That's some crazy strength.

Neko Case has a new album out. I love her, so I bought the album the day it was released. The next morning, I was playing it as I got ready for work. All of the sudden, track six, “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu” came on, layers of a cappella singing ringing round the tile and mirrored room.

Hey, little kid that I saw at the bus stop one day.
It was nearly midnight in Honolulu.
We were waiting for the shuttle to take us to the aeroplane
when your mother said, your mother said,
like I couldn't hear her, she said,
"Get the fuck away from me!
Why don't you ever shut up?
Get the fuck away from me!"

I was struck silent and still by these lines. There was something so painful and familiar about those words. I can't remember if those exact words were ever said of me. I'm missing a lot of time. But I know the sentiment was there, often enough, in both my parents, when I was a kid.

Recently, I was talking with someone who seemed not to understand what it means to be haunted, literally, by your own past. To be stalked through your dreams by loved ones trying to kill you, reliving moments that are like something out of a scripted nightmare or a gritty after-school special. Even today, I live with a hyper-vigilance, and it isn't against my triggers anymore as much as it is against myself.

I am constantly afraid of my own body, of the way a song or TV show will cause my breathing to catch or my hands to shake or my body to shudder out of control. In that moment, my own nervous system will betray the cool, calm, collected professional exterior I manage ninety-nine percent of the time and I won't even be able to breath, tears rushing down my face and words I don't want to say aloud tumbling from my mouth. I can't stop it when it happens. I have to just sit there until I calm down. Sometimes it takes a while. And the whole time, I wish for nothing more than for it to stop.

I live with the constant fear that this will happen in public. That it will happen in a movie theater. In a restaurant. At work. I am sitting in a coffee shop in Nashville right now, and as I write this to you, I am crying. I wonder what the lady sitting across the table from me thinks of the tears I can't contain as I write this.

Well, I just want to say that it happened,
'cause one day when you ask yourself,
"Did it really happen?"
You won't believe it, but yes, it did.
And I'm sorry.
And I'm sorry
'cause it happens everyday.

There is a tendency, particularly in people complicit in abuse by their silence, by their ignorance, or by their reluctance to intervene, to deny its reality. Though they are doing what is natural, protecting themselves from the brutality of the world, their denial gives them a role in that abuse. They contribute to its perpetration, its perpetuation, its prevalence in the lives of otherwise bright and hopeful beings, sometimes long after the abuse has ended.

This denial of what has happened has a tendency to eat away at survivors. Our abusers are already skilled at crazy-making, brilliant liars and manipulators whose strength depends on communal silence in the face of horror and our isolation as victims. It takes a lot to admit what has happened to us. Our abusers condition us to keep our mouths shut, to deny it if asked, and society furthers that effect by its tendency to ignore and marginalize. That those around us, even years later, will minimize, deny, or otherwise ignore the truth of our past compounds that pain, makes it difficult for us to name the ghosts in our heads, in our hearts, even after we've long since accepted and acknowledged the truth of them.

They won't believe you
when you tell them.
They won't believe you
when you say, "My mother, she did not love me.
My mother, she did not love me."
No, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no.

If you are ever confronted with a survivor, do us a favor. Don't pretend it didn't happen. It happened. You don't have to like it, or like your role in it, but don't pretend it didn't.

Also, don't pretend you know what we've been through. If I've learned anything from my own abuse, it is that this kind of horror is deeply personal. Even two people – a mother and child, a brother and a sister – experiencing the same abuse, won't experience it the same way. Don't assume that your pain looks or feels like what ours looks like.

Just accept what we tell you. Say it's horrible. Say you're sorry it happened. Say you're proud of who we are now. But don't deny us, or say you know how we feel.

You don't.

And I, for one, am glad you don't. I wouldn't wish my bad days and terrible nights on you. I don't want this kind of suffering for anyone.

Some days you feel like a cartoon
and people will rush to make excuses for you.
You'll hear yourself complain
but don't you ever shut up; please,
Kid, have your say...

I recently dropped something about being an abuse survivor in passing conversation to someone I thought already knew my backstory. We've known each other for the better part of a year now, and I just assumed it had come up already. When I realized I'd just dropped a bomb, I gave him the shorthand run down. “I had no idea,” he said. “I would have never guessed any of that.”

