sexual abuse

Calm the F Down: Mindfulness as a Survival Strategy

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

March 20, 2023

When I was a young punk, I had this dumb mantra, “Impulse to action!” I believed that any thought that came into my head should be acted on. It seemed “mod” and “vibrant” and “rebellious.” In reality, it was the reflection of how unformed my young brain was. How my prefrontal cortex was not yet able to reign in my limbic system. I was all unchecked impulse and unmoderated action.

What I did that look like when I was 16? Talking my dad’s Monte Carlo and, channelling the Dukes of Hazzard, doing donuts in the fields of rural Georgia and then telling him it got hit in a parking lot (again). By 20, it was less bad behavior and more the belief that I could say whatever thought came into my head without first saying, “Should I say this?” Brain scientists believe the pre-frontal cortex is finally fully developed around age 25, but by that point my “impulse to action” synapses were well worn grooves in my head. My cake was baked.

We live in a culture that over-values the individual (“Me!!!”) and celebrates impulse to action behavior. Carpe diem gets rewritten as permission for road rage and buying stupid crap on credit cards. We can escalate from zero to a hundred in a heartbeat. My own centering of my impulses was a severe case of my white male entitlement. “I’m entitled to everything I want!” When women, BIPOC and queer folks are impulsive, they’re often raked over the coals for being “overly emotional” or “uncivilized.” We all need to calm the fuck down.

So much of this impulsive behavior is linked to our experience of trauma. I know my sexual abuse at age four is wired right into my limbic brain, what we lovingly refer to as our “lizard brain.” Like lizards, our limbic brain works on the fight/flight/freeze option to keep us safe. Lizards don’t ponder their options when an eagle is overhead. They skedaddle. Those of us with trauma histories are often locked into the fight/flight/freeze mode. Much of my life has been some version of looking for a fight, from battles with my little brother to running off to a Ukrainian war zone. I am the master of the knee-jerk reaction and it’s a 4-year-old boy who is doing the kicking.

One of the most important books I’ve ever read on this topic is My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (2017) by Resmaa Menakem. Menakem points out that white bodies carry the historical trauma of the centuries of brutality of medieval Europe and when white people had the opportunity to unleash their unresolved trauma on black bodies, in the form of slavery, they went hog wild. The trauma levied on black people didn’t magically disappear in 1865 and is manifest in black bodies today. The need for African-Americans to make sure white people are OK is one manifestation of that trauma, which ads “fawn” to fight/flight/freeze. Additionally, police carry the unresolved trauma of dealing with traumatized people everyday and act out their trauma on the (mostly black) bodies they are charged to protect. Hurt people hurt people.

Manakem suggests a mindfulness approach to all this drama caused by people acting on their lizard brain impulses. In a fast-paced world, what if we all just slowed down and learn how to soothe ourselves? What if cops, before hitting the streets, practiced meditation and thought about their own thoughts? Maybe instead of cop lizard brains seeing black bodies as a threat and squeezing off a few rounds, they’d calmly assess what was actually needed in that situation. Calming the brain can interrupt micro-aggressions and explosive anger. Think of all those times you fucked up and wished your thinking brain had been in charge instead of your “impulse to action” brain.

This has been a huge issue for me. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard Cher singing, “If I could turn back time” after I did or said something stupid. I apologize and swear I’ll never do it again. Then I do it again. The lizard brain doesn’t think. It just reacts. That baked cake has been my trauma response for over 50 years and has not made my life any better. Worse, it’s driven away the people I claim to love.

So finding a space between impulse and action is now my mandate. Daily meditation has become a requirement. Exercise and yoga, too. Breathing exercises, also. Anything to slow myself down and give myself the space to think before I act. I knew this past Saturday was going to be particularly challenging given the sad turns this marital separation has taken and I meditated six times throughout the day, which kept me from sending angry texts or stewing in my juices on a rare sunny Saturday in Portland. I’m having an ongoing conversation with the 4-year-old me. He can’t drive the car anymore, but he’ll be protected and safe.

There’s a quote attributed to David Bowie that says, “Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.” If I could speak to that younger version of myself, I’d tell him to ditch that “impulse to action” bullshit as soon as possible. Slow your role and calm your soul. Give yourself permission to first see your thoughts and then, the ones that don’t actually serve you, let them go like big red balloons.

And to all the people that are screaming at each other, shooting each other, storming capitols, and hurting each other, please learn soothe yourselves. The lizard brain trauma response that tells you to pop a cap in his ass or street race down Broadway is the same impulse that tells you to text someone that they are a piece of shit or blow off someone’s sincere need to communicate. We can all be better at managing our tendency to cause harm. We have a buffer between our impulsive lizard brain and the mistakes we will later regret. That buffer is our ability to calm ourselves before we choose to act.

Sept. 26, 2012: My 10-year Reconstruction Begins

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

September 26, 2022

Everything changed on September 26, 2012 at 10:15 AM (maybe 10:17, she was late). But first, the backstory. And it’s messy.

My forties were emotionally confusing. I had successfully risen up the academic ranks to a tenured full professor position but my love life was always in turmoil. I hadn’t yet connected the abuse I experienced as a child to the bad patterns I had perfected in adulthood. And work and romance tended to overlap. Pew research reports that most Americans meet their spouses at work, and I had habit of dating former students (with the emphasis on “former.”) While the university had no policy against relationships among faculty and university students, that line mattered to me. After grades were turned in, two consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want. It never was an issue, nor should it have been. There were several respected professors who were married to former students. Let love rule.

About a dozen years ago, I had a brief relationship with a former student that started off fun but, as new relationships sometimes do, quickly hit a dead end. It was clear that not only were we not a good match, there were red flags popping up all over the place. (The university would later deem this woman “unstable.”) I tried to end it amicably but she was not having any of it and went into full Glenn Close/Fatal Attraction mode. She found allies in the administration to champion her cause. They’d drag me into regular administrative tribunals and lecture me about “power dynamics.” (One of these administrators was having a “romantic, amorous, and/or sexual” relationship the administrator who had appointed her to her six-figure job.) I hired a lawyer who shut it all down and I recorded her confession that she made all her accusations up. Hoping to expedite my return to normalcy, I offered to sign an agreement that I wouldn’t date anyone who was enrolled at the university. Although I did briefly date an administrator after that. Because irony won’t be lost on me.

