Why didn’t we speak up? Why did we stay silent?
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Because we lacked the vocabulary and the lens to understand what was happening. Because we were raised to believe that sexual assault was our fault – we had put ourselves in a situation, hadn’t we? We hadn’t said no or we hadn’t said it forcefully enough.
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Now, though, we have the language. Now we have the perspective. It is not our fault when someone else hurts us. It is *never* our fault when someone else hurts us.
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These past few weeks, and especially recent days, have been incredibly difficult and even traumatizing for so many people as we review and reevaluate experiences from our past – experiences not so different from Blasey Ford’s, Ramirez’s, or Swetnick’s. Memories we’d buried out of shame or self-preservation. Situations we’d always blamed ourselves for.
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This picture is from my senior year of high school, 16 years ago and so innocent. Half a year later, I’d go off to college, where 3 separate incidences of sexual assault would happen to me in my first semester alone. I didn’t speak up at the time, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong, wrong, wrong.
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I had wallpapered over all the memories, but this past week has ripped the garish flowers down. I can’t ignore the dark truth hiding back there anymore.
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Everywhere I turn right now, people are questioning survivors and victim blaming – and when they doubt or don’t believe others, all I can hear is that they doubt and don’t believe me.
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But I have lived with that for 34 years, and I am done. I will not let the next generation grow up blaming themselves instead of their assaulters. I have the language now; I have the lens; and I am not afraid of you.
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If you dare try to blame, ignore, or question any survivor, then be prepared to hear my truth, my story, my rage.
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