men’s responses to #metoo

Joe Renz

October 18,2017 at 10:02 ·

Ok here we go… #metoo. However this platform is not an appropriate one for a WCHM to disclose his own experiences as anything but a perpetrator.

For 35 years I denied even the possibility that my father had ever struck my birth-mother because against all evidence “it just didn’t make sense” to me.
He totally hit my mom.

Nevertheless, it did “make sense” to me to punch holes in the walls to express my feelings… Most specifically to my partners. I absorbed this from my father. This doesn’t excuse my behavior, but learning this behavior from my primary care-giver made it feel natural; something that men do. And get to do.
Because it’s convenient.
In the back of my mind, whenever I felt deeply upset that a partner’s behavior was slipping out of my personal control, when the argument escalated, I knew I had a trump card: “THIS IS HOW UPSET I AM!” Punch hole, Storm out. Conversation over. I may have even manufactured some escalation in order to justify this behavior.

When I was in my early teens I practiced a great deal of self-harm. I could have reserved that for my own comfort, but I found a convenient way to harm myself in front of my partners so I could manipulate their emotions and behavior.

When my father was in the spinal ward at Harborview, most of the other patients had gunshot wounds. I was 13. One of the nurses there noticed I’d been cutting and began a dialog with me that lasted about a month. At one point I must have said something casually misogynist because she introduced me to the women on that floor who had gunshot wounds.
Every single one of them had been shot by their boyfriends or their friends boyfriends.
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” I said.

In the meantime, perhaps that very week, I was serially groping female classmates, then wondering why they were so upset.
I have photographic evidence of this, a class picture in which the young woman in the row ahead of me is looking shocked and upset, while I behind her, am trying to look like a cool guy.
I timed this grope so that her moment of disempowerment would be recorded forever. I thought of this as a prank.

I knew that hitting women was wrong, and therefore was impossible behavior for my father, yet any other form of assault was fair game. “Ok, rape is also bad. I probably shouldn’t do that either because I am a good person.”

I frequently think about the class-picture assault I committed. I’ve wondered: how could I not have known any better? I believe the answer at the time was that I *did* know better but i didn’t have to. So I opted to be shitty because I thought it would be funny. And I got away with it because boys will be boys.

With such an attitude, I know I must have later on crossed a number of boundaries of sexual consent. This troubles me to my soul yet what keeps me awake at night is the fact that this is a suspicion rather than a series of recollections. That I was so pampered within within a culture of brutalization which had been constructed with my personal convenience in mind, it felt appropriate, comfortable, and convenient for me to blind myself to the verbal and emotional cues of a person I honestly felt I dearly cared for.

This duality began tearing me apart. Why do women seem so pissed off all the time? Why does there seem to be a pattern to this inexplicable rage?

My Father’s Ghost: “Women are crazy.”
Not good enough, Sherlock.

I began researching serial killers, searching for commonalities between “MONSTER” violence against women and the “casual” violence I had seen in my father and within myself. In my mind at that time I thought of it as “the sense of male possession” . Rape Culture is far more direct. I discovered that the parallax between Ed Kemper, Ed Gein, and the men who shot those women I met in the Spinal Ward was nearly identical.

I resolved to do better. I did a lot of work on myself. I refused to be “one of those men.” Plenty of times I failed when I thought I was Acing it.
When I was 30, I discovered this phrase:

Men are afraid that women are going to humiliate them. Women are afraid that men are going to kill them.

This catalyzed my confusion. Through the encouragement of my wife I became a personal safety instructor to women, girls, boys, and men. We became co-teachers. The stories we heard from our students were harrowing. And many of our colleagues had similar stories. My eyes opened and at last I understood how to conduct myself.

I shared that understanding with my students. One day I realized I was teaching what NO means to pre-sexual children. And to teens and adults. I began to have the feeling that at last I had driven the axe that would separate my behavior from the parasitic culture which I had previously so confidently and casually embraced.

Nevertheless, not two days ago I discovered I had once again discounted a partner’s NO. It was a conversation about soup. My partner was not having an easy day, had been buffeted by personal attacks on social media, and then as she was venting to me via text, I offered her soup. I’m paraphrasing here:
“I made a fuckload of tom yum. Would that help?”
“That sounds nice, but I have to work.”
“Ok, well there’s soup here if you want some.”
“Really have to work.”
“Soup might help you work better”
“No means no, dude! I’m in a bad place and you are not listening!”

