Becoming Mother

A book and a blog for first-time mothers

Tag: sexual assault

October 10, 2018

Elon, Take Me Away

Elon,

After this last month of news that American women have had, I think I can safely say…

Take me away in your spaceship to the stars.

 

I haven’t always been interested in space travel.

Truth be told, I’ve only recently found the idea very appealing.

I’m pretty sure the strong desire to leave this planet is emanating from a deep sense of doubt in humanity’s ability to overturn–or at the very least disrupt–rampant systems of oppression.

  • Women continue to not be believed when they are sexually assaulted. Or if they are believed, their pain isn’t important enough to actually change political will.
  • Wall Street continues to do its ludicrous work even though it robbed American taxpayers out of trillions of dollars.
  • Gerrymandering continues to silence and marginalize the most vulnerable.
  • Refugees and immigrants continue to be the scapegoats for every imaginable social ill.
  • Trump. Trump. And Trump.

I could go on. I won’t. I’m sure you’re familiar with the issues.

And so. Here we are. Women are told to vote (assuming our vote makes a difference–it doesn’t always). We are told to run for office (assuming we have the means and support to do so).

Sure, I’ll vote. I always do.

But in the meantime, if I’m really being serious, I have more faith that you can get us off this planet than I do in the American electorate’s ability to consistently move our country forward. Climate change is happening fast and if we’re still having arguments about whether or not it exists…

Is that sad or cynical? Maybe.

Or it could just be a logical estimation of the possibility that enough people who disagree with the direction of the country will actually be motivated enough to travel to a polling place and cast a ballot.

Societies are slow to change.

For most of human existence, patriarchy has been systemically and structurally embedded in society after society. (Precious few have managed to organize society differently.) Now that many of the factors that originally led to the necessity of patriarchal societies have been altered (division of labor, access to education, etc.), those same underlying assumptions that supported patriarchy are being either called into question or actively fought against.

Yes, societies are so, so slow to change.

Unless, that is, the people in those societies are taken out of their cultural context–and planted somewhere else.

This is one of the reasons why New Zealand and Australia were the first nations in which women gained the right to vote (1893 and 1902, respectively). European settlers (or invaders, from the indigenous people’s perspective), removed from their previous cultural context and banding together to build a life in a new land, were suddenly very flexible on the issue of women’s rights.

Women were, in fact, key to building these societies.

The same happened in the United States.

Women in the U.S. first gained the right to vote in…Wyoming.

And so, Elon, it’s not so crazy to believe that hitching my wagon to your star is, ultimately, quite feminist.

Might I suggest that our new civilization have some political structure where 50% of positions of power are necessarily occupied by women?

Just a thought.

***

I know people have called you erratic for smoking pot on Joe Rogan’s show…

Really? That was the main takeaway?

You talked about so many more interesting topics than that, like your vision that AI could be used as a tertiary level of cognition. And the fact that everything we put on the Internet is “a projection of our limbic system.” (Mind. Blown.)

I watched the whole thing (in 10-20 minute snippets over the period of a whole week while I folded laundry, graded papers, and ate lunch at my desk while simultaneously answering emails…).

I think you’re magical.

PayPal wasn’t your passion. It was just a $100 million thing you did so you could sink money into what really interested you: developing real plans for getting humanity off this planet (since we haven’t mustered enough political will to seriously try to figure out how to stop completely trashing it.)

You create electric cars that can drive themselves.

You build rockets that can take off–and land back on Earth.

You dig holes to develop a futuristic hyperloop that someday might take us across the country in like, 10 minutes, or something obscenely fast.

You create solar panels for roofs and electric semi-trucks that can haul the entire weight of a diesel truck–Uphill.

And you talk about the future with not only hope, but confidence.

 

I dig it.

You’ve made me a believer.

When I saw Interstellar, I thought, “Okay, if I were living on a spaceship that is basically a moving city, I could totally be sold on the idea of leaving Earth.”

Let’s leave behind a world that makes fun of science and learning and instead, embraces curiosity, courage, and the path less traveled (or never traveled, as the case may be).

Let’s try once more to make a different world where systems of oppression don’t emerge because of our lack of resources, tribalism, and ingrained patriarchy.

