Sly's FOAD Thursday: To All The Asshole Ex-Boyfriends Who Abused Me: Fuck Off and Die

This is my response to a post on Feminist Current. One of the topics was misogynistic behavior towards pregnant employees at Google. 

The tech industry is guilty of a lot of misogyny. I worked in tech for a little over a year back in 1997. I tried to be "one of the guys" because I had very low self-esteem and wanted to fit in. I also had as yet undiagnosed type 2 bipolar disorder and was drawn to chaos, possibly because I really had never known anything else. I was in my early 30s, but I was very naive.

 I fell in with a very interesting crowd. They all watched a lot of porn. The only other female in our little group was in an open marriage. She came from a very messed-up background. Her mother prostituted herself sometimes and had sex in front of her young daughter.

I made two big mistakes. The first was going to a Halloween party at this lady's house, but the bigger one was bringing along my ex-boyfriend whom I'd just broken up with because I wanted to be "open-minded" and show that we could "still be friends." He had been verbally abusive to me, but I felt guilty about breaking up with him.

Sometime during the party, one of my co-workers kissed me. The kiss was consensual, although I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been completely smashed. My ex-boyfriend started making a scene, and I made two more big mistakes.

I didn't want my ex-boyfriend to get in a fight with my co-worker, so I drove drunk back to my apartment. I thought my ex-boyfriend had left. I crawled into bed with my clothes on. I woke up with my clothes off and him on top of me. I yelled (or slurred) at him to stop. When he was done, he said: "well, now we're back together again."

I had horrific panic attacks one after another for a year afterward. The doctors tried to medicate me, but I tend to have paradoxical responses to medications and most of them only made the panic attacks worse. Xanax made me suicidal. My family told me "well, you got over this sort of thing before, you can do it again." (I had been sexually assaulted when I was 18 by a guy I met while waiting in line for concert tickets. That one told me he hoped I would get pregnant so we'd have to stay together.)

I never went to the police. I knew they'd only say I deserved it because I was drunk and I let him into my apartment.

I was in an extremely vulnerable state of mind, and that's when another pervert predator struck. I've mentioned that one before. He is the one who would force me to watch bestiality videos and to kiss his feet under the threat that he would withdraw his "love" from me. He flaunted another girlfriend in front of me. I ended up with scars on my arms that will be there for the rest of my life because I couldn't imagine life without this creep and I cut my wrists.

Not that other industries don't have their creeps and abusers, but the tech industry is rife with them. The guy who raped me was in school to get a degree in programming as well.

I'm not saying every man in the tech industry is guilty of misogyny. I am saying there is a lot of misogyny in the tech industry.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Image copyright juliahenze@123rf.com

I didn't want to

I didn't want to

I didn't want to!

I know this song could never be made today, and I know that some of the lyrics are not politically correct, but their heart was in the right place and the song made me laugh when I really needed to. R.I.P. Brad Nowell and Lou Dog. Hope you're having fun on the other side, writing more bawdy songs with heart.