In my family culture as a Sicilian, soup makes everything OK. This is a lie. Respecting a NO helps more than anything.

I’m grateful that my partner could muster the emotional strength to call me out. But it shouldn’t be up to her to guide me to respecting the NO. I should know this. I already know this. I still have a great deal of work to do.

Private Facebook User

17 October at 20:57 ·

These #metoo posts have made me reflect on some things which I’m not proud of. A couple of teenage incidents come to mind; standing outside Easons on O’Connell St with mates playing a private game amongst ourselves where we scored each girl walking past out of ten, or cheering loudly in a macho way seeing lesbians holding hands in Roscommon.

These are examples of “normal” laddish behaviour, which it would never have occurred to us to reflect on back then. I remember having a row with my girlfriend when I was around the age of 19 or 20. I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t get rid of my erection and she wouldn’t have sex with me. I literally didn’t have a clue why she wouldn’t just do it – we’d had sex hundreds of times, why not now?

There’s been tons of other times, drunk and drug-affected, when I had sex with people where consent was a pretty grey area. I was never told “no” but I wasn’t told “yes” either. The point is that this society brings us up to believe that women are the property of men. This plays out in both conscious and unconscious entitled behaviour. I don’t believe guilt and penance is necessarily a positive force, but I believe that reflection and changing your behaviour is. We’re all human and we can all change.

on promoting rape culture at your gig

I guess we’ll never understand why protecting the reputation of some guy, or a band missing one gig, is more important than who can feel comfortable attend a memorial. The issue was clearly discussed before the line up was even announce, they could have just not played.

It’s not like it would have been an admission of guilt if they didn’t play. Gigs get cancelled sometimes, it happens.

It would have just be a small sign of basic human decency. It’s a memorial.

Going ahead and playing a memorial just shows they don’t have any respect for boundaries and only care if they are happy. They don’t give a fuck who they hurt as long as they get what they want.

The memorial was a couple of months ago now but not being able to attend the memorial, has been like ripping off a bandaid (plaster) and pouring salt in the wound.

We don’t even know any of the people involved, we’ve never spoken about what happened but that didn’t stop his friends coming after us.

We just really hope other people don’t become targets for saying #metoo

Repost from Alice Bag

Some people think that my aggressive tendencies surfaced when I became involved in the punk scene, but they’re wrong. I was still an adolescent when I discovered that aggression, or the threat of violence, could be a powerful defense mechanism. The reason I was labeled as aggressive in the punk scene had to do with my being accustomed to violence and being used to defending myself physically.My childhood was steeped in domestic violence and I was surrounded with gang violence at school. I started to believe that the world was divided into victims and aggressors. I decided that I was never going to be a victim. It seemed like the less painful option. I was still in junior high when a girl in my class was relentlessly taunting me. One day, she pushed me hard as I was walking up the stairs. Fed up, I quickly turned around and shoved my open palm towards her to push her back. As fate would have it, she had a Bic ballpoint pen in her mouth at the time and I shoved it through the back of her throat. From that point on, the school bullies stopped calling me names and throwing things at me. By the time I graduated from jr. high school I had developed a tough exterior.

In 1976, after graduating from Sacred Heart of Mary High School, my parents gave me a choice of a new (used) car or a trip to Europe as a graduation gift. I decide to continue borrowing the old Ford Falcon and see the world. While in Austria, I nearly provoked an international incident when a drunk in a pub grabbed and locked in on my ass like a pit bull. I promptly smacked him across the face and pretty soon all the Americans at my table were yelling at the pub’s regular Austrian customers. We were all thrown out, thanks to me.

Back home, I got a part time job at a flower shop in Montebello. One day, I was packing up a lady’s flower order and as I bent over to get a box, my manager walked behind me and succumbed to an irresistible urge to slap my butt. I, in turn, succumbed to an irresistible urge to slap his face. That sent him scurrying to the back of the store. The customer, an older lady who witnessed the whole scene, told me she was proud of me and that I’d done the right thing. I rang up her order and walked to the back, ready to punch the clock and be sent home. Instead, I got an apology. I figured that maybe violence was not always a bad thing. I wasn’t the type to turn the other cheek, that’s for sure.

