Free at last

Last night I was at the fair. It was chilly, crowded, I was with 3 other girls, and after we bought cotton candy we paused to watch the fireworks start. I was looking up at them, I had been having a wonderful night, I was right up against my best friend’s side, and then I felt a guy squeeze my ass.

The other day I was talking to my friend about a time I was restocking a hanging shelf in a tank top, as a 16 year old, and when I was stretched up on my toes trying to reach, a man nonchalantly slipped out his phone and pretended to be texting, only for the phone’s camera shutter noise to go off as he snapped a picture of my cleavage.

And apparently in three years I’ve learned nothing, because in both these incidents my first thought was “being a woman ruins everything.”

the soviet union wasn’t some radical departure from the russian empire. it was simply the same empire in a new uniform. red flags and marxist rhetoric instead orthodox crosses or symbols of tasrdom. the core goal always stayed the same: control the non-russian peoples by any means necessary.

on paper, the ussr was a “friendship of nations,” a voluntary union of 15 republics. in reality, it was a centralized empire run out of moscow. the republics had no real say in foreign policy, trade, or even their own leadership. step out of line? you’d face censorship, arrests, or worse. this is well documented and it's gross that people try to downplay this because it challenges the theory they've consumed.

the soviet regime cracked down on local languages, histories, and identities. flags were banned. historians and artists were persecuted. even alphabets were changed with non-russian scripts rewritten in cyrillic to sever cultural memory. it was pure russification.

ethnic cleansing was policy. in the 1940s, stalin deported entire nationalities: chechens, crimean tatars, kalmyks, and others. shoved into cattle cars, sent to siberia or central asia and many never made it. half of the deported crimean tatars died. scholars now call these acts what they were: crimes against humanity, even genocide. ukraine’s holodomor (1932–33) was another brutal example. millions died of famine caused by soviet grain policies, right as the regime was wiping out ukrainian culture and religious life.

the baltics suffered too. in 1941 and 1949, tens of thousands of estonians, latvians, and lithuanians were deported, targeting everyone from political leaders to schoolteachers. all while moscow insisted it was promoting “friendship.” and after wwii, the ussr exported this "model "friendship" to central eastern europe. poland, hungary, czechoslovakia, east germany, and others swapped nazi rule for soviet occupation. local revolts were crushed (hungary in ’56, czechoslovakia in ’68). sovereignty was tolerated only when it served moscow.

even economically, the ussr followed the imperial playbook. resources flowed to the center; local populations got pollution and poverty. ukraine powered soviet industry with coal and grain but saw little investment or infrastructural support. the baltic states were productive yet politically silenced.

kazakhstan? used for 456 nuclear tests without consent, leaving over a million exposed to radiation. uzbekistan and turkmenistan were turned into cotton monocultures, poisoning land and water for moscow’s benefit. sound familiar? it’s the same exploitative dynamic seen in british india or the congo.

and the legacy lives on. russia’s invasions of georgia (2008), crimea (2014), and ukraine (2022) aren’t accidents. they’re rooted in an old imperial belief that former soviet republics can’t exist without moscow’s blessing. the kremlin still pushes “russkiy mir”, this insane idea that russia has the right to “protect” russian speakers wherever they are. but this protection has meant war, occupation, and death, especially for russian-speaking ukrainians.

ukraine’s refusal to bow to this narrative is exactly why it’s under attack. the empire might’ve changed flags, but its logic never died. and the fight for true decolonization is far from over.

My family were among the people who lost their home in the ethnic cleansing of Crimea. For years afterwards they weren't even allowed to visit their homeland. They never got their home back or managed to build a new home in Crimea even after they could finally live there again, although given what's happening in Crimea now maybe that's a blessing in disguise. My great-grandfather was imprisoned for six years (and sentenced to many more) for the mere crime of being the wrong ethnicity. My grandfather was left without a dad for years as a sickly little boy stuck in Siberia. Hell, years later, long after his father's release, when he was graduating top of his class his teachers had to petition for him to be allowed to graduate with the appropriate honors, because he was the son of a "traitor to the nation." He still wasn't fully granted the honors, despite having perfect grades.

