Liz Fong-Jones
Oct 20, 1:15 AM
[TW sexual assault]
#metoo: I slept with a director* somewhere in Alphabet. He got very creative to maneuver past the letter of limits I set. But I didn't break it off. I kept seeing him until the day he was semi-publicly accused of (non-sexually) assaulting a woman [he claimed self-defense and that she struck first]. I feel bad about standing by and being "neutral" in that situation rather than backing the woman he'd assaulted and also sharing my story. I shouldn't have been "neutral" and thinking "both sides messed up but maybe I'd better stop just in case". But I was too wrapped up to see that he'd also hurt me, and that I should have believed the woman and said so loudly. And also, I'd kept seeing him, right? [see the linked Hairpin article]
And in retrospect, there were some warning signs. Like the fact that he said he'd made the mistake of sleeping with someone in his reporting chain at another employer in the past, and viewed sleeping with a distant coworker as tickling that same taboo in an innocuous way. He swore he'd never sleep with a reportee again and had learned from the mistake, but that should have set off alarm bells for me. Or the many other rumors circling about him in the sex-positive community, which I'd previously defended him from by saying I'd generally had a positive experience. In retrospect, you don't
generally have a positive experience; it's
bad outright unless it's something you unequivocally consented to... Having one or two fun experiences shouldn't cause one to feel obligated to keep seeing someone, or to tolerate pushing at boundaries. I wish I'd realized that earlier.
* Not naming names [because while I do condemn the assault, I'm not sure how to balance with outing people as sex-positive in the process :/]. No specific HR violation, he wasn't in my reporting chain, we met outside work rather than in a work context, everything was technically aboveboard in that department. And I don't think I really feel like reporting through official channels -- it'll be he said/she said, "you kept seeing him", and also get HR digging around my personal life.
[p.s. never, ever, ever let someone you don't trust super super well negotiate doing more things after you've already set limits and started doing things within those limits. but that's a victim-blamey phrasing. Phrasing it better from the other side: never, ever, ever renegotiate limits once your partner is no longer in a coherent frame of mind to negotiate limits]
[pps
#metoo about having broken someone's trust and screwed up by accident with their limits in the past, but that's not my story to share. But this case wasn't accidental, at least based on the pattern of multiple other of his victims.]
