Tagged: politics
Sick Sad World
I write this from my sick bed [insert vague image of a Bronte or some such]. I’ve had a wicked head cold that one of the children brought home from school because children are disgusting. It is now in my chest so I can’t stop coughing forcefully which has caused me to vomit once and fart about a million times. LIFE IS GRAND.
While I’ve been sick in a literal, physical sense, I am also sick in my metaphorical heart. What I knew was going to happen happened. The FBI did a brief, cursory, limited background check on Dr. Ford’s testimony and the accusation of Deborah Ramirez, the Republicans are ready to ram his confirmation through and we’re probably stuck with Judge Frathouse.
There are a lot of think pieces and editorials and actual books on the gaslighting of America and why this particular outrage seems to be a bridge too far for many of us, so I’m probably not adding anything new or useful. But this is what we do, scream into the void in the hopes that it relieves some of the pressure.
What strikes me when I watch the Republicans and their old, white man rage is how hurt they are by our anger. They are devastated that women want to voice their own experiences and expect to be heard. How dare we impugn the character of a GOOD WHITE MAN. (GOOD meaning affluent and connected, having gone to the right schools and matriculated in the right circles, having trod the well-worn but narrow path laid down by the affluent, white men before him.) The big line from Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump has been “We can’t have GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT!!!” This applies only to GOOD WHITE MEN, however. Not black teenagers wearing hoodies. Or women who have been raped. Or children seeking asylum. They have no right to innocence.
We’ve known our justice system was broken for years. We’ve known our political system was broken. We’ve known America itself was broken. Has always been broken. Was broken when the founders lied and said “All men are created equal” while owning slaves. This continent was “found” by a murdering, raping, genocidal maniac. Is this the history that makes me proud to be an American?
I want to believe in a better, fuller, more whole and just and kind America. I want to listen to Cory Booker or Elizabeth Warren as they tell me that with enough grace and work, we can create justice and liberty for all. I want to believe that children are the future and Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg are going to make a difference.
But I see the crowds at the Trump rallies and I hear the women who support Kavanahhhh and I don’t think my hope can beat their hate. I think Obama was wrong. I think Voldemort wouldn’t really be defeated by a bunch of teenagers and private school teachers. I don’t see where there is any common ground to build, and fuck if I’m not tired of feeling like the only side looking for it. How do you fight a troll? How do you fight an entire nation of them?
There’s no rallying cry to be found here, friends. I’m still going to vote and call my Senators. I’m still going to be a social worker and change the lives that I can. But until the other side decides they want a society more than just raw power, I’m done trying. This confirmation hearing broke something inside of me, a belief that we grow and learn and do better. That if we share our stories and believe hard enough, we can bring light to the darkness. That the hurt and rage of millions of women might mean something, that there might be value in a person who is not a GOOD WHITE MAN. But, as we’ve been shown time again, like Charlie Brown and the football, Lucy isn’t ever going to play fair and we’re always going to end up on our backs, wondering why we even tried.
Indelible
I’m so fucking tired. Both literally, because it is after 10pm and I am old, and figuratively, because I watched all of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and most of Brett Kavanaugh’s and the majority of the questioning from both sides. I listened to the commentary on MSNBC and watched the clips of his interview on Fox News and I’ve overdosed on toxic masculinity.
I’m tired of being a woman, but yikes on the alternative. (Not in a gender-identity sense, so I hope this doesn’t offend all the non-binary and trans and intersex folx out there who I love and see and give all the high-fives to. This is a majority of the world, binary, cis-man/woman weariness that is sitting in my bones.) I think I need a good cry but I’m too numb. I think I need to break something, because the rage is overwhelming. I think I should probably just sleep but there are too many words in my head and hurts in my heart and I feel like a gaping wound in a way that most men will never, ever, ever understand.
I think it’s the laughter, the indelible laughter in Dr. Ford’s hippocampus. The same laughter I can hear and you can hear and every woman can hear. The laughter that rings in our heads and our hearts and our very bones vibrate with the laughter. They laugh and it gets caught in our hair and our lungs and our wombs. It hurts everywhere, these laughs. The laughter of boys being boys, of knowing there are no consequences, the joy and delight in taking a person and making her an object.
