When You Lose Your Right To Be Angry
By: Jun Wu
Tags: Women, Work, Sexual Assault, Trauma, Feminism

When You Lose Your Right To Be Angry

Harvey Weinstein’s verdict will not be a deterrent for sexual predators.

@Armelion pixabay.com

Reading about the Harvey Weinstein verdict yesterday was humbling. It’s a reminder that the system will always make compromises to keep both sides happy rather than doing the right thing. When 25 people testified, clear assault and a clear history of predatory acts have been demonstrated, there are still people unwilling to convict. Do women have to film their sexual assault and every single interaction leading up to it for sexual predators to be convicted?

I’ve encountered my share of predators in life to know that this type of sexual assault is not a single event for Weinstein’s victims. Power is stripped away day by day if not year by year before and after the crime has been committed.

There’s a certain kind of woman who is prone to be preyed on. This type of woman often did not have a family who truly loved them, do not have a support system of friends to stick up for them, and who does not know her worth.

With each power struggle against the elite, this type of woman’s power is slowly stripped away. Until one day, as Jessica Mann recounted in her encounter with Weinstein, “she crawled into the fetal position on the bed and sobbed but that Weinstein raped her anyway.”

The shock of the ordeal led her to feel numb. Two weeks later, she had sex with Weinstein again. “She thought it was stupid but she did it anyway.” As a woman, I can understand why she did it. The psychological injury for her was so severe that she lost any hope she had at all. Her soul died and she was living in a shell of a body. She complied out of validation for her numbness. Because at that time, she needed more numbness to get her through. So, she actively sought out another dose of violation to make her feel numb again.

This is what happens to women who are under predatory circumstances. They comply because they feel that can’t get angry. The predators stripped them of the basic right to get angry or even to show emotions. They give up any hope of getting out of the situation. Then, they comply out of necessity, the fear of losing a job, a hard-won career, or even any class standing in society.

When you live in the vacuum of Hollywood, investment banking, or Silicon Valley, it’s easy to believe that you have no choice in the matter. Living expenses are sky-high in these places, once you lose the hard-won career that you have worked for 10 to 15 years to obtain, you believe that you don’t have another chance. If you came from disadvantaged circumstances where your family lives in poor or abused circumstances, you feel like you rather die than go back to those circumstances.

When there’s no hope, you feel like you can get through the rape by numbing yourself. You feel like being a slave to power at least gives you the right to live at all.

Once the first time happens, it’s as if the predator broke you in. Your self-esteem plunges so low that your body automatically numbs all of your senses, sometimes for years and decades to come.

Can you make the connection?

If this type of experience doesn’t remind you of the experiences of a human trafficking victim, I don’t know what will.

The truth is that slavery is alive and well if we have un-prosecuted assault and psychological injury from the abuser. This goes for both men and women.

Harvey Weinstein might feel like he was prosecuted because he was made an example of the #metoo movement.

What about all the women who felt so diminished by their experiences with him that they lost all hope for years to come, and got by day to day by numbing their senses?

The psychological impact on victims of sexual predators lasts a lifetime.

If this is all it takes to diminish a woman in the workplace by simply stripping away their power little by little every single day and then once they learned to submit to the powerful, to follow it up with a sexual assault, then women don’t truly have a place in the workplace.

Women ask for equal pay and equal opportunity. We are far away from that because we are still trying to “not get assaulted”. You can live with taking 50% of salary while doing twice the work when the alternative is being the victim of a sexual predator.

Predators are not the only ones who perpetuate the system. There are powerful people who will send these women to the hands of the predators to be assaulted.

They could be both men and women.

These are the people who will never stand in front of the court of law. They are almost more insidious.

As I’m typing this article, I’m aware that some of my male readers will not like this article. I’m aware that in my real life I may get assaulted for speaking up.

But, you know, I’m numb because I’ve been powerless, gone through the slave mentality and felt what these women have felt.

In my numbness, I laughed at all the self-help gurus because they kept telling me to snap out of my victim mentality, take a deep breath and be goddam mindful.

Do you know anything about trauma or being a true victim?

Now I know that the alternative for not speaking up is to not feeling alive or human.

A lifetime of numbing my senses just don’t appeal to me.

And we’ve got to think about all the girls who will enter the workplace for many years to come.

These girls could well be your sisters, close friends, and family.