My MeToo Lessons from My MeToo Experience
The other person in this story is not a public figure, but some of my followers will know who she is. She might read this. I respectfully request that you not out her or target her or judge her, as I think she has fundamentally changed. I’m not sharing this story to shame her.
When I was young in esports, I was shoutcasting just as a hobby. My full-time job was playing music. I traveled a lot and never had a significant interest in dating because it was very difficult to have a good relationship while sleeping on different bar floors or camping in fields several nights a week.
I was invited to go to a community LAN and shoutcast the Dota portion. There I met a woman who played for one of the teams. She had traveled hundreds of miles to participate, she didn’t have the money for a place to stay or a meal.
I took her to eat, we talked. She said she was just out of an abusive relationship, had a broken-home background, had dropped out of high school. I felt empathy for her. I still do.
At the convention area, I gave her the blankets I had brought so she could sleep, and I stayed up all night to make sure nobody screwed with her while she slept. The next night she invited me to sleep in a hotel room paid for by one of her teammates, and I slept in a chair in the room filled with 7 people.
She and I stayed in touch over the next few weeks online, and there was some chemistry. She invited me out to another LAN, this time it was about 300 miles away. I rented a hotel and drove out.
When I got there, I found out it was a very small community event with so few teams and so little space there wasn’t actually room for a shoutcaster at all, so I was just there. I had rented a hotel, and she said she again didn’t have a place to stay, so I let her stay with me. I found out later she did have a place to stay, and the woman she was going to stay with had actually been upset that she chose to stay with me instead.
That’s reasonable, I’m a strange guy and the other woman was probably worried I was going to do something predatory.
This was years ago, so these details are hazy, but this is the basic overview.
That night, after we had both fallen asleep, she woke me up for sex. She admitted she had come down and invited me to the LAN specifically to have sex with me, and that she had been so nervous the whole trip that she hadn’t been able to eat since she left home.
I indicated to her that I hadn’t come with the expectation of sex, that we didn’t need to have sex, but she said she wanted to. I indicated we could cuddle but that we should go to sleep. We made out for a bit.
She said she wanted to have sex, but I said I didn’t have a condom. She said she was clean of STIs, and that she had a copy of her medical records if I wanted to see them. She had come prepared for this conversation.
I told her I didn’t have a medical report and how would she know if she was safe? She said because I had told her I was a virgin in a conversation when we first met. I indicated that it wasn’t true I couldn’t have something, as I’d been sexually active, I just hadn’t had vaginal sex. She said she trusted me.
I repeated that I didn’t have a condom and it wasn’t a good idea. I do not think I was vague or coy. She said she didn’t care. I said we should hold off and go for a walk, see if we can find a condom at a corner store and then we can talk about it, and she said it really didn’t matter. She was on top of me and she persisted.
We had sex for a few hours. I didn’t climax. She asked what she was doing wrong, and I said it wasn’t her but that we should stop for now. She persisted so I masturbated in front of her until I was able to climax.
We went to sleep. A couple weeks later after meeting her only twice in person, she moved in with me, illegally crossing the border and reside in the US at my residence. She kept saying how she was being physically abused in her apartment and explaining how she was trapped. I think I offered to give her haven for a while.
I believed I was a good guy doing a good thing for somebody in need. As it went on, I began to believe that I was in a normal relationship with somebody I had met.
I got a new apartment because I had been renting a room from a friend who didn’t want her or her cat there. I supported both of us. I paid for her medical bills, her pet’s medical bills, food, lodging, clothing, hobbies.
Within a few months, I left the band. The band itself had problematic members, which made me ignore when they questioned if the relationship was healthy or a good idea.
At this point I was pot committed to this being a good idea. Each step had further cemented that if I was making these choices, then these must be good choices, otherwise I was making bad choice after bad choice.
I got a day job, and I started making notable money in esports, but not enough to support two people. I paid for everything for her for a couple years. She routinely verbally abused me and we would get into arguments about it, she would apologize and say she had trouble trusting people after her other experiences.
