ALSO: Jane is having trouble keeping this secret. PLUS: Get paid to write your story here! It's a fun and easy process (though maybe not the writing part).
One of the joys of publishing pieces like this one is getting to come back and click on the link and read them fresh like a reader after spending a different kind of time with them over the course of days and weeks editing, building, publishing, etc.
Things I love about this piece that I already noticed and loved as an editor: Cal's incredible, unique, spoken-sounding and blunt writing style. It cracks me up constantly. The pop culture references strewn throughout a story on such a serious topic are priceless. The other thing I loved both as an editor and a reader is how willing Cal is to go into the gray areas and the nuances and to present parts of their story that may be not their proudest moments. That to me is the best type of memoir writing and it's so important that people do it. I also appreciate Cal's wife for getting in there and setting them straight.
The ways I am reacting now as a reader include: A memory that I had a massage therapist once who spent about 40 minutes of the hour session on my breasts only. I didn't say anything. I thought it was an LA thing that I didn't understand but should go with. Another massage therapist who afterward hung around my apartment for a long time and seemed to be coming onto me, but nothing happened because I wasn't the least bit interested. I found out later that he did have sex with at least four other women who were his clients after their sessions. It's a freaky and vulnerable position to be in getting (and giving, as we know) a massage and I'm really glad people like Cal are looking out for the ethics of all of it for us.
Last thing I'll say is a big apology to Cal because the headline that ended up going out initially (the one that got the most open rates on a headline test I ran) was not what they felt represented the piece. And they were right. It has since been changed. I'm sorry, Cal, and I appreciate you and your wonderful work so so much.
And I appreciate all of you for reading it and weighing in too.
Jane, thank you for all of this. I continue to develop my writing and the ability for it to provide a real peek into the inner world that underlies what's happening for all of us all the time. Not that what's happening inside me is what's happening inside you, but that all of that *that* is not what we see when we interact with each other. We hide this stuff that can really connect us and help us understand ourselves and each other with more depth, more compassion and good lord, yes...humor! I shudder to think where we'd be without The People's Court and Doug Llewelyn's Lego hair. (Also, apology wholeheartedly and humbly accepted. That push/pull between alignment and wanting to be sure the most people see something and get sucked into experiencing it is real...and a trap. Gah!) Thanks for the opportunity to share with your community. I hope I'll get to do it again. 🥰
I am really curious what you all think of this: I just answered one subscriber who cancelled because they are not interested in a rape apologist story. I asked them to see where the piece ends up and that I think it contains an important message because there are people who feel the way the writer started to. I understand that the article begins there with the headline, and that that element (of even questioning believing the perpetrator) is contained in the piece, but what do you all think?
I guess i am confused as to how this “rape” was perpetrated? if the masseuse asked the women what they wanted - how is this rape? My masseuse always asks about pressure and specific areas before proceeding to massage me.. and the genital area is never involved? If this were to be even mentioned I would get off the table immediately. So these victims never said no?
Thanks for the questions, Jackie, I'm waiting to see what Cal wants to say in response but from what I know it was digital penetration and I don't know what was discussed beforehand or not.
Thanks for asking, Jackie. I wanted to stay solidly this side of harm porn by leaving out the specifics, but I realize now that the piece does not make it clear exactly what the massage therapist did that was a violation. As Jane said, the massage therapist digitally penetrated both women. He did not ask them and they did not consent. (It's also real murky ground in terms of what constitutes consent in these two charges of object sexual penetration and felony sexual battery.
Right?...and I took out the part I had written about how sad and angry it made me that someone would do this to and within a profession I have spent 20 years loving and stewarding. His nonchalance about what he had done and complete inability to recognize how his actions harmed not only these women, but also thousands of massage therapists who are not violating their clients' trust was one of the many gut punches in this experience.
Wow. This is all kinds of intense. You did an excellent job at putting us in your complicated POV throughout the trial and the aftermath. Bravo.
