It was close to 11 when we drove down to the bar where we planned to meet with Autumn's first rapist. We made no plans to broach that subject with him. The two of them, through a lot of painful work, had managed to reconcile their relationship into some kind of friendship. I took my whiskey sour out onto the back porch where Autumn had already left to meet him. Talk was leisurely, lots of catching up, stories of where they’ve been since last seeing each other.

 

At one point, I found myself so caught up in the conversation that when I reminded myself of what this man did to Autumn, I felt myself quietly wrestle my feelings down and not disturb the current scene. It was neither my place to address that or ask them both in that moment to confront the way I felt, and it was easy not to call attention to it. I quietly sipped on my dwindling drink—mostly ice now. Eventually I was able to engage back into the conversation, and we were perfectly affable until it was nearing one in the morning.

 

Afterwards, we decided to drive to Capital University. Autumn had talked so much about the university, that the picture in my head wasn’t much different from the actual campus. It was a small, upper middle-class looking campus. Next to a seminary school for Lutherans. The school had the largest piece of the Berlin Wall in North America which stood in its own little plaza. The slab of the wall covered in graffiti and feeling then like an obelisk.

 

Autumn asked me what my impressions were. I quietly thought for the first time in a long time about the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, a space with my own collected trauma, but in the moment I didn’t mention it. The two weren’t quite similar, but I knew how a small school could impact you. You felt deeply connected to everything that happened at the institution, which meant when something bad did happen it was inescapable and impossible to avoid. In Autumn’s case, this meant it was impossible to exist in the space her rapist occupied without also seeing him on a day to day basis. It meant being reminded of the institutional agents who fucked her over.

We walked along one edge of the university when we started recording. I brought the conversation to the rape by discussing my impressions of hanging out with her rapists. We crossed a street and I let her talk. Listening carefully. All of this story I’d heard from Autumn at one time or another, it wasn’t new to me, and the act of telling me wasn’t perhaps going to put her in a location of pain where we might have to stop. But I could also tell, as we walked and talked, that this was work for her. A sort of work that would eventually grow exhausting before everything could possibly be said and unpacked.

We took a seat at a bench, and she discussed the process after the rape. I mostly stayed quiet. I won’t describe that story because it is hers to tell. But I was glad I we were out at 1:40 in the morning discussing this with no one around but the occasional car passing down the street in front of us. It felt safe. We kept a level of intimacy that allowed her to speak on what she wanted to, I only asked one question and only because it was something I felt was important. The issue of consent would be a constant thing to keep in mind on this trip. Anything we chose to do with her research needed to constantly be reaffirmed with her consent. Her consent to share certain details, to not share others. I wanted to be mindful of constantly asking, “Is this okay to talk about? Are you able to do this?”

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To not be vigilant about this consent is to make the assumption that my research partner can do the work, that the work is not endangering them. There is a very subtle coercion our field engenders, where the work is more valuable than our personal feelings and we should be able to divorce the two. The classic mind severed from matter that western male logics reinforce in the way we engage in our work constantly. “The white western patriarchal ordering of things requires that we believe there is an inherent conflict between what we feel and what we think… We are easier to control when one part of our selves is split from another, fragmented, off balance” (Bereano, Sister Outsider). As a then identifying white male treading this space with Autumn, the biggest reason I sought to reaffirm her consent to make sure I’m not asking her to split emotion and feeling from thinking. An ethics of care requires never demanding our colleagues to split themselves so they can do the “work” their research might require. For it is in the splitting that we dehumanize and alienate ourselves from the important labor our colleagues engage in.

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The tools of ideological control begin where we repress the pain, anger, loss, and every other difficult emotion that others might deem as delegitimizing our work. We all have an ethical responsibility to see these emotions as valid as what might be deemed as “objective” even when the anger is directed at us. When it comes to working through trauma, this is doubly important. Colleagues who must work through or bring their trauma into their work are doing double the labor of someone in an empirical study. Not only must they make “knowledge” out of the experience, they must also process it emotionally.

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I told Autumn after the recording that while I did not feel she was in any danger of breaking down and weeping, I could feel the weight in her voice as she moved into these details. I felt that work in her voice. I insisted treating her to some food. We worked through some self-care. After the work of sharing that story, I recognized my role as not just comforting her, but giving her the space to rest. It is one thing for a colleague to pat a peer on the shoulder and share condolences, it is another to make the active decision to ask what their needs are in the moment, to seek their consent and trust before trying to help them. We went through a Rally’s drive-through, ordered milkshakes and fries and talked about other things as we drove back to her parents’ house. By now it was past 2 in the morning and neither of us would get to sleep until 3. The process of my being there was only to make sure the work she was doing would be more possible for her. I wanted her to see that I saw the effort it took for her to do and say these things and share these stories in the way she did, and make sure there was a space for her to engage with this work safely and on her own terms.