September 24, 2012 was the first day of the 2012-2013 school year and I had asked to teach a Sociology 101 class that started on Monday mornings. I wanted to be the first professor a fresh batch of college students would encounter. So I put a lot of work into that first class. It was a true performance, a sermon on the salvation of critical thinking. There’s always a few students who blow off the first class because they think nothing important happens on Day 1, and it always annoys me because everything important happens on Day 1. I make note of their absence and develop a grudge. One of those absentees was named Andrea Barrios.

So before she walked in late on Wednesday, I already had a bias against Ms. Barrios. Then she walked through the door. I’m not being overly dramatic when I say it felt like being struck by a bolt of lightning. It was an out-of-body experience. (She has told me of a similar experience.) My first clear thought was, “Oh no, universe, do not put this woman in front of me. I signed a contract!” as she sat in the front row and smiled. I was on the tail end of a two year relationship with a wonderful woman that was sputtering because I didn’t have a basic understanding of how to be in a relationship. But I was a good professor and stayed perfectly professional the entire term (while my teaching assistant routinely hit on Andrea). I stayed focused, as hard as that was.

At the end of the term, I posted on Facebook that I was going to see local singer Storm Large at dark club to celebrate the end of the quarter. It was a rainy December night and I was sitting by myself at the end of the bar when Andrea walked in. Of course I was thrilled to see her. She was probably the smartest person in a class of a hundred students and she radiated. She bought me a shot of tequila and said we should hang out sometime. I told her I didn’t date students. She bought me another shot of tequila and we ended up making out at the bar.

A mature man would have stopped right there. I began building my career as sociology professor at 17 as a freshman in college.  It didn’t make a lot of sense to risk it over a woman in her twenties, as fascinating as she may be. I invited her to dinner the next night so I could explain the situation, that I had signed a contract with the university and if I dated her I could lose my job. “Maybe nobody will find out,” she said. That’s all I heard. I was already head over heals in love. I just wanted to be near her. She tried to get into another school to avoid the conflict but that didn’t happen. We were two adults who just wanted to be together. Two years later we were married with a baby.

But it wasn’t easy for her. I was only just starting to figure my shit out. The first lesson was how I tended to keep old relationships on the back burner in case the current relationship went south (a product of deep abandonment fears). I learned that only burned the person I was with and I almost lost Andrea. Fortunately, it was a surprisingly easy fix. So many of my other issues, wrapped in my narcissistic tendencies, made her feel invisible. But, as a tenured professor, I represented the stability she craved. Then all that changed.

This is the part of the story that involves a psychotic inmate in an Oregon prison. (“Psychotic” isn’t hyperbole. It’s in his medical records.) He was a “former” racist skinhead who I had worked with before his incarceration. He had decided, for some stupid reason, that I had aggrieved him. He made it his personal mission to destroy me and found allies in the university who were endlessly annoyed by my role as a faculty union agitator. I was dragged back in before the administrative mob, with our daughter in her baby carrier, and asked me if my wife was a university student. “Yeah,” I said, “She’s taking an online Women’s Studies class.” That was it. They had me. I was toast.

My long career was successfully destroyed, not by a nazi skinhead, but my failure to make better choices. I could blame Glenn Close girl, psychotic skinhead, or a university administrator who was banging her boss, but it all came down to bad decisions I made over the course of years. I just wasn’t ready to accept that fact.

Who was I without my career? Certainly not the stable provider Andi and our baby needed. My issues began to cascade. I thought I was one of the good guys, but I centered my anger, creating less and less room for her in the relationship. To her credit, she not only finished her undergraduate work but earned a Master’s Degree and began teaching her own classes. All while I tried to pick up the pieces of my life and figure out how the hell to be a good father and husband.

There are numerous details but suffice it to say she told me in very clear terms what she needed but I was so wrapped up in my pain and anger that I repeatedly failed to deliver. It was when things were at their worst, that I started remembering the experiences of early sexual abuse. But it’s not like one has a realization that leads to an immediate change, “Oh, I was abused. Now I can stop being a self-centered prick.” I still had a ways to fall before I hit the bottom. And that happened on last New Year’s Eve when Andi told me she was in love with someone else. The floor opened up and I was ready to cease to exist. I felt beyond repair. Beyond redemption. There was nowhere to go but oblivion.

After that, as I have written much about, I found a wonderful therapist who helped me not only connect the dots from my trauma to my behavior, but who gave me practical tools to start to change the patterns. My trip to Ukraine to resettle refugees this past spring encouraged me to be a source of healing instead of pain. And Andi’s patience helped me to see how childish my behavior tended to be. I’ve learned that love is more than a feeling but behavior in the small moments; a comforting look, a curious question, a snarky text not sent.

I’m marking this ten year point for two reasons. First, that psychotic skinhead is out of prison and still threatening me. I need a public record of my journey. But the main reason is that this ten year effort to deconstruct myself and build a better version of me may not be enough to be Husband 2.0 to Andi, but it’s been worth the attempt. We all can repair harm and fix ourselves to reduce harm to the people we love. I’m proud of who I am becoming.

Talking to My 7-year-old Daughter About Abortion

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

June 25, 2022

I got a text yesterday morning to turn on the TV. I was worried that someone famous I loved had died or there was another 9/11 unfolding. It was much worse than that. The health and safety of girls and women of child-bearing age was being thrown under the bus by five people, Clarence Thomas, Samual Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kananaugh, and Amy Coney Barratt. Remember their names. They pulled the lever to turn the United States into Afghanistan.

Going against the will of a vast majority of Americans and 50 years of precedent, Roe v. Wade was overturned on a Friday morning in June. The Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t end abortion (despite the spontaneous celebrations of tools like Marjorie Taylor Green), it just returns the practice to the back alleys of Mississippi and Missouri. And girls and women will die. But, apparently, America cares more about guns than girls and women.

The Friday morning news woke up my seven-year-old daughter, Cozy, who now, as a female, had fewer rights than she did the day before. She wondered what all the yelling on TV was about. Seven-year-olds should not know about abortion. That information should be reserved for 11-year-olds who are raped by a family member. I didn’t know how to answer her. How do I explain this to a child? Of course, she’s heard the word “abortion” and she’s gonna hear it a lot now thanks to the conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court.

Knowing that that word was going to be everywhere and that I would be dragging her along to a reproductive rights rally in downtown Portland later in the day, I decided to have “the talk” with her. Sort of like how black parents have to talk to their kids about how to the police might kill them if they don’t understand how racism works, millions of parents now have to talk to their daughters about how the state might kill them because of how patriarchy works.

