My grandfather was a generally peaceful man. He was a gardener, an EMT, a town selectman, and an all around fantastic person. He would give a friend - or a stranger - the shirt off his back if someone needed it. He also taught me some of the most important lessons I ever learned about violence, and why it needs to exist.

When I was five, my grandfather and grandmother discovered that my rear end and lower back were covered in purple striped bruises and wheals. They asked me why, and I told them that Tom, who was at that time my stepfather, had punished me. I don’t remember what he was punishing me for, but I remember the looks on their faces. 

When my mother and stepfather arrived, my grandmother took my mother into the other room. Then my grandfather took my stepfather into the hallway. He was out of my eye line, but I saw through the crack in the door on the hinge side. He slammed my stepfather against the wall so hard that the sheet rock buckled, and told him in low terms that if he ever touched me again they would never find his body. 

I absolutely believed that he would kill my stepfather, and I also believed that someone in the world thought my safety was worth killing for. 

In the next few years, he gave me a few important tips and pointers for dealing with abusers and bullies. He taught me that if someone is bringing violence to you, give it back to them as harshly as you can so they know that the only response they get is pain. He taught me that guns are used as scare tactics, and if you aren’t willing to accept responsibility for mortally wounding someone, you should never own one. He told me that if I ever had a gun aimed at me, I should accept the possibility of being shot and rush the person, or run away in a zig-zag so they couldn’t pick me off. He taught me how to break someone’s knee, how to hold a knife, and how to tell if someone is holding a gun with intent to kill. He was absolutely right, and he was one of the most peaceful people I’ve ever met. He was never, to my knowledge, violent with anyone who didn’t threaten him or his family. Even those who had, he gave chances to, like my first stepfather. 

When I was fourteen, a friend of mine was stalked by a mutual acquaintance. I was by far younger than anyone else in the social crowd; he was in his mid twenties, and the object of his “affection” was as well. Years before we had a term for “Nice Guy” bullshit, he did it all. He showed up at her house, he noted her comings and goings, he observed who she spent time with, and claimed that her niceness toward him was a sign that they were actually in a relationship.

This came to a head at a LARP event at the old NERO Ware site. He had been following her around, and felt that I was responsible for increased pressure from our mutual friends to leave her alone. He confronted me, her, and a handful of other friends in a private room and demanded that we stop saying nasty things about him. Two of our mutual friends countered and demanded that he leave the woman he was stalking alone. 

Stalker-man threw a punch. Now, he said in the aftermath that he was aiming for the man who had confronted him, but he was looking at me when he did it. He had identified me as the agent of his problems and the person who had “turned everyone against him.” His eyes were on mine when the punch landed. He hit me hard enough to knock me clean off my feet and I slammed my head into a steel bedpost on the way down.

When I shook off the stunned confusion, I saw that two of our friends had tackled him. I learned that one had immediately grabbed him, and the other had rabbit-punched him in the face. I had a black eye around one eyebrow and inner socket, and he was bleeding from his lip. 

At that time in my life, unbeknownst to anyone in the room, I was struggling with the fact that I had been molested repeatedly by someone who my mother had recently broken up with. He was gone, but I felt conflicted and worthless and in pain. I was still struggling, but I knew in that moment that I had a friend in the world who rabbit-punched a man for hitting me, and I felt a little more whole.

Later that year, I was bullied by a girl in my school. She took special joy in tormenting me during class, in attacking me in the hallways, in spreading lies and asserting things about me that were made up. She began following me to my locker, and while I watched the clock tick down, she would wait for me to open it and try to slam my hand in it. She succeeded a few times. I attempted to talk to counselors and teachers. No one did anything. Talking to them made it worse, since they turned and talked to her and she called me a “tattle” for doing it. I followed the system, and it didn’t work. 

I remembered my friend socking someone in the face when he hit me. I recalled what my grandfather had taught me, and decided that the next time she tried, I would make sure it was the last. I slammed the door into her face, then shut her head in the base of my locker, warping the aluminum so badly that my locker no longer worked. She never bothered me again. 

Violence is always a potential answer to a problem. I believe it should be a last answer - everything my grandfather taught me before his death last year had focused on that. He hadn’t built a bully or taught me to seek out violence; he taught me how to respond to it.

I’ve heard a lot of people talk recently about how, after the recent Nazi-punching incident, we are in more danger because they will escalate. That we will now see more violence and be under more threat because of it. I reject that. We are already under threat. We are already being attacked. We are being stripped of our rights, we are seeing our loved ones and our family reduced to “barely human” or equated with monsters because they are different. 

