I want to write a poem and I want to call it No

I want to scream / virally

I want to write a poem because I refuse

I refuse to let you ruin poetry / the thing that seems to be saving me

*

I really do want to write a poem and I really do want to call it No. I want to say No over and over in every way that I can. I want every atom of every cell in my body to take the same shape as my mouth and join me in saying No. I want to be as strong as the brick wall I am always banging my head against. I want to be stronger than the brick wall. And then I think: I am stronger. I am.

I want to write a poem but ultimately I care more about people than poetry and can’t afford to spend time thinking about rhythm and line breaks when victims of gender-based violence are being stepped on (again), hurt (again), pushed down (again), intimidated into silence (again again again).

I don’t know what to say, exactly, but I am going to keep on saying No.

I am going to say Bruce Covey’s name because people are afraid to say Bruce Covey’s name, and I don’t blame them – he has used legal threats and emotional manipulation to isolate people and scare them into silence. His scare tactics are working, and it pains me to witness the pain of others as they are forced to choose silence as a means of self-protection. People worried about their families, their finances, their homes. Punished for saying: I hear you. I am listening. I care.

I received one of those letters, and I said No:

I said No because the future I want to live in is a future where No, not fear, is the norm. Where No is heard loud and clear. Where my No is respected. Where my No is taken seriously. The Future: When I say No: You Listen. Stop. Do not fuck with me / I do not consent.

I do not consent to being silent as a poetry press attempts to reassert its power as if doing so is a harmless act. I do not consent to being silent as Bruce Covey continues to receive support as a publisher and poet, this man who calls himself an intersectional feminist yet tokenizes women of color and victims of sexual abuse, using them as pawns to bolster his feminist image. This man who sends baseless legal threats to women and non-binary people simply because they have demonstrated strong victim advocacy in the past. Why are we a threat to you? This man who says he received a “veiled threat” concerning the safety of his children, as if anyone who actually feels threatened would say they received a “veiled threat.”

Side note: wtf is a “veiled threat”? I have only received actual threats concerning the safety of my child:

This is what I received the very first time I spoke publicly about my personal experiences of abuse. I was very, very scared.

I don’t want to be scared anymore. I do not consent. I do not consent to a lifetime of fear. I do not consent to being silent while white men in literature continue to abuse their positions of power, while Bruce Covey insulates himself with a flock of women – and the women, I don’t even know what to say to you. Do I feel sorrow for you? Am I scared of you? Am I deeply pained? Am I angry as fuck? Yes, and yes, and yes, and yes. Why do you say yes? Do you not see that choosing to say yes to him is a choice to say no to so many others? Where did you find the nerve to label yourselves as feminists and victim-advocates? Because that is some fucking nerve. Enough is enough. You are not a safe space.  

I don’t want to be scared and I am not scared. What’s going to happen? Will Bruce Covey threaten me with more legal action for telling the Internet that Bruce Covey threatened me with legal action? What if I tell you he made me feel uncomfortable before I knew anyone else had been harmed by him? That I didn’t know what to say, that I brushed it off as no big deal, because that’s what we learn to do, conditioned to accept oppressive behavior, conditioned to give, conditioned to not say: No.

*

I want to write a poem and I want to break what they think they know about us. I want to burn the scripts they etch into our skin with their smiling teeth, their kindness, their uncivil civility.

I want to write a poem but if I start the poem it means I will have to end the poem and I don’t want to stop saying No.

I want to write a poem but first I had to tell You, Dear Ones, Invisible and Near: Yes. I hear you. And Yes. And Love. And Yes. 

It’s the day before Valentine’s Day and for the fourth day in a row this week I’ve woken up with chest pains. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I still sleep in the bed where he raped me, in the apartment where so much of the abuse happened. I only got the apartment when I did because he wanted to visit me so badly. It was good for me to move out of my parents’ house (my father’s continued emotional and psychological abuse was making me ill), but traumatic memories have a way of lingering. They are in every shadow. I hope to have the means to move away soon. 

