See, it doesn't matter how you side with that particular case, or whether you have personally been a victim of sexual assault - we've all been touched and shaped and influenced by this culture that says it's OK for one person to treat another like public property. And I'm raising daughters, girls whose first words included, "no," and, later in life, I hope that I've taught them to mean it. I know I've taught them how to break the arm of anyone who doesn't listen. And I'm glad to teach any of my other women friends the same - no should always mean no. And when someone overrides that, with a touch or a word or with violence, it isn't a joke, it isn't flattery, and it's not something that can ever be taken back.
#metoo
I was raised in a sisterhood of
silence. Voices muted by cultural norms
that validate boys’ desires, but
call us nasty girl names, when
there’s no more blame beyond being born with no Y chromosomes and
growing breasts and growing
curves, and growing long hair that gets used against us when we’re only
walking home. And
we’re left there on the curb, in the alleys, in the backseat, on our grandma’s
couch,
trying to figure out exactly
where we went wrong. #slut. #she was asking for it.
Decades of silence, because it’s
what’s expected of nice girls, who don’t make waves and
don’t make trouble, and hide our
daughters in a bubble of believing that boys will be boys.
And we are just there as their
toys, up to us to say no, and don’t wear that short skirt, or have
That second drink or walk home
alone. # it’s her fault. #she didn’t say no
Watching women grow heavy in
silence, and carrying baggage of shame and self-doubt, because
they didn’t know how to call some
boy out, drag him on the carpet to answer for actions we
half-expected anyway, because our
fathers and our brothers warned us, that’s just how men are made.
# don’t show so much skin #they only want one thing
One woman breaks her mute
introspection to share her rejection of these ideas of female servitude to
an antiquated attitude that says
we are responsible for where other hands land on our bodies. The
words that are forced into our
ears, the appendages forced into our bodies, and somehow, somehow -
It’s always our fault. And her words are met with scorn and derision,
and there’s a division among even
other women, for challenging what
everyone knows. # she’s lying #attention whore
We’re compared to animals and
analogies about sports, our bodies are someone else’s wonderland and
they don’t make reservations on
these resorts, but instead are breaking and entering. And getting
all kinds of support from other
boys, who slap backs in multiple cases, giving high fives when their
buddies run the bases. And I wonder, do they make their dads
proud? Is this a legacy from generation
to generation, one more iteration
of an age old tradition of domination? #
home run
# like father, like son #why buy the cow when you can get milk by
stealing it
We owe our daughters more than a
legacy of being public property, and giving out free samples
to those who flaunt their genetic
prosperity, as a right to touch and taste and comment and
waste the potential of women who
are more than their ass or their boobs.
We are not the weaker
sex by right of birth, and every
daughter deserves to know she is worth respect.
Every person
has the right to expect that no
means no. #I said no #me too
