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#MeToo – Why Aren’t I Traumatized?
Is there anybody who doesn’t have a #MeToo story of some greater or lesser degree of severity/significance? The Kavanaugh circus – the latest drama in what’s been dubbed the #MeToo moment – has got me thinking about it for a number of reasons.
First, I’m just the guy’s (Kavanaugh’s) vintage and I can relate to life as a late teen/young man in the early/mid 80s. There’s been a lot of talk about that, as though Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds, and Sixteen Candles were the lived experience of every high school or college aged guy alive at the time.
Second, while my high school experience bears no relationship whatsoever to any of those movies or any of the lurid stories about Kavanaugh, my college experience does. I joined a fraternity at the University of Minnesota as a freshman in 1982 and I’ve said many times since then that that experience has lead me to understand how Alexander the Great could have gotten a bunch of juiced up, horned up young men to go out and conquer Asia. We were truly out of control and in need of some adult supervision. In hindsight, it would be surprising if there weren’t far too many #MeToo stories from the parties we used to throw regularly. Had I been heterosexual, there’s an excellent chance I’d have been a perpetrator. I certainly drank enough; as much as Kavanaugh’s accused of and more than he admits to.
So I’m inclined to think that among late teens and young men and women in the early 80s, binge drinking was common and at least some clumsy, handsy, drunken version of what’s now considered sexual assault was too. Many people my age know this from their own experience. It’s what gives at least the Ford and Ramirez accusations against Kavanaugh their plausibility (and distinguishes them from the Swetnick accusation). He may not have done it, but it’s not like it wasn’t done. It was. A lot.
But I have a question, and it’s a question I’d never dare to pose anywhere else on the internet other than Ricochet. The question is: what’s the big deal?
You see I’m not only a mid-50s former fratboy who would, but for his sexual orientation, almost certainly have “committed a Kavanaugh” in his youth, I’m also a former (can you be a former?) “victim” of a #MeToo event. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say I was fresh out of high school, decidedly a virgin, she was someone I worked with at a summer job, twice my age. She got me very, very drunk (I was just discovering alcohol; high school athletics had kept my crowd away from it before that), and she took advantage. Sobered and hung over the next day, I was pretty freaked out. It was, coincidentally, the summer of 1982.
But today, 36 years later, I can talk about it without any fear or anxiety. Nothing about the layout of my home has been affected by the experience. If she were nominated to the Supreme Court and I was asked about it, honestly, I think my answer would be that it was no big deal. Not that it wasn’t at the time. To me it was. I felt violated. I was worried about STDs. I think it caused me months of stress and anxiety. What she did to me was wrong. But some days life’s a crap sandwich. That wasn’t the first bad experience I ever had nor was it (or will it be) the last. Me? I pick myself up and move on. It’s not like I lost a limb. I got over it.
So the first question is, is this a guy thing? Is this just less of a big deal to men than to women?
In many ways (the details of which I’ll spare you) the experience I had was quite a bit more “serious” than what Professor Ford describes. But I was an 18-year-old boy, incapacitated by alcohol yes, but otherwise at least her physical equal. I’m sure 15-year-old Professor Ford couldn’t have said that of 17-year-old Judge Kavanaugh. Does that shape how we experience these events and how we remember them and how (and whether) they scar us?
Or is it our wiring? Are women, as the sex that produces one egg a month and takes primary care for child rearing, just wired to be more selective about their sexual encounters and as a result more violated by an unwanted one?
Am I just weird? Me, personally? Do most men who’ve had experiences like mine suffer lifelong trouble like Professor Ford claims to have? Maybe I’m a sociopath. Or suffering false consciousness. Could therapy help me get in touch with the wounded, victimized child within?
On the other hand, how many women who’ve had to fight off a drunken lout manage to get over it? Is Professor Ford’s lifelong disability the norm? Or is she a fragile flower suffering over an event that most women would be resilient enough to move past? Is her claim of trauma even all that plausible? Or is it just too politically incorrect to doubt it?
If anyone who’s been on the receiving end of a #MeToo experience has any thoughts on these questions I’d be interested. And if your name and/or avatar doesn’t make it clear, it would be helpful if you included your sex in your answer.
Published in General
This! There was a time when it was understood that of course no one should have sex before they got married. (Yes, people sometimes transgressed, and first babies arrived “prematurely” Oh well). That rule meant that both/all involved persons, male or female, plus hosts and hostesses, parents and witnesses etc etc knew where the boundary was and knew that serious consequences were attached to transgression.
That boundary was buttressed by all the ancillary rules designed to keep boys and girls away from situations in which they could get “carried away.”
Because even plain old sexual intercourse was understood to be taboo, the notion that a woman might, for example, “consent” to being strangled and slapped during sex would’ve struck any normal person as absurd. But that was the defense offered by whatsisface, Eric Schneiderman, the attorney general in New York who was accused of slapping and strangling his girlfriend:”Well, she consented.”
