Warning: dark & personal.

I started this out saying, "No one did anything bad to me today." That's true.

Then I was going to say, "No one did anything bad to me this weekend." But that's not true.

At a con in the past, someone did. Someone I didn't know tried to force me, to rape me.

And someone reminded me of that over this past weekend. So when I stopped and listened to myself -- to my inner self, to what my heart and mind was saying behind "No one did" then I heard that, that echo, that "No one yet had the chance to go further" because I know someone who probably would.

I realized it because even when you don't get forced, the attempt is a violation. Just as Scarleteen says. To anyone who has never been forced, never been raped, never found that "No" is ignored... that's a concept he -- or she -- doesn't get.

There is no words.

Years ago, I fled where I lived because I'd been raped. Again, it's something people who haven't been raped or forced or victimized DO NOT understand. I've listened to them trying to grasp it, when I explain, and saying, "But why didn't you...?" as if that would help.

When I found out my rapist planned to move to my new region, I fled again. Each time, my fleeing coincided with other things happening in my life. The second time, however, I was aware that the flight was motivated first by my rapist and second by the other things. I've never fled -- as in packed up everything and moved away -- like that again.

Except for that weekend a few years ago. At a con. I got help from friends and fled him.


Years ago, I didn't try to explain this to anyone, not the rapist, nor the flight. This isn't to make you think I expect bad things at cons. I don't.

(The boyfriend who stalked me was not from fandom, for example. He didn't try to rape me, but stalking is another victimization.)

This whole topic is just something dark that I've been thinking about. I talk about a lot of things in my life. The predators... take me time to recover from. Just like they do for anyone else who survives the predators.

I am not prey. I am a person. I know teaching people to NOT be rapists is the first and best solution. But there is a dark part of me that wishes to make them feel exactly what it's like -- something that Mercedes Lackey did to a rapist in one of her books. I've never forgotten that.