Back in elementary school, a boy in my class thought it was perfectly acceptable to karate kick me into the ground without any provocation. His plan worked too. He got the high fives he wanted from the other boys in the schoolyard, all for showing off how strong he was. I, on the other hand, went inside to puke in the restroom.

Boys Will Be Boys

I didn’t fight back, not physically at least. When I spoke up and told a teacher, all he did was tell Greg not to do it again. Greg did not even deny that he did it. Instead, a smile bloomed over his face like The Grinch when he gets his “wonderful, awful idea”. He got away with it.

Women are getting beaten up left and right these days, if not always physically then emotionally. Thelma and Louise can be found at veery turn. The political turmoil over the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination in 2018 was only one example of that. Christine Blasey-Ford came forward with allegations about sexual assault and she was vilified for it. Many of the good old boys are high-fived each other like they did Greg. After all, he was just being one of the boys! How dare she blame someone years after the event? Why didn’t she report it sooner?

Not Coming Forward Sooner

Even when a woman comes forward at the exact moment she is sexually assaulted or harassed, people do not always believe her. Where is the video proof? The DNA evidence? If she is not penetrated or does not scratch at her assailant to get skin under her nails, did the assault even happen? Why didn’t she fight back? Maybe she had consensual intercourse and is now regretting it? It is as if a woman needs to wear a GoPro at every moment to protect her name, if not her virtue.

Let’s face it. Men are not always foolish enough to do these things with witnesses present. It makes many of these cases a “he said/she said” situation. If they knowingly have witnesses, odds are these people have their back anyway.

This is scratching at the surface, of course. I could write a dissertation on why women may not come forward right away. Not only do many attackers intimidate their victims but many women do not want to be victimized a second time. The shame and humiliation they experience from the act itself is made that much worse when people do not believe them. They are vilified as liars. They have to deal with the physical and emotional pain of being violated on top of the hate and loathing others spew on them for sullying the name of an “innocent man”. After all, every man is innocent until proven guilty, even if she knows he is guilty as hell.

Not Remembering the Date

I have my share of #MeToo moments. I was held at knifepoint in grade school by a boy who demanded I kiss him. A friend of the family inappropriately touched me in my own house. He was so drunk, he does not remember a moment of it. When my father passed away, he came to the funeral and pulled me aside to talk about the “good times”. It is a wonder I didn’t vomit right then and there from the surge of adrenaline in my veins.

Can I tell you the date each of these things happened? Exactly how old I was? What I was wearing? No. But I remember with vivid detail the acts themselves. Visions come to me in flashes. It is the true personification of fear. For the record, I told people right away about the knife incident but no one believed me. Less than a handful of people knew about the “family friend” and then only decades after it happened. Why? Because I was conditioned to believe no one would believe me anyway. Does the fact that I did not fight back at the time mean I deserved it? Does my coming out now make me a liar? No, no, it doesn’t.

People who have never been abused do not know what someone goes through in the aftermath. They do not know how someone can go into shock or how the mind processes information to protect itself from the pain. Some relive the experience day in and day out. Others push it down, burying it deep inside. Someone who is abused does not want to go through it over and over again. More than anything, they want to forget.

A Test of Character

Whether or not you believed Blasey-Ford’s story about sexual assault, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as a Supreme Court Judge. Instead of showing he was a qualified candidate, he bragged about how much he worked his “butt off” to become a judge. As if Brock Turner, a convicted rapist, did not work his butt off to become a competitive swimmer or Bill Cosby a celebrated comedian. How hard you work to climb the ladder of success, to make yourself more influential or powerful, is not the same as having good moral character.

You show your character in how you treat others. Kavanaugh’s character is shown in his illegal underage drinking and his overt lying about it. It is shown in partisan politics and his threat of revenge on his political enemies if he was confirmed to the bench, “what goes around comes around”. His character is shown in the repeated sexual references in his high school yearbook that coincide in time with the alleged assault and that, again, he lied about. It is shown in his outright disrespect to a female Senator asking if she ever blacked out when he refused to answer the question himself. His disregard for the system and for women in general set the tone. His conduct, belligerent and uncouth, is unbecoming a Supreme Court Justice.

For the record, you do not have to “blackout” to forget details about what you did while you were drunk.

Time to Fight Back

In our society, men are given the benefit of the doubt, especially men in a position of power. Whether it’s a boy in a schoolyard, a teenager with a knife, or a friend of the family, it’s easier to deny the truth and shame any woman who dares to call him out. Men like this put the victim in the crosshairs. The fact remains that the number of women who have been harassed and assaulted far outnumbers those who make false accusations. There is little to gain when you fight back and put your story in a public forum. You are more likely to get beaten up than vindicated.

We cannot let this continue. Enough is enough. While there are many good men out there, there are also many who abuse their power. Christine Blasey-Ford did a brave thing by coming forward, knowing she would become the punching bag of privileged men, knowing she would not be believed. Anita Hill did the same with Clarence Thomas. They did not do it for themselves. They did it for all of us. Now we can come forward together.

Women, it’s time to fight back. Stand up. Speak up. Vote. It’s time for our voices to be heard. When we join forces, we make a difference.