Let’s colonize, Elon. (#commassavelives)

Elon musk 2

***

Maybe you can’t tell, but I have a celebrity-crush on you. One of those crushes that you have for famous people that you’ll never meet in real life, but somehow you still think that maybe there’s the very minuscule possibility that our paths could cross… And if they did…

Nah.

You probably have a girlfriend. That’s cool.

I’m married. To a very great man, at that. He is extremely smart, too. He had me at his tattoo of the Golden Ratio.

(Can he come, too? Oh, and maybe my two kids? I swear I’m raising them to be decent human beings.)

Your achievements have come up in conversations among our friends, many of whom are engineers. I’m pretty sure my husband’s words were, That dude doesn’t care about money and he’s just crazy enough that he might actually succeed.

Admittedly, I am not a scientist or engineer. I did well in high school biology, physics, and chemistry (I excelled at balancing formulas.) I struggled in algebra, but I loved geometry (Proofs were fun.) But science and math were really not my thing although I have tons of respect for those who live and breathe those fields.

But your new world is going to need more than scientists and engineers who can help take us into the future.

It’s also going to need people who can make sense of our past.

We need stories to help us understand who we are and where we’re going. I am quite certain that without stories, humanity is lost. Human beings need storytellers.

I am a storyteller.

And I am full of stories.

I have other qualities that make me a good addition to your “space-bearing civilization.”

  • I am curious and I love to learn. I changed my major in college to linguistics because concepts like a universal grammar and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis fascinated me. (Arrival was an amazing movie on several different levels.) Also, I loved the rule-governed nature of phonology, morphology, and syntax.
  • I’m down-to-earth (merely a figure of speech, I assure you), persistent, and hard-working.
  • I balance life between being driven by outcomes and diving into creativity for creativity’s sake.
  • I enjoy a good pun.

My special talents include:

  • writing
  • teaching
  • knitting
  • speaking in cartoon-ish voices
  • gestating life well past 40 weeks (for a few more years)
  • giving birth with no drugs

Thanks for giving me hope that as a species, we may not be doomed to a future in which misogynistic, narcissistic, entitled men are necessarily destined to rule this planet indefinitely, to the detriment of the vulnerable and voiceless.

People like you make me remember that there are many people in the world who are trying to improve the planet and preserve the longevity of our kind.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. Can we please leave Mitch McConnell and his ilk behind? Much appreciated.

 

And oh, and this is AMAZING.

 

And for those of you who didn’t immediately get the reference in the title…

 

2 Comments
September 29, 2018

Republicans: It’s All About Protecting Unborn Life, Right?

A few warnings:

I kind of ramble in this post. Forgive me for that. It’s very hard to create any coherent stream of thought in regard to this thick web of issues that have become impossible to disentangle as we talk about today’s current events.

If you prefer not to read a woman writing in an “unladylike” manner, now’s the time to close this page.

Call me bitchy. Or unladylike. Whatever.

Like many other women my age, you can’t shame me for not being ladylike.

Because we have seen that being the good girl often doesn’t get you ahead and it sure as hell doesn’t get you heard.

So if you’re still here, allow me to bitch away.

***

Republicans,

You’ve got a problem. With women, specifically.

You do realize that 50% of this country is women right? You do realize that women vote, don’t you? You do realize that younger women (a.k.a. the future electorate) are more likely to believe that women are not to blame for their own sexual assaults, right?

I don’t think you do. I think you’re still banking on the idea that there are enough people in this country that aren’t completely offended by your support, nay, your approval, of a man who has been accused of sexual assault by three different women.

But why should it matter to you?

After all, 19 women accused Trump of sexual assault and harassment, and “the American people” still elected him.

Right?

Your political calculation is pretty clear to me.

You have been so, so very eager to get to the godly business of making sure that women can’t have abortions. Ever, if possible.

(At least, that’s the cover story. I’m fairly certain your fervent support of Kavanaugh has more to do with your expectations about how he’ll rule on matters of political finance and other much more boring, but far more pernicious, topics that don’t captivate the attention and ire of millions of Americans.)

No. You are very eager to “protect the unborn.”

***

That’s still what all of this is about, right?

Protecting unborn life is the reason that you’re willing to promote a man who is accused of sexual assault by three women to the Supreme Court.

(Excuse me for a moment: My brain just threw up…)

That’s why millions of us watched Christine Blasey-Ford’s worst nightmare come true on live TV. That’s why we all tuned in to see what Brett Kavanaugh had to say about the accusations.

