Let Me Speak: A protest to Donald Trump's "boys will be boys" defense

in response to video of Donald Trump and Billy Bush boasting about their routine violation of women.

I am a survivor of sexual assault. LET ME SPEAK.

The rape culture in which we now live is clearly evidenced by this article and today's Facebook commentaries that defend Trump by soooo many men, even women. LET ME SPEAK.

The rape culture began for me in Grade 8 in a science class at Slauson Jr. High in Ann Arbor, MI, 1968. A slip of a student teacher ironically wearing go-go boots told us we're responsible for exciting the boys in the class--and that it was up to us to hold them back lest they get to a breaking point. to the point they wouldn't be able to hold back their arousal. Here's me: skinny, shy, unseated by danger. I cast a quick glance around. Was I at their mercy? Their arousal somehow my fault? And how was I supposed to  know what would set them off? 

Was I expected to accept as fate any boy's violence against me?

I did something I NEVER did in class. I raised my hand and I asked a question. Fear overcame my shyness.

An inarticulate question, to be sure. I had no words. My teacher did not give me words. I had only this helpless angst. I tried: "Are you saying boys HAVE to hurt girls? They can't just go squirt their stuff into a toilet? It HAS to be IN a girl?"

"No, but it's not what they want. It's not fair to put them in that position."

LET ME SPEAK.

She did not tell me that putting it IN a girl without consent is illegal. She did not put the law on my side. She just said I'd be "unfair" to the poor, suffering boy, overwhelmed by his uncontrollable urges--and only God could know what THOSE urges might be. 

WAS DONALD TRUMP IN MY CLASS?

Was Billy Bush one of the sniggering boys?

LET ME SPEAK.

So is it any wonder, then, that at 17, when a doctor tells me to take off all my clothes, no gown, and then spends an HOUR--one HOUR--doing everything short of penile penetration?

My mother in the waiting room was frantic. I could hardly walk to the car. I was nauseous, faint, trembling, sore. I had no reason to believe that my vicious violation was illegal. Only that somehow I had been "unfair" to Dr. Don Mattson. I understood that I was to accept in silence this fate. My mother wanted to know what was wrong with me. What was I to tell her? My teacher's voice of four years before that fateful day of November 11, 1969, clanged in my ears. 

LET ME SPEAK.

A year and a half ago I had a double mastectomy. I have massive scarring on my chest. And every morning when I wake up, and I move, and I stretch, and I pull back the covers, the tearing and tugging I experience puts me right back in that doctor's office 47 years ago next month. Can you understand the terrible pain that any mastectomy brings? Beyond the physical? Add to the molestation so horrifying I had to bite my lips and go somewhere deep inside my head in order to endure. In order to survive. And now, my chest scarred and tearing, I have feel that doctor's hands tearing and tugging my body every day--for the rest of my life? 

LET ME SPEAK.

Donald Trump is not a man for presidency of even the local Elks Club. He is of the rape culture that continues to blame women and exonerate the boys who can't help themselves.

I have spent some of my day weeping for that girl forever lost. I emerged, though, to find myself enraged, ENRAGED, that THIS is STILL going on!

In the US presidential election.

LISTEN TO ME! And LET ME SPEAK!

"Stop the madness!"