Note: This was written in 2020 and updated in 2021/2022. My thoughts are my own.

It seems only right that Ruth Bader Ginsburg (the notorious and iconic RBG) be represented outside my house, because without her I wouldn’t have it or the right to any of my financial independence (Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974). This, among a number of other rights.

Her passing on Friday, September 18, 2020 saddened me to my core. However, it wasn’t until a few days after that I realized why I felt completely gutted and scared for what was to come on a very personal level. As we closed in on a controversial election, following an already historical year, I felt compelled to personify the rights, agendas, policies, etc. that have woven themselves into the apocalyptic years that started in and followed 2020. I hope this is a reminder that you’re not just casting a vote for the President, but the Vice President, Supreme Court Justices, human rights, healthcare, education, climate change, and the overall future.

There are three tracks to my story that tie back to the 2020 election and RBG: (1) men in positions of power, (2) police funding, and (3) women’s rights. I know this is going to make people uncomfortable. I know that people may not accept it as reality. But, I think that’s what we’ve been avoiding. This is fairly common, yet we don’t talk about it (because it’s really hard), and so it moves to the back-burner.

***This is my experience, not shared out of anything other than an effort to put pen to paper and a face to the abstract.***

In February 2018 (Super Bowl weekend), I became a part of the 1 in 3. The 1 in 3 women that experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. This excludes sexual harassment (which I also formally* experienced from October 2018-January 2019).

(1) Men in positions of power. The details of the event are irrelevant, and frankly too damaging and personal to recount, regardless of the incessant perception that I owe an answer to what I was wearing, if I had been drinking, or if I brought it upon myself in any way. The most significant part of this experience is that he said, “If you report this, I will ruin your life and go after you for slander.” (At the time, he was in school to become a lawyer.) He knew it was a reportable offense, but his privilege as a white man gave him the confidence to get away with it. Unfortunately, he did. Not because I didn’t report it (I did), but because I feared retaliation.

If you recall, Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination came shortly after this. On top of the mental gymnastics I was doing to navigate my own life post sexual assault, I watched the nation divide into camps regarding Christine Blasey Ford, and whether to believe her or not. The disrespect, criticisms, and death threats she received felt all too real, confirming the harsh reality I already knew from the 2016 election: we as a society often don’t believe women who report sexual assault.

There are a few parallels between my offender and Brett Kavanaugh, the most haunting: the legal career path. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about whether I’ve ruined someone else’s life by pulling my report; the guilt of sexual assault is real and rarely discussed.

(2) Police funding. After safely relocating, I debated whether or not to report it; unfortunately, as so many cases have shown us, time is not in your favor when making this decision. It wasn’t until I realized I was physically injured that I ultimately called a non-emergent police hotline. I specifically asked if I could make the report with a female police officer, but it wasn’t possible to grant this request. So through blurred vision full of tears, panic-driven body shakes, and shame weighing more than I will ever be able to describe (something I still carry to this day), I told the white male police officer what had happened. This is not to say the police officer didn’t do what is asked of him, but that’s just it, the job asks for too much. Just hours before, and in a matter of minutes, my trust in men came crashing down only to be faced with exactly what I feared most: a white man in a position of power.

While I prefer “reallocate police funding” to “defund the police”, the high-level concept remains the same. I can’t speak to or on behalf of what reallocating police funding means to victims of police brutality (though, let me be clear: systemic racism exists), but I can speak to it from my own experience of sexual assault. In that moment, I needed specialized sexual assault support services, a mental health professional, and most likely a healthcare professional (but at this point, I was too scared of the potential risk of facing yet another male in a position of power in the ER). Because of my socio-economic privilege, I already had access to a mental health professional that I was able to reach the next day. But, I recognize that this is unlikely the case for the majority of people who go through what I did.

This is so much bigger than police funding (and definitely not within the realm of ACAB) and more along the lines of “voting with your wallet”, not just within government funding but day-to-day purchases that align with values that are on the right side of history. It’s also important to recognize that this has its own layer of privilege and is not possible for everyone to do.

(3) Women’s rights. Again, because of my socio-economic privilege, I had access to birth control. However, in the debate of pro-choice versus pro-life, I can’t help but think, “what if?”. I don’t know what I would have done, but I do know that I would’ve needed the choice. Keep in mind, a sexual assault victim has already been forced to do something they didn’t want to do; imagine compounding this by not allowing a choice. It is the individual person’s right to choose what to do (sexual assault or not), on a case-by-case basis.

It is also my experience that a lot (not all) of the pro-life debates end up being pro-birth and/or anti-choice, meaning a majority don’t support life after birth. You cannot be pro-life and refuse to follow basic guidelines for Covid-19, be against Black Lives Matter, support the death penalty, or oppose child welfare legislation (it costs ~$10-30K just to give birth in the United States, plus the bare minimum cost of $10K per year cost until they are 17; even with adoption, a birth mother can still incur fees). A more productive (and proven) strategy to prevent abortion would be to invest in sex education and affordable birth control options. And if you’d like to take the path of “don’t have sex, then” please direct this at men as well; until there is a law that requires all men to get a vasectomy, consider how tone deaf this is. The US also has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries…how can you consider yourself “pro-life” when you’re willing to put the mother’s life at risks in favor of a fetus? I’d have significantly more respect for this argument if it moved upstream rather than blaming or shaming women.

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The 2020 election: By no means are either of our options perfect, but I’ll compare it to hiking in a new pair of shoes. Four years ago, we put on a new pair of shoes because our last pair had been worn out. These new shoes weren’t hiking shoes and didn’t haven’t any expertise on the trail, but they promised to be "great". As always, it takes a while to break in a new pair of shoes but we were willing to put them to the test. Four years (and hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths) later, they are not great (in fact, they’re in abysmal shape). So even though these new pair aren’t top of the line, and may come with a few blisters, I prefer a new pair of shoes for the remainder of the hike at risk of survival. 

2022

My story isn’t unique and it’s far from the experience that a person of color and/or someone with little to no socio-economic privilege would have. And as part of my privilege I felt like it was time to share my (raw, vulnerable, uncomfortable) story in hopes that it would humanize the impact of voting; and I may end up being wrong for doing so but at least I’m willing to try something new (unlike any anti-gun reform stance).

So here we are…Roe v. Wade has been overturned, a fear I had following the death of RBG and her untimely replacement to make up the SCOTUS 5 (a.k.a. out of touch, unfit liars as far as I’m concerned). The number of times someone (mostly men) had previously said to me, “don’t worry, they’d never overturn Roe v. Wade” is astonishing. And where are these people who so confidently assured me that this would never happen? Silent (just as a reminder, “Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor” but I’m pretty sure you already knew that). Confirming that we can’t only rely on someone’s word and politics spill into basic human rights, I’m still fearful of what’s to come. I’m afraid of what this means for LGBTQIA+ community. I’m anxious about the increased entitlement and control over minority groups. And I fear we have gone backwards where my optimism is faint at best. But I’ll keep speaking up and share others’ voices when and where I am not the one that needs to be heard.

“Speak your mind even if your voice shakes.”

RBG

*While I officially filed a sexual harassment case at this point, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t been sexual harassed previously or following. This particular occurrence just happened to get to the point of being trapped in elevators, followed home, and going down the path of a restraining order.