I am ashamed, appalled, angry - I am every fiery feeling there could be towards the treatment of women in America. Guns are regulated less than my body. A rapist has more rights than I do when it comes to keeping me safe.
It’s 2019 and I am exhausted.
I’m exhausted from explaining to other people that as a human being, I am the only person who should have the right to decide what happens to my own body.
I am unable to form sentences anymore to explain why we need to teach men more about sexual assault.
Women are the strongest human beings on the planet.
And yet we are the most regulated people in the world. Regulated by men who can never possibly understand anything about how we exist.
What I’d like to say about abortion is that no matter what law you make, abortion will occur. You cannot ban abortion. That is impossible. What you’re doing is compromising women’s healthcare and if you are “pro life (ridiculous term)” you are not supporting life when you oppose abortion. You are simply privileged enough that this does not affect you. No uterus? No opinion. Not one say in this except, your body, your choice. I would like to loudly, proudly, without caveat say that if I choose in my life to ever have an abortion, I will do so. Without shame, without hesitation, without remorse. And I will not allow anyone in my world to bully me because of that. You support me, or you are not in my life. End of story. What is best for my body and my life, will forever be what is my guiding light.
I’d like to say a little more about sexual assault because although I didn’t report it back then, I will not shut up about it now. The most basic rule of life is to keep your hands to yourselves. And yet we are in a time that there is every excuse in the book for men to blatantly refuse this rule. We blame the women. We blame beer. We put people in the highest office in the land and we shame the victim. It is unacceptable and it is inhumane. My rapist most likely does not consider what he did rape. He probably doesn’t think about it. Probably never did think about it as anything but a drunken night of sex with a cute girl in college. I wasn’t drunk. I remember and I think about it all of the time. I think about it when I am alone with a man I don’t know. I think about it the first time I am intimate with a man I do know. I think about it at work. I think about it in a crowd. I think about it when I cannot sleep. I think about it when I am unable to commit to a relationship with someone. I think about it when I tell people that I am a survivor. I never not think about it.
I am in therapy and yet I still consider myself a little bit broken, damaged packaging even because I am a survivor. For years, I called myself a victim. The thing is, had I reported 15 years ago, I am 100% confident my life would have been worse. I would have been put in the spotlight, forced to relive what I went through. Questioned, shamed for my sexual history. I don’t know if I could have survived that, I don’t know if I would have wanted to. I don’t know who would have believed me.
You think women are not capable of handling decisions around our own bodies? We certainly handle the decisions you force upon us every single day as survivors. I have been attacked at knife point, raped, harassed about the shape of my curves because I’m too sexual looking, hit by a boyfriend; and I am here. I am surviving, thriving, and I am fighting back. I am the ONLY person who can handle the decisions that come with the body I was born with.
The absolute bottom line here is that my body is my choice. At all times. And there is no law that should ever be able to compromise my rights to that body.