Meanwhile, the cotton monocultures in Uzbekistan? Those weren't just poisoning the environment, they were poisoning school children. Every year school students would be sent to work on the field and help with the harvest, exposing them to the pesticides that lay over the fields like a thick haze. My grandmother would get horrible allergic reactions from it, but it was still next to impossible to be freed from this duty. If I get my story straight, eventually she managed. I don't know from what age they would send kids to work, or when they stopped doing that. From what I know my mom didn't have to pick cotton anymore, but she still remembers the pesticides.

And those are just the larger crimes. You know why my grandfather's family eventually moved from Siberia to Uzbekistan? Racism. People would call them names and insult their appearance. My grandfather would have girls from the school years above him running up to him during breaks just to look at his dark eyelashes, like he was some kind of zoo animal. In Uzbekistan, at least, people looked like them and were Muslim like them, even if religious expression was still heavily stifled in public settings.

All of this happened in living memory. People have taken long-term health damage. People have lost language and culture, not only through the horrible crimes against humanity, but also through the pressure to assimilate to (white) Russian language and culture. Crimean Tatar is an endangered language. Nearly all of my maternal relatives have a Tatar name and a Russian name, because I guess even simple Turkic names are too "difficult." Very early on, people had to change their surnames to something Russian sounding. To my mom and her brother, Russian is their native language. I don't even speak either of my family's Tatar languages anymore. It's all getting lost.

“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me – it still sometimes happens – and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous – not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful… The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived.

That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday.

"The report, titled My Body is My Own (PDF), looked at both women’s power to make their own decisions about their bodies and the extent to which countries’ laws support or interfered with that right.

In the 57 developing countries where data was available, the report found 45 percent of women were not fully empowered to make choices over healthcare, contraception, and whether or not to have sex. There were differences across regions: While 76 percent of women in eastern and southeastern Asian make their own decisions over their bodies, the figure is less than 50 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and in central and south Asia.

The report also said more than 30 countries across the world restrict women’s right to move around outside the home.

Separately, the UNFPA said despite constitutional guarantees of gender equality in many countries, on average, women enjoy just 75 percent of the legal rights of men.

I was 6 years old when my two older sisters went to Palestine to “visit family.” At least that’s what my mom told me.

I was born in Chicago, like my sisters, but our parents are Palestinian, born in Jerusalem. I was four-months-old when our father died — he worked at a gas station and was shot during a robbery. After that, the four of us moved into the basement apartment of my mom’s mother’s house, where my sisters and I shared a room.

I worshipped my oldest sister growing up. She was rebellious and loved pop music and makeup, which my grandmother and mother couldn’t stand. We were raised Muslim, and while my mom didn’t make us wear hijabs — headscarves — to school, we did when we went to mosque on the high holidays. Every other day, we wore long-sleeve shirts and pants or knee-length skirts.

I don’t have too many memories of my sisters, but I do remember how much my oldest sister loved Usher. She was 13 and she’d sing along to his music on the radio in our room. She bought a poster of him, shirtless, and pinned it to the wall next to our bed.

He didn’t last long. My grandmother saw the poster one day and ripped it off the wall. She was screaming at my sister, and my sister yelled right back — she was feisty! But it didn’t matter; Usher was gone. And a year later, so were my sisters.

My mom said they were “going on a trip” to Palestine, but even as a 6-year-old, I’d heard rumors about a diary entry. Something about my sister kissing a boy behind a tree, or writing that she wanted to. I remember large suitcases and both of my sisters weeping as we said goodbye. I cried too, but I was more mad at them for leaving me. Who would I listen to the radio with late at night?

Still, I assumed they were coming back. So when my mother told me that they wanted to stay in Palestine, I got really upset. I missed them so much.

The only time I got to see my friends was at school.

In 8th grade, our class took a field trip to tour the high school. No one wore uniforms, like we did in middle school! I could even wear my skinny jeans there. Yep, as strict as my mom was, she did buy me skinny jeans that were super popular then. I remember being in the store and pointing them out and being stunned when she nodded yes, then paid for three pairs at the register. They were the only things I owned that made me feel like a normal kid.

But right before middle school graduation, I came home from school one afternoon to find my mother and grandmother rummaging through my closet.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

My mother was holding a garbage bag and my grandmother had scissors. They were cutting my skinny jeans into pieces and throwing them away.

I was so confused — she’d bought them for me! When I asked my mom why, she said, “They’re inappropriate and revealing. You’re too old to dress like this now!”

I was furious. All I had left were one pair of baggy jeans, which I hated. For the first time in middle school, I was relieved to have a uniform.

