I Can’t Even

I don’ t need to know you personally, Britni. I know that victim-blaming is never okay.

I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m fucking sick.
Take care, will you? Do whatever is necessary to heal and distance yourself from those flaming shitbags. I wish I could do anything besides sending virtual hugs.

Yes. How fucking dare you go out and try to have fun and have someone cross the boundaries on what is appropriate Britni. Obviously by leaving and going away from the poor douchebag who ‘caught mixed signals because you were dancing at one point with him near you, you totally invited him into coming up to you from behind to advance things without any official acknowledgement.

-shakes head- This (not you) is quite pathetic and ill-minded.

How weird of that guy to write that, and also to think that he is right- what’s wrong with people!? What a sick, sick society we live in.

It’s been said by all these awesome commenters but you fucking rock. And please don’t let such horrid small-minded people get you down – easier said than done I know. It wasn’t your fault and how dare this person use your personal life as hate-filled blog fodder? WTF? And to write that on a sex-positive blog? Grrr. I’m so angry about this. I’m sorry people are so shit to you. *massive hugs*

xoxox

I will never blame you, nor will I ever blame myself.
This is your space to write about what you want, however, those of us who merely read your blog do not KNOW you. Yes, we know a lot ABOUT you, but we don’t KNOW YOU.
The attack by that blogger on you personally just proves that said blogger lives in a tiny bubble outside of reality.
I hope you are resting and getting away from the negative today.
<3

I’m really sorry all of this happened to you, Britni. Some people on the Internet really are amazingly despicable.

As someone who does go to clubs and has dealt with guys who felt that they could touch me/grind up against, I give you my sincerest condolences. No one should be touched against their will and then to have someone say in a blog entry that you deserved it is bullshit.
It’s funny how some people that embrace victim blaming always have a plan eg I’m strong, or I don’t dress like a slut * because you know you plan out how you’re going to defend yourself if this does happen to you. It’s like shouldn’t we focus on eradicating or at least changing what people deem as personal responisbility when people are harassed/violated in public places in a sexual manner. It’s fucking ridiculous that we should even have to plan out a defense strategy in the first place.
Anyways I think I’ve deviated away from the point I was going trying to convey so I’ll stop now.
I’m sorry that someone voilated your boundaries and space in a totally inapporiate way and that now through some fucked up logic you’re being blamed.

I want to expand a bit on the ridiculousness of their non-arguments.
As a 5 year-old, the frilly dresses and embroidered socks my mom used to dress me with must have been sending the wrong signal because they obviously led to me being molested. As a 14 year old, my dad’s strict wardrobe rules (nothing above the knee, nothing tight, no cleavage whatsoever, no makeup, no nail polish) must have still been too lax, because the old fart that tried to abduct me when I was walking from the school I was tutoring in to my aunt’s house must have totally gotten the impression that I was a slut that should get in his truck from somewhere. These poor poor men just made mistakes and were misunderstood, it’s not as if they were freaking criminals that have done god knows what else after I was able to escape or avoid their clutches.
Then there are the assaults as an adult. Maybe the jerk that started fondling me when I was sleeping at a (female) friend’s house after returning from a party thought I must have agreed to something by being asleep? Thankfully one of the upstairs neighbors, that knew me since we were children, came in at the right time and helped me get that bastard off myself. And the ratty lab-appropriate clothes I use to hang out in as an upper upperclassman were what led to the other freaking undergrad assaulting/harassing me at a metal show. Whoa, male cargo shorts and band tshirts are so totally slutty.
In other words, there is no freaking correlation with what one wears and the probability of being harassed/assaulted. If it can happen to a prudish science nerd it can happen to fucking anyone, asswipes.

If I could put on armor and go defend you with a sword, I would get all Joan of Arc and do just that.

I’m going to chime in and say that post is vile. There are times I read your twitter and feel concerned about some behavior you talk about – but I don’t care if you were high on crack and buck fucking naked that guy had NO RIGHT to touch you like that without getting an express, and sober consent. (I also don’t know you and don’t know for sure what you’re doing – so who am I to judge?) We all react differently to assault and I think whether you expressly told him no or not is irrelevant too – you walking away from him should have been enough for any reasonable human being to make sure you were up for what he was up for before going further. Motherfucker. And the rape apologists are a big part of why this still goes on and is still sorely underreported.

I told the guy who assaulted me at a play party to stop as he was hurting me. He didn’t. I didn’t put up with it and yelled at the top of my lungs for him to stop. He finally did then, but fuck it – I was traumatized already. It’s bullshit to think, “Well I’ll stand up for myself and that won’t happen to ME.” Utter bullshit. I stood up for myself when I was raped, and it still happened. I stood up for myself when I was assaulted, and it still happened. Dickhead tried to say it was an “accident” but there’s nothing accidental about ignoring someone’s request to stop (or their walking away).

Also, I may have written a relevant entry on my blog today, thanks to the past week, your blog, and the bullshit other people have been spouting.

Ohhhhhhhhh!!! I see his point…you should WALK AS IF YOU’RE SCARY now! Duh. It’s just like being mugged as a guy. Now he makes sure he’s NOT A TARGET! It’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of it?? It really boggles my mind when men try to ‘relate’ to the ‘plight’ of women. Unless you’ve been hate-crimed, or your friends have and unless the mere fact of your perceived gender puts you at risk of assault…YOU’RE NOT GOING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IT’S LIKE! I’m 5’4″ and 130lbs wet. I can walk as big and tall and *scary* as I like, but if a guy wants to rape me, he’ll probably be able to…even if he’s my size. Why?? Because men hold their body strength in their upper bodies which makes it super easy to over power a woman.

