The Nightmare of Reality and Moving Forward with Purpose and Vision

Facing a world with Donald Trump as the USA President-elect...

So on that fateful Tuesday we all waited to see what would happen in the USA 2016 election. While people were vaguely concerned about Trump winning, it didn't seem likely. Then again, everything to do with this election hasn't seemed likely and yet it has all been happening. So when we then woke up on Wednesday, November 9th everything seemed like a bad dream. I myself had work at 7am that morning, so I had gone to bed around 10pm before anything was certain... Inevitable, yes, but not yet certain. So while I suspected what had happened I did not know for certain and was in denial for a good 5 hours. And then I realized that this was my new reality and I needed to get used to it. 

I probably spent the next 2 or 3 hours being quite depressed and upset, but still, things weren't too bad in my head at that point. Until I realized what a Republican President, House, and Senate would mean for the USA and the world as a whole. And then I couldn't switch my brain off. Everything was swirling like a maelstrom in my head; LGBTQIA+ rights, gay marriage, women's right to choose and abortion access and legal consequences, healthcare and access for low income families, the environment, Trump's climate change denier appointment as head of the EPA, Endangered Species Act future support, my future career choice of conservation biology... Everything that is important to me went from being supported and protected by the government to facing complete dissolution and active threats from the entirety of the government. The fact that republicans now control the executive (presidency), legislative (congress), and judiciary (supreme court) branches of the government terrified me.

When Obama was president republicans chafed under his "control", but his presidency has been plagued from the very start by a gridlocked congress. In the beginning, democrats controlled the senate and republicans the house, and Obama managed to make some progress with congress. However, then the republicans took control of the senate as well, and then Obama's hands were virtually tied behind his back for the majority of his presidency. So while republicans were not happy with Obama as president he couldn't do as much "damage" as they feared he would if congress hadn't blocked him at every turn. However, democrats are now faced with a very different situation. Republicans now control the house, senate, presidency, and will likely have the choice of the new supreme court justice filling Scalia's spot.

They prevented Obama from carrying out his constitutional privilege of appointing the supreme court justice on the basis of them wanting the next president to choose because then the "people would be choosing". Regardless of the fact that this is perhaps the stupidest argument I have ever heard, it worked for them. The president-elect of the US is Donald Trump, the republican candidate, and as such he will appoint someone and congress will gladly accept that person, and then we will have a majority-conservative supreme court that will likely then attempt to overturn gay marriage rights, abortion rights, women's rights, equal pay for equal work laws, environmental protection laws, and everything else the House majority leader that looks like a turtle has suggested so far. There are also 2 justices on the supreme court over the age of 80, so there is a possibility that they too may need replacing in the near future. Ruth Bader Ginsberg (83) and Anthony Kennedy (80) are the oldest members of the supreme court. While Ruth Ginsberg is famed (or notorious, depending on who you ask) for supporting liberal ideology and protecting social rights of people. Anthony Kennedy on the other hand is shaky at best when it comes to protecting individuals rights and the environment. While he has not voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade, he has been the swing vote that often allows more restrictions on abortions and state decisions to restrict access. He also is shaky on protections for the LGBTQIA+ community. He was the swing vote striking down measures that would actively stop gay couples from claiming domestic partnership, however he also refused to support anti-discrimination laws for gay people. If Ruth is not able to hold out for the next 4 years, we are faced with an overwhelmingly conservative supreme court, and if Kennedy kicks the bucket, he will likely be replaced by someone much less likely to support individuals freedoms.

So the stark truth of reality is now facing us. Trump's picks for "Secretary of ___" make the simple fact that he is president-elect even more terrifying. Add to that the republican agenda of squishing the light of progress out of the world, and the idea of a conservative majority supreme court and you've got my personal nightmare and the US version of the Nazi regime mixed in with dictatorship and communism in Russia. Yay.

