Fighting back against abuse

I just saw a video posted of someone giving a talk to young people. They asked if anyone who knew of someone, including themselves, who had been the victim of sexual abuse could stand. Most of the auditorium stood. Then they asked if those who knew the crime had been reported remain standing. Nearly everyone sat down.

When people ask, why don’t young people come out to protest, maybe the reason is right there, staring them in the face. A serial abuser, convicted for his crimes, a misogynist and racist, who then appointed similar types to his cabinet, is running the country into the ground. No one listened.

But maybe young people don’t feel that anyone will listen.

Like the Rolling Stones song:

Rape Murder
Is just a shot away

Except no one now is shocked. These are everyday terms. The President is guilty of one. His apartheid sidekick, the minute he dismantled USAID, is guilty of the other. The VP, shouting at the leader of Ukraine, also guilty. We all watch. So upset. So angry. Not enough to stand up to bosses, co-workers. Not enough to leave a warm house to hold up a sign on an icy day.

Young people don’t expect to be listened to. Why bother. It’s a system they were expected to agree with. And they don’t.

I think about these things. About the possible epidemic of misogyny, racism and abuse being the cause of why all this is happening, and why so many people are reluctant to speak out.
Yesterday’s major protest took place across all states, in all capitals, in small towns and medium ones, red and blue states as we have been taught to differentiate – and it barely got a headline. Red and blue. We get a color, like some afternoon touch football game. Except the stakes are so high. Too high. Many people don’t even realize what is at stake. Why should they? They believe everything they are told on TV, they go to the grocery store on Sundays to provide food for their families that is filled with chemicals and corn starch and dyes and may be contaminated or poorly processed and that will make them sick. They may go to church. They may believe in something bigger than themselves. And yet there is a group of people who are very happy to belittle them in private, enriching themselves in private, while proclaiming patriotism in public. The White House has put the fences back up. Gated communities for the rich, the billionaires. It’s a system we have been asked to buy into while being given no alternatives.

What if we don’t buy in? What if we show anger? We know it will lose us friends. It may cost our jobs. It may make the narrative too heavy to bear.

Losing twenty percent of your savings in a few days is a desecration of a dream deferred. Deferred with every day we trudge into the office, to be abused and bored, neglected and impeded. To be repeated the next day. Because we hope this is the right thing. Save up. Be part of the workforce. Then in a few days, months of this – for nothing. Twenty percent. Will it be enough? Probably not. Have they already decided which percentage will be too much? I’m sure they have. And then they will toy with us. It’s abuse. It’s taking away security and hope, turning up again when it’s almost too much and the ties are ready to break. The abuser’s handbook. Saying sorry, and not meaning it. A hook with bait. Being the bully that threatens you with other bullies, shaking you down for protection money. Or sexual favors. Laughing at your wish to be cared for. It’s abuse.

We are a country that has elected a serial abuser, liar, and criminal. Three months after the inauguration, crowds are in the streets. Will it be enough?

It seems to me, that I, as a woman, am frequently made to feel that any anger or frustration I exhibit is unnecessary and outsized. Tamp it down! Don’t do things that increase rage. Do things that mitigate it. Pretend it is not so bad, and it will go away. Positivity. Etc.

Maybe that’s true. And maybe a lifelong rage at being ignored and neglected can’t be fixed. Its manifestations escape borders, like octopi. No one tells the jailed orca or octopus that their wish for escape is wrong. They just make it impossible. The pool is the ocean. The tank is a universe. Until one octopus slithers out of its cage, finding ways out that were never imagined by the jailers.

And here we are. Needing to find ways out that were never imagined by the jailers. Never imagined by the abusers.

Can the courage to stand on the road side, watching trucks go by who shout things, who have huge bullets glued to the front wing of their cars and trucks, just by the windshield on the right hand side, can it help? We place our bodies feet away from metal cars – some honk in appreciation, some show their contempt. The bullet on the fender must be a symbol. Yet we all stand here. We look for strength, and hear it in voices that are unused to speaking out. This is the beauty of being in the real world. In protests that grow, in communities where community seemed a Hallmark moment for those who had bought into a lot of promises that were never accessible to so many. Anyone who has been the victim of abuse knows both the power of those stories to hide the truth, and the ugliness of those who turn on you when you reveal what has been hidden.

