Stop It.

If you have any form of social media, then you have most likely recently come across a picture that looks something like this: there's a photograph of an conventionally unattractive woman (i.e overweight, bad skin, all of that fun unattainable beauty standard stuff) along with the caption along the lines of "Have you seen Adam/Joe/Etc? He said he would meet me here." Facebook users then share these photos with their friends of the mentioned name to embarrass them. For Example:

This is a real one. By the way, the woman in this photograph deals with an agonizing disorder that doesn't allow her body to store fat and stole the vision in one eye. So yeah. Hilarious.

Everyone gets a good laugh and it's harmless, right?

Well, actually, no.

This trend is cruel and incredibly offensive and damaging. Take it from someone who knows.
I don't just identify with the type of girl in these memes.

I was that girl.

I was that girl who had boys come up to her in middle school on dares and falsely ask me to be their friend's girlfriend as a humiliation tactic. I was that girl who was repeatedly told, both directly and through actions of others, that the very thought of being romantic with her was horrifying and unimaginable. As if my own preteen girl's inner voice wasn't mean enough to me, I had outside sources confirming its hateful words. It happened more than once, and each time it ate at me, leaving deep scars that ached quietly at all times, and that still reopen to hurt me often. These are painful wounds that I don't think will ever close, and that I'll have to fight my whole life to conquer.

I would put on a brave face when it happened, and I remember writing a Facebook status about it, stating how I was too good for them anyway, but I didn't believe it. When I looked in the mirror, I saw what they had taught me to see: An ugly, unloveable girl of no worth. They are an enormous part of the reason that I have never been able to tell anyone that I'm interested in them, because all I hear in the grating, crushing laughter of those boys from so long ago.

And while I thankfully wasn't made into one of the memes,  I have experienced exactly the same mysogonistic, damaging sentiment.  I don't tell this story to elicit sympathy or to gain attention. In fact, I still carry shame from it and I'm intensely uncomfortable talking about it. But I feel that it's important to share to help people look deeper at what they post. To those of you who keep sharing these memes, I respond with the words of the brilliant Dieter F. Uchtdorf: Stop it.

Stop yourself the next time you see one of these pictures, even if it has the perfect name on it of your friend/son/cousin/whatever. Stop and think about the person whose image is being stolen and held against them. Think about the girl on your friends list who might scroll past it and see herself in the meme, and realize that so many people think girls like her are unlovable. That she's unloveable. Think about any time anyone had made you feel less-than, and decide if you want to be the kind of person who makes others experience that.

Every time one of these memes is shared, that culture of shame and hatred is perpetuated further and further. Is this a world you want your daughters growing up in? Or your sons, for that matter? Nothing healthy can grow in such a toxic mindset.

Please help stop it.

An Open Letter To My Dog's Previous Family

To My Dog's Previous Family:


I don't know anything about you.

I don't know where you live, what your name is, what kind of car you drive. I don't even know what language you speak. You don't know anything about me, either. Chances are you'll never see this, chances are you'll never know I ever wrote it, but I feel to need to write it anyway. Because the thing that links us together is one of my very favorite things in the entire world.

We named her Sydney. I don't know what your name for her is, and I wonder about that a lot. I wonder what toys she loved at your house, and whether you knew about her weird affinity for playing with towels or how much she enjoys eating squash and cucumbers. I wonder what she was like as a puppy, and I want to see what she looked like then. I can only imagine that she was heinously cute.

s

Sydney's haircut when we found her. This is how you probably remember her.

The one thing I don't ever have to guess about her life before us is the fact that you loved her. I found her in 2014, joyfully rolling around in the leaves on a patch of greenery and trees heart-stoppingly near a freeway entrance. She was trusting of people, as though it would never enter into her mind that someone would hurt her, as I believe your kindness taught her to be. Her thick husky fur had been lovingly cut, probably to keep her cool under the July sun, and she was wearing a sturdy black collar, signs of a family who cared for her and wanted people to know she had a home. But that collar had no tags to lead us to where that home might be. My family and I tried everything to find you, from Facebook posts to physical signs to putting her description in the "Lost Dog" section of the local newspapers. Eventually, we gave her to the SPCA, in hopes you would look for her there, with instructions to call us if she had reached the deadline of her stay and would have to be put to sleep.

She lived there for two weeks before we got the call.  There wasn't a question about picking her up, but there was an uncertainty about keeping her. At the time, I liked her a lot. I thought she was pretty, smart, patient, and sweet, but just previously to finding her,  I had been promised to opportunity to pick out my own dog for the first time in my life, and keeping her would mean giving up that chance. And on top of that admittedly selfish hurdle, she was somebody else's dog. She was your dog. You had raised her, fed her, trained her, loved her for the first two years of her life. She was not mine.

