doe-eyed-disaster

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Reading the new Vulture article about Neil Gaiman's serial sexual abuse (and Amanda Palmer's complicity) has shaken me, maybe most viscerally in the way it describes the weird kind of normal that victims so often have to construct.

Many survivors of sexual violence do not process their experience as such, not at first. I was one of them. It's such a shock to the system that lots of us kind of just... erase it? Like the tape is fuzzy there or the file got corrupted or the footage is just abruptly missing for that stretch of time. You just go on and don't really account for that lost time.

I got changed and threw out the clothes I'd been wearing in a dumpster, came back to the room, and woke the rest of the band up to start loading the trailer so we could get to the next show. One of the men in that room had raped me only a few hours earlier.

One of my band mates was having marriage trouble and asked us, his friends and me, for advice. I gave him genuinely good insight and helped navigate a tough moment in the relationship. He had raped me less than 12 hours previously.

We played a show with some artists I looked up to. I was in the green room with them and him. He saw how excited I was to be talking to these people and started talking me up as a musician to them. He had raped me only a few weeks prior.

Who do you tell? Who can you tell? Who will believe you? Who will do something, anything, to help you? I wasn't talking to my family. I didn't have other friends. I didn't know anyone in the scene. I wasn't thinking explicitly in those terms, but they lurked in the back of my head, the kinds of things that redirect you out of any critical analysis.

Lots of things went unexamined: why I'd thrown those clothes out; why I was bleeding and bruised the next day; why I was still nursing those injuries weeks later. That sort of thing. I didn't think to wonder why I didn't like to let him out of my sight when we hang out. I didn't pay any mind to how I'd get so anxious that I could barely breathe if he walked behind me or between me and a door. I couldn't bear to think precisely *whose* hands I kept feeling around my waist and neck when I woke up in a panic.

And you just keep on with that fractured kind of normal for as long as it takes, every day that you can't admit it adding interest to the emotional devastation. You wonder sometimes "am I crazy? I must be. Normal people don't feel that way." You deflect when the conversation veers too close. You feel afraid to label your experience *that* way because really it wasn't all that bad and I'm just exaggerating like I do.

And then one day you can't keep up the facade. Something slips. Someone sees something you didn't want them to. Someone comments and then doesn't buy the deflection. The details are different every time for every person, but two things are always true:

* you're gonna grieve hideously for the hideous thing that was done to you

* you're gonna have to deal with the thought that no one might ever believe you

It's a power thing. He had the power to do that to you. To me. To her. To them. That's what made you vulnerable. He wasn't suave or seductive or darkly brilliant. He was just stronger than you, more powerful. That's what keeps you quiet. He'll be able to shut the conversation down, deflect and move on, label you a libellous slut and call it a day with no more inconvenience than wiping off his shoes. He'll have friends that help him find his marks, who make him opportunities. He'll toss you right out and not think twice about doing it. My guy got to do it to me once, and it took everything in me to manage to keep it from happening again without *looking* like that's what I was doing. Sometimes though, when they're rich and powerful, they just get to keep doing and doing and doing. Dozens of times to dozens of women, every one of them living the same fractured reality that I and so many others have woken up into.

If you're reading the accusations against Neil Gaiman and wondering how it went on so long and so far, that's the whole equation: powerful men surrounded by enablers, living in a culture that sees their trauma as fodder for literary awards and ours as something so inconvenient to consider that it's easier to leave us all alone with nothing to console the sense that, even though you can't quite remember it, something terrible happened right where the tape skips.

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same as it ever was

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once you start thinking "idk if I want [transition related surgery] but if I could magically just have the results from it I would agree to it in a heartbeat"

then you gotta acknowledge that you actually do know that you want that surgery. the thing you're not sure about is whether or not you can endure the process of getting and recovering from the surgery.

and you'll never know the answer to that actual question unless you start seriously looking into it and researching what that process is like and what things you'd need to do in order to make it happen.

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this is probably above my pay grade but regarding neil gaiman it's so starkly clear how much class-based absue is entwined in this horrid situation. his victims were financially dependent on him, unable to even admit to themselves that what was happening was abuse because they had, in some cases, literally nowhere else to go. amanda palmer, self-proclaimed feminist, was complicit in a truly fucked mistreatment of a woman because she wanted to keep the babysitter that she didn't have to pay. gaiman was quoted literally saying that he's very wealthy to one of his victims. even the little mention of gaiman making decisions in his and palmer's marriage bc he's the one with the money is just. so telling when you know what to look for. they both took advantage of their social and financial priviledge over their victims and used it to abuse, manipulate, put down, and in the end try to silence them.

