Rachel Thompson's Blog, page 13

This is Why Love and Marriage are a Big Lie by @banishedcougar

Please welcome guest writer, Peter Olsen: blogger, mental health advocate, suicide survivor and all-around cool dude. I love how Peter shares openly about living with mental illness to help others and educate. Please leave your respectful comments below. 

There are those times, those definitive moments that change our lives forever. We experience these surreal moments in which the world stops on its axis. The birds start chirping in a glorious melodic chorus of hope. For some, it is the birth of a child. For others, it is reaching a level of financial or professional success.

For me, one of these days was supposed to be the 7th of August, 2011.

The day I got married.

I’d never had any concept of what love and romance truly meant. I received most of my knowledge of romance from movies. Movies teach us that roses, expensive gifts, or small trinkets personify the materialistic outpouring of love. We are culturally force-fed and willingly brainwashed to believe that the more money we spend on our first dates or long-term significant others equals the amount of love we have for our partners. We eat that up like it was a sugary dessert of bullshit and accept lies we yearn for and crave to consume. A healthy, welcomed ingestion of Garmonbozia (“pain and suffering”).

Being a child of the 1980’s, John Hughes and Cameron Crowe became my romantic bodhisattvas. Their movies became my textbook to learn how to be romantic. I learned from them that romance isn’t about the money spent; it’s the little things that matter the most.



Lloyd Dobler standing outside Diane Court’s window, holding a boom box playing “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel in Say Anything. Jake Ryan coming through in the clutch presenting a birthday cake to Samantha Baker at the end of Sixteen Candles. Ducky…just being Ducky in Pretty And Pink. And the ending of the movie Singles, where love and hope for the perfect romance could, in theory, happen to everyone.

MEETING

My ex and I met through a dating app on Facebook. I saw her picture and was instantly smitten. I know…weird to take a picture for face value. But, for whatever reason, the picture of her kneeling down with her daughter in a driveway resonated with me and left a lasting impression. We started talking back-and-forth through Facebook messages, graduating to phone calls and texting.

Eight months later she called me one day and said, “I’m coming up this weekend whether you like it or not. I have to know if you are truly the one.”

I had no idea what to say to this. Up to this point, I was celibate for 11 years. It was a godsend to start flirting over the Internet. I could think about my responses beforehand. But now…I was dumbfounded. From what seemed like an eternity, I was silent on my end of the phone. Excitement, nervousness, and me acting a fool washed over me like a fucking tidal wave. What the fuck do I say to that? Do I say “Sure, come on up,” or “I’m too much of a pussy to say yes so you take control,” or tell a very real truth, “Dude. I’m perfectly happy with being friends and having phone sex. So no. Don’t come up.”

I thought it out for a moment…

Do I take this chance? What if this blows up in my face?

I said fuck it, and texted back my address in a sheer moment of unprecedented clarity.

She texted back the four words I thought I would never hear from her…

“I’ll see you Saturday.”

Fuck! Now what do I do? I was never that scared to meet a prospective partner.

Saturday rolled around and she only texted me once.

“I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

Those 10 minutes were the longest 10 minutes of my life.

Each second felt like an hour. Each minute felt like a day had passed.

And then there was a knock on the door.

It was only 40 steps or so to the front door.

The longest fucking 40 steps ever.

I reached the door and closed my eyes.

Took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

Opened my eyes. And then opened the door.

I was shaking. Speechless. Dumbfounded.

It was like the world had stopped for one moment in time.

I looked at her for what seemed like a million years.

I closed my eyes, breathed deep, exhaled, and opened my eyes.

Finding love in a healthy, long-standing relationship for someone like me who has a mental illness is a damn near impossibility. People who do not have a mental illness have no idea what they are signing up for. The insomnia, the self-doubt, the manic episodes that lead to extreme paranoia. Just the thought of a slim possibility that long-term hospitalization might occur to someone without a mental illness scares the shit out of them.

The chances of finding that one person to spend the rest of your life with, someone who will treat you as an equal, be there to pick you up every time you fall, and live a life of constant education on their loved one’s mental illness is a Herculean feat deserving of a Nobel prize. Yes, this could happen to anyone. And yes, there can be everlasting love that could be found by someone with a mental illness.

MARRIAGE

We elected to write our own vows. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember focusing intently on not dropping the paper I was holding. My best man and the assorted lot of gentlemen that were at the bachelor party endlessly teased me about certain things like the “happy wife, happy life” stuff men talk about. At breakfast the next morning, my best man made a couple of cracks about the high emotional state he thought I might reach.

“I am so not going to fucking cry during the vow reading,” I said.

I was so very fucking wrong.

I fucking cried like a pre-teen girl in pigtails at her first One Direction concert.

My stepdaughter walked down the aisle, scattering flower peddles on the ground. I remember my wife walking down the aisle. She was radiant…glowing…angelic…wearing a traditional white dress. Her hair was done in a way I had never seen before. She looked at me and smiled I love you. I remembered looking at my wife’s dad as he escorted her down the aisle. I started to get a little misty; my dad was not there. He died seven months earlier from aggressive brain cancer. I wished my dad could have been there to see his son get married. As we were standing, listening to the Justice of the Peace, I could barely look my wife in the eye without tearing up.

We walked down the aisle as man and wife. We kissed, said I love you, and the proceeded to be party hosts for the day. The happiest moment I have from that day wasn’t members of our respective families that traveled long distances to share in our day. It wasn’t the reception, the ceremony, or the sober bachelor party the night before. It was the wedding night.

We were exhausted…and hungry. My wife’s parents graciously put us up for the night in a hotel in town. It was late after an after-party with friends at a bar within the hotel. We had little cash on us and no desire to go anywhere for a meal. We shared a couple of sodas and a couple of bags of chips and watched TV. We fell asleep holding each other…with our clothes on.

I have always wanted to truly fall in love. That deep, peaceful, soulful, storybook kind of love. I know that’s a fantasy. It’s a stereotype dreamed up in our heads and force-fed to us when we were young. The princess waits for her prince. The prince is the envy of all men. He rides in on a white stallion to sweep the princess off her feet. They live happily ever after.

I thought through this holy union between me as the husband and her as the wife, that I could, for the first time, lead a normal life. Through being married I could be known as a husband and stepfather. A breadwinner. The head of a household. I could be part of “normal society.” My life would no longer be defined as “Peter, the guy who is bipolar.” My mental illness could finally be forgotten about and everyone could just shut the fuck up about it. I would be normal for the first time in my life. Normal.