But it’s not just my personal trauma that gives me chest pains – it’s also the trauma that’s happening in the world, every day, all day, the sexism, the racism, the transphobia, the classism, the ableism, the empathy-deficit that is so strong I can’t help but think it will destroy the planet long before any bursting sun or meteor will. 

And today is the opening day of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. I haven’t read the book and don’t plan to. I don’t need to read it to know what it’s about. I don’t need to see the movie. I know what emotional and sexual abuse look like. I know what they feel like. I know all the signs. I am still living in the aftermath. 

Instead I’ve read many of the articles that dissect the story, and from what I’ve gathered there doesn’t even seem to be much dispute about whether or not the relationship between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele is abusive, but whether or not that matters. Women like this book – that is, after all, how it sold so many copies – so it can’t be problematic, right? It’s just a book. It’s not real. 

But it’s because women like this book that it’s so problematic. The fact that women find this book sexually liberating is so problematic it makes me dizzy. And not because women shouldn’t have sexual agency but because we already so gravely don't and Fifty Shades only reinforces mainstream sexual violence, i.e. heteronormative male sexuality, i.e. that’s why it’s so popular. If the movie was sexually groundbreaking it wouldn’t be opening at $60 million. If the book was sexually groundbreaking it wouldn’t be mainstream. Misogynist beliefs about sex and sexuality are too deeply ingrained in ourselves and our society for millions of women to suddenly become liberated by a story that people around the world recognize as abusive. And I know this attitude can sound patronizing, and I cringe at that, but that’s also because of the nature of abuse – it’s designed to look like something other than abuse, especially in the beginning. Abuse is designed to make you think you like it. And when you don’t like it, abuse is designed to make you think it’s your fault. Something must be wrong with you. What the fuck is wrong with you, he said… Abuse is abuse because it denies the victim agency to fully recognize that what’s happening is abuse. 

I was with my abuser when several of his other victims came forward about his abuse. I wasn’t shocked at their stories (which should have been shocking to me, in the moment), but I felt patronized when anyone tried to tell me I was being abused, and I think that’s because victims are already denied so much agency – by that point my entire life was being dictated by him, his wants, his needs, his moods – that I couldn’t stand yet another person trying to dictate my reality. And besides, listening to those other voices, believing them, would mean I’d have to face reality, to face the real him, but he’d already stripped away so much of my personhood that I didn’t have an “I” with which to face him. I was a nobody. Just a body. And he loved that body. He loved that body more than I had ever loved that body, and, growing up being shamed for my body – by both my father (“hey there, fatty,” “hey there, bubble-butt”), and body-critical American culture, it felt good, for once, to not be ashamed of my body, even though I was depressed, even though he was mean to me, even though I was scared of him, even though he wouldn’t take no for an answer –at least I was sexy as fuck, and I took this distorted thinking as some sort of liberation, some sort of power, when really that was exactly how he wanted me to feel – liberated, beautiful, not abused. 

My psuedo-liberation was a product of his emotional and sexual abuse and only reinforced his control over me. He didn’t love my body – he loved using my body. And he damn did he use it up. If I hated it before I don’t know what to call my relationship with it now. There isn’t one. Numbness.  

Patriarchy at large functions in much the same way – it denies its own existence through pseudo-liberation of marginalized groups, i.e. claiming that something like Fifty Shades  is all about giving women permission to openly talk about sex and is therefore progressive, when what it’s actually doing is further normalizing male narratives of sexual violence, which in turn only reinforces the power of those already in power, i.e. not women.  

And it’s not “just a book.” What is “just a book,” anyway? We shape our reality through language and stories. Language and stories reinforce our attitudes and beliefs about the world. No book is “just a book.” No movie is “just a movie." 

Part of me wishes I was able to read the book myself and draw more specific connections between Christian Grey and my abuser, the similarities and differences between them and how both are important to note – no two abusers are exactly the same, especially since many are very skilled at adapting their tactics to the personality and environment of the victim – but the foundation is the same – manipulation, control, confusion, fear, all wrapped up in a big red bow labeled LOVE. 

