How Not to Have the Rape Conversation

I believe the rape conversation is a necessary conversation to have right now in America. The Stanford rape victims letter, and all the other cases of rape in this country, are a gigantic indicator of this. But that does not mean that anyone gets to just go up and treat every guy like an inherent sexual predator.

So to the lady from last nights show. You giving my two, heavily intoxicated, female friends giant pretzels was great and you are a great person for that. But you lost all of my respect when at the end of the show you interrupt me enjoying one of my all-time favorite bands last song, which is one of my greatest offenses in itself, to remind me something along the lines of, “remember if they are intoxicated/unconscious it’s not consensual,” and just walk away. And while I’m left trying to process what was just said to me I turn around and see you getting a congratulatory hug for being so brave for stepping up to me, while I’m enjoying my show, to remind me not to rape my friends. That is absolutely insulting.

You have no idea the gravity your statement has. Because my first instinctive response, and the words that came out of my mouth were, “Of course.” To which you turned away and the question of, “why did she tell me that?” started to sink in. There I was thinking I was having a great time enjoying my show and now during the final minutes, of all times, I have to take the time to question if I had acted in any way that warranted the necessity of that statement. Because, to me, that sort of unsolicited advice comes for a reason. And the reasons I’m left with are that they were both drunk, I was drunk, they were female and I was a male. Because you definitely saw us all show up together and you saw us converse in ways that showed we know, and to an extent trust, each other; and you also know I was kind and appreciative to you for helping my friends earlier.

You interrupted my show, you treated me like a criminal, and you are lucky I did not think fast enough because you would have been wearing the last of my beer.

So if your idea of having the rape conversation is to single out random men and remind them not to rape, you are wrong. In no other situation can you make such a generalization and get away with it. That’s the kind of thing you tell someone when you expect them to do wrong. By all means I am on that woman’s side on this issue but I won’t stand with you if your language treats all men as inherent sexual predators who are not capable of caring about others; even when intoxicated. We can have this conversation and be respectful.

Album Appreciation: The Things We Carry

Discovered in 2011 this album quickly became one of the most important albums to my life. That year I was returning to college after failing out of school and taking a forced year off of school. I was still deeply in love with making music and being in a band. The music I was consuming and creating at the time was a sort of hardcore/metal hybrid. Full of fast drumming, melodic breakdowns, and positive messages; see The Ghost Inside. Then I came across Have Heart and the song “Armed with a Mind.” To me it was the perfect blend of who I was and who I was looking to become. It had the aggressive music that I was into, but stripped of the metal influence, and it had positive, intelligent, and forward thinking lyrics.

I was going to college but I didn’t want to lose the hardcore kid in me. So I told myself I was going to make the two worlds coexist in harmony and Have Heart was a constant inspiration that I could make it happen. They were hardcore kids but they didn’t “look” hardcore, they didn’t have any gimmicks, and they weren’t writing offensive screaming music that was common in the scene at the time. Though their music was aggressive they were kind and whatever they did they did for noble reasons. For instance the money that their last show, one that sold out almost instantly and could have made them one last big paycheck, was given entirely to a women’s shelter in their home city of Boston. They never had the “look at me” attitude. They were aggressive on stage because they talked about topics they were passionate about; defeating depression, avoiding violence, and treating people with respect; to name a few.

This album inspired me to want more for myself and others, it inspired me to be more open about forward thinking ideas, and it inspired me to be unafraid to speak out with conviction against injustice and oppressive ideas. I went back to school because I wanted to make a positive change in the world. We were all freshly off the heels of Occupy Wall Street and, like hardcore kids have been known to be, I was fed up with the world and the systems we lived in. So while I sat and wrote papers about injustice, as I often did, this album became routine background noise. It kept me vigilant and productively angry. Though I am five years removed from that neo-freshman year and I have a more positive-minded ideal for change (not just burn everything down and start over) I still find myself inspired to want better for myself and others and to be fearless in the face of oppression each time as Life is Hard Enough begins and Watch Me Rise ends.