Me too

The problems with Me Too are numerous. Pressure for women to tell their stories if they aren't ready to do so. Concern that the folks who need to hear our stories aren't going to listen, understand, or heed what we're telling them. I know there are women with much worse trauma than I. But for my own sake, I started a list. Once you start, it's hard to know where to stop. Because there's always so much, and so much more. Things done to us. Things done to those we love. Things we witness. Here's what we need men to understand. It's a constant barrage of aggression, from the day we're born until the day we die. Some of it is subtle. Some of it is brutal. Some of it we don't even recognize until we look backwards through the lens of time. Your mother and your sister and your sweetie and your daughter and every woman you know will suffer this much trauma or more under the social systems that benefit you and that you perpetuate in a million different ways, every day. Me Too is about women nurturing each other. It's also about us throwing down and holding you accountable. It's about our rage and our refusal to accept this status quo. It's our mic drop, gentlemen.

This is my very short list.

• In first grade, they posed us for school pictures with props – girls with a toy kitchen, boys with a football. I protested but was ordered  to pose with the kitchen. My mom still has that picture. I still hate it.
• In first grade, a boy tickled me in class. I’m very ticklish, so laughed. I was punished for disrupting the class and put in the corner. He received no punishment. I refused to face the corner; I sat glaring at the teacher with my arms crossed.
• In 5^th grade, a boy in my class constantly teased me, begged me to marry him, dropped to his knees in front of my desk. I didn’t know why he did this but I knew his ‘crush’ was fake. I told him to go to hell, loudly. He stopped bothering me.
• In 6^th grade, my dad bought me a red and black lace nightgown. I thought it was very pretty. I didn’t realize until much later how inappropriate it was.
• In 6^th grade, my dad ordered me to ‘change into my PJs’ in front of him when we were home alone. I didn’t understand why that made me so uncomfortable and frightened.
• At the end of 6^th grade, my parents divorced when my older sister told my mom that dad had been sexually abusing her.
• When I was 16, my boyfriend fucked me in the ass without asking. I was so supremely naïve/uneducated I didn’t even know anal sex was a thing. It hurt.
• When I was 17, I worked at the front counter of an ice cream shop in Dallas. I wanted to switch to making the ice cream. The manager told me girls weren’t strong enough to carry the heavy ice cream canisters.
• When I was 20, I was working on a joint exercise with the British military in Germany.  I was standing on a step-ladder updating the map in the situation room when a British army general walked in and started making comments about my ass.
• When I was 21, a gynecologist at the Army medical facility told me I had a ‘cute little uterus’ while performing a pelvic exam.
• When I was 22, a stranger grabbed my crotch while I was walking, with my husband, through the airport in Barcelona.
• When I was 28, I gave birth to my oldest daughter in a Houston hospital. I told the doctor I did not want an episiotomy. He performed one anyway. I took about 6 months for the pain to subside enough that I could have sex without agony.
• When I was about 30, I was working for Stewart Title as an IT project manager. I interviewed for a lateral transfer into a product manager role. I was told by the manager that I wasn’t ‘professional enough’ for the job because I didn’t wear make-up.
• When I was 36, we took our daughter to sign up for baseball. The woman at the sign-up table told her she couldn't play baseball because she was a girl.
• When I was 42, my daughter decided she wanted to homeschool. My husband disagreed. I withdrew her from school anyway, because I knew how toxic the environment was and how bored she was. He got angry that I didn’t abide by his wishes and told me that I had ‘emasculated him.’ I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.
• When I was 45, my cousin divorced his wife and became deeply evangelical. He tried to explain to me that rape and slavery in the old testament was God’s punishment of the ungodly, justly carried out by his chosen people. I blocked him on social media.
• When I was 46, I sat in the chamber of the Texas senate and listened to elected officials blatantly lie and disrespect women, congressional procedure, and medical science in order to take away our constitutional rights.
• When I was 49, I sat in Scholz’s Garden with friends and family and watched in absolute horror as Americans elected a serial sexual predator to the presidency. My daughter cried.
• Two weeks ago, I watched police arrest a neighbor who had screamed for help when her boyfriend beat her. When I protested, the cop got in my face, tried to bully me, threatened me for interfering with his investigation.

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