#we have both had weird unwanted romantic advances made

[impulsivedecisionsat3am]

man i really just. experienced something. a coming of age of sorts maybe i guess

[punkpoemprose]

At the risk of sounding like a total asshole... a 4:30 am rant about emotional labor/ social teaching and developmental disability in media and in my life...

So I was watching “The Good Doctor” tonight and I was like “Oh that’s cool they gave the non-neurotypical male lead a neurotypical female love interest. That’s very cool!” until I realized that she wasn’t only his romantic interest, but also the one who had to teach him how to be “normal” (showing him how to drive/ taking him out for his first drink/ constantly pulling him out of his comfort zone). And I was like “Oh they did this in Scorpion too” where Paige and Walter are together but only because she shows him and his team how to be more “normal”. And it gave me a weird feeling, particularly because of a few situations I’ve been in/ currently am in.

For quite a while now family/ friends/ etc have always sent people my way who are “socially challenged” and have few to no friends, mainly people with an autism diagnosis, and particularly men.

Now I have two younger cousins (10 and 13) who have been diagnosed with Autism, and I’ve always been more than happy to talk to them about their interests/ give them my time because they’re family, I love them, and helping family socialize and learn is part of what a family is. So because I’m apparently “good with” and “patient with” people who aren’t particularly socially skilled, people see no problem with giving people like this my Facebook name, or even in some cases, my cell number.

And I mean, okay. If it’s one person, we have similar interests and you ask me first it’s not a big deal. But it’s SEVERAL people, none of whom have any interests in common with mine, none of whom I ever actually consented to speak with (me consenting after being asked, and me replying after someone told me that they got my number/ name from someone are entirely different situations) and all of whom feel completely comfortable with monopolizing my time on a daily basis (despite me telling both them and others that I do have other things to do in a day other then text them back) is just honestly not okay. One of these situations REALLY REALLY bugs me, especially since I’ve been noticing the dynamics I’ve seen on TV.

So when I was 16, my cousin gave her friend’s son my facebook name, and she told me she had (note: not asked, but just did) after the fact. Which was okay because at 16 I didn’t have much to do anyway and I figured the guy wouldn’t contact me. And he didn’t, until I broke up with my first boyfriend. After that it was a deluge of asking me how I was and talking about transformers and Pokemon and several other things I had no interest in. I replied back because I didn’t want to upset my cousin, but overtime it became increasingly more obvious that the more we talked, the more he thought it was “romantic”. And I repeatedly tried to explain to him that it definitely wasn’t (I had never met the guy, and honestly I hadn’t even had enough interest to look at his page or anything... 16 year old Emily was kind of a trash heap). And no matter what I said he continued to confuse kindness and intimacy... and I think that’s why these shows that make them the same thing bother me so much. Especially because when I tried to tell his mother and my cousin they just sort of wiped it away with a “Oh that’s just how he is”. And I was just like “Oh okay but it’s making me really uncomfortable, also he just won’t stop messaging me and I’m tired”, but it was somehow expected of me to just deal with it. And as I receive the 50th “What are you doing right now?” message from him today, I just have to ask myself why I’m doing so much emotional labor for someone I’ve only ever met once who has had a romantic/sexual fascination with me since I was 16 and he was 20. Like, I know I’m a “nice” person and I believe in being kind to everyone, but now that I’ve gathered several people who I don’t consider “friends” because we have zero in common and I evidently only exist in their lives so that they can have a romantic interest in me (at least four of them have outright told me that they’re in love with me and are waiting for me and Adam to split up... and they seem to not care when I tell them it’s inappropriate, probably because what their family/ friends say doesn’t back me up at all) and talk to me about whatever they want instead of what I’m interested in. And I can’t just stop talking to them both because of their attachment to me (I already have several frowny faces in my inbox right now because I haven’t been on facebook for more than a half hour today), and because the family member/ friend that referred them to me (like I’m some kind of goddamn service) would almost definitely ask why I haven’t talked to so-and-so.

Why is it my job? Why is it that me parsing out excessive amounts of emotional labor with nothing in return often while fending off unwanted advances is considered “normal” to everyone? And now looking at, albeit probably well meaning, media that ties romance and teaching of social skills, I just get so furious. Particularly because (with the exception of the two women I speak with) it’s more of the woman provides emotional support/ man expects it bullshit. I’m just so done with it.  

That’s not to say I don’t befriend people with autism/ other developmental disorders, because I have made some wonderful friends for whom that’s just a part of their lives for me. But the thing is I MADE THE CHOICE to befriend them, WE HAVE CLEAR BOUNDARIES that are RESPECTED, and we have a basis (similar interests) for our friendship. I’m providing emotional labor for them, and they are (to the best of their abilities), giving it in return. TLDR;

 The best thing you can do for someone who has issues with socializing is to TEACH THEM TO RESPECT BOUNDARIES OF OTHERS, not hand them off to someone you know is “nice” and expect that person to handle it from there. Media, give me more Temperance Brennan and Angela Montenegro complex teaching/ respecting friendships and less nonreciprocating emotional labor in relationships. Please.

[ixvyupdates]

5 Ways We Teach Rape Culture in Schools

How do we teach sexual consent in schools? You’ll probably say, “Well, we don’t teach it,” which is mostly true. Most schools don’t have consent written into their curriculum.

But here’s the thing: There is no neutral when we talk about sexual consent. By not actively working to undo the damaging messages of our culture, we are passively supporting them. In fact, many of them show up in the policies and cultural norms that we enforce.

