My Rape.

Today is the anniversary of the death of my best friend. She was killed in her home. Through a combination of  shoddy police work, cronyism, sexism, and plain old racism, the police have never made an arrest in the case and don’t plan to.   Dead black woman in Hayward.  Who cares?

A hastily thrown together funeral. complete with false sentiment, grandstanding relatives, and painfully confused children portrayed my friend as a tragic  and troubled figure rather than a victim of abject misogyny.  The preachers at best were ineffective, at worst: offensive.  At one point, one of them requested we stand and give my friend a “round of applause for a life lived well.”  Another likened her to a conch shell.  Far from a proper and fitting goodbye that would help quiet the demons inside me, my rage grew as I sat listening to people who did not know her tell me who she was.  I was grateful her mother was not in attendance.  Having somehow foreseen the circus that was to ensue, she left the funeral home early.  I was not invited to my friend’s internment.  No one was.

My greatest sadness is that I knew she was an abused woman and I didn’t push her hard enough to leave her situation.  Murder.  Suicide.  Accident.  One was bound to happen.

This year has left me frustrated, wanting to remember my friend in a way that truly shows the fire and light and passion of who she was, and hoping for justice for her death.  I am not much for religion these days, but I found myself silently reciting the mourner’s kaddish, a practice of habit over worship, for some comfort around all of it.  Still, it wasn’t enough.  Having my attempts to start a scholarship program in her name thwarted by her husband, I struggled this year to regain the fire to do something to remind the world that she was someone important; that her life and death will – and should – never be forgotten. 

Congressman Akin gave me that fire.  It is in my friend’s memory, and in the memory of all women everywhere who have lived with or died from abuse that I share my story.

Some years ago, I was raped.  By a boyfriend.  It happened not when I was a teenager, but when I had enough education and fire in my own belly  – at least in theory – to be able to stop it.  And yet I was powerless to do so. I begged my boyfriend to stop.  With tears streaming and enduring a searing pain I know from other women who have been raped to be common, I pleaded for him to let me up.  I tried to punch him, but he gripped my hands to the bed.  I screamed, and it only seemed to excite him. When he was done, he rolled over and said, “Now that was good, and I know you liked it because the bed is soaking wet.”  He didn’t notice the blood.  He didn’t realize the wetness was urine.  I gathered my things, though I could barely walk, and I left, leaving my dignity in the urine and blood on his bed.

When I finally got the courage to tell a friend what happened and to ask whether I should go to the police, she said, “I honestly don’t know what to tell you.  I was raped by a boyfriend once.  When I reported it, the police vilified me and never even went to talk to him.”   So instead of trying to regain my power and stand up for myself, I decided to get a therapist, work it out, and move on.

It’s true he was my boyfriend at the time.  It’s even true that I was willfully in his home that night.  But make no mistake: I was forcibly raped, and while I was fortunate enough not to get pregnant from the most horrific experience of my life, my terror in thinking that I might made me vomit on my way to the car.  As it happened, my birth control pills worked.  Some women are not so lucky.

In the ensuing years, I’ve learned my experience is all too common, and worse, we have all – tacitly or directly – been encouraged to deep-six the horrible truth of rape and abuse we’ve endured in exchange for making it in a man’s world. I’m standing up now.

What Mr. Akin did was awaken in me the realization that I have been silent about this for too long, have ignored the repeated and ongoing misogynists in churches and synagogues and mosques, in Congress and in the media—some of them women—who are methodically turning women back into chattel.

I have let people like Jaycee Dugard be infantilized, despite her amazing courage; and allowed people like Sandra Fluke be demonized for standing up, while I hid in the shadows and quietly shook my fist.  I have stood by as friends were the victims of domestic abuse of all flavors because they didn’t feel they’d be believed or were afraid of what people would think of them. Of them.  I didn’t have the fortitude to be their voice.  And in my silence, I have allowed women to die.

In honor of my friend, I will not be silent any longer. I will not let anyone die on my watch because I was silent.  Our bodies are not negotiable.  This isn’t about free speech or religion; no one gets to “regulate” violence and hate against women.