So yesterday afternoon, after she came in from playing in a neighbor’s new tree fort, I sat her down on the couch for America’s new family tradition. The word is now everywhere. She’s an inquisitive child, so I knew she had questions.

Me: Hey, Cozy can we talk a minute? (She gets a worried face, like she was in trouble.) No, it’s not a bad thing. Well, it is a bad thing for society, not for you at the moment. I just want to talk about something that’s been in the news. Have you heard the word, “abortion.”

Cozy: Yes (She got uncomfortable, feeling like we were going to talk about sex.)

Me: Do you know what it means?

Cozy: No

Me: I know you’re hearing that word a lot right now and I just want to explain it to you. So when Mommy and I first got together, we really wanted to have a baby one day. And the day Mom found out she was pregnant with you was one of the happiest days of our lives. We were so excited. But sometimes women get pregnant and they are not happy about it. Maybe they’re too young, or they already have a lot of kids, or having a baby might be really bad for their health. So there this little operation called an abortion that lets women decide if they want a baby or not. Women have had the right to make that decision for 50 years. But this morning some judges picked by Donald Trump decided women no longer have that right.

Most Americans believe that women should have this right but some people think abortion is bad because it stops a baby from being born, so there is a lot of fighting about it and people get really angry on both sides. You really don’t have to worry about it now but let’s say 20 years from now you want to be able to decide whether or not you want to have a baby, you will want to have the right to make that choice.

Cozy: How long until the law changes back?

Me: I don’t know, sweetheart. That’s why we have to vote, and march, and fight for you and Mom’s rights. So we’re going to a demonstration downtown later today to protest the decision these judges made. Just imagine if judges said we can have slavery again, how much that would hurt some of your friends.

Cozy: Yeah, that would be really bad.

Me: We have to protest so we can get your rights back. Hopefully it won’t take long. You’ll see a lot of angry people today. I’m angry. Your mother is angry. You might even hear some bad words because everyone is so angry. But you can ask me anything you want about it. You know how much I love your questions. Do you have any questions?

Cozy: Yeah, can I go back outside and play?

And she did. I know it was a lot to lay on a kid, but the Supreme Court and the Trump cult has foisted this upon our families. I shouldn’t have to talk to her about these things.

Later, we headed downtown to the rally. I told her if it got crazy we would leave. Black clad anarchists have a tendency to hijack demonstrations for their own narcissistic reasons and start fires in the middle of the street. (Haven’t they heard about the CO2 problem?) She was a little uneasy walking into the large crowd, but she’s a veteran of marches, rallies, and protests. So she settled in to the cacophony. She only had one question.

Cozy: Daddy, what’s the deal with the coat hangers?

Me: Can I answer that one later?

We were joined about about 1500 other Portlanders in a panic over the rollback of rights. At the moment, women and girls in Oregon are safe, but we could easily have a Republican governor (a horrid anti-choice woman named Christine Drazen) elected in November and be as bad off as Mississippi. Democratic Socialists at the rally told the crowd to vote for them and not Democrats, which is exactly what the anti-abortion Republicans are hoping for. I just let all the chants and speeches wash over my daughter and I. I wanted her to be able to say she was there.

After about an hour, Cozy asked if we could leave. It seemed like a good time as I saw the teenage anarchists in their black uniforms start to circle the diverse crowd like hungry sharks. Often, I’m right there with them, sharing in the rage against the backward slide. But today I wanted my daughter to still believe in non-violence and the democratic process. I wanted her to believe in Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Margaret Sanger. It’s too soon for me to teach her about the politics of desperation or how enemies send agent provocateurs into demonstrations to start fires in the street to make demonstrators look bad on Fox News.

But, apparently. It’s not too soon to talk to a seven-year-old about abortion.

Note: They (anarchists, agent provocateurs, Fox News producers, whoever) did start a fire in the middle of the street last night. But don’t be surprised if the next fire is women burning down the Supreme Court building.

Psychoanalyzing the Attraction to Chaos, or Why I Want to Go to Ukraine

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

March 13, 2022

I was born at the right time for punk rock. Fourteen-years-old in 1978, my teenage angst was perfectly positioned to hear the music of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols as a telegraph to my soul. The explosive anarchy was what I needed. I remember desperately wanting to go to the January 5, 1978 Sex Pistols show in Atlanta, but you had to be 18 to get in. Didn’t they know this was “my” music? My introduction to slam dancing gave me a direct route into the chaos. I was slamming at a Lords of the New Church show in London in 1982 and had my arm pulled out of the socket. Another punk, who was also an EMT, grabbed my arm and shoved it back into the socket and we kept moshing. Punk was life.

When Russian troops began their “training” on the eastern Ukrainian border last month, I got the impulse to be there, in the action. It’s not a new impulse. When I was 20, I went to Belfast, Northern Ireland and ended up (purposely) in a riot, where a kid my age was shot in the face by British soldiers. The experience became my senior honor’s thesis at Emory University. At 29, while I was in Eastern Europe working on my dissertation on right-wing extremism, I tried to get to Sarajevo during the siege of the city and couldn’t get past the Yugoslavian border. It was framed as “research,” but there was something the compelled me to be in a place that most people just wanted to escape from. During the summer of 2020, I couldn’t get enough of manning the BLM barricades in Portland, dodging rubber bullets and coming home smelling like tear gas. The chaos and flash bangs were intoxicating.

And now with a European trip less than a week away, I’m debating heading in.

I’m not exactly a wannabe mercenary who is obsessed with war and violence. A lot of the young men I study certainly are. In the timeless words of Michael Jackson, “I’m a lover not a fighter.” Do these conflicts ignite some toxic masculinity inside me? In the 2000’s, I received weapons training from the FBI as part of their Citizen Academy, and now I’m wondering if I remember how to unlock the safety on an MP5 machine gun. Who am I? I mean, it’s entirely possible that you will see me on Instagram two weeks from now, posing with my AK-74 (standard issue with the Ukrainian ground forces).

I discussed this need to dive into the geo-political mosh pit with my therapist. She had a valuable insight that it might be linked to the abuse I experienced as a child. That chaos became a normal state and my desire to fight it became deeply engrained. Putin is the molesting neighbor and I want to go save the children of Ukraine from him. I experienced pain then so I can experience pain now, acting out some masochistic savior complex. Hey, makes as much sense as anything else. I wouldn’t be surprised if the victims of childhood abuse are over-represented in the ranks of the law enforcement and military.

