The Dandy and I went to his 80yo aunt’s place for dinner last night. I like her – or thought I did – but she got onto some conversational topics that were super difficult for me. Most notably (I have no idea why or how) at one point she started pearl-clutching about how sensitive everyone is these days and how just one accusation of sexual assault or rape can “ruin a man’s life.” She said in her younger days she went skinny-dipping with a mixed group of friends a few times and there was sometimes “some touching” involved and it would be just appalling if someone came out now to accuse someone in the group of having committed sexual assault back in the day (I pointedly said “well, if everyone was okay with the touching, there wasn’t any sexual assault so it’s fine”). At some point during her pontificating the aunt admitted that she doesn’t even know what the definitions of “rape” or “sexual assault” are. God only knows what she thinks accusing someone of sexual assault actually means. “I had a consensual thing with this guy once and now I want him pilloried for it because I’m capricious like that”? I dunno. She was sounding ignorant af and also bringing up a ton of baggage for me and I was stuck in her apartment with no way home and the subject matter was making me feel like I might have a panic attack.
And look, I hope to be in this living arrangement with The Dandy for the rest of my life. And that means I’ll be exposed to his immediate family for – well, not the rest of my life, he sees his mom and aunt the most often and they’re likely to die soon-ish. But a while. I would like to keep the peace and I would like to not be infuriated or even triggered by the conversations.
There were other convos last night that got under my skin, too, besides the sexual assault one. The Dandy and his aunt got to talking about what to do about the housing crisis and, later, whether paying reparations to indigenous people makes any sense (She said, “Well I never did anything to indigenous people so I don’t know why I’m supposed to feel guilty!” I tried to step in and educate her – it’s not about feeling guilty, it’s about acknowledging that as white people we benefit from a racist system, and trying to use our privilege to dismantle that system so things are more fair – but apparently talking the fuck over me runs in the family).
Oh and on a side note, as far as his family is concerned we’re still a couple; we never told them about the breakup because reasons. Last night The Dandy seemed to be agreeing with a bunch of the misinformed stuff his aunt was saying. If I’d tried to call him out and it had gone the way it always does at home (he impulsively volleys loud bursts of additional information at me whether I was currently talking or not, I repeatedly try to interject but can’t, I get to a point where I’m ready to either cry in frustration or stab him in the face or both and say “I need to not discuss this with you anymore,” he ignores this and keeps on spewing his horrible, damaging, bullshit opinions at me, I start screaming “STOP. STOP. STOP.” at the top of my lungs) that’s gonna put a pretty big dent in my otherwise quite convincing “loving, supportive partner” act.
I read up on a lot more SJW stuff than either of them from what I can tell, and I’m a lot more marginalized than either of them, and basically I spent a chunk of the evening watching The Dandy and his aunt have a spirited debate about things that don’t affect them the tiniest bit (but some of them affected me) and that in many ways they’re clueless about. Like they were just saying some of the dumbest, most presumptive bullshit at each other in such a self-congratulatory tone.
But they’re both really forceful speakers and know more about how political stuff works than I do, so the only way I could have gotten a word in edgewise is by fucking screaming and once I did that The Dandy (and possibly also his aunt) would have just started hectoring me about “well where would the tax dollars for your idea come from, huh? HUH?!?!?” and I don’t fucking knooooow, I just know they could probably come from somewhere if we changed up our priorities a lot and shifted some shit around.
The Dandy is very into defending the status quo. He’d like it if housing was more accessible (for instance) but unfortunately there’s simply no way to make it happen, according to him, and here’s his dissertation on exactly why the system is what it is and it’s pointless to even speculate about changing anything.
But y’know…even setting aside my borderline panic attacks over their shitty conversations, I think it was rude of them to keep having these political convos. I was clearly unable to contribute to them, and at times spaced out or started outright surfing my phone while they were talking. My parents always taught me that it’s super rude to have conversations that exclude someone – the thing to do is find pleasant common ground where everyone can participate. And that wasn’t happening.
Anyway by the time we went home I was exhausted and thoroughly messed up. Feeling trapped and powerless has always done that to me – made the world go gray and given me flat affect and a hard time speaking. I felt like a wind-up toy that had…wound down. Like HAL in 2001 wonkily singing that “Daisy, Daisy” song.
I waited until we were home to address the issue because I suspected The Dandy would be shitty about it and I didn’t want to be trapped in the car with him at the time.
So we got into the apartment and I said “Hey, in future during family gatherings if someone starts talking about any social justice-type topic, would you endeavor to deflect? Like just see if you can change the subject.”
He went off to his room to change out of his going-out clothes and didn’t respond to me whatsoever. A few minutes went by.
“I asked you a question,” I prompted. He still didn’t say anything.
All in all I must have prompted him and/or repeated myself five times before he told me in an annoyed voice that he would try but he couldn’t promise that it would work.
