This afternoon when I was driving from picking up a random Bat Mitzvah card for my missionary cousin to the post office, I realized a large part of why the Trayvon Martin case has affected me so deeply. It's the willful attitude that many have of blaming the victim. I mean, it really pisses me off. As I was driving I thought of this scenario:
Would someone say it was my fault that after a while of my mission trainer molesting me and demeaning me I fought back? Would someone say that it was unfortunate that she molested me in an even harsher way, but I had fought back, after all?
I mean, this is utter bull shit, and we all know it. Zimmerman stalked Trayvon. Trayvon was just a 17-year-old kid. He was scared and had a totally normal reaction for a kid of that age. There was both a flight and a fight in his reaction.
Someone explain the difference. There is none. This is part of the reason why it took so many years for me to say anything: I was so damn afraid that people wouldn't believe me, that it was my fault, that I deserved it. I mean, Trayvon was a teenager wearing a hoodie b/c it was raining. Shifty. AND the kid had the audacity of being black.
And here's the thing, that second paragraph up there happened to me. I fought back in this way or that, whatever way I could in the demoralized state I was in. It got worse. She humiliated me more.
So by the same dumb-ass logic that person after person has been posting about on FB, I deserved every shitty moment of my abuse after I fought back. In fact I deserved all of it b/c I was an American woman with big breasts. I was exotic.
Maybe if all these (Zimmerman apologists and the) people that deny that there isn't an undertow of victim blaming in the U.S. stepped out of their ignorant shit-box of privileged comfort and realized what they were saying, and how horrible it was, this nation could actually heal.
Because I know for EFFING DAMN SURE that I have no fault in what happened to me. I've been allowed to heal from a victim to a survivor. I have faith in God and think that Trayvon is a survivor, too, just not on this planet and that makes my heart ache.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
An appendage to my last post
Posted by Vanessa Swenson at 17:31
Labels: Healing, Ignorance, musings, political musings
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1 comment:
Damn straight, sister.
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