not to be a bitter asshole but the overwhelming “my gf is perfect and relationships between women are are all pure and perfect” culture on here is annoying. there are a lot of us out here being used, cheated on, dumped, abused, having communication issues and shitty breakups, and lesbian culture is not a binary of “im alone and pining after an imaginary perfect gf” or “i have a perfect gf”. it does baby lesbians and bi women a disservice. don’t feel like there’s something wrong with you if you have bad dates or weird dates or women treat you like shit or trespass your boundaries and in general don’t act like perfect magical moon princesses and your relationship isn’t a magical dream of cat ownership and cuddling. women are people too, and that means women are flawed too. there are wonderful women out there and you will find one someday to build your life with but there are a lot of assholes out there too, you’re not failing at anything if you date one of them. and you have the capability of being a shitty asshole too!
Boy there’s a lot of defensive creeps on this post!
“I’m a lesbian in a perfect relationship and I would never downplay that so that other lesbians aren’t jealous that’s ridiculous“
jesus, yeah this is definitely about jealousy not lesbians and bi women in toxic or straight up abusive relationships feeling isolated and wanting to change that!
A key reason why some believe LGBTQ IPV to be rare may be due to an assumption that LGBTQ people are inherently nonviolent. This may be particularly the case for sexual minority women. In contrast to the aggression often associated with culturally prominent masculinity norms, many lesbian women are socialized to perceive relationships involving two women as a peaceful and ideal “lesbian utopia.” Unfortunately, this powerful stereotype can impede lesbian female victims’ ability to recognize that a partner’s behavior is in fact abusive rather than normal.26 For example, in reflecting on her same-gender IPV victimization back in the 1990s, Julie describes the ubiquity of the lesbian utopia ideal in the United Kingdom that prevented her from discussing the abuse with anyone: “Well it was during a period where everyone was just raving about erm how brilliant woman-to-woman relationships were and also I don’t think anyone believed that one woman could do that to another woman—there was just no, no sense of reality around that at all. There was sort of a political euphoria about lesbianism at the time; well not even lesbianism, just woman-to-woman relationships.”27 Echoing these sentiments, a victim of female same-gender IPV in the United States explains the powerful influence the lesbian utopia ideal had on her ability to recognize the abuse: “No—I thought, well, I just thought that it was fine because we were girls, like, and girls don’t hurt each other like that. So I just thought that it was the way it was supposed to be.”28
– LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence: Lessons for Policy, Practice, and Research by Adam M. Messinger
An example of what can happen when a group of people are glorified
This is exactly how I got into an emotionally abusive relationship. My other bi friends had told me “relationships with women are better because there aren’t power dynamics like there are between women and men.”
I doublethought (doublethunk?) my way back to “this isn’t a power dynamic” every time I felt demeaned and afraid, because “there are no power dynamics between women,” so I couldn’t have been living one.
Lesbianism-as-purity stuff terrifies me now, y’all.
I’ve spoken about this before. One of the advantages of hands-on, community-building LGBTQIAP+ activism is that I had the opportunity to talk directly to hundreds of people and counsel them on a whole variety of concrete issues. By far the thorniest problem I was faced with was intimate partner violence within relationships between women. Many abused women came to me in emotionally fragile states, yet adamantly refused to do anything more than talk with me in confidence – such as speak to one of our official counselors or to a support group, never bloody mind even the idea of filing any kind of charges against their girlfriends!
Within the community, they were taught the idea that same-gender relationships between women were not only inherently ‘better’ and had ‘less capacity for containing abuse’ than other kinds of relationships (particularly straight ones), but that ‘airing their dirty laundry in public’ (talking publicly about their abuse) would be a damaging act toward the LGBTQIAP+ community as a whole, as it would give homophobes more dirt to fling in our direction. Given my disgust toward everything related toward purity politics and respectability politics, you can imagine what my stance toward the above is – I value truth, transparency and not throwing domestic abuse survivors under the fucking bus a hell of a lot more than I value us presenting a sanitized, artificially clean image to the world, when we should all know by now that our most irrational detractors would continue to hate us even if we were the human incarnations of purity! There’s a subset of people you just cannot win over and I’d rather have them crow like broken records about the problems within the community, rather than glossing over said problems and doing a hell of a lot of damage to young queer people in the process!