I have spent the last two weeks in a mixture of being okay for a few hours, to the most incredible despair I have ever experienced. I spent a good two weeks getting maybe 3-4 hours of sleep each night, and what sleep I did get was interspersed with nightmares and waking up frequently. Not a good way to keep up with schoolwork. On top of that I burst into tears and had panic attacks randomly throughout the days if I thought too hard about things. I couldn't get schoolwork done. I couldn't concentrate in class. I fell behind on homework. My nerves were shot to hell. When I heard loud voices in the street outside my house I always listened to see if they were harassing anyone, prepared to fly out my front door with my pepper spray and give them hell.

I'm not even a minority ethnicity or religion. Yes, i'm female, so I am naturally worried about the normalization of sexual assault and the lack of respect for women, their wishes, their consent, etc... But other than that i've got a lot of things going for me. I will fully admit that I am privileged. I am a white middle-class female with good family support. I'm atheist, so that's not great in this country but it's not seen as an immediate threat worth being expelled from the country over. I'm i'm scared, I can't even begin to comprehend how people who are actually at risk of verbal and physical abuse are feeling. People who already experience rampant racism and hatred towards them for their skin colour, religion, sexuality, and clothing choices related to their religion, etc... People who have already lived their entire lives being targeted because of who they are, attacked by random strangers with verbal slurs, aggression, and even physical violence are even more at risk now. Trump has "normalized" the "Alt-Right" which is really just a glamorized way of representing the white supremacist/Nazi agenda.

The more cabinet members Trump picks, the less likely it looks like this government is going to work for making all americans lives better. This government will take care of the rich old white people with political ties, and pretty much everyone else is screwed. Even the people who most vehemently support Trump will in the end suffer from this election. They think he's going to wave a magic wand and suddenly they'll all be millionaires? There's going to be a very rude awakening for some people. But his supporters who overlooked or even embraced every single character flaw and lie... Will they even notice that they are suffering for their choices? Or will they continue to blame everything on the "dirty lying cheating liberals" that they see as a parasite on this country? Sadly, it's probably the latter.

I see a bleak future for this country for the next 4 years. An undoing of all the progress made in the last decade. A fall back to the "great" times of America where women, minority religions, and people of colour were subjugated by white conservative christian zealots and their backwards agenda. I see a world where we will fall back by at least 20 years into the past. We will fall behind pretty much every country in the world. America is already the laughing stock of the world. Now we are not only a global joke, but a terrifying out of control torpedo that could hit other countries and do devastating damage with very little warning or provocation.

I see very scary times approaching and i'm currently planning my escape. I'm planning how to get out of this black hole as fast as possible. I'm planning on joining the Peace Corps where I can hopefully do some good in the world, where I can make a difference in people's lives. Where I can spend 2.5 years without having to worry about my future, where I can focus on the here and now while doing meaningful work, traveling, learning new cultures and languages, and learning more about myself and what I am capable of. When I get back I'll be faced with a few months of political campaigning and then an election that will hopefully get this country back to a place of sense and caring. If not, I can then apply to graduate school in Norway, which was already part of my plan. I can get out of this terrifying place and get a foothold in Europe, hopefully find a niche there for my specific skill set and integrate with life there and not have to return.

Part of me wants to stay and fight, fight for people's rights and for those who need the help. Part of me wants to tough it out and come out the other side stronger than before, knowing that I made even a tiny little difference with my resistance to bigotry and hate. But the larger part of me is just too terrified to even consider what that kind of life would be like. My parents moved my family from South Africa to escape what was quickly becoming a tyrannical government. They wanted my sister and I to have a better life than what was offered to us there. They wanted us to be safe, to have careers, to find meaning in our lives and experience all the things they never did. And now I see that vision of theirs dying. I see their hopes and dreams for us being flushed down the toilet. Maybe not for my sister, an iOS app developer in the Silicon Valley tech hub of California... She'll likely be fine and untouched by this. But the career path that I have chosen and worked towards for nearly 4 years of my life is slowly fading and shattering. My career was going to take me to places like back-country South Dakota and rural Colorado... Places where sexism and racism flourishes unhindered. Places where I would already not be welcome as a woman working for the federal government. I was willing to work at it, to quietly prove my worth to a community that didn't want my presence. I was willing to suck up my opinions and work with people I don't necessarily agree with to try and make progress on carnivore conservation and environmental education, even if I was faced with resistance. However, I am not willing to put myself in the way of bodily harm and person attacks. I am not willing to sacrifice my morals and everything I believe in. I am not willing to sacrifice my sense of safety and happiness fore years...

