I do this thing....
....where I say
"This is the world that women live in ALL THE TIME."
and then I look around pointedly at any/all men in my company.
I'm going to talk about sexual trauma. I'll cut it so you can just..
NOT, if you are not in the mood for why #metoo matters.
I'm lucky to still have my mom,
and for us to have enjoyed a good relationship
most of our lives.
So when she descends from her mountaintop
hungry for talk,
I try to oblige.
Sometimes I ask her to 'skip' her classically re-told stories,
reminding her I have been her talking partner
for 30 years, I understand the reference...
keeping going with what you were SAYING, pls?
This weekend, she told a trauma story I'd never heard before.
I knew about her uncle molesting her gently
when she was no more than 5 or 6
surreptitiously in the presence
of her mom
(my grandma)
and her utter CONFUSION
(Why is he touching me THERE?
Does Mom, see? Does she KNOW?).
Which is how she learned to avoid sitting on Uncle Elmo's lap.
She had told me about how when she started her period at 16
she thought she was DYING.
It was an actual surprise.
Periods were NOT DISCUSSED at home,
or at their country mountaintop school.
How she lost her virginity when her college dorm-mate
decided she needed to "get over it" and "have some fun"
and arranged for my mom to be gang raped at a party.
These were the things I KNEW.
I knew that her husband ripped out her episiotomy when he was drunk
and didn't take, "I just gave birth to our first child, your son" for an answer.
I knew that 10 years later,
when her second child,
(a 5 year old daughter)
reported strange happenings at daycare,
my mom ended up helping the police break
a longstanding child porn ring
run out of the neighborhood in-home daycare center
JUST DOWN THE STREET from our home.
I knew all this,
the things she told me over the years.
She wanted to protect me,
by NOT HIDING the "complications" of life.
The 'complications' of being female,
the way it was hidden from her.
So it was surprising there were still incidents
she had not 'thought about'
or considered telling me before.
Like how her first pelvic exam was performed when she was 14,
by a school doctor after sending the nurse out of the room on an errand.
She was being seen for fainting in class.
Afterward she asked her mom about it, who curtly responded
"Happens to EVERY girl, someday. Don't think about it."
Whether she was referring to pelvic exams or suffering sexual predation,
who knows?
My grandma (mom's mom) was raised in the foster system
after being abandoned (along with all her younger siblings)
at an orphanage in 1929 when she was 7.
Ask Gram about it, she will tell you she has no memories until she's 11 or more.
"Why bother remembering the bad stuff?" she said, once
when I pressed her.
"No point in THAT!"
Left turn.
At a storytelling workshop at our local teeny International Women's Day rally
a woman said how she suffers depression,
but whenever she goes in for counseling they focus on her history of being a rape and incest survivor.
And how FRUSTRATING that is, because it was such a FORMATIVE experience,
that it is accepted into her narrative *already*
and doesn't feel her current depression is ABOUT that blight,
but therapists INSIST talking about it.
She laughs at the idea of talking about not wanting to talk about it anymore,
but how she wishes more people understand
that is just ONE story of her life.
Left turn.
I am reading "Suits Me" the biography of Billy Tipton,
an accomplished Jazz musician who lived to be in his 70's,
and died in my hometown in the mid 1980s,
where it was revealed Billy was a physical female.
Even his wives... (he had several) didn't know.
Only family and acquaintances from childhood, knew.
Anyways, this morning I was reading a section on Billy's fourth wife, Kitty;
a stripper/burlesque dancer he met on the jazz circuit.
When talking about what it was like as a traveling stripper in the 1950s,
Kitty, now in her 70s (at the time of the book's writing)
talks about how a "game" many patrons would play is attempting to
burn their favorite strippers with cigarettes, to "brand" them.
Gnashing out your cigarette out on a woman's ass,
or thighs or breasts was "a thing"
that was "popular" in certain clubs of men.
They'd identify and call out their marks later on,
NEXT time she came through on the circuit in 3 months.