A year ago on Valentine’s Day I remember fantasizing about telling someone that my fiancee was abusing me. But am I being abused? I asked myself this so many times, entirely oblivious to the fact that the answer to my question lay in my need to ask it so many times. 

A year ago I was at work, not at all excited for Valentine’s Day. I thought, How could all this rage be love? I was scared to go home, to this apartment. But I went because there was nowhere else to go, and there he was, all showered and clean, with a bottle of champagne and a several-hundred dollar diamond bracelet he’d spent the day searching for at the Mall of America, a handwritten card he’d diligently worked on at the coffee shop. 

I am so in love with you I am so in love with you I am so in love with you 

Over and over I read the card. It was like water in the desert – I was thirsting for affection, romance, emotional intimacy – signs of all the things that had led me here in the first place, signs that I wasn’t crazy, that I wasn’t being abused, that everything would be okay… 

Fifty Shades of Grey is and will continue to be popular and there’s not much I can do about that. Women around the world are and will continue to be abused at alarmingly high rates, and there’s not much I can do about that either. But I’ll keep writing when I can, I’ll keep supporting other victims, and instead of seeing Fifty Shades of Grey I’m going to donate the ten dollars a movie ticket would cost me to The Domestic Violence Relief Fund. I hope you’ll consider doing the same. 

P.S. a few months later I burned that fucking card. 

Originally posted here, copied in full below: http://sarahxcerta.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/from-the-mouth-of-a-survivor-an-open-letter-to-elizabeth-ellens-open-letter-to-the-internet-and-all-the-conversation-surrounding/

Let me start this conversation by saying that it’s the last place I want to be. I don’t want to talk about rape. I don’t want to talk about sexual abuse. I don’t want to name the man who raped me because I know that he Googles himself daily and I can assure you his eyes will be one of the first to see this. That thought alone is enough to make my stomach turn. But as the stories of rape and sexual assault concerning Stephen Dierks, Tao Lin, and Steven Trull/Janey Smith have circulated this past week, the thing most clear to me is that many people have very little understanding of 1) what rape and sexual assault actually look like, and 2) the nature and severity of emotional and psychological damage such violence causes. This ignorance aids in perpetuating rape culture. I started to articulate some of these thoughts earlier this week, which you can read in full here.

It is hard for me to say much more about my story. I can tell you that up until May 31^st of this year I was engaged to Gregory Sherl, whom several victims came forth about this past winter, prompted by the fundraiser I’d started for him. I can also tell you that nothing in Kat Dixon’s essay detailing her relationship with him shocks me. In fact, it frightens me, how strikingly similar her story is to mine, even though we are strangers, me and Kat, we are bound by the intricacies of this nightmare. I have a hard time reading her essay because it is a step back into a pseudo-home, a life all too familiar and haunting.

I can also tell you that during my relationship with Gregory I was emotionally, psychologically, and sexually abused by him. I can tell you that I was raped on more than one occasion. And that should be enough. But over and over I see victims of rape and sexual abuse have the legitimacy of their claims questioned. People demand details. Context. Evidence. Proof. This is problematic for many reasons that to even think about addressing the issue makes my head spin. But at this point, on behalf of all the victims who continue to be silenced, questioned, and criticized, to say something is to further resist oppression.

From a survivor’s mouth: I cannot yet share many details about the ways in which Gregory abused me and that is not because I am conservative with my words but because I am still heavily dealing with the aftermath of having been in an abusive relationship. It is also because of the perversity of the nature of his acts as well as the emotional and psychological effects publicly sharing those experiences would have on me. Talking about how I was abused makes me feel weak, pathetic, used up and stupid, exactly how such violence is intended to make me feel. I hope one day to be strong enough to share the details because to be strong enough would be to break yet another form of oppression. When I first spoke up I was unable to say his name. I am now able to say his name. It is a slow process, this reclaiming of myself. Victims of abuse are silenced by the public, yes, by their abusers, yes, but also by the very nature of the abuse they have endured. When a victim speaks up it is a revolutionary act, both personally and politically. For many of us, it begins with acknowledging the reality of what has happened to us. It begins with saying to ourselves, “I have been raped.” To admit this to oneself is often the first step in healing. It is also an incredibly painful experience, to have this conversation with oneself, let alone with a friend, let alone with the public. To publicly say “I have been raped” is an enormous feat that many people not only fail to recognize but then also go on to belittle with their questions and skepticism.

