I hear your point, but I think you perhaps missed his. He repeatedly said that rape is wrong no matter what. What is so hard for all of us to accept that we still live in a patriarchal world, supported far too much by women who benefit from that structure. I for one did not at all hear that he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. I respect that you hear different things, but therein lies the problem. Of all people, having been repeatedly assaulted, you might think I would be even more virulent in my thinking. I’m not. I’m seeking answers. And in every way possible trying very hard not to continue to attack those who, in the best ways they know how, are trying hard to be better, think better. It makes me think that in some ways you want it both ways too, albeit I neither know that nor am intimating that. By this I mean we want the world to be safe, but it isn’t, and never will be, but that those men who are doing their level best starting from where they are to move forward are just as ripe a target for our abuse as those who abuse. That is neither fair to them nor to us, who very much need men on our side, and evolving.

We need to evolve, too, Blake. I think you may have taken his point way out of context. That is precisely what keeps us at odds with each other. Rather than seek to understand, if you and I continue to seek to attack, diminish and belittle, we get nowhere. If we constantly pick apart someone’s choice of words so that we can tear them down or make them wrong, kindly, what does that make us? Part of the problem. But again, that’s my opinion.

Again, I respect your point. But having spent a huge part of my life dealing with what was done to me, and in my case it was far, far, far more than a single incident, I have chosen a different path. Doesn’t make me right and you wrong. It’s just different. You come to your conclusions and opinions as rightly as I come to mine.

That is precisely why this is such hard work. It takes a wholly different level of thinking, openness, communication and awareness to listen, hear, honor and seek to understand. Those are choices. None is easy. And please hear me: I am not criticizing you for your choices. I am simply making note. When raw anger arises in response to something, that has far more to do with what’s going on inside you as opposed to the writer. I use those moments for deep introspection, to ask what is it in me that is so threatened, so angry, that I feel the need to attack?

Again, Blake, that’s my choice, not yours. No implicit or stated judgment here. We get to where we are for good reason. I wish you the best of the season.