My soul was at rest, and I was at peace.

For the first time in my life with a significant other I was so very happy.

I thought that I had married the most awesome woman in the world.

I knew this woman was the one I would be honored to spend the rest of my life with.

REALITY

But then reality set in.

We had difficulties just like every other couple trying to set a footprint in the world. It just so happened that our story began in 2009 during the economy crisis. Money and unemployment weighed heavily on our relationship as it did for millions of Americans during the economic crisis of that time. We talked extensively about me being bipolar. We laid out scenarios if something were to have gone seriously wrong, like if I needed long-term hospitalization, or how she could help me if I had a really rough go. She understood the risks and accepted them head on. Although we both acknowledged that I was the one who would help myself, she said she would do whatever it took to help me remain stable. All of these pressures tested our resolve as a couple in ways that I had never been tested in my single life.

But what love in our existing reality teaches us is that love and marriage are not the wine, roses, and heavenly bliss that we want to believe them to be. Love and marriage is not the storybook romance we have envisioned them to be, that happily ever after love and marriage that the movies force feed us to believe isn’t the reality.

Yes…love can be wonderful. Yes..love can be the storybook happy ending we all desire, but the saddest part about the reality of love is we accept the love we think we deserve. Even if love is toxic. Or abusive. Or cruel. Or even if the love we desire is an unhealthy fantasy forcefully planted inside our heads.

We carry this fantasy around from childhood into our adult lives where we force that nonsensical ideal that happiness is real, love is forever, and finding that one person we can share a lifetime with will center us and then all will be right with the world.

But when the reality hits. The true colors of the blurred lines between love and hate become reality.

She became verbally abusive and just damn right cruel. Evil. Even to this day, I have no fucking idea where the rage came from. It quickly became my consensual hell. Rage-filled hate and verbal violence became the graphic personification of pent up frustration. This became the personification of the Stephan Bonner/Forrest Griffin fight from the ending of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. She became Ray Rice. Our marriage became fucking evil…a shadow of what we envisioned all those years ago when we hid behind our keyboards and talked about a future together as a loving, storybook couple.

I stayed on for as long as I could. I was raised to believe that marriage was a lifelong commitment. Bust your ass to make it under any circumstance. I should have taken the hint things were that bad when I relapsed with self-harm. I was so hurt and pissed off one day that I took a back scratcher my ex-wife gave me for Christmas and left scars on my back. This wasn’t working out. I knew that, but I punished myself for her verbal abuse.

I blamed myself for her evilness.

I blamed myself.

Being married…being married to her…taught me a very important lesson: I will fall in love again, but I will never walk down that aisle. Too scary of a thought that a fucking piece of paper changes a person to the extent of turning them into an abuser.

Now I know that the path is too dark to walk…even with the light I now carry.

 

About the Author:

After graduating from Washington State University with a BA in Humanities, Peter M. Olsen followed his true passion and became a blogger. He is also a mental health advocate dedicated to helping people living with mental illness. In his free time, Peter is a loyal Xbox 360 addict, an unapologetic coffee snob, a PLUR warrior, and all-around pretty cool guy. Trance, trap, and house music keeps Peter very, very happy. Peter lives in the greatest city on Planet Earth. The Emerald City…Seattle, Washington.

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Periscope | Soundcloud

 

Broken Places is available NOW from Booktrope. It's already hit #1 on Women's Poetry and Hot New Releases on Amazon! Broken Pieces is still going strong, #1 on Amazon’s Women’s (paid) Poetry list.

Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a post again! I will never share your email and that’s a promise. Follow me on Twitter @RachelintheOC or @BadRedheadMedia for social media, branding, or marketing help. Increase your blog traffic by participating in #MondayBlogs (a Twitter meme I created to share posts on Mondays — no book promo).

All content © 2015 by Rachel Thompson, author, unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author.

Photos courtesy of unsplash and pixabay

The Other Boleyn Girl: A Frustratingly Wrong Portrayal of Rape

There’s a right way and a wrong way to write historical fiction. Remember the heaps of glory for Reign? That was a right way. This month is, annoyingly, about the wrong way. The oh-so-wrong-way it hurts my brain.

Dude! I got this great idea for a movie! First, we retell the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn but from Mary Boleyn’s point of view. We totally ignore history, make shit up and *boom,* instant hit.

I dunno, man; I’m not sure there’s enough drama there to carry a whole film. I mean, sure; there’s adultery and deception and a clash with the most powerful entity in the known world [Catholicism], but it’s probably not enough.

Okay… but what if Henry rapes Anne… and she becomes pregnant with Elizabeth!?

Greenlight!

Yeah, so, this is what I imagine that pitch meeting must have gone like when The Other Boleyn Girl was first discussed. I’m guessing they all caught a nasty case of the stupids. After all, anyone with even a passing understanding of The Tudors will tell you Henry didn’t rape her. In fact, there’s zero doubt he waited and waited and waited for her to consent. He was many things, including a giant whore who couldn’t find a cod piece strong enough to keep his peen from zeroing in on the closet willing lady, but a rapist he was not.

So why in hell was that ridiculous scene included?

If you haven’t seen The Other Boleyn Girl, you’re lucky. But you also might be confused. See, in this horrible telling of history’s most scandalous divorce, Henry is madly in love with Mary and while she’s pregnant with his son (which history insists was a girl and probably not his but her husband’s, since her second kid was a boy but, you guessed it, most likely William Carey’s, too) is reacquainted with Anne who’d already been whored out to him by her uncle, but Henry had turned away from her blah blah blah bullshit that doesn’t matter.

Anyway, she says no nookie for cookie and he’s a goodish boy for a while, but after he reorganizes England’s religious standing and puts Catherine of Aragon out to pasture, he decides he’s earned some playtime and goes all Real ManTM on her. Because the true story of history’s most infamous royal pair isn’t chock full of enough drama already. I guess.

Really? Rape just to up the ante?

Are you freaking kidding me, Hollywood? Has it become one of those things we just pull out of a hat when we need to pad a runtime now? You do realize there are other, better ways to titillate, right? Like, oh, I dunno, the consensual sex they had that led to Elizabeth being conceived? Could’ve made it uber hot (Natalie Portman + Eric Bana = oo la la) instead of uber-icky.