Before anyone starts screaming – the takeaway people should be taking from this isn’t ‘so now I can’t talk about my perfect WLW relationship?’ or ‘you people want to trash the image of lesbians!’ or other barmy shit like that. No, the message is ‘same-sex relationships between women fall on a scale that’s much more complex than ‘shades of soft, pastel-pink’, the way Tumblr all too often presents them.’ Queer women are people. Queer women are humans and as such, we’re as fallible and mistake-prone as anyone else on this Earth, no matter how much we might pretend that we’re some sort of ‘evolved form of person.’ We’re not exempt from perpetuating toxic, abusive models within our relationships and trying to ignore that does us all an enormous disservice.
You are an anonymous professional assassin with a perfect reputation. You lead an ordinary life outside of your work. You’ve just been hired to kill yourself.
My first thought is that the middle man I use–calls himself ‘Leader’, real name Brett Thompson, 46, balding, lives in PA–has uncovered my identity. Why else would I be staring down at a picture of my own face? I think it’s a warning, that he knows about the Sanchez job, and I nearly reach for my go bag.
Then I see the client’s name.
Vi Larson, the file tells me, male, 32, computer analyst.
I close the manila folder, tossing it away from me. The whiskey sour’s gone warm in my hand, but I drink it down anyway, eyes distant. I don’t need to read any more of the file. I can fill in the gaps well enough.
Funnily enough, this betrayal is just as sharp and unpleasant as the first one, the one that got me into this business in the first place.
“You at least owe me a crime of passion, you bastard,” I mutter into my drink. I close my eyes and sigh, willing away the stinging in my heart. I knew that my relationship was in trouble, but this is just cold.
In a way, I can’t believe it. Is a divorce really that hard? But, no, I know Vi. He’s methodical, analytical, and competent. If anything, hiring an assassin with a reputation like mine is right in line with his personality. Nothing but the best, even in the murder game.
I should be flattered, really. My rates aren’t cheap. Whatever I did to make him send this in–and he did, there’s his social security, his fingerprint, everything–it must have been killer.
I set my glass down on the counter and tuck the folder under my arm. I need to think and I do my best thinking in the tub. Vi won’t be back from his “business” trip for another three days, during which I’m supposed to kill myself.
As I head up the stairs, I can’t help but laugh. Finally, after three years of marriage, my husband does something interesting. And it breaks my fucking heart.
——————————————
He wants me to make it painless but horrific. There’s a script in the document, something that’s more common than people think, and it’s hard to read it, even surrounded by bubbles and soothing music.
“Your husband sent me. Said he needed to shed some dead weight.” I snort at the pun and close my eyes, resting the file against my face so it doesn’t get wet. Unfortunately, the tears do that anyway.
Do you know how many dogs I’ve met that get scared or anxious around men because in their previous home men hit them? A lot, and they are very protective of the women who have adopted them now.
Men who are violent towards women are often violent towards animals as well. They think we’re all chattel. If a man wants you to choose between your dog or cat or him, dump the guy. Those animals will love you for the rest of your life, loyal and true.
Actually, I have something to add.
The other day I saw a story where a woman was asking why her dogs had suddenly started growling at her boyfriend whenever he was in the same room as her son.
And my immediate thought was ‘that boyfriend has hurt the kid somehow.’
Spoilers: that was exactly the case.
Trust ur dogs when they say something is off.
The first time my sister came to visit, via plane, after I got my dog, pupper growled at her and wouldn’t go near her for the first day. Next visit was by car (two day drive)and pupper LOVED my sister. They snuggled and played and none of us could figure out why the change. We thought maybe the scent of my sisters cat had lingered on her clothes, making that first visit a rough one. Whereas when she came by car, the scent had had time to wear off. Well that was partially true…
Fast forward about six months when I went north to visit my family. My sister walked into my parents’ house and pupper ran to greet my sister. Stopped dead in her tracks and started growling and barking. Hackles raised, full protection mode. My sisters husband had just walked in behind her.
My precious puppy wanted NOTHING to do with him. She barked, growled, ran away, and sat between him and my sister. Y’all my dog had spent maybe a weekend a half around my sister but protected her like this was her flesh and blood.
Eventually, my sister filed for divorce on grounds of “Extreme and repeated mental, emotional, and sexual abuse.” Divorce was final in less than a month because her claims were substantiated.
Trust the dog, honey. They KNOW.
I’ve never owned dogs, but I used to work with horses (which are a lot like big dogs).
There was this one horse I worked with named Tonto. He was a doll. He followed me like a puppy, snuck treats out of my pocket, he was the sweetest thing. We were practically inseparable.