So, my plan is to get out of dodge as fast as possible. I'm just sorry that for so many people this plan of action isn't an option.

Those who have fallen by the wayside...

My High School Fellow's sheer Moronity... 

If that's even a word. 

(if not, it should be)

Recently, a teacher from my high school that I keep in contact with posted something on facebook about why people were or were not voting for Trump in the upcoming election, and for people to please not drag Hillary into the discussion. There were some simple responses of I will not vote for him, and some I will vote for him's. There were of course the quintessential posts about "he'll make america great again" and all that claptrap. And then there was a post by someone stating that she was definitely not going to vote for Trump because...

Person #1: "He is a greedy racist narcissistic ignorant asshole who cares about no one but himself. He doesn't give a shit about our country, he just wants the attention and is pandering to fear"

Pretty solid stuff right? Nothing we haven't all heard before as a viable reason not to vote for Trump in the 2016 election. Nothing too unreasonable here. I continued this sensible discourse with a comment of my own, showing my support and appreciation for her beliefs with...

Me: "Agree with everything you said! He's got a media deal going for when he loses... He's so good at drawing attention it's the perfect business for him to go into next." 

Also a pretty solid reply. Not too "nasty" or anything. Just the belief that he has found his true calling and that is "media whore", but said much nicer than that. Unfortunately, as is common on Facebook, someone replied to my simple comment with an inflammatory statement.

Person #2: "What would you say Hillary is best at? Protecting our troops? Ha! Not a chance"

I was somewhat taken aback at this, as we had been talking about Trump's true gift as media central, nothing to do with the military, his position on protecting troops abroad, foreign policy, or anything relating to those. We were simply commenting on him ability to grab attention and draw people in. As I am not the greatest lover of the military in the US or the purposes to which it is used, I found myself unable to not answer such an off-the-wall inflammatory comment. Just too good an opportunity to pass up.

Me: "(teacher's name) did kindly ask people not to bring Hillary into this as it is a discussion about Trump's shortcomings, not "who is worse at ____"... But to answer your question even though it probably wasn't directed at me... Well, as I really don't think american troops should be occupying other countries because the US government destabilized those regions in the first place, no I really don't give a shit about that. And I would say Hillary is less likely to start a nuclear war, so in that scenario she is the better option for not only protecting troops, but everyone in the damn world."

In retrospect, I can see how my statement, when read by an individual who's brain runs on a very different wavelength than my own, might be construed differently than the intended meaning. When typing my response, I was thinking how I have never heard Trump say a single thing about protecting any Troops, just about how he thinks it's okay to blow up the family members of terrorists, and how waterboarding is totally fine if it gets results, and even if it doesn't, they probably deserved it. (For those not aware, the killing of innocent family members and waterboarding are considered hate crimes and torture). I was also thinking about how the last republican president sent our troops into dangerous situations in order to cause chaos and gain control over crude oil natural resources for the US to make a profit off of. So, when I was saying that american troops shouldn't be occupying other countries I was thinking that it is immoral to invade another sovereign nation for the express purpose of stealing something that belongs to them to then make a profit ourselves. A side effect of that initial action by our great president Bush was the destabilization we now see in the Middle East, the rise of multiple different terror groups - usually initially funded in part by the US government for some legitimate purpose, or supplied with weapons for something that would have benefitted us... probably. So my comment about the destabilization was just mentioning that I recognized why there were troops there to begin with, even though I don't think they should have ever been placed there. It was my way of saying that I don't support our invasion of other countries, but I kinda get why we haven't pulled out completely just yet. And then my wonderful and lyrical comment about how Hillary might just have the mental capacity to avoid WWIII, whereas I'm not so sure if Trump is sentient enough to manage that.

