I was at a party once for my private prep school where I drank too much and ended up on a kitchen floor and had boys making cracks about taking me out to the back of a car and using paper bags as condoms on me. Were it not for a girlfriend, who knows what would have happened
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I walked into school the next day and everyone was talking about it. Parties continued. I kept going, because it was my school and those were my "friends."
I was 15.
For everyone saying, oh, we can't believe Julie Swetnick because she kept going to parties, ask yourself:
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She was a CHILD. She did what everyone did in those days, and coped.
This also needs to be said: holding a teenage girl (the third to come forward, BTW) to higher standards than the boys who she has asserted under penalty of perjury GANG RAPED her is REALLY RICH.
I'm going to tell a story right now that I've never told out loud.
When I was 20, I arranged to be out of the country when the 1st lawsuit against my molester was filed.
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There was press--in the local paper, in the Philly Inquirer about a family therapist who molested his teenage patient. It hit big by current standards.
That night, I spoke to my mother-- the last conversation we had for 20 years-- in which she told me she didn't believe me.
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At the time, I was all alone as a senior in college studying abroad, save my professor/boyfriend, 17 years older, who was there as the "faculty advisor."
When he learned, shortly after I filed suit, that I was generally absent from my body during sex, he took it personally.
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I fucked up a lot on race consciousness this year. @theladyalx came for me as a result. @nicoleclee entered my life soon after.
I chose thework. I put myself in the company of @desireeadaway and others. That led to @ncbcp_bwr.
And then I fucked up again. That led me to these really awesome conversations with @StaciJShelton and others behind the scenes that are so challenging and rich and so loving, and that have taught me to not be afraid to ask if I have fucked up, shamelessly.
And then I fucked up AGAIN. That led to me following @AngryBlackLady and @dianelyssa, who I think still mute me but educate me every day now. LOL.
I have had a year of fucking up as a white woman, in really bad ways.
It has been fucking painful, and worth every single minute.
I spent the afternoon immersed in various forms of my own personal therapy. I'm back and I'm ready to tear some shit up.
And I'm just gonna say it: I'm not backing another politician, ever again, who isn't willing to set shit on fire and burn down white supremacist patriarchy.
I'm going to center on people with a history of fighting for justice, people invested in equity, people who know what it means to fight, people who are relentless. I don't give a fuck where they come from or whether they're "experienced."
I'm looking at a coalition of warriors.
And WE make the army--leaders, generals and priestesses alike--as long as we are willing to listen and build and fight.
Make no mistake about it: I don't care if it all ends in ashes as long as what comes next allows nothing like what happened today to ever happen again.
My friend @Lmpera has a saying: what we do for the one we do for the all.
This afternoon, I stripped naked and got this beautiful, life-worn body of mine scrubbed, pummeled, massaged, anointed, head to fucking toe. Full on goddess territory.
I am new. And have some thoughts. 1/
We are innundated right now with their hatred of us— all of us who don’t look, love, or live like those in power. It is overwhelming.
The antidote is this: we must love ourselves so ferociously,with such profound and powerful commitment to it, that their hate can’t gain entry 2/
and with such an overwhelming sense of worthiness that we heal ourselves and one another from all the damage these centuries (and recent weeks) of hatred has wrought.
This means nourishing ourselves in every way— food, water, spiritually, emotionally, and dare I say it, 3/