Day One

Today’s post is mostly images, as I process what I felt and witnessed today during what is turning out to be the largest protest in U.S. history. I’m talking about the Women’s March, and all of the sister marches both here and around the world. Continue reading

Day Zero

Oh, where do I begin?

Other, better minds than mine will do the job of analyzing the inaugural speech of Donald Trump. I read an annotated transcript and saw so many red flags I hardly knew where to start. Like the world-shattering demagogues in whose footsteps he follows, he resorts to nationalistic speech, broad strokes of bleakness that conveniently forget the fact that he is one of those who has enriched himself ruthlessly at the expense of pretty much everyone with whom he’s come in contact. He talks of unifying the country, completely omitting the fact that he has just appointed some of the most divisive, hateful, and self-serving nightmare creatures imaginable to his new cabinet.

I suspect that his (and his cabinet’s) vision of “unity” has less to do with coming together across social divides and more to do with silencing dissent and difference. That’s not unity; that’s oppression. He wants a country peopled with compliant women and brutal men — a nation of Stepford Wives and their owners.

This, then, is where I will begin. Continue reading

An open letter to my family (and yours) on rape culture

We live in a society that insists we forgive. There is a lot of wisdom in forgiveness, but we lost sight a long time ago of what it really means.

Forgiveness does not mean forgetfulness, and it doesn’t mean that one must be nice to the person who did the damage. Forgiveness means understanding, and understanding means having a grasp of what factors led to the offense. Continue reading