But when we walked into the SPCA to sign the adoption papers that would authorize us to take her home something happened that changed that. I hadn't seen her for two weeks, and I'd assumed she'd forgotten about me. Still, I asked to see her, and they opened the door to the where the dogs lived. She was in the one of the first kennels in my line of vision, and her head was resting on her paws, a bored, lonely expression on her face. But then she looked up, and she saw me standing there, and she knew me instantly. She got up to her feet, dancing in the way she does when she's excited, beside herself with joy, looking at me with that intense, pure love that only a dog can give. And from that moment on, she had me. I'm obsessed with my Sydney girl. We had to leave her there because she was scheduled to be fixed (although they discovered, upon shaving her belly and finding a surgical scar, that you had already gotten that done, yet another piece of evidence about your responsible and loving dog ownership.) That extra week without her was tortuous. But we eventually were able to bring her home, and she's been one of us ever since.

I don't tell you this to cause you pain, if you ever see this. I want it to be clear that my intention is not to rub it in that she lives with my family now. I do want you to know, more than anything, that she is loved. She's safe, fed, and she has two small-dog siblings that adore her to the point of driving her crazy. She wears a pink collar now, but we keep that black one with us, tucked away safely. I love to dress her up on holidays, and she bears it patiently, like the good girl she is.

Halloween 2015.

One of my personal favorites. We printed it out, and now use it as a Christmas decoration.

She makes me happy when I'm sad, and she's helped me through some difficult, stressful times in my life. I love her so much it's stupid. When I go away on trips, I ask whoever is housesitting to send me pictures of her. And as I'm preparing to move out of my family home, the thought of being so far away from my dog makes my heart break, even though I know she has more than enough love to go around with my family members who will stay with her.

She loves car rides.

In the end,  there are countless questions I could ask you if I could, endless things I would love to be able to tell you, if I ever met you. But the biggest thing I would want to say, besides letting you know that she's safe and happy, is to tell you thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to have this sweet puppy in my life. Thank you for taking care of her when she was yours.

I promise to take care of her while she's mine.

Poem: On the Prospect of Being a Woman in Donald Trump's America

Note: In the wake of Donald Trump's most recent slew of disgusting comments towards women, and in the defenses I have seen made over them, I wrote this poem. The items in italics are actual quotes from the mouth of the actual republican candidate in this election. Keep that in mind.

On The Prospect of Being A Woman in Donald Trump's America

I am a woman, and I am not beautiful.

“I really understand beauty.”

Some of you who hear me say this may disagree,

Possibly because you are literally my mother,

Or you maybe happen to find my personal brand of appearance

Attractive, or perhaps you wish that I could love myself

And find beauty elsewhere in my being other than

The surface of my skin.

“You know, it doesn’t really matter what the media writes about you as long as you have a young and beautiful piece of ass on your arm”

None of you are wrong, as beauty lies in the

Eye of the beholder, but in the gaze of the public,

Under the checklist on the rubric of

American beauty standards,

I am not beautiful.

“My women are the most beautiful.”

I wish it didn’t matter.

Sometimes I am brave enough to think we may be

Nearing the time where not only is beauty allowed to be

Diverse and not formed in a certain plastic mold,

but in the image of Humanity herself.

And then I turn on the television.

I open a newspaper.

I peer into social media.

And there he is.

“I do own Miss Universe, I do own Miss U.S.A.”

His wide wrinkled lips spread open,

His harsh grating, uncouth voice spilling out,

His words a million straight-razors loosing the cages

Of the animals who have waited for him,

As his vitriol oils the rusted vocal cords of like-minded

Scum who suddenly feel emboldened enough

To crawl out of their shadowy, damp caves

And spit on, beat, verbally abuse, urinate on, rape

Those they have hated quietly for so long.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it.”

I am white.

I am Christian, able-bodied,

Straight,cisgender, from a suburban family. And still, even I, nearly the picture of privilege,

l have reason to be frozen with fear at the prospect of

Eight years, eight horrific, frightening years,

At the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency.

“I’ve had a beautiful campaign.”

Because I am a woman, and all of us

Who happen to be female have every reason to want to

Purchase pepper spray, and hold our keys between

White-knuckled fingers crossing dark parking lots alone,

Especially with that man so dangerously close to

Sitting, smug and orange, in the oval office.

“This is nothing more than a distraction.”

Those of us who are perceived as beautiful risk being reduced,

At the blatant example of the potential President of the United States,

To their body parts, laid out like a buffet for the hungry eyes

And the reaching, greedy fingers of lecherous men.

Because, after all, isn’t it only natural?

“26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men and women together?”