The political grandstanding on the backs of women constitutes unchecked violence of the most brutal nature against women.  It is men forcing their will, physically or legally, upon those who, by virtue of our biology, are more easily preyed upon.  This aggression must be stopped.

I was raped. I was raped. I will never support anyone who doesn’t advocate absolute protection for any woman who has ever been violated. I will never acknowledge anyone who doesn’t give unqualified support to the victims of violence against women. I will call out for the misogynists they are anyone—male or female, democrat or republican—who suggests, even for a second, that what I’ve endured, what we’ve endured at the hands of rapists, is anything less than pure evil. 

We must as men and women who stand for humanity and peace come together united against anyone who  tries to hide behind a shield of religious freedom, teachings of the bible, or arcane and narrow legal definitions of any kind to support any interpretation of violence against women as somehow justified.  We must denounce completely and totally without reservation every horrid religious leader, every unchecked politician, every person who believes that women should not have complete and total control of their bodies at all times.  Acquiescence is killing us.

I will not be silent any more.  I do this not for myself, because I am strong enough to fight my battles now.  I do this to protect the many who are not strong, and in memory of the one whom I did not save. 

Droppin' the Knowledge on Obamacare -- Post Supreme Court

Today the Supreme Court upheld The Affordable Healthcare Act.  Chief Justice Roberts, not wishing to be on the wrong side of history, wrote for the majority.  Justice Thomas is still trying to figure out why Plessy v. Ferguson was wrong.  The 198 page decision boils down to this:  Congress can levy a tax on U.S. citizens who choose not to purchase healthcare.  it also allows citizens to buy affordable health coverage if they cannot afford private insurance. 

There's a lot more to it than that, and in the coming week scholars and pundits alike will dissect the decision with a magnifier.  Already, people are arguing that Justice Roberts should have upheld the law under the commerce clause.  Others are decrying the strike-down of the medicare incentives.  There will be more, but for now,  the gist of it is you can get affordable healthcare, and if you don't want it, you'll put a little in the government's till.

For those who don't understand the decision, or the legacy that got us here, cries of socialism and marxism and communism can be heard emanating from the backwoods outhouses of red states where the only news source is Rush Limbaugh and Mike Hannity.  But the word, we're looking for here..  is "civilized nation."  

The Republican right has re-interpreted the message to suggest that The Act requires citizens to jettison their current insurance plans and adopt a medical plan imposed by the government; a claim that is patently false.  That said, we're pretty sure they're going to ride that lie for all it's worth.  That is, until history begins to surface, and the Republican right learns that their greatest icons are in favor of affordable health care.

Romney's health care mandate -- while he was in the top job in Massachusetts -- is old news, and most people know about it, despite his attempts to distance himself from ever proposing it.  Fewer people, however, know that Ronald Reagan, the king of trickle-down economics, was in favor of a universal healthcare plan.  Nixon, who opened the door to China and paved the way for real partisan politics (aka lying to stay ahead) was also in favor of universal healthcare.  From a conservative thinking-person's perspective, it's more economical to provide health maintenance than to use our emergency rooms as dumping grounds for the poor; moreover, it drives health care costs down and creates a more competitive market (right, Mr. Greenspan?).  Reducing the deficit and creating a fully functioning competitive market sound like the kind of old fashioned conservative values that got folks like Nixon elected.  Of course, since Obama proposed them, no telling how Fox News will construe it.

Republicans have already labeled the Act, "the largest tax increase in history" and have vowed to repeal it.  What they can no longer argue, however, is its constitutionality.  Bully for men, women, and children everywhere.

WHE HAVE A (V)AGENDA.

This Blog started largely as a series of comments from a Facebook post.  The gist of the post is that Rand Paul is holding up a weather relief bill until his state declares that life begins at conception.

It struck the funny-bone of enough smart women to get a series of interesting comments going.  It also solidified in our minds the real and outrageous attacks on the female body being levied by conservative men.  Vaginas, like the church, really ought to be a-politics, but if they're going to show up, then the agenda (or vagenda) needs to be taken over by women, you know, the people who actually have vaginas.


Enter VAGENDA.  Stay tuned.