Believe me.
Note: I first wrote this on September 28, 2018, after watching Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court Justice hearing, and listening to Christine Blasey Ford share her testimony that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. A campaign was going around social media stating “Believe Women.” I never thought I’d actually post this. I wrote it more for the therapy of getting it out of my head and into written words. Here we are SIX years later, I have two beautiful children who I’m trying to raise to be respectful, kind, and courageous, and we have a woman as the Democratic nominee for President (again). And I’m already seeing family members post about how we “traded diaper pads for knee pads.” Do I need to explain that one? In case you really don’t get it, it’s implying how Biden was old but Kamala gives out blow jobs. When I saw that post, I came right back here. It’s 2024. And yet people are still turning any woman’s job credibility or claims of their own life experiences into some sexual discrimination bullshit. So here I am, feeling courageous to post finally.
When I was in the 5th grade, my breasts started growing. Still adjusting to my new body as a 10-year-old, one day I forgot to wear my new bra to school and we had P.E. that day. I remember trying to inconspicuously hold my chest while we ran laps around the gym. I was sore and in pain. My male teacher refused letting me sit out. After P.E., two of my classmates (their names I’ll never forget, but won’t say here), called me a “ho.” I didn’t know what a “ho” was. I went home that day and asked my mom. Furious, she called the school and demanded the boys apologize to me. I went to school the next day and had a private meeting with the two boys and my classroom teacher. They apologized, and I still had no idea what a “ho” was. But I continued to get called one under their breath throughout the rest of the school year. It was later that year that I also started hearing the word “slut.” I was ten. I had forgotten to wear a training bra.
When I was in the 8th grade, I went to a party. An innocent middle school party where we all hung out in someone’s basement. The parents were home upstairs, while we were playing music loudly, playing foosball and pool, and engaging in embarrassing 13-year-old flirting. Someone suggested we play 7 minutes in heaven. I told my friend I didn’t want to, and I would sit out. A boy came up to me, grabbed and squeezed my breast and said to me “You’re such a prude!” Then laughed in my face.
When I was a Freshman in high school, I went to a friend’s house for a pool party as summer was starting. A boy I had considered a friend asked why I wasn’t swimming with everyone. I wasn’t swimming because I had my period, and hadn’t started using tampons yet. I didn’t want to swim with a pad on. I was too embarrassed to tell him this, so I stumbled over words, and he said “You’re on your period, aren’t you? Just put a tampon in. I’ll show you how.” And then proceeded to try and pull my bathing suit bottoms off and grabbed my crotch. I pushed him away, into the pool. Everyone laughed. I went in the bathroom and hid for a while.
As a Sophomore year started, I was somehow placed in an advanced math class (not sure how or why, since my math grades and standardized test scores were ridiculously low). I put in a request with my counselor to switch out of advanced, and into regular. He asked me “Why do you need to be in a regular math class?” I said “Well, I don’t even understand what our teacher is talking about and it’s week 2. I’m already failing. I need to learn, but not fail.” He asked me “Why can’t you fail?” And I responded “I would hope to go to college. I don’t think I can get into a good college if I’m always failing advanced math classes.” His response (verbatim, as I will never ever forget this moment): “College isn’t for everyone. Especially girls.”
When I was a junior, I dated a senior boy for about 3 months. I was still a virgin. I rejected his advances to have sex quite often. When we broke up, he spit at me and said I was a bitch for not giving him what he wanted. He said he could see me turning into a whore one day and then I’ll come back to him to see what I’m missing out on. I cried myself to sleep that night, and started taking different hallways to my classes to avoid seeing him.
All throughout middle school and high school, there was a man at church that my parents were “friends” (?) with? More than acquaintances. We were very active in church, and so was his family. So we saw him weekly at mass, and then during other church functions. From the age of about 12 - 18 whenever he’d see us in the church atrium, he’d kiss my lips hello. I told my mom it made me uncomfortable, and she said “I think that’s just how he says hello. Just give him your cheek next time.” I just avoided him as much as I could, but sometimes I couldn’t. As a teenage girl, I didn’t know how to tell him “no,” because my most trusted person in life shrugged it off.
When I was a senior in high school, I had a job working at a bank. It was good money and I started buying my own clothes. I bought a long sleeve v-neck sweater from Abercrombie + Fitch. It didn’t show any cleavage, but apparently when I bowed at the alter at church, a woman could see my cleavage. She approached my mom after church and told her that what I was wearing was inappropriate because as soon as I bowed, a man put his head down. He must have been ashamed to look at my chest. My sweater was tempting men in church and I should not be allowed to wear that sweater to church ever again. That woman is a D-list famous podcaster in the Catholic Church now. I wonder how many girls she is shaming by making them think it’s THEIR fault that men might be looking at them. (Also, maybe the dude was putting his head down because it was church and we were PRAYING?)
My first semester of college, I took a Speech 101 class. I consistently got C’s on the oral speeches I had to give in front of the class, until one day I wore a cute new top I had just purchased. It showed a little bit of cleavage (I was a C cup, not that it matters), and I had usually worn sweats and hoodies to class. This particular day, I had to give my 6th and final speech in the course. My professor asked me to stay after class. He told me I had improved and was giving me an “A.” He told me all this as he was blatantly staring at my chest. He then asked me if I would take his other class next semester. When I said “probably not,” he looked me in the eyes, said that I made him sad, and my grade for that speech ended up as a “C”.
Also my freshman year of college, I avoided walking across the bridge that connected 2 buildings at all costs. There was usually a gaggle of guys there. I started avoiding them because my first day walking across the bridge, one of them grabbed my ass as I walked by him. I wasn’t even talking to him or looking at any of them. I just passed by and he grabbed me. Hard. Told me I looked good. I shot him a dirty look and silently hustled away from there. For the next 3 days in a row, he and his friends yelled at me that I was the slut with the sweet ass. It was day 5 of college, and I was uncomfortable to walk across a bridge.
