My rapist could be President.

I haven’t known how to fully express everything I feel about the unfortunate turn of events on November 5th. But the one thing I can’t stop turning over and over is that my rapist could be President.

I don’t know how to teach people to care about others, but I do know that a nation built on racism, misogyny and hate — that has never truly faced those issues — is exactly where you’d expect it to be. America is a hateful, ignorant, selfish country.

At least half of you are.

The other half, not only are we literate in basic economics and history — we genuinely understand community and value humanity. I am one of those people.

The half of you that ignorantly thought somehow, this bigoted criminal would make your lives better, you chose hate. You thought you’d save a few bucks on groceries (you were yet again dumb and wrong) and you said rape? misogyny? racism? criminal? Who cares!

I genuinely wish you nothing but the worst. I genuinely wish that one day you realize what you’ve done and you have to live with knowing you are the lowest this world has to offer. You aren’t a Christian. You aren’t some smarter than the rest of us member of society. You are utter garbage. You lack the basic education and life skills to know that you will not only not flourish, many of you will lose it all (as you should).

There’s no world in which I thought this would happen - again. And that’s what I have to sit with. That’s what I have to realize is my biggest mistake. I have to do more for the future, because I surely didn’t do enough. Many of us didn’t.

So here we are. A world in which rape is ok. A world in which people still think you can be less than because of your skin color or gender. A world in which white men are so insecure that they vote hate over humanity.

In the coming weeks, I hope I have more developed thoughts. For now, I hope if you voted for this, you continue to have the worst day of your life every single day for the remainder of your life.

Privilege

I'd like to share something with you.  I'm white.  Like grew up in the suburbs, 2 parents, 2 kids, 2 dogs, soccer on Saturday's - white.  Ok I'm Portuguese.  But unless it's July, you can easily tell, I'm a white woman who grew up middle class.  

Is my life perfect?  Not even a little bit.  People actually don't believe a lot of my stories because shit like that doesn't happen in real life.  Let me tell you - it does, it has, I made it through.  I wish someone gave me the souvenir photo but I probably threw it away because it didn't have a puppy filter.

I used to struggle with the idea of white privilege.  It absolutely used to offend me.  I doubted its existence.  Realistically though, I never took the time to understand it.

But I asked some questions, did some research, mostly talked to people other than myself, and then asked some questions of people who are like me and here's where I'm at:

Having privilege does not mean I have not struggled.  Being white is not something I'm expected to apologize for.  White privilege isn't a label I've got to wear that says my life is rainbows and unicorns.

For me - understanding that I have privilege just simply means I get my struggles are different than someone who grew up in the same world but is black.  Or Latino.  Or really anything other than white.

The thing is - I am white.  So while I can listen to the stories of those not like me - those without that privilege - I don't know what its like.  Realistically, I never will.

But I'd like to use my voice to speak about it because I would hope that others would do the same for me.  I'd really like to work towards making life a little more equal.  I know, bet you guys never figured me for a good person, I didn't either but here we are.

Now I get it - life isn't equal and it never will be.  And you don't ever have to apologize for the life you have.  Being born wealthy or lucky or privileged is not something you have to stand up and apologize for.  You don't owe anything to anyone.  In fact, if you want to call it life's lottery and leave it at that - go right ahead.  You may even believe everyone has the same shot and needs to put in the same work.  I'll give you that life is hard and takes a lot of effort.  But given two people who are giving the same effort, coming from the same background but one is a minority and one is not - history kiiiiiiind of shows us the white guy is going to win (and I don't say GUY on accident).

You know - while we're at it - someone remind me to do a piece on male privilege because I'm currently living in the South (Texas, calm down, you're the South to the rest of America) and male privilege is flourishing.

Cool Cool - back to privilege.  Here's the thing.  Privilege is also widely associated with wealth.  And it's associated with being bad - making privileged people bad.  It doesn't mean any of that.  I'm not wealthy (Why hasn't anyone started a Go Fund me for this lifestyle) and I'm not even that bad of a person.  But there are people out there who will experience struggles I won't ever experience, simply because of the color of their skin. 

To recap - privilege is not something to apologize for, to feel guilty for, or to even take on as a burden.  But if you realize it's there - it is an opportunity to learn about the struggles of other people and to work for inclusion in a world that quite frankly is trying to be anything but.

Actively Exhausted

When it comes to being active in social responsibility, I am certainly not quiet.  I have been very vocal regarding my beliefs and actions.  I believe it is our responsibility as humans to speak up. Recently, I've felt exhausted.  Every time I sit down to type a blog about women's rights, racial equality, healthcare - whatever it may be - I feel too drained to get anything on the page.

I have so much passion inside me for human rights and social policy and yet lately - I can't find the emotional capacity to write about it, let alone talk about it.  I want people to understand the importance of #MeToo (or really understand it at all for some of you who think its only about sexual harassment).  I want people to get the value of taking a knee and use the conversation to take action.  I need for women's bodies to be under our own control and for the rest of the world to realize how wrong it is to have any control over my reproductive system.  And at the same time - I need a break from all of this.

I don't want to hear how privileged I am to be able to shut my eyes and cover my ears from the world - even if for only 5 minutes.  I know that I am lucky that I don't live every second of the horrifying world some people do as a result of hate, ignorance - or just plain shitty policy.  Someone else will always have it worse than I do.  It's simply how the world turns.  We are all better off and worse off than someone else out there.

I digress - I. Am. EXHAUSTED.  And I started thinking - if I'm exhausted, there are probably a lot of other people out there feeling the same way.  I don't know how else to explain to other people that they should care about other people.  I don't know how to look someone in the eye and challenge them to consider we need to work together or none of us will make it.  I just don't know how else to fight for what's right.

Unlike my other blogs - I don't have a solution.  I don't have steps to make this better.  I want to hear from YOU.  How do you keep up the energy, the fire, and the fight?  I am not ignorant, I am aware that I have a very small impact on this thing.  But I also know if I give up, someone else is thinking of giving up, and pretty soon - the movement ends.  The people who don't care, win.  And everyone ultimately loses.  

So what do you do?  How do you re-energize your passions?  Let me know sequins, I want to keep doing my part and I want to prevent this burnout for the future.  Help a sister out!