Promiscuous Girls?

I recently read an article on HuffPo about some state legislators in Iowa trying to pass a bill that would ban divorce for couples who have minor children, on the grounds that teen girls whose parents divorce are more likely to be promiscuous. I was surprised at the strength of my anger upon reading those words.

First and foremost, what about the boys?? Oh right, boys having sex is to be expected and even something to be proud of. Girls having sex is bad, immoral, wrong, slutty, promiscuous, and of course, extremely shameful.

I find the lengths that the "smaller government" party will go to in order to try and control people's sexuality absolutely ludicrous. This grasping at straws and coming up with ridiculous laws to maintain the patriarchy thing is getting really, really old.

Forcing people to stay married helps no one, particularly children who might be stuck in a home full of fighting and tension. As the article states, no fault divorce makes it easier for women to leave domestic violence situations. Luckily the bill died, but I find it disturbing that it was even introduced in the first place and managed to clear a subcommittee. The legislator who introduced it is clearly letting his personal issues and anger over his daughter getting divorced cloud his judgment. He wishes he had control over her getting a divorce, so hey, he can just write a law and make it so!

Total bull.

To the GOP: Stop thinking that just because you all are sexually repressed that the rest of us have to be too, or that your definition and practice of sexuality is the only right one. You have realized that sexually empowered women are a force to be reckoned with, thus the attempts to force people to stay married on the grounds of controlling teen girls' sexuality. Stop it. Whatever you believe, live your life in that way, but realize that you cannot force everyone else to live according to your beliefs, not even your own children.

And stop trying to make us all believe that you do what you do "for the family," or for "traditional values." We all know it's code for "maintaining the patriarchy," and "keeping the (white Christian male) status quo." We see through you, and we're not buying it.

Having the Courage to Speak

I'm helping coordinate One Billion Rising in my city. Being a part of this process has brought about some healing for me. You see, I used to know that I was one of the lucky girls. I went through unwanted attention and catcalling as a teen and young woman, some sexual harassment in high school, the occasional vulgar comment, the guy pressing himself up against me in a not-that-crowded subway train on a school trip to D.C., and a few shouts of, "Hey baby, hop in," but I'd never been assaulted, raped, or even hit up until about a year ago.

It's tough to tell this sort of story. There is shame involved. There is blame involved. However, I've come to realize that the blame is not mine, and in telling my story I put it back where it belongs. On him. I don't even remember his name. He had insisted that I take his number, which I did without giving him mine, and in a confused daze deleted it immediately after parting ways. Maybe I should have kept it and tried to press charges, but who wants to be embroiled in a "he said, she said" judicial process, especially when we all know that even violent sexual predators rarely serve time?

There are some who will say it's not that big of a deal, what happened to me, but it is a big deal when your body is violated in any way, shape, or form. I have always taught my daughters that their bodies belong to them, and them alone, and people aren't allowed to touch them in any unwanted fashion, no matter how casual or what part of their body is concerned.

That night I was out dancing with friends; one of my favorite pastimes. I'm not going to say what I was wearing, if or how much I was drinking, or whether I was flirtatious leading up to the event, because that is all irrelevant. What I will say is that he grabbed me around the waist and kept me pinned to him tightly and I couldn't get away, and these are some of the statements I know came out of my mouth: "Hey, cut it out," "Stop. You're coming on too strong," "You're kind of being an asshole," and, "No. Don't." That's the relevant part of the story.

And then, despite my protests, he took the hand that wasn't pinning me around the waist, shoved it up my dress, moved my panties aside, and penetrated me with his finger. It wasn't until afterwards that I learned that technically, I was raped. I tried to tell myself it wasn't that big of a deal, but really, it is. I SAID NO, in multiple forms, and he ignored that and forced himself on me, violating my bodily integrity and my psyche.

The sad part to me is, that even though I have joined the ranks of violated women, I fully realize that I am STILL one of the lucky ones.