Oh, and another thing for my freshman year of college: I nannied for a family that one day asked me to also help with “catering” a birthday party. Just handing out food and cake, etc… I had never done this before so I dressed super professionally. Nice black pants, a white button up top, and a black cardigan over it. I’ll never forget that outfit. One of the family’s friends, was a neighbor who had 3 boys the same age as the kids I nannied for. He and his wife seemed like they had a happy little nuclear family. But that was from my very limited interaction with them. I could count on 1 hand the amount of times I was in the same vicinity as they were, engaging in - at the most - cordial interaction. But this time, about half way through the party, he pulled me aside out of nowhere, looked me straight in the eyes, while standing about a foot from my face, and said “You know, men peak sexually at 18, and women in their 40s, but that’s the opposite of my wife and I. She’s not into sex after that 3rd baby. But I’m hitting my prime. I’m lucky, you know? Some girls peak at…what are you, 19?” As soon as he said that, he stared me up-and-down, visually undressing me. I felt so dirty at a 4 year olds birthday party. Just by how he spoke and looked at me. I had never driven home faster, and I never wore that outfit again. Even in professional attire, I thought it was my fault. Why else would a “happily married man” stare at me the way he did?
On New Years Eve of my Freshman year of college, I was sexually assaulted. I went down to University of Illinois with a few friends for a NYE party. There was a lot of alcohol going around. One of the guys I went to the party with was actually dating one of my best friends at the time. She was in Florida with her family. Some creepy dudes I didn’t know had started acting inappropriately towards me, so I went over to my friend’s boyfriend to pretend we were dating, so the creepers would back off. My friend’s boyfriend took this as a cue apparently. He started putting his arm around me and grabbing me, asking me why I was single, and if I was a virgin. I told him I was saving sex for marriage. He didn’t believe me and asked me two more times throughout the night if I was really saving sex for marriage. Then, he kissed me. We were standing on a balcony outside of an apartment where the rest of our friends were partying. One of my girlfriends walked out and saw him kiss me. She yelled at me and told me to “think of [our other friend that was dating him.]” I told her I did NOT want him to kiss me. I looked at her in the eyes and said “help me. keep him away from me.” We went back inside and started doing shots. It was the New Year finally. Everything got very blurry after that. Somehow, we ended up getting a cheap hotel for 4 of us to stay in before driving home the next morning. It was 2 girls and 2 boys. My friend - the one that I told to help me - got in bed with the guy she was kind of seeing. That left me and our “friend” that didn’t believe I was a virgin. The one that forced a kiss on me. The one that was dating one of my best friends. I remember crawling into bed in my cute New Years Eve dress, squeezing myself all the way over to the edge, hoping that he wouldn’t touch me and I could just pass out. I did pass out, mostly from the alcohol. And then I woke up. To him on top of me. Pulling my dress up and my underwear to the side. Forcing himself inside of me. I froze for about 6 thrusts before I pushed him off of me. I grabbed my cell phone and ran/stumbled out of the hotel room. I sat in the hallway of the 2nd floor of that La Quinta Inn, calling my mom, crying, asking her to come get me. My parents showed up as soon as they could. My dad had a baseball bat in the backseat of the car. I begged them to just take me home, so they did. I didn’t get out of bed for about 3 days. I saw a counselor. She told me in a court of law, it would be considered a “grey rape.” Because there was alcohol involved, and I had no recollection of actually telling him “NO” before he started having sex with me. So I never pursued legal action.
That was on the early morning of January 1, 2006.
My life was forever changed.
I wish I could say that 1/1/06 was the end of any negative interaction I’ve had with a man. But it hasn’t been.
I have truly wonderful men in my life as well. OF COURSE I do!
But I have real experiences, with real men, who did some really real bad things.
This is my life. My story. Believe me. Believe women.
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One bonus story, because I think it’s an important one to share.
My senior year of college at Benedictine University, I was a Resident Assistant (RA). One night, I heard really aggressive yelling from a dorm room. I knocked to see if everyone was okay / tell them it’s quiet hours. There were three young men that I knew in the room, and they were all drunk/high. One of them was yelling about something in a drunken rage, and as soon as I tried to open my mouth, he yelled in my face “YOU BETTER NOT TELL ME TO QUIET DOWN. I’LL SLIT YOUR THROAT WHILE YOU CHOKE ON MY DICK. LEAVE OR ELSE.” He was close enough to me that I had his spit on my face. I backed out of the room slowly, walked away as calmly as I could, and went straight to another building where my supervisor was. I reported it, stayed in another persons dorm room for the night, and then did the official report with the Dean of Students the next day. The Dean of Students, along with the President of the school at the time, listened to my account of what happened, and then made me wait in their office for over 2 hours while they decided what to do. They popped back in the office several times to see if I would drop my report since there was less than a month left in the academic year and it would cost a lot of money and resources to remove the guy from school. It wasn’t until I threatened to call the media and a lawyer, that they said they removed the student from the dorm. I found out later that he was sleeping in his car just outside of our dorm building. I reported it, said I felt unsafe still, and they said there was nothing they could do. I was consistently told to just “walk to class with a friend,” “the year is almost over, everyone will be over this soon,” “he didn’t really threaten you, this is kind of blown out of proportion here.”
Since this was first written in 2018, but finally posted in 2024, I want to add that I know some people wonder what made me turn from a conservative Catholic raised girl, to a “radical leftist feminist” woman, please use this blog post as Exhibit A. See my children as Exhibit B.
And, YES, I’D FUCKING CHOOSE THE BEAR.