Sharon? Imma get to you in a minute, OK?
This going to be one of those narcissistic overshares that I occasionally dip into, so if you’re not interested in that maybe just skip to the end. And then tell all your friends and family how disappointed you are and make sure they all too click on the article and don’t read it. And get them all to subscribe as well. It’s the only way I’ll learn. I also accept how it heavily features somebody else as a main character, and though I’m going to obscure identities and nobody reads this blog, there’s always a chance that it will get back to them and they will recognise the situation being written about and find it triggering or traumatic. If that happens, I’ll just fucking delete it, whatever, it’s not worth causing someone else that kind of grief. This isn’t a blanket policy by the way: my ex-wife asked me to take down a post I wrote in 2021 and it’s still there, and this post is going to be way softer than that! Oh, and I should probably mention that they’ll be no suicidal ideations in this post. Sorry to disappoint you.
So anyway, it started with a photo:
A little context if you care to listen (I find myself in a shit position), and we need to go all the way back to around 2018: I had been volunteering with MRSN for around two years, and had recently just won myself funding to actually have a paid part-time job for the first time. It was one of those borderline psychocompulsion exercises to support refugees into employment, I quickly realised it was 90% nonsense like all of these ’employability’ projects that don’t actually end in employment, but these are pretty much the only charitable work that gets funded today as the country still operates under the neoliberal delusion that people don’t have jobs because they’re not trying hard/well enough and not any wider structural issues, but I digress. I got to bring in my own volunteers for the project. One of these first volunteers was Rebeccah. Rebeccah was cool, a great volunteer, smart and witty. We got on well. Maybe a year or so after Rebeccah had been volunteering at MRSN, they suggested that MRSN also take on her friend, a Spaniard called Félicette that she knew from university. Sure, why not?
I was soon extremely glad that I agreed to Rebeccah’s suggestion. Félicette started volunteering in 2019 and they were an absolute riot. Seriously laugh out loud (not just ‘lol’, which at best represents an eyebrow being raised appreciatively), but also class conscious and extremely dedicated to the cause. To be honest though, that soft SJW bollocks is very much secondary: if you can make me piss myself, I’d probably look past your central role on the board of Patriotic Alternative. They were really cool, and their presence always made work more enjoyable. It might be juvenile (hi there, have we met?), but I particularly remember one time when she was helping a client’s kid do drawings (they were really good with kids, which is a larger benefit at MRSN than you might think, what with the many single mothers we support), and the kid had drawn two big circles with smaller circles inside each of them. Félicette got a pen and labelled the drawing ‘Donut Tiddies’. I dunno, my sense of humour is equivalent to a repressed toddler, I know, but something about the way Félicette spelled ‘titties’ with two ‘D’s (a ‘double D’, if you will) really sent me.
Félicette never actually made it to MRSN to volunteer that often – perhaps less than a dozen times in total? Firstly, there was this whole fake virus that the liberal media invented just so the government could inject the world with autism that made everyone transgender, which kind of put a pause on everything for a while. Afterwards (or at the same time, or from before, I dunno, I’m not their psychiatrist. At the end of the day, I barely knew this person) Félicette really struggled with their mental health issues. I’m not going to say what they suffered from, as I don’t want any of you amateur sleuth ghouls to start debating what part that played in this story, like you’re all fucking Carl Jung because you once read a Emma Watson Instagram or some shit. Oh, and I’m also not going to say because I can’t 100% remember. But it was one of the big ones, yeah? Not chronic fatigue syndrome or IBS. They would often WhatsApp their apologies/explanations for missing volunteering, and I would always understand. This was around the same time as Self Esteem’s ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ was released, and although MRSN had a number of volunteers that also struggled with similar issues yet still made the effort to come in as much as they could, I admit that it was Félicette that I thought about when I listened to The 345 (“And I know you find it harder than your peers do”). According to the subsequent investigation, the last time Félicette volunteered at MRSN was January 2022.
Even when they weren’t physically helping out, I would still keep Félicette abreast of all the MRSN updates, and also news of local opportunities events etc that the kind of SJW cuck snowflake that would volunteer for a refugee charity might be interested in. There’s an MRSN volunteers WhatsApp group for that, but because Félicette was conscious of the effect more WhatsApp groups would have on their mental health, I sent these messages to them directly on WhatsApp. Sometime in April 2022*, while sending Félicette a big dump of opportunities that I’d recently sent to all volunteers, I also chanced upon a very funny little meme. Hey, I thought, Félicette will get a kick out of this. They’re not feeling at their best at the moment, and I reckon this will at least give them something to giggle about for a millisecond. Definitely a bit of a roflcopter. Remember ‘Donut Tiddies’? This is definitely in Félicette’s wheelhouse. Send.
