Distract and Slash

I hate when I've been sick and a week later, I'm beginning to feel better. I hate that part the most. I get up and take a shower but get all sweaty and gross at the effort. Then, I dry off and go back to bed. I get bored watching television, so I pick up a book, a good book, but my eyes are t0o sore to read and my mind too scrambled. I turn the television back on and check the news. I can watch the news, right?

No, Trump has done another cruel thing and everyone is all up in arms about it.

"What?" I ask the news. "Did you think he'd changed overnight? What makes you think he'd become kind today? Why are you even watching him?"

The news doesn't answer me. It just drones on and on about Trump's cruelty without realizing that it has been duped into watching the reality show again. Trump may not know how the government works, but he knows reality TV. He knows he'll get ratings with the racist comments to the Navaho code talkers.

He got the ratings last night, right?

The news gave him what he wanted and in the meantime, what important but less glamorous part of the government has been dismantled? Is Bannon still running the show from outside the show? God, who is orchestrating this meltdown?

I'm not talking about Trump's arrogant comments.

I'm talking about the Consumer Protection Agency. Laurence Tribe gets it. He said, "Both this threatening process and dispatching Mulvaney to gut the Consumer Protection Agency are integral parts of  Bannon's nihilist agenda: DISMANTLE THE WHOLE DAMN GOVERNMENT BRICK BY BRICK."

Distract and slash. Over and over, that's what this administration has done. Distract and slash. Did you hear Trump endorse a pedophile? Pruitt redefined the level that is considered safe for tolerable air pollution. Distract and slash.

The news keeps falling for it. We keep falling for it. We're watching the left hand wave in the air while the right hand drops the coin into a pocket.

I may be sick with this stupid cold, my mind too scrambled to read very far in a new book, but I can still see that the new Trump reality show hasn't been canceled, not yet. And because Trump's great business acumen is to bankrupt and dissolve businesses, he's worked that plan for our government in the same way or somebody in his administration has. When they're done, our coffers will have been emptied out.

"When did all our government resources disappear?" we will ask while the echo of Trump's voice still resonates in our ears.

Distract and slash.

Thank you for listening, jules

There Would Be Hangings

Define how Al Franken is different than Roy Moore?

Al Franken is a little different, isn't he? He acknowledged his mistake. He apologized publicly. His victim accepted his apology. Roy Moore is totally unapologetic. He said all of the women were liars. I have a lot more respect for the way Al Franken handled his issue that I do for Roy Moore. I have NO respect for Roy Moore. Children. Roy Moore assaulted children, allegedly. I believe the women. I really do.

What about Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein? And Trump? With all these people being held accountable, will anyone hold Trump to account? Ever?

All of it nauseates me. I suffered both harassment and discrimination back in the seventies, eighties, and by the time I hit the nineties, I had learned to fight back and ignore a lot.  By then, I had kicked two men in the crotch and elbowed one so hard in the chest he said I might have broken a rib. I told him to go to a hospital and explain what he'd done to the nursing staff there. He didn't go. I didn't break a rib. It got easier after that, when I knew it was okay for me to fight back.

No. I'm not going to tell you what happened.

During my corporate career, I felt I deserved hazard pay because I was a woman. It was a relief to get out of the technology when I did, a total fucking relief. I never would have thought that mainstream life hadn't progressed while I was at home raising my son, while I volunteered in class, while I sat at my computer and wrote. I believed that harassment and discrimination had been exposed and now only occurred in pockets of forgotten society, backwoods creeps.

You know, I really don't want to write this. It makes me sick to my stomach, all of it.

Yet here we are, asking to hear sordid details. That nauseates me. The titillation of details. We still demand that women are either lying, seeking political revenge, or not telling her story soon enough to save other girls.

Sorry, Kevin Spacey's victims were boys. Fucker. They're all fuckers.

It's funny how people go on and on about how these perpetrators lost their jobs, but I want these fuckers to go to jail. I know it's hard to verify an occurrence beyond a shadow of a doubt in court when only two people were in the room, or the car. But I want them to suffer more than monetary loss, especially the ones who desecrated children. There is a special place in hell for people who assault children.

I believe in the death penalty. I know I shouldn't, but I do. I think sexual assault is right up there with serial killing, especially when children are involved. I don't understand how Roy Moore and Kevin Spacey aren't the main characters at a hanging. Maybe it's a good thing I wasn't born during the days of the wild West. In my world, there would be hangings.