In theory, therefore, the incarnation of “Brett Kavanaugh” presently floundering his way through high school will be able to say, when accused, that his Christine Blasey liked having a drunk guy turn up the music really loud, cover her mouth and try to rip her clothes off. Go ahead, Christine: prove you aren’t into this sort of thing? Some are, after all, and who are we to judge?
Check, & thank you.
I am an open-minded man. Really, I am. But this, Simon Templar, is simply beyond the pale.
Hie thee to the outer darkness, and do not even think of returning.
Oh my very goshness!
I guess I’ll come too, and bring a flashlight…
Agreed, but. I really think that if women are to maintain any semblance of freedom, we need to prepare them for the world that awaits. My mother prepared me very well in most respects; I was never taken advantage of by anyone, and that was mostly due to my mother, but it was also partly luck. Several much older men hit on me when I was a teenager, and I always took it in stride, but I had a college professor who was widely known to hit on his students; for some reason, I viewed him as a Daddy figure. If he had ever hit on me, I would have been devastated. Luckily, he didn’t: turns out, I was the only woman in the state he never hit on. One of my male friends who apparently knew me better than I knew myself went behind my back and told this professor that if he ever hit on me, he would be killed. I didn’t learn of this until over a decade later.
When my mother would talk to me about how to deal with men, I always assumed that she was talking about men more or less my own age; I was genuinely surprised when much older men took an interest in me; that is how naive I was. We really need to teach young women how to take care of themselves; there is such a thing as being too naive.
The idea that the feminazis push for (the pill?), unlimited access to abortions and/ or infanticide has not been a plus for the women and children and their children and so on who are unwed mothers. I believe we are at if not already above 50% of babies born of all races are to unwed mothers these days.
I cannot even imagine attending K – 12 wherein ~half of the students are bastards.
I am convinced that the main reason, if not the only reason, feminists brag about sleeping around is because men would totally reject them if they didn’t. Without the sex, they are just a bunch of man hating hags, but throw the sex in, and a lot of men have trouble seeing things clearly :)
I mean really. Feminists obviously hate men, but they claim to love having sex with the men they hate. Something is wrong with that picture.
And its corollary: being too cynical/jaded/wise-beyond-years…Or the ice-queen variant thereof, just saying: Wisdom, self-and-situational awareness, and prayer for guidance in choices.
In my immediate family to include my mother are/ were nothing but farmers’ wives and farmers’ daughters. All of those ladies were tough as nails but I would not have wanted to serve in combat with any of them. We have lost our collective minds I’m afraid.
P.S. Many of my immediate male family (to include my father) and distant relatives were drafted (two maternal uncles during the Vietnam war) and served in combat. I am OK with that. It worked well for generations, but suddenly we simply must have women grunts. Give me a break. I need to get off this merry-go-round.
The tide is turning, Simon. Things are getting better, people are starting to wake up.
*and I predict that the elections in November will prove me right on this.
Let’s hope they don’t wake up, look around, roll over, and go back to sleep.
LoisLane: no offense, but your comments make me wonder why you think your friend is amazing. She sounds, at best, lacking in good judgment, and someone who should never be in a jury box or perhaps even a voting booth.
People are mixtures. Most of us do not know a lot about everything, we know a lot about one thing and have a glancing acquaintance with others and so base our opinions largely on affiliation. I know, because I did this myself and —frankly—still do.
You always do, Nanda!
Hi, @kylez. Let me explain.
I know the whole of the woman, not just her narrow opinion here.
I have certainly taken positions on issues that others would not approve or understand, but should I then be dismissed as a person?
The truth is that I feel she has an almost violent reaction to the judge (emotionally speaking) because she views him as a threat to something she cares about: abortion. Instead of separating him from the emotional investment she’s made in this institution, she views him as coming at women in general… as a menacing man… the type of man who actually assaulted her. So it’s easy for her to strip from him his humanity as an individual because… in a way… this is about something more abstract, and she will never meet Brett Kavenaugh. It seems to me that is important to understand.
IF I looked at her reaction to the judge in isolation, I might go, “Wow. She’s awful.” Especially since I despise abortion, and I think her impulse is to shield something that is beyond immoral.
But this is the thing.
I know that girl’s journey. I know that girl and have for decades. She’s a kind, smart, funny person. She has her reasons for feeling defensive around men, and she has her reasons for rationalizing what is a legal practice that is endorsed by the vast majority of her friends.
Why would I reduce her to the thing on which we disagree?
As for her not being fit for voting or serving in a jury? Well, I guess some people could say the same about me if they didn’t like my perspectives. Some people say Judge Kavenaugh is not fit for the bench. (!!!!)
Both she and me are completely qualified and might serve on the same jury where we’d have to speak with each other and try to move past our feelings.
Being a progressive doesn’t disqualify her from being a citizen.