I hear that a lot. When I left the DV unit at the DA's office, I sent out a thank you to everyone in my department. I'd been there for over nine months and I'd never told most of them. When I wrote that they'd helped me heal and that I wanted them to know that there was at least one survivor who saw how committed they were, how hard they worked, how much they tried, and was grateful, some of them were shocked. “We didn't know,” one said, surprised etched across his serious face. “We had no idea.”

Of course not. You'd never know it to meet me. You can know me for months and months, maybe even years, and never know. Not anymore. I'm glad of that. I'm glad that you can't always tell just by looking anymore. But just because you can't see it, that doesn't make it any more or less true.

The friend I told recently speculated in passing that being survivor had shaped my feminism. “Of course,” I said. “How could it not?” Truthfully, though, it shapes everything. I don't always say that it does, but I know in my heart of hearts, the experience is indelibly imprinted on who I am and how I see the world as much as those unseen bruises used to be.

I've occasionally run into people who are curious as to why I would ever tell anyone, especially when I can hide it if I choose. They ask: “Aren't you passed it?” and “Don't you want to be passed it?” and “Aren't you worried that continuing to talk about it continues to allow it to victimize you?”

No.

God, yes.

Absolutely not.

The truth is, I can be healthy. I can be happy. I can be a functional, contributing member of society. I can be, by any measure of the word, a success in life. But I will also always be a survivor. I will never stop being a survivor. And there are a lot of us out there. I have lost count of the amount of my smart, successful, educated friends, most of them women, who are all those things despite being abused and assaulted by someone they believed was safe and trustworthy, someone who was supposed to care for them. I can tell you that when I tote up their numbers, the survivors outweigh those that aren't, and that's just the ones I know about.

The truth is, we are all around you, every day, and you may never know it. And as an adult with a happy life and a healthy relationship, I write these pieces because I know how scared I used to be of my own voice. I know how many people ignored all my not-very-subtle cries for help. I know, from working with survivors first-hand, how many of them feel like I used to: feel crazy, feel ignored, feel like no one will listen, and even if they do, that they still won't believe.

I am an educated, upwardly mobile, full-abled, cis-gendered, relatively young, relatively attractive white woman in the first world. I live in a privilege position now, socially speaking, and talking about my experiences is one of the ways I take what happened to me and I make something good out of it. I speak for those who right now cannot speak for themselves. I speak for those who are still too afraid to. I speak so that we are not invisible, and in the hopes that someone else will hear me and know they are not alone. That they know they will be believed if they talk to me. That I am here, and I can help. That they can get through it and get past it and make something fine from their lives.

Every time I do this, I don't feel revictimized. I feel empowered. I feel my own strength. And those ghostly shadows in my life grow a little smaller compared to the truth of what was then and what is now. And by talking about it, I also acknowledge the ways in which I am still a work in progress, and the areas I still have to work on. It keeps me humble. It reminds me that there are still miles to go. And, I've found, far more people believe me than I ever would have imagined. Far more people love me despite my flaws and my fears and my demons than the abused little kid I once was ever would have believed. In acknowledging the truth, I find acceptance. I find a kind of peace.

'Cause I still love you
Even if I don't see you again.

“That's some crazy strength,” my friend concluded when I had finished telling him my story.

“Yep,” I replied, because that's the truth.

That's some crazy strength.

Every survivor I know has it, whether we feel it every day or not. I have it. You have it. And we are successful despite everything that has happened. That is our true secret superpower. We are not defeated, and every day that we get up and keep going, we are demonstrating a kind of super-human strength.

So if you're reading this, and you feel alone, or broken, or lost, know this: It really happened. It may still be happening. But you are a superhero. Every day that you go on breathing in spite of it, you are a success. You can get out. And, in spite of it, you will be okay. Even when you're not. You will still be okay.

Because I believe in you.

And I did it.

And you can, too.

And I love you
even if I don't see you again.

SOMANYFEELINGS: On Chris Brown's Tattoo, Reproductive Rights Legislation, and Trampirism

WARNING: I am full of piss and vinegar today, and this post will include EXPLICIT language and adult themes. Also, thanks to Margo. This is for you.

