Beth
I was sexually harassed and many blind women in my community are sexually harassed. As a woman who is blind from birth, I feel as though we women with disabilities are viewed as docile and required to be so. Unfortunately, I am seeing a lot of sexual harassment and at times stalking by blind men who don’t know better. I wrote a blog post or two about a young man in Georgia who I once dated. Boy it was a bad decision to date Jason, and he was blind and had heart issues and walking issues and such. Jason unfortunately degraded, abused, and manipulated me. I wrote this all down in a WordPress blog, but was trolled for. even suggesting that Jason abused others too. There are men, both nondisabled and disabled, who abuse women every day whether it’s their own mothers or a girlfriend. I now have a very supportive local partner in colorado, and he knows what to expect. I don’t talk to Jason anymore, and there are many many Jasons out there, too many to count. I found this website btw because of a book you wrote about the bad guys on the Internet, and I wonder if Jason could end up advocating extreme misogyny, and to the point where he could hurt someone else. I did not use Jason’s last name because everyone in the community knows this guy is dangerous, bad news, etc. After jason, however, I was not confident in relationships for a while, and then dated a guy for a long time but he turned out to be too religious and fanatical about where my body belonged. So I had to cut him out too. Blind women might not have good choices about who they want to marry, but I fought back against trolls, people who thought that this guy or that guy was good for me, and on November 7, 2020, I had a commitment ceremony, one for the ages, with my supportive partner. Jason doesn’t have a very strong bond with an adult except to abuse, and there’s a rumor flying around that he dates one girl, stalks another, and then turns around and denies it all. My partner and I see this kind of behavior with guys like this other dude who sent me a death threat through a woman in my state. The cops were unable to catch this lady because she disconnected and changed her phone number. I wasn’t sure where the email address was for the Denver Police department. I live in Denver, Colorado, and every day is a struggle to forget the extreme bigotry and misogyny Jason advocated. Examples of statements he made include things about immigrants from Mexico and Africans and other bad statements about women in general. Jason seems to have liked misogynistic rap music, and even said some very abusive stuff like, “Love is for girls and gays.” It’s hard to forget that even the sexual act with him wasn’t really all that fun. He used all the classic symptoms of grooming, only I was an adult, but he isolated me from friends and family, wouldn’t allow me to call people I cared about, and I have to constantly remind my partner that I don’t tolerate any such isolating behavior from males and I don’t care which. Even after my commitment ceremony, I feel a bit weird writing this but I know that women with disabilities need a leg up when it comes to stopping sexual harassment. As a blind woman, I have been grabbed without my consent too, and many blind women in my circle of friends talk about this incessantly. Our phrase is “Just ask, don’t grab.” I use a white cane only my cane is red, my power color. I use this cane to navigate my world and I am typing this entry on an iPad with a screen access software called voiceover. Many women who are blind become blind later in life, but as one of the born this way types, I’ve experienced a lot of people thinking that I was harassing them, but in truth, I was rejected by the good quality people in my school. When my family decided to take my right to marry, they had guardianship for fifteen years, I was then forced to contend with men running away, and the only men who truly could have been there were low quality people who didn’t have what it took to show me affection and love, and they were cheaters, what I like to call up and runners, or worse, stalkers and rapists who’ve violated my friends. One guy said he didn’t want me in positions of power. Well, these days, I have to be in a position of power because if not, the consequences could have been deadly. Thank you for your website and I hope to see more stories like mine.