LET TERS
RELISH THE OPPORTUNITY
Pickleball vs. Tennis (EW, 7/5): If Buzz
Summers says pickleball is about finesse
and strategy, and tennis is about power and
pace, it must be true. Buzz won national
championships in both sports.
Of course, there is a lot to learn in
tennis before you get to power. I played
pickleball once. It was easy, I had fun and
it was a decent workout.
Buzz said it best when he said, if you
want to learn pickleball, give me two
hours. If you want to learn tennis, give me
two years. Just like racketball took over the
four-wall handball courts, pickleball will
take over the tennis courts.
Norman Bellitt
Springfield
PRESIDENTIAL COMPOST
Many of my fellow citizens rue the tri-
umph of Trump — his style of pre-emptive
prevarication, his fraudulent contributions to
the commonwealth. I argue that big D’s his-
torical significance should not be overlooked.
I think he will be remembered as the
Great Composter of institutions that cer-
tainly needed to be composted.
An organic gardener knows the value of
VIEWPOINT
compost, the ripe teeming rot of decompo-
sition. It is where the treasures of regenera-
tion are born, the black soil that grows the
gorgeous tomato and the juicy golden corn.
So it is with institutions. They need to
be broken down so that new life can be
cultivated from the fertile muck of their
residue. Such institutions like the State De-
partment and the FBI are examples.
I don’t know your opinion of these in-
stitutions, but the past 50 years of their ac-
tivities has not resulted in many gorgeous
tomatoes or golden ears of corn. Despite
their amply remunerated talent, in fact,
the institutions themselves have become
pathological.
So citizen gardeners like myself plan
the season. We ask ourselves how best to
utilize the disintegrating components to
grow the good stuff.
David Hugh Tyson
Eugene
DIRTY POLITICS
Summertime is upon us, and most of
Eugene is vacationing or busy preparing
to attend or work at the Country Fair. City
Manager John Ruiz is also busy, conduct-
ing a bit of political railroading that he
hopes to slip through while we are all dis-
tracted with other pursuits.
The downtown smoking ban, twice de-
feated by enormous public outcry in oppo-
sition, was sneakily inserted into the city
agenda again — added the Friday before
Monday’s meeting and quickly forwarded
to be voted on July 23, the council’s last
meeting before they take a long summer
vacation of their own.
I manage a market downtown and to my
knowledge no business owners or residents
in the affected downtown core were contact-
ed about their opinions on the issue, perhaps
because we previously said “no” to the ban.
Legally mandated public comment is
slated for the day after Country Fair, by
design — the city manager and council
clearly don’t want to hear from the public,
and so plan to do so when no one can at-
tend to express opinion.
The ban creates an unfair exclusion
zone that will adversely affect already tee-
tering downtown businesses. As there is
a vaguely defined “opt-out” clause in the
proposal, allow me to propose that all of
downtown wishes to opt out now.
Too bad there is no such clause to opt
out of our out of control city manager!
Jeffrey S Keim
Eugene
DON’T BLAME RALPH
Can we please stop repeating the lies about
Ralph Nader’s costing Al Gore the election?
Had Nader not run, Bush would have
won by more in Florida. CNN’s exit poll
showed Bush at 49 percent and Gore at 47
percent, with 2 percent not voting in a hy-
pothetical Nader-less Florida race.
Not to mention: Gore lost his home state
of Tennessee, Bill Clinton’s Arkansas and
traditionally Democratic West Virginia; with
any one of these, Gore would have won.
And then there’s the 5-4 Supreme Court
decision that stopped the vote counting
that favored a Gore victory. Gore simply
was not a strong enough candidate.
Jim Flynn
Springfield
YOUR COUNTRY ON DRUGS
Immigration will not be resolved by
begging and appealing to selfish people.
There are one billion people in the Ameri-
can continent; one third of them are in the
U.S. and the other 670,000,000 are in the
rest of the Americas.
Letting everybody come addresses
the symptoms instead of tackling the root
problems.
BY BERNARDO
Yes, There are Men in Eugene
WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED UNWANTED SEXUAL CONTACT
M
any of us men in Eugene cheer on the #MeToo Movement. Some
of us men have special, private reasons we are encouraged, because
we have experienced unwanted sexual contact, often as children.