It was one man, and a finger, not a dick. Not 6 men, 6 dicks, and an iron rod. It happened in the blink of an eye, and wasn't a sustained and violent attack. I'm alive, unlike many other victims. It was a stranger, so I don't have to deal with the confused emotions and deep betrayal of having been violated by a person of trust. I wasn't drugged and dragged around to parties and repeatedly raped. I wasn't beaten and left to die.

But what a sad world we live in where something bad, and painful, and demeaning happens to us and we say, "Well at least I wasn't _______."

The pain was more emotional and psychological than physical, but it still hurt. And I blamed myself, as so many victims do. Why didn't I scream? I know I tried to use all my strength to get out of his grip, and I had a hand on his arm trying to push it away with all my might, but I also caught the eye of a man maybe ten feet away who looked as if he was about to intervene. Why didn't I call out to him? It happened so fast, but I always question what I could have done differently to prevent it.

I've mostly processed it, but the final step in my healing process is telling my story, for all those who may have similar (and often much worse) stories to tell and who cannot because they are scared, or ashamed, or were forever silenced by their aggressors.

I invite all women, and our male allies who also want to see an end to the violence, to rise up and dance on February 14th. We'll dance away the pain, and dance in a new era where women are valued, respected, cherished, and never violated.

Watch this inspiring video and RISE.

ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME.

ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY

ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION

On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 14 February 2013, we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. ONE BILLION RISING will move the earth, activating women and men across every country. V-Day wants the world to see our collective strength, our numbers, our solidarity across borders.

What does ONE BILLION look like? On 14 February 2013, it will look like a REVOLUTION.

ONE BILLION RISING IS:

A global strike
An invitation to dance
A call to men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends
An act of solidarity, demonstrating to women the commonality of their struggles and their power in numbers
A refusal to accept violence against women and girls as a given
A new time and a new way of being

Some Thoughts On Inclusion

I recently posted on Facebook about a monument of the Ten Commandments being erected outside the state capitol building in Oklahoma (complete with spelling errors), and I mentioned that I hope the ACLU files suit. Of course, a lot of Christians take that to mean that I hate Christians and/or God, which is not at all the case. In fact, I've been doing a lot of soul searching lately and am not to the point where I am wanting and/or willing to reclaim the label of Christian, but I have found some amazing Christian mystics whose teachings I have been enjoying very much.

Here's what I don't like about a Christian monument being placed on government grounds:

- It's unconstitutional because of the separation of church and state.

- It's exclusionary. If ALL belief systems and non-belief systems are allowed to erect their own monuments on state grounds if they so desire, then I would not have a problem with it, but then of course you run into the possibility of having incredibly cluttered grounds, so the easiest solution is TO NOT ALLOW RELIGIOUS MONUMENTS ON GOVERNMENT GROUNDS.

- We live in a secular democracy, not a theocracy. It's really not that hard to understand. Our government represents us ALL.

When people of other faiths or non-belief are faced with a Christian monument on what is supposed to be a non-religious place that represents us all, they feel excluded. And that's not okay. Plain and simple.  For one second, if you are a Christian, think of how you would feel if said monument were representing some other religion...at best you'd simply feel left out, and at worst you'd feel threatened by it, right?

Further, placing a huge in your face thing pertaining to your faith is really not a testament to said faith. It's arrogant, rude, and a huge waste of money (including the costly legal battle that will ensue.) If you want to draw people to your faith, you should make them feel included, not excluded. God's love is inclusionary, and it's really time the religious right started figuring that out.

I've had to deal firsthand with the exclusion of my child in the school setting because of her life threatening food allergy, and I can tell you, it really sucks when people think that their right to eat peanuts anywhere they choose supersedes my child's right to, you know, live. I know it's not exactly the same, but if you support a Christian monument on government grounds, you are sending the statement that your religion, and therefore YOU, are more important than the rest of the citizens of this great nation. And that my friends, is so not cool.