(*sorry I can’t be more specific, I’ve obviously deleted the message from my chat history. Just in the nick of time! That’s actually a very funny joke for reasons that will soon become clear. It’s called ‘foreshadowing’, reading a fucking book sometime, I beg of you)
Didn’t think twice, didn’t think about it at all. It almost cost me my career. Debatably, it should have.
It was sent within a bundle of local opportunities, so while I can’t pinpoint exactly when it would have been, Félicette’s chat history would likely look like this:
[10:29]
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[10:30]
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[10:31]
beat me with your left titty
[10:32]
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Félicette didn’t actually get to the messages until June (“Apologies for the ghosting, I have been in crisis mode / poor and stressed so DMs have been hard to address.”). They replied to a few of my messages directly, they got to the ‘Baby Yoda/tit beating’ affiliation and simply replied “???”, before carrying on, finishing with the above message explaining their ghosting.
However, ten minutes after sending the ‘ghosting’ message, they returned with another message (before I had yet seen any of the conversation thread) and declared “It’s only hitting me know.. why did u send this to me? It makes me really uncomfortable”.
Around ten minutes after that I replied and apologised: “Sorry, I shouldn’t have. It made me laugh. Please disregard and sorry for making you feel uncomfortable”. I replied to another couple of their messages before stressing again how sorry I was: “Again, really sorry, thought it would make you giggle but didn’t consider how inappropriate it was. Thanks for calling me out on my bullshit”.
They never saw these messages though – haven’t seen them to this day – as they had already blocked me.
I massively regretted sending the picture, obviously, and hoped that Félicette would one day reconsider and at least give me the chance to apologise. In truth though, that was the last I properly considered her for close to a year. I guess I had that privilege. Until March 2023 when I was told a serious complaint had been made against me and It warranted serious disciplinary action.
While I was unaware of the true impact of my actions, Félicette had sent my message to Rebeccah as soon as they received it. Rebeccah agreed with Félicette that it was disgusting and that I should not be allowed to work with vulnerable people like refugees. Rebeccah urges Félicette to make an official complaint, but Félicette doesn’t initially, because, as they later say, their precarious financial and housing situation is a far more pressing issue. However, in January 2023, Félicette made an official complaint of sexual harassment to my manager. In March 2023, Félicette comes in to record an official statement. It makes for difficult reading, but I accept that it’s a valid representation of their response.
From the report, it is clear that the complainant was feeling that this message, specifically the text superimposed on the image, indicated that Alex’ was thinking of her in a sexual way, it makes her feel disgusted and unsafe to go to the office or have further contact with him, because she feels threatened and violated
Félicette drew attention to the crucial fact that I could have deleted it in the two months before they saw it. They said that me not deleting it was an “assertion of his power”. Félicette said that I had always been very friendly with her over the four years that they’d volunteered at MRSN, “which as a supervisor should’ve been a red flag, but it wasn’t at the time. Now I am concerned he was being intentionally overly friendly so he could try something like this”. Félicette said that they thought that I always treated her differently to the other volunteers, and noted that when a man is being nice to you it’s because they’re attracted to you. “I always thought his enthusiasm was genuine for the work he was doing and now I’m not so sure”.
This lead Félicette onto the wider connotations of the photo of Baby Yoda asking the receiver to beat them with their left titty. What about the more marginalised communities that I was working with? What about the people who feel powerless to raise objections? I’m seeing these people in one on one settings! What about the women? What about the children? “Is MRSN serious about protecting people?”
Félicette also mentioned that they were “generally wary of white cisgender heterosexual men abusing positions of power” and… let’s stick a pin in that for a second, OK?
I had my disciplinary meeting in May.
He was asked whether he had constructed the image i.e. purposely put the image and text together. He said he had not, that he had come across it as it was, and that it was the incongruence of the image (Baby Yoda) and the text together that had struck him as funny.
I didn’t put up any defence. I had done a dumb thing and I admitted to it being dumb. They asked me if I had any physical or mental problems at the time and I didn’t even play the disability card, just honestly answering that I couldn’t remember. I accepted how I made Félicette feel and that no arguments I could make would change that. Technically, I suppose I did put up some defence: I showed the tribunal the apologies I had made when I realised how uncomfortable I had made Félicette feel. Apologies that Félicette never saw because they immediately blocked me and deleted all of the messages I had ever sent. The tribunal also appreciated the fact that, because of this flash deletion, the only evidence of any sort in the hearing was supplied by me (in her interview, Félicette had stated that I had likely deleted all the evidence) as I had kept the entire conversation. I basically accepted that there was no getting around the fact that I’d one something bad, presented evidence that I had at least tried to apologise, and asked what my punishment would be.
