Sexual predation is about more than just patriarchy: it's about the deeply human compulsion to shut one’s eyes to inconvenient things, and it's in all of us.
There is so much to love about this piece, including that it grabbed me from beginning to end. Like drop everything and read it now.
It’s incredibly honest, human, and doesn’t fall for the feminist trap of female superiority, moral innocence, or purity narratives. Complicity and self-preservation in systems that will devour you is a normal reaction to threat. You understand that systems are filled with people who sense, suspect, minimise, rationalise, and look away because the incentives for disrupting the social order are unbearably high, which is why predators can keep doing what they want.
I love that you refuse innocence. You implicate yourself in the same human tendencies toward denial, self-preservation, and looking away that allow predatory systems to survive instead of positioning yourself outside them as morally pure. Excellent all the way through.
Thank you so much. It's a very new thing for me to tentatively write about, and it's been a long time coming so I appreciate this immensely. Last week I wrote about writer's block and the reasons why it can occur ... I forgot one very obvious possibility which is that you're not attending to the piece you actually need to write.
This is more personal than your other writing. I was going to mention the writer's block thing in my comment but I figured you already knew. When it's time for the thing to come out, all the resistance in the world tries to block it....unsuccessfully. Disruptive pieces can go through long gestation and labour pains. So glad it's here!
You could write an entire piece on how having a documented history of mental illness makes legal justice inaccessible, especially if you are a woman. It is scary and infuriating and humiliating to know that if someone abuses me, I don’t have the same legal options available to me because of my history: even if the facts are entirely on my side and my mental illness is irrelevant, a good lawyer will use it to tear me to pieces. I have been advised in the past not to report people who have abused me—I have been advised to appease them even—because I “will never win a court case”. It makes you feel like less of a person to be told you will never win a court case, no matter how innocent or victimized you are. And then, later on, the same men will say, “If it was so bad, why didn’t you sue?” I don’t feel like a full citizen, tbh; I know that sounds dramatic, but I feel like the justice system is there to serve other people, not me.
Absolutely, I will go into this more in Part 2 but it’s been a prevailing horror in the work I do realising just how wide the gap between ‘terrible acts that traumatise people’ and ‘terrible acts that traumatise people which can be successfully proven and prosecuted in a court of law’ really is. To say nothing of how impossibly hard the court process is if you get that far. For example: I can present myself well and I have a lot of professional knowledge. That is easily twisted into ‘She’s clearly not that badly affected if she can speak about it coherently, and study towards an advanced degree, and run a practice, etc etc’.
I’m so sorry you understand this more painfully and personally than most. I also never want to dissuade anyone from taking the criminal justice path if they want to try (I still might one day). But my personal credo is that such a thing is best attempted when you do it because you choose, because you have to try, independent of what the outcome may be.
Agree with everything Nathalie said. And your writing is so true that it’s not difficult to say, “yes, I’ve seen that with my own eyes” to every part of the story. A terrible thing about the calculation that every woman in this situation makes is that everyone around them (the witnesses and bystanders) is making those calculations for themselves as well, which you illustrate beautifully.
Thank you Trysa. That means a great deal, especially from another practitioner. I was concerned about balancing the idea of ‘complicity’ carefully, it’s a different thing from the shame and self-blame survivors tend to be left with.
Wow, what a wonderful honest, insightful, and beautifully written piece. I’m sorry that you went through this. As you know, so many of us women have. I’m glad you’re able to write about it with such clarity I hope many people read it. Everybody ought to.
I received the email at 3 a.m. I was awake because of a power outage, and I was reading this on my phone in the dark. That seemed to be appropriate, and I couldn't put it down until I finished.
It's now 7 hours later and the power is back on.
This is another area of life that I have been fortunate to have missed; I am so sorry for all the trauma you had to go through. As a father of two daughters, probably a little older than you, I would be crushed, then angered if something like that happened to either one. I'm not sure what I would do, but it could be something I would later regret.
Also as a father, when I see someone in distress, I have a strong desire to hold them until things get better. You have a husband, who is also a father, and I hope he's doing that for you.
