I experienced injustices not with anger and disgust, but with tears. This semester was the first time I remember saying, out loud, “I am a feminist.” Despite believing all the same things I knew feminists did, I didn’t feel like I identified with the way feminists I knew enacted their feminism. I always felt guilt and shame about not being able to verbally identify as a feminist. But I have one hand reaching back to my grandma and one hand reaching forward to my daughter. To quote her, because her words couldn’t be more true to my heart, “I am just trying-trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.” I still don’t know if I’m trying to make some noise. Roxane Gay tells me to embrace it because I am a human. I always had the idea that I would make a bad feminist. Now I know that feminism can also be one head reaching back and one hand reaching forward. I always had the idea of feminism as a raised fist and I was not the raised fist kind of girl. I always felt for some reason that I would make a bad feminist. And every person has a right to control their own body. The first time I learned about her story was listening to her interview on Tim Ferris's podcast, in 2019 or so.Ībortion rights matter to victims of rape and incest. She just seemed like a nice, pretty, cheerful girl. I thought of her as a friend, and still do, even though we've barely talked over the past 35+ years.Īnd I had no idea the nightmare she was living with at home. And the trajectory of my life, too, would have been further altered.ĭebbie Millman and I grew up in the same town, we're the same age, we went to the same schools, and had classes together. The trauma I endured would have only been compounded by a forced pregnancy. But a 12-year-old is not equipped for childbirth or parenthood. If I had been pregnant, I don’t know what I would have done. I worried I would not know who the father was. And still, in the weeks and months after, of course I worried I was pregnant.
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I have told the story and am tired of telling it, and the story is not the point. I was sexually assaulted by several young men when I was 12. It is unfathomable to consider how a forced pregnancy would have further altered the trajectory of her life. She is still dealing with the repercussions of that trauma. A pregnancy would have, in Debbie’s words, ruined her life. Her mother took Debbie to a doctor, who said that because of her scar tissue, she was sexually active and must have a boyfriend. Her stepfather often threatened to kill her younger brother and her mother if Debbie told anyone, so when the fear of pregnancy became too consuming, she told her mother she was assaulted at school.
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She had no one to talk to and nowhere to turn. The abuse went on for years, and as Debbie got older, she was constantly terrified that she was pregnant. My wife’s stepfather began raping her when she was 11 years old. This essay about abortion rights by feminist writer Roxane Gay is particularly powerful for me, personally, because I know Gay's wife.