I was let off with a warning. This still felt unjust to me. I didn’t want MRSN to fire me – a firing for sexual harassment would be the death of any career and the probable loss of my immigration law qualifications – but I kind of wanted to ‘jump before I was pushed’ even if afterwards MRSN briefed that I was pushed. I got interviews for other full time immigration work in cities far away from Manchester. It had made me question the way I work, it had made me question the way I am. I wanted to go far away for a long time. I was also conscious of how disappointed Félicette would be that I stayed in my post. I at least soon switched to part time so that I could work with unaccompanied asylum seeking children at Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit. I feel I must stress that I have never shown any of these children a picture of Baby Yoda asking them to slap him with their left titty.
Even if I had been sacked, I couldn’t really complain. Officially, it was gross misconduct and I couldn’t complain.
Unofficially? Well that’s what this blog’s for, innit??
First of all: I am not in anyway cheapening or delegitimising any person’s complaints about sexual harassment in the workplace. I accept that my conduct would come under that, and I accept that I deserved to be punished.
But, at the same time: come on. There is one mistake in this story that actually caused far more damage than the infamous Baby Yoda Titty Pic. It was Félicette immediately blocking me and deleting all of my messages. In doing so, they not only ensured that there would be no challenge to the situation they’d immediately reacted to in their head, but also denied her own access to the evidence. Félicette immediately decided that there was no viable explanation or excuse for what I did, and no apology could cover it. They then just liquidated any sign of the interaction ever existing, so from that point onward it would only exist in their memory. It was immediately stored in the part of their brain that processes trauma and just sat there, festering and growing more and more repugnant. Stripped of all context, stripped of all the messages we’d exchanged and all the jokes we had made, you just remember a technical supervisor sending you a picture asking you to hit them with your left titty and that’s beyond gross.
OK, I admit, to me that still sounds really funny, but I don’t have a history of being sexually objectified to deal with.
Can we get in Communism and liberalism now?
They were a lib, I was a Commie, can I make this anymore obvious?
Félicette has been completely brought up in a world that has commodified neoliberal values and paraded them on social media for her outrage dopamine glands. They’re maybe more than a decade younger than me – perhaps close to two decades – so likely doesn’t even remember a world where they weren’t always surrounded by self-affirming/self-disgusting triggers. The smartphone was invented when I was in my 20s, a post-pubescent, depressed alcoholic. It might have come out when Félicette was in secondary school. Under neoliberalism, us workers are encouraged to divide ourselves into niches and factions in order to keep us from recognising that we’re all on the same freaking side and the real enemies – the ruling class – profit from the instruments upon which we attempt to ‘cancel’ other workers! To a liberal like Félicette, there’s not even any validity in my apology. I am the ruling class. The reason that picture hit so hard wasn’t necessarily its contents, it’s because it was sent by a “white cisgender heterosexual men”. Because, to a liberal, your power comes from your identity, not from any relations to capital and production. Presumably, Félicette walks past white men sleeping in doorways and asking for change to buy a Greggs and squirms at their abuse of power, and looks mournfully at Condoleezza Rice and her heart aches for her lack of influence in the patriarchy.
“Oh, but except him! And except her!” Hey liberals, can you find a rule that is no more than 40% exceptions.
And as an aside: let’s just sit with the fact that Félicette claimed that me sending them the Baby Yoda Titty pic indicates that I am a danger to children.
OK, rant over. Félicette was right to complain, I was right to be punished. We never heard from each other again and that’s that.
Apart from I did hear from Rebeccah.
In August they contacted me on WhatsApp. “I was wondering if you’d mind me putting you as a reference? No worries if not, I know it’s been a while!” Félicette wasn’t mentioned. Here was my chance, here was when I could enact some sort of revenge! Rebeccah was applying for a dream job in the Americas and I could fuck them up! Bwa-haha! This particular act will be served ice cold!
Nah, I gave them the reference immediately. They’re a brilliant worker! Smart and witty, remember? What, I’m going to punish Rebeccah for supporting their friend?? Get the GTFO outta here!
Soon after. Rebeccah told me that they got the job: “That’s amazing news, I’m so pleased for you and (in a non patronising way) proud of you, you’ve really earned this and I hope you have an amazing time”, I replied.
Shit! Sharon van Etten though, yeah? The 10th 11th anniversary of her third album gives a fifth Necessary Evil entry (and just that elusive debut album away from Gold Star status). It’s amazing, of course. For the longest time I considered it a slight step back from the previous album ‘Epic’, but listening to it again more closely in preparation for (the paragraph I’m going to write on) this entry, I realised that the fucker is banger after banger after banger. maybe I was just pandered to with the whole ‘other artists doing covers’ aspect of ‘Epic Ten’?? Whatever, I don’t need to choose between them until she’s Gold Star and I have to rank them.
Sorry, Sharon, that’s all you’re getting. Been busy.
2022 #9, 2021 #16, 2019 #8, 2014 #3
Yeah, she only misses the top ten with rereleases. She does alright, does Sharon.
Necessary Evil 
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