Consent – Blountly Speaking

Sigh…here we go…

My first abortion was when I was an 18 year-old college freshman. I was with a boy that had had a crush on me since we were in junior high. He was nervous, I was uninterested, it was awkward, it lasted less than five minutes and the condom broke.

I found out when I suddenly became nauseous during one of my classes, and realized it had been awhile since my last period. When the test read “positive,” I was devastated because it felt like everything I was working for to finally have a better life was in jeopardy. I began to think of all the trauma I’d previously endured: The sexual abuse by my cousin when I was four, by my neighbor when I was eight, and by the cousin of a school friend — who my father had taken under his wing because he and his brothers were “at-risk” — when I was ten. Then I cursed my parents and god for their collective lack of protection, and told my adopted mom — a devout christian whose first instinct was to tell me I had to have it — that I was either having an abortion or I was going to kill myself. Once she got on the page, she called my father, who was informed in a single day that his daughter was pregnant, previously abused by multiple boys he trusted and suicidal.

My relationship with my father changed exponentially that day. From then on, we were no longer estranged, although it would take years to repair the damage.

The second time I had an abortion, I was a 20 year-old junior still living at home, and stupidly relented when he protested the use of a condom because “it doesn’t feel the same.” I was still in my people-pleasing phase, and still operated in relationships with a mix of fear and desperation that made me less inclined to set boundaries or factor my own wellbeing and protection. So that night I got pregnant…and chlamydia. I was so riddled with shame I only shared the ordeal with my two closest sister-girlfriends, who helped me take care of both without me ever telling my family (at the time).

The third and final abortion I had was when I was 27 years old and living with a roommate who nearly got us evicted for submitting bounced checks for her portion of the rent. The guy had already been in the proverbial doghouse for trying to coerce me into having a threesome with another girl that also didn’t get previous notice of his plan or give consent.

That last word is important.

After not speaking for months, and definitely because I was single and craving human contact, I agreed to meet with him, and in the midst of “doing the deed”…he removed the condom without my knowledge or…here’s that word again…consent. This time I considered keeping it because I felt guilty going through it again, but he insisted on terminating it and paying for it. I bled all over his bedsheets, ran into him a year later one morning on my way to work when he shouted my name on a crowded subway train, and years later discovered he was friends with one of my cousins on Facebook when we both responded to one of her posts.

It took nearly two decades before I found out there was a name for what he did. It’s called “stealthing,” and it’s a form of sexual assault. I couldn’t catch a break. I’ve only just started telling people that story because it’s my truth and it’s a fucking horrifying cautionary tale.

But back to the subject at hand.

In a perfect word, I never would’ve had them. It was always my intention to never bring a child into the world if I wasn’t married, and the only exception would be if I were rich and able to give that child everything my parents didn’t give me. Those were the only conditions.

I thanked god for every year of the nearly six I spent with a man who physically, emotionally and financially broke me, that mercifully didn’t result in carrying his child. Even though by then I didn’t believe god existed.

Years later I would take my chances again with birth control, after a disastrous first attempt following my first pregnancy led to a hormonal imbalance that resulted in a epic meltdown in a math class. It didn’t prevent me from being assaulted by a partner again, but it did put my mind slightly at ease knowing I wouldn’t have a physical human reminder of that trauma calling me “mom” and expecting me to sacrifice everything to keep them from the same fates.

In the years that I’ve been single and abstinent, I’ve taken it mostly because I still fear being raped again.

And not just by some rando on the street.

Not too long ago, a former colleague joked about slipping me a “roofie.” And although he was reprimanded in real time by our “boss,” that same boss made comments about my breasts, told me once he’d “gotten me a big, Black, African man” (referring to an actor invited to one of our events), and literally said to me after I was pushed out of my job full-time and shifted to a contract role making significantly less money “If you’d just done what we wanted you to do, eventually we would’ve let you do what you wanted.” (He’s since been fired for whatever other nonsense he’s done.)