The men would one-up each other by claiming responsibility
for this mark or that, on this girl or that,
as they searched for blemishes
on the dancer's skin.
Lighting her costume on fire was a second-best.
With the abundant use of feathers and polyester, it was an easy target.
Maybe, too easy for the sporting men?
At 27, she had been a dancer for 10 years and admits
she did not like being touched, IN GENERAL
because of the rape and abuse she had survived as a child and teen,
and then as a dancer.
Skirting rape and death,
courting dollars,
she was probably never very 'naive'.
Kitty says she loved Billy, because he always treated her with respect,
and was never forceful, or cruel to her "womanhood" like the "other men".
Another left turn
brings us back home.
My own stories,
are not one but many.
Not like my mom's at least.
I have been spared much, thanks to her revolutionary honesty.
But I have not been spared.
Mom just got news that there is a movement called #metoo
and after watching a little tv
(no tv in the mountaintop hermitage)
she seemed worried that it could go "too far"
and erase great art in the name of feminism.
That it was wrong for ANYONE to be an iconoclast.
She also worried about 'smearing' personalities.
If there is no police report, they shouldn't say it happened.
That is when I initiated counting off the assaults
EACH of our bodies (and minds)
(mother and daughter, each)
had endured at the hands of predators
(from amateur levels to expert)
and ALL THE REASONS
the cops had NOT been called
in each case.
She..... remembers why.
That was when she remembered the school doctor,
thought about him for the first time in a LONG time.
She said she lumped it in with
"Just one of those things...."
like her mother had told her to.
Sailor sat and listened to this conversation.
And that is when I lift my eyebrows and say
"This is the world that women live in ALL THE TIME."
Even though *I* know he already knows this.
It feels important to give him the stories
and the language to point this out to others.
I feel the need to keep repeating this
whenever I gather a story
like my own,
like my mom's,
like Kitty's strippin' stories,
like that woman's story of child rape and making room for the people
who experience it as just one event among myriads.
So, that's why you keep talking and telling stories
even with people where you think you know ALL their stories by now.
"This is the world that women live in ALL THE TIME."
and then I look around pointedly at any/all men in my company.
I'm going to talk about sexual trauma. I'll cut it so you can just..
NOT, if you are not in the mood for why #metoo matters.
I'm lucky to still have my mom,
and for us to have enjoyed a good relationship
most of our lives.
So when she descends from her mountaintop
hungry for talk,
I try to oblige.
Sometimes I ask her to 'skip' her classically re-told stories,
reminding her I have been her talking partner
for 30 years, I understand the reference...
keeping going with what you were SAYING, pls?
This weekend, she told a trauma story I'd never heard before.
I knew about her uncle molesting her gently
when she was no more than 5 or 6
surreptitiously in the presence
of her mom
(my grandma)
and her utter CONFUSION
(Why is he touching me THERE?
Does Mom, see? Does she KNOW?).
Which is how she learned to avoid sitting on Uncle Elmo's lap.
She had told me about how when she started her period at 16
she thought she was DYING.
It was an actual surprise.
Periods were NOT DISCUSSED at home,
or at their country mountaintop school.
How she lost her virginity when her college dorm-mate
decided she needed to "get over it" and "have some fun"
and arranged for my mom to be gang raped at a party.
These were the things I KNEW.
I knew that her husband ripped out her episiotomy when he was drunk
and didn't take, "I just gave birth to our first child, your son" for an answer.
I knew that 10 years later,
when her second child,
(a 5 year old daughter)
reported strange happenings at daycare,
my mom ended up helping the police break
a longstanding child porn ring
run out of the neighborhood in-home daycare center
JUST DOWN THE STREET from our home.
I knew all this,
the things she told me over the years.
She wanted to protect me,
by NOT HIDING the "complications" of life.
The 'complications' of being female,
the way it was hidden from her.
So it was surprising there were still incidents
she had not 'thought about'
or considered telling me before.
Like how her first pelvic exam was performed when she was 14,
by a school doctor after sending the nurse out of the room on an errand.
