Just kidding it’s all about me. I’m so disappointed in you that I needed to take a little break from you, America.
I’ve felt a little sick all week, which is not surprising, given it’s Fall allergy season. But it’s not just the allergies that have gotten me down this week. I literally had to soak in a bath Wednesday, a luxury I haven’t enjoyed in a long time. It felt so good to show my aching body and my struggling spirit a little kindness, to give myself some intentional care. I added eucalyptus oil to help my breathing and remind me of my grandmother Walsh. She was an incredibly strong and kind and brave person.
Sometimes I have to remind myself to stay strong and brave, even when I am sickened by what’s happening around me and I just want to check out and soak in a bath. A nice bubble bath is great, of course, but it only lasts so long. And while I may feel calmer and cleaner afterward, I eventually I have to return to the gross reality that made me feel so disgusted and even dejected in the first place: an America that does not seem to care about the well being of its girls and women.
I know it only seems that way and that most Americans do, indeed, care. But as I read and listened and watched some of the news this week, I felt over and over and over again as if our ugly history of demeaning and dismissing women and the violence they endure was repeating itself right before my eyes.
And it made me sick. It made me sick as I watched my 13-year-old niece and her friends cheer for her 8th grade football team as Congress prepared to hear the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford. Don’t get me wrong. I was proud of Blasey Ford for having the courage to speak up and I am happy that my niece and the girls on her cheer squad seemed to have such good team spirit and were having fun on the sidelines.
Yet I couldn’t help but worry for their safety as my niece and her friends enter the years when girls are most vulnerable to attacks. According to the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), “ages 12-34 are the highest risk years for rape and sexual assault,” and between ages 16-19, girls and young women are “4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault, ” which is saying something, given that “every 98 seconds an American is sexually assaulted” (RAINN). In addition, “women ages 18-24 who are college students are 3 times more likely than women in general to experience sexual violence,” and women ages 18-24 “who are not enrolled in college are 4 times more likely” to be victimized.
This makes me sick. It made me sick as I attended Girls Leading Our World, Inc. (GLOW) and was reminded of how many girls, even those younger than my niece, and those who are already pursuing their dreams in college, have already had to endure assault, rape, molestation. Sexual violence has long-lasting and often devastating effects, including problems with relationships with family, friends, coworkers/classmates, depression, PTSD, suicidal thoughts, self harm, STDs, trouble focusing in school or at work, drug abuse, and more.
The way we excuse rape culture as “boys will be boys” behavior make me sick, America. It makes me want to break up with you. In fact, I declared in 2016 that I would break up with America if it actually elected that sick man we all know as Donald Trump. Granted, it took a little foreign meddling, and there are STILL 3 MILLION more of us who voted for a very different vision for our country, but you did it, America! Just enough of you voted for this odious man that I had to kind of break up with you.
I have withdrawn a bit over the past couple of years. Since the 2016 election debacle, I haven’t felt as engaged online or in my community and have even avoided engaging at times—sometimes with positive intentions for self care and sometimes because I’ve been so sad and disgusted I just don’t feel social. It became so difficult for me to relate with people who not only voted for 45 but tried to excuse and defend his inexcusable behaviors. I felt these apologists, many of whom are people I love–family members, church members, students–no longer or, apparently, never did truly respect me as a human being.
I told friends I hadn’t been so disappointed in so many Americans since Clarence Thomas was elevated to our highest court. That people I know and love could vote to elevate the brazen misogynist that is Donald Trump to our highest elected office sickens me. It literally makes me sick to my stomach.
It sickens me to see how little America has evolved when it comes to sexual violence. It’s truly inexcusable. I was 15 years old when I endured an experience very similar to Blasey Ford’s at my first “real high school party.” I was nervous and excited because a boy I thought was cute would be there. He was older but the friend who hosted was a cheerleader so she knew him from the football team.
I remember people playing cards and drinking, not just beer but liquor. Standing all of about 5’3” and weighing in around 106 pounds at the time, it did not take much to knock me off my feet. I remember going downstairs to find a bathroom. The next thing I knew, I was in complete darkness and the football player I’d thought was so cute had lifted me onto the bathroom vanity and was trying to unzip my shorts. I tried to stop him and even told him I’d thought of kissing him before but not like this. Another boy, also on the team, was in the bathroom, too, and at one point I wasn’t sure whose hands and lips were on me. Mercifully, as I’d started to feel I might black out, I heard my friend, the hostess, knocking loudly on the door and asking if I was in the bathroom.
I said, “yes” and she asked if I was okay. The boys began prompting me to tell her I was fine, tell her I was alright. I was not fine. This whole scenario was NOT FINE–not then, not ever. I said I thought I needed to go lie down because I wasn’t feeling well. Thankfully, she made the boys open the door and she took me upstairs to a bedroom where I could lie down.