Oh, did you not realize Anne went for it after Catherine of Aragon was out of the picture and she and Henry were all but hitched? What, that not sexy enough for y’all?

Maybe, just maybe, Justin Chadwick, the dolt who fouled up as director, doesn’t understand the weight a rape scene carries – or, at least, should. We don’t have other violent crimes committed just for shits and giggles (except in horror, of course, but even that genre tends to keep it rape-free when rape would just be a random plot point and not a driving force in the narrative),so why does sexual assault get used so… casually?

Is this a chick-hater thing? Like, does Mr. Chadwick despise woman-folk? Does he have an unrealized rape fantasy he plays out in his films? Or does the fault lie with Peter Morgan (screenwriter) who, according to reviews of Henry VIII, has had the king lash out in similar ways back in 2003?

Maybe they’re both just naïve and don’t even realize what a horrible job they did.

Let’s fix that, shall we?

Rape is life altering. It’s not something that’s easily moved on from, if it ever is. Post attack, Anne is affected for, like, one scene. Then, she’s back to her scheming self. Dude, seriously. If you’re gonna hack up history, at least be realistic in the fallout and ask yourself, “would she really fall for her rapist?”

Well?

You want to write rape? You go on and write all the rape you want. No one’ll stop you. Hell, I’ll defend your right to do so. I have no issue with the rape scenes in many films. I even write them in my stories as well. But do not confuse sex with rape and do not inject rape into a love story. People don’t rape people they love; they rape people they wish to control and hurt and destroy. Henry never wanted to do any of that to Anne (until the whole beheading thing, of course); her strength was one of the things that attracted him.

And learn how to include the fucking historical part of historical fiction in your work. Also, learn how to actually do what you claim to do. Hacks.

Hmmm. Maybe this is where Game of Thrones got their idea from.

 

Broken Places is available NOW from Booktrope. It's already hit #1 on Women's Poetry and Hot New Releases on Amazon! Broken Pieces is still going strong, #1 on Amazon’s Women’s (paid) Poetry list.

Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a post again! I will never share your email and that’s a promise. Follow me on Twitter @RachelintheOC or @BadRedheadMedia for social media, branding, or marketing help. Increase your blog traffic by participating in #MondayBlogs (a Twitter meme I created to share posts on Mondays — no book promo).

All content © 2015 by Rachel Thompson, author, unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author.

Photos courtesy of pixabay and Wikipedia commons

The Other Boleyn Girl: A Frustratingly Wrong Portrayal of Rape by @willvanstonejr

There’s a right way and a wrong way to write historical fiction. Remember the heaps of glory for Reign? That was a right way. This month is, annoyingly, about the wrong way. The oh-so-wrong-way it hurts my brain.

Dude! I got this great idea for a movie! First, we retell the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn but from Mary Boleyn’s point of view. We totally ignore history, make shit up and *boom,* instant hit.

I dunno, man; I’m not sure there’s enough drama there to carry a whole film. I mean, sure; there’s adultery and deception and a clash with the most powerful entity in the known world [Catholicism], but it’s probably not enough.

Okay… but what if Henry rapes Anne… and she becomes pregnant with Elizabeth!?

Greenlight!

Yeah, so, this is what I imagine that pitch meeting must have gone like when The Other Boleyn Girl was first discussed. I’m guessing they all caught a nasty case of the stupids. After all, anyone with even a passing understanding of The Tudors will tell you Henry didn’t rape her. In fact, there’s zero doubt he waited and waited and waited for her to consent. He was many things, including a giant whore who couldn’t find a cod piece strong enough to keep his peen from zeroing in on the closet willing lady, but a rapist he was not.

So why in hell was that ridiculous scene included?

If you haven’t seen The Other Boleyn Girl, you’re lucky. But you also might be confused. See, in this horrible telling of history’s most scandalous divorce, Henry is madly in love with Mary and while she’s pregnant with his son (which history insists was a girl and probably not his but her husband’s, since her second kid was a boy but, you guessed it, most likely William Carey’s, too) is reacquainted with Anne who’d already been whored out to him by her uncle, but Henry had turned away from her blah blah blah bullshit that doesn’t matter.

Anyway, she says no nookie for cookie and he’s a goodish boy for a while, but after he reorganizes England’s religious standing and puts Catherine of Aragon out to pasture, he decides he’s earned some playtime and goes all Real ManTM on her. Because the true story of history’s most infamous royal pair isn’t chock full of enough drama already. I guess.

Really? Rape just to up the ante?

Are you freaking kidding me, Hollywood? Has it become one of those things we just pull out of a hat when we need to pad a runtime now? You do realize there are other, better ways to titillate, right? Like, oh, I dunno, the consensual sex they had that led to Elizabeth being conceived? Could’ve made it uber hot (Natalie Portman + Eric Bana = oo la la) instead of uber-icky.

Oh, did you not realize Anne went for it after Catherine of Aragon was out of the picture and she and Henry were all but hitched? What, that not sexy enough for y’all?

Maybe, just maybe, Justin Chadwick, the dolt who fouled up as director, doesn’t understand the weight a rape scene carries – or, at least, should. We don’t have other violent crimes committed just for shits and giggles (except in horror, of course, but even that genre tends to keep it rape-free when rape would just be a random plot point and not a driving force in the narrative),so why does sexual assault get used so… casually?

Is this a chick-hater thing? Like, does Mr. Chadwick despise woman-folk? Does he have an unrealized rape fantasy he plays out in his films? Or does the fault lie with Peter Morgan (screenwriter) who, according to reviews of Henry VIII, has had the king lash out in similar ways back in 2003?

Maybe they’re both just naïve and don’t even realize what a horrible job they did.

Let’s fix that, shall we?

Rape is life altering. It’s not something that’s easily moved on from, if it ever is. Post attack, Anne is affected for, like, one scene. Then, she’s back to her scheming self. Dude, seriously. If you’re gonna hack up history, at least be realistic in the fallout and ask yourself, “would she really fall for her rapist?”

Well?

You want to write rape? You go on and write all the rape you want. No one’ll stop you. Hell, I’ll defend your right to do so. I have no issue with the rape scenes in many films. I even write them in my stories as well. But do not confuse sex with rape and do not inject rape into a love story. People don’t rape people they love; they rape people they wish to control and hurt and destroy. Henry never wanted to do any of that to Anne (until the whole beheading thing, of course); her strength was one of the things that attracted him.