In front of this is my desire to help. I’m watching Russian tanks fire into civilian apartment buildings in Mariupol and I just want to leap through the TV. The kids streaming out of the country look so much like my daughter. I’m slavic and was born in a Cleveland suburb that was heavily Ukrainian (Parma). If I can just go to the border and serve meals with World Central Kitchen, that would be a lot. These people just seem stunned. The fact that Russia is now attacking close to the Polish border means there’s even more help needed with the refugees. I imagined rockets slamming into my neighborhood today and wondered if anyone would come to help us. How can I not go?

I felt so deflated last week I went to donate blood, even though I know that my blood is not going to Ukraine, or Syria, or Congo, or any of the other of Earth’s bloodbaths. But I have the privilege to travel and the freedom of “spring break,” as well as the ability to work remotely. Why not go? Flights from Paris to Warsaw are down to $94 and I have a new credit card. Can I go just help refugee families in Poland and resist the temptation to throw Molotov cocktails at Russian armored vehicles?

The plan now to fly to Paris on Saturday and then catch a flight to Warsaw, where I have one last Zoom class to teach. After grades are turned in, I’ll catch a train down to Przemysl to find opportunities to help with the flow of refugees. Even if it’s just giving hugs to traumatized kids who look like mine, I will feel that I’ve added to the healing in some small way. I’ve been shopping for both combat boots and children’s books to take with me. The only question is whether or not my childhood trauma will pull me across the border.  For the sake of my own child, I will probably stay on the safe side of that line. Or maybe I could do this work from a sunny French café. Stay tuned.

We can all do something. I really want to encourage people to donate to UNICEF’s Ukraine relief. It’s for the kids! https://www.unicefusa.org

Follow Up: Fixing What’s Broken

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

November 7, 2021

I needed to let the dust settle after that one.

When I wrote my little “coming out” piece about my experience with sexual abuse a few weeks ago, I wrote it for an audience of two. I wrote if for myself, because I needed to say these things out loud so I could start the healing. And I wrote it for my wife because I was desperate to mend the damage my behavior had caused in our relationship. I had already discussed it with my parents who were surprisingly tranquil about the news that their four-year-old son had been sexually abused. My mother seemed to separate herself from any of the events and my father thought it was a good explanation for how I treated my little brother. Now, as then, they didn’t seem concerned for my emotional well being.

Who did care about me were many of my friends. When I posted the link to the story on my Facebook page I got so many wonderful messages, including friends coming out about their own victimization stories, some leading to failed marriages and life-long challenges. It meant so much and also let me know how many of us are struggling with the adult effects of childhood trauma. We are a statistic (1 in 7), but we are also pieces of the story of humanity. The narcissist in me could be seen as saying, “Hey, look at me! I’m an abuse victim, too!” I thought about that before I posted it. But I think it just needed to be said and I’m glad I did. It was like taking a breath.

The hard part about this is the realization of brokenness. I was pretty cool before, just bopping along, blaming all my problems on other people. I had a poem called “Psycho Chick Magnet” that I’d perform at readings in the 90s to laughter and a lot of dudes saying, “Me, too!” I now see that I was the psycho. My fucked-up defense mechanisms gas lit them. They were crazy. But they weren’t crazy. I was deeply damaged.

Now that I know this, it’s endlessly frustrating. I know what the problem patterns are. I know what the root cause is. I know the behavioral shift to make everything work like it should. Sounds super simple, right? This pattern is fucking up your life, so just stop doing it. This the part where I tell you that I am so completely broken that I’m not sure I can fix it. These patterns have evolved over a half century and I was a fool to think I could snap my fingers and be a different person. That the wirings of my brain that were the result of trauma in a 4-year old boy could just be switched off and I would forever be in the green zone.

Since I posted my story, I’ve fallen off the “Grown Up Randy” train a dozen times. Here’s just the latest example. I thought it would be fun to spend a rainy Sunday at the movies, so Cozy, Andi, and I went to go see Addam’s Family 2 at the Kennedy School. Cozy had her popcorn and lemonade. Andi and I had our beer and held hands and cuddled during the movie, which meant a lot because there had been some me-caused tension (surprise!) earlier in the day. After the film, Andi commented that it would have been nice if I would have put my arm around her. I should have just listened and said I would next time. But instead the four-year old me, who was stuck defending against endless attacks, popped up and ruined everything. I got defensive and felt like nothing I did was enough. I became the asshole that I swore I wouldn’t.

Our therapist warned against expecting immediate results. That changing patterns was like a snake shedding its skin and that old skin was sticky. That makes sense but tell it to my wife who is past her tolerance level fo sticky snake skin. But the feeling sinks in. That I will never break the patterns that were created in me by an entitled babysitter in 1968. It’s nearly unbearable because I see the harm it causes. I should be smart enough to figure this out.

I’ve been doing some research on Polyvagal Theory and how trauma rewires the nervous system. I now understand the my reactive nature is pretty much baked into my body. More great information but still doesn’t get me out of this loop I’m stuck in. All the enlightenment in the world doesn’t carry you out of the darkness.

The only point to this blogpost is to report on how hard this work is. There’s a good chance I will have to do it on my own, but I do it for that little kid who I was and the man I hope to become. You can only shoot yourself in the foot so many times.

Afterthought: I was listening to the news of the world leaders in Glasgow trying to kick the can on the global climate crisis. We know what the problem is. We know what the cause is. We know what behavior change is required to fix things. You can only shoot yourself in foot so many times, earth people. (I am the world. I am the inner children.)

I am the victim of child sexual abuse and it made me toxic.

~ Randy Blazak ~ 9 Comments

October 22, 2021

I have a few clear memories from when I was four-years-old. I remember the birch trees in our front yard in Parma Heights and turning my tricycle upside down, pretending it was an ice cream machine. I remember doing the Tarzan call over our back fence, hoping my neighbor, Sharon, would climb over to play. I remember my breath becoming condensation on the inside of my Secret Squirrel Halloween mask. I remember the Christmas tree and learning that I could swallow SpaghettiO’s without chewing them. I didn’t remember being molested.

This might be the hardest thing I’ve ever written but I have to. I have to because I remember now and that memory has allowed me to connect so many dots in my life, a series of dots that includes a trail of tears full of damaged relationships with family members and other people I supposedly loved. Two failed marriages and a third that is hanging by the tiniest of threads. All connected to one weekend in 1968.

