On "not resisting actively enough" and other tragic aspects of the Owen Labrie case

So the Owen Labrie prep school rape trial is over, at least for this round (his defense attorney is already promising to appeal). Labrie was found not guilty of felony sexual assault charges, but guilty of having sex with a girl who was below the age of consent. 

For those unfamiliar with the case, Labrie, a student at St. Paul's School, was accused of forcing a younger classmate to have sex with him in the context of what witnesses referred to as "senior salute". Senior salute, according to witnesses, is when soon-to-graduate seniors at the boarding school try to engage younger students in a sort of last-chance sexual encounter. In this instance, the victim was a freshman in high school.

No matter what the legal outcome, this is a sad, sad case. 

Sad because of a context where sex-as-conquest is referred to as "slaying", and the names of "slayers" are written on a wall. (And while the details are specific to one school, let's not kid ourselves that there are not countless other places with similar cultures and practices).Sad because a young teenager and her parents had to sit through an excruciatingly detailed and drawn-out trial, the victim having to relive the incident and her parents having to hear details which I'm sure are the stuff of their nightmares now. Sad because of all the collateral damage.

Sad because Labrie's attorney leaned heavily on a popular notion that the victim "did not resist actively enough", and therefore, the incident was not felony rape.

Did not resist actively enough.

During the victim's testimony, she described saying "no" repeatedly to Labrie's sexual advances and trying to physically prevent his removing her underwear, before she finally "froze"-- a very common trauma response.  So, in what universe does freezing equal consent, or does repeatedly saying no constitute insufficient resistance? Why is a victim's responsibility to somehow prevent her victimization more important than a perpetrator's responsibility to hear and honor the word "no"?

As a woman, survivor, and friend or therapist to many rape survivors, I am so disheartened. Not just by this case, but by the way our society victimizes, blames, and shames females of all ages. Including, sadly, underage girls. (Do you remember who and how you were as a young teen? How able you would have been or felt at that age to somehow ward off an assault?)

I am also a mother who is raising a daughter. And I'll be honest, I am scared--  terrified, really-- about the culture and attitude at this boarding school. Which, if we're honest about it, is really only a microcosm and reflection of larger societal culture and attitudes. A mindset in which females are objects, trophies, prey for the "slaying".

"I can't believe you poked her... How'd it go from no to bone?" a friend messaged Labrie.

"Used every trick in the book," Labrie answered in a message exchange shown to the jury.

We who are parents or professionals working with youth have an enormous responsibility to meaningfully address the objectification of and violence against women. In our homes, in our classrooms, in our conversations with one another. Because the "senior salute" attitude which supports the tragic incident at St. Paul's is pervasive and massively destructive. 

As for Owen Labrie, who awaits his sentencing, what exactly would constitute justice? There is certainly significant evidence that he was guilty of rape despite having been exonerated (at least for now) with regard to that charge. We do not know, cannot know, if he has remorse, or the degree to which he poses a further public safety risk. The argument could be made that the culture of the school and its "senior salute" ritual blinded him to the true harmfulness of his actions, to the fact that he was inflicting real and lasting harm on a human being rather than simply scoring a point in a game. It could be argued that he was swept away by a powerful current of misogyny.

In which case, he certainly did not resist actively enough,

The amazing things we almost miss

I had been aware of (read that, intrigued by) the Northampton Poetry Open Mike on Tuesday nights for a while, but it had already been filed under Things I Cannot Do as Single Mom to a Child Not Old Enough to be Left Alone. So, when my sister invited my daughter to her place for a couple of last-remnants-of-summer days, I immediately thought of going to the Open Mike, which was to be held, in fact, very near where I was to be working until 5:00.

And I very nearly talked myself out of it.

Why? There were a thousand practical reasons not to go. It would make for a late night, I was already tired, it was a chance for a rare evening of solitude. 

I think the real reason, though, was I was afraid I might love it. And that if I loved it, I might want to go back. Which was going to be one gigantic logistical problem. So, why go there in the first place?

All day, I went back and forth. I really didn't decide until the last minute that I would go.

And I might not have, would probably not have, if it hadn't been for my fantastic friend Lindsay, who was going to be there, attended regularly, and told me how terrific it was.

OK, OK, I'll go, I finally decided. But I might leave early. And I'm just going to listen.

The venue was technically a bar (I am not so much a bar type of gal), but the event itself was held in a banquet room in the back of the building. As people filed in, I was immediately struck by the warmth, laughter, and camaraderie in the room. 

So, to make a long story short, I listened. In what ended up being an enthralled sort of listening. And I even read (gasp), because, you know, we all walk around with our binders of poetry, just in case. The energy, talent, and enthusiasm was amazing, and the featured poet who read, Scott Beal, had us all captivated. (Hey, anybody who writes octopus divorce poems is okay by me!)

All told, it was an incredible evening that left this non-drinker feel like I was leaving with a buzz. I'm already trying to figure out how I can get back there again.

And I came so, so close to missing it.

Kids don't miss out on the interesting and exciting stuff, not if they have any say in it! My 8-year-old would try to do three activities at one time, just to avoid missing out on anything,

But we grown-ups? (Well. At least this grown-up!)  We talk ourselves out of things. We make and believe all these excuses. And sometimes, amazing things go on without us.

I'm so glad this one didn't get by me.