And learn how to include the fucking historical part of historical fiction in your work. Also, learn how to actually do what you claim to do. Hacks.

Hmmm. Maybe this is where Game of Thrones got their idea from.

 

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Photos courtesy of pixabay and Wikipedia commons

The post The Other Boleyn Girl: A Frustratingly Wrong Portrayal of Rape by @willvanstonejr appeared first on Rachel Thompson.

Reasons Women Are Told: Take It As A Compliment by @jcahannigan

Please welcome my guest, author J.C. Hannigan. She’s continuing my series on Women and Sexism. 

The Experience

Picture this: you are at Walmart, shopping for the random things one shops for while at Walmart. You’re chatting with your friend, discussing ways you could possibly improve your organization when it comes to managing the kids’ busy schedule and your own demanding one.

Not even two minutes into your Walmart venture, you encounter a rough-looking male in his late fifties, eyeing you up with a sleazy smirk on his face. He even licks his lips and says “mmm,” as if he’s tasted something scrumptious, while his eyes roam hungrily over your body.

You and your friend immediately duck into the nearest aisle to avoid his vile scrutiny. Your friend remarks how perverted some guys are, and you try to laugh it off but on the inside, you feel dirty, violated, and very uncomfortable.

He ends up walking down the aisle beside yours, just to run into you again. He starts approaching you, still licking his lips and making that nauseating “mmm” sound while his eyes are still slithering over every inch of exposed skin. You literally snap at him that he’s creepy and to go away, and he chuckles…so you tell your friend loudly that if this creep keeps following you, you’ll find a Walmart manager.

That prompts him to disappear, but you still can’t shake the prickly sensation crawling under your skin. You’re still uncomfortable, still checking over your shoulder – just to make sure you aren’t being followed. You wonder aloud if you should report it anyway, even though he is gone because he made you that uncomfortable, and it is broad daylight, in a Walmart, and you are with a friend. Yet, even if it isn’t broad daylight, in a Walmart; even if you aren’t with your friend, it wouldn’t be okay, but you were and you were still followed and scared enough to be worried about any future females this jerkoff might encounter.

But your friend says the same thing everyone says, the same thing woman have been groomed to tell one another: “It’s just a guy, a creepy guy. Guys are perverts!”

And inside, you know nothing can really be done about it, anyway. You don’t have a good enough description. He was a rough-looking older man; there are a lot of those around. Technically, he broke no laws, and he did leave you alone when you told him too.

But, this whole scenario is something you can’t shake, because it’s not the first time something like this has happened, and it won’t be the last…

Everyday Sexism

They call it everyday sexism. Women are propositioned by creepy men like that a billion times every day, men who openly leer and make comments on our physical appearance. They say they’re “just being nice” or they’re “just flirting,” even though it’s at inappropriate times and locations, and it’s clearly unrequited.

We’re told to “take it as a compliment!” when someone makes us feel uncomfortable in the grocery store or at work. We’re told we are “too uptight” for not returning gross comments with smiles and brainless giggles.

No woman, hell no person, wants their talents to be measured by their physical appearance.

What does ones’ looks have to do with their ability to tell a story or save a life? Absolutely nothing.

I know it’s not illegal to find someone attractive, and I am not someone who bristles every time I get hit on. There’s a distinctive difference from some casual, harmless flirting and being a perverted asshole with no respect for the opposite sex. Women know this difference; we can smell it from seven miles away.

It’s not always terrifying to have a stranger remark on your looks – because it’s not always in a perverted, sexual way. I’ve had older men compliment me and tell me that I am pretty, but they did so in that sweet way that clearly expressed they meant no harm and wanted to tell someone they were pretty.

The man in Walmart was not innocently expressing that he found us beautiful, he was coming across as creepy and he knew it and he didn’t care, and that’s what made the experience scary.

And that’s why I – and many, many women – get an adrenaline rush of fear when out walking somewhere and encounter a group of guys, no matter the time. You never know what you’re going to get from them. A few innocent comments about your looks, or full out vile sexual remarks and leering that leaves you feeling dirty and cheap? Will they be the kind of guys to chirp from a distance and never approach, or will they be the kind of guys that follow you, hoping that by tossing out cheap remark after cheap remark, they’ll get lucky? Not caring that they’re scaring you, that they’re making it even harder for you to relax while out walking around? Not seeing a problem in their behavior? Not seeing how scary it is to have a pack of grown men following you, saying overtly sexual things to you?

If you don’t feel sexism exists, ask yourself this question: do men feel this same fear?

The Effects

The other day, I wanted to take my dog for a hike on the trails…but then I started to think: what if there’s somebody else on the trails? What if it’s somebody who isn’t a good person? I can’t help but think about every single story in the news about women abducted or attacked while out walking, jogging, or running alone in isolated areas. If I encounter someone like the dude in Walmart while out in a setting like that: what would happen to me?

Any time women cry out about men treating them inappropriately, too many men laugh it off and say something like “it’s a sad state that we can’t compliment a woman on her beauty without them reacting this way.”

I agree: it is a sad state when we can’t tell if someone is going to compliment us or attack us. It is a sad state when we are more inclined to question our safety hiking well-maintained trails in broad daylight than to trust we will be okay. We have to raise our daughters to be wary of strange men, we have to raise them to think like this, to worry about going somewhere alone for fear of these men, because these men exist.

If you’re not one of those men, what would you have us do? Assume everyone is “just flirting,” or “just paying us compliment?” That’s dangerous for us. We have to be wary because nobody’s going to be wary for us, because the supposed good men who say they don’t believe women should be afraid don’t think there is a problem. If you can’t put yourself in our shoes, at least think about what it would feel like for your daughter, sister, wife, or mother.

That’s a problem, and it’s also why we can’t let our guard down and why I think that Barrister Charlotte Proudman has every right to speak out about the message from Alexander Carter-Silk without fear of losing her job, without being told by other colleagues that “she’s biting the hand that feeds her.” Charlotte Proudman should be able to stand up and say that women don’t need to put up with that kind of inappropriate treatment from their co-workers. Would Alexander Carter-Silk have sent a similar message to a male? If he did, would everyone condemn that male for speaking out about his inappropriate behavior?

If you’re angry at me for asking those questions, maybe you should take a closer look at that anger, and realize that you’re not angry at me for asking, you’re angry because you know the answer.

About the Author:

J.C. Hannigan lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband, their two sons and dog.