Over the years I’ve trumpeted the benefits of therapy as a place of self-evolution and fixing broken patterns. “I worry about the people NOT in therapy,” I’d tell my students. Since my first drop into clinical depression, that I fictionalized in my novel, The Mission of the Sacred Heart, therapy has been a place to put out the emotional fires. But it’s often just tinkering around the edges and not getting to the root. The root takes time to dig down to, maybe years.

I was in couples counseling about a dozen years ago when I had a very clear childhood memory that stopped me cold. My young parents were looking for their American dream and got involved in some of those “multi-level marketing schemes,” like Amway. They would take weekends to go to sales seminars and drop me off with an older couple that lived down the block. While sitting on our therapists couch, I remembered my parents picking me up at the end of a weekend away and me crying uncontrollably, thinking they had left me with these people forever and being so relieved they hadn’t. I chalked it up to a root cause of my vague abandonment issues and moved on.

This pandemic has offered us an opportunity for self work. My patient and loving wife has helped me to identify my tendency to center myself instead of her in our marriage. (Something I’ve written about in this blog.) She was strong enough to name it; narcissism. She gave me reading list on the subject so I could continue my work. I was reading one of her recommendations, Why Do I Do That? Psychological Defense Mechanisms and the Hidden Ways They Shape Our Lives, and I began to see a lifelong pattern that started with endless fights with my younger brother and my tendency to be in perpetual “battle mode” in my romantic relationships. But I was puzzled about why I could see this pattern and seemingly be powerless to stop it.

Then, one day, because I really wanted to know, I was reading about theories on the origin of Narcissistic Personality Syndrome. And there it was in black and white, that one root can be child sexual abuse. It was like great whooshing enveloped me. I suddenly remembered why I was crying so hard when my parents picked me up from the neighbor babysitters. I had a crystal clear memory of being in the guest room, window facing the street, with the man, maybe twice as old as my 25-year-old father, standing in front of me, staring, with my clothes in a pile on the floor in front of me. The memory gets a little hazy after that, but I know I was crying because I needed my parents to rescue me from how that man was hurting me.

Realizing this literally stopped my breath. I began to hyperventilate and then sob. The timing was not perfect because I was in the middle of a me-caused crisis with my wife. I had shared an intimate detail of our lives with a friend (who was really just a local bartender) that she had asked me not to share. I had betrayed her trust in the most callous of ways for no reason other than momentary titillation, wounding this person I claim to love. This realization shed light on that and so much more. My hyper-sexuality, my narcissism, and probably why I never had a best friend. 

That 4-year-old didn’t have the skills to stop this abuse so he erected a wall around himself for protection. I entered into a world where I constantly had to be on guard and defend myself. Everyone was a potential attacker, including my little brother, who I was endlessly cruel towards. I would see his efforts to emulate me as sinister attempts to take the things that were unique about me for himself. At age 10 I remember freaking out because he said he liked Elton John. Elton John was mine! I should have just said, “Yeah, Ronnie. Elton is awesome. Let me play you some of my favorite songs.” Instead I beat him up. That hyper-defensiveness and self-centering (and fortunately not the violence) followed me into adulthood and sabotaged every single romantic relationship I entered. I can provide you a list of women who will testify that was not a very good boyfriend or husband.

That 4-year-old also didn’t have the skills to process what was occurring. How could my parents let this happen? So all that trauma got folded into my subconscious and came out in my toxic personality traits. That’s where it hid until I was 57-years old, and by then those brain pathways were pretty well-worn grooves.

I found a new therapist to help me work on this psychodynamic that has only hurt people I love. She’s a hypo-therapist, so much of the work has involved talking to that 4-year-old who has been in control of my mind and behavior since 1968. I can take care of him, acknowledge his pain, and move forward as the adult version of me. But that kid is strong. He doesn’t want to let go. One thing that is painfully clear is that alcohol, something often abused by adult abuse victims, lets that kid out with a vengeance. So as of today, I’m going back to my straightedge tendencies. No more Portland benders. I can’t let the child cause more pain. And he’s caused a lot pain.

The research is clear, people who experience trauma tend to traumatize others. Veterans with PTSD have higher rates among domestic abusers. So many of the hate criminals I’ve studied over the years have histories of abuse in their background. Roughly one in seven American children experiences abuse, and you can bet that many of them are going to turn that pain outward, creating an endless cycle of trauma.

One of my favorite novels is Nick Hornby’s 1995 book, High Fidelity. The protagonist, Rob, is going through another break-up and decides to write all his ex’s to ask them why they broke up with him. I’m tempted to write all my ex’s to tell them that I know why they broke up with me and to apologize. Profusely. But my work has be in the present, being ever-mindful of this hurt 4-year-old that lives inside me. His need to lash out and erect walls has destroyed so much. I want to give him love and protection so he, and the other people I love, can finally feel centered and safe with me.

I know two things. What happened to me wasn’t my fault and that this internal dynamic that my abuse shaped is not an easy thing to change. Wish me luck on this path. It’s not going to be a straight line. And also that I’m sorry that I didn’t figure this out sooner. So sorry.

Brett Kavanaugh and Bro Culture: Let’s Look in the Mirror

~ Randy Blazak ~ 18 Comments

Sept. 28, 2018

Judge Brett Kavanaugh and I are basically the same age. He’s almost a full year younger than me and a lot more bourgeoise. But the summer of 1982, we were probably pretty similar characters. He was hanging out at the country club in Deleware, and I was hanging out in punk rock bars in London. He was drinking a lot of beer at 17 and I was trying to be vegan at 18. But we were both teenage boys surrounded by Rocky images of masculinity and the patriarchal notion that God or the gods put all the world’s women on Earth for us to enjoy.

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The difference is that I never tried to rip the clothes off of 15-year-old girls. My warped perception of male entitlement only went as far as envying the shower scene in Porky’s. I was sexually shy that summer, but he seemed to have an action plan.

Watching the testimony yesterday morning of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was gut wrenching. I have to think that millions of women (and plenty of men) were both transfixed and transported back to their own moments of violation. The trauma of sexual assault isn’t a wound that is just healed by time. We don’t expect war veterans suffering from PTSD to “just get over it,” yet there seems to be some statute of limitations on the waves of devastation caused by sexual violence. Dr. Ford was calm but fragile, as she relived her deep-rooted trauma. Kavanaugh’s hysterical testimony, full of conspiracy theories about the Clintons and “Democratic hit jobs,” would have been derided if he had been a female, but men are allowed to use their anger as a cudgel in absence of the truth. “He must be right, look how loud he is yelling.” (And aren’t judges supposed to be politically impartial. This is like giving Fox News a seat on the Supreme Court.)