Okay, there are some things bubbling in me that I have needed to blog about for a while and though I try not to use this space to vent about the general SUCK that is being a feminist in the modern world, I feel the need to get a few things off my chest. So I promise to get back to the love letters to New Orleans and the amazing Elemental Perfumes project I've been wanting to tell you all about starting tomorrow, but right now, a girl has got to take a few minutes to talk to you and know you feel me. Okay, dear reader? Be with me on the following things:

~ CHRIS BROWN HAS RIHANNA’S BEATEN FACE TATTOOED TO HIS NECK

Seriously, this has got to be one of the most fucked things I have EVER SEEN. And before you even start some shit with me, let me say right now, THAT IS NOT a dia de los muertos mask. CHRIS BROWN HIMSELF, when confronted about it, said (through his rep) it is a "random woman." Yeah, sure it is.

(1) If it were a dia de los muertos mask or "sugar skull," he/his rep would have said that.

(2) Maybe it is a random woman. Rhianna is unlikely to be the first or last woman Chris Brown beats the crap out of. Maybe it is a showcase of his handiwork, a kind of portfolio of pain inflicted on unsuspecting women through the years. Like Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, but you know, Chris Brown's Beaten Woman. FN1.

All I know is this, EVERY TIME YOU GIVE THIS MAN A DOLLAR, you are telling him and men like him, that it's cool he beat down a woman who loved him, a woman he alleged to love. And don't even bring that crap about "separating the art from the man" up in here today, because Chris Brown, like any artist, draws from his life for his work, and supporting his work is supporting his life, and it sends a message that the things he's done, not to mention turning it into music he can then sell and profit from, is okay.

And that's the terrible genius of his celebrity, this tattoo, all of it. That man is getting press right now because of this piece, and I hate, I mean HATE, giving it to him. But his choices aren't just about him. His choices, because of his celebrity and because of hers, are scrutinized by the media and it becomes about the way the media reacts and responds and even excuses celebrities who perpetrate and perpetuate intimate partner violence from Chris Brown to Mel Gibson to Charlie Sheen to Sean Penn (FN2), until it becomes a story about 'what drives a man to hit a woman' as though one person leads another to violence, about his punishment and apologies and crying on talk shows, and we forget the survivors in the rush to talk about the men.

It's not about the individual men. It's not about Chris Brown. It's about a society that continues to hold him and men like him up as a talent and a star, despite the fact that he beat a woman badly. It's about the fact that we, as a society, continue to excuse this kind of behavior because it happens between people who are supposed to be in love. It's about the fact that domestic violence is a disease that kills women every day, and as a society writ large, we don't even bother to pretend to care.

Also, as the esteemed Sara Perle pointed out: "It's like he wants to do the most violence possible. Even if dude can't knock someone around personally, there's his face plastered across our screens all the time, now perpetually paired with a hella triggery image." This is the total truth.

And while I will never repost the photo of Rhianna's face because I really do not want to be another site that shows what he did to her when she never wanted those photos out in the world, and I respect her right to privacy as a survivor, and because she deserves to be able to move on, it's linked from the piece referenced above, and I encourage you all to keep in mind that what was done to her was not only terrible, but terribly, terribly common.

AND IT IS NEVER OKAY. Say it with me, people. INTIMATE VIOLENCE IS NEVER OKAY. But hey: thanks, Chris Brown. If we're all really lucky, other abusive pricks will follow your lead and tattoo some obvious representation of the women they've beaten in their lives on a visible part of their bodies, and then all women they meet in the future will know to run, not walk, in the opposite direction.

~ So many f-ed things on the reproductive rights front I feel almost overwhelmed by them, but let's start with this:

Anti-Abortion Lawmaker Has ‘Never Thought About’ Why A Woman Would Want An Abortion

“What do you think makes a woman want to have an abortion?,” an Al Jazeera reporter asks Buchy[.] “Well, there’s probably a lot of — I’m not a woman so I’m thinking, if I’m a woman, why would I want to get — some of it has to do with economics. A lot has to do with economics. I don’t know, I have never — It’s a question I have never thought about,” responds Rep. Buchy. “It’s a question I have never thought about.”