We’re in this political maelstrom because Judge Kavanaugh may be the deciding vote on future court cases that may overturn or severely chip away the protections of Roe v. Wade.

In short, what you, Republicans, are saying is that the rights of the unborn are decidedly much more sympathetic compared to the rights of women who have been sexually assaulted.

But today, many young women see attacks on Roe v. Wade as what they really are: attempts to control women’s sexuality and their bodies. 

Maybe you’ve noticed lately that women in their 20s and 30s and 40s are not so easily shamed anymore by the old, “You don’t want to be a bad girl, do you?” playbook.

That has to be hard: to know that the women are becoming more impervious to the blows that knocked previous generations down far quicker and for far longer.

Today’s women get up much faster. They speak out much more.

And we aren’t going away.

***

Republicans,

Let me lay it out for you in the simplest terms possible (because I assume you are skimming. You’re busy. I get it. #MomLife)

You suck at making policies that help women.

(Probably because so many of you are Men-Who-Cannot-Imagine-the-World-Through-the-Eyes-of-Women.)

This is what is so frustrating about the Republican platform. Your campaign messages champion upholding family values, strengthening the economy, and keeping government small, but your political actions aim to create a very different reality for all of us. 

Republicans, your track record is awful. Let me count the ways.

You hurt women by admitting that Blasey-Ford’s testimony was heart-wrenching and credible… but she still must be mistaken about who her attacker was.

You hurt girls by insisting that sexual assault committed by teenage boys is just “horseplay” or “roughhousing” and that men shouldn’t be accountable for the actions that they commit in high school.

But let’s not forget all of your…

Favorite Hits of Ways to Hurt Families:

You hurt families by cutting spending on education and forcing teachers into unspeakable working conditions. And then appointing Betsy DeVos. (Sigh).

You hurt families by cutting Medicaid even though most of your constituents depend on it.

You hurt families by cutting food stamps or raising the work requirements for those receiving welfare.

(Haven’t you heard unemployment is at an all-time low? What’s wrong with you? Go get an $8 an hour job to support your four kids, you Low Life! In fact, go get three of those jobs just so you can make ends meet and never see your kids. What? You can’t get enough hours in one place to qualify for health insurance? Guess you should have thought about that before you had four kids! Why didn’t you use birth control? Well, whose fault is it that you can’t afford it? It’s not the government’s responsibility to make it affordable for you to have birth control. Just stop sleeping with your husband or make him wrap it up. That shouldn’t be too hard, right? Take some responsibility for your reproductive powers!)

…is the message that seems to come together in a person’s brain when they consider the barrage of “typical conservative things to say in an argument.”

You hurt families by saying nothing when the leader of your party allowed children, toddlers, and babies to be taken from their parents’ arms when they came to the border seeking asylum from violence, blamed Democrats for the problem, backtracked, refused to accept responsibility for his actions (does he ever?), and then left our government bureaucracy to clean up his mess. (Oh, right. Sorry. Immigrants don’t count as “real families,” right? Feel free to disregard this point.)

But, remember, you also hurt the working poor by applauding Trump’s efforts to “blow up” Obamacare, even though it’s providing crucial health care for dying coal miners.

***

But what hurts the most today, in this moment, is that you hurt families by using women’s bodies as a political weapon.

And make no mistake–chipping away women’s rights hurts families.

But you care about protecting the unborn.

Right.

***

Does it scare you?

The very noticeable fact that…

We are on to you.

Who are we?

Women.

Women who work full-time, part-time, all-the-time.

Women who still make less money then men who do the same work (thanks to the cultural dilemma of gender in salary negotiations).

Women who pay taxes.

Women who still don’t have any nationwide guaranteed parental leave after giving birth.

Women who give birth in a country with unreasonably high maternal mortality compared to other developed countries.

Women who spend half of their salary on DAYCARE just so they can go to work. (Citation: Me).

Women who raise kids by themselves, with their with a partner, with cobbled-together daycare and babysitting, with parents, with friends when the sitter is sick.

Women who are routinely passed over for promotions based on the assumption that, because they’re mothers, they’re probably “more family-focused” at this point in their careers. (Never considering that those same families would probably benefit greatly from their mother’s promotion.)

We’re women who run PTOs.

And women who run for political office.

