Man Am I Plastered...As a Meme!!

So, there's this really cool thing I did for a group called UniteWomen.org. I sent in my picture to them, along with a quote they could use, about how I stood with Jane Doe of Steubenville, Ohio. Seeing as I wrote an article about the case from the standpoint of rape culture, and how much it's pissing me off, I was happy to contribute to their latest ad campaign. Well, today the director of the Ohio chapter tagged me when she posted the result. Then the director of the overseas site also tagged me with the same meme, so take a look. I'm so thrilled to be part of this!

Rain Stickland - Unite Against Rape Campaign for UniteWomen.org

I'm very proud to be a part of this campaign, I have to say. There have been many celebrities contributing to this campaign. (No, I don't consider myself a celebrity by any means - just someone who wants to help out.) Margaret Cho, Courtney Love, Sandra Fluke, Drew Reyes, Roseanne Barr, Jane Pratt, and Erin Scott, to name a few, have all contributed their own memes to the campaign. Now I have joined their number.

Additional great news is that I'm now listed as a contributor to the +UniteWomen.org website, and they're going to be linking my blog as well. I signed up on the website for Feministing, as well, to start contributing there, although I'm not quite sure how it works just yet. It looks like a massive blogging site for feminists such as myself, so I might just carry over my blog postings that relate to feminism. Considering how much I write on that particular subject, I'm sure I'll be considered a regular contributor.

All yammering about my writing aside, the issues that I write about are often extremely important, which is why I chose to be a part of this ad campaign for the survivor of Steubenville. This girl went through so much. She was drugged, raped, filmed and photographed, she was dragged (unconscious) from party to party, and then, when she had the courage to come forward and testify against the animals who did all this to her, she was subjected to public humiliation, rapist sympathizers in the media, had her name aired for the 'viewing pleasure' of millions, and finally she ended up receiving death threats. What should be the most surprising aspect of this, yet somehow it isn't, is that the rapist sympathizers and persons uttering the death threats are female.

CNN reporters couldn't get over the fact that such 'promising futures' were over for these rapists. Fellow students were angry because the football players they idolized would no longer be able to play. Are you kidding me?! I mean, I wrote the article on it that I linked above, and got such a vicious headache from writing it that it took several days to get rid of it. These things upset me on an almost visceral level. There's a primal protectiveness in my nature that gets simply ferocious at the thought of everything that was done to this child. Yes, she is a child! A high school student who will now have to live with this horror, over and over, for the rest of her life. Unless you've been a victim of rape, you can't possibly understand what it does to you.

There will soon come a day when I actually write, publicly, about what happened to me. I haven't thus far simply because it will take a fair bit out of me. I've dealt with it, inasmuch as is possible, and I live with it quite well. I am no longer angry about my own experiences, as I've reached a point in my life where I would actually chose to go through it all again just so that I could end up exactly the same person I am today. I wouldn't be feeling too good about it as it happens, but I would make that choice.

Most people would be asking why I would ever want to go through it again, and the answer is quite simple. The moment someone touched me in a way that violated me, the person I should have been died. I don't have a clue who that person was now. Maybe if I'd been older, and had had the chance to get to know myself, I might not feel this way. I might feel the loss of my other self more keenly. I was only about six or seven years old when it started for me, though, so I don't remember who I was before then, and my real personality had yet to develop.

If I were able to do so, and went back to change my past, I would completely lose the person I am now - the person I know, understand, love and respect. That person would never have existed, and I would be somebody else I've never met before. I can't bring myself to wish for that, as sad as it might be to think that that person had to die.

On the other hand, if I were Jane Doe, I'd be wishing fervently for a return of my real self. She is now going to have to deal with the loss of that person, which is something they don't explain to survivors very well. It always seems to get missed in all the therapy. What they should be telling her, and maybe what I should have said in my meme, is, "Your old self has died, and you will have to accept the loss of that person as though your best friend has just died. You are now stuck with a new person inside of you. An angry, bitter, traumatized person who will try very hard to make you self-destruct, and you will have to fight against that person for the rest of your life."

The Courage and Compulsion to Confidently Confront Comments

Maybe I've been spoiled with my writing, but I've never had any really bad comments on any of my articles. I've had people disagree, certainly, but they've always been rather polite about the whole thing. One would think that after more than 41,000 page views on one site, a few thousand on this blog, and however many on another site I started writing for, that I would have garnered at least a little bit of nasty criticism. I'm not a moderate in my beliefs by any means. I'm outspoken and opinionated. I try to be fair, and I try to consider other viewpoints, but I'm certainly not shy about expressing myself.

Because I'm a writer for one online magazine, +Feminspire, I'm part of a Facebook group meant for just staff. I go on there and see other writers chastise themselves for reading the comments on their own articles. The self-admonishment surprises me, because it's not an issue I've had to face yet. They keep telling themselves, "Never read the comments." I guess it's because people are leaving remarks that upset them. Of course, I have a fairly thick skin, so comments that might bother some people don't really have much of an impact on me. For one thing, you're always going to run into people that just like to be mean for no reason, and those people don't really deserve the time and effort spent on getting upset. For another, I don't really care what anyone thinks about me, except the people I'm close to. If I'm close to someone, it won't be some jerk who just likes to hurt people's feelings.

The trolls are out there, I know, but they're not finding me. Even if they did it wouldn't particularly bother me. I know I do my research when I write a piece. I make certain my facts are verifiable, and I cite my sources, particularly for anything that's inflammatory. Sort of a pre-emptive strike if you will. Most people won't argue something if you've already gone to the trouble of providing documentation. They're simply too lazy to look up their own sources for a rebuttal. That's not always the case, but it certainly is most of the time.