I had to turn down a job offer because the contract had a clause that said I would have no legal recourse if I were to be physically, mentally and/or emotionally harmed while on the job. I was once told by a coworker I had “child bearing hips.” I was once stalked by a former coworker I went on one date with after I’d gone to work for another company. After telling him I wasn’t interested in another date, he called my house to the point where my family went from screaming at him to stop calling to disconnecting the phone, and then waited outside the front of my office building for seven hours — prompting security to escort me through a private entrance for months after.

I’ve had to rebuild my life and shake off these things…Every. Single. Time.

But I can never fully do that, when time and again, the world…and especially the fucking country I was born in…shows me and the millions of other people who’ve been through their own traumas…that we just aren’t protected. Insisting we acquiesce to the needs, desires and whims of men (and women who enable them) who wish to break us for their pleasure. Because their repressive beliefs dictate they have complete control over everyone and everything. No matter what and who says they don’t.

The only thing I hate more than having experienced the things I have in this lifetime…is the constant trigger of knowing there are people actively making sure I and countless others never have the peace of confidently knowing it can’t and won’t happen again.

With that, it goes without saying that right now I just wanna burn everything to the ground…and rise like a phoenix from the ashes in a world where I can just breathe easy. A world where Clarence Thomas and his seditious wife are serving jail time, instead of him serving on the bench of the highest court in the land.

A world where I can afford to be an ex-pat and live happily ever after.

I wish…

When they aren’t selling your information to the highest bidding megalomaniac, or creeping you out with hyper-targeted ads of something you maybe mentioned in a text message five minutes before, Facebook is actually not too awful a place to be sometimes.

For me, it’s a place where I can keep up with relatives I haven’t seen in years, and/or live in places that I’m sociopolitically allergic to. A place where I’m privy to the success or struggles of classmates I promised I’d keep in touch with in our yearbooks, but realized that required actual work to do so. (Shoutout to my college sister-friends for occasionally restoring my sanity and faith in humans in the group chat!) And, most importantly, a place that keeps me informed about birthdays and stances that either deepen my connection with someone, or validate any suspicions I had as to why I never quite connected with them.

Yesterday, it became a place where a pretty big “Aha” moment in my life transpired, and it started an unexpected wellspring of emotion, and hopefully something much bigger.

It all began when I posted the following status:

“Just saw a video in which a group of female 45 voters expressed their opinion on the Stormy Daniels affair. Not surprisingly, they doubled-down on their support for their man, and lambasted Daniels, saying she was in it for the money and degrading her.

Just as I was about to post that video, I paused. I was ready to say “What kind of woman would still support this man after all that he’s said and done, and then drag and ridicule a woman for speaking her truth?”

I stopped because I realized that these women aren’t anomalies. I, too, have defended and forgiven men who I knew to be absolute trash in their behavior towards women – including myself – but was kinder in my thoughts and actions toward them, than I’ve been with women who simply gave me the minutest attitude. (I deemed a former female friend “dead to me” for disparaging me behind my back, but have had cordial interactions with a man who nearly choked the life out of me. That’s just crazy!)

And I’m not alone.

This has brought me to the very horrifying discovery that there are SO many of us who’ve accepted that men are entitled to behave badly, and women are expected to just shut up about it. We’ve been conditioned to forgive, laugh it off, and look the other way. That’s kinda effed up when you think about it. The possibility that WE are OUR OWN worst enemies.

There are monstrous men out here wrecking lives and legislation because there are women in their circle doing the absolute least to check them, and instead are cheering them on. The chants tend to be louder when the woman being punished is a free-thinker.

That’s a real sobering takeaway during this Women’s History Month.

Just saying.”

What happened after that was magical.

While it didn’t “go viral” or bring me internet fame, it did spark a conversation that we’ve sorta been having during the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, but haven’t really had until Stormy Daniels admitted on national television to having sex with someone she didn’t really want to have sex with because she felt she’d placed herself in that situation and therefore must follow through. It’s the same awkward discussion we had when Aziz Ansari was placed in the spotlight for essentially being a bad lay.