As far as I’m concerned, #metoo is fundamentally about freedom of expression. Every person should be free to express themselves publicly about events that they have experienced personally in their lives, even when their memories of those events may be faulty. By publishing the story on Ricochet, a website available to anybody on the planet willing to sign up for a free trial, you have participated in your own “#metoo moment”.
However, when it comes to taking those expressions and using them to demand government action against individuals, I contend that at that point it’s no longer a “#metoo moment”. It’s no longer about expression, and instead about prosecution without evidence.
I feel very “icky” when I see people disparage or attack anybody simply because they expressed themselves publicly about something that happened to them. At the same time, I feel very angry when I see other people demand that folk be punished based on what the first person expressed.
In other words there is (arguably) a difference between Christine Blasey Ford and the Democratic Party apparachiks who claim that her words qualify as evidence.
I’ve been arguing for years that the College Republicans should go all in on the whole “rape culture” and “#metoo” hysterias as ammunition to promote abstinence and marriage. They should get a booth during college “sex weeks” to education young men on what the law in their jurisdiction actually says about sexual harassment and sexual assault, and how their college administrations actually adjudicate allegations of sexual misconduct. They should lead the campaign to “just teach men not to rape” by illustrating that abstinence and marriage is the best (only?) way to minimize (though not eliminate) the odds of allegations against them (both false allegations and true allegations).
Heck, they could even add sobriety to the list of precautions as well.
I have certainly taken positions on issues that others would not approve or understand, but should I then be dismissed as a person?
No, but believing it is okay to accuse a person of a crime based on your own personal experiences and biases with no regard for evidence is beyond “taking positions on issues”. Maybe you should explain this to her if you haven’t.
I didn’t say she was disqualified from being a citizen, but she is clearly not fit to be making decisions that affect society, especially when the liberty of a man is at stake.
Sadly, she is obviously still letting this rape from many years ago control her life in a number of ways.
she views him as coming at women in general… as a menacing man… the type of man who actually assaulted her.
It doesn’t help that the media keeps putting angry-looking pictures of him taken from his testimony everywhere.
I don’t disagree about her projections. But my friend didn’t accuse the judge of anything. She is also not screaming at senators in elevators or making death threats to families or anything else like that.
Rather, she shared her reaction with me, and I told her why I felt that was reaction wasn’t based on reason but feeling.
Isn’t it better that we talked? That she heard this other point of view?
If I led with “you’re hysterical on this one,” how far would I have gotten? About as far as if she’d said to ME, “You don’t care about women.”
Also, whether her judgment is clouded or not, her view of the judge does not cancel out the other good she does in life…. does not make her a flat person.
If she were the accuser at this point with no evidence or a senator trying to destroy a man, I might very well feel differently.
She is neither of these things.
She’s just an observer.
And I understand that it is difficult for people to divorce themselves from their own experiences in any case.
That is why we seat more than one person on a jury.
That is why we will never have a perfect justice system.
I get this. I have old friends who are liberals, and they’re some of the smartest people I know, and I know they’re sincere in their beliefs. I mean I still don’t see how they can have those beliefs, but oh well.
I’m working to improve my skills in listening and talking (rather than lecturing and correcting) for just this reason. And, if I think about it, the fact that I knew a lot of conservatives (and loved them) helped me a lot when the time came to realize that I’d been batting for the wrong team.
Me too. I have dear friends who are bright, well educated, liberal atheists; but their actions and behavior is more Christian than they realize or would ever admit. We just disagree on politics. It is not the end of the world, and we can still play round after round of golf together (usually well fueled by booze and beer-cart girls) without fighting.
Yeah, this is what leftist politics does to even people who are otherwise friendly and caring towards others. Especially for the irreligious. It is a combination of self-righteousness and ignorance. Not wanting that bubble to ever be bothered by reality.
She is just an observer, but what is scary is that she (and millions of people) is observing the same things you are, but not allowing the observable facts (what little there are) to shape her opinions.
Maybe you had hit a few home runs though.
Sure. That’s about Roe. But I think she’ll still think about what I’ve said.
One soul at a time dude.
I have two points.
(1) There are some veterans in my family, but I don’t really know much about how military careers are advanced. Is there something about serving in combat that enhances your military career? I mean, there probably should be, but I know majors and above who didn’t have combat MOSs, and they got there. Is there something about combat, other than the obvious, that enhances your ability to advance?
(2) Not all men are fit for combat either.
One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance.” I think part of the current state of affairs are a serious lack of knowledge about physical strength. Fewer and fewer people work in fields where being strong is necessary. Fewer children do sports, families don’t backpack, they don’t do anything more strenuous than cut the grass, so they look at combat and say, well, she can pull a trigger as well as he, why not? Also, smaller, more isolated families mean that many children grow up without even sharing a bedroom. They really don’t get what it is like to live in a big group 24/7, and have no idea of what stresses are involved.