Later another “cute boy on the football team,” found me passed out in the bedroom. He lied down next to me on the bed. The next thing I knew, he was on top of me, kissing me. I pressed him away and said I was sorry but it was like kissing my brother. Our parents were friends and we’d known each other since we were babies. Besides, I felt so ill and so traumatized by what had just happened. I don’t know if he knew what the other boys had done. But, unlike them, as soon as I pushed him away, he respected my choice and he left me alone. That “first real high school party” was a horrible introduction to what girls and young women all over our country experience on the regular, both then and now.
Later that awful evening, I literally became sick and vomited in my friend’s hall closet and had to come help her clean the next day. I felt so sick and ashamed and dirty and irrevocably damaged. I felt I’d never overcome the sense of shame, that I’d never feel like myself again, that I’d never feel clean or just normal.
Those who were there know who they are—and whoever they told knows, too. I didn’t speak up about that evening until years later when a terrible depression and eating disorder prompted me to seek help. This assault and other experiences of sexual assault, harassment, intimidation and discrimination over the years that followed literally made me sick. Or, rather, my reaction to them did. Though some survivors will act out because of traumatic experiences, like many girls, I turned the trauma inward, and it took me a long time to let go of self-blame and harmful patterns of self-abuse.
Some people will dismiss me right off the bat, just for “admitting” that: that I suffered with depression and an eating disorder and sought counseling for unhealthy behaviors that were not serving me. I dismiss that and say I will always try to use the tools at my disposal to help me move in a direction of progress and wellness.
Others may say what Christine Blasey Ford or other girls like her–or like me–experienced is not so bad. It’s not like we were raped, right? Some may feel it’s my fault or hers for drinking and, therefore, making ourselves more vulnerable.
I expected that kind of reaction when I was 15 and scared and didn’t have a career or a degree or a husband to make me seem credible; but apparently we women still need others to vouch for us. Back in the ’90s, I expected people to make my life even more miserable by shaming me for someone else’s behavior. I expected that in ’91 because I saw how people treated Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas.
As a 15-year-old, I didn’t tell anyone what happened when it happened because I knew it was most likely there would be no consequences for the boys who assaulted me, but my life would be “ruined.” I would be painted as a slut and a liar out to ruin those football heroes who, after all, were “just being boys.” I thought if I could just pretend the whole sickening evening never happened, then my world wouldn’t have to become so ugly. I wouldn’t have to tell my grandparents. My church and teachers wouldn’t have to know. If I could just pretend I really was fine, I really was alright, like those boys suggested, my 15-year-old self thought I could just move on with my life and it would be as if this whole disgusting, ugly assault never happened.
But, of course, that assault was just the beginning. There would be other offenses: boys sticking their hands up my shorts as I walked upstairs to get to my classes, catcalling in the halls and crude gestures and stares during lunch, asking inappropriate questions about my virginity, I could go on about the almost daily sexual harassment that I endured in high school. But I won’t. I don’t think I need to; after all, you all were there. Y’all know this $#!+ happens ALL THE TIME in America!
Apparently, we just don’t care enough about our girls, or our boys, to change it. THIS IS NOT NORMAL behavior. It’s certainly not honorable. And, yet, the pussy-grabber-in-chief remains in office, and he’s found another pussy-grabber to appoint to the Supreme Court, one who, by coincidence, has pretty much guaranteed 45 he doesn’t believe presidents should be held accountable for their actions.
Have some self respect, America! Is this truly who you want representing the best interests of ALL Americans for a LIFETIME? I mean seriously, America. WTF?! Why won’t you stand up for women and girls?
This is what the Women’s March was all about: we will not stand by in silence while you teach another generation of boys and young men that this is how honorable men behave, and we will not stand silent while you teach another generation of girls to shut up, sit down, and take it like a lady.
This wasn’t okay in ’91, and it’s not okay now. And you know it, America.
Donald Trump does not deserve to be President. He is unworthy of the office. This is a man who not only commits but brags about sexual assault. It’s no surprise he would gravitate toward the likes of Brett Kavanaugh, who seems to share Trump’s moral flexibility.
I might have been too scared to speak up in the ‘90s, but I’m a LOT older now and I’ve survived a lot more as well. So, again, America, I just won’t have the normalizing of this violent behavior by men without at least VOICING MY OBJECTION. There are plenty of men and boys who know what constitutes respect and consent. We need you to stand up more often and speak even louder!
Do not let the likes of Donald Trump and his compromised band of cronies coopt what it means to be a man. Stand up for girls, America! If we don’t learn from our history, from our collective experience, we are doomed to repeat it.