The first show the Bags played at the Masque in 1977 was all a blur to me. It was like I blacked out during the set. The reviewer in Slash said that I was yelling at the audience to “MOVE, MOTHERFUCKERS! MOVE!” and it’s true that I couldn’t stand complacent audiences. I needed energy to feed off and so I exhorted the audience to keep up with me. Rather than aggressive, I would describe myself as confrontational and trying to engage the audience, but I suppose it’s all in how you choose to label it. I suspect that if I were a man, I would have been called “intense” or “energetic” but since I am a woman, my attitude seemed to catch some people off guard.

The Bags were the first punk band to headline the Troubadour in 1978, which ended with the place being trashed and our being 86’d from that club. We were subsequently 86’d from Madame Wong’s for a similar reason. The same thing happened with Club 88 when they started having punk shows. The Bags played a few shows there before being 86’d for being “too aggressive.” Although I couldn’t play there, I didn’t hold it against them and I continued to go and spread my love and support to the bands that played there. One night, The Dils were playing. I was dancing in the audience when somebody grabbed my crotch. I looked down and there was a hand clutching me. I grabbed the wrist attached to the offending hand and without missing a pogo beat I turned, jumped into the air, and slammed a hard fist into the pervert’s face. It was a really nice punch too because my whole body went into it. The guy was wearing sunglasses which broke apart, slicing a nasty gash into the flesh around his eye.

After the show, the guy’s buddies were gunning for me. Kickboy (Claude Bessy) stepped in to talk to them and asked me to explain to them what had happened. I gave it to them straight and it seemed they were satisfied with my account as I was allowed to leave the club. Later, we heard that the guy required 22 stitches to close the gash around his eye.

A few days later, I was back at another club I’d been 86’d from: Madame Wong’s. I went to the bathroom and as I was walking out of the stall, a tall Latina put her arm up and blocked my exit. She identified herself as the girlfriend of the man I had injured and told me she was going to kick my ass. She looked like she could do it, too. I washed my hands and asked her to step outside with me. On our way out and as we were walking down the stairs, I told her I would fight her, but I asked her if it was worth fighting to defend a man who went around grabbing women’s crotches. We started talking and after a while we decided to go to the liquor store. By the end of the night, when Scarface showed up to see if his woman had avenged his honor, he found us both sitting outside – drunk, laughing at him. I honestly couldn’t see myself fighting that girl. I felt bad that she had such a creep for a boyfriend. I hope she dumped him.

In conclusion, I’d say that I deserved my reputation for being aggressive and The Bags were just the perfect vehicle for expressing that aggression and anger onstage. I would have directed it elsewhere and expressed it in another way had it not been for the Bags. It was the best form of therapy I could have hoped for.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1448265698566405&id=142878472438474

this is why you have been blocked

Reposted from our fb page  about the benefit gig over April 29/30/ May 1st 2016 weekend at the Boston Arms…

