i had a dream

I had a dream I can't remember but it woke me up at 5:30am. Whatever it was made me wake up thinking deeply about that one time when I was around 23 or so that I posed for the photgrapher who was supposedly "so safe" and "part of our community" but then who suddenly started jacking off and freaked out and told me never to tell, he'd never done it before, well maybe one other time but he'd never do it again, don't tell or I'd ruin his standing with the community and ruin the book that was going to come out. I was bothered very much but took my 50 bucks posing fee and you know, still wanted to be in the book or something. My feelings were complex. I didn't want to go around shrieking that I'd been raped - because I hadn't. But I felt that I had not consented, that something was deeply wrong and full of lies. And the guy knew that he had done something wrong. And when I talked to people who I thought of as the community elders - one of them my girlfriend - they were unnerved and what I got was more lies and evasion. So then part of what was wrong about what happened was the (incorrect or inefffective or perpetuating-the-problem) community response. and I can't stop thinking about that. This has happened before. (I mean, me waking up in the night thinking about it.) And maybe 6 months or a 9 months ago from listening to the story of another person in the SF perv community and realized what she was talking about was another edgy situation where the borders of consensuality were crossed and she was looking for a way to deal with that, and though I didn't know her well, I was now in the position of an older person in the community. I didn't know how to respond. Meanwhile I had run into the photographer dude socially and realized that I would see him again. And I started picturing writing something and giving it to him and to a couple of people who gave me the not-so-useful-for-me response at the time, and seeing what they would write in response so that an actual conversation woudl take place, an open conversation.

What did/do I want as a result? for this guy to be ostracized? I didn't want that then and don't want it now. for him to apologize? he already did - right at the time. I want an actual conversation where I feel like people have understood something they didn't before. Because I listened to their side. Did they understand mine? Did they ever think about the incident again? How could they have responded differently? How should situations like that be handled in a community? (And one in which a bazillion kinds of scandal were constantly taking place as open secrets - but as a community we were vulnerable - would you destroy the community by taking something public? i'm thinking of worse things, like that guy Master whatever he was, who would persuade his bottoms that he was a guru with psychic powers who could kill the hiv virus by thinking about it so, they should have unprotected an4l sex with him. I've forgotten this guy's name, and eventually he DID get kicked out of the community on some level, thank god or i'd freaking lose all faith in human nature.)

So my point is that I'm going to really do this and publish it somehow if peopel will agree to participate (me, photodude, my ex-g, this other person who is still making her living in the community in various ways and is for sure a leader and elder (and who also gave me the unuseful answer) and possibly the person who is 15 years younger than me who had a similar problem. (And part of the problem in her situation was the lack of dialogue. The person who crossed her boundaries would not talk with her about it, which made her feel much worse and compelled to take action against them.)

Getting people to participate I think will be very difficult and may require a level of somewhat bogus anonymity since everyone who was around at the time will know who is being talked about and people who don't could find out by gossip; all these peopel to some extent make their living off being sex radicals and would be afraid of hurting their positions. (But isn't that also part of the problem, and doesn't that prove that something inappropriate happened? Again - I'm not calling that something "rape" nor myself a "victim". However - It was definitely theft and a violation of trust at first, and then the community response made it a dirty secret, which was a worse violation of trust.) I could probably persuade them to have the conversation, but part of the point of the conversation is for it to be one that is public.

I was inspired lately by the "Breaking Out: feminist consciousness and feminist research" book about feminist research methods (in social science, but most everything they said applies to personal situations and literary criticism as well.)