Yesterday during Counseling class, in between watching a 40 something year old video of a client telling her therapist she wanted to choke him (he would've deserved it, in my opinion) and job searching, I spent a little time reading Texts from Last Night. I typically find this site highly entertaining (though I'm still bitter that my text about pole-dancing and arguing about the importance of feminism in the same bar, on the same night - was never posted despite Marco submitting it to the site). Gloria, the client in the outdated Counseling video, got frustrated with and angry at her therapist, who literally squawked at her like a chicken and said she was too afraid to say what was really on her mind - until she blew up and said he treated her like he was better than her, like he knew everything and she knew nothing, and that it made her want to choke him. While this exchange held my attention more than some previous videos I've been forced to sit through in Counseling class, I still find myself looking for an escape for 2 hours, something to keep my mind from what I'm actually sitting through.
Admittedly, I read texts from last night for some low-level humor - humor that I think qualifies as a silly escape from the real world. I don't expect witty satire or humorous social commentary, I expect tales of waking up in a bath tub smothered in cheese, or wondering why there's a giraffe in the living room. I'm perfectly aware that the site is a place to post foolish tales from the previous night told in text message format. I enjoy clicking on the thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate whether I think it was a "good night" or a "bad night," and typically I do so without judgment of the texter in question. Rarely do I read a text from last night that legitimately concerns me about our society, but evidently... it can happen.
I came across this text while surfing the site in class yesterday:
(425):
After grabbing my boob for a couple minutes he then decides to ask me if I was awake.
What upset me wasn't just the content of the text, but also the fact that the thumbs-ups for "Good night" outweighed the thumbs downs for "Bad night" by almost 1,000 votes. Over 2,000 people thumbs-upped that it was a "Good night." Call me crazy, but touching someone sexually while you're not sure if they're asleep or not is sexual assault in my eyes. It's hard for me to think of that as a "Good night" for the person whose boob was grabbed by someone who didn't know whether this person was awake, and it's harder for me to make light of the grabber as someone who was just having a "Good night." But apparently, there are at least 2,000 texts from last night readers who do not have such trouble distancing themselves from the issue of groping others while they may or may not be asleep.
I of course, immediately jumped into social problem-solving mode and contemplated ways that I could shame people into the realization that no, this isn't a "Good night." I decided that if I clicked the thumbs down for bad night over 1,000 times, so that it caught up to and surpassed the good night votes, future readers of the text would see that the popular opinion was that this was a "Bad night" and they would agree (majority rules, right?). I begin clicking as quietly as I can, still in the classroom and trying to be considerate as Gloria told her therapist how much she hated him (in 1963...).
I clicked over 200 times on the thumbs down, only to refresh and find that my 200 extra clicks were not counted - it was only counted once. Apparently the site isn't designed for me to manipulate people into thinking mine is the majority opinion. And frankly I don't know that it would've done any good to make it look on the site like more people were as disturbed by this text as I was; maybe it was just my attempt to think for a minute that people are as concerned about sexual assault as I am, or that they could be if they just thought others cared, too. Or hey, maybe I'm underestimating the good nighters, who were motivated to vote good night by virtue of the fact that "he" did eventually decide to see if 425 was awake - maybe he realized he was doing something wrong and tried to correct it. But, I have my doubts.
Gloria - fight back. That fucker shouldn't get to disrespect you - he's been conditioned to because you're a woman and he thinks he's superior. You said yourself he was treating you like a silly little girl. Before you know it, he'll be laying next to you and grabbing your boob, without regard to whether you want him to, or are awake enough to consent. He'll squawk at you like a chicken if you say you don't want it.
I'm really lucky (slash society is lucky) to have men in my life that are really good allies to women, aware of the effects of sexism and unwilling to tolerate behavior that contributes to our culture that condones rape and sexual assault in some subtle and some less subtle ways. I love these men so much - too many people are not as bright and caring as them.
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