Mhmm.

If you haven’t voted early or mailed in a ballot make sure you SHOW UP AT THE POLLS ON NOVEMBER 6th! This is one of the most important midterm elections in history. USE YOUR VOTE.

Go to Vote Save America to find out information on what your ballot will look like and read about the different amendments that you’ll see on your ballot. You can even fill out a voting day cheat sheet so you have all your votes right there when you go to the ballot box.

“One of the issues brought to light in the face of all of this is that patriarchy has constructed a very specific way in which survivors are permitted to act with respect to our trauma. This includes, but is not limited to, how and when we report it, what we wear, and what we look like. The narrative constructed of what a “proper victim” of sexual violence looks like also prescribes how the victims are required to have the trauma affect them. If you aren’t affected enough, then the assault wasn’t really that severe. But – if you’re too affected – you’re ‘damaged’, and ‘not credible’. A system built by white men to preserve their own power shouldn’t be determining this, but it is. For example – I’ve seen and heard comments about how Dr. Ford “clearly wasn’t very affected, as she was able to get her PhD. So, what harm was really done? It couldn’t have been that bad.” We basically have to be dead for it to ‘count’, and even then, it still doesn’t matter enough to spur real change. Apparently, being too upset by your own assault removes all of your credibility, and now you’re vengeful and/or untrustworthy.

Dr. Ford is not a broken vase that no longer holds water.

Objects are damaged. People are not.

The word ‘damaged’ implies that something is no longer fit for the utility it was created to serve.

But we are people.

We weren’t created to serve as a utility to society. You don’t get to throw us away like useless garbage just because we may not be acting out our victimhood in a way that fits your completely baseless and fabricated definition.

Women are so often discarded when they don’t act in accordance with this absurd social contract. You’re too big, too ugly, too nice, too emotional, too smart, too dumb, too whatever. It’s not the same as the social contract we make with the world with respect to valuing fairness and kindness. This is stuff that’s only applied to women, and arbitrarily controlled by those in power for no other reason than that they can. So, they choose to do so to preserve that power structure. This simply has to be over now. Powerful men don’t get to define women, whether it be in terms of femininity or survivorhood.

Lastly – I find it very telling that men would assume that women use sexual assault accusations as a weapon against them in the way they actually use sexual assault as a weapon against us.”