I then had the very great pleasure of this response:

Person #2: "youre a god damn idiot" (yes, the punctuation was missing, not an error on my part)

Now at this point I was genuinely curious as to who this person insulting me was. He had written other rude comments on other people's voting choices, and I had a vague feeling I recognized the name. Now remember, the person who started the post was a teacher that I had in high school, so I did not discount the possibility that this rude individual calling me an idiot might be someone that I had met while in high school in Bend, OR. So, as the logical solution to being curious about who someone is, I stalked him on facebook. And to alleviate any confusion that statement might incur, I mean that I clicked on his profile and started rummaging through pictures. To my not-entirely-great astonishment, I not only recognized the person's face, but I actually remembered who they were, and that we had come into contact before while in school together. Not personally as friends or even acquaintances, but interacting with friends of friends of friends... I did remember his face, his speech pattern, even the time he accidentally smacked his friend in the balls.

His pictures on the endlessly useful facebook showed an very muscled young man, who appears to be on a fire fighting crew, spends time firing guns in the wilderness, hunts, fishes, and is pretty much the usual suspect of all around country-boy conservative that I have grown to despise with almost every fiber of my being. (Not every fiber, as I reserve at least 20% of my being for the ownership of my dog, haha).

I of course could not let the challenge to my intellect go unanswered, so I responded thus:

Me: "If having an opinion that differs from your backwards notions makes me an idiot, then I will wear that title proudly. Just because I do not support invading other countries to take control of their natural resources for US profit does not make me an idiot. Similarly, thinking that Hillary is the safer option for maintaining some sort of "world peace", also does not make me an idiot. 
And you are a budding war monger as far as I can see... Do you really want to start in on personal insults? I can come up with plenty, but I really don't see the point."

Now, I was really on my high horse, greatly enjoying being on the high moral ground for not being the first to issue a personal insult. And I was really looking forward to what he would respond with, because I had already pigeon-holed him into the type of person who gets so upset when he cannot understand one's argument or see their point of view that they resort to aggression tactics and attempts to either upset or intimidate their opponent so that they win. That kind of thing doesn't really work on me as the more aggressive they get trying to intimidate me, the more riled up and aggressive I get in return. I'm that unusual type of female that doesn't cower when a man yells at her, but instead puts on steel toed boots, grabs the nearest weapon, and prepares for battle. Unfortunately, the original poster of the discussion decided that it was time to put an end to the brewing storm, and removed my old high school "buddy" from the conversation because personal insults are not nice...

So I will never know what he would have said in response to me. I do know that he was later invited back into the conversation, probably with a warning to behave, and he promptly proceeded to confirm my worst fears about republicans and rural conservatives. Not only did he rail against Hillary or use every attempt to malign her, but he also vehemently supported everything about Donald Trump, his policies, his "beliefs", his speeches, and the fact that he wore an american flag pin about the size of a penny, was apparently a great sign of support for our wonderful military. The fact that Hillary does not accessorize similarly appeared to be a great personal insult to this male from my past.

On the same FB post, another person (person #3) extensively listed why they were not partial to Trump's political stances...

Person #3:

To which that asshole person #2 just had to respond...

Person #2:



I could have summarized all that, but I really didn't feel like tainting my own soul by typing any of that utter shit from person #2. I always knew that there were backwards people out there that could not only justify Trump's skewed world view and principles, but actually agree with them. I just never realized that I might have actually come into contact with them. And now i'm struggling to reconcile this new world view, and the fact that whenever I visit home I may come into contact with this person. If I do, i'm going to really struggle not to give him the ultimate glare of death that I was notorious for in high school. If looks could kill there would be a glorious line of bodies trailing behind me, mainly of assholes like this.

