[Ron]
As you just demonstrated, it is a matter of degree and perspective as
to exactly what constitutes "harm". Ones harm is another's creative
play. Where's the line? who draws it?
[Arlo]
Here, in Azeroth, in Norrath, the answer is the same, you do.
[Ron]
So if I draw the line at false identities who are you to call this
value an illusion that is not real?
[Arlo]
You can think what you want, but when you impose on ME a realness
that does not exist, that is where I step up and call it an illusion.
If you wanted to think, for example, that my body determines my
gender, go ahead. But if you tell others "the real Arlo is X" based
on this, and make the claim that my gender otherwise is pretend or
false, then I step up, most certainly. In other words, *I* determine
what is "real" about "me". You can accept it or reject it, but you
can't tell ME what is "real" and what is "not". But why don't you go
ahead and tell me what a "false identity" is. What makes one "false"
and another "real"? You continue to attack my position without
articulating any alternative.
So do so now, Ron. What is a "real identity"? How do we determine
what it is? What makes one identity "false" and another "real"? Give
me something to use to make this determination.
[Ron]
Obviously you have never been raped or abused or you'd see the
ridiculousness of that statement.
[Arlo]
No, I've never been raped. But one of my closest friends has been a
rape counselor for years. And I've had other, intimate, exposures to
this in my life as well. Rape is a crime against the body. Much of
the trauma to the self results from conflating this assault with an
assault on the "self". It is not. Healing begins with that
recognition. When someone close to me was raped, she was the first to
say, "my body was raped, but *I* was not". I have seen the ravages on
others who are unable to disambiguate the act against their body from
an act against themselves. If the "self" is destroyed in this act,
Ron, it is because the self allowed itself to be, and it does so by
confusing itself with its body.
[Ron]
the fact you think the realization of the act perpetrated on the body
was not perpetrated on "you" begins a healing process one might find laughable.
[Arlo]
I'll be sure to tell my friend that "she" was, in fact, raped along
with her body. But here again you lapse into rhetoric that makes me
question my civility. I am trying, Ron, really trying to have a civil
conversation with you, but you ain't makin' it easy. You want to
start playing these games? You want to start with the little attacks
and snide comments, well then so be it. From here on out, I'll give
what I get, you want civility, then you better start giving it back.
[Ron]
So, when Bubba is raping you he is not getting off on screwing you,
he is getting off on destroying your personhood.
[Arlo]
Which he can only do if I let him, if I am so weak that I allow him
to, if I am so caught up in conflating my body and my self. No one
can destroy my personhood, Ron, unless I allow them to. But I'll be
sure to tell my friend that her personhood was destroyed too. She
tells me it was not, but if you say it was it must've been.
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