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The underlying message is that the starting assumption is men are truth tellers and women are liars or patsies. Welcome to Anita Hill Redux. You haven’t come a long way, baby. And yes, maybe Ford was mistaken and Kavanaugh is innocent, but his “defense” didn’t convince a single rape victim. No matter how impressive your resume is and how many times you’ve flown on Air Force one and how much you lean on the wisdom of your daughters, good men can do bad things. His credentials don’t shield him from abusive behavior. It’s not good people vs. evil monsters, us vs. them. It’s just us.

As I recently wrote with regard to race, not only do we all internalize white supremacy, infecting each of us with a degree of racism, so to we all internalize misogyny, infecting each of us with a degree of sexism. We might not say it out loud, but we (men and women) are socialized to believe that “male” is the norm (a message delivered by your mailMAN each day), and women are, as Simone de Beauvoir called it, the second sex. I’ve written a great deal about the challenges of being a male feminist when the go-to switch in your head says women are “girls” and secondary or sexual objects. I am a racist and a sexist. Brett and I both learned these lessons long before 1982. The difference seems to be that I seek to purge the sexism within me and he has chosen to deny its existence. I half expected him to pull a Trump and claim, “I’m the least sexist person you’ll ever meet!”

Part of the gendered message we get early on is that men stick together to maintain their authority. “Bros before hos,” the frat boys chant. That male bonding was evident in the predatory behavior of teenage Kavanaugh and his wing-man Mark Judge and it is evident in the Republican men of the Senate Judiciary Committee who are desperate to give this bro a lifetime appointment on the high court. Bro culture reinforces patriarchy from the ball field to fraternity row to the senate chambers.

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But it’s easy to point to Brett Kavanaugh as the supreme douchebag of the land, who may or may not have spent Beach Week ’82 plying underage girls with grain alcohol. Whether or not he makes it on the court, he will always be known as the “rapey judge.” Kavanaugh is “them.” We need to focus on us and how our own internalized misogyny creates the rape culture that allows credentialed dicks like Kavanaugh to rise to prominence. If the rise of the alt-right is an opportunity for this country to explore the damage done by white privilege and normalized racism, the Kavanaugh hearings are an opportunity for us to confront our issues with male privilege and normalized sexism.

Brett Kavanaugh isn’t the problem. He’s a symptom of the problem. As my wife and I watched Ford’s testimony, we wondered if our daughter would be telling her own stories of sexual trauma one day, trying to convince a panel of old men about the lifelong damage created by one single act. Trump and his old boy network are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that #metoo is just a fad and the old regime stands firm, so I am desperately worried my daughter will encounter her own Brett Kavanaugh at some point.

But if we men can take a deep dive into our own sexism, our simple dismissal of women and all things feminine, we might put an end to the uproarious laughter of boys who have a girl locked in a room and see her dehumanization as sport. We might delegitimize the delegitimization of women and girls. We might keep my daughter safe by surrounding her with boys and men who see her not just as somebody’s daughter but as somebody. We might be able to undo what we have done for so long.

“You’re gonna need a shotgun” Raising a daughter in a rape culture

~ Randy Blazak ~ 5 Comments

September 7, 2017

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I was speaking at a civil rights conference in Michigan this week and over lunch I was having a conversation with a jovial guy who worked in law enforcement. Since it’s always a unifying topic, we began chatting about our children. I showed him a cute pic of Cozy milking a cow at the Oregon State Fair. “You’re gonna need a shotgun,” he said.

I wish it was the first time I’d heard that line. Even before Cozy was born, when friends, family, or strangers heard we were having a girl, the calls for “better get a shotgun” came from men of all ages.

I understand that these men are trying to be cute, but it always injects two thoughts into my head; 1) I don’t want a gun, and 2) thanks for reminding me that boys and men will try to rape my daughter.

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I mean, isn’t that what that line means? If Cozy is hanging out with a boy that she likes, it’s her time, her body, her choice. Right? It’s only if said boy crosses some boundary into nonconsensual douche-baggery that hero dad is supposed to rush in with his 12-gauge Remington to rescue his damsel in distress by threatening to blow this kid’s head clean off. “Do you feel lucky, punk?”

I’m not buying it.

What patriarchal vision has a father guarding his daughter’s window, weapon loaded, to make sure sex-crazed boys don’t rob her of her precious virginity? Cozy can arm herself with the wisdom to surround herself with the type of boys who can use the front door. I’m trying not to think too much about her inevitable transition into a sexual being, but my hope is she will own it responsibly without the anxiety of a father who wants her locked in a chastity belt, or who is lying in wait, with a Winchester across his lap.

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The cute line about shotguns is more an acknowledgement of the rape culture we must raise our daughters in. I can trust that Cozy will make good choices with the boys (and/or girls) in her life and know how to shut down any unwanted advances (and accept the wanted ones). We will load her up with lines from TLC (“I don’t want no scrub.”) and bell hooks (“There can be no love without justice, asshole.”) But the harsh reality is that there will probably be boys and men than blast right though those defenses.

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Self-report studies have found that one in four women in America will be raped in their lifetime, many numerous times. The numbers are even more bleak for the more broadly defined “sexual assault.” He may not force his penis into her, but “just” grabbing her breasts may be enough to demonstrate who is boss. The same research shows that only 22% of rapes are committed by strangers, the majority are men known to the victim. This might happen in a dormitory, on a date, at a family gathering, or all of the above. It could be a boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, or thinks-he’s-a-boyfriend, or all of the above. There is no place that girls and women are safe from the potential of unwanted sexual contact; not home, not work, not school. So I know this, and it kills me that Cozy will know this, too.

We’ve tried raise a generation of girls who can defend themselves. We’ve given them guns, pepper spray, German Shepherds, and rape whistles. We’ve taught them how to walk in groups, cover their drinks in bars, and trust their guts about guys who give off rapey vibes. But we haven’t done a very good job teaching boys and men not to rape. When their presidents and faux-medieval TV heroes do it, you can understand why they might think they are entitled to women and girls’ bodies. According to a 1998 study by the National Institute of Justice, 1 in 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. A recent University of North Dakota survey found that 1 in 3 college males would rape a female if they knew that would not face any consequences. Boys will be boys, right?