As soon as I graduated 8th grade, I started pestering my mom about enrolling me in high school. Every time I asked if she’d done it, she’d say, “Not yet.” In July, she said, “I’m signing you up for an all girls’ school.” But there was a wait list, so then it was going to be online school. I even did my own research and had pamphlets sent to the house, but nothing happened.

By September, all of my friends had started school but me. I woke up every day at 10am and watched TV, cleaned the house, and helped make dinner. I was beyond bored. Meanwhile my mom loved having me around. She didn’t work, and always said that it was important for me to learn how to be a good housewife. I cringed every time she said that — that was the last thing I wanted to be.

In fact, I really wanted a job, even if it was just working at my step-dad’s gas station. Anything to get out of the house. I even asked my step-dad if I could get a workers’ permit, which you can get at 15 in Chicago, and he said, “Sure!” But just like with high school, nothing ever happened. It was another empty promise.

My laptop was my refuge.

Facebook was the only way for me to stay in touch with my friends. I made up a random name that my parents could never guess and chatted with friends throughout the day. If my mom walked into the room, I’d switch the screen to a video game. She had no idea. Earlier that year, when I told friends why I wasn’t in school, more than one told me, “That’s illegal!” I kind of knew I had the legal right to be in school, but wasn’t sure who to tell. My parents didn’t care — it’s what they wanted!

A year passed, and the following summer, I was chatting on Facebook with a guy I knew from middle school.

When he wrote, “Want to go to Chipotle this Friday?” my heart skipped a beat.

I was super excited and typed back, “Sure.”

I told my parents that I was going to see my 24-year-old cousin. She was the only person I was ever allowed to visit. She’s also incredibly cool and promised to cover for me. I met her at her house, and then she dropped me off at the mall and told me to have a great time.

I did! He was cute, and super nice. I told him that my parents were strict and didn’t even know where I was. He was like, “No worries!”

It was the most fun I’d had in over a year. At the end of our date, I told him that I’d be in touch over Facebook, and floated home.

The next night, I was in the living room watching TV when the doorbell rang. My mom answered, and I heard his voice ask, “Is Yasmine home?”

I froze.

My mother started screaming, “Who are you and why are you at this house?”

He said, “I’m Yasmine’s boyfriend.”

I could see him standing in front of my mom, her back to me, and was trying to wave to him, like, “Go away! This is a terrible idea!”

She threatened to call the police, slammed the door, and then screamed at me: “Go to your room. You’re grounded!”

The next day, my mom went grocery shopping without me and locked the glass storm door from the outside, which meant I was trapped. For the next two weeks, I was literally kept under lock and key when she left.

And then one day, my mother said, “Pack your bags. We’re going to Palestine to visit your sisters.”

I’d only been there once when I was 10; I don’t even remember seeing my sisters then — all I remember is that it was dusty and dry. No green at all. I hated it. Plus, I speak only very basic Arabic, which is what they speak there.

I was dreading the trip. Saying goodbye to my little sister was painful — she was 8 by then. She was the only other person who knew, besides my cousin, about my date. I fought back tears and promised I’d be back soon.

My mom said we’d be gone for a month, but I didn’t trust her. On the way to the airport, I asked to see my return ticket. I wanted proof that it existed. She was indignant as she showed me the ticket, but it made me feel better.

My mother and grandmother and I landed in Tel Aviv, which was as hot and dusty as I remembered. I felt claustrophobic in the cab, which we took to Ramallah, the Palestinian capital. My grandmother has a house there, and both of my sisters lived nearby.

I was so angry about being there that I wasn’t even excited to see my sisters. I couldn’t believe that they’d left me all those years before. Now, they were both married with kids. But by the end of that first evening, I relaxed with them. I even told them what happened with my Chipotle date, and they started teasing me, like, “You’re such an idiot! With a white guy? Really?”

They thought that if he’d been Muslim, I wouldn’t have gotten into so much trouble. I wasn’t so sure, but it still felt good to laugh with them about it.

About two weeks into our stay, my sisters sat me down and started doing my hair and makeup. I was never allowed to wear makeup at home, so I thought it was cool. When I asked why, they said they wanted me to meet a friend of theirs.

Their friend was in his twenties but still lived with his mom, which my sister called “a problem.” I didn’t understand what she meant by that.

He arrived with his mom and uncle and started speaking to me in Arabic. I barely understood anything except for his asking me how old I was.