She writes contemporary new adult romance and suspense. Her novels focus on relationships, mental health, social issues, and other life challenges.

Author Website | Twitter | Facebook

Google Plus | Instagram | Personal blog 

 

Broken Places is available NOW from Booktrope. It's already hit #1 on Women's Poetry and Hot New Releases on Amazon! Broken Pieces is still going strong, #1 on Amazon’s Women’s (paid) Poetry list.

Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a post again! I will never share your email and that’s a promise. Follow me on Twitter @RachelintheOC or @BadRedheadMedia for social media, branding, or marketing help. Increase your blog traffic by participating in #MondayBlogs (a Twitter meme I created to share posts on Mondays — no book promo).

All content © 2015 by Rachel Thompson, author, unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author.

Photos courtesy of pixabay and J.C. Hannigan

The Reasons Flying is For Girls

“Marry me!” he said, more of a demand than a question. He disappeared after only a handful dates only to show up after he heard about what I now call My Project.

Of course he did.

My community is small but not tiny. Once my Facebook page announcing my goal – to be the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine plane went live I knew the local response would be supportive. I wasn’t expecting a marriage proposal, though.

And I didn’t want one. I barely turned 20-years-old last month and the sky is where I belong. I don’t need a man who not only wants to clip my wings, but who wants to freeload off them. I’m aiming for a brass ring, not the diamond ring for my finger.

Flying Before Settling

Local community members are supportive, yet only so much. The general tone is a congratulatory doubt, while those closer to me have privately asked why I am not focusing on what really matters: marriage and family. I’m not opposed to marriage and family — once I am married and have a family they will benefit from my experiences in aviation.

I’m not saying no to any of that. I’m just saying no to it right now.

What I am saying “yes” to now is aviation. I’m saying yes to more women in the cockpit. I’m saying yes to more women in the pilot population. I’m saying yes to more opportunity for women who are continuously sold on the “male-only” image in aviation by a male dominated industry. I look up into the same sky today as I did when I was a little girl and I feel the same excitement for flying as I did then. The sky is for equal opportunity dreamers and I am tired of explaining to people that I am in an aviation program to become a pilot – not a flight attendant.

Flying is For Girls

The current record-holder for circumnavigating the globe is a woman in her thirties. Her flight is just as historical as mine would be, and besides, this isn’t a competition. Every single woman who takes off in a plane is making history and is sending the message that flying is for girls too. Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman to become a pilot (1921) said, “The air is the only place free from prejudices.” This message needs to be told over and over again so that each and every little girl who looks up into the blue sky knows she can be up there some day. The glass ceiling can be broken by more than sitting in a corporate chair – a single-engine airplane can shatter it.

Girls and young women need female advocates in male-dominated fields who encourage them and speak to their dreams. They don’t need more men who will placate them with patronizing advertising campaigns that tell them “You can do it! Here’s a pink pen!” Young women already know they can do it; that’s why they are attempting to do whatever “it” is. They want to hear from women who have done it.

Who needs marriage when you’re already committed to the entire field of aviation for women?

Flying Scares Men

Unsurprisingly, my unofficial PR manager, C. Streetlights, and I haven’t been able to receive too much traction when requesting interviews or other media write-ups from men. I don’t know why a twenty-year-old pilot scares men, but it seems like the idea of me circumnavigating the globe is either not interesting or terrifying to them. Isn’t there enough room in the sky for all of us? Or maybe the real question: Isn’t there enough opportunity for all of us?

By the end of next summer, you won’t find me planning a wedding or expecting my first baby. I won’t be dreaming of honeymoons or hoping to catch a bouquet. If all plans go well and sponsorships come through, you’ll find me on the runway waiting for clearance for takeoff. My first stop will be Florida, and then Brazil. My personal fourteen-day flight around the world will begin in hopes that I will inspire a future generation of female aviators. Where these future pilots will take off to once they’ve been cleared is to be determined, but I do know that everyone’s horizon – present and future – guides all pilots to where they need to land.

About Erin Davis:

After flying her uncle’s Cessna 172 as a little girl Erin Davis realized she had no other choice but to walk around Everett, Washington staring in the sky watching airplanes until she was older and could become a pilot. Thankfully, after years of successfully avoiding peril while walking in such manner, the 20-year-old young woman now studies in the Aviation Sciences program at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. She uses her private pilot license to artfully dodge marriage proposals and to plan on becoming the youngest female to circumnavigate the globe.

Erin Davis, Aviator can be found on her website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you would like to contribute to her historic flight around the world you can do so at her CrowdRise.

 

Broken Places is available NOW from Booktrope. It's already hit #1 on Women's Poetry and Hot New Releases on Amazon! Broken Pieces is still going strong, #1 on Amazon’s Women’s (paid) Poetry list.

Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a post again! I will never share your email and that’s a promise. Follow me on Twitter @RachelintheOC or @BadRedheadMedia for social media, branding, or marketing help. Increase your blog traffic by participating in #MondayBlogs (a Twitter meme I created to share posts on Mondays — no book promo).

All content © 2015 by Rachel Thompson, author, unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author.

Photos courtesy of pixabay and Erin Davis

The Reasons Survivors Deserve Affordable, Quality Help

I’ve been working with survivors of childhood abuse for over 18 years. The most common obstacle to healing that I have seen is a lack of access to frequent, quality, affordable recovery help. Without that support, they often have a very lengthy recovery process, at times scrambling to obtain even meager rations of assistance.

It’s also not uncommon for survivors to only have access to care that is not trauma informed. Therapists and social workers can lack specific training about abuse, and how it affects a survivor’s emotional, biological and neurological functioning. This often leads to survivors being misunderstood or even judged as malingering because they aren’t “getting over it” after a year or two of the treatment that is offered to them. Inadequate or poorly trauma-informed care can be so traumatizing to survivors that their recovery is slowed or even set back.

Some of the problem is that there are too many survivors and not enough trauma-informed mental health professionals. Ninety-seven million Americans live in cities that have too few mental health professionals to treat everyone who needs mental health treatment. That is a lot of people who need help, but have little access to it.

Education about trauma is not a mandatory part of any counseling or social work program,

and yet approximately one in four girls and one in six boys is sexually assaulted before they turn eighteen. That means approximately 1,470,000 children are victimized.

Many will need mental health care as children or as adults. If they don’t get it until they are adults, they will often have additional complicating issues, such as addiction or a mental illness such as depression, and that’s just for children who were sexually abused – it doesn’t cover those physically, emotionally and verbally abused.