A guy I was considering dating came to visit me one day, and Tonto wanted NOTHING to do with him. Normally well behaved, he shoved himself between us and would NOT let this guy near me. He was stomping, acting really aggressive, and tried to bite the guy. This horse was practically dragging me back toward the barn. At that moment, despite being like, 17, I knew something was up, and ultimately things didn’t pan out for guy and me.
A year later I found out he had lied about his age (he said he was 18 but he was actually 27) he was arrested for sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl.
Stop abusing your boyfriends and yes what you are doing is abuse.
Stop:
Yelling at him in front of his friends
Hitting or slapping him when he does or says something you don’t like
Telling him he doesn’t have a choice when it comes to decisions that involve both of you
Telling him he can’t hang out with friends because you don’t like him
Telling him to not talk to other girls even if they are his friend
Forcing him to spend every moment with you
Belittling him and pointing out all his flaws
Calling him stupid or making fun of him for making a mistake
Threatening to break up with him if he doesn’t do what you want
Being emotionally manipulative and crying until he does what you want
Accusing him of cheating every time he’s not with you
Blow up is phone if he doesn’t text you every five minutes
Telling him you are the must thing that has ever happened to him and no one else will love
Physically attacking him when ever you are mad
Forcing him to have sex despite that fact that he said he didn’t want to
Invading his privacy by going through his phone
Getting mad at him for changing his password and demanding he tell you what it is
If a guy did any of these things to a girl it would be considered abuse but since its the other way around its considered normal. Throughout High school I saw many girl treating their boyfriends like shit. Sometime even physically abusing them in the hallways and no one trying to stop it because its a girl attacking a boy.
Boys: If your girlfriend does anything on this list leave her. It is abuse and you deserve better.
Girls: if you find your self doing anything on this list to your boyfriend you need to knock it off because you are being abusive.
!!!!!!!!
My brother was abused by his babies mom and it started like this and escalated to child abuse and neglect.
You don’t deserve to be screamed at, ignored, or assaulted.
Not showing affection when she wants or not hugging her before class) or missing a phone call doesn’t warrant getting cussed out or hit.
Lol, I lost 5 followers from reblogging this. That’s fine, y’all can go
Whole lot of grown women do this too.
Just wanna throw these in too
Being passive aggressive with him when he wants to spend time with friends or doing other things
controlling when he’s able to go out with friends
Breaking up his friendships with other girls just because you’re insecure
Making him feel like his opinions in decisions that affect the both of you are irrelevant and don’t matter
testing him in anyway in general without his knowledge or permission (example: catfishing! it’s manipulative and weird don’t fucking do that)
taking money/credit cards without permission to spend on things without his knowledge ( had an ex friend do this constantly to her boyfriend and she’d always condone it because “he’ll get over it” )
guilting him for hanging out with friends/family over you and making him choose between you and friends/family
telling him “you don’t love me if you *insert harmless activity he wants to do here* “
being rude or mean to him in front of others to assert dominance or power over him
downloading apps to spy on his phone activity (yes, this is a thing “”regular”” people do) or snooping on his social media to see who he’s talking to
hitting him, slapping him, punching him, shoving him. literally how do people not understand slapping your male partner is bad. people tend to find this funny in media and society and its weird. KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF YOUR PARTNER WITHOUT PERMISSION.
I come from a family of very forward and manipulative women and i see it in media all the time. it’s fucked and people need to not be accepting of young girls acting like snot-nosed, abusive shit heads that think they can get away with manipulation and cruelty because they happen to be girls.
Basically anything you see in cheesy high school set movies DO NOT DO.
More than 100 gay men have been detained “in connection with their nontraditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such,”according to the New York Times, which cites the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta. The Russian newspaper says it confirmed the news with government officials and an analyst of the region also confirmed the news to the Times with her own sources.
Three men are known to have been murdered, although the real number is likely to be higher.
in almost every genocide, the first “act” is the rounding up and killing of a group of men, specifically.
In “root and branch”
genocides they [”civilian men of ‘battle age’”] are often the first group to be separated out and massacred, paving the
way for the murder of women, children, and elderly men. In more common articulations
of genocide, however, they can be the only group slated for outright massacre, while
women, children, and elderly men suffer a range of alternative fates involving rape, sexual
exploitation, torture, forced maternity, murder, and expulsion.
as the rest of this article explains this isn’t to say that men have it worst in a genocide, but that it’s important when you see a very common red flag for genocide to pay attention to the “conflict” in case any more markers of an impending genocide occur.
the g word is really loaded and i’m not bringing this up because i want to start an avalanche of “CHECHNYA IS COMMITTING GENOCIDE AGAINST GAY PEOPLE” fear mongering (that is the absolute last thing that i want). it’s just not possible to prevent any genocide without questioning whether a current conflict might eventually get there. and i do not think it’s nothing that genocide watch is reporting on this.
