Hell, is a house on a quiet street

In response to Hayley’s piece from yesterday, the question about how the three young women who were prisoners in a Cleveland home for a decade, go on, I have no answers. I’m sure that balloons and stuffed animals are not going to make things right.  I work with young women and grown women and young men and grown men, processing the assaults that are part of daily living; parking tickets, divorces, failures, disappointing tax returns and diseases. For most of us, these events offer challenge enough. For some of us, these are enough to mandate Xanax. Forever.

In an NBC news piece, discussing how the girls will recover, offered a bit of hope:

As many as half of kidnapping victims experience PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, and about 30 percent suffered from major depression after their ordeals, according to one recent study…If they were psychologically healthy at the time they were abducted, they’ll likely come through OK, but with some common issues, said Herbert Nieburg, an assistant professor of law and justice at Mitchell College in New London, Conn. He specializes in trauma and PTSD and has been an FBI hostage negotiator.

We talk a lot about resiliency when we work with children. They’re rather known for their resilience. This is a good thing because they’ve got an abundance of it for when they are not in charge and adults are. Kids recover and find their hope boats quicker than adults.  Good news if you’ve ever had a shitty parenting day and if you haven’t, you will, so take heart, resiliency lives inside your child!

The women were taken captive when they were still young, still children. Maybe they have some trace resilience…they certainly have a lot of catching up to do, frozen in time as they’ve been, lost years when they would have been growing and learning and maturing. What will wandering around the world you last participated in a child be like, for these young women? Terrifying, confusing, daunting, all of these and more?

The women in the basement of the Cleveland Sadist, and later on the second floor, and once in the back yard and often back to the basement to be collard and chained, became dehumanized. How will they begin to recognize themselves as people with wants and needs and boundaries when those tenants of being human were taken away?

There is a lot of help in the therapy-world for trauma recovery. The people who do that work, sit with survivors and witness their stories, do incredibly important work. They hold the terror for the survivor and magically ( or so it seems to me)  find ways to unpack the heinous details, item by item,  piece by piece and throw them away.

So, there are clinicians who can help these young women.  These young women do not live in a wealthy community (a fact rarely mentioned in the coverage – perhaps it affected the way these women were searched for, or not). They may face challenges getting access to good care. I know it seems as though that’s impossible,  balloons and funds enough to celebrate forever.  But after the balloons have deflated and the stuffed animals have withstood some rain, their fur matted, well, that’s when things will get real. Cameras gone and ten years still lost and at least three suitcases of agony to unpack and throw away.

(Image: www.CNN.Com)

I can’t take my mind off them. Of the details that continue to emerge. Today on Jezebel sources said there’s a reason we’ve only seen photos of Amanda Berry and haven’t seen photos of Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus. Apparently Amanda Berry was treated differently–special, oh, so special, that lucky girl–than the other girls who were left in the basement with dog collars and chains for long periods of time, so long that they developed bed sores. That DeJesus has trouble moving her head because of being locked up for extended periods of time.

We all look to Elizabeth Smart or Jaycee Dugard as hopeful victim recovery stories, but Smart and Dugard had different situations, say experts. Their monsters “valued” their captors in some way. Reports the Christian Science Monitor:

This has echoes of prisoners of war, says David Reiss, a psychiatrist in San Diego who specializes in working with trauma victims.

In a prisoner of war camp, “there is much more sense of having no control at all, the future being totally uncertain,” he says.

Yet even that situation provides at least the hope that an endgame is possible, which apparently was not the case in Cleveland, with sources suggesting that Knight and Gina DeJesus – the third captive – had become resigned to their fate.

So what will they do to overcome this? How do you live after this? With a treasure chest full of Xanax and sleeping pills? With daily therapy? It’s an ongoing process, of course, but where do you begin? From the beginning, I guess.  The first step, say experts, is overcoming the hopelessness that they experienced while captives. And coping with the post-traumatic stress disorder that will inevitably come up throughout their lives.

And what about their families? I’m guessing that for at least Gina DeJesus, who was 14 when taken, will revert back to that age to some extent–if she can. (If she’ll let her mother hold her?) Amanda Berry has her daughter to live for. But Michelle Knight. I can’t take my mind off of her. I know many of us can’t.

The Cleveland Courage Fund of the Cleveland Foundation was established by Cleveland council members. 100 percent of the funds will go to the victims.

(Image: CSMonitor/David Duprey/AP)

Jeffrey Krusinski, the air force officer who was assigned to protect no one except himself.