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when the safe word is “gentle” because you don’t want them to stop, just be… more gentle.

safe words don’t always have to mean total, full red. safe words can mean go slower, i need a moment but don’t pull out, can you not do specifically whatever it is you’re doing, etc.

sex is supposed to always have open communication, and if you’re like me and struggle to say full sentences or give specific instructions, come up with a list of words that have different meanings to you and your partner(s).

talk, put everything out in the open, be vulnerable, trust this person / these people, make sure you’re all on the exact same page, and most importantly, be safe ~

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Giving my girlfriend music lessons so she can sing that one LMFAO song correctly when we do our HRT

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Long magical girl transformation and the whole audience is so excited to see how I will subvert it, but in the end I just look like a normal magical girl and they're all booing me because I didn't subvert the genre and I'm crying because I just wanted to be a normal magical girl

[doe-eyed-disaster]

[doe-eyed-disaster]

this is probably above my pay grade but regarding neil gaiman it's so starkly clear how much class-based absue is entwined in this horrid situation. his victims were financially dependent on him, unable to even admit to themselves that what was happening was abuse because they had, in some cases, literally nowhere else to go. amanda palmer, self-proclaimed feminist, was complicit in a truly fucked mistreatment of a woman because she wanted to keep the babysitter that she didn't have to pay. gaiman was quoted literally saying that he's very wealthy to one of his victims. even the little mention of gaiman making decisions in his and palmer's marriage bc he's the one with the money is just. so telling when you know what to look for. they both took advantage of their social and financial priviledge over their victims and used it to abuse, manipulate, put down, and in the end try to silence them.

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awareness of "the abused can become the abuser" is useless without the knowledge that abuse is a choice anyone makes that is made for self-benefit. recently I watched an interview on the psychology of domestic abuse and the woman who interviewed those who inflicted the abuse always made sure to ask "why didn't you take it further?" because the answer would always show the abuser hadn't simply lost control. for example one man said he pushed over his girlfriend but didn't kick her once she was down because he didn't want any noticeable bruising that caused suspicion. human psychology is much less poetic than you think. too many psychology enjoyers only enjoy the poetic

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pouring one out today for the tgirl subs who don’t like anal. nobody can truly understand their struggle.

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Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman's whole family was so obviously an enterprise – it functioned on the exploitation of vulnerable people, young isolated women hired as nannies and babysitters, a tenant family who would manage land and properties. The whole timeline and the way they did damage control was so much like any major company – Palmer identifying the vulnerable and "hiring" them, Gaiman providing the money and feeling entitled to abuse. Palmer functioning as HR to mediate "abuse" by further isolating the worker. The reproduction of ideology in teaching your child to call his nanny a slave. The final straw for HR only coming when the beloved, innocent child was exposed to the abuse. All for preserving the value of their family, the ideology it represented (Palmer and Gaiman's long documented history of taking advantage of fans) and the media enterprise where they both made and sold "Art" about it. Family abolition now and so on.

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I’m legitimately wondering if there’s any reason a neovagina has to look especially realistic since it’s not like I’m gonna be seeing it all the time and genitals aren’t super aesthetic anyway so maybe I can get a discount if the doctor doesn’t have to like perfectly craft every fold of the vulva, like it’s not gonna be particularly deep or wide for me anyway, just gimme something that’s works and is easy to clean and knock a few bucks of the price, I’m not asking for Michaelangelo’s labia or anything y'know, I appreciate maybe the doctor won’t give me teeth or tentacles down there but at the same time I’m not going to get into a relationship with someone if they feel like they gotta conduct a 120 point snatchspection just to confirm my cunt meets the fuckability codes, I’m sure as shit not pushing babies out it and there’s no reason to overcomplicate taking a wee, so why not go for something a little more aerodynamic and low rez right?

[doe-eyed-disaster]

What would you do

What would you do if you showed up for a date with me, and instead of a guy like I said in my dating profile, I was a small injured deer?

And you asked me why I didn't say I was a small injured deer in my profile, and I said I was worried you would hate me for being so small and injured?

And then I got a salad and slowly nibbled on it, flapping my ears while you told me about warhammer 40 thousand. And then when it came time to split the bill, I told you I had no money because I'm a creature of a forest, but that I would pay you for my portion in song?

And so I sat up on my hind legs, and sang the most beautiful sonata you've ever heard in your life. I sang of the valleys and the rivers. In the first part of the song, you could hear my voice waver from the pain of my injury. But then it crescendoed with fire and determination, as if in the middle of that very song I decided that I must keep living no matter what happens, and that you must keep living too?

Then, when you came back to your senses from being entranced by the beauty of the song, there were tears streaming down your face? I was nowhere to be seen, leaving behind only a single autumn leaf on the table? You looked down at your hands, and in your hands was a small note with your childhood dream you had long forgotten on it, written by your own hand?

What would you do?

Would you be mad?

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My new mission in life is to impart this wisdom to as many people as possible