I was thinking about this recently because a group of legitimately kick-ass people here in Minnesota is pushing for legislation that would require consent education in K-12 classes. Their effort is based on some of the affirmative-consent education that has spread in higher-ed institutions, and seeks to make it part of a healthy, comprehensive sex-ed experience.

The more I thought about what consent education looks like now in schools, the sadder and madder I got. Just because it’s not written into our curriculum doesn’t mean we aren’t sending constant and strong messages about consent, and they aren’t great.

When we choose to have no curriculum or plan for teaching consent, these are the messed up lessons we teach our kids instead.

Bad Lesson 1: Touching someone means you are sexually attracted to them.

This weekend, I was out at a coffee shop, and watched as a young girl, maybe 2 years old, walked up to the man in front of her and put her hand on his knee. The girl’s mom said to him, “Oh, looks like she’s got a crush on you.”

Like, I get that’s a thing that we do, but I think it’s weird.

I think it’s super weird, and we do it all the time, and we do it with younger and older kids. We act like a hug is a sexual thing, like lying next to each other is too close. Doing so, we miss an important chance to teach about how to negotiate touch, even non-sexual touch, in a healthy way. When we discuss different kinds of touch, different meanings, and how to communicate about them, we help keep young people safer from those who would actually want to hurt or take advantage of them.

Putting such strict and extreme meaning to touch enforces the idea that someone touching you, on your shoulder or even in some playful, flirtatious way, is communicating more than it is, and at the same time excuses non-consensual behavior.

Bad Lesson 2: Your body is not yours.

One year, in a building I taught, a young woman was being disciplined by a behavior dean. He was walking her to his office and she said, quite clearly, that she didn’t feel comfortable being in his office with him. He told her that she had to go anyway.

Luckily, her friends saw it, came to me and I went and sat with her in the office, but still. This is a version of something that happens all the time in schools, whether or not the student is able to so clearly express their discomfort at the time.

I had never thought of the way our control of student behavior takes away agency over their bodies until I interviewed my wife, a sex therapist and author, last summer. She pointed out how we often control students by telling them where and how to sit, when to go to the bathroom, how to walk, where to be and who to be near.

Some of those things are likely necessary because we need schools to work and to cut down on the flaming chaos of the hallways. But my wife’s outside perspective made me realize that when we do those things, we’re sending a bigger message about their bodies at the same time.

Bad Lesson 3: The behavior of others is your responsibility.

The most egregious way we enforce this in schools is through our dress codes. I’ve written about it before, and so have many others, so I won’t spend too much time here on why dress codes are often sexist and shaming.

They are.

When the dress code is used to say that whatever harassment or teasing or touching can be blamed on a skirt that doesn’t hit your fingertips, or that someone can claim your body because they have seen your bra strap, dress codes are giving a dangerous message to students.

I’ve heard similar messages applied to staff, where an unruly class has been blamed on the outfit of the teacher, where unwanted advances from a coworker have been blamed on—I kid you not—the sharing of food.

When we don’t have real conversations about what consent means and how it is given, we assume too often that any victim of harassment or assault must have, in some way, asked for it. It’s not a statement many of us would feel comfortable saying out loud, so it shouldn’t be an idea that is written into our school handbooks.

Bad Lesson 4: Boys are bad.

Once upon a time, I was a boy in school. I didn’t like it. I remember teachers making jokes about how messy and unruly boys were. I heard jokes about how young men were like children. Now, I hear those same jokes in the staff lounge about teachers’ husbands.

We aren’t good at boys in school. Not as good as we could be. We boys will be boys them too often.

We also allow room for jokes and comments about “real men” and delight at the male teachers at the assembly when they put on a dress. So absurd! A man who would reduce himself to being a woman!

Masculinity is fine. It is great. But toxic masculinity is, quite literally, killing us. When we allow for or encourage this culture of “bad boys” in schools, we allow for an idea of men who get what they want because they want it, of boys who can comprehend no larger threat to their self-worth than a girl who won’t give them the physical or social attention they want.

Bad Lesson 5: Sexual violence is less terrifying than sexual pleasure.

What do the standard texts in our schools tell our students about love and relationships and bodies? I’ve been wracking my brain about this for days, going through the texts I’ve taught, that are taught in buildings where I’ve worked, that I was handed when I was in school. I’m struggling to find examples of healthy romantic relationships.

At first, I was struggling to think of examples of any real relationships in books, which seemed to be by design. I can imagine that we are mostly terrified of addressing romance, most especially sexual romance, in classrooms.

That said, I could think of tons of books and stories that carried rape scenes in their pages, or that alluded to sexual assault or molestation. Tons more had scenes of physical abuse of children and partners. But none, none that I could think of, suggested that sex is something that people find to be enjoyable when done in a healthy, consensual way.

Seriously, the most sex-positive piece of literature I’ve taught that is typical in schools was “Romeo and Juliet,” and they get married after knowing each other for like a day, speak a full five minutes to each other, and then both commit suicide. Not good.

We Can Do Better

When we don’t include healthy relationships as models in our schools, we hope they learn those skills elsewhere, but most of the messages they are getting about relationships are from “The Bachelor” and the messages about sex are from Pornhub.

We are missing a grand opportunity to teach something necessary, to tell counter-narratives to rape culture. We need to take a hard look at how we work against consent in schools, but more than that, we have a chance to take action and provide our students with the tools they need to understand and engage in a culture of consent.

Photo by NINA P, Twenty20-licensed.

5 Ways We Teach Rape Culture in Schools syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com