To say that we are at more risk now than we were before a Nazi got punched in the face is to claim that abusers only hurt you if you fight back. Nazis didn’t need a reason to want to hurt people whom they have already called inhuman, base, monsters, thugs, retards, worthless, damaging to the gene pool, and worthy only of being removed from the world. They were already on board. The only difference that comes from fighting back is the intimate knowledge that we will not put up with their shit.

And I’m just fine with that.

tortexandcobalt:

whatever-is-pxre:

When I was 13 years old and curious about sex and love, I asked my mom if she had had sex before marrying my father (of whom she is still married to, and has been since before I was born). She said that that wasn’t really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. I said ‘sure it is, you’ve either had sex before him, or you haven’t’. She brought me onto the couch and sat me down and told me about the boy she liked when she was young and how one night she snuck into his house while his parents were gone and they were kissing and he said they should have sex and she said that she wanted to save sex for marriage and he laughed and basically took all her clothes off and he raped her and as my mom was telling the story she cried and this was the second time I had ever seen my mom cry. She was 12 when it happened.

In grade 8 I got a call from my friend in the middle of the night and she was drunk in the park crying and told me that she went out that night with some other friends and they drank a little and her guy “friend” starting flirting and yes she laughed at first but then he tried to pull her shirt over her head and she pulled away and he ripped her shirt and it was her favourite shirt and then he pushed her to her knees and HIS BEST FRIEND HELD HER JAW OPEN WHILE HE FACE FUCKED HER. And so I went to the park and picked her up and took her home and slept in her bed with her except we didn’t sleep because she just cried and her mouth bled and this was four years ago but I still have to be the one to bring her items to the till it the cashier is a man, and she still has anxiety attacks and she’ll get a rash all over her body and I just want to kill those boys but instead they are still walking around. And I’m in the bathroom with her, dabbing at her skin with a warm cloth until it returns to its regular colour.

And in grade 9 one of my closest friends was kinda seeing this boy and so they hung out one night and then she said that she really had to be getting back home and he said that she wasn’t going anywhere until she gave him what he wanted and he parked the car and took off her clothes and she said no and he ignored her and so she laid in the backseat totally limp and just cried and it wasn’t even sex, he just masterbated by using her body instead of his hand and she came to school the next day with vodka in her water bottle and she drank all day and I had to fight her to get the alcohol away from her and she just cried and threw up and I skipped class while I held her hair back and that same boy texted me a month later, asking if I ever wanted to hangout sometime.

And in that same year my very best friend who has never even kissed a boy, confessed to me that when she was 9 years old, her 12 year old cousin made her give him a hand job and he told her that was what cousins do and he gave her a chocolate bar afterwards and she told me that he probably doesn’t even remember it but that it’s something that she’ll never have the luxury of forgetting.

And in grade 10 I knew a girl who invited her best friend over to watch Disney movies and then he started to put his hands down her pants and she said no but she is 130lbs and he is 220lbs and he called her a tease while she tried to fight him but he used one hand to hold her down, and the other to put inside of her and i was the one to push her inside of a classroom and stand in front of her while calling the police when he showed up at our school looking for her and she was so damn scared.

And a few months later I skipped class and was in the car with a guy who i had had unprotected sex with in the past while under the influence of cocaine but this time I was sober and I insisted we use a condom but he told me he couldn’t feel anything while the condom was on so he ripped it off and I said I refused to have unprotected sex again and so he just grabbed me and forced himself into my mouth and I was crying and he pulled me onto him and I just came saying “stop” over and over like a broken record but he must’ve heard something different because he went until he came and I just sat naked in the backseat while he drove me back to the school and said “we should do this again sometime”. And I had five showers that night and I scratched at my skin so hard to try and rip his fingerprints off of me, I still have the scars.

And I found out soon afterwards that that same guy had raped a classmate of mine, 5 months earlier and she told me about how he brought her McDonald’s first, and how he said they could take things slow and she told me about how he didn’t listen to her either. And he goes to our school and so after she told me about her incident and I told her about mine, we decided to report it to the police and the trial is currently still going on and he told people about it, except in his version we are just “asking for attention” and all his friends talk about how bad they feel for him. As if HE is the one that still wakes up screaming. As if HE felt like his skin no longer was beautiful, no longer belonged to him.
And I held her in my arms as she bawled after giving the police her statement. And she did the same for me.

And I met a woman a year ago in a paint store and she had a service dog and I asked what the dog was for and it turns out that she had been so brutally raped and abused in her life, that the dog is literally trained to keep men away from her.

And I’m so FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF THIS WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN. How many rape victims eyes have I already looked into? How many more will I? And how many more friends will I hold while they shake? Because I don’t know how many more I can take. And who the fuck still has the nerve to make rape jokes? And… Something just has to change. Please, someone just start being that change.

-16 year old girl

I’m going to fucking vomit.

Yes all women