I said, “I’m 15. I just finished 8th grade.”

He looked perplexed. So was I.

After he left, I asked my sisters what the meeting was about. They explained that the way to meet suitors is through families. When a family thinks a girl is ready to be married — usually she’s part of that decision — they pass word along to other families that they’re looking for a husband. The couple then meets through the parents, and if it is a good match, an arrangement is made.

A week passed, and once again my sisters sat me down and started putting makeup on me. They said that another guy was coming to meet me. When I asked, “Who?”

They said, “Don’t worry about it. Just have fun.”

The doorbell rang and in walked a guy with his parents. I’m 5'8" and he was 5'4", nine years older, and missing half of his front left tooth. Everyone seemed very eager. I was repulsed.

I sat stone-faced the entire time they were there. As soon as he and his family left, my mom and grandmother said that they thought I should marry him. They said, “He has a job and a house.” That’s all it took.

I was furious. By then, I realized that they’d brought me to Palestine to get married and planned to leave me there. Instead of berating them, I immediately started thinking of ways to return home on my own. I had watched SVU. I knew this was totally illegal. I just needed to figure out a way to reach a detective in Illinois who could help me escape.

I also knew then that I couldn’t trust my sisters — anytime I complained to them, they’d just say, “It’s not so bad! You’ll learn to love him!”

He and I met two more times that week and each time, I hoped he’d figure out that I was being coerced. But then, during that third visit, all the men went into one room while the women stayed in another.

My sister, mother, and grandmother were chatting with his mother and sisters when I heard the men read the engagement passage from the Koran, which announces a marriage.

Startled, I said to my sisters, “What are they doing?”

My oldest sister said, “They’re reading the passage.”

I shouted, “No!” and fought back tears.

My worst nightmare was becoming a terrifying reality. I ran into the bathroom, curled into a ball, and dissolved into tears. How could my family do this to me? I thought about running away, but how? My mother had my passport. I had no money. I was stuck. I started thinking about different ways to die. Anything was better than this.

After his family left, I could no longer contain my rage at my mother. “How could you do this to me? I am your daughter!” I shouted. Tears were streaming down my face. I could see my mom was upset, too — she was crying, shaking her head. I think she felt bad about it, but she also felt like it was the best option. I felt so betrayed.

And just then, my grandmother marched into the room and slapped me. “Don’t disrespect your mother!” she said, before turning to my mother and saying, “See? She needs this. How else will she learn to be respectful?’

That’s when I learned that my grandmother had set the whole thing up. She’d met this man’s family at a mall the same week I met him! His parents owned a restaurant and spotted us shopping. They approached her to see if I was an eligible bride for their son. She told them yes, but that I had to be married before she flew back to the States. He had no other prospects, so they were excited I was one.

I never liked my grandmother, but I didn’t hate her until that moment.

The wedding was planned for September 30th, a week and a half away. I was still desperately trying to figure a way out of it. I told my mom, “I’ll find a way to leave.” She replied, “Either you marry him or someone way older who won’t be as nice.”

My sisters said the same. “You’re lucky.” As much as I dreaded what was happening, they made the alternative sound even worse.

A few days before the wedding, my oldest sister finally revealed that she was also married against her will. “I was kicking and screaming the whole way,” she told me. “But I learned to love him. You will too.”

I don’t remember the ceremony — everything is such a blur — but I do remember pulling away when he tried to kiss my cheek and my mother hissing, “Kiss his cheek!” I refused.

At the end of the wedding party, both of my sisters were so excited about my first night with him. They even said, “Text us afterwards!”

I hated them.

The first night was awful. The only thing I’m thankful for is that my husband was not a violent or aggressive man. It could have been so much worse. I get terrible migraine headaches brought on by stress, and I used them to my advantage in the weeks that followed.

He took that first week off of work and we spent most of it with his family. I did the best I could to tolerate being around him and his family while I tried to figure a way out of this mess. To do that, I needed to get on the internet.

When he went back to his job as a mechanic, he’d be gone by 9am. I’d get up, have breakfast and go to his mom’s house to help her clean and make dinner. She had a computer, so one day, I asked if I could use it to talk to my mother and she agreed. Instead, I logged onto Facebook and messaged a friend from 3rd grade and told her where I was and what had happened.

She wrote back immediately, “That’s illegal!”