“To the nasty comments we received here’s our reply. To the bands and anyone who attended, you get nothing but love and thanks for playing, supporting, showing up. You are awesome!!
So we are pretty use to being hated. Not just hated but harassed, followed, cornered, threatened. Been “warned” to stop, told that over and over for hours, we need to stop doing LSHS “or else”. I’m not even going to start on digital hate mail and MRA threats. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had people try to convince me that having sex with a stranger who is passed out unconscious is OK, not only OK but perfectly normal. And some people have actually tried to convince me its a good idea. Two people have told me on separately occasions, that’s their “move” its what they does, they wait for who they are interested in to pass out, then once they are asleep that’s how they hooks up with them. We’ve also had rapists confess and thank us for providing information that could help them change their ways.
Setting up a LSHS stall isn’t like most other stalls. We aren’t just selling a few t-shirts. It’s actually incredibly stressful. People also open up to us quite a bit and tell us some really horrific stories. We’ve heard so many painful and heartbreaking personal accounts of rape and rapists who have gotten away with it because of our messed up legal system. Victims who weren’t supported or believed. Sometimes people tell us their most personal and painful story just to be believed for once. This is part of the reason we do stalls, to open up the conversation and support each other. It’s so much harder to understand or deal with sexual assault on your own. We want to do what we can and provide what support we can but it’s not easy. We need to have a support system for ourselves in place as well. We are trying. We are hopeful.
A lot of collective members will be very active behind the scenes but can’t actually cope with doing a stall or reading the messages we receive. We need a strong support system for people to do a stall. We can’t do it when there is hostile promoters who don’t listen to or respect us. Who have ignored our concerns for months on end. Who speak on our behalf when they clearly know we don’t want them too. Who puts profit over people. We really didn’t want any bands to cancel and we wanted the gig to go well. We initial started planning this gig together and thought it was a solidarity action. But back in January when we said there should be more than 2 women playing over the entire weekend (a few more were added since) we were told our opinions didn’t matter and we weren’t allowed to be a part of this, it was his leaving gig so he was going to make all the decisions. It was NOT a solidarity event as we had been discussing since last year. “If we wanted anything to do with it we should go put on our own gig”. But he was still going to use our name because he was worried bands might drop out or charge their normal rate and he didn’t want to pay them that. We wanted distance or equal input; either call it what it was, his leaving gig or let us continue to be involved. Unfortunately that was ignored so we felt really backed against a wall and not sure what to do.
Because of the hatred we already have to deal with, we thought is was better to not speak publicly about it, to pick our battles and not make this a public one. We already know that there is nothing worse than cancelling a gig. Just looking at all the rape allegation that have come to light recently. There were way too many people more upset that a gig was cancelled than the possibility that someone had been rape. So we knew we didn’t stand a chance if a band cancelled or anything got messed up.
We wish this had remained private but unless we shut ourselves off and didn’t reply to any messages or comments, or unless we started lying to cover up for them, it felt unavoidable. Our lack of presence still had presence.
Obviously we still feel very upset we were not welcome there. We feel really bad we could not be there to see and support all the amazing bands that played and showed us support. But we do really hope the gig went well!The offer of getting a outside mediator who works in conflict resolution within grassroots activism is still open to them. And its free. It’s not too late, we hope to hear back from them this time. We don’t want to continue this on Facebook. We want a real conversation with a likelihood of both parties being heard and leaving with a positive outcome.
To all the bands who played and showed us support, thank you!! Sorry if anyone got caught in the crossfire, we think it was so great you are played. We don’t want anyone to take sides, it’s great that you played and we don’t want to take away from that. We wish we could have been there to show support and just fucking see you!! So many good bands on!! Heard it was an amazing gig!! and everyone played super well! Hope everyone had a fun, looked great! To everyone who was there hope you all had fun too!”

One night I was really drunk on the bus home from a gig. So drunk I got off the wrong stop and was utterly confused until I saw my sober ‘mate’. I was relieved when he offered to take me home so I’d be safe. I don’t know how it started (he was not someone I would do) but the next thing I know he’s in my room and we’re having sex and he was telling me he liked ‘rough sex’ and I was struggling to stop that….

Ugh. The last one makes me well up even now.

I fell asleep in the back of my van at a festival, next to a guy I liked. I was woken up by him kissing and grabbing me. He wouldn’t respond to my repeatedly asking him why he was being so pushy. Turned out it was because he wasn’t the guy I’d fallen asleep next, it was some creepy fucker who’d crawled into my van without my knowledge or consent. Everyone saw me freaking out at him as I kicked him out of my van, had no excuse for being in there, he never denied touching me but still he had guys rush up and defend him. There was never any consequences for him.

Walking through the crowd at The Feeding of the 5000 gig, someone grabbed my crotch from behind- I spun round immediately shouting, and demanded to know which one of three guys had done it- they all claimed innocent and no-one said a word. Security told me it wasn’t really worth doing anything because the gig was nearly over and all they could do was kick whoever it was out.

Don’t trick underage girls into having sex with you by getting them drunk. This happened to me when I was 15 by an older punk guy in his early 20s. He gave me beer until I didn’t know what was going on then he had sex with me. This is statutory rape. You are a pedophile. You are look at a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years (with up to a maximum of 20 years)

I was in the pit at a Misfits gig when my backpack opened and everything went flying everywhere. As I was trying to pick up my stuff someone grabbed my ass from behind. I was really angry and no-one would admit it or tell me who did it.