I know that there's this whole "freedom of speech" thing that conservatives and liberals alike enjoy protecting their speech. And sure, I'll respect your right to say and believe whatever you want, but hell to the no will I respect what this guy believes... As far as i'm concerned, people like this do nothing to enhance their community. They sit around, drinking beer and complaining about how the liberals are making their lives shitty. Instead of working hard, educating themselves, contributing to their community and the world, they just complain about their lot in life and vote in fuckers that will only make things worse for people like them. And if things do get worse, they continue to blame the liberals, not the republicans that are actually in charge.

These people are so obsessed with military glory, with our "brave troops", with the idea that America is the "greatest and most powerful country in the world", when in reality the whole world both laughs their asses off at our backwards-ness and inability to make a smart choice whenever it is presented to us. While also being freaking terrified that we'll let someone like Trump actually rule over us, because that will have world-wide consequences for them as well. When people like this exist in the world, its really hard to look past this and see the somewhat-sensible republicans out there that are just trying to make the best out of a shitty situation in their party. I cannot respect them for voting for Trump, even if he is their party nominee, but I can somewhat see where they're coming from in that they don't like him, but are voting for their party to have control of government for the next 4 years.

But those who not only vote for Trump but espouse everything he touts from his podium on high... those people scare the shit right out of me. Those people are the ones who give the rest a bad name, who go to rallies and scream that Obama is a muslim, those are the ones whose FB profile pics show them holding big assault rifles, sipping a can of beer, sitting in their big-ass jacked up truck, with a huge american flag hanging out the window, wearing camo, and possibly even taking a selfie with a dead deer, all at the same time. These are the guys that make me scared to walk down a street at night, that make me nervous of daring to voice my opinion in a public space, who would beat up someone just because they have a different opinion, who would go down to a voter station deliberately to intimidate minorities out of voting... Those are the guys that allowed Trump to be the republican nominee, and those guys are the ones who will riot when Trump isn't elected in 7 days...

And If there is any god(s) out there that I haven't recognized as a thing yet, please intervene in this madness for the whole world's sake. If you really did make the world, surely you don't want to see everything in it burn because Trump felt insulted by a something Putin said about his hair... There are much better reasons to watch the world burn than that, I'm sure...

Victim Blaming... The all american pastime of the US

Victim blaming for both rape and murder...

Americans have so many national passtimes... Baseball, flag obsession, racism, sexism, religious zealotry, appropriating the name "football" from the rest of the world and repurposing it and renaming the original sport bearing that name "soccer", bombing innocent bystanders and failing utterly to actually kill the person they're aiming for, and - at the forefront of my mind today - victim blaming. It's been an interesting year for us living in the amazing US of A. We've had Donald Trump turn from an amusing sideline of the election into an actual threat who could possibly have control over nuclear weapons in the not-so-distant future. We've had rapists left-right-and-center getting ridiculously pathetic short sentences, rape victims being disbelieved and slut-shamed. We have had news reports virtually every week about police shooting people all over the place - usually unarmed black kids and adults, the Black Lives Matter movement gaining incredible momentum - and of course opposition. We've had a football player kneel during the national anthem in protest of police shooting unarmed black people and white people going back to the overt racism we saw when the KKK was a popular club to be in, and then that same football player be called a muslim, a terrorist, received death threats, told he's a communist, should both kill himself and allow others to kill him, etc... 

Pretty much the US is a fucking insanely stupid nation at the moment. It's scary to live here, and i'm a privileged middle-class white girl. If i'm scared, I can only imagine how people who are actually in danger from this shit that's happening feel. I'd be fucking terrified to even leave my house. I'd become a hermit and only come out at like 4 or 5 am when almost everyone is asleep and there's less chance of me becoming a target for someone's racist vendetta. 

The US has an interesting history of blaming people for things they can't help. When the British "discovered" North America, they blamed the Native Americans for defending themselves, and punished them by slaughtering them, scalping them, and killing them (admittedly unknowingly) with diseases. When the Dutch and British started the whole slave trade, white people in the US enslaved Africans simply because they had a different skin colour, language, culture, etc... When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Government rounded up all the Japanese (and even Chinese) immigrants they could and shoved them into what were basically concentration camps without the whole gassing chambers part. For thousands of years, women have been considered "unclean", "stupid", "hysterical", and "too delicate" for pretty much everything except embroidery for the simple fact that we have vaginas and periods.

