In one of my recent posts I mentioned that saving the awful paperwork from the legal battle for custody of my children was a way of documenting my bravery. I was listening to a conversation between Rebecca Solnit and Sonara Jha last week (virtual events feel like sneaking into someone's living room to hear them chat) and they talked about sexual abuse and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Well, that makes total sense, right? Being sexually assaulted, like any experience with violence, would create a terrible psychological backlash. However. When soldiers talk about their war experiences, people listen with hushed reverence. Their courage is lauded. They are given medals for their actions. And now, with more mental health awareness, they are treated for their wounds, mental and physical.
When woman (mostly) have PTSD from sexual assault, they are expected to keep their war stories silent. No one wants to hear the gory details. No one wants the indelicate images shared.
Great comedians have always peppered their humor with serious cultural commentary. George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Dave Chappelle, etc. They have been sometimes been criticized but often embraced and, in general, respected. When Hannah Gadsby performed her show Nannette, I was surprised/not surprised at the anger of many men and women because she not only refused to be predictably funny, she broke the code of talking openly about the boys/men who sexually assaulted her and what it did to her. She was not polite. She did not use euphemisms. She gave no fucks if it made the audience uncomfortable. In fact, she seemed to want the audience to be uncomfortable. She wasn't interested in making men feel safe.
She is a warrior, survivor, broken human on the mend. She deserves a goddamn medal.
I know so many women, too many women, who have survived the epidemic of sexual assault. They are powerful and I wish to all the mythical gods that their power had been built on a different foundation. Most of them function magnificently. They mother, they lead, they build and they gather others together. It is a fucking miracle and they deserve medals and hushed reverence for their strength. For their perseverance. For resisting the well-earned urge to burn it all down.
Me too. Those two words started a heartbreaking roll call across the country. Me too. My own experience at the age of 11 was short and terrifying. I spent years minimizing it because I wasn't raped. But, like Roxane Gay talked about in her brilliant book, Hunger, my life cleaved in two that day. Before I was molested and after. I never even recognized the damage done by the Mormon church leaders some years later as additional sexual abuse until the #MeToo movement. I just assumed it was what all women went through and had to bear–and please bear it silently, sister. Childhood innocence ended that day in a crowded line for hot dogs at Shea Stadium when a strange man slide his hand between my legs and I froze for what seemed like an eternity before I bolted away. I was filled with shame. I was wearing a pretty peasant top with my new training bra and some red and white checked polyester pants. Everything on me felt complicit and tainted.
When I cried loud enough in the bathroom late that night to make my mom come find out what was wrong, I told her. She asked me questions. They were probably innocent enough but each question seemed to imply my responsibility in the sordid act. I remember thinking, with a child's fierceness, no man will ever touch me again. I remember going back to bed red-eyed and sniffly. I remember crawling into my big sister's bed and feeling safer but not safe. I remember the subject never came up again. Ever. It took 10 years before I could speak of that day again. But not with my family or friends. Just to a therapist who didn't know me.
Something breaks when a woman or girl is violated. Something you can't un-break.
I finished Roxane Gay's book yesterday. It is painful and articulate and raw. She is brilliant--really, like something in a jewelry display that shines almost too brightly. I would have an unabashed crush on her if she wasn't so close to my childrens' ages. Her wife (Debbie Millman) is also very smart and full of bright shiny ideas. A queer dynamic duo those two. The thing about Hunger that impressed me most was that understanding the flawed, damaging misogyny behind our culture's obsession with the thin and white and pure does not prevent us for wanting it anyway. Even when it's not possible (which it's not for 85% of the population). I appreciate that contradiction.
She's another one--give her a fucking bronze star.
I was taught that bravery and courage were male traits. That women were to be protected and grateful. Women were only brave when men were absent but they shouldn't have to be. Maybe it was some primal form of feminism that made me reject the idea that women weren't as tough as men. Or maybe I was just a deeply stubborn child. I silently taught myself to control my fear by walking around the spooky cellar alone in the dark. I watched my father's bullying behavior with seemingly compliant composure and steeled myself for the day that I would stand up to him. I trained my fight response and smothered my flight response. The bravest things I ever did not involve physical confrontation (well, not most of them) but the ability to look your bully in the face and say, hit me again. To find a well of inner calmness and intellectually battle powerful people with my composure intact. I didn't always win but I always felt powerful.
To all the women who have shared their nightmare stories with me and still manage to face the world with grace and rage and love and defiance, I salute you. You inspire me. I wish I could heal the damaged child in each of you. You are my heroes.
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