Moving Through (And, Hopefully,Beyond) The Ruins

It was bound to happen, I guess.

A new friend of mine lives in the same neighborhood as Dominick.  On Saturday, I rode out there.  Really, unless I ride around the world and enter the back door (which is a temptation), there isn't another way to get there from my place.  Besides, if he could "pass through" my neighborhood and call to say, "I'm coming over now"--as he did several times before I took him to court--I can pass through his neighborhood if I'm minding my own business.

Anyway, you can probably guess what happened next.  I was a couple of blocks from the friend's house when a red SUV pulled up behind me.  A voice taunted me through the window, "Are you coming to visit me?"

Has he learned anything?  I could tell, just from the tone of his voice, that he is as arrogant, presumptuous, disrespectful and abusive as he ever was.  In other words, he's the same thug--coward--that he was when he slandered me to my employer, co-workers and other people, and when he called and texted me 11,518 times in two years after I said I didn't want him around me anymore.

After the things he did, there's simply no way I can have him anywhere near me.  Perhaps I'm supposed to be more forgiving, but I can't be.  I take that back:  I don't want to be.  He takes forgiveness, or anything that isn't retaliation, as a license to escalate his harassment and abuse. 

In short, I not only don't believe he's changed; I don't believe that he ever will change.  As long as he can continue living in the house in which he's lived since the day he was born, he'll have no reason to take responsibility for himself.  In his mind, no matter how he behaves, other people are wrong in the ways they respond to him.  Anyone who tries to hold him accountable for his words and actions is being "unfair"; anybody who tries more than once is an enemy who must be retaliated against.

In short, he hasn't grown up, and probably never will.  So, when he made his mock-invitation from his grandmother's van, I ignored him.  All I can do is to move through--and, hopefully, beyond--the wreckage he left in my life.

October Is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month.

The issue has received a lot of publicity because of Ray Rice.  The running back's contract with the Baltimore Ravens was suspended by the team not long after the National Football League suspended him for beating his then-fiancée (now wife) into unconsciousness. 

Of course, it took a lot of public outcry and pressure from sponsors to get Roger Gooddell, the NFL commissioner, to act on his case.  He claimed not to have known about the video on which Rice uses his spouse-to-be as a punching bag in an Atlantic City casino elevator at the time TMZ posted it online, in March.

Still, Rice's case got more attention than most other incidents of domestic violence, in part because of his celebrity.  Too many other incidents of such abuse are never reported, and too many others are simply not taken seriously when they are reported. Or, they are mis-handled by law enforcement authorities.

One reason for these problems has to do with perceptions and attitudes about domestic violence. For the most part, there are still many people--including, incredibly, women--who think that the woman/girl must have done something to "provoke" the man/boy.  Such provocation can include simply not pleasing him, whether sexually or in some other way. 

Another reason why domestic violence isn't dealt with appropriately is that it's still seen as a man-on-woman problem.  To be sure, the vast majority of such cases involve males abusing females in one way or another.  But new research has found that there's LGBT partners beat and otherwise abuse each other at roughly the same rate as heterosexual couples.   Sometimes law enforcement officials don't take their complaints seriously or at all; even when a conscientious police officer tries to help and records the complaint, little more can be done because the couple's union isn't legally recognized.

And, I can tell you from personal experience that some policemen (and -women) simply think trans people are not worth helping because, they believe, we're all sex workers (or sexual predators) and that our status somehow gives our partners the right to abuse us.  Finally, too many in law enforcement--and even in the so-called helping and healing professions--still think that if it's not physical, it's not abuse.  It took me three visits to my local precinct before anyone would hear my ordeal of having endured over 11,000 text messages, as well as "anonymous" false complaints to my former employer and the city, and e-mails falsely accusing me of sexual crimes, from Dominick.

Of course, he will never think of himself as an abuser.  It's because of people like him that we need anything that will raise awareness of what Domestic (i.e., Intimate Partner) Violence (i.e., abuse) actually is.

They Don't Violate Only The Ninth Commandment

Funny, how "religious" leaders decide that it's perfectly OK to commit one sin ostensibly to fight another.

I'm thinking now of Kendall Baker, a Texas pastor who warned that children will be victimized by "trans predators" if Houston passes a bill that gives equal rights to trans people.

Hmm...A pastor violating the Ninth Commandment:  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Had it not been for an experience of mine, my reaction to this story would be "What, this shit again?"  But because of a particularly ugly incident in my life, that news turns my stomach.

You see, that "trans predator" trope has been used to rationalize all manner of bigotry, harassment and outright violence against us. I know:  It happened to me.

I take that back. It didn't happen to me.  Someone did it to me.  If you've been reading this blog, you know who that somene is. Yes, Dominick.

After I ended my relationship with him, one of the ways he retaliated was to start rumors that I was preying upon my students.  He not only told people I did that, he also sent e-mails and made "anonymous" complaints to my employer.   

Worst of all, he tried to claim that I "accosted" him and that he spent five years in a relationship with me only because he was "afraid" of what I would do.

Hmm...That "trans panic" claim all over again.  That's particularly interesting coming from someone who claims he's victimized in all sorts of ways because he's gay.  (Right up to the time I had my surgery, he hoped that I would change my mind and live as the gay man he believed I was.)  Plus, if he was so afraid of me, why did he not only spend as long as he did with me, but also threaten me when I left him and wouldn't go back to him.

Oh, wait, I answered my own question:  He acted as he did because he was afraid.  People who lie and start vicious rumors about others are always so. Sometimes they're just pure and simple cowards.  Other times, they're guilty of the very thing they impute to others.

In Pastor Baker's case...You guessed it...He's preyed on women at his day job with the city's 311 call center.  

I'd call him--and, for that matter, Dominick--a chickenshit, except that I have too much respect for chickens.

Oh, here's another irony:  When Dominick was trying to win me back, he'd make some sort of appeal to me before making another threat.  Once, his grandmother was dying. Another time he claimed to have cancer.  And--you've probably guessed this one--he "got religion" and was praying for me.

And, no doubt, he was telling people I preyed on somebody.  After all, that's what we do, right?