I dare you to do something you're dying to do, but have made a long list of reasons not to. (Nothing too dangerous or illegal, friends!)  When you're through, please tell me about it. By then, I might need another amazing something to experience vicariously. 

Of course, if you can't reach me, I'm probably out doing the poetry thing...

Kinda Catchy

Language fascinates me. I love the way words can get at something, directly or indirectly, from a thousand angles.

I'm especially interested in words with evolving meanings. Words with usage that changes by generation or by culture.

Take the word "catch". When I was  growing up, you could catch a ball (something good), catch a cold (something bad), or catch someone's attention (which could be good or bad, depending on whose attention it was).

When I started working with clients in corrections settings, I heard lots of familiar words and phrases used in a different way than I was used to hearing or saying them. One: when a client who was on probation or parole would get in trouble again, and the guys would refer to it as "catching a charge". I thought this was an interesting framework because it put all the responsibility outside the individual in trouble, as if he or she were walking down the street one day and got clobbered by a flying legal charge. (Of course, there are indeed some who are targeted by some bad apples in law enforcement for various non-criminal reasons, whose experience is like that. But I digress.)

The other way the guys in corrections settings used the word "catch" applied to social interactions. It was risky to engage in a friends with benefits type situation, they would say when chatting among themselves before or after group, because someone always ended up "catching feelings". What struck me about this use of the term was that 1) it was clearly meant to describe something undesirable, risky, or problematic, and 2) that it also had the feel of something that could be foisted upon a person by external forces-- "catching feelings", like, catching pneumonia, say.

At first I thought about this in terms of what it says about this population of guys, then what it might say about guys in general (sorry, male readers, we stereotype sometimes just like you do!), then what it might say about the times that we are living in. But gradually, I shifted from thinking about the original use of the phrase-- to "catch feelings" as in to "fall for someone" (a similarly dangerous-sounding expression), and started thinking about it in terms of how our society looks at emotions, period.

When I see clients in my private practice, they often come in describing a problem that is actually a feeling. Sometimes, the feeling is embedded in other things which make it rise to the occasion of a mental health disorder (i.e. persistent sadness+ lack of appetite + sleep disturbance + loss of interest in things = major depression episode, or so says the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual). Many times, though, the feeling is a response to a situation which would probably provoke a similar emotion in any number of people.

There are times, though, when a difficult dynamic happens where the client who is in, say, a high-conflict relationship, comes in with what they think is the problem (a feeling) and wants the problem fixed by the "expert" (played by the therapist). They don't realize that their feeling is trying to give them an important message, and that the feeling is not the real problem. That the feeling would diminish or vanish if they could reduce the conflict in their relationship or get out of the relationship.

As someone who is prone to strong feelings (positive and negative), I know to some extent where they are coming from. I know what it's like to have my sleep hijacked and my concentration derailed by distressing feelings or troublesome thoughts. I know, too, about "catching feelings for someone" in circumstances where I might be better off if the feelings had blown past me through the air and landed on some other unsuspecting person.

Yet, feelings have been important avenues for me to connect deeply with other people, understand myself and my needs better, and create stories, poems, essays, and even this blog. So while they might at times be challenging or inconvenient, I think I'll stay in the boat of trying to experience, or sometimes simply tolerate, my feelings rather than eradicate them. Without them, life would be pretty bland, indeed.

Writing inward, writing out

A couple of people have approached me about blogging recently. Aspiring bloggers, they wanted to know what it has been like for me, these early days of starting to blog.

People blog for vastly different reasons, of course. And in truth, I am still finding my way into my blogging identity. I have little to say to those who hope to build business or make money through a blog. But I can talk a bit from the perspective of a writer who never expected to become a blogger.

Writing requires a certain amount of solitude. There is a kind of diving inward, a sense of going deeper into one's self. Maybe not so much some of the more technical parts of the writing process, such as self-editing, but certainly the more creative parts.

I have an ambivalent relationship to this process of going inward. Sometimes it feels delicious, private, extraordinarily free of constraints which make up other parts of life. Sometimes, it feels like being lost in a cave that seems endless, and I don't know whether I should turn back or keep going, and I don't know which way is which anymore.

I have similar mixed feelings about the social part of writing, which to me includes submitting and discussing one's work, being involved in writing communities or groups, and the many ways writers and readers have dialogues with one another. On the one hand, it feels fabulously surreal to get feedback that a poem or essay resonated with someone, or that something I wrote has been accepted for publication. And I often greatly enjoy writing in a workshop or group.

But there are also times when exposure or social noise feels like something I want to hide from, and I long for private moments, just me and my pen and notebook.

Blogging, it turns out, feels for me like the best of both of these writing worlds. I am alone with writing a post for a finite, usually brief period of time, engaging in some mild self-exploration that feels neither pressured nor deep, and then I am pressing "Publish". I know when I do so that only a small number of people will be reading my words, but it's enough to feel like I'm connecting a little. And every now and then, someone will give me feedback by Comment or through message, and this feels like the most casual, comfortable interaction.

The Writer Susan leaves her manuscript-in-progress and gives a friendly wave to the nice people she sees across the lake, reminding her that she is not, in fact, alone. And now and then, someone friendly on the other side of the lake waves back.

It isn't high-brow. It isn't literary. But it's pretty cool, when it comes right down to it. (So, friends, the answer is yes, by all means, go try your blog!)