Russian newspapers and human rights groups report that more than 100 gay men have been detained “in connection with their non-traditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such” as part of a purge. Several people were also reportedly feared dead following violent raids.
In a chilling response, a Chechen government spokesperson denied that there are any gay people to detain, insisting that “you can’t detain and harass someone who doesn’t exist in the republic”. The Kremlin denied any knowledge of a purge.
But reports have since emerged that the men arrested are being kept in horrific concentration camp prisons, where violent abuse and torture is common.
Based on interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors, Novaya Gazeta reports that a secret prison has been set up in the town of Argun to detain the men arrested in the purge.
One man who was released from the camp told the newspaper that he was subjected to violent “interrogations” at the camp, as Chechen officials attempted to get him to confess the names and locations of more gay men.
The officials also seized his mobile phone, targeting his network of contacts regardless of whether they were gay or not.
The camp was reportedly set up by Chechen forces in a former military headquarters in the town.
The newspaper reports allegations that the Speaker of the Parliament of Chechnya was among officials to visit the site, though the claims have not been substantiated.
The detainees face electric shock torture and violent beatings, while some of them have been held to ransom and used to extort their families.
Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch wrote: “For several weeks now, a brutal campaign against LGBT people has been sweeping through Chechnya.
She continued: “Law enforcement and security agency officials under control of the ruthless head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, have rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay, torturing and humiliating the victims.
“Some of the men have forcibly disappeared. Others were returned to their families barely alive from beatings. At least three men apparently have died since this brutal campaign began.”
She added: “These days, very few people in Chechnya dare speak to human rights monitors or journalists even anonymously because the climate of fear is overwhelming and people have been largely intimidated into silence.
“Filing an official complaint against local security officials is extremely dangerous, as retaliation by local authorities is practically inevitable.
“It is difficult to overstate just how vulnerable LGBT people are in Chechnya, where homophobia is intense and rampant.
“LGBT people are in danger not only of persecution by the authorities but also of falling victim to ‘honour killings’ by their own relatives for tarnishing family honour.”
Alexander Artmyev from Amnesty International spoke to Metro.co.uk.
He said that people who are not in Russia can help by joining the charity’s Urgent Action on Chechnya.
The action encourages people to write in Russian or your own language to Chairman of the Investigation Committee and Acting Head of the Investigation Committee for the Chechen Republic.
Amnesty has also asked the letter, which should ask for an investigation and appeal for protection for LGBT individuals, to be copied into Human Rights groups and diplomatic missions from your country.
When a player is accused of assaulting a woman, perhaps the team doesn’t have to trot him out, front and center, every time it holds an event. Maybe we don’t need to schedule a bobblehead night for a player accused of raping a woman before the police investigation is completed? It’s possible a trial for domestic battery should be a disqualifier for being named first star that particular week.
Currently, the league and teams pretend everything is hunky dory and practically dare anyone to mention accusations against a player. When one does dare question a team’s handling of an accusation, a dedicated hoard of online attack-dog fans routinely threaten and harass the interloper into silence. It works out great for the NHL.
From time to time, NHL teams make announcements that they’re “reaching out” to female fans in an attempt to grow the fan base. Women don’t want “ladies nights,” pink jerseys or Hockey 101 sessions with the hottest players. What women do want is to feel that the league and their team values them as much as their male counterparts.
That starts with the way the league addresses violence against women.
So i work as your friendly underpaid barista and currently we’re having problems with one of our regulars hitting on our women staff members. The first woman he hit one, he wrote a note to her….as in elementary school note passing. Now of course, she’s at work and the model in f&b and retail is that you do everything in your power not to piss off the guest.
So in hopes of not causing a scene, she kindly wrote on the note that she appreciate the interest but she’s a lesbian. Now, 1) she shouldn’t have to out herself to a complete stranger all to avoid a bad yelp review. 2) She shouldn’t be forced into a situation where she has to entertain a guests unwanted attentions to avoid at the least, a negative review on yelp.
