August 17, 2025

Eleven years ago today, I was driving west on the Sunset Highway like a bat out of hell. Andi was in labor and we had to find some place to have this baby. We had planned a natural birth in a bathtub birthing center, but our daughter Cozy had started to poke her head out and said, “Nope!” and was retreating back into the security of the womb. The nearest hospital had no room at the maternity inn, so my barely mobile wife, her mother, and the midwife hopped in the Prius and headed west. St. Vincent hospital was on the very edge of town and I was assured that it was still in Portland. This child would be born in Stumptown.

Fortunately, Cozette was born at 9:25 pm in Portland, Oregon, not Beaverton, during the second term of Barrack Obama. That night seemed like the most perfect exhausting evening on earth. Our daughter was here and the world was hers. Little did we know what was ahead.

I had hoped for a girl because I want to help put strong women into this world, who aren’t saddled with the marginalizing messages girls have typically gotten from their dads growing up. This was a feminist household. But easier said than done. We are always working against our patriarchal programing. And then came Donald Trump to make everything so much worse.

Cozy turned two during Trump’s first campaign for the White House. She was too young to hear the reports of the man who would be king bragging about grabbing women, “by the pussy,” and all the credible reports of sexual assaults by the alleged billionaire. (He still hasn’t released his taxes.) She never heard how he talked to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Although, she did put the ballot in the box for me and shouted, “Hillary!”)

Cozy was in first grade on January 6th and already knew Donald Trump was a very bad man. But it was his second term that made things the most challenging. The constant news coverage of Trump and his pedophile ring has just filled the air with the most disturbing sex talk. I can’t even listen to NPR with her in the car. But she already knows it all.

At 10, I got my puberty memo, so I knew Cozy was already in the zone. I bought a supply of menstrual pads for when it officially gets here, but the fact that the style among her and her friends is the visible bra strap means we’re fully in it. I knew it was coming, just not this soon. And now the normal relatively innocent adolescent sex chat has been colonized by the flood of chat about Epstein’s rape of underage girls and the protection of those fellow child rapists by the President of the United States.

I keep flashing back to the days when the GOP was the “party of values” and rich Republican ladies would clutch their pearls over the lyrics in rap music. Now the GOP has become the Guardians of Predators and I’m doing everything I can think of to protect my child from them. We’ve hit the point where children are safer with priests than they are with Republicans. It’s a race to the bottom with Trump, and the old man is in a full on sprint.

Maybe the whole “innocence of youth” thing is a myth. There are kids shooting up schools, after all. But I had a naive hope that I could save my daughter from the reality of our sick culture that elevates rapists and refuses to punish wealthy white sex predators for a few more years. She knows she’s a target. There’s no way in hell I would leave my daughter alone in a room with the President or any of his uber creepy MAGA cult. (Many of Trump’s white nationalist following believes the age of consent should be 14 so men can marry children, so there’s that.)

If there’s any silver lining to this disgusting state of affairs, is that Trump’s rape culture has forced us to talk to our daughter about sexual safety early and often. And Cozy is clear on her boundaries. She’s already shut a classmate down who sent an inappropriate text. It’s horrible at age 10 she had to but she knows how to protect herself. But the other side is the non-stop sexual content she must see as she endlessly scrolls through her TikTok. I want to believe it’s all Taylor Swift but I know it’s mostly Sabrina Carpenter. Our baby is surfing in a sea of sexual messages, and not all are affirming.

Tonight, Cozy will celebrate her birthday with a big overnight party. They will want to keep me and any other adult at arms length. May they all be safe, happy, healthy and live with ease. Welcome to adolescence, Cozette. I am still here to protect you, but I’m going to let you start to lead.