Rage Becomes Her #metoo

Y’all, shit has been way too real lately. The micro reflecting the macro in all its rage-inducing glory. I am so fucking angry! Angry at the sense of entitlement way too many men have to violate women’s boundaries with impunity. Angry at the perverse reverse victimhood men cry out when a woman calls him out on his violation. Angry at all who demonize or ostracize the women coming forward as if our truth telling uncovering of all these secrets and lies and outright violation is some kind of crime. Angry at all the attempts to deflect blame and normalize the toxicity of rape culture as ‘boys will be boys’. Angry at how so very few women cannot say #metoo. Angry at all the motherfuckers (and I use that word in its technical sense, those who violate and desecrate the holy, sacred feminine) who have willfully and knowingly violated a woman and are still working jobs with a code of ethics or moral turpitude clause they have broken nine ways to hell. Angry at all the people who label survivors as crazy, hysterical, liars, ‘asking for it’, man-haters if we do not conform to the very narrow view of the ‘correct’ way a victim of sexual assault should act and react or conform to the ‘correct’ timeline by which we choose to talk about the horrors we survived. Angry at how the credibility of a victim is used as a weapon to undermine the truth and horror of what she survived. Angry because too few even recognize how ‘credibility’ is a badge bestowed by the patriarchy and almost exclusively reserved for privileged, educated, successful white women who most would agree are neither a little nutty nor a little slutty. Angry at all the ‘good’ men who are so deafeningly silent right now while so many women are wailing at the sick fucking twisted reality of it all. Angry at how little recourse there actually is, and at such a re-traumatizing cost to the survivor, to bring justice down upon the heads of perpetrators. Angry at how the trauma of assault has ruined lives, broken families apart, taken children born and unborn, left an unbearable burden to be carried and passed down for way too many generations, an all-consuming grief and despair that I know in my bones our great great great grandmothers knew too but couldn’t speak of except in hushed whispers to each other with little power except to grin and bear it. I don’t even know how to process my outrage right now. I am way past the point of overwhelm as I try to navigate the trauma and complete and utter mindfuck of my own recent, terrible violation by a man I loved and trusted with all my heart. I am so fucking angry! I am also incredibly thankful to all the women in my life who have survived the most unimaginable horrors and who now hold out their hands in solidarity with those of us still struggling to wake from our own nightmare. I am thankful for the tears we shed together, the rage we share together, for witnessing each other, for believing each other, for loving… even still. To all my sisters survivors, I see you, I hear you, I feel you. I believe you. Me, too.