No News – Bad Hostess

(I am also sorry about the stock photo I ripped off for this hastily written post.)

It largely serves as a brief note to any press representative attempting to contact me for comment on the man recently convicted of stalking current employees of a radio station for which I once worked and at which I was once stalked: I am washing my hair and cannot pick up the phone.

While it is true that almost TWENTY YEARS AGO I did make public comment on the matter, I have no interest in doing so now. Don’t contact me. This is for a few reasons.

First, Reliving My Personal Hell in a newspaper and on television was a dumb idea. I became The Stalked Girl. Here’s a hot tip for anyone thinking about agreeing to divulge their personal trauma to a media outlet: only do it if you get paid by the fuck-tonne. Which I, very foolishly, did not.

“I believe it would be unethical for me to receive payment for the disclosure of my heartbreak!” I said at the time. What a fuckwit.

If you are a person who has suffered some sort of newsworthy violence, please get paid enough for your True Story to keep you going for a couple of years because, damn, girl, no one is going to give you a job afterwards. Capitalism has no use of a victim as a labourer; only as a single-use commodity. My employers made me redundant after I was declared well enough to return to work. After that, no one wanted to give The Stalked Girl a job at all. I concede that this was due in part to my own naïve and narcissistic compliance with media outlets. Not only did the experience of being pursued by a man become much more harrowing when I played it out twenty times in a public forum (please, do this therapy in a psychiatrist’s office and not on your Facebook page or on talk radio) but it served as some kind of anti-résumé. I don’t wish to revive that document.

Second. Look, I understand that the violence done to public figures is kind of interesting to hear about. But, it’s not representative of the real violence most people confront. Therefore, I don’t wish to participate in any news story which normalises the very abnormal situation I found myself in. I can say almost nothing to the majority of stalking victims whose experience does not match mine.

I can’t relate my story to most of those who have been the focus of someone else’s obsession because, as we know, such aggressors are generally known to their victim. I imagine that this is far worse than my experience, where it was always clear that I hadn’t done anything to provoke this attention. Of course, no one ever does anything to warrant such violence—and if you don’t think that being pursued and threatened and maligned merits the term violence, then you probably need to see a doctor about that, or at least suspend your quite stalky Twitter account for a while—but, knowing this is different from believing it utterly, and it is much easier for a randomly targeted “celebrity”, such as I was at the time, to know that it wasn’t their fault.

In other words, if purveyors of news really care to address the problem of widespread violence, especially that enacted upon women by men, then the way to go about it is not examining the experience of a victim with a high profile. Ours is not a widespread problem.

Third. I find that most media discussions of trolling and stalking end up in some kind of police state conversational latrine. People say, “we need to do more to stop the violence”. And, they suggest that harsher penalties and more laws are what is needed. Currently, the law is adequate. And, actually, following the passage of metadata retention legislation, it is far too fucking adequate. You, me and everyone we know can all have their location (how this counts as metadata is beyond me) accessed by a range of government agencies and, call me a crazy libertarian, but this also feels like stalking to me. The way to stop violent intrusion into our lives by individuals is not by sanctioning violent intrusion into our lives by the state.

I find that whenever I receive requests to be interviewed on the matter of stalking, which I always refuse, the journalist always ends up urging for more laws, without bothering to read or understand the existing laws, and harsher penalties. “Lock ‘em up”, they say. And, god, but would I have loved to have seen the guy who stalked me locked up. But, fortunately, I have no legal clout. What he needed was not imprisonment. What he needed was healthcare and other forms of assistance.

I am not saying this because I am nice. I am not fucking nice. I am angry that he fucked up my life and sent me on a fifteen-year odyssey of bad relationships, bad therapists and debt. I am angry that the way I now respond to many persons who seem to have some sort of keen interest in me is a little jumpy and over-the-top.

STILL. Violent people need reform much more than they need to be “called out online” or whacked in the big house. Yes, they are, in many cases, “bad” people. But, if you think that a moral injunction by the state or a well-meaning advocacy group is going to stop them, you’re deluded. If we focus on an individual victim’s juridical victory—and I do not consider incarceration a victory for anyone, but evidence of a great failure shared by us all—rather than the objective conditions that produce acts of violence, we’re fucked.

Well, we are fucked, but that’s another story.

In short, I just wanted to use this opportunity to (a) elaborate on my current favourite theme of “personal stories have become politically useless” (this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell them) and (b) ask my press colleagues not to bother contacting me UNLESS they want to receive a very rude note with “OFF THE FUCKING RECORD” written at the bottom and the top.

It is, of course, pointless for me to tell any member of the press to desist in their focus on more glamorous versions of the everyday shit people deal with, such as being stalked. These journalists have convinced themselves that this reporting is a democratising act to which real people can relate. I happen to believe that it is a falsely democratising act that makes people who are hurting feel even more maligned when they compare their own violent drudgery to narrativised celebrity pain.

Finally. To anyone who has had their life fucked up by any kind of violence, notwithstanding my claim that my experience is not your experience, I feel very keenly for you. I understand just a little of your horror and confusion. I believe that you have been very badly hurt. It is quite possible that you will hurt less if you seek justice, either of a state administered or self-administered kind. Whatever gets you, individually, through.

What is not going to get us collectively through anything, though, is the flat and self-serving media approach to “justice”. Newsworthy trauma is, a great deal of the time, not socially useful. In fact, it’s destructive to everyone but the paid providers of news.

3 thoughts on “No News”

3 comments

erin
June 28, 2016, 2:58 am

holy hell this is spot on.
Cheree
June 8, 2016, 10:29 am

“The way to stop violent intrusion into our lives by individuals is not by sanctioning violent intrusion into our lives by the state.”

Yes. Perfect. I’m getting that put on a t-shirt. Could probably sell it, make a few dollars.

I actually think this personal story, as told by you, is still politically useful.
valerie
June 4, 2016, 1:32 am

Keep being strong

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