Juliet Escoria's Blog, page 13

Last night, my husband was messaged by a person who told him to unfriend someone because they were a...

Last night, my husband was messaged by a person who told him to unfriend someone because they were a “predator.”

Scott posted the screenshot on Facebook because he thought it was ridiculous and invasive and it pissed him off.

The person then posted in Alt Lit Gossip, saying that Scott and anyone who commented on the post was a rape sympathizer. (The post was removed.)

Scott got angry. A lot of other people got angry, too. A lot of these people — my husband included — were victims of sexual abuse and/or rape themselves. 

One poet told Scott him that he was “shaming the victim” by posting this (funny, considering “the victim” was never mentioned). They later blocked Scott (and me too, which seemed odd considering I hadn’t said anything and had also gone out of my way to help this poet in the past in a couple different ways, but whatever) and Tweeted this:

Other tweets by other people followed:

Feel like it should be unnecessary to point this out, but apparently it’s not…

1. You are “shaming the victim” of a past sexual assault/rape by bullying them because they are not responding the way you want them to.

2. Yes, what you are doing is indeed bullying.

3. “Friendship” on Facebook is hardly support. Personally, I know maybe 30% of my Facebook friends. The rest could be murderers, for all I know. They mean nothing to me. Facebook friendship is meaningless. I’m sorry you grew up so attached to the internet that you cannot distinguish this?

Just curious… What would Scott have to do to earn Dianna Dragonetti’s fascist little crew’s support? He already wrote a novel detailing his rape and the behaviors that resulted from it. I thought all you had to do was write an essay or Tumblr post? Maybe a novel is too long and hard to read? Maybe Gawker needs to write an article about him? Maybe it only counts if the rapist is Facebook friends with people that you are Facebook friends with. Maybe Scott needs to say that he no longer identifies as a man. 

—-

A couple days ago I, completely confused by everything that was going on on the internet, decided to email Sophia Katz’s original essay to a couple of my IRL friends who have nothing to do with alt lit.

I asked them: What do you think of this?

They told me things like:

It was hard to get through. It reminded me of when I was 18 and (their own experience of coerced sexual assault). 

It made my heart hurt for her.

It made me glad I’ve never been so down and out financially that I was in a situation like this.

etc. 

Then I asked: Is this rape?

One friend said, yes, it was. Another said she wasn’t sure. We talked about why and why not. 

Then we discussed why it was bad to discuss what the author could have done differently (“She’s probably already thought about it enough as is.” “It isn’t fair to do this because you never know how you might act in a situation like this— you may surprise yourself with how complicit you may be because your body and mind can shut down. “) We talked about why it was good to discuss what the author could have done differently (“It could give someone who finds themselves in a similar situation the tools to respond in a way that brings them to less harm.”) Then we talked about how terrible it was that ALL of us had something similar happen to us. At how sad it was that this scenario was commonplace. At how badly young people and older people needed to have a serious conversation about consent. 

Our opinions varied some, but as a whole we were coming from the same place. It was refreshing, and it made me feel a whole lot less confused about how this whole thing got started in the first place.

But it made me a lot sadder to think about what this had spun into. People telling people how to feel. People bullying people online. People sticking up for one victim at the expense of another. People who want essentially the same thing attacking each other, telling people that they’re terrible, that they’re misogynists, bad feminists, rape sympathizers. Dozens of men — many of them my friends — being accused of being sexual predators or rapists, with the accusations oftentimes being based on little or nothing. Dozens of other men afraid that they would be accused of something, simply for having sex or making out or having e-flirtations with a female writer in the community. People delighting in the fall of other people, seemingly happy to exploit their status of victim in order to help out their “personal brand.”

I don’t know what the solution is, all I know is this isn’t it. 

___

EDIT: 

EDIT #2:

Some people have expressed concern about this sentence: Maybe Scott needs to say that he no longer identifies as a man.