Women survivors speaking up help many in our society who are
marginalized.
In April, my wife and I attended an important community gathering in Eugene
— Addressing the #MeToo Movement: What Men And Our Community Can Do To
Prevent Sexual Violence. The good-sized turnout at St. Thomas Episcopal Church lis-
tened to community leaders, and then we held small group discussions.
This event was sponsored by The McKenzie River Men’s Center, Sexual Assault
Support Services, and the Center for Community Counseling, but my essay only
speaks for me.
Thanks #MeToo. It’s past the time that our whole community to speak up and sup-
port you.
• • •
In 2018 the media have run a lot of stories about sexual assault of women. It is
about time that there is more attention to this harm. This movement led by courageous
women helps in some unexpected ways.
As I look around at my weekly support group, we are all men who survived harmful
and inappropriate sexual contact. Male survivors of sexual assault are largely invisible.
I will use this pseudonym of “Bernardo” because it still does not feel safe to use my
real name. For example, my family has not yet addressed this issue, and some might
be surprised.
The #MeToo Movement has provided support for addressing these issues.
Now I am at retirement age, but more than 50 years ago, when I was about 8 or 9,
a close adult male relative would enter my bedroom in the morning, and while I lay on
my stomach, he would lie on top of me. I felt pinned down, and this lasted for several
minutes. He would make jokes about sex, for example talking about male erections in
the morning, which I did not know about at all. These inappropriate events happened
many weekend mornings.
Thankfully, this inappropriate activity did not become as violent as rape or even
direct body-to-body naked contact. However, this intrusive and negative behavior
happened repeatedly. At the time, of course, it did not feel good. For decades later, I
looked back at these experiences as harmful. It seemed that at that time, I lost a type of
innocence, and began to feel guilty just for existing.
Also, this negative activity illustrates a hidden iceberg of ways that learning about
4
July 19, 2018 • eugeneweekly.com
intimacy could have been healthier.
Yes, I realize that some of the reports in the media describe far worse sexual abuse.
However, certainly considering my age, my abuse was as or more serious than some of
the media reports. In any case, I have learned that one cannot rank abuse. Each person
responds differently.
Unfortunately, there is an odd double standard for boys who survived sexual as-
sault. When the perpetrator is a man, the abuse seems more clear. But whether the
abuser is a man or woman, a child survivor is robbed by a person with power over
them.
Eugene has a great resource for men who have experienced unwanted sexual con-
tact. Each week the well-respected nonprofit Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS)
holds a drop-in mutual support group for us. I have been going for a few months to a
comfortable space in the SASS building over by 19th and Jefferson Street.
The group is led by two wonderful and professional counselors. One, Rebecca Rob-
inson, wrote her 2017 master’s thesis on male sexual abuse survivors. She wrote, “An
often surprising percentage of the sexual assault survivors are men. These men deserve
counseling and support from informed therapists who understand how the effects of
the traumatic experience, and their recovery journey connected to this trauma looks
different for them.”
Another counselor helping to lead our group is finishing her thesis on the same
subject, and recently held a seminar for working counselors on this topic. The fact that
our SASS group therapists are both female actually adds to the value of this group. It
is nice to have allies. Thanks, and thanks SASS!
While of course this group is confidential, I can say that there is a wide diversity of
abuse, often hidden.
As a drop-in support group, participants do not have to commit to attend. We can
decide at the last minute. At least one member waited in his car for a while and finally
entered. If you are an adult guy in Lane County who has experienced unwanted sexual
contact, you are invited to attend this support group.
We have been few in numbers, so I hope this valuable service continues. I have got-
ten a lot of support and healing here. I personally appreciate the #MeToo Movement
for shining more of a light on this under-recognized subject.
For more information, go to the SASS web page at sass-lane.org. I can be emailed privately, via my pseudonym:
bernardo-survivor@protonmail.com. This essay has just been included in Reclaim//Reclama, a 24-page publication
highlighting the stories and artwork of survivors from all walks of life throughout the state of Oregon. The magazine
was published earlier this spring by the nonprofit Sexual Assault Resource Center of Portland, sarcoregon.org