She was being seen for fainting in class.
Afterward she asked her mom about it, who curtly responded
"Happens to EVERY girl, someday. Don't think about it."
Whether she was referring to pelvic exams or suffering sexual predation,
who knows?
My grandma (mom's mom) was raised in the foster system
after being abandoned (along with all her younger siblings)
at an orphanage in 1929 when she was 7.
Ask Gram about it, she will tell you she has no memories until she's 11 or more.
"Why bother remembering the bad stuff?" she said, once
when I pressed her.
"No point in THAT!"
Left turn.
At a storytelling workshop at our local teeny International Women's Day rally
a woman said how she suffers depression,
but whenever she goes in for counseling they focus on her history of being a rape and incest survivor.
And how FRUSTRATING that is, because it was such a FORMATIVE experience,
that it is accepted into her narrative *already*
and doesn't feel her current depression is ABOUT that blight,
but therapists INSIST talking about it.
She laughs at the idea of talking about not wanting to talk about it anymore,
but how she wishes more people understand
that is just ONE story of her life.
Left turn.
I am reading "Suits Me" the biography of Billy Tipton,
an accomplished Jazz musician who lived to be in his 70's,
and died in my hometown in the mid 1980s,
where it was revealed Billy was a physical female.
Even his wives... (he had several) didn't know.
Only family and acquaintances from childhood, knew.
Anyways, this morning I was reading a section on Billy's fourth wife, Kitty;
a stripper/burlesque dancer he met on the jazz circuit.
When talking about what it was like as a traveling stripper in the 1950s,
Kitty, now in her 70s (at the time of the book's writing)
talks about how a "game" many patrons would play is attempting to
burn their favorite strippers with cigarettes, to "brand" them.
Gnashing out your cigarette out on a woman's ass,
or thighs or breasts was "a thing"
that was "popular" in certain clubs of men.
They'd identify and call out their marks later on,
NEXT time she came through on the circuit in 3 months.
The men would one-up each other by claiming responsibility
for this mark or that, on this girl or that,
as they searched for blemishes
on the dancer's skin.
Lighting her costume on fire was a second-best.
With the abundant use of feathers and polyester, it was an easy target.
Maybe, too easy for the sporting men?
At 27, she had been a dancer for 10 years and admits
she did not like being touched, IN GENERAL
because of the rape and abuse she had survived as a child and teen,
and then as a dancer.
Skirting rape and death,
courting dollars,
she was probably never very 'naive'.
Kitty says she loved Billy, because he always treated her with respect,
and was never forceful, or cruel to her "womanhood" like the "other men".
Another left turn
brings us back home.
My own stories,
are not one but many.
Not like my mom's at least.
I have been spared much, thanks to her revolutionary honesty.
But I have not been spared.
Mom just got news that there is a movement called #metoo
and after watching a little tv
(no tv in the mountaintop hermitage)
she seemed worried that it could go "too far"
and erase great art in the name of feminism.
That it was wrong for ANYONE to be an iconoclast.
She also worried about 'smearing' personalities.
If there is no police report, they shouldn't say it happened.
That is when I initiated counting off the assaults
EACH of our bodies (and minds)
(mother and daughter, each)
had endured at the hands of predators
(from amateur levels to expert)
and ALL THE REASONS
the cops had NOT been called
in each case.
She..... remembers why.
That was when she remembered the school doctor,
thought about him for the first time in a LONG time.
She said she lumped it in with
"Just one of those things...."
like her mother had told her to.
Sailor sat and listened to this conversation.
And that is when I lift my eyebrows and say
"This is the world that women live in ALL THE TIME."
Even though *I* know he already knows this.
It feels important to give him the stories
and the language to point this out to others.
I feel the need to keep repeating this
whenever I gather a story
like my own,
like my mom's,
like Kitty's strippin' stories,
like that woman's story of child rape and making room for the people
who experience it as just one event among myriads.
So, that's why you keep talking and telling stories
even with people where you think you know ALL their stories by now.