And I am tired that we haven’t gotten better since Anita Hill. That Lindsey Graham’s outrage will be applauded by a segment of the population. Including women. I’m tired of women who uphold and embrace the patriarchy as much as I’m tired of the patriarchy itself.
The brilliant and amazing Roxane Gay edited an anthology earlier this year titled “Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture” that I attempted to read but it was glass in my throat and sand in my heart. I didn’t have the fortitude. I wonder if Lindsey Graham would be able to read it. I wonder if the women who support him could.
He really pissed me off today. His sympathy for Brett Kavanaugh and his outrage at his fellow Senators was shocking. Is it a good sign that I can still be shocked by the conduct of men?
But still, the laughter, it’s haunting me. How often are we told to lighten up, to take a joke, to smile, to agree with our abusers that it wasn’t abuse? How often do we grin and bear it? How do we defend against the stereotype of joylessness when the laughter we hear is knives in our bellies?
Indelible. That which cannot be eliminated, forgotten, changed, or the like.
She did not hesitate when asked what her strongest memory of that night was. She did not say the way he groped me or the weight of him on my 15-year-old body or the feeling of his breath on my neck or the sound of the door locking or the song that was playing loud enough to drown out my screams. She did not ask for a moment to recall. She knew because she’s heard it over and over and over and over and over until she thought she was mad from it. The laughter.
I hear the laughter, too. I heard it when I was catcalled. When the car full of boys hollered. When they slowed down. When they surrounded me in the hall. When they shouted at me to stop what I was doing and gift them my time and being. The laughter that accompanies “it wasn’t me” and “I didn’t really mean it” and “it was a compliment” and “don’t be so stuck up” and “bitchslutwhorecunt.” The laughter when you say stop and don’t and please and when you scream.
I’ve never been raped. I’ve never been assaulted in a way that would be considered a crime. I’ve never been hit. I’ve been lucky. I’ve always felt lucky – not strong or blessed or impressive or more right – just a roll of the dice luck. But I’ve heard the laughter. Indelible and deafening and haunting. I’ll bet you have too.
My Hope Is A Battle Cry
There’s a growing sense of dread that’s come to sit on my shoulders. I know I’m not the only one. There’s an uneasiness that lives somewhere between my stomach and my heart, a churning ball of anxiety and rage and sorrow. There is an unshakeable tension between my shoulders and a slight tremor in my hands. I’m becoming terrified of our world, our country, our society.
I don’t have to spell it out. Your fear might not have the exact same triggers as mine, but it’s there in all of us right now. All of us who pay the slightest attention to the world outside. Like a old Maine fisherman, we’re sitting on our front porches, looking at the sky and muttering “Stahm’s a’ brewin’.”
Underneath all of that scary, there sits a tiny shred of hope, though. I can’t help my streak of optimism and I’m trying very hard to focus on it, nurture it now when it is needed most. My hope comes from seeing Bernie Sanders almost pull off the upset of the century and reminding Democrats what liberal is. My hope comes from watching crowds gather in solidarity around victims of violence. My hope comes from national outrage at reduced sentences for the affluent white male. My hope is that more and more people are waking the fuck up. Continue reading
Rage Against Everything
I’m getting my angry liberal/feminist on. If you think that might offend you, you’ve been warned. I also curse. A lot.
I think I’m fairly even-tempered. I don’t fight, I don’t get in yelling matches, I don’t break random objects in a fit of rage. When someone makes me upset, I try to tell them. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just ignore them. I believe in the anger management philosophy of walking away and settling down.
But that’s not cutting it right now. Today my anger has reached critical mass and is about to take everything out. I want to scream and then hulksmash everything. Once my deep, cold reserve of anger is tapped, get out of my way before I take it out on you.
Why so angry? Why today? Everything has just been building and now here I am. And, you know what? You should be really angry, too. We should all be spitting nails and blowing gaskets and losing our cool.
Put Your Damn Pants On! 