Thank you John. When I speak of lack of parental support in the piece, my parents are wonderful, decent people. They were simply going through too much themselves. When my father found out some of this, years later, I jokingly said: "Hey Dad, do you think you could kill a guy for me?" and he said "Of course, but I can also teach you how to do it yourself, you're very capable." Hugs and tears all round. I am blessed to have had many wonderful, kind, protective men in my life and they hold me well alongside the women. I appreciate your kindness.
Thank you for writing this. Your deliberate vagueness is irritatingly instructive: I am glad I do not have to read the sordid details, but mildly annoyed not to know what is being referred to. Still, if I wanted sordid details I would devote myself to reading the death penalty review decisions from my state's Supreme Court.
I had written much more, but it was more about me than about you or your post, so in the spirit of the complicit HR, I suppressed it.
I can appreciate that dilemma Jackson, it’s difficult to stress the appropriate seriousness given everything online seems to be dialled up to 11 at all times. I thought about what to say in this regard a lot. In the end, though, as I will touch on in Part 2, I have had to learn not to bite off more than I can chew in terms of spending too much time in the details. Even now it is not good for my functioning.
There is also the small matter of the details being specific enough to identify the people involved if anyone concerned reads it, and I don’t want to paywall this one (or get sued)!
The byline alone, earned you a Subscriber from me.
After reading this, I couldn't help but think of a twisted inverse (one I've seen play out, multiple times in workplaces). And I want to ask you about it.
Question: When a "More valuable" employee makes a sexual harassment/other-kind-of-harassment complaint or report, about a "less valuable" employee, I've noticed the person the complaint is about also tends to be victimized by this system. Trust is gone about their own social abilities or whether to trust employees (one of which reported them, and they'll never know who). Even if they DID say an inappropriate joke, or were too flirtatious, or inappropriately suggestive. Instead of establishing boundaries, it suddenly becomes more likely that the janitor will get let go during probationary period, if he's only recently hired. Or that the female staff intern will not get a job there after her internship is over. Or that the male nurse will not have his contract renewed because the other male nurse who is Full Time, feels "unsafe" working with him, now.
It's like once a suspicion is raised about the kind of person the employee COULD be, there HAS to be a human sacrifice. And the weaker person is always safely dealt with as a liability, albeit indirectly. I think that's why more good people don't report things they should.
Am I inaccurate in noticing this? Did I get it? How does the system eat its own this way, in your opinion? Or does it? Can you break down your analysis of this phenomenon? Because I think you'll shed some light on it.
Welcome and thank you! I’m so glad you found it worthwhile. That’s such an interesting question and something I’ll probably need to let sit for a while before I can answer coherently. Instinctively, I think you’re correct: @Nathalie Martinek PhD writes extensively about workplace power dynamics and pathological personalities, and this makes me think of her work around how the system ostensibly demands scapegoats. The organisation has to be SEEN to be doing something (more on this in Part 2) and swiftly knifing low-power employees at the first hint of scandal serves a dual purpose. You remove the possibility of a threat, and you also look proactive and like you take this stuff incredibly seriously. The system will do what protects the system…
I will check in, from time to time :) And yes, I wonder now if the sexual harassment reporting system is designed to protect the institution from liable damages in the future. Not necessarily prioritizing what employees consider justice.
It is the nature of systems to preserve themselves. Better to experience extra pain than to calibrate exactly the temperature at which we get suffer burns. Better to vomit up something healthy than let poison or infection remain.
But this same instinct hits different when the “risk” is a person, and you’re potentially expelling someone for something they didn’t do.
Or worse, when evil behaviour gets lodged in the system and the system then rallies to protect that behaviour. Though in that case, being presumptively expelled might be a mercy, even if it is painful at the time.
The problem is, we've all harassed someone at one time or another. So we need to deal with mistakes honestly, and fairly. How do we do that?
Women aren't safe from the system when it is unfair, either. Neither are men in an all male office/work floor. Same-sex sexual harassment claims are more common, now.
There is so much to love about this piece, including that it grabbed me from beginning to end. Like drop everything and read it now.