Spirit Day 2012, aka Don't Mess With Mama Bear

(I had a busy day yesterday and wasn't able to finish this post in time to get it published on Spirit Day, but better late than never!)

I am a handful of episodes into season three of Glee. (Yes, I'm way behind. Don't judge me. I don't watch much TV and tend to wait for entire seasons of the shows I like to be available so I can watch them at my leisure, generally during brain injury setbacks, rather than die of anticipation each week.) In the episode I watched tonight, Kurt and Blaine consummated their relationship. I'll admit, I got teary eyed, not just because it was romantic and sweet, but because I'm filled with joy that gay kids across America (and possibly the world) got to see themselves represented in a sweet, romantic, normal way.

That's huge. And important. I love that Glee is representing LGBT teens, and even a bisexual Latina, just like me and just like my teenage daughter. Neither of us are quite as, um, mean as Santana, but I love her tough exterior contrasted with her vulnerability, and I admit to having a fiery Latina side that appears every now and again. I wish that kind of programming had been available when I was a kid, but I'm extremely grateful that it's there for my daughters (even though I'm not letting the little one watch it quite yet.) I want the media that they watch to be a reflection of real life, and the reality of life is that there are people of all races, religions, economic situations, and sexual orientations who benefit from seeing themselves represented as normal on the screen, because they are. And what IS normal, anyway?

I wore purple yesterday in order to stand with my own daughter (and I have an inkling the other one isn't going to fall all the way to the heterosexual side of the spectrum either) and for all the other LGBT daughters and sons whose parents and families may not support them. My message to all of you is:

Be yourself. Know yourself. Respect yourself. Love yourself. Know your darkness and your light, your strengths and your weaknesses, and understand that often they are one and the same. Know that you never have to separate out different parts of yourself and try to have them work independently of each other. Your intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, sexual selves are all one and the same, and every experience that you have doesn't affect just one part of you. What's intellectual might also be emotional; what's sexual can also be spiritual; both physical and emotional ecstasy and pain can be closely intertwined, sometimes hard to even separate. This is the beauty of life; the beauty of YOU. Live fully. Love wholly. Speak boldly, for both yourself and others.

And in the spirit of Spirit Day: Stand up. Be strong. Don't bully. Don't stand by when others are being bullied. Draw a line if and when you need to. I had to recently. I unfriended a bunch of people on Facebook because I have reached a point where I simply cannot tolerate intolerance. If you think that LGBT people are sinful or gross or don't deserve to marry whom they love, I don't want you in my life. Period. You may not even recognize your own bigotry, but I do, and I refuse to take it any longer. I love myself and my daughters for exactly who we are; not some version of ourselves that someone else or society at large thinks we should be, or just our physical and intellectual selves while we keep our emotional and sexual selves hidden. We are who we are, and I want to share my life and my daughters' lives with those who love us exactly as we are. Because you know, I think we're pretty great, and perfectly normal, whatever the hell that means.

Have You Seen My Faith?

I am said to have lost it, but I've never liked the expression "lost my faith." It conjures up images of searching the house, as if for my misplaced keys, scratching my head in wonder at where I could have possibly put it. (It also makes me chuckle at the memory of a bumper sticker I once saw: I finally found Jesus. He was hiding behind the couch the whole time.) At any rate, I didn't lose it. I very deliberately and consciously rejected it, yet I'm starting to think that I really may not have lost my faith. My religion, yes, but I've been realizing in recent months that I still have faith.

It's an interesting thing, deconversion. It's almost been like moving through a grief cycle: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and finally acceptance; coming to terms with the "new normal."

I can remember a pivotal moment through each of those stages. As a teen I was sitting on the public bus, heading home from work one evening, reading an autobiography by Hannah Whitall Smith. I don't remember verbatim the exact passage that struck me, but it was like this huge epiphany settled into my soul and my eyes widened in shock and excitement at seeing the Bible and Christianity through new eyes. It was an incredibly spiritual moment; a revelation. From that point I started devouring Scripture to read it through this new lens called universalism.

