Confession

[Trigger Warning for Survivors of Sexual Assault]

I am twelve or thirteen. There are five of us and one of her. She hasn’t lived in the neighborhood long. The others hold her down, laughing. One pries her legs open. I know what’s happening is wrong, but I don’t say anything. I grope her breast, the first one I have ever touched. I stand up and back away. Thankfully, it’s enough, and we let her up. I never tell anyone.

I am eighteen. I’ve gone out on a couple of dates with a girl whose friend just broke up with me. We’ve made out once or twice. One night in the middle of the night I go over to her house. The door is unlocked, and I sneak into her room. We have sex. After, I ask if we can do it again, and she says no. I leave. It’s not until a few years later I realize I probably raped her. I don’t tell anyone til I’m in my forties.

I am twenty-one. I’m having consensual sex. She freezes up, asks me to stop. I finish. I never tell anyone.

This list of my transgressions is hardly exhaustive. I can only hope it’s the worst I have done. In two of three cases, I’ve never told anyone until now. I didn’t want people to know. More than that, I didn’t want those things to have happened.

But they did happen. I did those things. And if it’s taken this long for me to human up and acknowledge them, well, that’s on me, too.

I could make excuses. I was young, dumb, and full of cum. I didn’t know any better. I came of age in the ’80s, when rape culture was just culture. Men were supposed to want sex, and anything shy of actual or threatened violence was on the table for getting it, be it deception, cajoling, or just getting her drunk enough to let you take her panties off and do what you wanted. I was a product of my environment.

Those excuses are bullshit. Basic human decency isn’t hard to grasp once you admit to yourself that other people are people.

I am sorry for the things I did. I apologize to the people I did them to. But I don’t presume to ask forgiveness. Some stains can’t be washed out. Just like some wounds never heal.

The idea of hitting publish scares the absolute shit out of me. People I don’t know are going to judge me. Worse, people I do know will, too.

But after reading as much of this as I could stomach, my conscience compels me to come clean and own up to the things I have done. Somebody has to go first.

I may not be a good person. But I can at least try and do the right thing. If we, as men, are going to do something about rape culture, we’ve got to look inside as well as out. You can’t fight something you’re not willing to face.

Let’s Call Donald Trump What He Really Is: The Candidate – and Literal Embodiment – of Straight White Male Privilege

trump-smirk — “I have never been wrong about anything.”

You know, for a guy as demonstrably and reliably dishonest as Donald Trump is, he’s been pretty open about what kind of man he is, and what we’ll get if he wins the Presidency.

What kind of man is he? Well, yes, he’s straight (the straightest!), white (okay, he’s actually orange), and male (“There’s no problems. I guarantee it.”). But above all, before anything else, he is privileged.

It’s been said of both George Bushes, ‘He was born on third and thought he hit a triple.’ Trump was born on third and he’s mad because he’s sure he hit a home run. He must have, because everything he does, says, or thinks is awesome, and the only reason he can’t have literally everything he wants whenever he wants it is because the world is conspiring against him. Probably because everything he does, says, or thinks is awesome, and they’re jealous, or fat, or ugly, or sad!

It’s almost hard to fault him for it, because the notion he is entitled to do whatever the fuck he wants, whenever the fuck he wants, to whomever the fuck he wants has been drummed into him his whole life. It’s the air he breathes, the fabric of his space-time continuum, of which he is the absolute center around which all else revolves.

Okay, it’s not that hard to fault him.

But just as it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it, it’s damn near impossible to get a man to understand something when his privilege depends on his not understanding it. Continue reading “Let’s Call Donald Trump What He Really Is: The Candidate – and Literal Embodiment – of Straight White Male Privilege” →

Hillary, Bernie, and Me

I was a strong and early supporter of Bernie Sanders, especially the Bernie Sanders of the early campaign: the guy who took the high road, who spoke truth to power, who organized at the grassroots and refused to engage in negative campaigning. The guy who said on her worst day Hillary Clinton would be a better President than any of the Republicans.

But I have a confession to make: I never thought he’d win.

It wasn’t lack of faith in the message or devotion to the agenda he espoused. That faith and devotion is what drove my support. To me Bernie Sanders was only a vehicle for getting the word out and starting to organize. It was clear the man himself was an imperfect vessel (he is, after all, a career politician). It was also based on a cold, hard political calculation. Remember the incident in Seattle about a year ago, when two #blacklivesmatter activists stormed a stage he was set to speak on? The way Bernie and, more importantly, his most ardent supporters handled that told me all I needed to know. However you stand on the incident, nobody gets the Democratic nomination without support from African-Americans. And while Bernie has done a great job of mobilizing younger African-Americans, they were outnumbered by their elders, who were less willing to take a chance.