The magnitude of this problem cannot be solved by shuttling more people into counseling and psychology degree programs. “’If we’re really going to take on mental illness, as widespread and impactful as it is, we’re not going to reach that scope of impact with one provider at a time,’ says Dr. Gary Belkin, who heads the city Health Department’s mental health division.” (Press Connects, 2015). Instead, New York City and other areas are starting to implement multi-million dollar lay person training programs to provide peer to peer support. It is not the same as assistance provided by a trained, licensed mental health professional, but it does allow for more affordable and easily accessible services to be available.

I’ve lived for years watching survivors of childhood abuse suffer because they could not get the help they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Many years ago I became interested in the Alcoholic’s Anonymous model of a national network of meetings offered seven days a week, at virtually any time, in locations easily accessed by those who need them. This model of peer to peer support is exactly what I feel could benefit survivors. We often have very bad days, but cannot get access to our therapist, if we even have one, on that day.

When we’re really struggling, a system of daily meetings we can access for support and information would be priceless.

Unfortunately, I don’t have multiple millions to set up a national network like this. But, over the last month, I’ve been beta testing an online model. I now have virtual meetings four times a week at various times that survivors can drop into when they need help and support. That’s at least 16 hours of support for survivors anywhere in the world that have internet access. Right now I lead the groups, but as the program grows I will raise up lay leaders from within the community to begin new meetings. My goal is to have meetings every day of the week, at several different times during each day. And I’ve priced it as low as I can, at $34/month – something almost every survivor can afford.

This is the beginning of my reaching for the goal to provide affordable, easily accessible, trauma-informed care for every survivor who wants it. If you’re a survivor, I invite you to check the program out HERE. If you are not a survivor but know one, please pass along this information.

Last week a survivor I knew from the online writing community committed suicide. Let’s do everything we can prevent that from ever happening again. This program won’t solve all of the problems, but it will provide a critical access point to support and education for almost any survivor out there.

 

Broken Places is available NOW from Booktrope. It's already hit #1 on Women's Poetry and Hot New Releases on Amazon! Broken Pieces is still going strong, #1 on Amazon’s Women’s (paid) Poetry list.

Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a post again! I will never share your email and that’s a promise. Follow me on Twitter @RachelintheOC or @BadRedheadMedia for social media, branding, or marketing help. Increase your blog traffic by participating in #MondayBlogs (a Twitter meme I created to share posts on Mondays — no book promo).

All content © 2015 by Rachel Thompson, author, unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author.

Photos courtesy of pixabay

The Reasons Survivors Deserve Affordable, Quality Help by Bobbi Parish (@BobbiLParish)

I’ve been working with survivors of childhood abuse for over 18 years. The most common obstacle to healing that I have seen is a lack of access to frequent, quality, affordable recovery help. Without that support, they often have a very lengthy recovery process, at times scrambling to obtain even meager rations of assistance.

It’s also not uncommon for survivors to only have access to care that is not trauma informed. Therapists and social workers can lack specific training about abuse, and how it affects a survivor’s emotional, biological and neurological functioning. This often leads to survivors being misunderstood or even judged as malingering because they aren’t “getting over it” after a year or two of the treatment that is offered to them. Inadequate or poorly trauma-informed care can be so traumatizing to survivors that their recovery is slowed or even set back.

Some of the problem is that there are too many survivors and not enough trauma-informed mental health professionals. Ninety-seven million Americans live in cities that have too few mental health professionals to treat everyone who needs mental health treatment. That is a lot of people who need help, but have little access to it.

Education about trauma is not a mandatory part of any counseling or social work program,

and yet approximately [share ]one in four girls and one in six boys is sexually assaulted before they turn eighteen[/share]. That means approximately 1,470,000 children are victimized.

Many will need mental health care as children or as adults. If they don’t get it until they are adults, they will often have additional complicating issues, such as addiction or a mental illness such as depression, and that’s just for children who were sexually abused – it doesn’t cover those physically, emotionally and verbally abused.

The magnitude of this problem cannot be solved by shuttling more people into counseling and psychology degree programs. “’If we’re really going to take on mental illness, as widespread and impactful as it is, we’re not going to reach that scope of impact with one provider at a time,’ says Dr. Gary Belkin, who heads the city Health Department’s mental health division.” (Press Connects, 2015). Instead, New York City and other areas are starting to implement multi-million dollar lay person training programs to provide peer to peer support. It is not the same as assistance provided by a trained, licensed mental health professional, but it does allow for more affordable and easily accessible services to be available.

I’ve lived for years watching survivors of childhood abuse suffer because they could not get the help they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Many years ago I became interested in the Alcoholic’s Anonymous model of a national network of meetings offered seven days a week, at virtually any time, in locations easily accessed by those who need them. This model of peer to peer support is exactly what I feel could benefit survivors. We often have very bad days, but cannot get access to our therapist, if we even have one, on that day.

When we’re really struggling, [share ]a system of daily meetings we can access for support and information would be priceless.[/share]

Unfortunately, I don’t have multiple millions to set up a national network like this. But, over the last month, I’ve been beta testing an online model. I now have virtual meetings four times a week at various times that survivors can drop into when they need help and support. That’s at least 16 hours of support for survivors anywhere in the world that have internet access. Right now I lead the groups, but as the program grows I will raise up lay leaders from within the community to begin new meetings. My goal is to have meetings every day of the week, at several different times during each day. And I’ve priced it as low as I can, at $34/month – something almost every survivor can afford.

This is the beginning of my reaching for the goal to provide affordable, easily accessible, trauma-informed care for every survivor who wants it. If you’re a survivor, I invite you to check the program out HERE. If you are not a survivor but know one, please pass along this information.

Last week a survivor I knew from the online writing community committed suicide. Let’s do everything we can prevent that from ever happening again. This program won’t solve all of the problems, but it will provide a critical access point to support and education for almost any survivor out there.

 

[blurbit]

Photos courtesy of pixabay

The post The Reasons Survivors Deserve Affordable, Quality Help by Bobbi Parish (@BobbiLParish) appeared first on Rachel Thompson.

