Picking up from yesterday –
This wise person also brought up the great point that even if we want to assume he’s a “good person” who made a mistake and did a bad thing… If a “good person” soooooomehow “accidentally” committed sexual assault (they literally didn’t hear somehow, or just didn’t understand, which is really hard to believe, but let’s go with it for a second)…
If someone who did that had their victim say, “Look, you did this, and I’ve been crying every night since… You ignored me completely and plowed forward anyway, and it was really not okay,” is their reaction to focus on different excuses and consistently blame you? Is it to get riled up in semantics of whether you “asked” can we please go somewhere else? Can you please leave me alone? vs. whether you “commanded” it? Or does that person apologize with the fire of 1,000 suns and ask what they can do to make it better?
[And, additionally, does this actually seems like a mistake – a thing out of character, and not something they’ve done not only multiple times to you, but also to another person? These are all various things to think on…]
Final, last little side thought here: With the amount of turmoil I’ve experienced from dealing with this ugly (criminal) side of someone merely popular at school… From all the questions that have seemed impossible to answer –
(What things can/should I go to? What people from the group can still be my friend? Should I tell anyone? How do you tell someone that someone they know and like unapologetically assaults women? How can I keep going in the direction of my dreams and career while also just being able to live happily and calmly?)
And just alllll these questions and issues…It has seemed (I hate to use the word again, but seriously) nearly impossible to deal with all this when it’s just someone from school…
So, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be assaulted by an incredibly popular man throughout America. What I’ve experienced is just a teeeeeeeensy tiny microcosm of what the women who were raped, by, for instance, Bill Cosby, had to deal with.
I know everyone struggles afterward if they’re raped by someone involved in their life in some way, “Do I keep my job [if they work with him]? “Do I stay in this town, even (etc)…?”
It has felt nearly impossible to get away from someone just at freaking school. I cannot begin to fathom what it would be like to have to try to wrestle with all of these issues on a much, much larger scale of someone famous, or someone with a lot more power and influence than my sexual assault guy, someone who signs your paychecks, etc. etc.
Oof. My heart is with all the people who have to deal with these impossible questions.
[This is from the sexual assault series.]