After Roe. fell in Texas

No One is Coming to Save Us (an affirmation after Roe has fallen in Texas so you don’t feel crazy too)

September 2, 2021 8:03am

I was arrested for the first time in my life protesting the appointment of Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, and my strict SWANA* parents will find out about it right now as I push publish on this post.

I understood that Kavanaugh was a sexual assault perpetrator. So did the hundreds of other women, cis and trans, I was arrested with. We understood what was to come. We lined up in that great Harte Senate building in D.C. with that sprawling white marble floor. We refused to move. We stayed until they took us. They yelled about us in the media. I was there with a group of other women, my group was women of color in a sea of white, we held each other and we spoke to each other about what an arrest means and what it meant to us, in real time. We educated the women around us on the difference in stakes we all held. We pushed through the bullshit. We educated each other. We were there. We were young. We were there.

We understood what it meant. And that no one was coming. And we got up and took our destiny’s in our own hands.

Over 667 were arrested that day.

I am coming out today. I am a multiple sexual assault survivor starting from childhood. These things I have never said and I held in me for a long time.They are painful and why I struggle to say “no” and to advocate for myself everyday. When I saw the Kavanaugh hearings happening and the world subsequently gaslight Dr. Ford, I said it’s time to stop pushing away this pain, and I flew from LA to the Captiol with WomensMarch for the first time to put my body out in front of it. After #MeToo emerged on my timeline I felt conflicted in the pain I feel as a lifelong reality in the week the world was finally paying attention. When the #MeToo hashtag happened it was a lighting rod that electrified the world, super charged and beautiful. Scary and terrifying. Built on decades of struggle. It was survivors claiming our voices, and doing so together. This was it’s power. In sexual assault you are made to feel crazy. You are made to believe you are alone. #MeToo said we are the experts of our own experience. We are valid, and what happened was real. Because we are.

I did not come out with this during #MeToo. When #MeToo flashed all over my phone and computer, it was not just in the U.S., and it was not just in English, and it was powerful. My friends back in the “homeland(s)” in South West Asia and North Africa were sharing too. Survivors were writing it all over the world. It was beautiful and also not beautiful. For myself I could not share my #MeToo post . I posted it, and deleted it. I wrote at the bottom of my now deleted post the same conflicted feelings I feel today “I don’t want to share my story because for someone it is just a moment, to be consumed, and for me it is my whole life. They move on.” There are days in the movement I feel, as we all feel. conflicted. something like…I will not pimp my pain.

They are coming after Roe now, all of it.

They are obsessed with our bodies. These cis men. They equate our worth, our dignity as our bodies. And they are afraid of our power.

I am tired of being equated with my body. The media, Hollywood, those people trying to sell you all that shit on Instagram, the State. You are your body. What we want. What we don’t. Too covered up, not covered up enough. You are gendered this way. You are not. Too much this, not enough that. Your body for labor, for work, for reproduction, for us.

I was born into a body. I am discriminated against because of something I did not and do not choose.

Feminism is not this, “ individual choice” shit we here about all the time in the West. It is about power shaping what options you even get to pick from, if you are among those that get to pick at all. It is about global groups structurally subjugated via gender, race, class, etc. Feminism is a global liberation struggle happening all around the world, all the time, against white cis heteropatriarchy. It is a struggle of workers and of communities who have faced and are facing genocide. We are not alone.

The State is denying us options.

And no one is coming to save us. The worst part is this is the story they tell. That they save us. They write books about this — epics, novels, movies, and legends. In every culture, in every romanticized history of our movements, everywhere. And they don’t. That when we are in distress they come, you know this bullshit about damsels or whatever. Or worse, they say that — They “liberate” us through war and bombs. They make up their “manifest destiny”as they destroy generations through blood. They are hero, they say, as they raze the world to the ground.

They are not hero, they cannot save us because it is them we need saving from. They cannot save us, because it is them who is causing this. They are the perpetrators and they are blaming you. They are not coming to change this. They will not change this. They created this.

Women, I am sorry everyone is always telling you what to do. I am sorry that we live in a constant feedback loop reality now on the internet where people believe you need to hold all their critiques and worries for them, and that our movements do. We don’t.

I am sorry I am now telling you what to do. But I am not, I am telling myself. I am validating myself. Because I feel crazy. No, because we are made to feel crazy. We saw this coming. We need to validate each other, so we stop believing their lies.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

And this is all I know. The future is determined by what we do, but also what we choose not to do. That is more terrifying. This is the only ‘choice’ we actually have. But I believe. I can see the future, and in the future, all of our communities are free. Historical violence has been righted. Reparations and healing for those Black, those Indigenous, those poor, those under empire. Gender justice is free from the binaries and we have self determination that also addresses how people have been historically oppressed through what has been put onto them. We do it. I can see it. We have to believe in us, and we have to make it so. And thus it is written.

I can see it there, the future. After Roe in Texas fell to the Kavanuaghs of the world, what did we do? We came out. Together, and we changed the fate of our childrens’ lives. We saved Roe. We shaped their reality, and they will never know it.

So I say to you, you are worthy enough to show up for yourself. (Affirmation to self). No one is coming. They are not hero, you are, they cannot save us because it is them we need saving from. They cannot save us, because it is them who is causing this. They are causing this destruction. They are the perpetrators and they are blaming you. They are controlling your life and it benefits them. They are not coming to change this. They will not change this. They created this. Repeat it every time someone says you do not know your own struggle. You do.

Self defense for women. Now.

It is time we strike

-SA