Here I go again latching onto something that is absolutely not the point: I never would have imagined that massage therapy wouldn't be considered real healthcare. That's kind of baffling. Don't therapists still need to be licensed, go through extensive training and the like? How is that not a healthcare profession? Actually, my PCP just prescribed massage therapy for me as an adjunct treatment for my CPTSD, so I guess we'll see what happens. Any suggestions for what I can do to prepare and make sure the sessions are as helpful as possible?
As a former rape/domestic crisis councilor, and as someone whose taken punches to the face, cigarette burns, and had men beet-faced swearing spittle flying profanities for refusing to release the info of where their badly beaten wife was hiding:
They do the con so easily because they believe it. They also view women as lesser humans. They believe that there’s no such thing as rape, because a vagina refusing them wouldn’t allow entry. As you said - screams of passion and screams of pain/for rescue seemingly sound the same.
So. Rape doesnt exist and if a woman doesn’t want to get hit she’ll behave.
And this ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ mentality displayed by so many men in power positions and boy-jockeyed along by the women beside them is why the little justice there is won’t last much longer.
I expect that the conviction had more to do with violating workplace ethics than violating the women, even if violating the women was the workplace misdeeds. Same as overcharging for hours or stealing office supplies. In that regard, the women were lucky.
the next night not be covered by workplace rules - which are far more stringent in private entities like massage therapy NOT covered by the umbrella of a hospital. Had this been on hospital grounds this case likely never would have gotten a court date, as hospitals have the time, money and lawyers designated to preventing cases like this from ever seeing the light of day.
And this might shed some light on why it’s not a covered by insurance. Nudity, oil and dark rooms with closed doors? You might note that you are no longer allowed to be alone in a room during a pelvic exam with the doctor anymore. Someone else must be present. So, in order to be a valid medical therapy, insurance would expect something similar. A nice relaxing massage with a spotter watching where the hands go - yours, and the massager.
Anyway, I’ve been ‘the wife’ in this article, leaving a trail of more educated males behind me who viewed rape entirely different after hearing my story.
Oh! We didn’t know it was like THAT. THAT… is horrific. I make feminists in my wake.
But the one thing I can guarantee - the more evil the man, the more convincing the acting. It’s an important thing to carry in life as a weapon.
because one won’t always have a spouse to take them to task.
That was the shocking part of it for me. If Cal's wife hadn't shaken them out of the trance... yikes. If they hadn't overheard the massage place owners gloating... yikes. Yikes!!!
Thank you Gina and Kim for your comments. My pronouns are actually they/them and I have spent a lot of time thinking and feeling about gender and harm, so I'd like to think that it may have taken me a few days or maybe weeks, but I trust I would have accessed what was necessary to keep showing up to the suffering of my fellow people, particularly women. I'm also so deeply aware of how much of the harm humans perpetrate upon each other is entirely unintentional. That's not to say it's ok, but to say thank you for feeling and caring as you do and that I don't pretend that this incident "cured" me. It also may be noteworthy that, in the first trial, the person who hung the jury was a cis-gendered female. This blindness is not unique to men or male-presenting humans. *sigh*
Until all of us are willing to speak honestly about this, we’ll just shout at one another about how we would have reacted had that been us. You never know until it is happening to you. I appreciate Cal writing honestly about this. I wish more people would.
Thank you and....the whole thing never really ends, right?....my somatic experience of being "he'd" and "him'ed" was jarring. It's so instructive to experience how it all shows up inside me/us.
Absolutely yikes. It’s a real problem when without even hearing the victims speak - you just don’t want to believe some aw shucks dude would hurt them. This is playing on the biggest screen in America now as people find out who is in the Epstein files and react with… disappointment. Yikes a go go!
Cal, through their nonprofit, Healwell, has dedicated their career to making this a reality -/ through training of massage therapists (me), educating health care practitioners and advocating for our integration. Slowly research is coming round to the power and potential of massage therapy. But with that responsibility comes access that can be abused as this therapist did. I’ve been a masssge therapist for 15 years. I’ve been propositioned countless times, and I’ve heard clients tell me about male therapists who took advantage.