Thank you for listening, jules

Mixed Gratitude for #MeToo

I don't really want to have to tell my harassment stories. I have many of them. But every time I tell one of those stories, it feels as though I'm required to strip naked and walk through the streets in order to make my point. Guys have asked me what I was wearing. Women asked how much I had to drink. The first time I tried to tell one of those stories, I could see the guys who tried to picture it in their minds, a titillation, with the younger, sweeter, prettier me as the star. Now, thirty-three years later, I see people cringe, doubt, shudder at the thought of this old woman, this wrinkled, tired, angry woman being the object of harassment. They can't imagine it being true.

Don't get me wrong-the #MeToo revolution is a long time coming and I'm grateful for it even if it's hard to speak out. There's a gratitude for your Thanksgiving table, the #MeToo revolution.

Can you imagine that conversation?

Mom has just put the turkey on the table. The scene is classic. The food is gorgeous. Your brothers and sisters sit there, even your Trump-loving brother-in-law-TLBIL is what you call him privately with your husband. You can barely look at TLBIL while he goes on and on about the ignorant libtards in this country as if none of them sit around the table with him. Right now, he's talking about how Mary was a teenager and Joseph was a thirty-two year old man and that makes Roy Moore okay in his eyes. If he could only go to Alabama and vote for that good Christian man, he would. Why should a perfectly good representative suffer for what happened thirty years ago, dammit.

Dad, at the head of the table, hushes everyone by holding up his carving knife as if in toast. Then, Mom sits down and reminds him that you all haven't gone around the table with your gratitudes yet.

"The food will get cold," he mutters.

Your baby sister, the loudmouth, the rabble-rouser, the militant feminist who's always going at it with TLBIL over equal pay for women, starts first, always clockwise around the table ending with Dad.

"I'm grateful for the #MeToo revolution in which our society has finally begun to believe that if a woman dances naked on the table, she still has the right to say no to sex. Okay, I'll say it. When I worked at the cafe, my manager Al, got me cornered in the walk-in refrigerator and pulled out his-"

"Please!" your father interjects, "can we just have a nice Thanksgiving here?"

"No Dad," your sister replies, "because the patriarchy won't allow it, won't allow women access to contraceptives, won't allow women rights to our own bodies, won't allow us to tell our horrific stories about men who abused us, won't allow us to say no, to wear whatever the fuck we please without expecting to get assaulted for it."

"Well, if a woman wears a miniskirt up to her crotch, then she deserves what's coming at it." TLBIL says.

"Can we just have-"

"No Dad," your sister goes on, "because it's time for people to listen to women's stories. It's time for you, yes you, to finally listen to what I went through every day I had to work at that lousy place. I needed the money. I didn't want to wear that stupid short skirt they forced me to wear. I didn't want to have to always watch to see where Al was when I needed to go into the walk-in or anywhere else he might corner me. And hell, I didn't need you telling me that I'd never work in town again if I kept talking about it. You should have protected me, Dad. You should have sent the police to arrest that man the day I came home and tried to tell you that story. Instead, you asked me if I'd been flirting with him, fucking flirting. You told me not to get in a room alone with him. How was I supposed do that when he was my boss and told me there'd be a mandatory meeting at 7pm and I was the only one who showed up because I was the only one he told? You said I needed to keep quiet or I'd get into more trouble. Do you know how many girls Al has cornered in that walk-in refrigerator, Dad? Do you? Do you know how many girls were assaulted because you wouldn't let me tell my story when it happened ten years ago? Huh?"

And at that, your sister slams her hands on the table, bouncing the silverware, pushes the heavy chair back, and runs out of the room. Thanksgiving is over and we are grateful.

Maybe it's time for all of us to have a Thanksgiving conversation like that. Maybe that's what we're doing with all these god-awful stories, clearing the air, finally, and for a good reason. Maybe in a year or two, we can actually be grateful that this nasty part of our history, the repression and abuse of women at the hands of vile men who don't respect our boundaries, is finally something we look on as a part of our nation's growth toward a more equal society.

It's hard to speak out. I know. I have stories that will curl your toes. But I have to tell you this-on Thanksgiving, I will be truly grateful that we, as powerful women, are finally beginning to shout out our stories whether you men want to believe them or not.

Thank you for listening, jules