I loaned her friends and family money which I never saw back, I’d estimate well over $10,000 by the end of a year. At one point, she indicated that if I didn’t pay rent for her ex boyfriend, she would have to go move back in with him and begin prostituting herself or worse to pay rent because her name was on the lease. If I didn’t want to be responsible for that, I had to pay for the apartment.
She’d routinely pressure me into having sex when I wasn’t comfortable, including pressuring me to climax in her without a condom during her period. This pattern continued for years.
I left her behind when I moved for my first full-time esports job, which I took despite being unsure about it in part because I knew she wouldn’t be able to follow me that far from the border. She went back home, and a few weeks later I got a message that she had been seeing somebody new so we needed to officially break up. I broke communications off with her and intentionally avoided contact with her at events like The International (which I always attended as part of my job). She would sometimes seek me out if she knew we were both there.
Now, it wasn’t all bad. No abusive relationship is all bad. I did like her. She is charming. I think she has good intentions but that she couldn’t conceptualize herself as a predator or an abuser because she was a woman, because she was a minority, because she was a victim herself.
There are elements of that relationship that had real lasting impacts on me, and on the way I see sex and relationships. In the ~10 years since that night, I’ve never been able to climax with a new sexual partner, which has put strain on new relationships.
She called me last month after five or six years to talk and apologize, which I accept. She thanked me, she said I changed her life. I’m sure that’s true. I’m glad that’s true. But it was very much a benefit at my expense, emotionally, psychologically and financially. Seeing her or our mutuals reminds me of it, so I avoid them.
Many of our mutuals are women in this very community who are now coming out with their own stories of abuse.
So, alright, why share this story?
Well, firstly, no matter who you are, you can be a victim and you can be a predator. No matter who you know, they can be a victim and they can be a predator. No matter who you are, even if you are a victim, you might be enabling somebody else’s predator. Nobody is above it. Everybody needs to learn.
If somebody tells you they are a victim, nothing else matters. Take it seriously. I’m not saying you need to take every accusation to the courts of public opinion, but you cannot ignore it. If somebody says YOU are a predator or have been predatory, you need to leave that person alone and reflect on why they felt that way. You are responsible for learning and improving.
Many predators don’t see themselves as predators. You might be one of them.
Sometimes being a victim isn’t black and white. Sometimes being a predator isn’t drugging and assaulting. What is really concerning to me about the conversation happening in the Dota 2 space right now is that a lot of people are saying, “How could I have known?”
As in, “How could I have known GrandGrant was assaulting women?”
But the line shouldn’t be at assault. You don’t need to drug somebody or physically force somebody to have sex to be a predator, and if left unchecked, predators will take more and more. They will never be “mostly harmless” unless somebody forces them to back down.
Some predators, like my ex, don’t see themselves in that light at the time. Some don’t think they are being predatory at all. In their story, they are just courting, messing around or wooing. And it’s natural that to each person, we are our own protagonist, so we see the best in ourselves and the company we keep.
But that doesn’t mean these kind of actions are harmless or excusable. Somebody who uses a power dynamic, or sympathy, or financial leverage to secure a kiss is a predator. And they will take more the more they’re given. To stop that predatory behavior, we are all responsible for spotting and stopping it.
I’m glad women who have experienced far worse outcomes than mine are being listened to. I hope all women who have these kind of experiences get listened to. I hope all people with these kind of experiences get listened to.
Most of all, I hope we can root out the people in our scene and in our lives who would engage in truly indefensible behavior, and quickly educate everybody else so we are all comfortable saying, “You are being a predator.” And we all need to be comfortable hearing that and immediately ceasing whatever is going on.
Anybody who hears that and doesn’t walk away, anybody who hears “no” as “maybe,” anybody who think aggression is confidence or a workplace is a sexual playground… moving forward, there needs to be zero tolerance. Looking backward, we need to ask victims who they feel safe around and who they don’t. The latter needs to go, immediately.
