Legitimate

CAUTION: This post deals frankly with the topics of sexual assault, self-injury, and suicide. If you are likely to be triggered by these topics, please, take care of yourself and read with caution or come back next week for another post.

Rite of Passage

After my third sexual assault, I just quit caring. I thought of my body like the pin cushion on my grandma's sewing table, attacked again and again without ever changing much. Rape was all around me. At a young age I knew the terrifying details of my mother's molestation and of the attack which lead to my conception. Sexual abuse was a rite of passage. All the young girls went through it. Like menarche and pimples came the eating disorders and self cutting, symptoms of our common disease.        Our trauma was common, but hardly communal. Each girl suffered in her silent world of shame and fear and self loathing. Each thinking she'd asked for it, had it coming, deserved it. After all, it happened to all of us. And though quiet confessions, me toos, were made, no one admitted feeling anything besides the pain when a hymen is ruptured.      Few, if any of us knew the difference between being raped and having sex. We twelve year-olds entered adulthood with a vicious thrust. We knew our place as young women. We were walking warm respites. We were dens for serpents. We were holes to be fucked.          This story doesn't turn to a happy ending. Therapy and group hugs, Vagina Monologues and Take Back The Night rallies do nothing for our shame, our hatred, our distrust. It is no big surprise when a woman is raped. And no matter what the feminists say, she was asking for it, by having the brash audacity to have a sheath between her legs, instead of a sword.

The words above were written in collaboration with women who have survived the unthinkable. Each broken and shattered by her attack. Each struggling to collect the pieces and rebuild. Each has recoiled at her lover’s gentle touch. Each wept, shook, and flailed in her sleep as she relived the attack in her nightmares. Each felt her pulse quicken with every knock on the door, every shadow on the sidewalk, every wandering thought that lead her back to where happened. Together they have paid in full for a new car for their therapists, as they learned to trust again and fight back menacing shadows.  None were wrestled to the ground, or knocked on the head. All were acquainted with their attackers. Some were drugged. Some were coerced or threatened. A couple were unconscious when the attack started. All were, inarguably and absolutely raped.

There are some groups and individuals who believe that these women made it all up. That it wasn’t real. It wasn’t so bad, could have been worse. That their pain was not “legitimate.” But I have seen the cigaret burns on their ankles. I have cleaned the blood from their forearms. I have ridden in the ambulance when they have OD’d. I have held them while they wailed at two pink lines. The people who minimize and dismiss this torture, I would like to call monsters. I would like to rail and rage at them all. Shout at them “go get raped and report back!”  Instead, I gather my sisters, my sorority of shadows, to love each other, and support each other as this debate in the headlines brings our pasts to surface again. Then, in silence, and to my own surprise, I am glad for Akin’s comments, ignorant, misogynist and cruel as they are. I am happy for his ignorance, because in a country where the danger of sexual assault is as present as the danger of a sunburn, it means no one he loves has been through what we have. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

**This post is dedicated to the brave women who shared their strength with me to make this piece possible. Our words and experiences are blended into one voice, because when one woman is attacked, every woman bleeds.

An Important Lesson from Chickengate.

Yesterday, my partner and I did not go kiss in front of a Chick Fil A. We did not choose to abstain from the protest because my wife remains marginally closeted for professional reasons. We did not stay home because we couldn’t find information regarding which Chick Fil A to go to at what time. It was an experience we shared the night before that made us realize we don’t give a damn what Chick Fil A thinks.

Late Thursday night, like married couples do, my Sweetie and I quarreled. To vent my frustrations, I took our dog for a walk. Though I wasn’t gone long, when I returned my girl was already in bed reading a book. As I started to prepare for my shower, she took hold of my wrist and gave it a gentle tug, a cue to get in bed beside her. I was still in my street clothes and reeked of cigarette smoke, but I lay down on top of the covers and Sweetie pulled me into her arms. She stroked my hair and whispered “Baby, I’m sorry.” My, “I forgive you” was understood, but remained unsaid. Even after seven years, my wife’s embrace can leave me breathless. It was in that moment, as I intertwined my fingers with hers, and our cat wriggled his way into the middle of our cuddle, that I realized no amount of hate can touch this love.

