises or other OJ-plus-booze drinks. I have the alcohol resistance of a fasting shrew at the best of times, so I was pretty drunk, but this is not something I expect other people to realize; I'm also a fairly high-functioning drunk. Mostly I spent the time we were at the pub giggling my head off (totally normal behavior for me even when sober) and lightly punching Tertius in the arm at regular intervals.
Once Tertius and I got back to our hotel room, we did some hugging and cuddling, which I felt fell into the "acceptable" category in regards to what I expect reasonable people to not have a cow over. Things progressed south pretty gradually, and I was too caught up in the moment to call it off. If I had, I do expect he would have stopped.
Afterward, I was a bit disappointed in Tertius, since he knew I didn't want part in his cheating, but I knew he was a cad, and we were both inebriated to one extent or another. I lay on him the blame for asking the question, but accept my own responsibility to pull myself together (which I can do; first time I got hammered my mom wouldn't even believe I was drunk despite both me and the person I'd gone drinking with telling her so) and assert my position, which I failed to do. Other things eventually ended this friendship, but these events were no significant part of it. He did a shitty thing in the same way it's shitty of a friend to ask you to accompany them to the doctor's office if the place gives you the heebie-jeebies; it was thoughtless, but not abusive.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~So what's my point in all this? Well, there's a few of them.
Firstly, I was young and stupid. Hell, I still am, just less so on most counts. The way to get over being young and stupid is to accumulate life experience, and I'm perfectly happy attributing all three of these instances to that. We all make decisions we regret, and have our moments of poor judgment; it's part of growing up. Importantly, though, none of these experiences were traumatic. I may have found it uncomfortable that Secundus expected a repeat performance when we next had the opportunity to potentially cross paths, but I also get uncomfortable speaking out loud about sex, getting compliments on clothing I don't normally wear, and getting blood drawn (understatement of the year!).
Secondly, what has scarred me to some extent about these events is constantly hearing others who've gone through the same thing being told they were raped, with an expectation that they should be traumatized. I'm not a rape victim. I'm not a rape survivor. I'm someone who happened to have a few experiences that involved sex and hesitation, in which I arguably didn't make the smartest decisions. I've honestly got more trauma associated with accidentally cheating in a tournament chess game in 4th grade. (Yes, that still eats me, to this day, and if I could get a hold of my opponent to apologize I'd do so.)
I'm not in any way saying it's not okay to be supportive of people who've been through this kind of thing and do consider it rape. By all means, have their back! I'm not even saying it's not okay to attempt to expand people's views of what "real rape" is. By all means, make sure the people around you know that rape is not just jumping out of the shadows and brutalizing some poor soul! But, here's the kicker, do not impose the "rape" label on other people's experiences.
If someone were, against all odds, to figure out who any of the guys (or gals) mentioned in this text are, and tried to use these experiences against them, I would be absolutely furious, and would step up to defend them against those allegations without hesitation. I hate being told what I'm supposed to feel about things, and this is one of those things. If I don't feel I was raped (and I'm not in any kind of relationship at all with the guys that might skew my perception), I don't believe anyone else has the right to impose that label on the events. That, to me, is far more of a violation than anything I experienced, effectively saying that my opinions and feelings on the matter are irrelevant.
Thirdly, I believe it's important to remember that not everyone has the same level of social skills that you do. I'm by no means a wizard of interpersonal relationships, and I've had enough experience in the course of just living life dealing with individuals who are socially inept enough to make me want to bang my head against a wall to realize that. Please do not assume malice where simple ineptitude would do; please do not assume lies are being told when the alleged liar may just have a different interpretation of the situation.
How rarely do we take to heart the advice of others. As you say, we learn what works or does not work in Life through experiences. Hopefully most experiences are good, but realistically, we have to expect that a percentage of what we experience in Life will not be good.
The question then is what do we do with our bruised or āviolatedā feelings in the time that comes after a bad experience? Hopefully we use them as painful reminders that we have to change our cherished but incorrect views of Life and/or our preferred ways of dealing with Life.
To sum up, my favorite piece of advice is to ānever ascribe to malice what can more easily be explained as stupidityā. Stupidity on other peopleās part, or stupidity on our own part.