Thanks for your comment, Andy and I'm glad you're getting support for your CPTSD. I wish I could say that any massage therapist will be able to meet you where you are in a trauma-informed place to support your healing in a diagnosis of CPTSD, but I can't. I also wish I could trust what massage therapists write on their websites about their training and competence, but that's not possible either. I would recommend doing some real research about the MTs training and looking into one who works specifically with people living with the symptoms of trauma. Hit me up at @laydboycal on Substack in the chat and let's noodle how to find you someone who will love you and your body in the safest way possible.
I remember watching a documentary once where a woman was missing, and her husband who was probably in his 70s was sobbing and worried for his wife. I told my mom, "I want someone to love me like that." Turns out he murdered his wife. People without a conscience make great liars.
Beautifully beautifully said! I have been taken in by a number of them myself. I came up with a theory when I was in my 20s and first had this happen that they act the part of a loving person the way they've seen it in movies and that's what we've been conditioned to expect too, so it makes all the regular people’s love feel muted in comparison. Anyway, I love this comment!
yes.. real love is expressed differently in real life vs movies and media.. young, impressionable people beware! it involves respect and patience.. which are two valuable and must-have commodities!
I came here to write (and I will write): Such an interesting and nuanced experience. Thank you Cal for writing it and thank you Jane for publishing it.
I can see that a lot of people would be very triggered by the headline and you definitely need to read through to the end to get the whole impact of the piece: which is that 'nuance' is weaponised by patriarchy and most of the time (and I mean vastly vastly vastly most of the time), the accused SAer is guilty.
Thank you Jane and Cal for getting this fascinating article out. It is important for all genders to read and understand how we've all been conditioned to the patriarchy, even when we don't realize it as such.
I'm so glad you said that and thank you. It was really important to me to get this message out, too, even though it is complicated and nuanced and not an easy piece to encapsulate in a quick subject line and that maybe it won't be read by absolutely everyone for those reasons. I think it's well well worth it and your appreciation of it means a lot.
One of the joys of publishing pieces like this one is getting to come back and click on the link and read them fresh like a reader after spending a different kind of time with them over the course of days and weeks editing, building, publishing, etc.
Things I love about this piece that I already noticed and loved as an editor: Cal's incredible, unique, spoken-sounding and blunt writing style. It cracks me up constantly. The pop culture references strewn throughout a story on such a serious topic are priceless. The other thing I loved both as an editor and a reader is how willing Cal is to go into the gray areas and the nuances and to present parts of their story that may be not their proudest moments. That to me is the best type of memoir writing and it's so important that people do it. I also appreciate Cal's wife for getting in there and setting them straight.
The ways I am reacting now as a reader include: A memory that I had a massage therapist once who spent about 40 minutes of the hour session on my breasts only. I didn't say anything. I thought it was an LA thing that I didn't understand but should go with. Another massage therapist who afterward hung around my apartment for a long time and seemed to be coming onto me, but nothing happened because I wasn't the least bit interested. I found out later that he did have sex with at least four other women who were his clients after their sessions. It's a freaky and vulnerable position to be in getting (and giving, as we know) a massage and I'm really glad people like Cal are looking out for the ethics of all of it for us.
Last thing I'll say is a big apology to Cal because the headline that ended up going out initially (the one that got the most open rates on a headline test I ran) was not what they felt represented the piece. And they were right. It has since been changed. I'm sorry, Cal, and I appreciate you and your wonderful work so so much.
And I appreciate all of you for reading it and weighing in too.
Jane, thank you for all of this. I continue to develop my writing and the ability for it to provide a real peek into the inner world that underlies what's happening for all of us all the time. Not that what's happening inside me is what's happening inside you, but that all of that *that* is not what we see when we interact with each other. We hide this stuff that can really connect us and help us understand ourselves and each other with more depth, more compassion and good lord, yes...humor! I shudder to think where we'd be without The People's Court and Doug Llewelyn's Lego hair. (Also, apology wholeheartedly and humbly accepted. That push/pull between alignment and wanting to be sure the most people see something and get sucked into experiencing it is real...and a trap. Gah!) Thanks for the opportunity to share with your community. I hope I'll get to do it again. 🥰
I am really curious what you all think of this: I just answered one subscriber who cancelled because they are not interested in a rape apologist story. I asked them to see where the piece ends up and that I think it contains an important message because there are people who feel the way the writer started to. I understand that the article begins there with the headline, and that that element (of even questioning believing the perpetrator) is contained in the piece, but what do you all think?
