I'll know it when I get there? I hope? Maybe the boiling point comes after it becomes my turn to talk? Very long story, short: I was in a leadership position years ago. After making a very public announcement and taking action, it was brought up to me that the winner that I had awarded was actually a rapist, and had raped a friend of mine. My friend was pissed that the organization had "sided with her rapist". This was LONG before any of these conversations were being had in public, and I secretly hoped this would sort of "go away" if I didn't do anything. And it did. So as I have become more "woke" to the everyday existence of women, and the shit they have to deal with on a daily basis, I realized how wrong my decision was. Not only did I "rehabilitate" her rapist, and deny her experience, by choosing his side and hoping she would take her problem and go hide in her hole again... I also inadvertently empowered other predators in the community, by showing that you could even rape one of the women in our community, and not suffer any consequences. And I lived with that for 8-10 years. It has eaten at me, in the back of my head, for all that time. Only recently have I come to find the words that express the role I played, and why it still stuck with me so long after. ---- The kicker is that, this week, I found out that none of it is true. She wasn't raped. He wasn't her rapist. The information I had been given - and had been holding as a "shared secret" between me and her - wasn't true. And when it came up in a mutual conversation she and I were having with other core people in the community... she completely melted down. She went from not being raped, to being held up as an example of how rape has been treated in our community, in the past. And it destroyed her. She went ballistic. Completely hysterical. All the pressure of all the recent revelations, and stories, and problems, all came to a head at once... ... and I found out that I have been beating myself up about my role as an enabler or "broken-stair" for close to a decade, and it wasn't even true. But now, by "outing" her like that, I HAD become the problem. Oh the irony.
My first encounter with the public side of all this was when a very gentle, very shy, very kind friend (who happened to lift a lot of weights) was written up by an ex on DontDateHimGirl.com as a physically violent stalker. He had in fact broken things off when the accuser faked a pregnancy in order to pressure him into marriage (by her own admission). There was no recourse. She had done it purely to damage his reputation at his church, where he had a leadership position. The site didn't even respond to his communication. It was up for six or seven years, coloring every relationship he had from that point forth (small town, word gets around), even after she bailed back to Canada under inauspicious circumstances. Despite the fact that she had a reputation as a liar and instigator, there was always that 'what if' hanging over him. I'm sure the website - and other devices like it - were created with the best of intentions. And hopefully one of the side effects of #metoo is we acknowledge accusations in daylight where we apply the normal standards of credibility and intent that we apply to everything else. When things are under shroud of darkness, accusations are enough because we assume due process is denied the accuser because of the environment; it's true often enough. But for opportunists with no scruples, it gives cover for women with made-up problems to make things less safe for women in real jeopardy.