What’s even more repulsive is that the victims of Stephen Dierks and Tao Lin told their stories in explicit detail (this article at Quaint Magazine is thorough with links) and they are still being questioned. Not only does this demonstrate a gross insensitivity to the strength and vulnerability of those who have spoken up, but also an ignorance of the nature of rape and sexual abuse. Thankfully, others have done the labor of articulating what we talk about when we talk about rape, including Andrea Kneeland, Seuyeun Juliette Lee, and Katie McDonough in her aptly titled piece “America’s sex abuse surprise: Why our search for ‘monsters’ is blinding us”:

This is the kind of sexual assault that we don’t talk about. The kind that simply doesn’t exist for the Wills and the Flanagans. There are no weapons. No violent struggle. No explicit threats. But it’s rape. Though it seems that there’s no room in our current narratives, at least among the people who are shouting the loudest, to condemn rape that looks like this, because that means answering the question of what is to be done about all of these men — the ones we know, the ones who we don’t think look like “classic” rapists. Or “classic” domestic abusers. And then there are the men who do not do these things but look on and say nothing while this violence unfolds around them. What are we to do about all of these men, who seem to be everywhere?

Elizabeth Ellen is right: Tao Lin is not a monster. Neither is Dierks. Neither is Trull/Smith. And Gregory? I can’t say what Gregory is because I am his victim and on a personal survival level I have to think of him as a monster because it is the only way to stay free of him. But he, along with all the others, is also a man. It’s tempting and for some of us necessary to call these men monsters but ultimately they are men and their attitudes and actions towards women are not isolated beliefs and events. They are misogyny and sexism in visible action. They are common. They are normalized.

Want to see a “classic” rapist? Look around you. Most rapes are committed by a person known to the victim. Nearly 40 percent of rapists are friends or acquaintances with their victims. The sooner we erase the image of the shadowy man hiding in the bushes or stalking women in darkened parking lots from our collective consciousness, the better. Not because stranger rape doesn’t happen, but because this singular vision of sexual violence erases a majority of the crimes being committed. (McDonough)

Elizabeth Ellen thinks it is important to share her personal experiences with Tao Lin. This does nothing except prove that he is not abusing someone at all hours of the day. It proves that he can appear perfectly harmless. He can be a good friend. Of course he can. Do you think when Gregory proposed to me he followed it up with “I am going to rape you now”? That Elizabeth Ellen offers her own experience with Tao Lin as some sort of rebuttal or parallel to E.R.’s experience is demeaning, insulting, and arrogant. And I don’t even want to delve into the “he’s not all bad” argument because it’s part of what kept me in the cycle of abuse and also what feeds my self-doubt. Of course he’s not “all bad.” Do you know how hard Gregory could make me laugh? It doesn’t mean he didn’t rape, gaslight, or sexually and emotionally abuse me. For someone to offer the “he’s not all bad” argument is to further minimize and silence the victim.

Which brings me to my next point: what about his side of the story? What if he didn’t “mean” to do it? From a survivor’s perspective this question also comes with heavy emotional weight. After being pressed for details victims are then often forced to consider their abusers’ intentions, which is incredibly dangerous: being asked to sympathize with your abuser further minimizes the severity of your experience, which has most likely already been minimized not only through your own psychological repression as a way of coping but also by the prevalence of rape myths.

