Dr. Ruthless Cyber Article #1: Identifying Inappropriate Touching

Greetings Friends,

Since I seem to have a lot of posts lately involving socio-sexual politics, I decided to bring back Dr. Ruthless. That is the pseudonym I used in the mid 90's before they called it a "user name", and I used it when I wrote articles for punk zine columns before they were called "blogs". These articles were about sexuality and sex, within relationships as well as within social constructs and the political nature of ideals surrounding the topics of sex and sensuality, specifically within the anarchist community. This will be the first article under this pen name that will be posted online. Enjoy!

I like to take experiences that I have had and use them to point out some important issues that both genders and all orientations can find helpful. We all have the potential to find ourselves in a situation that we might not know how to respond to if we don't already have an idea of how to analyze the situation. Smaller offenses can lead to more serious ones if they are not accounted for. Also, what seem to be small offenses might have deeper meaning. If we can know how to look for that deeper meaning with intuition and awareness, we can protect ourselves from both assault and slander. The first step is to knowledge your part in anything and everything that you have issue with. That is often the hardest part for people, but it is the most important part. That is very general for now, but i will get into that when I get into the stories.

Today I want to discuss the topic of inappropriate touching, how we might define it, recognize and mitigate it. IT, as I will refer to it from this point forward, is the 1st physical step to molestation or more serious assaults. It is important to note that there are grooming and desensitizing tricks that come before the touching, but I will go into that another time. IT can occur anywhere, to anyone at any time. That is because there are an array of IT techniques that are meant to seem harmless, so they are often done in public or in front of mutual friends even. When I was being unwittingly groomed by my daughter's school director, she would touch my butt and even pinched my nipple in front of other parents with little remarks to make it sound friendly. I never touched her like that even once, nor did I ever give the impression that I was ok with it. I didn't make a big deal because I really didn't know what she was up to. She told me she had a boyfriend and I assumed her approach was due to being French. I didn't find out until later that she was obsessed with me and trying to get me to give rights to my child over to her. It was a huge trauma for me. She abused my child, stole my money, slandered me to all the other parents, etc etc. If I had paid more attention to her boundary issues, I would have seen the red flags. I let it go, even though it did make me feel very uncomfortable and even violated at times, like when she pressed her body against me in a door way and rubbed herself against me. I was in shock and didn't even know what to do or say. I let it go. And I should not have. I should have recognized this behavior as predatory in nature and that she would have other predatory behaviors to match it. Since she was a woman and claimed to be straight, I assumed that I was just being sensitive. Truly, i just didn't want to see it. I didn't want it to be true, for a whole variety of reasons. So, I allowed myself to ignore it and both my daughter and I suffered because of that.

I'd like to bring up something that happened recently too. It is very different, but is another example of IT that can easily be overlooked. It was about a month or 2 ago when I was dropping my daughter off at school. We had just started there and still don't know many parents. There was a dad dropping his daughter off too who introduced himself. We will just call him B. B chatted with me for a while in the parking lot before asking me if I wanted to grab a coffee. I agreed since I really did want to meet more parents and get to know the community. We had a very long talk about politics, mostly. I was trying to explain to him what is really going on behind the political curtain and why we shouldn't hate on Trump so much. It is a long and complex conversation that requires a lot of focus and an open mind, otherwise you just go straight into reaction. B was very polite and patient and seemed to be trying to understand my perspective. We had some laughs and all was well when he returned me to my car at the school a few hours later. As I was about to get out of his car, he touched my hand and rubbed it for a few seconds before I pulled away. It was really awkward since I had just met him AT MY DAUGHTER'S SCHOOL, no less. I didn't call him for obvious reasons, but I did add him to FB so that I could hopefully make more contacts with other parents that way. That didn't happen, but I will tell you what did.

I honestly don't remember if B had commented on one of my posts first or if I commented on his first, but whichever way it went, the first thing B ever said to me on FB was condescending and insulting. I was surprised at first since we had had a friendly encounter, until I remembered that I rejected his advance. It has happened, many times, that when I don't respond the way a guy wants me to, he looks for ways to punish me for it. That is what I started to feel about his comments. I posted a video of something proving my point and he told me not to post certain things on his timeline. I told him that I was going to respond to whatever comes up on my timeline however I see fit and if he wanted to avoid that, he was welcome to unfriend me. There was more than one heated exchange about this or that post, but he refused to unfriend me so I kept responding to his stupid posts to try to enlighten the people he was deceiving with his ignorant, hateful bullshit. I had to ask myself why. Why was he talking so much shit to me, and why did he refuse to unfriend me. I came to the conclusion that he was doing it to get laid. Hear me out. So, a lot of the people who see his comments are women, many of them are potential pussy and or current pussy that have to be emotionally primed to want to fuck this creep. My theory is that he wants me to say things to defend Trump so that he can come at me with what he knows the ladies want to hear. He then becomes the hero that defends the honor of women. Disgusting! Of course, this is just my opinion, but based on experiences with men who showed interest in me, and the way this particular man approached me physically, only to attack me publicly when I didn't show interest in his advances, as well as the things he was saying and most notably the thing HE WAS IGNORING about what I was saying all gave me the impression that he doesn't actually care what is true, he only cares about what works for him and his eager little penis. I have no idea if it is actually little or not, and I don't care to find out. The point is, he isn't thinking with his heart and his intentions are highly questionable. So, my point here is to out this fucker just a little bit, but not for the purpose of humiliating him. Obviously, I could do that in way more effective ways. My point here is to remind people (male or female) to pay attention to IT before it turns into something more serious. This guy didn't destroy my life as I knew it the way Hind Louali of French School of Austin (aka JJR) did because I learned from my mistake and I paid more attention to the deeper meaning behind the IT. While he has probably hurt my chances of being accepted fully into the fold of parents at the school, it was more important to me to stand up and speak out, and not allow people to intimidate me into silence.

It is imperative to teach young children about IT and ALL it's different forms. Not just to protect them against pedophiles, but also to learn to set firm boundaries with peers. This is why you should never physically punish a child or tickle them too much or force them to kiss and hug people when they don't want to. Pedophiles often groom their prey by simple "affectionate" touching before they go further. Talk to your kids and teens about what feels ok and what doesn't and what to do and say if you don't like something that is being done to or around them. Date rape often starts with consensual touching that moves into IT and can then quickly turn into an assault before one can even grasp what is happening. I am going to write more about how to teach kids and teens to identify predatory behavior, so look out for that. But for now, I just want readers to take a moment to think about a time or two when IT was happening, but since it wasn't really serious, it was forgotten. What happened after that? Did that person turn out to be bad news, or try to do more harm in one way or another? If you had paid more attention to your feelings about the IT, would it have prevented you from being further harmed by that person either physically or socially?
Ask yourself to make note of any IT that you experience or see happening to another. Come up with some things you know you can do or say to either stop or prevent assertion from a potential sexual predator or deviant. Have a plan of defense whether it be as subtle as a word or as fierce as martial arts. Know what YOU will do, and be prepared to do it.
Love and Solidarity to all beings! Until next time, take care of yourself!