Luckily, when I started getting serious about my writing, I started out on a site that was very supportive of writers. +SearchWarp has been a boon to many fledgling authors, myself included, giving writers the confidence they need to keep honing their craft. I will be forever grateful to the encouragement I receive on this site. I still write at least one piece per week there, usually two, but I've been rather swamped lately. I've received a great deal of support from the other writers that contribute to SearchWarp, and have made quite a few friends, too. In fact, my being the producer of The Kovacs Perspective, hosted by +Steve Kovacs, is a direct result of writing on SearchWarp.

I got so used to reading comments and responding to them, that I would have a hard time ignoring them now. It would feel like I was being impolite by not bothering to respond, despite the fact that most writers on e-zine sites do not respond. To me it just feels a bit like a thank-you note for someone taking the time to read my work. They read it, appreciated it enough to leave a comment on it, whether it's positive or negative, and I feel obliged to engage with those readers. Maybe a day will come when there are too many comments for me to respond to, and I will have to wean myself away from the habit, but for now I enjoy the interaction.

I've only had one person get really insulting toward me on my own work, but even then he wasn't commenting directly at me. He was leaving a comment on someone else's comment about me. Kind of like talking behind my back loudly enough to make sure I could hear everything he was saying, because he wasn't courageous enough to say it to my face. I simply responded that no one was forcing him to read my work, and that where I'm from we have a saying that if you can't saying something nice, don't say anything at all. He never commented on my work after that. Granted, we have had a couple of civil discussions since then, so all's well that ends well. Not that I find myself agreeing with him about very much, but at least he's no longer calling me a narcissist. The term is 'egocentric' dude! There's a difference.

Just Call Me "The Wonder Hamster"

Today has felt like a bunch of spinning hamster wheels, with me hopping from one to the next. Not that I mind so much, since I like to keep busy, but it gets confusing sometimes. I had another article posted in Feminspire today, called "My Vagina is Not Profane: Why Can't We Talk About Anatomy in Schools?" It's always exciting to see your work in front of the general public, and it's awesome to be able to write pieces that advance the cause of feminine equality.

Today was also a day for work on The Kovacs Perspective stuff, including thank-you notes to our guests from last week now that the Parenting episode vodcast is up on the site. Our guests for April 10th have already been arranged, of course, but I had to invite two new guests for the April 24th episode. On the 10th we're going to showcase international issues, and on the 24th we're talking about Sex, baby! Sorry, I had a Salt 'N' Pepa moment there. It's what pops into my head every time I think about doing an episode on sex.

Another portion of my job as producer for The Kovacs Perspective is to post an article on +SearchWarp, a site I contribute to under my own name, and one that Steve Kovacs also contributes to. The article I post on there is to give SearchWarp readers a chance to see the vodcast, so I embed the video for the show in the article.

Beyond the usual stuff, I've had to cope with my stripped computer. I went to work on the logos for the new show we've got coming out soon, and found that the graphics had disappeared, but that was a fairly quick fix. I needed to shrink the logos, but increase the font size, so that I had multiple-sized versions of the logos for various application. The big ones are all well and good for the Home page of a website, but aren't exactly great for e-mail signatures and secondary website pages.

Today was an interesting day on another level, a more personal one. My ex will be staying at my place for a while. He's in a situation where he needs to get back on his feet. Not only do I know he would do the same for me, but he actually has done the same for me. It's not just a matter of obligation, though. He's my friend, so I care what happens to him. We weren't able to be friends to one another while we were together, and aren't the least bit compatible as a couple, but we managed to become very good friends once the pressure of a relationship was gone. None of the reasons we couldn't make a relationship work have changed, but they don't actually matter when you're not involved with someone on that level.

Sadly, my apartment isn't very welcoming at the moment when it comes to having a guest, since I don't even have a sofa for him to sleep on, so he's stuck with a piece of the floor. It looks like we may be picking up the remainder of my stuff tomorrow, however, so at least there will be a decent chair for him to sit in, rather than also having to lie on the floor to watch movies, which is what he's been doing since he got here. I'm not very good company, to be perfectly frank. I spend my life on my laptop, as does my daughter, and we're not very sociable. It's actually one of the reasons we weren't compatible.

I used to be able to sit around and watch movies with him, at least, but I don't have the patience for that these days. I've got too many things I need and want to do. As his friend I should probably be doing more, but I suck at that sort of thing. From what I understand he's turfing his girlfriend, or he'd still be at her place, so he's probably having some feelings about that, but I don't exactly excel at those conversations. You'd think I'd be better at conversations about emotions, considering the fact that I'm always sharing my feeling about things in my writing. I guess the skill doesn't translate very well. I can write, but I can't talk.

I'm not sure how long this particular situation will last. I don't think it matters all that much. Anyone who knows me already knows the type of relationship I have with my ex. He'll have a place for as long as he needs one, but it's not going to involve any 'benefits'. He's planning on finding work doing long-haul driving, so it's entirely possible I'll barely see him for whatever time he's here. He'll be more comfortable in a sleeper truck than sleeping on the floor anyway. He's probably going to be rather determined to get out of here. I would be.

There are still a million things I need to do, but this hamster has no more wheel-spinning left in her for today. It's time to chill out a bit and then get some sleep, especially if I'm going to be picking up my stuff tomorrow. Thankfully it sounds as though my 'guest' has passed out to the dulcet tones of Karl Urban's Judge Dredd, so my duties there are done for the night. Hmm. Maybe it's time to break out the ice cream and a book.