Official Diary｜Pretty Dark Matters

The white boy I passed by, after I responded to his greeting with a brief hello and ran about ten meters away from him, I heard him shouting behind me, You look great and sexy!

Sexy.

I was wearing a mint green sports bra and close-fitting sports pants that day, and I accidentally started to analyze whether I was "too much" dressed. I knew I felt uncomfortable with the boy's compliments. But should I take this as a "compliment"? I do enjoy the feeling of being desired when both parties feel pleasure and consent; but this kind of sudden sexualization process in daily life always makes me feel queasy and gives me a slight (to strong) sense of threat.

It makes me feel that whether I do or don't do it, what I say or what I don't say, will be analyzed and ultimately understood by the other party as what I want to get from him. The self-righteousness of cisgender men, coupled with the fact that the patriarchal society allows and encourages them to be aggressive, allows them to rationalize their courtship behavior that violates other people's boundaries. What's more, they may think that my appreciation for you is a kind of charity.

For two-thirds of July, my life was not very stable; there were even times when I was very uneasy. I don’t know how to tell if it’s a past memory that’s causing my unsettling feelings or the cisgender men who are in the same space right now. I feel like my feelings are being twisted into tiny little pieces, and I can be in a physical state of panic and breathless for a brief moment; the next, as I'm limping my emotional feet into a moment of non-panic. , but because the peace or happiness was instantly replaced by numbness, I began to wonder if it really existed.

When the counselor asked me on the other side of the screen, if anything happened, do you have friends there who could be contacted in an emergency? I don't know if she is being overly cautious, or if I have been too neglectful of my feelings?

Recently, I began to look back at some clues like a detective. When did this roommate in the shared living space start to make me feel uneasy, but I immediately told myself that it was nothing? This retrospective is not intended to condemn myself. I just want to know if I have habitually missed some information again.

I started sharing my living space with my roommate, a cisgender man who is much older than me, in May.

Before signing the rental contract, I obtained the personality trust of this man from the landlord (they were partners). I also stated before and at the beginning that I attach great importance to physical boundaries and I don’t like others to approach me suddenly. These boundaries have been well respected during the three months I have lived here.

But something, even though it wasn't through physical contact, sent a parabola of unease through me.

The following list of events is not necessarily written in chronological order. I just write whatever comes to mind first.

The first thing is that once I temporarily put the carton of shampoo soap on the kitchen counter, planning to take it out to throw it away later. Not long after, when I was about to take the carton for recycling, My roommate who was cooking in the kitchen said to me in a joking tone, did you leave it here on purpose so that I could smell it? I didn't feel particularly offended at the moment, I just thought this person's reaction was strange. But after the July incident, I guess, in his imagination at the time, did he regard me leaving the scented packaging box in the shared living space as a temptation? And he once told me that although his mother was a hippie and a feminist at that time, he believed that women have the potential to seduce men, including her who has become a mother.

The second thing is that from the first month after I moved in, due to my personality and curiosity, I was very willing to talk to each other about various topics. There was no so-called taboo for me, so from then on Local rights for same-sex couples, the current status of gender equality, issues from sex education to sex workers, and even views on one-on-one and open relationships, I think even if the other party holds different positions, as long as both parties remain rational during the dialogue and respectful attitude, that is a rare exchange of opinions. In addition, as a foreigner, I have a strong thirst for knowledge about the similarities and differences between the local area and Taiwan. The main reason why the topic radiates outwards with sex as the center is because as a survivor of sexual violence, I live in the Low Countries. During these days, I always actively participated in activities related to sex/gender issues, so the above topics are mostly extended from the activities I participated in in the past.

However, in a conversation that had nothing to do with sexual issues, he once again mentioned to me that his sexual needs were to act as a sub, and that he hoped to find his Dom. At the moment, my brain chose to deliberately exclude whether his statement was correct. The possibility I mentioned was simply interpreted as his difficulty in expressing his sexuality. I even encouraged him to try his luck at one of the many BDSM clubs in Amsterdam, and maybe he could meet a suitable partner.