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If there’s any good news it’s that the rates of rape and sexual assault have been falling (along with the violent crime rate in general). Rape victims coming out of the shadows and sharing their stories have surely been a part of that decline. Every man has at least one woman in his life who has experienced this horror. Maybe boys need to hear these stories as well, from their mothers, sisters, teachers, doctors, neighbors. It makes all that Game of Thrones rape a bit less entertaining. I do know the decline in what is still an epidemic of sexual violence has nothing with dads chasing aspiring rapists off with shotguns.

So here’s how that conversation is going to go next time:

“You’re daughter’s very cute. You’re gonna need a shotgun”

“Why?”

“Because she’s going to have boys all over her.”

“What if she wants boys all over her?”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“So, you’re saying she’ll have guys harassing her and trying to rape her.”

“It happens.”

“And she won’t be able to take care of it herself?”

“She might not be. I’m just saying you might need that gun.”

“How about you teach your boy not to rape her and we spend that gun money on something else?”

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Postscript: A friend pointed out that also coded in this is that only pretty/skinny/cute girls are targets of rape, as if rape was an act of sexual attraction. All types of girls and women are rape. It’s about power, not sex.

Men Who Just Don’t Get It: Sexual harassment and my falafel with Bill O’Reilly

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

April 20, 2017

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You’ve gotta think it was pretty bad for TV personality Bill O’Reilly to get kicked out the misogynistic cesspool over there at Fox News. Papa Bear was booted from the right-wing network this week after reports surfaced that Fox had payed out more that $13 million in settlements to women over sexual harassment allegations. The grab-ass environment created by serial predator and Fox CEO Roger Ailes sounded like something from the first season of Mad Men. Meanwhile Fox News stalwarts Sean Hannity and Donald Trump have gone out of their way to defend these two men and attack their accusers. Is this 2017? Oh, right, making America “great again” takes us back before the time of pesky sexual harassment laws. Before those humorless feminists brought an end to the office party fun-fest.

Fox News is not unique. I don’t doubt that there are similar versions of this dynamic in almost every workplace, including CNN and MSNBC. The difference at Fox is that the powerful men doing this were pretty much the most powerful men in the room. Most workplaces have at least one dumb-ass guy who doesn’t know how to interact with women as fully functioning humans deserving of the same professional respect the old boys club gives each other. Like a character on The Office, his offensiveness is a product of living inside a boys club bubble.

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On the most basic level it’s inappropriate comments that female employees get on a regular basis. “Sit up straight, honey.” “Don’t let that donut spoil your diet.” “You should smile more.” “Your husband is a lucky man.” On the surface, it might seem pretty harmless. But the sheer volume is a reminder of the subordination women are supposed to endure and a reinforcement of the sexist trope that women are supposed to be seen and not heard. And if she says anything to interrupt the comments, she’s a bitch. “I was just being friendly.” “It was just a joke.” “Don’t get uptight.” Just go back to work, asshole.

The comments can be a set-up for the next level. If she’ll let a dirty joke slide and not “freak out” over a possibly inappropriate non-work related text, maybe it’s time for the quid pro quo. The offer she can’t refuse. “If you do this for me, I can open doors for you.” Or the converse, “If you don’t do this for me, you’re out on your sweet ass.” That’s where O’Reilly got busted. He’s a star and, according to President Trump, “when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” One too many women said “no” to Old Bill, and without Ailes there to protect him, he’s now out on his blotchy keister.

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I’ve heard so many versions of this story from women, including my own mother who filed a complaint with the EEOC in the 1980s in a pretty egregious case. She was brave to say “no more,” but lost the case because the other victims were afraid to come out of the dark. Those women wanted to keep their jobs and my mother lost hers. But in this day of texts and emails and instant messages, there’s a lot more evidence to file successful claims. These days it’s more likely there will be a settlement or maybe the harasser will be removed. (Although both Ailes and O’Reilly leave with millions of dollars in severance.)

I know I have been guilty of making inappropriate comments, thinking I was just being funny. As a feminist sociologist, I’m on guard, but I’ve made my share of mistakes. The difference is, if a female colleague, student, or even Facebook friend were to say, “Hey, I don’t think that’s appropriate,” I would immediate stop and evaluate what I said or did. That’s because I respect women and don’t want them to think I’m a douchebag. I know my male privilege could dictate that I just blow it off. “Maybe it’s that time of the month.” But I’ve learned (often from mistakes) that if you don’t have women as your allies, you’re alone in Guyland. That might have been cool when you were a teenage “bro,” but it’s no place for an adult male.

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On September 26, 2005, I made my first (and now last) appearance on The O’Reilly Factor. I was brought on as a hate crime expert to discuss death threats that had been made against New York Yankee Derek Jeter for dating a white woman. This was when Bill was being sued by former producer Andrea Mackris for sexual harassment. She recorded him saying all kinds of a wack-a-doo things while using a vibrator on himself, including this gem:

So anyway I’d be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda kissing your neck from behind… and then I would take the other hand with the falafel thing and I’d put it on your pussy but you’d have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business….

(No wonder Donald Trump loves this guy.) Now let me say this – consenting adults are allowed do and say all kinds of freaky-deaky things. If Bill O’Reilly wants to propose rubbing Mediterranean food on a female partner’s vagina while he’s got a Magic Wand up his butt, that’s their business. I don’t judge. (And I think he meant loofah, not falafel). But Mackris contends it was unwanted. ““Tyrannical and menacing” is how the suit describes the contact by O’Reilly, who was (of course) married at the time.

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O’Reilly didn’t propose any such shenanigans with me. (Although during the over-the-phone pre-interview I mentioned that I was just finishing my falafel and was almost disinvited from the no spin-zone.) But he did make the interview all about him. I tried to talk about lingering racist anger at inter-racial couples and he went off about how gets death threats all the time and it’s just the price of fame. (Al Franken later told me that this was a complete lie and there are no documented death threats against Bill.) The interview ended with O’Reilly saying, “OK Professor, you get the last word.” And then he cut me off mid-sentence to blather more about his persecution.

Bill O’Reilly is a 67-year-old narcissist who will probably never get it. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong and the current President of the United States of America doesn’t think he did anything wrong. But there are a lot of young guys who look up to these old men as role models. Their victims will suffer without the millions of dollars Fox News paid out in hush money. And now the low-level dickwads who are telling their female co-workers to “Sit up and smile more,” have some pretty powerful icons on their side.