It’s incredibly honest, human, and doesn’t fall for the feminist trap of female superiority, moral innocence, or purity narratives. Complicity and self-preservation in systems that will devour you is a normal reaction to threat. You understand that systems are filled with people who sense, suspect, minimise, rationalise, and look away because the incentives for disrupting the social order are unbearably high, which is why predators can keep doing what they want.
I love that you refuse innocence. You implicate yourself in the same human tendencies toward denial, self-preservation, and looking away that allow predatory systems to survive instead of positioning yourself outside them as morally pure. Excellent all the way through.
Thank you so much. It's a very new thing for me to tentatively write about, and it's been a long time coming so I appreciate this immensely. Last week I wrote about writer's block and the reasons why it can occur ... I forgot one very obvious possibility which is that you're not attending to the piece you actually need to write.
This is more personal than your other writing. I was going to mention the writer's block thing in my comment but I figured you already knew. When it's time for the thing to come out, all the resistance in the world tries to block it....unsuccessfully. Disruptive pieces can go through long gestation and labour pains. So glad it's here!
Exactly, you get it! I said to a writer friend that it’s sort of working its way out of me and wants to be born. Thank you.
Ugh, I’m so sorry.
You could write an entire piece on how having a documented history of mental illness makes legal justice inaccessible, especially if you are a woman. It is scary and infuriating and humiliating to know that if someone abuses me, I don’t have the same legal options available to me because of my history: even if the facts are entirely on my side and my mental illness is irrelevant, a good lawyer will use it to tear me to pieces. I have been advised in the past not to report people who have abused me—I have been advised to appease them even—because I “will never win a court case”. It makes you feel like less of a person to be told you will never win a court case, no matter how innocent or victimized you are. And then, later on, the same men will say, “If it was so bad, why didn’t you sue?” I don’t feel like a full citizen, tbh; I know that sounds dramatic, but I feel like the justice system is there to serve other people, not me.
Absolutely, I will go into this more in Part 2 but it’s been a prevailing horror in the work I do realising just how wide the gap between ‘terrible acts that traumatise people’ and ‘terrible acts that traumatise people which can be successfully proven and prosecuted in a court of law’ really is. To say nothing of how impossibly hard the court process is if you get that far. For example: I can present myself well and I have a lot of professional knowledge. That is easily twisted into ‘She’s clearly not that badly affected if she can speak about it coherently, and study towards an advanced degree, and run a practice, etc etc’.
I’m so sorry you understand this more painfully and personally than most. I also never want to dissuade anyone from taking the criminal justice path if they want to try (I still might one day). But my personal credo is that such a thing is best attempted when you do it because you choose, because you have to try, independent of what the outcome may be.
Agree with everything Nathalie said. And your writing is so true that it’s not difficult to say, “yes, I’ve seen that with my own eyes” to every part of the story. A terrible thing about the calculation that every woman in this situation makes is that everyone around them (the witnesses and bystanders) is making those calculations for themselves as well, which you illustrate beautifully.
Thank you Trysa. That means a great deal, especially from another practitioner. I was concerned about balancing the idea of ‘complicity’ carefully, it’s a different thing from the shame and self-blame survivors tend to be left with.
Wow, what a wonderful honest, insightful, and beautifully written piece. I’m sorry that you went through this. As you know, so many of us women have. I’m glad you’re able to write about it with such clarity I hope many people read it. Everybody ought to.
Thank you Irene, it was simultaneously very hard to put together and at the same time felt a bit like I had to get it out. Labour pains!
That makes all the sense for me. Perfect for the day after Mother’s Day!
I received the email at 3 a.m. I was awake because of a power outage, and I was reading this on my phone in the dark. That seemed to be appropriate, and I couldn't put it down until I finished.
It's now 7 hours later and the power is back on.
This is another area of life that I have been fortunate to have missed; I am so sorry for all the trauma you had to go through. As a father of two daughters, probably a little older than you, I would be crushed, then angered if something like that happened to either one. I'm not sure what I would do, but it could be something I would later regret.
Also as a father, when I see someone in distress, I have a strong desire to hold them until things get better. You have a husband, who is also a father, and I hope he's doing that for you.