I said “Yeah, I know, I’m only asking you to give it your best shot.”
And he protested again “I can’t control what other people talk about! I can’t guarantee anything!”
And I was like “I FUCKING KNOW THAT. I am literally asking you to just attempt to deflect as best you can, because sitting there as a sexual assault and rape survivor listening to Aunt NameRedacted delicately flail about how difficult it must be to be a rapist was fucking my shit up and if I’d had my bus pass with me I probably just would have stood up and screamed that I have to go and then gone home, which would be awkward.”
The Dandy never expressed any kind of empathy or understanding or pledged to do his best to make sure I wasn’t trapped in someone else’s living space getting emotionally triggered, because of course he didn’t. He just kept acting huffy/pissy that I would ask him to intervene whatsoever. You’d think I was demanding that he leap to his feet and go “THIS SHALL NOT STAND! I DEMAND WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE FORTHWITH!” or actually call his aunt out on her bullshit instead of doing the absolute most subtle and non-confrontational thing.
And this is where I rant about what an absolute spineless piece of shit he is.
When I was in the process of moving out of my old place and moving in here (since The Dandy and Dandette already lived here I was able to shift my stuff over the course of a month or two instead of having one big Moving Day) my old landlady was making my life difficult and trying to demand unreasonable things (if I hadn’t stood up to her I think she would fully have bullied me into renovating the apartment on my own dime before I left). I would tell The Dandy about this and he would barely let me speak; I’d get as far as “welp, the landlady just emailed me telling me I need to move my stuff out immediately so someone can take photos of the place for -” and he would impulsively bellow “she can’t do that! You gave notice for the end of the month so the place is under your possession until then! You should call the Landlord Tenant board and report her!” Real strident and passionate and clearly knowing a lot of shit about landlord tenant laws.
So when my landlady insisted on meeting up with me in person to discuss stuff, I asked him to come along and back me up. Surely the moment she started asking for unreasonable things he’d be all over that with “Nuh-uh! The Landlord Tenant Act says X, Y, and Z!” Right? No. He agreed to come along and then sat there like a meek little wallflower and didn’t say a single fucking thing. She wasn’t his landlady; she had no power over him at all; and yet his irresistible impulse to scream over someone with a pedantic deluge of legal facts was somehow missing.
When Dandette was living with us – and The Dandy completely financially supported her and thus had all the power in their relationship – he was too chickenshit to address her obvious alcoholism or to, like, tell her it was bad that she sexually assaulted me. I ended up addressing it my damn self.
A few months back I had an incident with an online acquaintance that resulted in…somewhat of a vendetta, for a while. And maybe I’m overly paranoid but I got to wondering whether the acquaintance would escalate his activities to stalking me in person. I asked The Dandy what he would do if this guy showed up to our apartment and was pounding on the door yelling that he was gonna kill me or something. He said he’d call the police. Which, I mean, yeah, obviously, but the police don’t have fucking teleporters so we’d be waiting for god knows how long. I asked The Dandy what he would do in the meantime. He’d at least, like, yell out “fuck off” or something, right? Let the stalker know that I didn’t live alone, I had a potentially threatening man here backing me up? He repeated that he would call the police. I said “You wouldn’t even yell something from behind the locked door?!?” He repeated “I would call the police.”
This man is probably three times stronger than me, fifty times louder, and as a cishet middle aged white man he has the whole damn patriarchy on his side, but he’s hypothetically too chickenshit to raise his voice at someone who’s wanting to murder me. And apparently the thought of delicately deflecting a conversation to a different and less controversial topic makes him shit himself so hard that when I ask him if he’ll do it he’ll freeze up and avoid answering me unless I persist and persist and persist.
And it wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t so willing to effortlessly talk over me all the time. Anytime we get into a discussion of basically anything, he fuckin’ steamrolls me without even thinking about it. Except I guess on some level he is thinking about it, since he won’t “unthinkingly” bellow at a home intruder or his eldery aunt who has him in her will. I am reminded of my father’s temper tantrums, which my mother attributed to him “losing control” but which oddly never happened with anyone but his financially dependent immediate family. He never “lost control” at a cashier who gave him the wrong change or his boss at work or a cop who pulled him over. He never even “lost control” at my mother or I when there were people within earshot. What a lucky coincidence, amirite?
Meanwhile, as much as I hate awkwardness and confrontation, I will stand up for people I love and cut people out of my life who are awful. And the only thing keeping me from being more outspoken last night was knowing that it might have negative repercussions for The Dandy. (Well, that and the fact that I don’t know a lot about indigenous issues or how housing works, either, so all I could have said there was “I feel like you’re saying inaccurate things” but I couldn’t have backed it up in any authoritative way.)
And if it came down to it I would straight-up murder someone to protect a loved one.
The fact that I have the backbone to stand up for people even with my history of abuse and trauma and Mr. Patriarchy McLoudface doesn’t just irritates the living shit out of me.