Once again, I knew that, but I didn’t know what to do.

I had another friend I met through Facebook who lived in Texas. He was Muslim. I told him what happened, and he wrote, ‘You need to call the embassy!’ He even sent the number.

My heart was pounding as I wrote it in a piece of paper and shoved it into my pocket.

On October 14th, I was in our apartment in the afternoon when I finally worked up the nerve to call. I used the Nokia flip phone my husband gave me to talk to him and my sisters.

An American-sounding man answered the phone and I blurted, “I’m a U.S. citizen. My parents brought me here against my will to marry a man. I want to go home.”

After a moment of silence, he said, “Wow, this is a first. Hold for a moment.” He connected me to a man named Mohammed, who asked me for my parents’ names and address in the states.

I gave him all the proof I could think of that I was a US citizen. I didn’t know my social security number and didn’t have my passport. He said that was okay, but he needed proof that I was actually married. He asked for the marriage certificate. I had no idea where it was. Then he asked me for my husband’s last name, and I realized, I had no idea what that was either.

Mohammed told me he’d be in touch once he verified all my information. He called me several times over the next two months. During that time, I learned my husband’s last name, which was legally mine as well.

As I waited for news, I got lots of migraines.

On December 3rd, Mohammed called with the number for a taxi service and the address of a hotel. He told me to be there the next morning at 11am.

The next morning, I waited for my husband to leave and shoved all of my belongings — including the traditional wedding gold my husband’s family gave me — into my suitcase and called the number. That’s when I realized that I didn’t even know my address. I told the driver the name of the closest big store and then stayed on the phone with him, telling him when to turn right or left. He still couldn’t find me, so I ran down to the main street to flag him down praying no one would see me.

I held my breath for the entire 30-minute ride to the hotel. There, in the parking lot, I spotted a blond woman sitting with a guy in a black van.

“Are you with the US embassy?” I asked.

They said yes, and then she patted me down, explaining it was for security purposes, to make sure I was not strapped with any bombs.

I said, “Do whatever you need to do!” I didn’t care — I was so close to freedom.

When they put me in the back seat, I pulled off my headscarf and fought back happy tears: There, with these two strangers, I felt safe for the first time in forever.

We went to the US Embassy in Jerusalem where I spent the day filling out paperwork in order to enter into the foster care system back in the States. I had no idea what that meant other than from this one cartoon show called Foster Home for Imaginary Friends, but agreeing to enter foster care wasn’t hard — at least it was a new start.

That night, a diplomat accompanied me to the airport with two bodyguards, and I was placed on a plane to Philadelphia.

On my next flight, I flew from Philadelphia to Chicago O'Hare and sat next to a 20-something guy on his way to his friend’s bachelor party who asked me how old I was.

I said, “15.”

He said, “You’re too young to be on a plane by yourself!”

If he only knew.

At O'Hare, I had twenty minutes to kill before I was supposed to meet two state officials in the food court, so I went to a computer terminal and logged onto Facebook. I had two accounts at the time: one for friends and one for family. I wanted to see what my family was saying.

A three-page letter from my second oldest sister was the first thing I read. She said she never wanted to see me again, that she hated me, and that if anyone asked her how many sisters she had, she’d say two instead of three. I was devastated.

Then I read a group chat between my two sisters, my mom, and my mom’s sister.

It started, “Yasmine ran away.” “What? Where?” And then someone wrote, “She’s ruining our reputation!” Not one of them wondered if I was okay.

My aunt asked if I had taken my gold. When my sister said yes, my aunt replied, “She could have gotten kidnapped or robbed!”

That was the only mention of concern for my wellbeing.

As painful as it was to read those words, it made me realize that I had made the right choice.

The people I then met in the airport food court introduced me to a woman from Illinois’ Child Protective Services, who took me under her wing. It was 11am, 24 hours after I ran for my life into the streets of Ramallah to escape my forced marriage.

I first moved in with a woman who fostered several kids, and stayed there for six months. It wasn’t ideal — she was very religious and made us go to her Baptist church with her on Saturday and Sunday. But it was still better than what I’d left. This was confirmed when I had to face my mother in court to establish that I should remain a ward of the state, which is what they call kids whose parents aren’t fit to take care of them.

The first court date was two weeks after I arrived. When I saw my mom, I froze. She was sitting in the waiting room and refused to acknowledge me. She didn’t make eye contact; it was as if I didn’t exist. I felt an awful mix of hurt and rage.