If I Can Just Make it Home

Almost twenty years ago, I was sitting with a client as she described her hopes and wishes for how she wanted to raise her children. She was a survivor. Like many adults who were abused when they were a child, she was uncertain about her ability to be a good parent. Her greatest fear was becoming just like her abusive mother. Pregnant with her third baby, she already had two toddlers. Her anxiety was escalating as her delivery date grew closer. She wasn’t sure she should have had her first two children, but now adding a third felt like she was dooming herself to failure and her children to an abusive nightmare.

I asked her to tell me about her greatest hope for what she could provide for her children. If a genie fell from the sky and offered to grant her one wish, I said, what would her mama heart ask for? She already knew. It was something she’d held inside herself since her own childhood. “When my children are out in the world, at school or someplace else away from home, and something hard happens to them I want them to be able to tell themselves ‘If I can just make it home, everything will be okay’”.

My reaction to her statement was visceral, like a body blow. The air left my lungs and tears filled my eyes. As a survivor myself I was sometimes triggered by what my clients discussed in our sessions. But I’d been doing this therapy thing for a while and those instances were becoming rare. This, though, took me by surprise and stole my words.

I looked at my client. My tears told her that I understood to the depths of my heart what that meant for her. Neither of us grew up feeling like our homes were a safe place. There was no “If I can just make it home everything will be okay”. Ours was an “If I can just make it out of this home, everything will be okay”. We had no safe harbor. Our safe place was inside of our head, where we retreated when the world got threatening. This was, sadly, very often.

My client and I just sat together for a few moments, sharing tears of pain over what we did not have and tears of hope for what we wanted so fiercely to create for our children. I assured her that I saw in her the capacity to create that safe haven for her kids, all three of them. And I hoped that I too would have what it took to make my home a sanctuary for the children I would someday have.

Fast forward almost two decades to today, when I received a message from another survivor. Her daughter was experiencing a severe episode of depression and had expressed suicidal thoughts last night. Would I help her, she asked, to determine how serious the situation was? I walked her through the stages of lethality of suicidal ideation. She said she’d already set up both a therapy and a doctor’s appointment for later today. Her husband called into work and both of them were with their daughter. They kept her home from school so she could be in the safety of her own home, with her mom and dad beside her.

I told my client she had done everything I would. Her pain over her daughter’s deep depression was palpable. Both of us had been in that dark place, as children and adults. Our parents had so little care for our state of mind.

There was no one to protect us when we feared that even retreating inside our heads would not give us enough of a reprieve from our daily pain.

But now, as moms, each of us would trade a decade in that dark space to save our child from spending even one day there.

When I finished the conversation my mind dumped the memory of my appointment with my pregnant client years ago. This time, the tears came without the body blow. They came because I knew I had realized our shared dream. My son, now a teenager, knew the safety of a loving home with a parent who adored him and would do anything to keep him from harm – just as the woman I had been speaking to had done with her daughter.

The tears also came because I now know for certain, twenty years later, that we survivors can absolutely crush the fear of becoming like our abuser. But even more so, we can gift our children what was never given to us: the certain knowing that if they just make it home, everything will be okay.

 

Broken Places is available NOW from Booktrope. It's already hit #1 on Women's Poetry and Hot New Releases on Amazon! Broken Pieces is still going strong, #1 on Amazon’s Women’s (paid) Poetry list.

Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a post again! I will never share your email and that’s a promise. Follow me on Twitter @RachelintheOC or @BadRedheadMedia for social media, branding, or marketing help. Increase your blog traffic by participating in #MondayBlogs (a Twitter meme I created to share posts on Mondays — no book promo).

All content © 2015 by Rachel Thompson, author, unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author.

Photos courtesy of pixabay

If I Can Just Make it Home by Bobbi Parish (@BobbiLParish)

Almost twenty years ago, I was sitting with a client as she described her hopes and wishes for how she wanted to raise her children. She was a survivor. Like many adults who were abused when they were a child, she was uncertain about her ability to be a good parent. Her greatest fear was becoming just like her abusive mother. Pregnant with her third baby, she already had two toddlers. Her anxiety was escalating as her delivery date grew closer. She wasn’t sure she should have had her first two children, but now adding a third felt like she was dooming herself to failure and her children to an abusive nightmare.

I asked her to tell me about her greatest hope for what she could provide for her children. If a genie fell from the sky and offered to grant her one wish, I said, what would her mama heart ask for? She already knew. It was something she’d held inside herself since her own childhood. “When my children are out in the world, at school or someplace else away from home, and something hard happens to them I want them to be able to tell themselves ‘If I can just make it home, everything will be okay’”.

My reaction to her statement was visceral, like a body blow. The air left my lungs and tears filled my eyes. As a survivor myself I was sometimes triggered by what my clients discussed in our sessions. But I’d been doing this therapy thing for a while and those instances were becoming rare. This, though, took me by surprise and stole my words.

I looked at my client. My tears told her that I understood to the depths of my heart what that meant for her. Neither of us grew up feeling like our homes were a safe place. There was no “If I can just make it home everything will be okay”. Ours was an “If I can just make it out of this home, everything will be okay”. [share ]We had no safe harbor. Our safe place was inside of our head[/share], where we retreated when the world got threatening. This was, sadly, very often.

My client and I just sat together for a few moments, sharing tears of pain over what we did not have and tears of hope for what we wanted so fiercely to create for our children. I assured her that [share ]I saw in her the capacity to create that safe haven for her kids[/share], all three of them. And I hoped that I too would have what it took to make my home a sanctuary for the children I would someday have.

Fast forward almost two decades to today, when I received a message from another survivor. Her daughter was experiencing a severe episode of depression and had expressed suicidal thoughts last night. Would I help her, she asked, to determine how serious the situation was? I walked her through the stages of lethality of suicidal ideation. She said she’d already set up both a therapy and a doctor’s appointment for later today. Her husband called into work and both of them were with their daughter. They kept her home from school so she could be in the safety of her own home, with her mom and dad beside her.

I told my client she had done everything I would. Her pain over her daughter’s deep depression was palpable. Both of us had been in that dark place, as children and adults. Our parents had so little care for our state of mind.

There was no one to protect us when we feared that even retreating inside our heads would not give us enough of a reprieve from our daily pain.

But now, as moms, each of us would trade a decade in that dark space to save our child from spending even one day there.

When I finished the conversation my mind dumped the memory of my appointment with my pregnant client years ago. This time, the tears came without the body blow. They came because I knew I had realized our shared dream. My son, now a teenager, knew the safety of a loving home with a parent who adored him and would do anything to keep him from harm – just as the woman I had been speaking to had done with her daughter.