But we seem to have entered an all new low period in our history when we blame women for being attacked and raped, and black people for being murdered. The girl who was sexually assaulted behind a dumpster "had it coming" to her because she was intoxicated, and therefore we cannot even consider punishing her rapist because "it will affect HIM for the rest of his life..." Never mind that she will have to live with the memory for the rest of her life, knowing that when she was helpless someone took advantage of her and tried to stick his penis inside of her... No, the rapist's life and future are what we have to protect right now, obviously...

When it comes to rape the first question is not, "what the fuck did the parents teach their fucking rapey kid growing up?", it's what was the girl wearing, was she revealing too much cleavage, how short was her skirt, did she flirt with the guy, was she a "tease" or "leading him on", did she consent to kissing or fondling, because if so she was definitely asking for sex too, how much did she have to drink, was she wearing makeup, did she tell him she had a boyfriend, did she have a history of one-night-stands, was she "loose" with her sexuality, did she go to parties often, etc... We don't look at the perpetrator of the rape, the person with the penis who - for some reason - thought it was okay to force himself on a resisting woman. No, we look at the woman and analyse everything about her to decide how much she is at fault for another person attacking her. We give her a score of 9/10 her fault for the rape, and the guy only a 1/10, because he must have just misread the signals. 

Universities don't expel rapists, especially if they're on a sports team. They punish the victim of the rape and force her to go to a school where she sees the person who may have ruined her life, who has given her nightmares, panic attacks, a fear of intimacy with people she cares about, possibly even a fear of hugging her parents or friends, and who knows what other triggers and side effects of being sexually assaulted and abused. Judges give rapey little swimming kids 6 months in prison and then let him out after 3 months because anything else will DAMAGE HIS FUTURE... HIS future, mind you. His father pleads with people to be kind to his kid because 6 months in low-security prison was a "steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action"... Why not teach your kid to respect women and if he tries to rape any of them turn him in yourself or beat the shit out of him until he understands what apparently 20 years under your tutelage failed to teach him in the first place. 

"20 minutes" was 20 minutes too much action. Even 5 minutes is too much, 1 minute, 30 seconds... There is no "amount of rape" that is okay. It's not like there's a line of right and wrong, and when you hit the 30 minute marker you've suddenly gone too far. Like, 29 mins and 30 seconds of rape is okay, but 31 minutes earns you a prison sentence... It doesn't work that way. You don't get a free pass because it was a small time period. That's like saying that you get to murder 6 people without any consequences, but if you murder a 7th, OMG, you done fucked up... 

People get taken to court and stripped of their life savings because they bumped the car in front of them and the other driver falsely claims whiplash, when they still have an open cup of water in their cupholder that didn't spill a drop. We can consign a person to bankruptcy and strip them of everything they own because some dude wanted a fat payout by suing, but god help the person who suggests that we legally punish a rapist. That's "cruel and unusual"...

Similarly, all people seem to do these days is blame black people for their own murders at the hands of cops. They don't look at the little kid that was playing in the park with a toy squirt gun, they look at the dude who called it in and said there was a black kid with a gun. The cops didn't investigate what was going on, they just tore up to the park in their cruiser, flew out of it, and shot a little boy dead. No questions, no "put the gun down", no consideration that this was a little kid playing in a park. White people look at a grown man that was shot by the police and they ask "Was he wearing a hoodie? How tall was he? Did he look angry? Did he put his hands up immediately, or ask questions first? Did he resist arrest? Did he follow instructions? Did he have past convictions? Was he doing anything illegal?"... They tell black people to just "follow the law and do what they say and you'll be fine"... Well, obviously not! I'm pretty sure that by now some black people just drop to the ground with their hands out the minute they see a cop, regardless of what they're doing at the time, even if they are just selling girl scout cookies... It's no longer about keeping your nose clean, going about your business, and being safe. It's about assuming you must look like a criminal 24/7, so you have to always assume someone's going to try and shoot you.