A few months later, I had to testify in a courtroom. My mom was there with her lawyer. He showed photos from my wedding and said, “You look happy! And your mom said that you wanted to be married.”

I had to explain to a room full of strangers that I was faking that smile to survive and that my mom knew the entire time that I didn’t want to marry that man. On the stand, I said, “My mom is lying.” That was so painful to have to say — I wept in front of everyone. All the feelings I’d kept inside just poured out.

After that hearing, I officially became a ward of the state of Illinois.

By then, I’d already started ninth grade. I didn’t like my foster mom much. I stopped going to church on the weekends, but she wouldn’t let me or my foster brother stay in the house alone so we were locked out until she got home every weekend and weekdays too. It was hard in the Chicago winter, but the agency didn’t think I was in immediate danger, so I stayed put. Teens are hard to place.

By January 2014, at 16-years-old, I’d been in and out of three foster homes. My strategy was just to survive foster care until I was 18, when I would finally be on my own. So when a couple called Carrie and Marvin came to meet me one weekend, I didn’t hold out any hope.

Carrie and Marvin had two biological teenagers, both with developmental delays. They understood kids and were super warm, but it still took me a while to open up. I really wanted to make it to 18 living with them, but I never dreamed what actually happened next.

When I hit my one-year anniversary with them, they asked me if I wanted to be adopted. I was shocked! I figured I’d leave at 18 and just be on my own — I never thought there was an alternative. But they told me that they wanted me around forever. I cannot tell you how good that felt — to be wanted, by an actual family. I said yes.

No more waking up at 6am to someone saying, “Pack your bags — you’re out!” For the first time in my life, I could put things up in my room and it was okay. It was the first time since being in that van with the people from the embassy that I felt safe.

I saw my mother one last time in court, at the final termination of parental rights. Carrie had asked her for childhood photos of me, and amazingly, my mom handed them to me there.

It was a cold exchange. She was expressionless. At first, I was insulted. It all seemed so easy, her giving me up. But it was really nice to get the photos. She didn’t have to do that.

Now Carrie has them around the house. It makes me feel like I’m really part of her family, like I’m her kid.

I finally reconnected on Facebook with my sister a few months ago, the one who’d said she hated me. She admitted that she wished she’d had the nerve to do what I had done. Now I understand why she was so upset: I got away. She didn’t.

I just graduated from high school — the first in my biological family to do so! In September, I’m going to Illinois State University and just learned that I won a full scholarship, which means my tuition will be waived for the next five years. I plan to study mass communications, and may want to do something with computers, considering they are literally what saved me.

Forced and child marriages are not limited to any single race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or place of residence. The US is no exception: while forced marriages aren’t something you think of as happening in the States, there were at least 3,000 forced and underage marriages that took place in the United States between 2009 and 2011. A national survey found that forced marriage occurs among families of a variety of religious backgrounds, including individuals from Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish, and other faith traditions, so again, there is no singular group of people being affected by this practice. While the majority of forced marriages involve girls who are minors and older teenagers, there are a lot of women in their early and mid-20s that become victims as well; men are also victims, though in smaller numbers. One of the (many) complicating factors in the US is the presence of ‘parental consent’ marriage laws, which allow 15, 16, and 17-year-olds to get married with a parent’s consent; the problem being, of course, that the parents consent to the marriage but the child does not.

If you are facing the prospect of a forced marriage, suspect your family is trying to take you overseas to get married against your will, are in the process of being forcibly married off, are currently in a forced marriage, or have a friend who is in any of the aforementioned situations, here are some resources you can utilize:

Tahirih Justice Center’s Forced Marriage Initiative: Email [email protected] with your story or call 571-282-6161 and ask for Casey or Dina; they run the Forced Marriage Initiative at Tahirih and are both professional caseworkers whose job completely revolves around helping people leave forced/underage marriages and preventing them from happening in the first place. 

The mission of the Forced Marriage Initiative is to end forced marriage in the United States, and this is taking place in several forms: Casey and Dina’s main objective, of course, is to directly assist victims and potential victims. However, they also run a very active education, advocacy, and legal campaign. Jeanne, who also works closely with them, does a lot of public policy work on the subject and is currently working on getting the minimum age of marriage raised to 18 in every state, while Archana does a lot on the policy and legal side of things to try and minimize the numbers of forced marriages happening in the United States.

