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| Fifteen. |
I haven't been blogging as much lately.
Unless I have something to say that is likely to add to the general conversation, I think it makes more sense to wait and listen. When I feel compelled to speak/write, I will. I have so many projects underway, both writing projects and gardening ones, that my blog doesn't call to me quite as often. I've turned off comments for a very specific reason, but if we are connected through other social media, I welcome your feedback.
So, the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. I can't imagine that this isn't raising some issues for every woman (and probably many men), no matter their age. Did that happen to me, ever? Did I do something like that? For not a few, the answer will be yes. How much should that "yes" continue to impact the rest of our lives, if it happens as early as this was alleged to have happened.. high school?
I went to plenty of parties in high school where there were no parents, and there was drinking. I remember going into bedrooms. I'm pretty sure that boys laid either on top of or next to me, but there the comparison ends. Although they (and sometimes I) were drinking, and probably drunk, I wasn't forced into a bedroom, pushed onto a bed, held down, nearly suffocated, nor were my clothes nearly torn off. I didn't have to flee to a bathroom and wait, terrified, until the offender left. And there was never a second boy in the room. That's just so upsetting, for a number of reasons.
I didn't feel then, and I don't feel now, that I was ever forced to do anything against my will. I'm a good ten years older than the accuser and the accused here, so I bring my own experience to the conversation, because it may be more relevant than someone who is that age today, or was that age ten years ago. As a girl, I felt more powerful than powerless, because I knew that I had something (even if I was insecure about it) boys liked, and I could either give or withhold my affection. The boys with whom I spent this kind of time were inexperienced, usually awkward, and endearing. So I write this not to say #notallmen because that has become anathema, but to say that what is alleged to have happened was not normal, not okay, and not just a case of "boys will be boys".
15.
I was also sexually abused. This happened at a much younger age, around nine or ten, when the oldest stepbrother of four moved into our home after our mother died when I was five. Because I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes, he backed off after making numerous attempts to groom and grope me, and I spent the next year or two, until he moved away, hiding from him. Tragically, he did succeed with my brother and sister, and their trauma has been far worse than mine. But even with what happened to me, I've been affected in ways that continue to have repercussions decades later. So, it's easy for me to believe that the accuser is still affected, as well as to believe she did not tell many people. Neither did I.
sixteen.
Here's why I think what happened to her happened, and why so many women signed a letter supporting her attacker:
His actions were those of an entitled, pampered, male from the upper classes of American society. Much like Trump, he believed that if he wanted something, he could just take it. Of course, he kept that sort of behavior in check over the remainder of his adult life, because what he wanted would be undermined by allegations like the one that has arisen. There is a class of people who are making decisions for us, who are running our institutions, and who are taking our money, who have never experienced the day-to-day life of American people. This is epitomized as much by Brett Kavanaugh throwing a 15 year old girl on a bed at a party as it is by Donald Trump throwing paper towels at Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria.
Strangest of all is that those who are enabling this triumph of entitled imposters are the poor and uneducated who have never seen the inside of a prep school, and who might think what Kavanaugh did is no big deal, yet sit back and ignore the rape of the environment, the stifling of peace accords, the undressing of trade economies. Who are being assaulted themselves, and don't even know when they're getting groomed.