Bunch wants to make abortion ILLEGAL -- HAS NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT WHY WOMEN HAVE ABORTIONS. How can you even think about writing legislation to address what you see as a social ill WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT WHY IT HAPPENS? Why would you do that -- EVER? "I want to outlaw homeless people. Not going to think about why they're homeless." THIS IS NOT SOMEONE YOU WANT WRITING ANY KIND OF LAWS, PEOPLE.

 To quote Taylor Swift's new single: Like, EVER. FN3.

And while we're talking about why you should avoid electing knee-jerk, reactionary lawmakers who don't know their legislative business from a hole in the ground, let's talk about this AMAZING piece of law-making fuckery:

~ Life before conception: Arizona anti-abortion law defies science

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed her name to a controversial bill on Thursday, authorizing the state to outlaw abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

According to the legislation, however, the state considers the starting point of the life of a fetus to begin on the first day of the mother’s last menstrual period, essentially establishing life to begin before scientifically possible.

With officials now considering the gestational age of the fetus to begin on the first day of the last period, abortions can actually be banned as early as 18 weeks after conception. Lawmakers insist that complications can occur for both the mother and child if abortions are administered later than that, but the bulk of the controversy coming from Brewer’ signing isn’t about the medical consequences. Understandably, many are mad about the government getting involved between the legs and love life of everyone in Arizona.

The law “disregards women’s health in a way I’ve never seen before,” the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Jordan Goldberg explains in protest. “The women of Arizona can’t access medical treatment that other women can.”

THAT'S RIGHT, LADIES. Arizona's legislature, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to start its regulatory clock on your uterus EVERY TIME YOU START BLEEDING, just, you know, in case you might have some baby potential up in there. Even though, you know, while you're menstruating, YOU ARE NOT PREGNANT because that's your body shedding it's baby-making endometrial lining. And yes, I know last menstrual cycle is the date used by doctors to determine fetal age. THAT DOES NOT MEAN WE SHOULD USE IT AS A REGULATORY MEASURE, particularly when it raises issues regarding forms of birth control pill (BCP) for non-pregnant women.

What issues? Okay, off the top of my head, in less than five minutes, I have the following questions:

(1) If you're on a BCP that shortens your cycle, if you keep taking that BCP because, hey, you didn't know you were pregnant, are you now guilty of attempted abortion? If you accidentally cause yourself a miscarriage and medical complications arise such that this is discovered when you seek medical care, while you be in violation of the law? What happens to you? Will you be charged?

(2) If you're on a multi-cycle suppressing birth control (i.e. Seasonale, Jolessa, Quasense, etc.), are you violating the law by merely taking the BCP since you're eliminating some of your cycles, or do you just get a free pass since you bleed less?

(3) re: #2 - Same questions go for the depo-provera shot.

(4) If you don't technically have a cycle because you don't have a lot of lining to shed for a BCP- or medical condition-related reason (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, anyone?), but you somehow manage to get pregnant, do you now get a free pass? If there's no blood, does the clock never start on your 20 weeks, or can you just have an abortion whenever?

(5) Alternately what if, thanks to a medical condition and/or your body's interactions with BCP, you  just continually spot. If you never stop bleeding, does the clock never begin?

I cannot stress enough how poorly written laws have unintended ramifications, and how important it is that lawmakers take the time to educate themselves about all the possible interpretations and applications of the laws they write. And lest you think this problem is limited to Arizona, let me take this moment to lead you to this Ms. Magazine piece on how six other states have crazy 20-week bans that have even murkier definitions of when the anti-choice clock begins to tick tock on your reproductive freedoms.

So why are anti-choicers so stuck on using this inaccurate term “postfertilization” in their lawmaking, despite the fact it undermines medicine? Dr. Gunter thinks that not only have they failed to hire medical professionals to vet the bills, but also that they “got so wrapped up in life at fertilization that they needed to state it.”

It’s indicative of the dangerous, anti-abortion extremist mindset: Reiterating the terms “fertilization” and “postfertilization” and “probable fertilization age” emphasize the fetus while further removing the woman from the law. Acknowledging gestational age, two weeks prior to fertilization, would mean acknowledging that there is someone else involved in an abortion—the woman, whose body has been existing, functioning and preparing for gestation even before the fetus was conceived.