*fave journal*
Everyone is affected differently by their experiences, particularly experiences where others by accident or intent cross the boundaries of personal space, autonomy, and liberty. That's okay, and if we let them tell us how they feel about it instead of assuming how they should feel, everyone will be happier for it.
It gets more complicated, of course, with non-"standard" emotional states, such as depression, which I can understand is difficult to fully empathize with, though again attempting to accept what the sufferer states about their emotional state is a great first step.
(Not, in any way, attempting to invalidate any of what you said by this; you are quite correct. Just expanding on it. I'm very big on acknowledging emotions.)
Like you, I like to expand on a new thought to see if it is still valid in a macro sense, or at the least beyond the individual expressing it. If it is, then that is material to be used by the artist/writerās in their craft. Something to consider since we are on a āart siteā of sorts.
But to express an emotion or āfeelingā that is wholly unique to oneās self seems egotistical at best and at worst perhaps neurotic.
In a social context, I do believe it is important for an individual to be able to express what their experience of things is (politely), and for others to respect that that is what that individual is feeling. Attempting to invalidate someone's feelings is doing them a great disservice, though if the emotional experience is hampering them offering possible venues of thought to work through those feelings can be helpful and justified. Since this is such a subtle concept it's not one I expect is easy to incorporate into visual art, but all reflections on human interaction are useful to a writer, and
My firm belief is that it is not as black and white. I have a lot of opinions, and have discussed it with a lot of people -- including rather seriously in philosophic circles. The points you mention have been covered in lots of ways, too... If you wanna, I can talk -- and link to a few rather good food for thought things...
One of the main and most important things you touched, though, is -- what's important for a person is whether they regret it, whether it hurt/harmed them. But even if it did, it does not necessarily make the other party wholly (or sometimes, at all) guilty/responsible for it, because they couldn't know/perceive everything in same way.
I'm generally quite fascinated by the shades of grey there are to consent, and have written quite a bit of dubcon or things otherwise toying with where lines are drawn in that regard. Because, yes, perceptions are individual, and RL people are not Disney villains who do things because they're ~evil~.
... Then again, I was certainly hurt and harmed by a zillion of other things :)
While I wouldn't have sought out any of these experiences, I don't think I was particularly harmed by them. Yet they were all without my explicit consent and would count as criminal acts if it came down to it.
Did any or all of these people feel that my conduct or (lack of) response gave them permission? Perhaps - though in the last case, the guy was clearly acting against my initial attempts to rise. Certainly I could have said something - and yet, at such times, it's easy for your tongue to freeze.
Part of the issue is that restraint and loss of control can be arousing, at least for me. I didn't know any of the people above, yet I'm not sure that would've changed anything; they might think that I'd enjoy and be willing to go along with what they wanted without explicit consent - and they might be right, depending on the circumstances.
Your Tertius story strikes home, from another perspective. I've offered or considered offering friends a room share and even in one case a plane ticket to attend a convention, who I knew would not otherwise have the means to do so. In that last case my motivation was their contribution to one of the sites I run; I would've been perfectly happy for them to just attend the convention and have fun. But I can't honestly say I'd have minded if it became more than a simple room share, either. I can easily see that transforming into an expectation for some, and it makes me wary of making such offers for fear of misunderstanding.
It is a very tricky balancing act; I do believe such a thing as implied and/or unspoken consent exists, and I'm glad it does, as there are definitely situations I've been in where a question would have been at least potentially quite jarring.
I don't know your friends and obviously can't speak for them, but in the Tertius case, he'd made it very clear he wanted to do me well ahead of time, before the notion of attending this con together was even a twinkle in its father's eye, so to speak. That group of friends had a very open dialogue and we were all aware of a lot of his marital circumstances, including repeated infidelity. Even so I was not feeling pressured by the fact he'd treated me, nor honestly pressured, as such, at all. I was drunk and turned on and the combination made for a bad decision. So at least from where I'm standing, I understand your concern but also think the act of doing something nice for someone else in itself ought not be interpreted as unspoken expectation.
Then again, I also have had you pegged as asexual for at least half a decade, so I may not be making an entirely unbiased judgment.
So much of these problems ultimately come down to the ridiculous courtship dances people all too easily get wrapped up in. Girls are expected to play hard to get, guys are expected to have an angle.