#YesAllWomen -- The Chocolate Priestess's Story

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I wanted to expand on a post I did on Twitter and Facebook for the #YesAllWomen movement... or at least I hope it will become a movement that actually turns into actions and changes.  One way to try and do that is to continue to share stories so I'm going to start off what I hope is sharing by the rest of my sisters writing this blog.  Original text from my FB post is in Italics.

I am a survivor.

Some people still use the word victim perhaps because that is what the police use or what those who want to "help" use.  The problem with using or accepting the word victim is that it emphasises your powerlessness.  While your power may have been taken from you it was not all taken from you.  The fact that you survived, that you are here, shows that.  You could have given up, you could kill yourself, but you didn't, you haven't, you are here.

You are a survivor.

I survived childhood abuse ranging from the psychological to the sexual at the hands of men, boys, and even a mother. I tried to tell but nothing helpful was done.

When I was about 2 and a half, the boyfriend of my only sister who still lived at home digitally raped me while he put a hand over my mouth and told me that my sister liked this.  My parents weren't home and my sister was in another room.  He was fast and brutal, he was done by the time my sister came back into the room.  I didn't tell her because according to him she liked this sort of thing.

What type of little sister doesn't want to be like her big sister?

The next time he assaulted me it was with his brother at their house.  They opened their pants and brought out their dicks, they didn't touch, they didn't have to because their words, tone of voice, and actions threatened me.  I ran this time, I fell down the stairs trying to make my way back to my sister who was talking with their mother.  I told, the mother and brothers denied; I can't remember what my sister did other than take me home, but the boyfriend was with her.  I told my mother but the boyfriend said I was lying.  My mother believed me but didn't do anything other than forbid me being with the boyfriend without her there.

He came into my room a few months later at Christmas just to show me that he could still get to me if he wanted to.

The way my mother dealt with it was a pattern that made my mother partner to the abuse.

When I was assaulted by a cousin and witnessed him assaulting his sister and told both my mother and their grandmother who was their guardian... my mother kept me away from them for a good five years until we were in the same school.  I found out years later that my cousin raped his sister regularly after that point all through high school until she finally left.

By the time I was raped at the age of six by a high boyfriend of a high babysister, I didn't even bother telling my mother.  I just hid my bloody underpants in the trash and demanded a lock for my door.  I think she must have known because I never had a babysitter after that; my parents took me everywhere or we just stayed at home.

Her actions said that this was just something that happened that girls had to learn to deal with... I often wonder what happened to my mother when she was a girl but she never wanted to talk about it and she's dead now so I'll never know.

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I could have given up at that point but for some reason I instead started defending others and I learned to defend myself.

I should have given up, hidden away, since that was the pattern my mother showed me.  I didn't and I think I didn't because I had nieces and nephews ranging in age from only six months younger to 18 years younger.

Maybe my personality just isn't cut out for not defending others?  Maybe it's the same drive that pushed me to be a storyteller, leader, teacher, and dominant in my household.  By all rights it should have be nurtured out of me especially when coupled with my mother's psychological abuse that tried to get me to be the servant of all... YUCK!

I channeled her "lessons" into protecting others and by the time I was 16 I was starting to apply those lessons to protecting myself.

I survived a psychologically abusive boyfriend in high school who used to use his pets in an attempt to coerce me into activities I didn't want. I can't say the way I fought back was ideal but the coercion stopped.

I had a few boyfriends in high school and I stupidly went for the asshole instead of the nice boys who wanted to just please me.  I don't think it is because I really liked bad boys more, because frankly other than his attempts at violent emotional manipulation he wasn't bad in most ways.  He used to threaten the kittens on his farm, actually put one in a microwave and threatened to turn it on unless we went back to his bedroom and did something... I fought back by turning the tables on him sexually and I actually beat him up a few times in response to his threats.  The threats stopped.

Now I'm not saying that was a great way to fight back but frankly I never should have had to fight back at all!  He could have just asked for sex or even tried to seduce me into sex, that's part of our mating rituals, but threatening tiny animals?

These experience taught me some important things -- go for the nicer boys and you have the power.

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I survived sexual assaults when I was at college both in the USA and in Italy. I fought back each time and even contacted the police who managed to catch one of them.

Of course there may always be someone out there with more raw physical strength or the benefit of surprise.  You can't control others, only yourself.  I think it is very sad that I was trained by my high school in self-defense workshops to defend myself but it came in handy.

I was sexual assaulted by a complete stranger in my own dormitory in the basement one day.  I had seconds to think of what to do with him on top of me on the couch where I had been just watching TV waiting for my laundry to be done.  I told him that this was cool but I really needed to check my laundry and then I'd be back and not distracted by it.  I don't normally lie, I don't see the need 99.9% of the time, but I had lived with lies my entire life, I know how to do it and I did it well then.  I went out of the room toward the laundry and then up the stairs to get my RA who called campus security and the police.  The police were almost pleading with me to press charges, make a statement; I was surprised that they thought I'd do otherwise.  It turned out that this man had done this at least three previous times; he did it once more but because of my report the campus security was able to react faster and soon the police had him.