The tears also came because I now know for certain, twenty years later, that we survivors can absolutely crush the fear of becoming like our abuser. But even more so, we can gift our children what was never given to us: the certain knowing that if they just make it home, everything will be okay.

 

[blurbit]

Photos courtesy of pixabay

The post If I Can Just Make it Home by Bobbi Parish (@BobbiLParish) appeared first on Rachel Thompson.

This is The Reason It’s Not Rape If It’s Girl On Boy?

Faggit, A Tedd Hawks Novel

aka It’s Not Rape If It’s Girl On Boy

After reading what was otherwise a very good book about one boy coming to terms with his sexuality while living in a very conservative Christian small town, It’s Not Rape If It’s Girl On Boy could very well could have been right there on the cover. If it had been a “corrective rape” scene with actual fallout, I wouldn’t have objected; as ugly as it is, corrective rape is a thing and as we all know, I don’t mind even the most stomach churning scenes as long as there’s authenticity behind them.

Faggit (misspelled on purpose to show the bigots’ lack of high IQ, if memory serves – it’s been a while since I read it) goes for the bullshit response to boys being raped. It ignores it. See what you started, Batman?

Jack Freeman, the titular faggit, is your average, everyday gay boy, who happens to be surrounded by homophobes whom he fears would disown him, and possibly worse, if they found out his not-so-dirty secret. Pretty typical coming of age YA tale, a la gay. Hawks does an admirable job of making it interesting, even if there are one or two farfetched scenes that had my eyes rolling. But I digress. This isn’t a review.

This is a calling out.

See, there’s this girl. And she really likes Jack. But Jack, for reasons that are obvious to no one in his hometown, doesn’t feel the same feels, but pretends to find her bootylicious so no one suspects he’s strictly dickly. Cause, y’know, teen boys must love boys if they’re not all-consumed by the mighty vajayjay. Again, digressing. Anyway, they’re “dating,” and she decides one day, while in the park, while the sun’s out (exhibitionist, much?), that it’s high time they got it on.

And she doesn’t care that he disagrees.

Susie pushed me to the ground. She smiled and put her lips on mine and started to tug up my shirt. Her hands found my crotch and started to maneuver over it.

“Don’t –” I started, but she wouldn’t stop.

“My sister told me what to do,” she whispered. “I’m going to make you feel good.”

Before I could stop her, she had my pants down. She hesitated for just a second when she saw my penis out in the open. The breeze died down and the cicadas roared as we both sat there, me exposed, and her thinking about what to do. We knew that something was changing, but it didn’t stop Susie. She started to kiss and move her hands all over me.

(Hawks, Tedd (2014-01-15). Faggit (Kindle Locations 563-570). . Kindle Edition.)

This Is Date Rape

If the roles were reversed, this would be called “date rape,” and he’d be an instant villain with no chance of redemption but, because it’s a girl refusing to acknowledge a boy saying “stop,” it’s not treated as such. In fact, it’s treated as consensual sex.

Not once in the entire book, is “rape,” even hinted at. There’s no mention of what happened and Jack acts as though saying “no” meant nothing. Right there in the middle of a goddamn YA book, a protagonist was stripped and assaulted, yet there’s not even a moment where he thinks about what occurred.

Because boys cannot be raped. Duh. Now I get it. All this time I thought the whole “no means no” thing was for everybody. Guess we don’t have to worry about that now, eh?

This book has been recommended by others, who claim to have read and loved it, to be passed on to LGBT youth as a story of hope. And not one review I’ve read has mentioned the rape, even in passing. Am I really the only one who sees something wrong here? Is it really that ingrained into our collective mentality for a boy to have choice forcibly taken? Is this the message we want to send to them? Oh, well, we know you said “no,” but you do admit to having an erection? Well, that right there is proof that you wanted it.

Fuck you. No, seriously; if that’s what you think than fuck you. As a human being, you suck and I want you to take a long walk off a short pier. Because fuck you.

Look at that, got me all sweary.

Why don’t more people get pissed off when this sort of crap happens? Why do we allow these things to happen in our fiction? What, do not enough people not know what rape looks like?

Apparently.

FYI: rape isn’t always violent and messy and bruising. Sometimes it’s a simple refusal to stop, even when the person who doesn’t want it doesn’t fight the rapist off. If Hawks had said he was confused and scared and didn’t know what to do, that would have been fine. Behold, a learning moment! Boys, if a girl wants the D and you don’t wanna give it up, say “no.” If she pulls off your pants, push her away. If she keeps going, then RUN.

Seriously, dudes, ain’t no shame in it. Contrary to what this, and so much pop culture, says, y’all don’t always want it and are not obligated to ever bow down to pressure. Y’know that thing said to girls all the time? About how it’s their body and they don’t have to let you near it? Same is true for you.

Boys Can Be Raped, Too

Not that you’d know that reading Faggit; not only is it seemingly okay to rape a boy, it’s not even really rape. I guess. Oh, hell, I don’t know anymore. Maybe it’s true: boys are always willing and since you can’t rape the willing, you can’t rape boys.

Pfft. As if.

Oh, and Batman, you totes could’ve stopped this if only you’d been honest about your ordeal, too. Instead, we have yet another instance of non-rape rape. Yes, DC, I’m yelling at you again. Along with every other writer, director, actor, singer, dancer, athlete, politician… who continues propagating this bullshit about how not affected by sexual assault boys are. Cause they are. Very much so. And those boys could use some bloody truthiness in their entertainment of choice so maybe they’d feel less wrong for feeling things they don’t understand.

You don’t need to keep sexual assault out of books, but at least be honest about what comes after. Or please stop writing. Your choice.

pictures courtesy of pixabay

Broken Places is on sale for only 99c this week on Amazon! Grab the Kindle version (no Kindle required, they have a free app) through September 9, here.

Broken Places is available NOW from Booktrope. It's already hit #1 on Women's Poetry and Hot New Releases on Amazon! Broken Pieces is still going strong, #1 on Amazon’s Women’s (paid) Poetry list.

Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a post again! I will never share your email and that’s a promise. Follow me on Twitter @RachelintheOC or @BadRedheadMedia for social media, branding, or marketing help. Increase your blog traffic by participating in #MondayBlogs (a Twitter meme I created to share posts on Mondays — no book promo).

All content © 2015 by Rachel Thompson, author, unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author.