Women who do the grocery shopping, the oil changes, the doctor’s appointments, the RVSPs, the thank you cards, the school pictures, the flu shots, the pharmacy pick-ups, the fundraisers, the endless permission slips and photo releases and medical forms.

We’re almost always the ones that get called at work when a child is sick. And we’re often the ones who end up staying home with them.

We’re women.

Educated. News-watching. Well-read. Thinking. Talking. Podcasting. Blogging. Campaigning. Running. Voting. Women.

Republicans, you’re the first to talk about how expensive universal preschool would be or how un-American subsidized daycare would be, or how much guaranteed paid parental leave would hurt business…

In short, you sure know how to make women feel unusual, unwelcome, and burdensome.

But you’re welcome–for giving birth to your future tax-paying citizens.

(Can we please not pretend that our birthing and raising of children has no economic value? Since, apparently, that’s all you seem to care about. Oh right. No. You also care about “protecting unborn life.” And “born life?” That’s my responsibility. I’ve got it. Thanks for the clarification.)

***

I watched both of their testimonies.

And I believe her.

I. Believe. Her.

I think it’s clear that Ford is not some manufactured pawn in a widespread liberal conspiracy.

I also believe that Kavanaugh is furious that his family and his credibility are being raked through the mud now. (Maybe he grew up over the years? Maybe he’s different? Maybe he’s the same aggressive drunk that he was in high school? Hard to say. Maybe the hard-won FBI investigation will help clarify?)

And I believe that Kavanaugh is furious that Christine Blasey Ford is so credible and that his big chance of having his greatest dreams realized is coming crashing down all because he acted like a giant douche in high school.

Is that really so hard to believe that Brett Kavanaugh may have done these horrible things to girls and women?

Not for me, it isn’t. And I don’t think it’s hard for many women. We all remember guys just like him in our high schools. We remember similar jokes circulating in school about boys who joined the “Name of Girl” club, as a way to mark their sexual conquests.

We remember the college parties where some entitled, rich White guy drank way too much and thought shoving his penis in women’s faces was funny.

The more we’ve heard about Kavanaugh’s yearbook and the nicknames, the more we remember how small and dirty we felt when we received the jokes, the taunts, the “innocent” slaps or pinches, the touches.

And for some of us, we remember the groping. The assault. The rape.

All of us remember the shame, the shame, the shame.

I hope it’s all worth it to you, Republicans: the loss of confidence, indeed, the complete betrayal that women all over this country are feeling right now.

(And the women who don’t feel betrayed are still playing by your Good Girl playbook.)

But that’s not what angers me the most.

***

What angers me the most is that you hurt of all these people…

…and still most White evangelical Christians support your party.

Because, apparently, they believe that everything else is secondary to the primary goal of…

…protecting unborn life.

God works in mysterious ways…Who’s to say that Donald Trump isn’t a vessel that God is using to accomplish his purpose of ending abortion in this country?

… is a maddening rationalization of every abhorrent thing that our president has ever done and will do.

As a former evangelical Christian, this reasoning doesn’t surprise me.

But as a progressive Christian now, this logic absolutely disgusts me.

Republicans,

When you write policy against and vote against the poor and the vulnerable and the voiceless, you don’t represent the God’s love.

And it’s embarrassing for you to claim that you do.

But what do you care?

You’ll still be able to pay for an underground abortion if your wife finds out at 16 weeks that her baby has anencephaly and she’s already grieving for her child and you don’t want her to continue to carry the pregnancy, give birth, and watch her child die in her arms.

You’ll still be able to secure an abortion if, one day, your daughter really needs one–because she doesn’t want to raise a child with her prom date just because he didn’t have a condom and you thought she wasn’t old enough for the pill yet. (And the whole experience puzzles you because, it’s weird. Your daughter isn’t usually the kind of girl that gets in trouble like this. It’s not like she’s a slut, like the girls that this usually happens to. Right?)

But for me, you have crossed the point of no return on this.

You will never win my vote back. Ever.

Oh, it’s true, I was pretty sure that I’d never, ever vote Republican again after Trump was elected even though the entire country heard his raspy, old codger’s voice saying, grab ’em by the pussy. 

But presidents aren’t elected for life.

So, never again.

You will never win my vote back. All because of your lack of empathy and foresight.

Because for you, the possibility of overturning Roe v. Wade was such a juicy prize that you were willing to steamroll right over the bodies of dozens of women and their claims of sexual assault.

