Happy birthday, Spray! I'm disappointed in you!

“Not being assaulted is not a privilege to be earned through the judicious application of personal safety strategies. A woman should be able to walk down the street at 4 in the morning in nothing but her socks, blind drunk, without being assaulted, and I, for one, am not going to do anything to imply that she is in any way responsible for her own assault if she fails to Adequately Protect Herself. Men aren’t helpless dick-driven maniacs who can’t help raping a vulnerable woman. It disrespects EVERYONE.”

-Emily Nagoski

These are our daughters. Mine and Ashley’s, that is. These are the beautiful, innocent, vulnerable girls we have brought into the world. Sometimes I get so angry thinking about the world they will enter soon that it feels like I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. How are we supposed to explain to them the way the world will see them? How do you make your daughters understand that the world won’t protect them? How do you teach your sweet, perfect children that they can do anything they want, but that those decisions can come at the cost of their safety? When nine year old girls aren’t allowed to wear “revealing” clothing to school, who are we protecting them from? Certainly not nine year old boys. Certainly not children who, unlike our daughters, won’t feel the societal pressure to cover up their bodies because they are seen as inherently sexual. Our daughters’ bodies are only sexual if you choose to view them as such. 

I am terrified of a world where our daughters have to fear walking down the street. I am terrified of a world where our daughters will meet men who feel entitled to their time, their bodies, their smiles. I am terrified of a world where my daughters will put up with the same shit I have. And I am terrified of what my response will be should a man ever touch our daughters without their enthusiastic consent.

When I was eighteen years old, I went to a frat party with a couple of my friends. A guy walked up to me, asked for a cigarette, struck up a conversation. It seemed benign; I felt safe with my friends there to protect me. He acted very friendly and familiar with someone I had come with. When he went back to his apartment with us, I thought they knew one another.  We went outside to smoke, just the two of us. He kissed me and I tried to push him away. I was too intoxicated to figure out how to explain that I didn’t like what he was doing. Rather than step back when I pushed him, he pinned me against a wall. Rather than fucking quit when I said to, he yanked up my dress and shoved his fingers in my pussy. Rather than understanding and accepting that when I tried to squirm away from his hand on my throat, he kissed my mouth to keep me quiet. I was lucky. My friend came outside and told him to leave. We went to bed and I was relatively unscathed. But for months - no, years - I felt guilty. I never talked about it. I thought that if I’d been a little less slutty, a little more vocal, it wouldn’t have happened. I was at fault for this man twice my size touching me in ways I didn’t want him to.

Our daughters will know that they are in control of their bodies. Our daughters will know that when they say no, people better fucking respect it. And if any one of them, if anyone’s daughter calls me and tells me some man touched her when she didn’t want him to, I guess I’ll gladly catch that charge. I will viciously protect these girls until the day I die.

Sometimes I think about how different things could have been if only you had been different.

But you weren’t. You were you.

And I spent nights wide awake, wondering what I had done to make my daddy want to leave me. My seven-year-old self wasted hours trying to come up with reasons that my mother deserved to be held down, a hand tight around her throat keeping her from crying out for help, and beaten until her flesh was tinged yellow, purple, black, blue. They were only excuses and none of them were good enough to explain why - Why you beat your wife, lashed out at your son, swung your fists at your daughter.

I’m almost twenty-three now and I can still feel the cold night air on my bare legs, the hard gravel pressing into the heels of my shoe-less feet as I ran for help, ran as fast as I could because I was so sure that this time - this time you were going to kill her.

I like to think that was the day my mother made her choice.

No more would her long shifts at work pay for the liquor that wet your throat, or the blood that stained your knuckles.

No more would she spend nights terrified and waiting for you to come home with the stench of alcohol on your breath and an anger burning like a fire - deep in your heart - that no one could ever put out.

Sixteen years. It took me sixteen fucking years to realize that you were the problem; not my mother, not my brother, not me.

With final exams on the horizon, Donnell Marcus Phelps was all set to finish his freshman year at Fort Valley State University in Georgia.

The 19-year-old from Marshallville had been studying agricultural engineering technology but also found time to manage the university’s tennis team.

 And help those in need. 

Late Tuesday afternoon he witnessed a man harassing three young ladies. The man was touching these girls in a very inappropriate way, so he decided to step in. However, he was forced to bring fists to a knife fight.

An autopsy showed Phelps was stabbed four times in the upper torso with a pocket knife with a 3.5-inch blade.

“Words cannot describe the pain that we all feel in the Fort Valley State community,” university President Paul Jones said at news conference, offering condolences to Phelps’ family, friends, students and the entire community.

Johnson described Phelps as selfless: “He always gave us hugs, and he’d always check up on us,” she added to the Telegraph.

Donnell Phelps died a hero. His Mom did an incredible job raising an amazing person. God bless this young man for his sacrificial act of bravery. His life matters.

 RIP Donnell Phelps.