So once she passes this dude the note, he then starts jokingly exclaiming “I always fall for lesbians” in the middle of our cozy cafe, effectively outing her to anyone within earshot. Now my co-worker isn’t closeted, she’s out and proud etc, etc. However, that doesn’t give someone else the right to disclose her sexuality without her permission, and especially not after he effectively coerced her into outing herself in order to avoid his come-ons.
Another one of our regular guests, hits on one of our baristas on a regular basis. No matter how much she casually brings up her boyfriend. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had to literally stand in front of her so he can’t force eye-contact with her (Naturally we do this kind of thing in a low-key manner so that we don’t actively piss off guest and thus put our jobs at risk).
I’ve had to actively shut down people on behalf of my women co-workers (Nah dude, she’s seeing someone. She’s not interested in that sort of thing. Dude, chill out.) because they simply can’t understand the fact that they are at their jobs and simply just want to get their jobs done and go home. Stop taking advantage of the unequal power dynamics to force her to engage you. She’s seem nice? Of course she is, her job revolves around being nice. She seemed into you? No, I can promise she’s not, she’s doing her job and told me five minutes ago how you were clearly staring down her chest.
“But how am I supposed to let her no I’m interested in her?” you might say. My answer, that’s not my fucking concern. There are plenty of opportunities to meet people in this world that don’t revolve around you forcing them into an uncomfortable position while they’re literally trying to earn a living. Not every person your interested in obligated to entertain that interest.
Simply put, stop being goddam creepers and let people do their goddamn jobs.
Fuck off. Some of us have a hard enough time talking to people without shitheads like you guilting us over it.
No one’s guilting you over anything. The point of this post is for you to stop doing it, not to do it and feel guilty.
If you feel awkward hitting on someone who’s not in a position where she can safely be honest with you or leave if you make her uncomfortable, that’s good. Listen to that awkward feeling. It’s telling you that you’re transgressing a boundary.
Now, if you feel like you’re always awkward and always crossing a boundary, then posts like this should be a gold mine. It’s telling you in clear terms where boundaries actually exist and why.
Story time:
There was this dude I knew through a monthly infosec meeting. He knew me and my fiancee and my friends through this meeting and he started coming to the coffee shop while I was working. He took a shine to one of my coworkers. He started asking me when she would be on shift and when I wouldn’t tell him he started showing up every night just in case. So she took on afternoon shifts and he started showing up in the afternoons. So she took morning shifts and he started showing up in the morning. So she started taking random shifts and he started showing up all day, from four thirty am when we opened until close at one am.
The thing is, while this is creepy in hindsight he wasn’t doing anything overtly creepy. The shop billed itself as “Smalltown’s Living Room” and there were a few regulars who hung out all day. And this guy bought endless iced teas and ate all his meals off our menu and bought ice cream for regulars and tipped extravagantly. He must have been spending close to a hundred dollars a day at the shop and never did anything beyond placing his order, chatting for a minute, and sitting in a chair where he could always watch the counter. Sometimes he’d talk to me after I locked up and asked if she liked him and ask me how he could get him to like her and no amount of “dude, it’s not going to happen, she’s not interested” could convince him. “But she’s so nice to me,” he’d say, “she smiles when she sees me and listens when I talk to her. No other girls do that for me.”
The owner felt a little hogtied by the whole thing – the guy hadn’t DONE anything, except spend more money than my coworkers and I made on a shift each day to have the opportunity to see her. At least five hundred a week on product. Almost the payroll of a full-time employee every week. And there was always a ten or a twenty from him in the tip jar at the end of every shift – five or ten dollars that represented about an extra hour’s worth of labor to everyone working there. So my co-worker and I felt bad too – he wasn’t really being THAT creepy, was it worth it to deprive our other co-workers of this extra income? (Spoilers: yes)
After a couple months of this (and yes, it was terrible that it went on for that long) my coworker got a better-paying, stalker-free job at her university and nobody was happier for her than me. It was my stupid bullshit that had infected her life and if I hadn’t told this acquaintance to swing by the coffee shop sometime she wouldn’t have had to deal with being scared and tense and having to hold a brittle smile every day at work just so that five or ten would reliably show up, so that someone’s hours wouldn’t get cut because of the dip in sales.
And when she left this guy was crushed. Didn’t show up for a month. Then he started coming in again. Started talking to me about how heartbroken he was, hanging out for my entire shift and thanking me for being such a good listener and marveling over the fact that my fiancee, his friend didn’t appreciate me the way I deserved. He’d follow me out on my lunch break and sit at my table. Eventually I went to the Smalltown Police Department and asked what I would need for a restraining order.
“Well, have you told him in clear words that he is not to speak to you and to leave you alone?”