I guess i am confused as to how this “rape” was perpetrated? if the masseuse asked the women what they wanted - how is this rape? My masseuse always asks about pressure and specific areas before proceeding to massage me.. and the genital area is never involved? If this were to be even mentioned I would get off the table immediately. So these victims never said no?
Thanks for the questions, Jackie, I'm waiting to see what Cal wants to say in response but from what I know it was digital penetration and I don't know what was discussed beforehand or not.
Thanks for asking, Jackie. I wanted to stay solidly this side of harm porn by leaving out the specifics, but I realize now that the piece does not make it clear exactly what the massage therapist did that was a violation. As Jane said, the massage therapist digitally penetrated both women. He did not ask them and they did not consent. (It's also real murky ground in terms of what constitutes consent in these two charges of object sexual penetration and felony sexual battery.
thanks for clarifying this Cal.. now i understand the rape charge and it is well-deserved .. this is so creepy!
Right?...and I took out the part I had written about how sad and angry it made me that someone would do this to and within a profession I have spent 20 years loving and stewarding. His nonchalance about what he had done and complete inability to recognize how his actions harmed not only these women, but also thousands of massage therapists who are not violating their clients' trust was one of the many gut punches in this experience.
You may have taken out those words but I think that meaning came through very clearly in your piece. It is so well written!
Thanks so much for reading, Janet and for this comment. 🙏🏻
Wow. This is all kinds of intense. You did an excellent job at putting us in your complicated POV throughout the trial and the aftermath. Bravo.
Here I go again latching onto something that is absolutely not the point: I never would have imagined that massage therapy wouldn't be considered real healthcare. That's kind of baffling. Don't therapists still need to be licensed, go through extensive training and the like? How is that not a healthcare profession? Actually, my PCP just prescribed massage therapy for me as an adjunct treatment for my CPTSD, so I guess we'll see what happens. Any suggestions for what I can do to prepare and make sure the sessions are as helpful as possible?
As a former rape/domestic crisis councilor, and as someone whose taken punches to the face, cigarette burns, and had men beet-faced swearing spittle flying profanities for refusing to release the info of where their badly beaten wife was hiding:
They do the con so easily because they believe it. They also view women as lesser humans. They believe that there’s no such thing as rape, because a vagina refusing them wouldn’t allow entry. As you said - screams of passion and screams of pain/for rescue seemingly sound the same.
So. Rape doesnt exist and if a woman doesn’t want to get hit she’ll behave.
And this ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ mentality displayed by so many men in power positions and boy-jockeyed along by the women beside them is why the little justice there is won’t last much longer.
I expect that the conviction had more to do with violating workplace ethics than violating the women, even if violating the women was the workplace misdeeds. Same as overcharging for hours or stealing office supplies. In that regard, the women were lucky.
the next night not be covered by workplace rules - which are far more stringent in private entities like massage therapy NOT covered by the umbrella of a hospital. Had this been on hospital grounds this case likely never would have gotten a court date, as hospitals have the time, money and lawyers designated to preventing cases like this from ever seeing the light of day.
And this might shed some light on why it’s not a covered by insurance. Nudity, oil and dark rooms with closed doors? You might note that you are no longer allowed to be alone in a room during a pelvic exam with the doctor anymore. Someone else must be present. So, in order to be a valid medical therapy, insurance would expect something similar. A nice relaxing massage with a spotter watching where the hands go - yours, and the massager.
Anyway, I’ve been ‘the wife’ in this article, leaving a trail of more educated males behind me who viewed rape entirely different after hearing my story.
Oh! We didn’t know it was like THAT. THAT… is horrific. I make feminists in my wake.
But the one thing I can guarantee - the more evil the man, the more convincing the acting. It’s an important thing to carry in life as a weapon.
because one won’t always have a spouse to take them to task.