To the grace and bravery of Stephen Dierks’ most recent (now-ex) girlfriend, we get to see some of Stephen’s initial response to the allegations brought against him. It is clear that he is scared, doesn’t deny what happened, yet still says “idk if it is legally what they say it is,” meaning: he doesn’t know if he “legally” raped or, just, I don’t know, casually? I’m actually not sure what Stephen means. He is most likely in denial. And he is definitely unaware of what rape is, which is, perhaps, one of the biggest problems in responding to a victim’s story with “What about him?” Many men accused of rape aren’t going to say that’s what happened because they don’t know what rape is and that is because they are so deeply entitled to women’s bodies. They have very little concept of rape or sexual abuse because such violence and entitlement has been normalized. They are so entitled that they don’t even recognize this entitlement. They don’t want to.

But I didn’t mean to hurt her, I didn’t mean to rape her. To this sentiment we can only respond: Well, you didn’t mean not to. You didn’t mean to treat her like a human being. You didn’t mean to respect her. You didn’t mean to think of her at all. All you meant to do was think of your own needs and desires and doing whatever it takes to fulfill them i.e. you raped her. And yeah, that’s a hard thing to accept. It’s also a hard thing to accept that you have been raped. There is no undoing this trauma. There is no do-over.

From a survivor’s mouth: Elizabeth Ellen’s Open Letter to the Internet is a kick to the throat. It is careless, uninformed, and frightening. Any valid points she may have had are lost in the fact that her words reflect and perpetuate rape culture, despite whether or not this was her intent, it clearly wasn’t her intent not to.

As Carolyn Zaikowski wrote last week:

To deny that rape subculture in the literary world is real, and an issue to be dealt with, is to deny that rape culture itself is real, and to fundamentally misunderstand how rape-culture-in-general works by filtering down through more localized, more specific systems. This denial and misunderstanding, even when well-intentioned, amounts to one more act of patriarchal silencing and erasure.

In her letter Elizabeth Ellen writes that she is certain she doesn’t have the right answer and she is well aware that she is offering a viewpoint for which she will no doubt receive backlash. Maybe this is one of the positive things people saw in her piece – her willingness to voice her opinion despite knowing it wouldn’t be popular among everyone. If the issue at hand were something other than what it is I might venture to say this was brave of her. But in this case it was dangerous and irresponsible and I can only hope that the time I’ve spent here, in this conversation I do not want to have, will encourage her and everyone else in support of the letter to deeply examine the implications of their words and beliefs. Sophia Katz has also made an important statement addressing the problematic nature of the open letter. Kate Zambreno initially shared the letter and then apologized for doing so and her call for more listening and self-examination is refreshing and vital.

In closing I also want to address the fact that Elizabeth Ellen previously stated in a Hobart interview that she felt like defending Gregory Sherl because from what she knew the allegations weren’t true. I was only aware of the interview because Gregory himself showed it to me, the day it was published, while we were still together, as a way of saying, “See, I am a victim of mob mentality. I am a shitty boyfriend but I am not an abuser. I am not a rapist. I am innocent.” Not that it’s Elizabeth Ellen’s fault that he continued to play the victim card with me – ultimately he is the one we need to continue to hold responsible and accountable for what he has done – but people who jump to dismiss allegations like this are not only slapping victims in the face but also helping those in power, upholding the system that normalizes rape and sexual violence, and I don’t know if I can give you a more concrete example of this than what I’ve just shared. 

It doesn’t matter if you call yourself a feminist or if you are “for women.” Just like it doesn’t matter if Stephen says he didn’t mean to rape anyone. It is lazy labeling without real examination of the systems of oppression in place. In the end the effects of your actions remain the same and if you refuse to examine this for yourself you will continue to be very much a part of the problem.

*This letter was published at Entropy Mag on October 7, 2014

I know a lot of people are saying this has been an awful week for the writing community AND IT HAS in terms of the issues we’ve been discussing but for me personally I’ve never felt more sane and validated and unsurprised – like, this toxicity is what I deal with almost constantly in terms of flashbacks, processing, memories, AND private conversations with so many of my girlfriends, both in and out of the writing community, who have endured similar abuse. And it’s not because we’re obsessing or “choosing to focus on the negative.” This is reality right now. Internet breaks are healthy but this week feels more like reality surfacing than anything else. This week feels like the truest week I’ve had in a long time. Like all my private thoughts and conversations are suddenly public. It’s exhausting and exhilarating. If someone wants to come over for a dance party and/or cigarettes later that’d be cool.