But obviously, it would be my fault because I must have somehow given him the impression that he could do whatever he wanted whether I wanted him to or not. I must have winked at him, bent over in front of him to pick up my pen, flipped my hair, flirted, not flirted, wore a shirt that showed cleavage, didn’t, bought him a drink, accepted a drink, trusted a friend, trusted a date, trusted a family member, went out with a stranger, went out with my friends, drank too much, didn’t drink enough…ugh…I could go on forever.

Brit said it best before (and so have many, many, MANY other people in the past): The only person responsible for the rape is the RAPIST, with no other lies the blame.

I read the post and it sickened me. You put yourself out there and shared something traumatic that happened to you and to have someone attack you like that must feel nearly as disgusting as the original assault.

I have to admit when you first told the story I was so shocked that I was waiting for some kind of punchline. It is just beyond my comprehension that some one would try to penetrate another person at a crowded nightclub in the middle of everything.

I only wish you had put those Steve Maddens to good use and given him a good kick in the man parts.

I came here via ASM, I’ll need to read all the posts but no one ever asks to be assualted, ever!

I dont know if this means anything to you since I’ve only commented once, but below is the comment I left on that horrible blog post. I absolutely love your blog. Reading it makes me feel a lot less alone in some of the painful experiences I’ve had. I’m so sorry someone like you had to go through them, but you have no idea what it means to women like me that you share the experience, share the healing process and the pain that goes along with it, and make us feel like we’re normal, ok and not somehow being singled out as victims. I know people can be really hard on you sometimes, but for those of us who have been there, you have no idea what an honest, frank, well written blog like yours means to us. And seriously, anyone who tries to make you feel like you’re doing something wrong by being honest and trying to take the taboo out of sexual assault as well as sexual enjoyment can take their self righteous smarmyness and shove it up their condescending asses.
*************************************
The extent of victim blaming in your post is quite horrifying. You state that for a woman to experience sexual assault she must somehow be inviting it, but unless you have an extremely broad definition of how a woman can possibly invite assault and harassment, at least in my experience, this is most certainly not true. I wear an Islamic head scarf -as well as my wedding ring- and follow a dress code where I wear loose fitting clothing and show nothing other than my hands and face. I almost never go anywhere other than the library after 10pm and, as part of my religious commitment, I generally politely decline to shake hands with men when the situation arises. Despite the fact that I make it abundantly clear that I am in no way interested or asking for any sort of male sexual attention, I have still had experiences such as a male metro employee telling me that he bets it would look really hot to get a blow job from a woman in a scarf and that he intends to masturbate to the image of me fellating him later. While in Lebanon, I once had a soldier attempt to rape me at gun point because I was walking home with a male friend at 3am and he assumed that I must have been having a sexual relationship with my friend (who, incidentally, is gay). Yes, I was out late at night and this was before the wedding ring, but I was doing nothing at all illicit, was not drunk, and was not dressed in an even remotely provocative way. I have also had a complete stranger here in DC grab and twist my breast hard enough to leave bruises from 4 of his fingers all around the breast while in an elevator at 11am. Following the line of logic in your blog post, I almost feel as though you would like me to blame myself for getting into an elevator alone with a strange man.

You say that the average man would not just approach a woman in a blatantly sexual way without getting some sort of cue that he would not be rejected, but I have to hope that sexual predators aren’t the average man. The fact that they are in the minority, however, does not mean they do not exist. Also, in the case you described above, one has to assume that alcohol played a significant role in the interaction. Not everyone is an elegant drunk, and alcohol may have led the assaulter to believe that his victim was giving off cues that did not really exist. It may also just have lowered his inhibitions so that he was able to just act however he wanted and try to get his penis under her skirt in a public setting.

My personal experience with sexual assault has been that many men have a fantasy that , for some reason, they seem to believe a woman is obligated to fill. For some reason, there appears to be bit of a headscarf fetish out there, with a heavy leaning towards images of women in scarves giving men blow jobs, which I’m assuming led the metro employee to think that he could tell me he would be masturbating to the image of me fulfilling that role since evidentially that is all he knows of women in headscarves. I, however, do not feel that I in any way allowed that to happen. It’s like some men who have an airline hostess fetish or a twin fetish to the extent that they seem to believe they need to engage in sexual activity with these individuals: sometimes people actually seem to confuse their fantasy with the reality in front of them. I think that’s generally the case in situations of sexual assault. Other than the one time where there was a blatant attempt at rape with a deadly weapon, I’ve never felt like the men involved had any idea that I would be offended. Both the metro employee and the elevator breast assaulter seemed so excited to see me that it was more than a little disturbing. It totally didnt seem to register to them that I was an actual person beyond some sort of extension for their really, really strange fetish. I think it is much more likely that the attacker in the story above wanted to believe that his fantasy of a cute girl liking him and wanting to get with him right away in the bar was coming true after he’d had enough to drink that his judgment was slightly impaired than that the victim in question was in ANY way asking for it.