But I wish you had courage to say what you really mean.

(Courage: Maybe you are familiar with the concept? It’s what Blasey-Ford demonstrated when she talked about her trauma, live, in front of a national audience.)

So, yes, I wish you had the courage to say what you really mean:

You don’t trust women.

Deep down, maybe you think women are conniving, manipulative, back-stabbing, selfish, and left unrestrained, whorish.

(Not the ones that you know, of course, but other women, definitely. You see it happen all the time.)

Deep down, maybe you think women need these laws to stay in place. To keep them from sleeping around and being sluts. Deep down, maybe you think that these laws will actually stop abortions from happening. Deep down, maybe you think that these laws will actually stop women from having sex with men with whom they don’t intend to have a family. (Or being raped by men with whom they don’t intend to start a family.)

Just kidding. Women can’t get pregnant by a “legitimate rape,” right?

But let’s be real.

Outlawing abortions won’t stop them from happening. Did Prohibition work? Nope. Instead, we got mafia and bootleggers. Did making marijuana illegal work? Nope. Just ask Jeff Sessions.

Or let’s turn to guns, your other favorite issue. Did making the AR-15 illegal work?

Oh, right. Just kidding. We would never dream of making a semi-automatic rifle illegal. That’s our constitutional American right. Right, Brett Kavanaugh?

But the right for women to control what happens to their bodies?

Nah, that’s not theirs to decide.

What happens in a woman’s body is no one’s business but the government’s.

Unless she’s assaulted by a future Supreme Court nominee.

Then what happened to her body is the business of the entire country.

It’s our right to be able to judge for ourselves how traumatized she really is.

It’s our right to be able to compare ourselves to Blasey-Ford and insist that we would definitely report a real sexual assault and speculate about the gaps in her testimony.

It’s our right to be able to hear all the details of the assault from both sides and decide that, ultimately, we’ll never know who’s telling the truth (and an FBI investigation would just take too much time and the Blue Wave is coming…), so let’s just quickly vote on this guy (even though we blocked Obama from having his SCOTUS nominee) so we don’t lose our chance to…

…protect unborn life.

Right?

I think I’ve got it now. Thanks for listening.

It all makes so much more sense now that I’ve written it out.

Supreme court

7 Comments
June 6, 2016

Brock Turner: It’s Time to Call it Rape

Let me begin with the unusual statement that I have a lot of compassion in my heart for people who have been accused of doing the wrong thing.

Because it has happened to people I know–both friends and family.

Some of them did indeed do the wrong thing. Some of them didn’t.

I won’t detail this out here, but I’ve had been involved in a number of different situations in which people I love have been caught in the justice system for something they’ve done or something they’ve been accused of doing.

So trust me when I say that I am capable of practicing compassion for the accused and the offender.

But I have not been able to access my compassion in this case.

Because he clearly raped her.

And he has not said that he is sorry for raping her.

brock turner

***

For the last five years, stories of campus sexual assaults and the egregious cover-ups by university officials has been a hot topic, especially when they involve college athletes. Each time another university is put in the spotlight (see Baylor University for the most recent example), I have renewed hope that we are moving a little closer to finally taking violence against women seriously.

And then Brock Turner’s sentencing hearing happened.

The facts of this case are deplorable.

  • The victim was unconscious.
  • Turner took her behind a dumpster and raped her with foreign objects, his hands, and debris.
  • Two Stanford graduate students caught him in the act, pursued him when he ran away, and held him down until the police arrived.
  • The victim was covered in physical evidence of the attack.
  • The physical evidence was carefully catalogued and photographed.
  • He was there. He was caught. The crime he committed was called rape.

And then add these additional facts that trouble me.

  • Turner was sentenced to 6 months in jail (not prison–a world of difference), but can be released in 3 months.
  • The judge’s rationale for the short sentence was that he didn’t want to “severely harm” Turner.
  • Turner’s own letter to the judge expresses his remorse over getting drunk. Not over raping an unconscious woman.
  • Turner is from my hometown, Dayton, Ohio.

But I think I understand why he has not expressed remorse for raping.

His own father cannot see his son’s actions as violent or deserving of serious punishment. Turner’s father wrote this letter, in which he says that

These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways.

(The verdicts? Not the rape? Not the year-long trial?)