As the stories of rape and sexual assault within the writing community continue to circulate, I realize that not only is my story a disturbingly common one, but also that many people have very little understanding of 1) what rape and sexual assault actually look like, and 2) the severity of emotional and psychological damage caused by such violence.

It is hard, though, for me to tell you much more about my story because I am still heavily dealing with the emotional and psychological damage. But that’s also why I want to say at least a few words. Victims of rape and sexual assault are so often silenced not only by the public but also by the nature of the trauma they’ve endured. They then appear “emotionally unstable” and their allegations are further discredited, so essentially the damage of the abuse they’ve endured is then used against them to further silence and oppress.  

This summer I wrote an essay that shared a sliver of the abuse I endured while in a relationship with my ex-fiancé, Gregory Sherl, whom several other women publicly came forth about this past winter. I wanted to publicly support those women, who no doubt aided in saving my life and sanity. My essay was well-received and afterwards came pouring in emails and messages from friends, strangers, as well as ex-girlfriends of his, all thanking and supporting me. One woman I did not know told me she was helping a friend leave an abusive marriage and my essay was the final push her friend needed to break free. I don’t think I’ve fully processed the significance of this.

But a few weeks later I had the essay taken down. Not because the essay wasn’t true but because I felt confused. At the time I’m not sure what was happening – I can only look back now and say that it looks like I was still caught in the cycle of abuse. I learned that the cycle doesn’t necessarily end when the relationship does.

A week after my essay went live, I received an email from someone at [email protected]:

“think about child services coming to your home and taking your daughter away. i heard you left her with a so called abusive person. think real hard.”

While I can’t be 100% certain that he wrote this, I did trace the email source to within a 15-mile radius of his parents’ address in Florida, where I am pretty sure he was staying at the time. It affected me more than I wanted it to. I felt guilty. I was hurt. I started thinking about why he would do this, doesn’t he understand? The psychological and emotional control he had over me is very strong. So strong that sometimes “had” still has to be “has.” I fell into a deep depression, and then I began to over-intellectualize as a way to cope with the pain. 

But every time another woman speaks up or a friend reaches out, I become stronger. My story becomes more and more validated. And this past week I found the courage to have my essay made live again. And it feels really good. I need all of your voices, badly. Thank you. 

Hearing other women’s sexual abuse & rape stories makes me so angry my teeth hurt. I cannot unclench my jaw. I am triggered. I am reminded. Of what happened to me. What has happened to so many of my girlfriends. I tell a friend a detailed account of what Greg did to me and I almost vomit. I get dizzy. I start to cry. I get confused. I have a hard time envisioning ever being touched again. I want to hide. And then I want to shout from the rooftops of the world. And then I feel crazy - why? Why do I feel crazy for screaming with anger and pain? For falling into depression? My mind tries to repress what really happened. I try to make sense of all this violence. I try to be compassionate & understanding - it’s a way of coping, & I am not crazy for that either. I am a woman who has been sexually abused & raped by a man she loved. And I hate saying that, I fucking hate saying that, because it makes me feel weak, pathetic, exactly how such violence is intended to make me feel. I am supposed to feel powerless. I am supposed to cower in weakness & submission. It’s easier that way. It’s comfortable. It feeds the system. It feeds the system to call myself crazy. And Fuck. The Fucking. System. Gregory S—. Janey S—. Stephen D—- [insert yr abuser here]. It’s tempting to call these men monsters but they’re not - they are men, and their attitudes & actions towards women are not isolated beliefs & events. They are misogyny & sexism in visible action. They are common. They are normal. And every time we talk about it we have an opportunity to change it.