The third thing is actually what makes me feel creepy the most now that I think about it. It probably happened less than a month after I moved here. One time, my roommate knocked on my door and asked me a question while I was taking a nap. After I responded to him a few words, he opened the door without my consent. At that moment, because I was still half asleep and half awake, my head couldn't help but be frightened. The first thing he said to me was that a few hours later, when I went downstairs to the kitchen, he said to me, "You look so beautiful when you sleep." His response made me feel strongly uncomfortable, so I told him that day that you cannot open the door to my room without my permission. This made me feel very uncomfortable. He immediately apologized after hearing this, so I judged at that time that he realized that his behavior was very inappropriate.

Btw, if you want to ask (critically) why I didn’t lock the door, it’s because in my mind it was just a short nap, and I still felt that it was safe to live in this space, and I didn’t think I would open the door at will. The door is a common sense. Then, screw you teacher, it's not my fault for not locking the door, it's the person who opened my door without permission.

The fourth thing confused me the most, and I even tried to suppress my unsettling feelings.

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, I have a set of sportswear for jogging: a sports bra and close-fitting sports pants. When my roommate saw me wearing this sportswear for the first time, he said to me, You look smart. I asked him what Smart here meant. He replied, because he was not sure whether he could use the word beautiful to describe me, so he chose Use Smart. Indeed, in British English usage, smart can describe a person well dressed. So I readily accepted the compliment. But later, I discovered that he would compliment me on how beautiful I was (using the word Beautiful instead) almost every time I wore this sportswear. I began to feel strange and slightly uncomfortable, and would subconsciously only do this when my roommate was not at home. I just put on my sports clothes and went out for a jog. It wasn't until the compliments accumulated to a certain extent that one day I finally plucked up the courage to tell him that I didn't like his description of my body. I felt uncomfortable and just made it clear to him that this behavior bothered me.

Before I get to the events of early July, I have to fill in some other context.

In the first month after I moved in, because I had not yet found a job in the new city, I had a lot of free time. My roommate invited me to have dinner together, watch movies together after dinner, or go to nearby restaurants together on the weekends. Nature cycling. For me, these are reasonable roommate interactions, because I would do these things with my former roommates, and I also have a lot of work-swap experience in my life. Gender male), they will share the cuisine of their own culture with each other, and go out for outings together, etc. To me these are just human interactions of trust and kindness.

During these shared moments, my roommate and I would talk about many things. In addition to the gender issues mentioned above, there were also racial discrimination, Drugs culture, colonial history, China-Taiwan politics, and (fake) liberalism in the Low Countries. Politicians, even the MeToo movement in Taiwan, etc. It's very satisfying for me to be able to talk about these topics. Would you say it's an intimacy? For me, maybe, it is an intellectual exchange. If you feel connected, it is the warmth in the stratosphere that is working, right?

As I write this, I suddenly feel very tired.

Much like a plaintiff standing in front of a courtroom and suddenly being called to stay in the defendant's seat.

Just write it here first.

The books I'm reading recently are " The Farewell Book " by Zhang Yixuan, and " The First Self-Healing Bible for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ".

Share two passages from these two books.

People always invest in something: fame and fortune, science, saving the earth, world peace, art and culture, music or politics - at first glance, it seems that these things represent a certain meaning - but as long as we dig deeper, we I can tell you that there is a kind of "hopelessness" deep in these actions - not for what we are pursuing, but for a certain person, a certain memory, a certain secret. We are completely powerless and helpless, so we start the journey of life. Pursue--move "hope" away from people and things that initially made us feel hopeless, look elsewhere, and think about other things.

Mindfulness also involves noticing how strongly the mind tends to dissociate from uncomfortable feelings. Again, dissociation can be the classic right-brain type of emptying out, daydreaming, or sleeping, or it can be the cognitive left-brain type of worry and obsession.

Survivors need to rescue themselves from dissociation over and over again and gently bring their awareness to fully feeling the fearful sensations in their bodies. Although physical feelings of fear may be overwhelming at first, continued focus with non-reactive attention will dissolve those feelings, as awareness itself digests and integrates them.

There were many painful moments in June and July, and I felt very tired at one point, but I tried to think about the people around me who loved and cared about me, as well as my dog. Several family members and friends caught me in time. Lots of tears also became an outlet.

When I was in college, a senior student was killed in a car accident at the side entrance of the school. She had been advocating environmental protection during her lifetime, starting from not using disposable chopsticks. I don’t know why, so I started to put a set of chopsticks in my backpack, even though I completely I don’t know this senior sister.

If I were that senior student, I hope the MeToo movement can continue forever.

Let those who cannot speak out have a chance to be heard.