That was the beginning of the process of a very gradual change in belief. It was a decade before I had the courage to completely let go of the label of Christian. The denial stage was fraught with indecisiveness and confusion as to whether I could still partake in Christianity when I knew that it didn't line up with my inner convictions. I went through several years of halfheartedly playing the part. I was not a regular churchgoer. (Never was growing up either. My parents had to write a letter convincing the administration of the Christian school my brothers and I went to that we were still good kids and should be allowed to attend despite not belonging to one church. We church hopped a lot when I was little then my parents just seemed to give up on finding a suitable church family when I was in high school.)

Anyway, the denial years coincided with being a young and isolated mom who craved community and intellectual stimulation, and I became active in a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group at a church I sporadically attended. I enjoyed that experience very much, but it eventually became fraught with confusion and indecisiveness as well. I was on the Steering Committee and we were supposed to sign a sort of contract/honor code that I don't remember every detail of, but did have a line about regular church attendance. I simply left it unsigned, but felt very hypocritical in doing so. My pivotal moment was when sitting in a MOPS meeting on Election Day 2004, listening to all these other women talk about how scared they were at the thought of Bush not winning reelection. I didn't utter a word that the voting booth was my next destination, and I certainly would not be voting for Bush. I felt like a misfit and outcast, and realized that even though I didn't really know how to find community outside the familiar framework of church, this community wasn't fulfilling me in the ways that I needed.

Anger, bargaining and testing were happening simultaneously throughout those years in a kind of ebb and flow as one took precedence over the others at various times and in various situations. I was constantly trying to convince myself that it was okay to attend church solely for the community aspect. I remember sitting through sermons and wanting desperately to converse with the pastor over what he was preaching. I've never felt a huge amount of anger towards God or the church for anything that has happened directly to me. I've felt anger at the larger injustices being perpetrated by the church in the name of God, and I've been angry that American Christianity does not reflect what I believe to be the true Christian faith. I felt very disheartened with "Churchianity" but still maintained that I had my faith, and that was what counted.

Testing took center stage when I saw an announcement at the church for people to be baptized. It was something I had never done, and I understood it to be a public declaration of faith; a sacred rite that one goes through when you are certain about your faith in Christ. I signed up to be baptized. And then a flood of questioning began that ultimately led to the realization that I no longer believed in Christ. Needless to say I did not go through with baptism.

I think when I finally made a declaration of nonbelief I felt the need to make a very clear rejection, but in the years since I've been doing a reclamation of sorts. My faith was a huge part of my upbringing and I've realized that I can simultaneously reject the things that did not work for me and reclaim the things that did, and that line of thinking has led me to wonder if I ever lost my faith at all. Perhaps I was simply called to a deeper faith.

My favorite Bible verse from back in the day was Romans 15:13 -

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

I still find comfort in it, for throughout my journey hope, joy and peace have been my guiding lights, and indeed, despite often feeling sad about the injustices in the world, I am generally overflowing with hope. I just can't seem to help it. It's a deep inner knowing that while I may not have the answers to life's big questions, everything will be okay in the end. I think they call that faith. I don't know if there is life after this one, but I decided that for me at least, it doesn't matter. I've fully embraced not knowing, and rather than resulting in confusion it's only deepened my convictions surrounding this life, and my desire to strive for love, equality, justice, compassion, and peace.

I'm not ready to reclaim the label of Christian, nor do I know that I ever will be, but I'm grateful for my Christian journey, for as Emerson said, "Life is a journey, not a destination." I very much admire and strive to emulate the teachings of Christ, or at least the main ones: Love God (though I don't call it God any more, but simply love or that which is the essence and purpose of life), and love your neighbor as yourself.

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

~I Corinthians 13:13