That was the shocking part of it for me. If Cal's wife hadn't shaken them out of the trance... yikes. If they hadn't overheard the massage place owners gloating... yikes. Yikes!!!
Thank you Gina and Kim for your comments. My pronouns are actually they/them and I have spent a lot of time thinking and feeling about gender and harm, so I'd like to think that it may have taken me a few days or maybe weeks, but I trust I would have accessed what was necessary to keep showing up to the suffering of my fellow people, particularly women. I'm also so deeply aware of how much of the harm humans perpetrate upon each other is entirely unintentional. That's not to say it's ok, but to say thank you for feeling and caring as you do and that I don't pretend that this incident "cured" me. It also may be noteworthy that, in the first trial, the person who hung the jury was a cis-gendered female. This blindness is not unique to men or male-presenting humans. *sigh*
Until all of us are willing to speak honestly about this, we’ll just shout at one another about how we would have reacted had that been us. You never know until it is happening to you. I appreciate Cal writing honestly about this. I wish more people would.
I've edited my comment & correctly pronoun'ed you Cal. Soz :)
Thank you and....the whole thing never really ends, right?....my somatic experience of being "he'd" and "him'ed" was jarring. It's so instructive to experience how it all shows up inside me/us.
Absolutely yikes. It’s a real problem when without even hearing the victims speak - you just don’t want to believe some aw shucks dude would hurt them. This is playing on the biggest screen in America now as people find out who is in the Epstein files and react with… disappointment. Yikes a go go!
Cal, through their nonprofit, Healwell, has dedicated their career to making this a reality -/ through training of massage therapists (me), educating health care practitioners and advocating for our integration. Slowly research is coming round to the power and potential of massage therapy. But with that responsibility comes access that can be abused as this therapist did. I’ve been a masssge therapist for 15 years. I’ve been propositioned countless times, and I’ve heard clients tell me about male therapists who took advantage.
Thanks for your comment, Andy and I'm glad you're getting support for your CPTSD. I wish I could say that any massage therapist will be able to meet you where you are in a trauma-informed place to support your healing in a diagnosis of CPTSD, but I can't. I also wish I could trust what massage therapists write on their websites about their training and competence, but that's not possible either. I would recommend doing some real research about the MTs training and looking into one who works specifically with people living with the symptoms of trauma. Hit me up at @laydboycal on Substack in the chat and let's noodle how to find you someone who will love you and your body in the safest way possible.
I remember watching a documentary once where a woman was missing, and her husband who was probably in his 70s was sobbing and worried for his wife. I told my mom, "I want someone to love me like that." Turns out he murdered his wife. People without a conscience make great liars.
Beautifully beautifully said! I have been taken in by a number of them myself. I came up with a theory when I was in my 20s and first had this happen that they act the part of a loving person the way they've seen it in movies and that's what we've been conditioned to expect too, so it makes all the regular people’s love feel muted in comparison. Anyway, I love this comment!
Sociopathy can be real dark. It's no wonder so many of us struggle to trust ourselves and each other.
yes.. real love is expressed differently in real life vs movies and media.. young, impressionable people beware! it involves respect and patience.. which are two valuable and must-have commodities!
I came here to write (and I will write): Such an interesting and nuanced experience. Thank you Cal for writing it and thank you Jane for publishing it.
I can see that a lot of people would be very triggered by the headline and you definitely need to read through to the end to get the whole impact of the piece: which is that 'nuance' is weaponised by patriarchy and most of the time (and I mean vastly vastly vastly most of the time), the accused SAer is guilty.
Well well said. Thank you
Thank you Jane and Cal for getting this fascinating article out. It is important for all genders to read and understand how we've all been conditioned to the patriarchy, even when we don't realize it as such.
I'm so glad you said that and thank you. It was really important to me to get this message out, too, even though it is complicated and nuanced and not an easy piece to encapsulate in a quick subject line and that maybe it won't be read by absolutely everyone for those reasons. I think it's well well worth it and your appreciation of it means a lot.