And then when it comes to the protesting, the black community can do nothing right. Either they protest by trying to get laws passed to protect themselves, or they go to court to get punishment for the murdering cops, and nothing gets done. Protesting via the court system isn't effective. So they try getting support from the communities and politicians around them. But no one is interested, or even sees that there is a problem. So they get mad and sit down in the middle of roads and conduct peaceful if disruptive protests. They get attacked by white bystanders and the police, even though they are exercising their constitutional right to protest. Next they get really angry and hold violent protests, marches, smash windows, destroy public property, anything to get the attention of the world and highlight the very real problem that their community faces every single day. Discrimination, racism, hate from white people, unequal opportunities, lack of resources and lack of quality education in their communities... The list goes on and on. Even when a single black person protests in a completely non-disruptive, non-violent, not in your face at all way - by taking a knee during the national anthem at a football game - he is held up as an example of a "dangerous, disrespectful black man". Called hateful names like communist, devil, told to go back to where he came from, told to leave the US if he doesn't like the way things are... 

We blame the victims of crime all the time. We blame rape victims for being too provocative. We blame the victims of cop murder for being ex-cons or just looking suspicious (i.e. having darker skin caused by more melanin pigmentation), we blame regular murder victims for pissing the wrong person off, being disrespectful, refusing to do something for someone, not having better house security, etc... We blame pregnant young girls killed by their boyfriends because they wouldn't abort for getting pregnant in the first place. We blame women killed in childbirth for getting pregnant in the first place, even though they tried to have an abortion for their own health and safety. We blame young LGBTQA people who commit suicide for being LGBTQA, and say that if they could only just have tried to be "normal" heterosexuals then they wouldn't have been unhappy enough to kill themselves... 

When horrible things happen to good and innocent people, we blame THEM for it. Not their murders, or their tormentors, not their rapists and their torturers, not the abusive boyfriend or the religious fanatics, not the unfair court systems that pass laws preventing women from terminating pregnancies that threaten their lives... We blame the very people we SHOULD have been helping. We allow this disgusting victim blaming culture to not only perpetuate, but to thrive. 

Why? I have no idea. I cannot comprehend how little compassion a person has to have not to feel the pain of these needless deaths or feel sorrow at how their lives ended.

The ongoing fight to have a voice in my future...

Standing Up To The Institution

So recently I did the risky thing in my college career and stood up for myself to the University. I say risky because apparently it is just "not done" to have an opinion or make a real complaint about something at one's university. 

To be quick and to the point I went to the administrators of one of my universities departments about an experience with a professor teaching a class that had no business ever trying to teach anyone anything. After A YEAR of being shunted around from one person to the next, having my concerns belittled and disregarded, I finally scored a meeting with the Associate Chair of the Department of IB (nameless to avoid any retribution or defamation claims), the department in which this professor was nested. I sat down in a room with the Associate chair (a man) and one of the office workers (a woman) - I promise, those details will become necessary later on - and began to explain why I wanted this meeting in the first place. Upon the table in front of the Associate chair, I placed a stapled pile of documents. On top was a bulleted list of what was to be found within, the main points of 1) my original complaint about the teacher, and 2) my subsequent complaints about the department's handling of my concerns. Now I began to read these out as a brief overview of why we were all there, but then something happened that stopped me dead in my tracks...

The Associate Chair (AC from this moment forward) decided it was a good time to interrupt me before I really got on a roll and actually got to the point of the whole meeting. He talked over me and told me it was "his turn to talk". He told me that he had thought the issue was resolved the previous year when he replied to my email about my concerns about this teacher with a "I'll look into it". He wanted to know why we were even having this conversation in the first place. Now, he had just interrupted me from actually telling him that, so he could have saved himself some trouble by having decent manners and waiting for me to finish my intro, but that would have been far too difficult.

