Quote: (05-25-2014 04:41 PM)BadgerHut Wrote:
Someone who changes key details of a story either has a really bad memory of material facts, is deliberately deceiving people out of habit, or lives in a world where the matter of facts is simply not important to them ahead of whatever point they want the story to express at the time.
That's just women, mate. Their reality is entirely-subjective, and necessarily-fluid due to their hyper-awareness of social dynamics, and their inability to deal with the ugly realities of cognitive-dissonance, (what we call 'running the hamster'). It's basically an ability to hold two simultaneous, contradictory beliefs at once whilst thinking they're both truth.
There's no point labelling them 'liars' for the way their sex perceives things. I guarantee you that, in the moment they're telling a tale, that is their genuine recollection of events after they've denied and filtered the bits that might make them, or their listener, uncomfortable.
This has been on my mind since February:
Through work, I recently ran into a woman I've known since High School and has floated through my social circle as a 'friend of a friend' on and off ever since.
I'd talked her off the ledge at various parties over the years, and through threats of suicide. I've discussed - at great length - her rape with her multiple times: she went out on a date when she was visiting Melbourne when she was 17, and ended up being raped by him and a friend of his back at his house, leaving with her with anal herpes. She never pressed charges, 'out of fear'. All the women I know, (including my sister and cousins), know her and pity her and praise her 'strength' etc, because she's made sexual assault crusading her career.
I'd lost track of her about six years ago, but she turned up for training at my workplace. She's still a hambeast, (and was before the rape), but I've got 20 kilos of muscle on me since she last saw me, and noticed she was constantly giggling, lip-biting and touching my bicep, chest and back as we talked, so I was feeling an uncomfortable 'creeper' vibe from her attention.
After training, she approached me and said she needed a lift to another site in town, and asked if I could drive her.
I'm not that stupid.
I called up one of the girls upstairs and ask if she could come with us to our other site, and she said she was just finishing up something and would meet us down here in 10 minutes.
Rape Girl looked disappointed, and asked me 'Why is she coming?'
I know how to play the game, and said it was a sign of respect because I didn't want to put her in an uncomfortable situation of being alone with a 'much bigger' man - despite her probably weighting close to me - because of her rape.
That's when she said it: "I've always been really comfortable with you [Bosch]. And, well, I wouldn't exactly call it rape."
You could put a cape on this girl with RG emblazoned on the back, this is how much the rape has defined her. She never shuts the fuck up about it. She was on the front of our local phone book about 6 years ago fronting a 'Take Back The Night' march. I couldn't have been more shocked if she'd said she was from Mars.
Note 'exactly'. Classic girl weasel language.
I responded with completed stoicism: letting her talk, prompting her with questions. I'm a listener, and she trusts me because I've always talked about her problems non-judgmentally. This had the aura of confession. Why now, at this point in her life, under the ticking clock of someone coming to join us? Who knows? But it happened.
A couple of things she said:
- She felt like she owed the guy something, 'well, he'd bought me dinner'.
- She stayed the night because 'We were in [an outer suburb about 50 mins from her hotel by train], and he'd been drinking, and I'd have to get a Taxi and a Train and find my way back, and I didn't really know how to get there."
- The other guy ended up in bed because she might have 'possibly' invited him to join them.
See the cognitive dissonance at play? Instead of saying "I wanted to fuck this guy and his friend," and being honest about it becomes about rationalising why she mustn't have really wanted to do the thing that she did.
Otherwise you have to stop and consider that she would give up her vagina against her will simply because she couldn't be bothered dealing with navigating a simple taxi and train trip back to the city. Hell, women possess more agency that that.
So, how does it become 'rape'?
Because she ended up with anal herpes through her poor choices.
So she either has to face reality:
- I had slutty sex with someone I barely knew and ended up with butt blisters.
Or spin the hamster:
- Arse herpes is something bad, dirty girls get.
- I'm not a bad, dirty girl. I'm a good girl.
- I wouldn't have made the choice to be a bad, dirty girl.
- It wasn't choice, I was forced.
- I'm now a victim, and no-one can judge me for my disease.
Strangely enough, a good mate of mine has seen this rationalisation process in gay men who've contracted HIV.
The other girl soon turned up and we dropped her off, with me questioning why she said what she did to me. The vain part of wants to think she was trying to make me view her as less-tainted so I'd want to get into her front bum, but I'm not that arrogant. Her lengthy rationales for sleeping with the guys seemed to have too much verisimilitude.
I wondered what to do about this for weeks afterwards, (and there's no need to derail this thread into a discussion of what I should do about it), because in the end I came to the conclusion that it's just how women perceive reality, and there's nothing to be gained from it, because group conflict guarantees women will side with women and will never believe me. (If charges had been pressed, it'd be another matter).
I'm being Zen about it. The story she told to me was the truth of her reality as an actor, with me as her audience, at that moment in time. The story she tells to other women is the truth of her reality as an actor, with them as her audience, at that moment in time.
It think accepting this without anger is part of understanding the nature of women. Either that or it was just the snapping of the last, lingering thread of expecting anything better out of them.