An article from the Huffington Post came across my feed this morning about a female massage therapist who stopped seeing male clients after having had a male client ejaculate during a session. She spoke of feeling violated- how he turned a non-sexual encounter into a sexual encounter without her consent. It brought me back to an incident many years back in my own practice.
Something that I heard over and over during massage school was that it was "normal" for men to get erections during massage, and that it was our duty not to make a big deal about it UNLESS they tried to touch us or asked us to touch their genitals. Granted, there was constant discussion about it being inappropriate for us to have relationships with our clients, and yet when one of our classmates spoke about how he thought it wasn't a big deal to get on the table and have sex with a client "if they were into it" there was never any reprimand or consequences. And when he continually fucked with peoples' boundaries, his behavior wasn't taken seriously, and the women around him were made to feel like they were someone the ones with the problem. And there was never discussions about when an erection was more than just a "natural response"...essentially, as long as they didn't touch us, if there was a problem it was us (the female massage therapist).
As for my own disconcerting experience... several years ago I had a client who had had an erection during the massage, and I ignored it (as I was taught) along with the light moaning (maybe he was just moaning because the massage felt good in an appropriate way??? right???), but he didn't try to touch me, he didn't say anything inappropriate to me, so as per what I was taught, this was "natural" and if I was having an issue, *I* was the problem. After he had dressed I returned to the room to take his payment, and give the obligatory post-massage hug that we were taught to give all of our clients. But this time, the hug felt sinister from the start- the much taller, much older man cupped my head (eek!) and pulled me up against his body, holding me firmly as he shuddered, convulsed and groaned. And this from a man who had been telling me with great pride how he had recently become a deacon in his church.
For years I questioned the experience. Did he really ejaculate? I mean, I don't have a lot of experience with men, maybe I misread what was happening? Surely, it must be my perception that was wrong, right? But I know in my bones I was not wrong about what happened, but I had been trained from an early age as someone born in a female body to discredit my own perception of things, to defer reality to whatever the man said, to not "make a big deal" of what ever horrible thing a man had done.
And here we are. We have multiple politicians and church leaders/ministers warning of the dangers of trans people and queer people, and everyone is all stirred up, yet when these same people (men in power), OVER AND OVER again are the ones arrested for child sexual abuse, and rape no one seems to bat an eyelash, because they're so worried about the LGBTQ people who are a "danger" to cis women and children as per the crowd that are the actual folks hurting women and children. This is patriarchy. And I'm tired. I'm tired of being villainized as a AFAB person, as a lesbian, and as a non-binary person. I'm tired of carrying the burden of keeping myself safe from dangerous men, and shouldering the blame if I don't succeed. I'm tired of predatory behavior by men being dismissed as "no big deal" or it being me "making a big deal out of nothing." I'm tired of being told it's not ok for me to take up space. I'm just tired.
No comments:
Post a Comment