He then states that his son…

…has never been violent to anyone, including his action on the night of January 17th 2015.

(Raping a woman isn’t violent? Interesting…)

And that spending time behind bars…

…is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.

(Hmm… But during that 20 minutes, he raped someone. You can also commit a lot of other heinous crimes in under 20 minutes.)

If his father is articulating these thoughts on paper, it’s probably a safe assumption that these words open a window into this family’s discourse surrounding Brock’s crime. If his own family won’t call his actions “criminal,” then it makes sense that Brock won’t call his actions criminal.

If everyone around you creates a reality in which your main error was drinking too much, then you begin to believe, Yeah, that’s where I went wrong. I drank too much. I mean, a lot of people drink too much, so what’s the big deal? Anyone else could have been caught in the same situation as me if they drank too much.

And that’s how the rationalizations happen.

***

As infuriating as the father’s comments are, I understand that they are coming from a parent who is struggling to find a way to love his son and admit that his son has committed a terrible crime.

Everything in our society trains us to hate people who commit crimes. It’s seemingly incompatible with our ability to love. So I understand that it’s a kind of family preservation to downplay the severity of their son’s crimes in order to preserve their love for him.

In his landmark book Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon writes about exceptional relationships between parents and children, including parents of children who commit crimes. He says,

Families of criminals often struggle both to admit that their child has done something destructive, and to continue to love him anyway. Some give up love; some blind themselves to the bad behavior.

The ideal of doing neither of those things borrows from the idea of loving the sinner while hating the sin, but sinners and sins cannot so easily be separated; if human beings love sinners, we love them with their sin.

People who see and acknowledge the darkness in those they love, but whose love is only strengthened by that knowledge, achieve their truest love that is eagle-eyed even when the views are bleak (p. 587).

It must be difficult to come to terms with the fact that your child has done something as despicable as this. But it is possible. Sue Klebold (the mother of Columbine shooter, Dylan Klebold) was able to comes to terms with the fact that her son did a despicable thing–and she still loved him. She even wrote an amazing book about it.

As painful as it will be, that is what Brock’s parents must do in order to help Brock at this point. In order to move toward healing, everyone needs to call Brock’s actions what they really are: Rape.

They will need to find a mental space in which it’s possible that these two facts exist at the same time: their son has committed a terrible crime and they still love him.

***

Many voices on social media have raised the question, How would this judge/these parents like it if this happened to their own daughter?

Exactly.

That question should be our moral compass on this issue. This woman’s life was forever altered by Brock Turner. She says,

My independence, natural joy, gentleness, and steady lifestyle I had been enjoying became distorted beyond recognition. I became closed off, angry, self deprecating, tired, irritable, empty.

And in regard to Brock’s continued insistence that his main error was getting drunk, she says,

If you are hoping that one of my organs will implode from anger and I will die, I’m almost there. You are very close.

This woman needs closure. She needs to hear an abject, wholehearted apology. She needs to hear Brock call his own actions by their rightful name: rape. She requires this for (at least a chance of) restoring her wholeness of mind.

***

When my daughter was about two years old, another boy in her daycare class started to hit the other kids in his class. When my husband brought her to school one day, she saw him and didn’t want to go inside. What did my husband do?

  • He asked her what was wrong.

He didn’t ignore her.

  • He listened and found out that she was scared of the little boy because he hit her.

He didn’t tell her she was exaggerating.

  • He told the teacher what was going on.

He made a report.

  • The teacher called the little boy over and asked him if he had hit my daughter.

The teacher didn’t dismiss it with the old “Boys will be boys” excuse.

  • The child lowered his head and said, “Yes.”

The boy admitted his guilt and was humbled by his mistake.

  • Then the teacher told him to apologize.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

My daughter’s face lit up. And they went on playing.

It’s a simplistic analogy, but it does say a lot about human interaction and emotion. My daughter needed to be made whole…

…and that was only going to happen if this other boy acknowledged that he had hurt her.

I want to believe that good can still come out of this story. I want to believe that in the coming years, we’ll have more and more public discourse about the effects of a hyper-masculine culture and the objectification of women. I think we can overcome the assumption that drunk women are responsible for their own rapes.

In the meantime, let’s acknowledge the courage and strength of the women like this victim, who chose to end her statement with these words:

I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you.

I am with you, too.

sexual assault

 

10 Comments
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