Thank you John. When I speak of lack of parental support in the piece, my parents are wonderful, decent people. They were simply going through too much themselves. When my father found out some of this, years later, I jokingly said: "Hey Dad, do you think you could kill a guy for me?" and he said "Of course, but I can also teach you how to do it yourself, you're very capable." Hugs and tears all round. I am blessed to have had many wonderful, kind, protective men in my life and they hold me well alongside the women. I appreciate your kindness.
Thank you for writing this. Your deliberate vagueness is irritatingly instructive: I am glad I do not have to read the sordid details, but mildly annoyed not to know what is being referred to. Still, if I wanted sordid details I would devote myself to reading the death penalty review decisions from my state's Supreme Court.
I had written much more, but it was more about me than about you or your post, so in the spirit of the complicit HR, I suppressed it.
I can appreciate that dilemma Jackson, it’s difficult to stress the appropriate seriousness given everything online seems to be dialled up to 11 at all times. I thought about what to say in this regard a lot. In the end, though, as I will touch on in Part 2, I have had to learn not to bite off more than I can chew in terms of spending too much time in the details. Even now it is not good for my functioning.
There is also the small matter of the details being specific enough to identify the people involved if anyone concerned reads it, and I don’t want to paywall this one (or get sued)!
The byline alone, earned you a Subscriber from me.
After reading this, I couldn't help but think of a twisted inverse (one I've seen play out, multiple times in workplaces). And I want to ask you about it.
Question: When a "More valuable" employee makes a sexual harassment/other-kind-of-harassment complaint or report, about a "less valuable" employee, I've noticed the person the complaint is about also tends to be victimized by this system. Trust is gone about their own social abilities or whether to trust employees (one of which reported them, and they'll never know who). Even if they DID say an inappropriate joke, or were too flirtatious, or inappropriately suggestive. Instead of establishing boundaries, it suddenly becomes more likely that the janitor will get let go during probationary period, if he's only recently hired. Or that the female staff intern will not get a job there after her internship is over. Or that the male nurse will not have his contract renewed because the other male nurse who is Full Time, feels "unsafe" working with him, now.
It's like once a suspicion is raised about the kind of person the employee COULD be, there HAS to be a human sacrifice. And the weaker person is always safely dealt with as a liability, albeit indirectly. I think that's why more good people don't report things they should.
Am I inaccurate in noticing this? Did I get it? How does the system eat its own this way, in your opinion? Or does it? Can you break down your analysis of this phenomenon? Because I think you'll shed some light on it.
Welcome and thank you! I’m so glad you found it worthwhile. That’s such an interesting question and something I’ll probably need to let sit for a while before I can answer coherently. Instinctively, I think you’re correct: @Nathalie Martinek PhD writes extensively about workplace power dynamics and pathological personalities, and this makes me think of her work around how the system ostensibly demands scapegoats. The organisation has to be SEEN to be doing something (more on this in Part 2) and swiftly knifing low-power employees at the first hint of scandal serves a dual purpose. You remove the possibility of a threat, and you also look proactive and like you take this stuff incredibly seriously. The system will do what protects the system…
I will check in, from time to time :) And yes, I wonder now if the sexual harassment reporting system is designed to protect the institution from liable damages in the future. Not necessarily prioritizing what employees consider justice.
I think this is absolutely true and I am hoping to address some of it in Part 2, when I talk about how the 'independent investigation' went down.
This is really tough
It is the nature of systems to preserve themselves. Better to experience extra pain than to calibrate exactly the temperature at which we get suffer burns. Better to vomit up something healthy than let poison or infection remain.
But this same instinct hits different when the “risk” is a person, and you’re potentially expelling someone for something they didn’t do.
Or worse, when evil behaviour gets lodged in the system and the system then rallies to protect that behaviour. Though in that case, being presumptively expelled might be a mercy, even if it is painful at the time.
The problem is, we've all harassed someone at one time or another. So we need to deal with mistakes honestly, and fairly. How do we do that?
Women aren't safe from the system when it is unfair, either. Neither are men in an all male office/work floor. Same-sex sexual harassment claims are more common, now.