During the next half hour, Mr. AC talked down to me like I was a naughty child. He told me that my original "Teacher Evaluation" that listed in detail the numerous ways in which I found the teacher and class to be inadequate and unacceptable to be "overly aggressive" to the point at which he had been considering reporting me to Student Conduct. He said that my claims and assertions were unfounded and not based on fact and without sources. I was very curious to know how he thought I could add sources to my own experiences... I told him that it was unfortunate that no one had written a peer-reviewed paper based on his departments teaching standards, otherwise I would have been happy to provide a works-cited page along with everything else. He said that I was obviously upset and overemotional and that he wanted to resolve the situation quickly because he had canceled another meeting in order to sit down and talk with me and he felt that he was wasting his time. The woman in the room did absolutely nothing, neither stood up for her fellow female against this bullying behaviour, nor supported him in his arguments. I was very disappointed in her.

This entire experience was rather horrible and the entire time I felt:

• belittled 
• marginalized 
• put down because of my gender (female)
• bullied and pushed around because I am young and a student
• unfairly threatened with student conduct
• upset because I was constantly being interrupted and talked over

Some people in this world, in this country think that we (aka everyone) don't need feminism. They see feminism as an ugly word, they think that it means that feminists see men as inferior, that we want them to be slaves to us women. But really, what we mean when we say we are feminist is that we want to have the same opportunities as men, we want to stand up for ourselves and have people in authority (usually men) take us seriously, not use tactics that make us feel worthless and not have them belittle us. 

It is a hard thing in this world for a young girl to stand up to male authority and tell them what she thinks. It is hard to walk in knowing you are outnumbered, that there is no one at your back to stand up for you, that it's only you against this big scary establishment. But you do it, because you think it's the right thing to do. You hope that you can make a difference for future students. You hope that because you had the lady-balls to stand up for yourself that in the future another girl with a similar issue or a similar complaint might be strong enough to do the same. And then you walk out having been belittled and bullied and threatened and you feel as though your attempt failed miserably. You understand why more people don't speak up for their rights, why more students don't go beyond giving a a bad RateMyProfessors review. You feel as small and insignificant as a bug that big man in the big suit and the big position had just squashed. 

The whole point of college - beyond just getting an education - is to try new things, spread your wings, explore the world from the safety-net that is still not being a "real adult". We are told to challenge convention, to challenge the way things have always been and to fight for what we think is right. And then we have an experience like this. For some it is their first D grade, and they are instantly disillusioned. For me it wasn't my first D or my first failed class. It wasn't my first negative sexual experience or my first boyfriend. It wasn't even the first terrible teacher that taught me nothing and frustrated me for 11 weeks when I could teach the class better. For me, it was using my rights of freedom of speech, it was standing up to the status quo and being shot down so thoroughly that I'm surprised I am actually ready to write this at all after just a week. 

I'm amazed that I am emotionally and mentally ready to even walk past that building again. Two years ago I would have altered my route to class to avoid it, but now even so soon after my disillusionment, I proudly hold my head high and flip off the entire building as I walk past. Yes, maybe this is a teensy bit juvenile, maybe I should be the "better person" and go on with life, but I refuse to allow my negative experience to happen to another student. I refuse to be silenced and marginalized because of my gender and because I say some things that they don't like. Just because I criticize the ability of their staff to teach properly and their department for not taking student's claims seriously. They have now validated everything I just said to them and I will somehow make it count. 

My plan going forward is to go straight to the legal advice, advocates, and representatives that my school supplies to students and seek their counsel on my next steps and what I should avoid in order for Mr. AC not to have any reason to hold something over my head. From there, I will go to student conduct to tell them of this experience and explain exactly what went on, just in case Mr. AC does go ahead and "report" me. I will be ahead of the game on that count and I wish him luck if he tries to go after me. Next, I will be going to my student government ASOSU, whose job it is to help students with problems they are facing and to advocate for their rights. There needs to be some sort of support and outreach to students who want to try to confront big departments in the future. There needs to be some kind of way for students to have an advocate with them to support them and help them with their goals when taking on other AC's. Finally, I want to propose to my universities paper that they should write a column about how departments try to silence student's voices and try to push their concerns to the back burner while walking all over them.