buffer-overrun

—Richard Siken, “A Primer For Small Weird Loves” Crush

I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that something that happens to women constantly is only relevant when a man articulates it. But (1) Siken does a really amazing job of capturing being young and messed up and basically everything in Crush seems incredibly vivid and true, and (2) reading men’s descriptions of gross men somehow makes it easier to see how “young object of impersonal desire” is a category that exists out there and that’s easy to fall into when you’re just starting out. Something you eventually learn to recognize, so you can steel yourself for the (e.g.) balding math teacher chasing you through the courtyard of a conference hotel demanding you let him give you head, and not feel guilty about rolling your eyes and speed walking to the elevator.

And I’m still thinking about that terrible Emily Yoffe piece (that I promised I wasn’t going to write about anymore) where Carol Tavris says, “Calling all of these kinds of sexual encounters ‘rape’ or ‘sexual assault’ doesn’t teach young women how to learn what they want sexually, let alone how to communicate what they want, or don’t want. It doesn’t teach them to take responsibility for their decisions, for their reluctance to speak up.” And, yes, I had a bunch of terrible sex that wasn’t sexual assault, but was humiliating in ways that seemed outside my control, and that I’m still trying to find a way to articulate