“I can’t, he’s a customer and he only speaks to me in front of other customers.”
“Well, unless you tell him to cut off contact and he violates that there’s nothing we can do.”
And that was the real nastiness of this trick – always being in front of other customers. When you’re on register you can’t tell a customer never to speak to you again then casually move on to the next person in line. When you’re getting a muffin out of the pastry case you can’t tell a customer “go away and never come back” in front of some soccer mom who believes the customer is always right. You can drown someone out with a blender or an espresso machine, but only temporarily. There was a cubbyhole where we put our purses under the register – eventually it got to the point that if I saw him through the windows I’d let my coworker know then crawl into it to hide. Sometimes I’d spend half a shift doing dishes and making sandwiches in the back where he couldn’t follow me. At least we’d never run out of clean mugs, right?
It was too much. I told my fiancee and a couple other infosec friends what he was doing. He’d stopped coming to the meetings months before over a tiff with another dude so they weren’t seeing him. The had jobs to go to, they didn’t have the time to sit at a coffee shop with me all day. So they took a day off work in the middle of the week and when this guy followed me outside on my lunchbreak I texted them that he was there with me. I didn’t respond to anything that he said during that lunch, I only said “I don’t want to talk to you anymore, please leave me alone.” I said it quietly, but I said it in clear words, per what the police department had told me. He continued to talk while I continued to look at my book and try to eat my food when my fiancee and his friend showed up and joined us at the table. My fiancee (who is, by the way, over six and a half feet tall and built like a fridge) sat down next to him, our other friend sat down on the other side. They both very casually asked what he’d been up to recently. He didn’t say anything, just bit his lip, glared at me, and stormed off. He never came back to the coffee shop.
He DID email a friend of mine to rage about how I’d broken his heart and lied to him and misled him and sent mixed signals – how it was so nasty and two-faced to be smiling and nice one minute and turn on him the next, how he thought we had a connection, and why would I spend so much time listening to him and laughing at his jokes and smiling at him otherwise?
For two months nothing happened, then he showed up at the infosec meeting and as my fiancee and I were getting into the car to leave he charged at us and started trying to hit my (once again, goddamned enormous) fiancee and trying to push past him to come at me. This guy was about five ten and not terribly strong, and while we were scared we didn’t want to fucking KILL him, so my fiancee just sort of knocked him down instead of having a serious fight. The guy got into his car, rushed around bunch of us in the parking lot, which was genuinely terrifying because we thought he might try to run someone over, then sped away into the night. We called the cops to file a report of assault. The cops didn’t want to talk to me, said I wasn’t involved in the altercation. They took a statement from my fiancee and two other guys who had been in the parking lot, then took down my number and a note that I claimed he’d been “close” to me. I told them he’d been harassing me but they just said that it wasn’t harassment if he just showed up at my job and didn’t actually DO anything.
Well, it turns out that while we were making our report this guy had driven to our friend’s house and rammed the house repeatedly with his Honda. He completely caved in the garage and tried to charge the living room but was stopped by a reinforced concrete wall. When the cops showed up there he was on the lawn raging about how we were all against him and trying to control him.
I missed all my classes the next day because I went to my college campus police department and said I needed a restraining order. I explained what had happened and their first question was how long I had dated the guy. Why did he think we were dating if I hadn’t been flirting with him? Had I led him on or tried to make it seem like I was interested in him? They escorted me to the women’s violence prevention center on campus and I spent approximately six hours filling out paperwork before the director of the center drove me to the county courthouse and made sure I was granted a temporary restraining order that day. It was made more difficult because I only knew this guy’s first name. At every step I had to reach out to my infosec friends or my fiancee to ask for his address, to check the spelling of his name, to confirm the make and model of his vehicle. This guy had chased my coworker out of a job, been showing up on every one of my shifts for months, and I didn’t know anything about him because to me he was just a customer who was an annoyance that had become a threat. But in his head I was the nice girl he’d had a meet-cute with at a fucking hacker hangout who blossomed into a romance in the goddamned coffee-shop AU he was scripting in his imagination, who spurned this rich, considerate, shy boy in favor of her lunk of a boyfriend who wasn’t good enough for her. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to explain a fifteen-year-old gray-hat hacker meetup to a judge in a way that doesn’t make it sound like you’re selling heroin? Calling it a professional infosec networking group didn’t work well enough to include it on the list of places on my restraining order. He couldn’t come to my coffee shop, my home, or my school but was free to return to the meeting where he’d attacked us that was full of my friends who DIDN’T have restraining orders so long as he left when I showed up.