Although there are many things in the Arizona law to rage about, the correct medical terminology is not one of them. Dr. Gunter urges all of who are pro-choice to also be pro-facts: “Those of us who stand for the facts need to be clear about what the laws say, even if the lawmakers themselves don’t know.”

You got that, folks? We can't expect the people who write our laws to understand WHAT THOSE LAWS EVEN MEAN, to think about why they're writing these laws or the impact the made-up non-words they use have on the people (and here I mean WOMEN) who will be subject to their legislation or even why a woman would have an abortion. NOPE. That is just too much to ask. Gotta be on us to EXPLAIN what, precisely, is wrong with those laws.

Oh, and when you do? Expect to get called a baby-hating murderer. Happens to me all the time.

I'd love to tell you that a basic human biology class could fix this problem for people like, say, Todd Akin, who think women's vaginas have magical anti-rape baby powers, but these laws tend to be written by people who refuse to accept basic scientific theories like evolution, so I don't have a lot of hope.

And lest you think Todd Akin's (R) campaign was dead in the water, he received a major endorsement from the Missouri Farm Bureau today so Mr. "I Cannot Even Bring Myself To Say the Word Vagina But Think I Should Get To Regulate Them" isn't out yet.

And Todd Akin isn't even the craziest among them. And instead of getting laughed out of public life for-EV-ER as they so richly deserve, they just keep on trucking. One of them went on to run Arkansas's state Health Department. Thanks Mike Huckabee (R)!

~ Okay, last but not least, and this is mostly to add some levity to this post, I need to talk to you for a minute or four about this whole 'trampire' business.

As I'm sure you all have heard by now: Kristen Stewart was caught on film getting smoochy with her Snow White and the Huntsman director, Rupert Sanders, who is a 40-something married man with two kids. She even made a public apology affirming the affair.

Some people are really disproportionally upset about this. (Thanks, Will Ferrell, for your hilarious critique of the overreaction. FN4.)


Now FIRST: let me say this -- THIS IS NONE OF MY DAMN BUSINESS. Seriously. It's not yours, either. As far as I can tell, the only people who need to deal with the betrayal these illicit smooches represent are, in no particular order: Kristen Stewart, Rob Pattinson, Rupert Sanders, his wife, his two kids. That's it. That's all.

This really does not involve ANYONE ELSE.

The only reason I am talking about it because (1) I promised Thu I would and (2) I feel the need to say the following:

1. Thank GOD no one was following me around at 22, taking photos of all my worst decisions, and printing them in national publications. Because oh, holy vestal virgin, KStew would look like a damned saint next to my stupid ass. (Okay, not really. But you know, close enough.) In all seriousness, though: did ANYONE make entirely good, noble, and pure decisions at that age? We don't even know what Jesus was doing when he was 22, but I'm willing to be bet we don't want to. My heart has to ache a little for ANYONE who has to deal with that kind of scrutiny.

2. Why is KStew getting all the haterade? Can we stop and talk for a minute about the INSANITY that is the slut-shaming going on here? I think this piece by Nico Lang does a really nice job of outlining the underlying problems with all of the public discourses related to this private disaster.

I don't know that I'll go as far as this piece by Liz Jones, which declares Stewart an "Anti-WAG Superstar" and intimates, "And so I hope Kristen Stewart is self-indulgent rather than self-sacrificing. I hope she sends forbidden texts, and tries to seduce her yoga teacher and makes him drive her to the airport so she can conduct an illicit tryst without taking the Heathrow Express."

But I will say that when all the critique is headed one direction, and that direction is the shoulders of an unmarried 22 y.o. girl rather than the 40-something married father of two who decided to sacrifice all the trust built in a marriage of ten years for an affair, something is terribly wrong with this picture. Stewart is being targeted for being a sexual being, for having her own mind, for playing outside the script roles like Snow White and Bella Swan allow for women.

 Simply by being human and making mistakes in her life choices, Stewart has accidentally engaged in a transgressive act, an act that cuts against the narrow script our society has written for her. And our society, our sexist, misogynistic, women-hating society, absolutely hates women who violate their scripted role.

