Yesterday’s senate hearings were like September 11. I was talking to people I hadn’t heard from in decades just to make sure we were all okay. A lot of us weren’t. I tried to focus on sending love and light to everyone as traumatized as I was.
To everyone who been hindered professionally by sexist men and preyed upon by male sexual predators. To everyone who had been manterrupted or mansplained. Who had been sexually assaulted or harassed. To everyone on whom the burden of proof had landed on us when they were already experiencing PTSD.
We were watching all this happen to a woman in real time and we wanted her to be ok–to achieve her goals not only because of what’s at stake in the Supreme Court, the body of law that dictates what happens to female bodies, but because our related wounds remain so profoundly unhealed.
How systemic is male privilege? How deeply is sexual assault built into our dating culture? How much denial are men in when they are perpetrators? Enough so that my most serious abuser was posting pious, good-liberal pablum about believing CBF as if he himself did not exhibit this sort of violence. And, of course, getting lots of atta-boys for his efforts. Continue Reading →