I hate coffee-shop AUs, in case that isn’t clear. It perpetuates this idea that the person behind the counter is your ONE if only you’re persistent and sweet and generous and bashful enough to keep forcing them to endure your presence in their place of employment.
Look, it sounds fucking shitty to say it but most customer service jobs can be accomplished by machines. Automated phone trees can take the place of receptionists, you can get a latte as good as anything you’d get from a Starbucks out of a machine, cashiers can be replaced by self-checkout. Even bartenders can be replaced by some tubes and buttons if you have enough money to burn. The reason customer service still exists is because it is emotional labor that the customer is paying for. An automated phone tree can’t reassure you that it’ll pass your message along just as soon as possible and that we’ll make sure the tech gets back to you. An automated espresso machine won’t smile at you and ask if you’re having a good day. A self-checkout doesn’t make small talk about how great that ice-cream is or how nice the day is outside. A drink machine may be able to listen to your problems but it won’t say “I feel you,” and tell a funny story to make you feel better. We live in the fucking future, almost everything you could want can be accomplished with an machine an a cellphone. If you’re interacting with a human it’s because you want to interact with a human and you want that human to be nice to you. You are paying for their kindness, for their smiles when their feet hurt and their questions about your day when they haven’t had lunch yet.
Flirting with customer service workers at work, asking them out when they’re on the clock and paid to make you happy, telling them you think they’re attractive and expecting a gushing response – that’s breaking the rules. That’s a lose-lose situation that you’ve set them up for. If they continue to do their job and be nice to you they’re “leading you on” and if they react negatively and ask you to leave or to not speak to them that way it’s “bad customer service.”
A good rule of thumb if you’re thinking about asking someone out or flirting with them is to ask yourself this question: “if do this thing and it makes them uncomfortable can they leave this place without it impacting their livelihood?”
If the answer is “no” and you do it anyway you’re a jackass. That person is trapped. You have cornered them. You have put your desire to flirt with them over their ability to earn a living.
“Oh good, I’ll do it now, when they can’t get away” is not an effective dating strategy. It’s abusive, it’s creepy, and nobody is well-paid enough to put up with unwanted sexual or romantic advances while they’re trying to do their job.
Don’t pull this shit.
^^^^^^^that was intense
My god what a maddening story. And of course, there will be many who read it and dismiss it as one in a million or the actions if a particular weirdo. It’s not.
When I worked on the shop floor of Waterstones it was at a branch that opened till 10. The evenings were when the creeps turned up. I am not exaggerating when I say not a single female member of staff at that place was without at least one ‘customer’ (mostly they weren’t paying customers, more people making use of our seats and charging their phones) developing a fixation on them. One guy had transferred his stalking of our (gay) assistant manager from her previous branch. One friend used to gave her boyfriend meet her when she finished to avoid the guy who would like to walk ‘with’ her to the station. I’ve previously mentioned my own experience, which was a less extreme version of the above story. No violent response or campaign of real stalking, just lots of aggressive messages and slagging me off to my friends.
(If you think you shrug this stuff off, I was more affected by my experience than I realised till later. I feel angry that a guy’s sense of entitlement to my time, good will and then to take out his hurt feelings on me, resulted in a shaken confidence that had noticeably negative consequences within my life afterward. How dare someone think they get to do that?)
I’m describing the experiences of about ten women (some of them as young as 19) in about a two year period. Every single one got at least one borderline stalker, some a honest-to-goodness stalker.
I should mention the male staff didn’t get off entirely Scott free, our handsomest make colleagues tended to get taken for lunch by an older, creepy local author. But the fact that they WENT says a lot about the difference in conditioned fear responses.
This happens to women in retail all the time.
And the men who whine we are changing the rules… have you considered you are meant to be an adult which means you don’t GET a set of rules? You’re meant to navigate for yourself how to deal well with other people. And you do that by listening when they say they gave a problem and not whinging it’s haaarrrddd not to be creepy.
My grandfather was a generally peaceful man. He was a gardener, an EMT, a town selectman, and an all around fantastic person. He would give a friend – or a stranger – the shirt off his back if someone needed it. He also taught me some of the most important lessons I ever learned about violence, and why it needs to exist.
When I was five, my grandfather and grandmother discovered that my rear end and lower back were covered in purple striped bruises and wheals. They asked me why, and I told them that Tom, who was at that time my stepfather, had punished me. I don’t remember what he was punishing me for, but I remember the looks on their faces.
