Dear Dad,
I’m
going to need you to stop complaining to me about Kirsten Gillibrand. While I
obviously agree with you about global warming being an important issue, your repetitive
complaints which only target female politicians, echo your 2016 “I go easy on
you about Hillary” comment. All these comments sound, at best, like low-key
sexism and at worst, like a gentle continuation of a lifetime pattern of abuse,
both on a national and personal scale.
When you
tell me, over and over, that the senator who is most vocally in support of the
#metoo movement isn’t doing a good enough job (For YOU. After one donation and
one survey response. Are you KIDDING ME WITH THIS!? I know you see how much
work I do very day, why do you feel so entitled not to? And WORSE why do you
expect ME to do your work FOR you? I pour countless hours into justice work and
I have my own senators to nag!)
ANYWAY,
when you complain about Senator Gillibrand, you are also dismissing the work
that I do, both personally and politically, Every. Single. Day. You are
dismissing the power and courage of not just me but of every single rape
survivor who perseveres although life feels like a constant attack on our
bodies. When the sea levels rise, do you imagine we will somehow be LESS
vulnerable? Less raped? Do you imagine WE are somehow the ones endangering the
planet, by rising up and insisting that---GASP---we be treated as humans?
But
there are a couple of more insidious reasons you should not be low-key trolling
me by running down female leaders, particularly Gillibrand.
When
I was in third or fourth grade, I overheard you at least try to rape Mom. You’d
both been fighting about sex for weeks and I was WAY too up to date about what
was going on in there. I heard Mom scream “No! Don’t! (his name!) Stop! Stop!” and it
scared the shit out of me. I started to cry really loud and she said “See? Now
you made (me) cry.” And then things seemed to calm down in your room. I don’t
know how I understood what was going on, but I did.
After
that, the world changed for me. I became darker, less hopeful. Though Mom
denied it to me when I asked a few years later, I know what I heard. You took
something profound away from me that night—my trust for the world, my trust for
love. I’ve been fighting like hell ever since to get those things back. (Senator
Gillibrand?! Also fighting for those things.)
Fast
forward a few years to when I was drugged, raped, and beaten at a party. A few
days later, you beat the shit out of me too—just pounding and pounding away and
saying “You brought this into our house! You did this!” Meaning, I guess, that
that I’d somehow made you and Mom violent by getting raped, even though you’d
been that way my whole life.
That
night my friend Bethanne came and got me and I stayed with her family for the
night, but I had never felt so deeply and horribly alone. Over the years, that feeling
of abandonment and betrayal has come back to me over and over, causing me more
panic than any of the original violence. “You are alone, the panic tells me,
and the people who say they love you are only waiting to attack and blame you.”
You taught my panic how to speak.
And
yet, here I am with the optimism you keep trying to undermine. I did not get
this way by accident. It has taken me HUNDREDS of hours of therapy, writing,
self-care, activism, and many other kinds of work. I am optimistic and
productive by both sheer force of self-creation and as a tribute to the people
who have helped me build, thread by thread, vote by vote, scream by scream, the
person I am today.
And not
only can you not write ONE GODDAMNED LETTER to Congress, but you have the
callousness, cruelty, and entitlement to give me a hard time about how YOUR
SENATOR CARES TOO MUCH ABOUT WOMEN’S RIGHTS? PLEASE.
I
have loved you and done my best to forgive you for all of these years without
asking you for anything in return. Now I’m asking for two things:
1. Acknowledge
that you got this letter.
2. Stop
retraumatizing me and trying to put me in my place by running down female politicians.
I am not going to give up the fight to own our own
bodies. We are not going back and there is nothing you can do about it. If you
EVER crap on Senator Gillibrand or any other female leader to me again I can’t
promise I won’t FLIP THE FUCK OUT. And NO ONE will get an apology letter.
Love,
Me
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