#then i also have the same thing signed by george takei with my other fucking deadname

[dadbodbensisko-moved]

answer me these: how long have you been into star trek? what was your first series? what's your favorite series? who is your favorite character? and who is your favorite captain?

i'll go first: 11 years, tos, ds9, spock, sisko

[priceforrottenjudgement]

let me tell you a story. (domestic abuse cw)

i see so many of you defend celebrities (Johnny Depp, George Takei, Jared Leto, casey affleck, chris brown, lena dunham, dr luke, marlon brando, etc) that have been accused of domestic abuse or sexual assault or rape. none of you know these celebrities personally, but you always have the same arguments: [abuser] seems so nice so they cant be an abuser and [victim] seems very untrustworthy, i bet theyre making it up. The defining word here being “seems”.

Now on to the story. All of this happened roughly 3 years ago. A member of my family, i’m not gonna tell you my exact relation to her, was in a relationship. None of the other family members knew him before they were together and he wasnt known in our home town.

The first time I met him they had already been together for two months. I thought he was nice, unremarkable (in a good way) and totally in love with her. Like, to a point where I couldnt believe it was HER he was talking about because he glorified her so much. She moved in with him soon after that.

I didnt see her a lot during that time and it seemed like a lot of her formerly close friends didnt either. Then, all of a sudden it seemed, she broke up with him. My first thoughts? “Oh thats a shame, he seemed ok for once” and “well, we all know her. she just does things like this”.

Her now exboyfriend then called me (he was fixing my car at the time) and i came to his house. He almost immediately started crying and said he doesn’t understand why she left him, now his family will hate him, what is he supposed to do now? In an attempt to comfort him (I’m hilariously bad at comforting people) I told him that thats just the way she is. She just drops people sometimes. The only thing that struck me as weird on that evening was that he wanted to give me money so that I would bring her back to him. I said I would not take the money, but maybe I’d try to talk some sense into her. Luckily I never did that.

We were at her family’s house for a birthday a week after that. I was still a bit disappointed in her and I could feel that a large part of our family shared that sentiment. After dinner we went to her room and she said, almost casually, that she still had to fetch some of her stuff from her ex’s flat and was NOT looking forward to that. I asked why and braced myself for something along the lines of “Because he’ll be crying and begging me to come back and I dont want to hear that” or something. She said “Because he’ll throw stuff at me or try to punch me again, he does that when he drinks and I know he is drinking right now” And I was so fucking speechless. And my first, shameful reaction was ‘oh, she’s making this up’, which i pushed down immediately and listened to her speak about instances where he’d thrown ashtrays after her or when she’d had to lock herself in the toilet until he’d calmed down. She finally decided to ask one of her strong, buff, male friends to come with her. At that point I was ready to come with her myself and just fucking annihilate that ex of her’s. I was so angry, mostly with him, but very much so with myself, too. How can I preach feminism, how can I tell people to believe abuse victims, how can I call myself a good friend if I never noticed it happening right in front of my eyes? How can I live with the fact that I had immediately assumed it was her fault and never even considered the possible reasons?

Although I never asked why she never tried to reach out to me or another member of our family, I think I understand why. She told me she had tried to talk to a few members of their circle of friends (most of them were his friends first and he also forbade her from seeing her former best friends, which explained why she’d seemed to have dropped them) and none of them believed her. She tried to reach out to formerly close friends, but they didnt want to listen to her explanations and didnt want to reconnect. I think that after these she was afraid to try to reach out to someone else.

In the time after the breakup her ex, his mother and his friends kept harassing her. Calling her heartless, telling her to go back to him, telling her to fix it because he was “suffering so much”. He at one point sent her a picture of his own puke with the comment “look what youre doing to me”. Nearly none of their friends took her side despite having one of them (who was there on one of the occassions her ex threw something after her) back her story.

What I’m trying to say here is: don’t you ever defend a potential abuser by saying “there were no signs of abuse before”, don’t you ever defend them by saying “they don’t seem the type/they seem so nice”, don’t you ever say “if all their friends are taking their side, how can they be an abuser?”, don’t ever say “if there had really been abuse, why are they suffering so much when their victim broke up with them?” and don’t ever try to discredit a potential victim by saying “they’ve had so many partners before and broke up with them over nothing” and don’t ever say “they don’t seem trustworthy”.

None of you can know what goes on behind closed doors. Not if it’s your sister, not if it’s your cousin, not if it’s your friend and ESPECIALLY not if it’s a celebrity YOU’VE NEVER EVEN MET BEFORE. 

I sure as hell learned my lesson.