There is no word can be said. There is no bill can be passed. There is no rock can be thrown, that will break-up this marriage. It is not a piece of paper stamped by a bureaucrat that makes us married. It is the way she bags up the trash for me to take it out. It is the kiss I place on her shoulder blade whenever I find myself behind her. It is the way we refer to each other as mom, or momma when talking to our pets, and shake our heads when we see the new “girls fashion” at Target. It is the box of her favorite candy hidden in the back of the pantry, and the bottle of my favorite tea picked up on the way home. It is learning to forgive the socks on the floor, but nagging about the leak under the sink. It is the frustration of one that other stayed late at work without calling. It is proofreading each other’s papers, presentations, and blog posts. It is giving in that she will talk on the phone while driving, but insisting that she use a bluetooth because I  worry. It’s laughing at the same in-jokes for half a decade and learning to love the produce stickers on the freezer door. It is the day I realized my aversion to juice or tea made with corn syrup was entirely her influence. It is reserving every “I told you so.” It's being the human dictionary to her human calculator, and always being in awe of her uncanny googling skills. It is the way she really listens when I blather about evolutionarily maladaptive traits in arachnids, or socio-political theory as represented in The Hunger Games or other such pedantry.  It's understanding each other's need for alone time and her coming to terms with my close friendship with my ex. It is forgiveness and learning to let go of grudges. It is that one thing each of us does that makes the other insane. It's the library fines incurred when I insist she read the book I just finished, and forget to renew it online. It is the midday text messages that say I am thinking of you. It is ending every phone call with “I love you” before “goodbye.” It is accepting that we will fight, and learning to fight fair. It is never going to bed angry, even if it means staying up til 2am, that make our relationship as impossible to put asunder as any legal marriage. No amount of waffle fries can ever take that away.

Chickengate 2012

The very concept of this image is bullshit.

Let me tell you why.




Ok Friends. Listen Up. I am clearing up this Chick-Fil-A confusion right about now. It goes like this. IF THE COMPANY TAKES YOUR MONEY AND USES IT, OR GIVES IT TO PEOPLE WHO USE IT TO DO THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE, DON'T GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY. See, nice and simple. The Chick Fil A boycott has nothing to do with First Amendment rights (at least as far as I know, no one has been pepper sprayed, God Help Us if they have) The CEO of Chick-Fil-A, has every right in the world to say anything he want about Jesus Hatin' Turd Punchers ‘til his tiny little black heart’s content, and we can call him A Bible Thumping Nazi Dingleberry all we want. It's not about words. It's about MONEY. Words are what we are slinging around to to convince each other to either stop spending money on tasty tasty waffle fries on principal, or to buy more of them because, you know, fuck the gays.

Now let me be clear. CEO, Dan Cathy’s comments SUCK, and are what lit this fire, but it is the laundry list of anti-gay organizations and hate groups that receive a cut from your purchase of nuggets and hand squeezed lemonade that are the real issue. I believe I speak for all gays everywhere when I say we really want to get married and we get our feathers ruffled when people do shit on purpose to make sure that never ever ever happens By GOD! Because, you know, all gay people kick puppies and drown kittens in sewers. What we REALLY can't stand is our family and friends (the ones that still speak to us, precious few that they are) giving money, even indirectly, to these groups that think we were all minted straight (ha ha) from Satan's asshole.


Armed with the truth about how the company donates our hard earned cash,  we took to the interwebs and made damn sure everybody knew exactly where their money was going, so that they could make the informed decision to stop giving it to Chick-Fil-A. After all, they love their gay friends and family more than lightly breaded chicken breasts. We took over Facebook and burned out everyone we know with photoshopped images of cows holding signs ala Westboro Baptist. Yes, we got a little uppity. We posted a ton of statuses, and we wore our rainbow tube socks to work two days in a row. Our Bad. But can you really blame us? We're not twelve months removed from all the Occupy Wall Street shenanigans and all the action we are calling for is to eat at KFC and make out in a parking lot for a couple of hours. Even if our boycott dollars are made up tenfold by right-wing dollars, everybody now knows what they are getting along with their peach milkshakes, and if nothing notable comes from the Chick-Fil-A Same Sex Kiss Day, it will provide the country with some free Lesbian Soft Core, and that means everybody wins!







This semi-gratuitous, hot lesbian make-out, featuring one of our country's finest defenders of freedom, is brought to you by the demise of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the discriminatory policy those damn illiterate cows fought to keep in place.