Unchained At Last: a New Jersey-based non-profit that fights against forced and child marriage in the US. Founder and CEO Fraidy Reiss is a forced marriage survivor, and has dedicated her life to helping other people (mostly women and girls) escape forced and child marriage situations. You can fill out their form or call 908-481-HOPE.

The AHA Foundation: The Foundation deals with issues relating to female genital mutilation, honor violence, and forced marriages, though they focus on advocacy and victims in Muslim communities. Here is their Get Help page and their amazing resource directory, organized by type of service and state.

Manavi: an organization founded specifically to help South Asian women escape domestic violence, sexual violence, and forced marriages. Here’s their Get Help page and the number of their 24-hour hotline:1-732-435-1414.

Girls Not Brides: A global partnership of over 900 civil organizations from 95 countries committed to ending child marriage. While the partnership itself is only a policy organization, they have a lot of good resources for finding assistance if you are a victim or prospective victim of forced/underage marriage.

The US Department of State has an entire page about the topic

If you are a US citizen or resident abroad, contact your local US embassy for assistance and they will help as much as they are able

Some articles discussing the problem in greater depth:

NPR: Thousands Of Young Women In U.S. Forced Into Marriage

New York Times: America’s Child Marriage Problem

PRI:  The US has a forced child marriage problem, too

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Forced Marriage in America: many women don’t know their rights, fear to claim them

TruthDig: Forced Marriage of Children Happens in America, Too

CBS News: The “ugly” problem of child marriage in the US

Al Jazeera: “Till Death Do Us Part: The Forgotten US Victims of Forced Marriage”

Girls Not Brides: It Does Happen “Here”: Forced and Child Marriage in the US

PBS: Uncovering the Problem of Forced Marriage in the United States

Good Housekeeping: Child Marriage Still Happens in America

Vice News: There Are No States in the US that Outlaw Child Marriage and the accompanying in-depth video

Washington Post:  Why can 12-year-olds still get married in the United States?

In 1992, he drugged a 23-year-old patient, a woman who had gone to him before and whose baby he delivered, and raped her. The victim, known as Candice/Candy, remembered the assault and that he was the one who did it, and she reported it to the police. Of course, everyone thought she was crazy. Whose side would you take: a respected small town doctor or a young single mother?

When the police took his blood, it didn't match the semen taken from her rape kit. She was adamant this was the man and asked for a re-test. A year later, they took blood again, this time with police observing. The blood didn't match the rape kit. The police closed the case.

Candice/Candy didn't let up and hired a private investigator who did an extremely illegal thing by breaking into Schneeberger's car, stealing some chapstick presumably used by Schneeberger, and testing the DNA. That DNA from the chapstick matched her rape kit.

Due to the illegal seizure, the positive results didn't mean shit, but Candice/Candy brought a civil case against Schneeberger. He agreed to another test, this time the entire thing was videotaped by police. Initially, they asked to take the sample from his fingers. He asked if it could be done from his arm instead, due to some disease that made his fingers swell.

During the video, the examiner tries multiple times to get a sample from his arm. While she's prepping the sample for testing, she looks obviously skeptical. Someone off camera asks her what's wrong. She remarks that, even though she had just taken this sample herself right now, the blood looks...old.

The sample was apparently too degraded for testing, presumably due to a mistake on the lab's part.

The case didn't move again until 1997....when Schneeberger's wife reported to police that her husband was sexually assaulting her daughter from a previous marriage. This had been apparently going on for several years. He would go into her room, give her injections and assault her.

They took a sample from him again, and videotaped it again. This time, they took multiple kinds of DNA samples: hair, blood (taken from his fingers!), saliva...and it all finally matched Candice/Candy's rape kit.

Insultingly, he was sentenced 6 years and got out on parole after 4. But how did he get away with making an entire town turn on a woman and call her crazy, all the while he was raping his stepdaughter in the same way he raped Candice/Candy?

To illustrate the lengths men go to cover up their violence against women, Schneeberger revealed during the trial that he had SURGICALLY INSERTED A PLASTIC TUBE INSIDE HIS ARM that had the blood of someone else inside. He made sure that examiners took blood from that arm in particular. The blood inside the tube had degraded over time, which was why the examiner had noticed it.