Still, I advocated, and donated, and when the time came I caucused. All along I tried my best to keep to the high road the Bernie Sanders of the early campaign laid out.

Sadly, my candidate chose not to. Somewhere along the way, some subtle threshold got crossed. It was about Bernie now. Bernie the man, the visionary, the leader of a revolution, though what the revolution meant or would look like was never made clear. He started throwing punches, insisted he was going to win despite the fact that the path to victory only got narrower and less likely with every primary and caucus, even the ones that he won.

Continue reading “Hillary, Bernie, and Me” →

About This Whole Hillary/Bernie Thing

So, let’s get started by placing your humble correspondent in context. I am a supporter of Bernie Sanders. I give him money every month, and when Washington State holds its Democratic caucuses in a week or so, I’ll be there, standing with other Sanders supporters. I think his run for the Democratic nomination is one of the most important political developments of my lifetime. His overarching theme of wresting the apparati of state and nation back from the oligarch class and putting it to work for the common good makes my heart soar. His indictment of the warping effects of money in politics is trenchant and is clearly resonating in the hearts and minds of millions of citizens. He’s given a voice to ideas and positions I think many of us despaired would ever be so clearly articulated on the national stage, and his grassroots organizing campaign has upended the conventional wisdom about running for office without the assistance of either SuperPAC money or mainstream media coverage.

And, frankly, he’s losing.

It’s not over yet. It is at least theoretically possible for him to overcome the odds win a majority of pledged delegates (superdelegates would, I think, fall in line at that point, as they did in 2008, when President Obama overtook Hillary Clinton). But it’s really, really unlikely. By the accounts I trust, he’d need to win something like 60-40 in every one of the remaining contests to make up his current deficit and come to the convention in Philadelphia with a winning majority.

I hope he does. But I don’t expect he will. The odds are overwhelmingly against it.

That said, I don’t think he will — or should — drop out of the race. For one thing, the message he articulates deserves as wide a hearing as can be accomplished, and the longer he stays in the race, the better he’ll be able to do that. The more attention he can bring to the fundamental causes of wealth and income inequality, the more acceptable talking about it becomes in the national discourse. Which means maybe finally we’ll be able to do something about it. And the more he talks about what Democratic Socialism actually means, and the policy choices that fall within its penumbra, the more the national discourse will be empowered and/or forced to give them a fair hearing.

Every vote Bernie gets and has gotten only makes that case stronger. And the grassroots organization he’s built can accomplish a great deal going forward, whether or not he gets the nomination or is elected to the Presidency.

But the odds are that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Not only that, and despite the gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair that is my facebook feed these days, the odds are that she will be our next President.

And I’m okay with that. Continue reading “About This Whole Hillary/Bernie Thing” →

You Don’t Have to Attend Clarion to Be a Real Writer

But it helps.

For those not in the know, the Clarion and Clarion West Writers’ Workshops are intensive six-week residential programs where aspiring, semi-professional, and early-career professional writers are exposed to and connected with accomplished working professionals in the speculative fiction field. The focus is on writing short fiction, and critiquing it (building a less-shitty first draft, if you will). But as much as that, it’s about learning what it is to be a professional or at least serious writer, both in terms of lifestyle and in terms of the business of speculative fiction and the people and standards within it. I have, for many years, described it as a provisional membership in the kool-kids club (please note the tongue planted firmly in cheek).

Both are currently accepting applications.

As you’ve likely guessed, or knew already, I attended Clarion in 2010. It was, in many ways, a watershed experience. I met and studied under some of my personal heroes. I made friends I expect to keep for the rest of my life (many of whom have gone on to do amazing things). I got the aforementioned provisional membership in the kool-kids club. But more than anything, I had the incredible privilege and luxury of six whole weeks where writing, critiquing, and talking about writing and critiquing with seventeen peers and six bad-ass instructors was all I had to do and to worry about. For someone who was insistent on toiling away in solitude and obscurity until he applied on a whim six months after his mother died, it was a life-changing event.

Then, today, this happened:

And, this being the internet, outrage ensued. Continue reading “You Don’t Have to Attend Clarion to Be a Real Writer” →