Women are not meant to be actors, not in idealized fiction, not in the world, and not even in their own lives. When a woman of prominence colors outside the lines, expect people -- men and women -- to freak out. Bella waits; she doesn't go get it on with someone else, no matter how many of us wanted her to. FN5. The real woman behind the provincial Mary Sue fantasy, however, isn't as easily controlled, hemmed in, or limited to only approved audience-tested tropes.

And that, if nothing else, is the greatest piece of public tragedy in this whole 'trampire' fiasco. It isn't that Stewart is being publicly shamed for her choices, though that's pretty terrible in its own right. It is that the world is thunderstruck by her autonomy, and is now taking this opportunity to make sure that Stewart, and any of the fans watching this go down in the public sphere, know their place in it.


So I stand with Kristen Stewart, screw-ups and all. She gets to make a mess of her life, if only because it's her's and that's her right as a flawed but autonomous being. And when people try to shame her for those choices, and send all the criticism in her direction for failing to be the 'Angel of the House' they want all women to be, we need to all get behind women like Kristen Stewart and say to the critics, men and women alike: "HEY! THAT IS NOT OKAY."

Okay.

I think I'm done now.

In the only good feminist news of the day, Amanda Palmer's new album dropped, and it is awesome. Explicit video below.

Also, it's 9/11, so let's take a moment to honor the dead and the living and those who've served, and remember that there are first responders still waiting for benefits and compensation.

_______________________________________
FN1. If he ever admits it is Rhianna, I hope she sues his ass for intentional infliction of emotion distress for monetary damages and a court order compelling him to have the tattoo covered or removed.

FN2. ...and that's only to name a very few and even before I get to all the celebrity athletes...

FN3. I love the video. LOVE IT. I also think Taylor has inadvertently acquired herself a large fan base among the plushophile community. At least, I think it was inadvertent...

FN4. At least, I hope that's what you were doing.

FN5. Seriously, check out the video. The Hindi girls are epic.

VAWA Reauthorization: A Personal Plea for Action

As some of you know, I spent my 2L summer and 3L year of law school clerking for the local DA's office. Nine months of that life-changing, soul affirming year were spent prosecuting domestic violence offenders. I could tell you one hundred terrible stories from my time there, but for every bad story I have two stories that made me feel better about the world I lived in. It is not an exaggeration to say that the attorneys I clerked with were some of the most passionate and hardworking people I have ever known. They truly worked to give a voice to the voiceless to empower victims of domestic violence of all stripes, to take control of their lives and their safety, to harness a network of resources to lead survivors to a better future.

Some of those attorney's positions were funded (in part) by VAWA (Violence Against Women Act), a federal funding program that provides $1.6 billion to enhance investigation and prosecution of violent crimes perpetrated against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave unprosecuted.

VAWA funds a tremendous amount of good in local communities. It helps ensure individuals fleeing domestic violence can find shelters, food, clothing, job training and support, safety planning and more. It helps fund programs to train police officers and to staff special positions for DV investigators and prosecutors within cash-strapped departments so 'minor' incidents, like protective order violations, are follow-up on and prosecuted before they develop into greater tragedies. FN1. Through VAWA, survivors can get access to:

~ Community violence prevention programs
~ Protections for victims who are evicted from their homes because of events related to domestic violence or stalking
~ Funding for victim assistance services, like rape crisis centers and hotlines
~ Programs to meet the needs of immigrant women and women of different races or ethnicities
~ Programs and services for victims with disabilities
~ Legal aid for survivors of violence

FN2. VAWA helps women change the locks on their doors, buy a bus ticket to a family member who might provide them shelter in another state, gives them a hand to hold during a SAFE kit examination following a sexual assault. FN3. It provides funding for programs that allow for the safe exchange of children and supervised visitation. FN4.

VAWA, despite its name, does not only serve women. It provides funding for positions that assist elder abuse victims receive assistance and protection. FN5. It assists those with disabilities, who face special difficulties in reporting but also with safety planning and prosecution. FN6. It helps same-sex survivors get the protection they need, rather than have incidents of intimate violence written off as simple assaults. FN7. It provides appropriate counseling and other resources for additional vulnerable populations, like immigrants and non-native speakers. FN8. FN9. The current bill also seeks to extend those protections to Tribal communities, which are in desperate need of resources and education on issues of intimate violence. FN10. FN11.