It chronicles a rural Jharkhand family’s fight for legal justice after their daughter is gang raped by teenage boys from their village

Her parents report the rape to the village panchayat (elected representatives) immediately but the community decides the thing that will keep their village life most harmonious is if the 13 year old gang rape victim agrees to marry one of her attackers.

These scenes were incredibly disturbing because pretty much all of the villagers, male and female, believe that her marrying her rapist is the best choice: chiefly because women in their community’s ability to survive is based on marriage, no one will want to marry her otherwise and marriage will “remove the stain on her character” from the rape

Her parents push back on the idea that she should marry a violent rapist and take the case to the police anyways, but the entire trial is made much harder by the fact that the rest of their villagers alternatively shuns and physically threatens them for making an “internal village matter” public.

One of the villagers elected representatives talks endlessly about how much he values community cohesion and how the family has ruined the harmony of the village by pressing charges. He claims to care about the victim but says over and over that she should realize “everyone makes mistakes and is human” that she should give the boys a second chance rather than trying to lock the boys up (he doesn’t mention that the boys accused of the rape had already murdered another woman accused of being a witch) Some of the commentary that he makes feels like it could come out of the mouth of a male western leftist.

the story has a (somewhat) happen ending. The boys who raped her ended up getting the LONGEST sentence for rape that had ever been given in jharkland at the time, and after the verdict was released some of the shunning lessened.

It was made into a documentary specifically because of how rare it is for rape cases to be reported to the police in Jharkhand (let alone for fathers to stand by their raped daughters and publicly seek justice for them) The credits said the rate of women reporting to the police has doubled since the case was decided.

I don't think its fair to compare it to anime and comics.

And when you look at the sculptures of males, they are neutral: their bodies are not sculpted like a caricature of the male sex. The proportions are normal.

It shows that it's a deliberate choice from the artist. I'm pretty sure the statue on the left has dark breasts because people touch it so much it lost its colour.

There are also sculptures with both men and women that look oh so very contemporary...

you should also never ever unplug the air conditioner and stick a flashlight in the vent that blows air to see if we're in there. it's very bad, that place should not be checked

and whatever you do, if you've already made the mistake of unplugging it, don't remove it from the window for cleaning if possible. and whether it's possible to remove the unit or not, don't carefully disassemble the front panel, document where the screws go and plastic bits go, and open up the vent more to be able to get into it easily

as black mold, i'm an expert on this. you should heed my warnings: now, if you've somehow made the mistake of doing all of the above, you should not use warm water and dish soap to CLEAN the inside of the vent thoroughly. DON'T ever use a bottle brush to get into the hard to reach places. and certainly don't rinse and dry the cleaned area before carefully putting it back together

there's nothing wrong with us, black mold. we don't cause or exacerbate breathing conditions like asthma or other illnesses. it's cool, we're cool

furthermore, if you're capable of removing the window unit, DONT take a hose with the same soapy water and wash the portion of the window unit that sits outside the window and is therefore weatherproofed.

whatever you do, don't allow the air conditioner to dry before plugging it back in and turning it on again

and if you have a central air conditioner, you will definitely never ever consult a manual or sources online to perform a similar cleaning procedure on the cooling unit outside.

If you want to go full-neutral, you can finger sign abortion. 

Or, the scientific version (pregnancy-remove) that is considered the leftist way –

"Male Karens"

But hey, it's not a misogynistic trope. Men are compiling and watching videos of women getting beat up to fight racism. Yes. Totally.

For example, here, Karen, while you all claim it has an anti-racial background (its history is muddied however), is now being used against women of all Races because it was an acceptable way for males to express their misogyny. I'm seeing the same Trend happen with the discourse around white woman tears. Where everyone recognizes the racial connotations at the beginning and then men of all races start using it to accuse that women of all Races cry and lie about rape to hurt men.

You can never create an acceptable Target out of an oppressed class because they're not going to focus on the part where you find it acceptable. Like, White women being oppressors for being white. What they find funny and acceptable about the jokes is that they're getting to make fun of a type of oppressed person: women.

And do not get me wrong, this is not limited to race. Making jokes about straight woman culture and it is just domestic violence also holds this problem. The part that men are laughing at is the fact that they get to joke about beating women. They don't care that you're laughing about a supposed oppressor because you're still making the target a member of an oppressed class specifically. There isn't a male equivalent to Karen. There isn't a male equivalent to crying to avoid accountability even though they've done so on the national stage.