Okay.
Remind me never to get on your bad side, Idle Thoughts. 
This has taken an interesting turn.
There happens to be a lot about Beckdawrek that you don’t know, Mr. Smartyman.
Whoa, what the fuck?
Sock? Looking at Beckdawrek’s oeuvre I’m not all that surprised if it turns out to be the case.
Anyways, Mr. Smartyman is one of the lamest insults I’ve ever read.
I agree that there is something fishy about Señor Trainwreck. I suspect his time here will be short. He will be made mince meat of shortly.
Beckdawrek hasn’t been banned, though. If she were Mince’s sick, that account would’ve been banned, too.
All in good time, my pretty!
Maybe Mince is muddying the waters. I still believe 'dawrek to be a sock, Mince’s or otherwise.
Jeez, people! WTH! I really don’t even know what a ‘sock’ is. Much less have the wherewithal to be one. I am just a plain old person with no agenda, at all. I have recently found I have time on my hands ( my nest is empty). That is the reason I came to this forum. I thought (wrongly??) that I could read and post and join in the fun (?) here. I have NEVER even been on another board, I am not on any other social media type thing, unless you count Pinterest. I have a profile on Amazon , I think. As you can probably tell, I clumsily came on the board, asking alot of questions, getting in trouble a couple of times. Having issues with grammar and punctuation and getting slammed about it. So…people make your own judgements about me. It really isn’t gonna make a difference in my life. I do want to stay on the board. I can’t understand why Idle thoughts and some others don’t like me, I have never sought out or even paid attention to them. And here we are.
Oh, btw, I am a senorita, not a senor!
Was drafting a PM to octopus and felt something needed to be said.
iiiandyiii, you are my hero. All of you men, who take other men to task for inappropriate thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors toward women, you are heroes. I probably wouldn’t feel as comfortable speaking out about my own experience if it weren’t for you.
Sometimes I wish you did it more diplomatically, but still. Heroes.
Thank you very much; that means a lot. I’ll point out that the main extent of my efforts, other than the occasional modest financial donation, is sitting in a comfortable chair and typing words into my laptop. I’m sure my talking about something that I’ve never experienced is much easier than you talking about something that was profoundly traumatizing.
In all honesty, I could do a lot more. I have a full time job, but lots of other free time, yet I don’t do volunteer work because of how much I value my leisure time. I donate a little money, but not a lot, because my wife and I save most of our money, or use it to travel. I enjoy writing and arguing, and I like this board, so what I do takes modest effort and no sacrifice.
But thank you very much. It’s extremely gratifying when my writing is well received.
Either way it’ll be adiós, muy pronto.
Crap, let it go. This thread is about ‘octopus’…not me.
Spice, your story is so heart-wrenching. I take you are an author. Do write about your experience in your books. It should be quite inspirational if you do. I have always felt that the more women ( and men ) speak out the better the situation will get. It is hard to tell that story the first time, and getting persecuted when you do finally speak has got to be mortifying. I am surprised people tell at all. It seems we, as in a collective of Americans, are seeing a change coming. God I hope so! Spice thanks for your story. There might be someone in a similar situation who gets help because of it, so it is worth telling for that reason alone!
Really? Not sure how iiandyiiii can get any more diplomatic than he usually is.
I was more referring to everyone who speaks up, not just him as an individual. He usually is pretty damned diplomatic. What some cynically see as ‘‘virtue-signalling’’ I see as somebody for fucking once standing up for survivors. The next step is doing that in a way that doesn’t make people feel combative and shut down the dialog. I recognize this is not easy. It’s an emotional issue.
[QUOTE=iiiandyiii]
In all honesty, I could do a lot more.
[/QUOTE]
We all could. I do nothing outside of my paid profession as a grantwriter, and cutting a few checks to the ACLU every year. Plus the thing about working in the nonprofit industry is that everybody is always better than you. It’s embarrassing how lazy and selfish I am compared to some of my peers. I’m pretty sure the main difference between us is I chose a different career.
[QUOTE=Beck]
Do write about your experience in your books. It should be quite inspirational if you do.
[/QUOTE]
I write a lot about trauma in my novels, often a wide range of physical and sexual trauma including circumstances and things I’ve never experienced. My current novel takes place in the middle of a war for independence (science fiction setting, non-earth) and sexual trauma, consent and consensual kink – as well as how trauma complicates BDSM relationships – are major themes to the story. In the case of my female protag, she’s got a backstory of having been raped as a teen by a security guard, which results in an extreme trauma reaction when she’s abducted by my hero for political reasons. She attempts to kill him and escape, and it goes… poorly. They both end up traumatized. The hero’s profound guilt over the abduction reverberates through the novel, and they have to deal with this mutual trauma in order to cobble together anything resembling a healthy relationship. There are a lot of other factors complicating things, like the fact he is a child of rape, an ethnic minority produced by a violent occupation, and he’s suffered most of his life for it. Throw the BDSM element in there and it’s a wild ride.
I think the sequel is going to focus on another character who was abused in a political prison. Nobody ever talks about male rape in fiction, least of all romance novels*, so someone’s gotta. Reading through this, it sounds like all I write about is sexual trauma, but actually, there are a lot of other things going on. I try to focus on telling a good story and put those parts of myself into it where I can.
It’s harder for me to get closer to the details of my own experience in my writing, both emotionally and because the dynamics were a lot more complicated. I loved my abuser and was dependent on him to protect me from my mother. But I’m working on a concept for a new novel, The Burning… that might make this dynamic work. My protag lives in a dystopian future-earth and as a homeless teen, she is taken into the protection of a small-time drug lord. By the time she reaches adulthood she’s both addicted to his drugs and being sexually taken advantage of. So the inciting incident is her choice to leave the safety of her ‘‘home,’’ eschew the protections he offers her and go out into a largely apathetic, resource-hungry world, with no real goal other than to find more drugs. Also she shoots fireballs from her hands.
Basically, I just love to write, and pieces of myself always go into that writing, but they aren’t exactly conceived as feminist manifestos, just honest stories about flawed people.
*hat tip, Outlander for dealing with the rape of a manly hero
Oh, I love ‘Outlander’, the prison rape of Jamie just about killed me! Let me know when your stories or books get published, I would love them, I think.
Well, after reading this thread, I’m joining the Spice Weasel fan club. Her posts were awesome. The rest of you come across just as partisan and petty as Octopus. Speaking of petty …
I’ll say in advance that I am replying to a poster making a post, not a mod. This post reeks of a small person getting drunk on a small amount of power, and IMO reflects far worse on the person making it than the person it is aimed at. The board rules require me to respect you as a moderator, so I will, but as a poster I think you come across as a petty bully and you should feel bad about yourself.