And those of us who are not seen as sexually desirable

Will be crushed under heels of dress shoes and work boots alike,

In the company of drugstore brand cigarette butts,

Because our faces and bodies do not please them,

Hushed up because no one likes to look at us,

So nothing we say, feel, need matters.

“This was locker room banter.”

And our country’s daughters who deserve respect and equality,

Will look into the reflective glass of Donald Trump’s empty eyes,

And begin to watch their reflections warp until they are nothing more

Than whatever inconsequential pieces of them are left after his pet buzzards,

lovingly named Misogyny and Chauvinism pick over them,

Reducing them, these precious young women of incalculable value,

To quiet piles of

Bone and

ash and

Dust.

“We’re only getting started, and it’s going to be beautiful.”

"We're only getting started."

Stop Calling Him The Stanford Swimmer.

It is September 2nd, 2016. It's a Friday. My library books are due today. The weather outside my house is warm and sunny.

And today, Brock Turner, a convicted rapist of an unconscious woman has waltzed out of prison a free man after spending only three months behind bars. Three months ago, the world was in an uproar after Judge Aaron Persky, "concerned about the effect that prison would have on Turner", sentenced the rapist to only six months in prison.

And now, due to good behavior, that sentence has been sliced in half. Time, it seems, is something the media has continued to associate with Turner, as if it could shed favorable light on him. Multiple newspapers printed his exceptional swim times in articles about the brutal rape he committed. His father lamented in a letter to the judge about the time his son wouldn't be able to enjoy the simple things in life, like steak, his boy's favorite food, because of, and I quote him here,"twenty minutes of action."

Yes, you read that right. Mr. Turner referred to a rape, perpetrated by his own son, as "twenty minutes of action."  If you need to go vomit, this post will be here when you return. It's okay.

This entire case was bizarrely and disgustingly focused on Brock's well-being, and his precious swim career was hanging in jeopardy. In that same letter, his father spoke about how Turner would never be the same after this trial, as if his son's victim bounced right back after waking up to her body brutalized and violated, pine needles shoved into her hair and her body, listening in a lengthy trial about how her rape was her fault because she had been drinking. Having to sit in the same room as her rapist and listen to details about his swim career, about how it wasn't a problem what he did, about how raping a person was as small of a mistake as tugging on a girl's pigtails.  This strong woman gave an incredible speech at the close of the trial, addressing how, in spite of physical evidence and eye-witnesses, it was his word against hers, and how, due to the disgusting rape culture we live in, his was widely accepted over hers. Here's a link to a transcription of that speech. Warning: it's slightly graphic, as she does not shy away from letting her audience know what horrors she suffered, post-rape included as she endured invasive testing to gather proof against her rapist. (https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.jyAeO0qjR#.coW3BagqR.)

As if the two Swedish visitors who found Turner on top of his unresponsive victim, who chased him off, and were brought to tears telling police what they had witnessed, will be fine and forget this horrific memory in a little while. Because, after all, it was just twenty minutes of action, right?

And today, after he has been convicted, after all of the uproar about his sentencing, as it is trending on Facebook today that he has been released early, the headline on that site refers to Brock Turner not as "Convicted Rapist", but as "Stanford Swimmer."

I have heard him addressed in this ridiculous, asinine way on multiple platforms. Not only does it focus on an aspect of Turner that is completely irrelevant to this issue, but it is a thinly veiled attempt to draw focus on his athletic career, as if that alone with exonerate him from his actions. As I've just been extremely troubled to find out as I was looking for Brock Turner's mug shot, when you google his name, the dropdown selection of suggestions to pair up with it is deeply unsettling, to say the least. Remember that these come from what is googled about Turner most often.

Not once, not once on the ten most googled phrases about Brock Turner is the word Rapist attached to his name. But the number one suggestion? Swimming.

This is a huge issue, huge in the protection of our women, on college campuses or walking alone on the street or generally existing. Nowhere is safe for us, and the blame of what may happen to us is always ours to bear. So often are rape cases thrown out because of insufficient evidence, and here we have a case laden with irrefutable proof, and still it is "debatable" because there was alcohol in her system, because apparently, being unconscious equals giving consent somehow in the twisted brains behind Turner's ludicrous sentencing. And because, somehow, being an athlete means you are incapable of any wrongdoing. We need to stop blaming the victims of rape, and stop putting the magnifying glass on them, and put it on their attackers.

It is my fondest wish that Brock Turner will somehow pay for what he did, that his victim will somehow receive her justice. But a person cannot be unraped, and a trial cannot be redone under the United States Bill of Rights.

What I suggest we, as a society who is tired of living in this rape culture, do about this particular case, about the case of the "Stanford Swimmer", is to eradicate that phrase from our vocabulary concerning him. We focus on what's important. We focus on what is vital history remembers about this man.

His name is Brock Turner.

And he is a rapist.