Can week four become a different story?

…

Despite the hopelessness, she kept protesting. And she saw the Vietnam vet, wearing his hat, out there again. She talked to the man who was there for the first time, who finally shyly admitted that his wife was too frightened to come protest, because she said that these people have guns. She said that she was afraid too, but that a playground of Ukrainian children had just been blown up. And so this fear was there, but maybe this was the way to change. That you had to be courageous. That these people were good. He said he would come next week. And he would tell his wife that it wasn’t so bad, and to not be scared.

What happened that made fear the dominant emotion?

She borrowed a sign. This week, a man had made twenty signs, and brought them in a little cart for people to use. Don’t thank me, the wife said, thank my husband. He’s been working on these all week.

Another man brought a beautifully painted sign. It’s my daughter’s artwork, he said proudly.

A woman noticed that most of the people there were older. Where are the young people, she asked. Another woman said that her three sons were not there. They were on their phones. A bitter note in her voice. A wish for things to be different.

This week she saw something she had never seen in America before. A British way of showing contempt. She had used it once, and no one knew what it was. Now men in trucks who didn’t read were flapping their wrists at the crowd. Interesting, she thought. Now where did they learn that? Which group is funding videos? How is this what they have learned?

The people who were rude or shouted or made gestures were for the most part homogenous. A certain type of American. Grim. Frowning. Angry. Overly made up. Bursting through big shirts.

The ones protesting were more varied.

One truck yelled something nasty. She yelled back to read a book.

Who said that, one of the women said, looking around, startled, not seeing an obvious source. The person who yelled it, she said that she had done so. The woman looked at her. Well done, that was really good, she said.

A moment of recognition. A moment of community. A moment of sharing. Appreciation, not criticism or dismissal.

Walking back along the small pavement, by the main road, past the café, the CBD store, the pizza place, the package store, once it was all done, a man with his wife stopped another man holding a sign. His question – what was it all about? The man with the sign was shocked. You don’t know what this is all about, really? You don’t know? The other man said, well what does that mean, pointing to the sign. She stopped to watch, somewhat embarrassed, but too curious to hear what would happen to maintain a polite distance. They both looked like traditional people. Where would this go? His sign said No Autocracy, Save Democracy. You don’t know what this means, sign man said to the other man, startled. No. And they had a brief conversation about how they were both disappointed by what was happening, and that the fallen soldiers returning home from Lithuania should have been welcomed by the current president. They both agreed that what was happening was wrong. Fear overcome. Connection made. Questioning begun. A dent in the overflow of lies and excuses the average person here sees and hears, and is told to accept. Don’t argue.

She fell into walking side by side, past the shops, with the man with the sign, thinking he would go in a different direction. Instead he asked her why the man didn’t know. Perhaps it was that he didn’t know what the word autocracy meant. Yes, that could be it. He worked with boats. He said the men there didn’t know much, but they knew that the last thirty years had not been good to them. Thirty years. Such a long time. She ran through in her mind all the things that she had done, some of which had been in another country, and wondered how she could understand what he meant. They talked about how the protest made things better, just seeing people who felt the same way. This protest was his first one, ever. A lifetime of not protesting. That, she could not understand either, but could appreciate what an enormous step it must have been for him to make a sign, to come out, alone.

He shook her hand when they got to his car. A firm, hard grasp, a hand with no softness, yet the grip did not hurt. It was respectful, not crushing. His face had obviously seen wind and sun and seasons and she wondered how a man who had studied political science, as he had recounted, yet was startled to realize that people didn’t have the terms, or education, or understanding to comprehend what had seemed to him like a simple idea, had been moved to come out, to paint his first sign. How did a man like this wash up here, to work on boats? Not every story is a straight line.

He told her to enjoy her walk. They smiled and went their separate ways, as people do.

…

A month of protests, and I have spoken to more people on these snowy, cold, icy hopeful Saturdays than in my nearly three years of living in this area.

Our future and promise is in humanity. Not on the screen. Even if they never listened and told us we were wrong, that it was all our fault, that no one would care.

Fighting through the trauma of abuse to keep hope alive enough to welcome words and touch, and to not stay home, frightened, cowed, alone.