To clarify: That sentence was a disparaging remark about people who have publicly admitted that they have changed pronoun preference solely as social commentary, which seems extremely detrimental to the aim of transgender people. I would never want to discredit the transgender movement, transgender people, etc. That transition seems hard as shit and I have a lot of respect and empathy for those who have that as a part of their experience. 

Guess it also has something to do with society’s habit of ignoring male sexual abuse/rape. Very few Hill William reviews mentioned this part of the book, which seems troubling.

Photo

Carabella Sands came to visit last week. We went into the forest...

Carabella Sands came to visit last week. We went into the forest so I could get some footage for a project I’m working on. I had bought these cheap Halloween robes for us to wear. I was worried they’d look as shitty as they were on camera. I didn’t need to worry. The robes didn’t look cheap. They glowed.

just saying

I lived in NYC for three years because I thought it would be a good idea to do so if I wanted to be a writer. I met lots of cool people and went to lots of cool events and places, etc. while I was there. I also wrote a total of five decent stories in the 3-year span. 

The work I’ve done in my childhood bedroom and in Beckley, WV has far surpassed the work I did in NYC, in terms of quantity, quality, and “coolness.” 

That New New In Lit: September | Bookish | Impose Magazine

That New New In Lit: September | Bookish | Impose Magazine:

Jacob Kaplan talks about my essay up at Hobart, along with work by Chelsea Hodson, Melissa Broder, Gene Morgan, Blake Butler, Ben Lerner, etc. etc. etc.

lk-shaw:shout out to my main bitches and my side bitches here...

lk-shaw:

shout out to my main bitches and my side bitches 

here are some recommendations for things i have enjoyed recently:

women by chloe caldwell

bad blood by luna miguel

illuminati girl gang edited by gabby bess 

the blue hour by karina briski

bushwick review edited by kristen felicetti

anaconda by nicki minaj

excavation by wendy c. ortiz

takahe by stacey teague

pressure, titanium & bone by sarah jean alexander

bunny collective founded by samantha conlon

the chronology of water by lidia yuknavitch

six dead dogs by rachael lee nelson

sadmess & why-fi by ana carrete

beyonce at the vma’s by beyonce knowles

true life: i married scott mcclanahan by juliet escoria

i am here by ashley opheim

& the female fear by stephanie georgopulos

"I believe in art. We can’t have truth, because truth is so difficult. But we can have beauty. My..."

“I believe in art. We can’t have truth, because truth is so difficult. But we can have beauty. My obsession is to give to you something different. When civilization ends, Greece, Egypt, India—the only thing that endures is art. A country that does not have art despairs. War is not beautiful. Banks are not beautiful. Architecture used to have a lot of style, not anymore. Religion is not beautiful. Politics is not beautiful. What is beautiful now? Tell me. What is beautiful now?”

- Alejandro Jodorowsky (via thatlitsite)

Death Will Come and Will Have Your Eyes

Cesare Pavese wrote this poem and then killed himself shortly thereafter. 

Death will come and will have your eyes—
this death that accompanies us
from morning till evening, unsleeping,
deaf, like an old remorse
or an absurd vice. Your eyes
will be a useless word,
a suppressed cry, a silence.
That’s what you see each morning
when alone with yourself you lean
toward the mirror. O precious hope,
that day we too will know
that you are life and you are nothingness.

Death has a look for everyone.
Death will come and will have your eyes.
It will be like renouncing a vice,
like seeing a dead face reappear in the mirror,
like listening to a lip that’s shut.
We’ll go down into the maelstrom mute.

—Translated by Geoffrey Brock

"The truth is that mental illness can be deadly, and suicide is the end result of ongoing symptoms...."

“The truth is that mental illness can be deadly, and suicide is the end result of ongoing symptoms. Cancer kills when it spreads so much that the organs can’t function. Mental illness kills when the urge to die becomes louder than the urge to live.”

- Juliet Escoria, True Life: I Married Scott McClanahan (via thatlitsite)

The new Karen O album makes me very happy and is a good reminder...

The new Karen O album makes me very happy and is a good reminder that sometimes unpolished things are the best things.