I don't blame the other women he assaulted for their assaults; I do blame them for not doing more about it after the fact.  I know that won't be a popular thing to say and I've probably pissed off my sister writers here on Butt-Kicking Women but I feel strongly that this is the truth.  As long as women do nothing, as long as we just mourn and cope then we continue to be powerless not by because we are but because we chose to be.  When you are quiet, when you refuse to press charges, when you shy away from letting others know, then you support your abusers continued behavior and you become his partner in crime just like my mother.

I didn't just stop there -- I wrote letters to the school newspaper and my hometown newspaper letting them know what happened to me.  I even stepped out into the hall when tour guides were bringing prospective students and parents to campus and told my story if I heard the tour guide make a stupid claim about how safe the dorm was.  I'm sure the university higher ups hated me.

In Rome I was fondled three times on the public bus system -- those were crimes of opportunity and crowdedness and I could have ignored them but I didn't.  The first I was with my boss from the library where I worked and told him immediately as I stepped away; he glared at the perp and stepped between us.  The second time I jerked away and told the guy off and some wonderful old lady started hitting him with her big purse.... big purses my Italian girl friends told me held big books so you could hit men who did that in public.  It was so common that no one stepped in when the old woman hit the perp and young women were prepared to carry big books to do this.

The third time I am most proud of my action because this time I grabbed the assaulting hand, curled mind into a fist around it, and punched back with it into the perp's own groin as hand as I could.  He gasped and pulled the stop cord and got off as quickly as he could.

I stopped taking the bus after that and just walked everywhere I needed to go unless I was with friends who could all gather around in a group.  Was that being afraid and letting my fear guide me or was it removing myself from potential threats?  I'd like to think it was the second.

I helped a group of other survivors in support groups, worked for the sexual violence awareness program on my campus, and as many of you know worked as an educator on sexual issues for a several years even when it brought me negative attention back in NYC at Columbia University. I've worked to educate not just the general public and those in the support groups but also health care providers.

I've done many things that I hope have been helpful not just for women but for men as well in regards to sexual violence and sexuality.  I pushed at Drake University to have a men's table for our Sexual Violence Awareness Week.  I reached out to men I knew had been raped or assaulted just to offer a shoulder, an ear, just plain old recognition that it happened to them, too.

I've spoken up to defend the men in my life when they have been targeted by other men for a perceived weakness in their manhood.

After I stopped letting myself be attracted to the "bigger man" and starting dating real men, I realized that they, too, are targeted by other men.  This ranges from the messages they receive in mass media to the fearful looks they get from women when they are in elevators or just walking down the street to actually assaults and insults from other men.

Before I got married my then boyfriend and I were walking down a street from my summer apartment to campus where I was working.  The frat house were on the way and as we walked some asshats decided that they needed to not catcall me but insult him by telling him how he didn't deserve a hot babe like me (also insulting to me by the way since I wasn't a work of art for them to jerk off to but another human being).  I turned around at one point and marched back and told the ringleader off. He was shocked, didn't know what to do, my boyfriend had to pull me away before I started getting physically violent.

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See just like I was motivate to protect my nieces, nephews, and others, I was motivated to protect him.  I've done this for other male friends and partners, too, but I also try to get them to talk and act on their own.

These asshole who were raised to think that they have a right to take whatever or whomever they want they don't listen to women or girls, they might or might not listen to their mothers, but they very well might listen to you.  Men, boys, fathers, uncles, grandfathers... the ball here is in your court.  Either teach yourselves and each other to control yourselves or you may discover that women and girls will reach out collective limit and fight back in a way you really don't want.

My point -- stand up for yourself and your loved ones, teach your children to stop all of this gender and sexual aggression, or in my opinion you are also the abusers that the rest of us must survive.

I haven't and won't do the one thing that is really going to make a difference -- raise my sons to be human beings and my daughters to be human beings, too.  I haven't had kids, I won't have any, for a lot of reasons.

Instead I try to empower the young women and men I've taught, I try to treat boys and girls I interact with fairly and evenly, but I'm not a parent so I have to trust that those of you who are can realize that YOU are the only real change that can work.

What have you done to stop the cycle of violence?

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Image Credits, Sites I found each image at:

Image 1: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/yesallwomen?source=wtfrt&position=2&query_id=-1

Image 2: http://radioornot.com/blog/yesallwomen-and-chriss-dad-is-right/

Image 3: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/470663166675144705/TETKi-RX.jpeg

Image 4: http://eyesonlife-ginahunter.blogspot.com/2014/04/violence-against-women.html