But times are changing. The old guard is dying and a new band of brothers is going to defend their sisters. The banishment of Bill O’Reilly should encourage all victims of sexual harassment to speak out. No one is allowed to get away with this. Not the guy who works in the pizza shop, or the law firm, or even a guy who has his own TV show. And certainly not the guy who lives in the White House. So bros, grow up. If a woman tells you, “I don’t think that’s appropriate. Please stop.” – don’t blame it on her period. Check yourself.

To report a case of sexual harassment, please visit the EEOC website: 

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

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I stand with the women who march: Anatomy of a backlash

~ Randy Blazak ~ 8 Comments

January 18, 2017

Politics would make a great spectator sport. How many years did Donald Trump question President Obama’s legitimacy, spreading the cockamamie lie that he wasn’t born in America? One soft-spoken Congress member from Georgia questions Trump’s legitimacy and Baby Hands has a full scale meltdown. It’s entertaining! But it’s not funny. It’s real. And people know this and they’re getting involved. And I don’t mean on Twitter.

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Instead of focusing on the circus of Inauguration Day (No wonder Ringling Brothers is calling it quits. Who can compete!), my focus is on the day after and the Women’s March on Washington. Trump may have secured Pat Boone to sing at his event (Glad to know Pat’s still alive!), but the real star power will be in the streets with an estimated 200,000 marchers in DC. Julianne Moore, Jessica Chastain, and Chelsea Handler will be there and a lot of other women who Baby Hands will surely tweet about. (“She’s totally overrated. A real dog.”) And an estimated million people will join sister marches around the country, including here in Portland. You should see my wife and daughter there.

Unlike a lot of “pop culture feminism,” the march promises to be truly intersectional. I’ve written about intersectionality in this blog. Let’s just say, for now, that feminism doesn’t just belong to middle-class white females with degrees in Women’s Studies. The organizers of the march have made a point of making it open to all identities who see the new oppression of sexually harassing politicians as a growing problem and the liberationist positions of feminism as the solution. Their four-page statement says upfront, “Our liberation is bound in each other’s.” So expect to see bell hooks marching alongside Katy Perry and Malala Yousafzai next to Scarlett Johansson. Trump may have 3 Doors Down, but they’ve got Solange. You can read the full statement here:

Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles

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I wanted to locate this march historically and sociologically, because this isn’t just about a president who brags about sexually assaulting women. The election of Donald Trump represents a significant backlash against the empowerment and true equality of women and girls. Susan Faludi popularized the concept in her award-winning 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. The text was a crucial theoretical component of my doctoral dissertation on the rise of racist skinheads and I just pray she is working on a 2017 edition.

So here’s the mini-version of her thesis. Faludi argues, with convincing evidence, that each time women make collective gains of empowerment there is a corresponding backlash that tries to push them back into their second class role. She lays out three historical periods in the twentieth century.

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First was the women’s suffrage movement and what has become known as first wave feminism. Among the gains made were things like access to birth control and, in 1920, the right to vote. This political empowerment was met in the 1920s with the double backlash of the flapper and the housewife. One was cute and ditzy, like cartoon Betty Boop, the other was obsessed with care for the home, the children, and a new invention, fashion magazines.  The message was clear, women don’t politically organize, they have fun or wash their hair before hubby gets home.

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The second wave was about women’s economic empowerment during World War II. As men were off at war, many women were in factories and shipyards, building the weapons of war. Their symbol was Rosie the Riveter. The federal government funded daycare. Theaters were showing films starring Betty Davis, Lauren Bacall on other dames who didn’t take any guff from men. And women had their own money with no men telling them how to spend it. When the war ended in 1945 and the men came home, it was time for women to leave the tank factory and go back to the kitchen. Betty Davis was replaced with Marilyn Monroe and the 1950s became the glamor era when women were meant to be seen and not heard. Backlash #2.

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The second wave feminist movement socially empowered women in the 1960s and 1970s. Betty Friedan’s book 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, and her National Organization of Women brought women into the streets on a range of issues, including workplace harassment, pornography, and abortion rights. “Women’s Lib” became a part of the counterculture of the baby boom generation and every aspect of culture was inspected through  feminist lens (although it was typically a white feminist lens). The great attack on patriarchy was met with the third backlash in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and the ultimate weapon – THE SUPERMODEL. More than ever women were bombarded with the message that they were their looks and would only lose power as they aged instead of gaining it.

It has been argued that Faludi helped launch third wave feminism in the 1990s. Third wave is more intersectional and not afraid to take on micro-aggressions along with macro power structures. But Faludi’s model would predict that the turn of century wave of personal empowerment for women (including transwomen, lipstick lesbians, Muslim feminists, and a bunch of other cool categories) would be met with yet another backlash. Who would have guessed that this backlash would have come in the form of a TV gameshow host with a fake tan, fake hair, and a wall of fake news stories.

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The new War on Women began before the Trump candidacy. But the fact that the first female major party candidate for president was defeated by a guy who runs beauty pageants and brags about never having heard his latest wife fart was the tipping point. More disturbing than Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” comments were his flock, chanting “Trump the bitch” at his rallies. It was like an army of anti-feminists had suddenly been released from the gates of hell. And now their fake “Good ol boy” (Lordy) and his porn-model wife are moving into the people’s house. Don’t expect much support for women’s issues for the next four years. They’re already going after Planned Parenthood.

My cousin, Chamisa Kellogg, is in DC for the march. She’s an incredible artist who has created the piece below to commemorate this moment in history. She just sent me this message – “The ‘Pussy Grabs Back’ drawing was based on a photo I took at a protest in Portland, Oregon two days after the 2016 Presidential Election. As the Million Women’s March 2017 draws near, I find myself reiterating my goals and beliefs in gender equality, and the importance of affordable healthcare for all, including women (who may sometimes need abortions). I’m selling high-quality archival prints of this drawing on my etsy shop, and all profits from sales will go to Planned Parenthood.”

You can purchase a print at THIS LINK.

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So women will be marching in 2017 just like they marched in 1917. But the beautiful thing about Faludi’s model is the backlash never pushes women all the way back to where they were. Once women have tasted political, economic, social, and personal empowerment, that genie doesn’t go back into the bottle. It may be one step backwards, but there were two steps forward first. Donald Trump may want to make America great “again,” back to a time when women were more like Melania, seen and not “being a bitch,” counting calories and not wage gap data, but he’s looking at more than one march coming his way. The future is female.

See you in the streets.

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