When my mother and stepfather arrived, my grandmother took my mother into the other room. Then my grandfather took my stepfather into the hallway. He was out of my eye line, but I saw through the crack in the door on the hinge side. He slammed my stepfather against the wall so hard that the sheet rock buckled, and told him in low terms that if he ever touched me again they would never find his body.
I absolutely believed that he would kill my stepfather, and I also believed that someone in the world thought my safety was worth killing for.
In the next few years, he gave me a few important tips and pointers for dealing with abusers and bullies. He taught me that if someone is bringing violence to you, give it back to them as harshly as you can so they know that the only response they get is pain. He taught me that guns are used as scare tactics, and if you aren’t willing to accept responsibility for mortally wounding someone, you should never own one. He told me that if I ever had a gun aimed at me, I should accept the possibility of being shot and rush the person, or run away in a zig-zag so they couldn’t pick me off. He taught me how to break someone’s knee, how to hold a knife, and how to tell if someone is holding a gun with intent to kill. He was absolutely right, and he was one of the most peaceful people I’ve ever met. He was never, to my knowledge, violent with anyone who didn’t threaten him or his family. Even those who had, he gave chances to, like my first stepfather.
When I was fourteen, a friend of mine was stalked by a mutual acquaintance. I was by far younger than anyone else in the social crowd; he was in his mid twenties, and the object of his “affection” was as well. Years before we had a term for “Nice Guy” bullshit, he did it all. He showed up at her house, he noted her comings and goings, he observed who she spent time with, and claimed that her niceness toward him was a sign that they were actually in a relationship.
This came to a head at a LARP event at the old NERO Ware site. He had been following her around, and felt that I was responsible for increased pressure from our mutual friends to leave her alone. He confronted me, her, and a handful of other friends in a private room and demanded that we stop saying nasty things about him. Two of our mutual friends countered and demanded that he leave the woman he was stalking alone.
Stalker-man threw a punch. Now, he said in the aftermath that he was aiming for the man who had confronted him, but he was looking at me when he did it. He had identified me as the agent of his problems and the person who had “turned everyone against him.” His eyes were on mine when the punch landed. He hit me hard enough to knock me clean off my feet and I slammed my head into a steel bedpost on the way down.
When I shook off the stunned confusion, I saw that two of our friends had tackled him. I learned that one had immediately grabbed him, and the other had rabbit-punched him in the face. I had a black eye around one eyebrow and inner socket, and he was bleeding from his lip.
At that time in my life, unbeknownst to anyone in the room, I was struggling with the fact that I had been molested repeatedly by someone who my mother had recently broken up with. He was gone, but I felt conflicted and worthless and in pain. I was still struggling, but I knew in that moment that I had a friend in the world who rabbit-punched a man for hitting me, and I felt a little more whole.
Later that year, I was bullied by a girl in my school. She took special joy in tormenting me during class, in attacking me in the hallways, in spreading lies and asserting things about me that were made up. She began following me to my locker, and while I watched the clock tick down, she would wait for me to open it and try to slam my hand in it. She succeeded a few times. I attempted to talk to counselors and teachers. No one did anything. Talking to them made it worse, since they turned and talked to her and she called me a “tattle” for doing it. I followed the system, and it didn’t work.
I remembered my friend socking someone in the face when he hit me. I recalled what my grandfather had taught me, and decided that the next time she tried, I would make sure it was the last. I slammed the door into her face, then shut her head in the base of my locker, warping the aluminum so badly that my locker no longer worked. She never bothered me again.
Violence is always a potential answer to a problem. I believe it should be a last answer – everything my grandfather taught me before his death last year had focused on that. He hadn’t built a bully or taught me to seek out violence; he taught me how to respond to it.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk recently about how, after the recent Nazi-punching incident, we are in more danger because they will escalate. That we will now see more violence and be under more threat because of it. I reject that. We are already under threat. We are already being attacked. We are being stripped of our rights, we are seeing our loved ones and our family reduced to “barely human” or equated with monsters because they are different.
To say that we are at more risk now than we were before a Nazi got punched in the face is to claim that abusers only hurt you if you fight back. Nazis didn’t need a reason to want to hurt people whom they have already called inhuman, base, monsters, thugs, retards, worthless, damaging to the gene pool, and worthy only of being removed from the world. They were already on board. The only difference that comes from fighting back is the intimate knowledge that we will not put up with their shit.
Steel Phoenix Studios 