I’m not just an angry liberal, I’m an infuriated woman

October 11, 2018 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

 

Poor Eve. It was all her fault. It still is, according to old white men.

The Republicans have — once again — thumbed their noses at women and let us know just how they feel about us.

They think we’re liars.

They think we live to seduce and then destroy men.

They think we’re powerless to stop them.

I have never been angrier about the abuse of women by white men in power.

It was an old white man who violated me when I was 3.

No one would have believed me if I had said anything then, and people have questioned my honesty since I divulged in my 30s — 30 years after the abuse began.

Why didn’t I say anything? Because it was my word against a pillar of the community. Because when adults had to choose between my story and his, they would have chosen his and punished me for lying. And he still would have had control over my body.

When my ex-husband decided he didn’t need my consent to have sex with me whenever he wanted, the law of powerful white men was on his side, not mine.

I wasn’t allowed dominion over my own body in 1971 when I got engaged and went to the doctor for birth control. In Massachusetts in 1971, the law of powerful old white men decided I couldn’t have birth control unless I was married, and I was so unable to make decisions about my own body that I wasn’t the one who would be punished if I tried to take control of my own reproductive system — it would be the doctor — an old white man.

When a man wanted me to give him a blow job in exchange for me making a sale, I went back and told my boss. The pig denied it, but my boss believed me and threatened him with real trouble if it happened again.

Another white man asked me out to lunch and as soon as we were in the car, he pulled his penis out and asked for a “massage.”

At work at a small newspaper in new Jersey, I sold ads. Another sales rep, a creepy old white man named Bob, decided I would be his next conquest. I told him no every day, often several times a day. He made a habit of trying to grope me every time he was within reach. After a couple months of this, I went to the publisher to complain, and all he did was laugh and say, “That’s Bob.”

For the first time, I fought back. I told him to give me his home phone number, which he was stupid enough to do.

“If I call now, your wife will answer, right?” I asked.

His face fell.

“If I tell her what a fucking pig you are, she won’t be happy, will she?” I said.

Then I held up the slip of paper.

“Ladies, I have the phone number for Bob’s wife here. If he ever gropes you, if he ever makes another pass at you, please ask me for the number. I’m happy to share.”

I quit a short time later, but Bob was kept in check because I gave every woman that phone number.

A couple of years later, another white male boss bragged that he liked to keep the heat turned down to 65 degrees in the office because the women’s nipples got hard and he enjoyed that.

Every morning I went and turned the thermostat up to 70. Every hour or so I checked to make sure it was still set at 70. I left him notes letting him know what I’d overheard and promised to report him if I found the heat set below 70 degrees.

But people still ask why I didn’t report my grandfather. Am I SURE it’s not just “recovered” memories? Trust me, the memories are real.

Do I remember the room? Yes. It was a little room in the attic. Do I remember walking up the stairs or coming back down? No. Do I remember who else was in the house? No. Do I remember what either one of us was wearing? No.

But I remember his hands on me — all over me. I know what happened, even though he died in his bed and everyone else still thought he was a fucking saint. He was so good with children, after all.

Having people question Christine Blasey Ford’s motives in telling her story, or accuse her of lying, is the same as telling me I’m lying.

And I don’t care that he didn’t actually get to rape her. He intended to, and she knew it. She was fighting for her life for all she knew.

I’m tired of people asking why she was at a party where drinking was going on. He was at that party, too. Being at a party where people are drinking is not an invitation to be raped.

Wearing a short skirt is not an invitation. Having dinner with someone, having a drink, walking on the beach, just our very existence, seems to be reason to say we tempted him, and all he did was take what we really wanted to give him.

We are not here for your pleasure. We actually aren’t all that interested in you or your accomplishments or the size of your penis. We don’t care about your flashy car or your decked out apartment. You are inconsequential.

Brett Kavanaugh is a sexual predator. The creature currently squatting in the White House is a sexual predator. They flaunt it every day with their hate-filled rhetoric toward women. They flaunt it with their ramming through the nomination of an unqualified, active alcoholic, lying partisan hack to the highest court in the nation.

Damn right we’re angry. Women have had about enough of this.

More of us die at the hands of people who are supposed to love us. More of us live in poverty. We make less money for the same work. We do more of the work in the home, when when both partners work outside the home.

We are the Daughters of Eve, the people Evangelicals say are responsible for our own abuse and all the violence against us, and we are pissed.

We are coming for your white male privilege.

Look behind you. We’re gaining ground.

 

Here’s why women don’t report

October 3, 2018 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

This is me with my older sister when I was 3 and she was 6. This was the year my perpetrator found me too irresistible to keep his hands off me. Notice the come-hither look I must have used to tempt him.

Let me tell you what trauma does to a person so that you might understand why women don’t come forward.
I was 3 when I was violated. I remember his hands on me. But I don’t remember the exact date. I remember the room, but I don’t recall going in there or leaving. I remember my chubby little fingers closing around the quarter he gave me — the hush money. I remember knowing what happened was wrong, but also knowing I couldn’t tell anyone, so the abuse continued until I was 11 and told him he had to stop or I would tell.
In Sunday school at the Evangelical church we attended, I learned that all girls are the daughters of Eve and therefore guilty of her original sin (which it turns out is seduction), so we have to be controlled by men, who always know more than we do. So, long before the abuse ended, I knew it was my fault.
Sex was a filthy thing, so no one ever talked to me about what to do if someone molested me. It was just assumed no one would be that dirty unless I offered myself up. It must have been my come-hither look at age 3 that started me on the path to hell.
If I had come forward, I would have been treated like Christine Blasey-Ford. I would have been called a liar. I would have been blamed. I would have been told it must be my fault. I was, after all, alone in a room with my grandfather, who was a good, upstanding member of the community — a school janitor, crossing guard, church sexton. People loved him because he was so good with children.He would have denied it and I would have been punished for telling such a filthy lie.
Had I come forward, I would have been accused of destroying his life, even though he was the one who destroyed mine.
I live to this day with a sense of shame, even though I know I have no reason to be ashamed. I still have to remind myself that I was the victim of a crime. I was never at fault.
So, when friends and family tell me they want to see more proof, I tell them I need no more proof. The reason she was reluctant to come forward is clear — just look at how she’s being mocked and criticized — blamed for her own assault.
“She was at that party.”
Well, so was he.
“She was drinking.”
Yup. So was he.
What was she wearing?
Why should it matter? What was he wearing?
She doesn’t remember the date.
Why should she?
She doesn’t remember how she got to the party or how she got home.
In the scheme of things, those things weren’t etched in her memory the way the assault was. That’s a classic response to trauma.
According to people who know Brett Kavanaugh’s drinking habits, he has lied under oath about his underage drinking. 
So, we know he’s capable of lying, but we still prefer to believe him and not her.
This is white male privilege at its most damaging.
He’s still under consideration for a seat on the highest court in the land, and she had to abandon her home because of death threats to her and her children.
These old white men care nothing about those of us who have suffered sexual violence. They “protect” us by withholding our identities, as though we’re the ones at fault. When we do come forward, we are attacked, accused of being at fault.
This whole episode has triggered anxiety in me like I’ve never suffered before, and this predator may be rewarded with a seat on the US Supreme Court, just like the pretender squatting in the White House.
Criminal behavior is rewarded if you’re a white man, but the truth destroys the women who come forward.
Do not EVER ask me why women don’t come forward. If you have read this and still don’t understand, you likely never will.