Is VAWA expensive? Not in comparison to the money it saves. A 2002 study found that VAWA saved an estimated $12.6 billion in net averted social costs in its first six years alone. FN12. Even small investments in VAWA have been shown to make a difference on the ground. FN13.

VAWA was initially drafted by then-Senator Joesph Biden in 1994. At the time it was called "the greatest breakthrough in civil rights for women in nearly two decades." It has been reauthorized several times, and each time there has been mounting opposition. This latest reauthorization comes at a time when women's autonomy is under attack in a number of ways, and this one is critical to the lives and safety of literally thousands of women, men, and children.

Today, I am a strong, proud and successful woman, but back in 1994, when VAWA was first created, I was a scared sixteen year old girl whose life was threatened on a daily basis. I reached out over and over for help -- for me, my younger brother, my two elderly and disabled grandparents. There were four victims in our house, two women and two men, two young and two old, two disabled. We all needed help, every last one of us, and we were all captives to violence and silence. It is not an exaggeration to say that there were days that I literally begged for my life, for all our lives. I came out of that circumstance with a dim view of government, of whether anyone could have helped me.

Working in the DA's office in the Domestic Violence unit showed me that there are people who spend every day of their lives trying to protect and save people like me. It healed something in me that I didn't realize was broken. It gave me solace. It gave me hope. I believed that, in another time and place, someone might have helped me, could have helped me, if only the could have reached me.  VAWA helps people like the men and women I worked with reach people in need, people like I once was. I am eternally grateful to the wonderful men and women who do that work, and I pray every day for their continuing strength and their success.

VAWA is not a "boondoggle" or "feminist slush fund." It provides critical funding for services desperately needed by survivors. Please call, write, email, text, whatever works for you. Please, contact your Senators and ask them to support VAWA.

I am asking you, today, please, take five minutes of your time, and help those advocates, prosecutors, police officers, counselors, and survivors. Please. I implore you. Especially, if you feel your representative is against VAWA reauthorization and funding. Let them know you care about VAWA, you are watching their votes, and that you will take it into consideration the next time your current Senator is running for office. If your Senator is supporting VAWA, also please take the time to thank them. They need all the thanks they can get, and reassurance in this tense time that they are on the right track.

VAWA could go to the Senator floor for a vote as early as next week. Time is of the essence.  Please act now! You can find out more how to contact your Senators here.

You could be saving the life of someone like me.

Thank you.

__________________________________
FN1. Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies and Enforcement of Protection Orders.

FN2. Violence Against Women Act, Wikipedia, [Viewed March 15 2012].

FN3. Sexual Assault Services Program (SAPS).

FN4. Safe Havens.

FN5. Enhanced Training and Services to End Violence and Abuse of Women Later in Life Program. This funding stream expressly states "individuals who are 50 years of age or older" and does not address sex or gender of the abused.

FN6. Education, Training and Enhanced Services to End Violence Against and Abuse of Women with Disabilities

FN7. "Let me put this on the table," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "This bill includes lesbians and gay men. The bill includes undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic abuse. The bill gives Native American tribes authority to prosecute crimes. In my view these are improvements. Domestic violence is domestic violence." Ted Barrett, Accusations fly in Senate over Violence Against Women Act, CNN.com [Viewed March 15 2012].

FN8. Legal Assistance for Victims Grant Program.

FN9. Culturally and Linguistically Specific Services for Victims Program.

FN10. Grants to Tribal Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Coalitions, is only one of several VAWA grant funding streams.

FN11. "One of the provisions in the act would allow tribes to prosecute offenders who are not Native American or Alaska Native when their victims are and the violence happens on a reservation." Tribes seek support for VAWA act, The Jamestown Sun, [Viewed March 15 2012].

FN12. Clark, K. A, Biddle, A., & Martin, S. (2002). A cost-benefit analysis of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. Violence Against Women, 8(4), 417-428.

FN13. Boba, R., & Lilley, D. (2008). Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) funding: A nationwide assessment of effects on rape and assault (No. NCJRS 225748). Violence Against Women, 15(2), 168-185.