But I digress. The point is, women were attacking Daniels’ character, instead of considering the character of a man who had unprotected sex with a person whose profession is literally having sex with people she barely knows on camera, while his wife was nursing their newborn child. A man who has a history of infidelity, misogyny and questionable and unethical decisions, yet still was elected President of the United States. A man who makes cringe-worthy comments about his daughter, normalizes racism and discrimination and comments about grabbing women by their vaginas gets a moral pass, but a woman looking to set the record straight and fight for her family’s safety gets lambasted.

This is the world we live in.

A world where boys will be boys, and the shit they say is just “locker room talk.” Where they can knock a woman unconscious in an elevator, but still get signed to a team before the guy who takes a knee to protest injustice and police brutality. Where they can beat a woman til she’s unrecognizable, or record themselves urinating on a minor, and still sell out venues and have countless female fans and collaborators in the years since. Where they can force their mistresses to have abortions, while simultaneously structuring laws to keep other women from terminating an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. Where they can shack up with their stepdaughters and still have actors clamoring to star in their films. Where they can play fast and loose with the rules that govern and protect, but get you ejected from the game for your emails. Fucking emails.

Coming to terms with my own permissive history was the breakthrough I needed not just to comprehend the mindset of the women who looked the other way, but to understand that there is a disturbing pervasiveness of double-standards globally that has shaped societies for centuries, and we are still woefully compliant to them.

When I think of all the shit I let slide, it’s really disturbing, and yet it makes perfect sense why I’m single. The insults. The verbal abuse. The physical abuse. The unannounced children. The unannounced live-in girlfriend. The unannounced wife. The unannounced move to other cities. The unannounced resentment, and my new favorite: The unannounced intent to punish women stemming from maternal neglect and/or conflict. Until fairly recently, this all seemed normal…until one day it didn’t.

But for many women, it is still normal. It makes more sense for us to say “He’s just going through some things,” or “That’s just the way men are,” instead of “What the fuck is your trigger, and why can’t you handle your shit in a way that doesn’t punish everyone else around you?”

And it’s because of our desire to keep the peace where men are concerned, we end up doing more damage to our fellow sex, and future generations of boys who will grow up thinking it’s okay to disrespect women, and girls who won’t be able to identify the disrespect until it’s too late. We break our necks coddling male egos, while simultaneously ignoring the very people who need guidance and encouragement the most.

That’s probably why the swift justice bestowed to Harvey Weinstein, and the movements that followed, were initially so confusing to process. We’d just voted in a man who admitted on-camera to sexual assault, but somehow found outrage that brought down one of the most powerful men in entertainment. We still treat Bill Clinton as a rock star, while Monica Lewinsky still can’t have a career without ridicule, and Hillary is still being dragged for everything she says and does despite losing to a man who — once again — admitted on-camera to sexual assault. Let that sink in.

So how do we break the cycle of condoning the transgressions of men, while simultaneously holding a safe space for women to tell their stories and heal from their experiences? How do we come to that place where we own our shit and say “Hey, maybe we are much harder on women than we are on men because we live in a society constructed by men?” How do we come to terms with the very real fact that the men we revere as fathers, brothers, friends, mentors, lovers, legends, etc., are capable of committing unspeakably evil things against other women, children and just people in general that they don’t deem on their level?

Maybe the first step is admitting that we aren’t perfect, and to own and accept that we can be biased, frightened people who do what we can to survive, and it’s much easier to sweep things under a rug, than do a deep-clean and start fresh sometimes. The problem with that, is there are people breathing in the residual filth we leave behind…and it can be toxic.

I’m heartened by the recent cultural shifts that have seen more women in the forefront as heroes, warriors and leaders in activism and slowly but surely on the political spectrum. I celebrate the voices of a young generation that basically just told us that they’re fed up with our nonsense, and “since we’re not old enough to drink beer, keep holding yours while we figure out how to get these assholes you blindly voted into office out.”

And I appreciate the men out there who embrace, support and encourage all of this necessary change without taking it as an affront to their existence.

That said, being my sister’s keeper doesn’t mean Stacy Dash and her ilk get a pass.

Just sayin’…