no 70. sean combs / am I losing my mind?

How is it, exactly, that we can witness a man beat his girlfriend as she tries to flee in fear, and he’s the one celebrating?

This is one of those ones that poured out because I didn’t know where else to put it. Solidarity with anyone else climbing the walls on this.

Sean Combs was aquitted this week on charges of racketerring conspiracy and sex trafficking. He was found guilty to two counts of transportation to engage in prostituion.

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Did you notice that the jury was mostly men (eight men, four women)? Did they worry women couldn’t be trusted? Did they think women couldn’t listen attentively or make a reasoned decision? Did they assume women would be biased because every single woman on the planet has some experience, however minor or major, of a man trying to control their bodies in pursuit of his sexual pleasure and her sexual degradation?

Did it surprise you that the jury decided that Cassie and ‘Jane’ were not coerced into sex trafficking but willing participants, based on enthusiastic-sounding texts they sent to a man who is proven to be violent when he doesn’t get his way? A man who bribed a young woman with the sex tapes she was coerced into if she didn’t comply again. A man who put her in the hospital with his brutality. A man who was so confident in his untouchability that he beat her in a hotel corridor.

Do you think the criminal justice system doesn’t know how much women do every single day to placate men? Because placating men is still the safest way for some women to live. Do you think some people still don’t understand that abusers can be violent and loving all within the same 12 hours? Do you think some people still refuse to understand that women stay with abusers for a host of complicated reasons, always underscored by physical/economic/psychological fear, which does not, under any circumstances, make them complicit? Do you think people are yet to realise that a woman saying yes is often a means of survival, something that every woman can relate to, even on a granular level? Do you think, like I do, that the prosecution didn’t do a good enough job of pointing this out? Just ask any fucking woman, I would have said, if she’s ever said yes to a man, engaged in a conversation, smiled, or more, because she’s worried, fearful, about what he’ll do if she doesn’t. Give us a smile/You moody bitch.

Did you also deep-breathe your way through a trial that has minimised domestic abuse into irrelevance? How is it, exactly, that we can witness a man beat his girlfriend as she tries to flee in fear, and he’s the one celebrating? And how is it, exactly, that that same woman, the woman we saw on the floor, cowering, covering her head and face, had to stand on trial, waiting for the world not to believe her? Did you feel your nails dig into your palms when you also thought, sure, that sounds about right: a domestic abuser allowed his partner agency when it came to sex? After all, it’s an act for some men, especially those who allegedly commit sexual assault, which is notoriously about control and power, the very scaffolding abuse is built upon. Incidentally, Combs is facing more than 50 civil lawsuits from men and women accusing him of sexual assault, rape, drugging and physical violence. Does it bother you like it bothers me how completely fucking transparent this all is?

And do you know that I ask you these questions because I’m starting to wonder if I’m losing my mind, sent to distraction with exasperation, scratching away at my skin with the wild injustice that is so exhaustingly familiar? That I’m succumbing to years of watching men get away with their best efforts to destroy women, gaslit by all our training courses and hashtags and alleged enlightenment. Am I the only one insane with it all? Becoming sicker and sicker living in a world poisoned with male violence, in all its many variations, one in which they are granted permission and forgiveness as easily as women are killed by them each and every day. In time I will become weak with rage, burnt out with heartbreak. My nervous system will be shot to shit because whatever happens men are victors and women are liars.

Or perhaps I’m there already. Firing off words I’ve written a thousand times into the ether to be read by women who have read them all before - a form of insanity in its own right.

And isn’t that the oldest trick in the book? Tell the women, the ones screaming in dissent, they’re not right in the head, they don’t know what they are talking about, they are hysterical, they are losing their minds.

Isn’t it all going exactly to plan?