My own sins:
When I was 25, a Chicago Congressman was found having a sexual relationship with a 16 year old girl. I said, "Oh, she is 16 going on 45" and brushed it off. If you'd suggested that my surmise was maybe racist (after all I didn't know that girl at all), I'd have said, "But Mel Reynolds is black!" and remained totally unconcerned with one of the more toxic ways of racism informs rape culture: Black girls are treated as grown, sexualized women when they are still children.
I used to tell this joke: "What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?" "Nothing she hasn't already been told twice!"
Edgy!
How about all the times I questioned some girl's motives? Assumed she was a slut? Assumed she was taking unfair advantage of her own attractiveness?
How about all the times I assumed the man had more credibility? Assumed his authority as sacrosanct and hers was poached?
How about the sins done to me?
The first time I got cat-called I was 11 and I felt so ashamed to have let myself be seen outside in shorts. There was the time I was walking to school (7th or 8th grade) and the man gestured to me from a car, asking for directions, and then showed me his gross hard penis under his flabby belly and I felt like an idiot for walking over there.
What about all the times men wondered within my earshot about the color of my pubic hair, and I felt like a cheat for having dyed my hair blonde?
How about all the times a boy told me I was being cruel for saying no, and I believed I was cruel. Worse - how about the hands holding my head down and it never occurred to me that I was allowed to spit or bite or punch. How about when I really didn't want to but it wasn't rape because that only happens when it's a stranger and you haven't had anything to drink.
The men yelling at me from cars, looming over me to in line to make sure I knew they were stronger. Being a woman is being scared a lot of the time. Or, maybe, it was?
Look, it was all fucked up. I have said this many times, but it bears repeating: I am knocking at fucking 50 and it's just now occurring to me that assault and harassment aren't just the cost of doing business as a woman. My failure to recognize this doesn't make me a doe-eyed victim. Or it doesn't make me just a victim; I am also a huge fucking super complicit dumbass as I have been game for making other women feel bad for the way they are women.
It's all tied up and mired in a rape culture that we're just now, finally, having a reckoning for and, lord, it is a painful reckoning. Still, as we pick through the gross, slimy, toxic icks beneath the rape culture rock we've turned over, I can't help but insist that we find a way to be OK with admitting that some things are worse than others. We just have to. Because if we can't, we are going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and that baby has potential to grow up as, like, Channing Tatum or Terry Crews or some other stalwart, shining excellent example of doing man well.
It is worse to groom and stalk a 14 year old than it is to grab an ass at a State Fair. It's not NBD to grab an ass at a State Fair. It's gross and disgusting and these things need to be brought to light. The ass-grabber should feel embarrassed and ashamed and he should apologize and he should fucking mean it.
But it's not as bad as grooming and assaulting a 14 year old.
Especially when the ass grabber is all "I am ashamed and you should investigate me" and the child molester is all "LIBRUL CONSPIRACY!"
Especially when the ass grabber will continue to advocate on behalf of women and use his legislative might to make sure we retain control over our own bodies and the child molester will say "Jesus wants me to put all the Muslims in prison."
Ideally, we could rid ourselves of all the ass grabbers; of all the people who've trucked in the notion that women's bodies are public property or that male hegemony is the natural order. But, the problem with that is that I think we're talking about getting rid of about 70% of the people who were born before 2000.
We're just going to have to learn to stop separating people into Good and Bad (Millennials, I don't shit on you guys a lot, but you are TERRIBLE about that). We're going to have to be better about saying "He is bad but also he does good and so let's call him on the bad and keep him honest about doing good" or "He is bad and wants more power to be worse so let's not give him that power."
To wit: Joe Biden will stare at your boobs. That's bad. He blocked Anita Hill from a fair hearing and gave us Justice Pubic Hair on a Coke Can. That's worse. He is a Catholic man who is staunchly pro-choice. That's good. He wrote and agitated for the Violence Against Women Act, which he got passed. That's better. Everything I just wrote in this paragraph is true. And we have got to see all of it.
Also, at the risk of being totally cliche: vote for women. More women in government. Women, especially women of color, at higher and higher and the highest positions in government. Men, I'm not throwing you out - but you haven't been exactly kicking moral ass over the past few hundred years.
Step aside.
And, Jaysus, stop grabbing ass! It's not yours!
It's so sad how long it took so many of us to realize that.
