here is what it feels like to be told you’re crying wolf when the wolf is at your door

Here is the context: I have spent 20+ years advocating for myself and fellow victims of sexual violence to be listened to. At first we said “believe us,” but as I have gotten older and further into these things and as the discourse about sexual violence has changed around us, partially due to the pressure of our ongoing advocacy work and partially due to many other cultural factors, it has become “listen to us,” at least for me. All I want is for us to be heard and not immediately dismissed.

(In case you are not familiar with my story, here is part of it, again, for context.)

This is what it felt like for me to be told that sexual violence you very well know happened did not happen: from the person who committed the violence, from people I’d reached out to for support, from authority figures and legal processes (remember, the US legal process around sexual assault has an enormous number of systemic problems, from burden of proof to rape kit backlogs and beyond). I am not talking here about “recovered memories,” which have led to many specious and harmful claims. I am talking about incidents known and remembered in the moment.

I was flooded with anger, flooded with shame. I should never have said anything. I should never have spoken up. Now they’ll all think of me as a liar. And then: Am I a liar? Are they right? Am I so fucked in the head that I am inventing this horrible thing that happened to me? Why would I do that? Am I broken? And then: I have nowhere to go. I should just erase myself. The pain is too much. And then: I am leaking everywhere. I need help. There is no one who will help. And then: But really, what if this is all in my head? What if I brought it on myself? This is my fault. My fault. My fault. No matter what, it is my fault.

I stayed silent. I internalized my pain. I abused a lot of substances. I nearly killed myself a few times. I know what that feels like, to hit that bottom.

Nobody should ever have to feel that way. Nobody should have their sense of trust in others doubly fucked: you trust someone to be intimate with you, to be kind, to love you, and they use it against you. And then it’s compounded by others turning their backs.

Trauma recovery asks a lot of the people around us. I am very keenly aware of that. I have my own boundaries, and I cannot give what i want to to many other survivors. I try to give what I can. I try to listen, at the very very least, even if there is no action that it is appropriate for me to take beyond that.

Every time someone makes a false claim of sexual violence, from small scale to large, it damages the work that we have done in trying to get people to listen, to not turn away from us, to see our pain for what it is and to respond kindly.

Revenge porn is a form of sexual violence. It is a boundary violation, an abuse of trust, a sexual act used as a weapon. People have committed suicide over revenge porn. It is legal in many states and almost never enforced in states where it is illegal. Upon seeing the band YACHT’s statement yesterday about their stolen sex tape, I felt an immediate flood of empathy. And then I kept reading, and something seemed strange to me about the whole thing. I did some quick web research, and nothing seemed to be out there other than the band’s own statements. I was pretty sure it was a hoax within about an half hour, and I wasn’t happy about it, though I waited for that hoax to be confirmed to say much publicly about it.

You can call it a hoax, you can call it an art project, you can call it commentary on the state of media today, but it is an abuse of people’s trust and faith, it is an abuse of hard-won public empathy, it sets the work that I and others have been doing for decades back.

It is irresponsible and cruel.

It is a false claim.

And the band can walk away from it after their performance of victimhood, leaving real victims worse for wear. Which is why I am writing this: I want them to know how much this hurts, how what they thought was a cute stunt was in actuality a cynical betrayal. And maybe next time they’ll think before they pull something like this.