26,000 attempts of sexual assault occurred in the military this year, says a new report released by the Pentagon yesterday. Worse, the leader of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit (yes, you read that right), Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, has been charged with “misdemeanor sexual battery” by the Arlington County police. His face looks bruised and battered because his victim, a woman he assaulted in a parking lot–he literally grabbed her breasts and ass while he was wasted–fought back.

“The bottom line is, I have no tolerance for this,” Obama told reporters. “If we find out somebody’s engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable, prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged — period.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, is blocking the promotion of one of the Air Force’s top female generals after it was discovered that the officer, Lt. Gen. Susan J. Helms, overturned the conviction of a captain found guilty of sexual assault. I’m shaking my head as I read this, and reread this, because really, this concept takes a few minutes to digest.

A top female general overturned the conviction of a captain found guilty of sexual assault.

Who are these people protecting? Other men? Themselves? Certainly not the general public of women in the military. Only 54% of women report sexual assault. And who can blame them after this kind of response to sexual assault, and this, this and, right, remember this? Said Sen. McCaskill to the Washington Post:

“That is the crux of the problem here, because if a victim does not believe that the system is capable of believing her, there’s no point in risking your entire career.”

To start, the military needs to change the code so generals cannot reverse a court martial on someone who has been proven guilt of sexual assault by a jury.  As it stands, generals are allowed to overturn a jury’s conviction for any reason at all. If a general can reverse punishment–yes, even jail time–so that the man can then return to his military unit, why would a woman speak up if she’s been sexually harassed?

The system that is in place doesn’t protect military personnel from each other.

It only protects the men.

NRA”s LaPierre

LaPierre made a speech this weekend, (5/4/13) , where he asked, though I suspect rhetorically, as in how could anyone not wish for a gun after the events of the Boston Marathon, how many Bostonians wished they’d had a gun two weeks ago? I for one, did not wish for a gun. I haven’t spoken with anyone who did. But LaPierre, he thought we must have all been wishing we packed heat. How would having a gun, have made the waiting easier or better or more secure?  Would people have hidden behind living room drapes, guns cocked and ready? Would there have been vigilante patrols prowling through the blockaded streets? I tried to imagine a situation where having a gun would have made that week seem easier. I could not think of a single instance. Not unless guns have the power to heal grief, the power to regenerate lost limbs, pluck shrapnel from the chests and legs of victims.  No, Bostonians wished for a more peaceful world, not firearms. They prayed for a world with fewer guns. They imagined a world where online cupcake recipes outnumbered directions for how to build your own bomb.

(Image: USAToday )

I’ve spent the past two days googling Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie, who play Jon Snow and Ygritte on Game of Thrones. (No, I have not told my husband this.) Call their sex scene Harlequin Romance, goofy for the “You no nothing, Jon Snow-oh-OH!” but the chemistry between the two actors is undeniable.

If you’re a gossip hoarder like me, you will have noticed this photo below of Kit and Rose holding hands in a cafe–and then it all makes sense as to why this sex scene which has been building for some time, was such a hit for so many of us. Sure you can say that it’s symbolic–Jon Snow and Ygritte are two people who actually like each other on the show. Their relationship grew out of a violent capture. She eggs him on sexually and chides him for being a virgin. Their relationship is an oasis in a show that embraces the gruesome side of humanity. Rape, beheading, men named The Hound burned by fire as a child, princesses with scales locked in a dungeon. Every episode is a suicide watch.

But when you look at this photo, you realize that maybe the other reason we’re all so drawn towards them is because the actors themselves are actually falling in love on the show. Their sexual chemistry is hawt–it’s real. And I don’t know what kind of black heart you have, but I’m drawn to stories about true love. And that kind of adorableness makes a cave that one would think be populated by all sorts of freezing cold Wildlings, but isn’t, seem plausible.

Rose Leslie and Kit Harrington. Awwwh.

Here’s my conversation with my husband during the hottest sex scene in Game of Thrones last night where we finally get to see Jon Snow deliver the lord’s kiss. I’d also like to say that The Hairpin should revise their Game Of Thrones Men By Hotness list because ranking Jon snow at #17 just makes no sense, people.

ME: Oh, lord, Ygritte is taking him into the cave.

ANDY: Yep.

ME: How come no one else knows about this cave?

ANDY: Good question.

ME: Is this like the make out cave?

ANDY: Yes, it’s the make out cave.

ME: Oh, my god, Ygritte is so skinny. I have to stop eating after 7pm.

ANDY: [Says nothing.]

ME: Is this the whole “lord’s kiss” thing?

ANDY: It appears to be the “lord’s kiss.”

ME: So no one else comes into this cave for sex? With the hot tub, waterfall and everything?

ANDY: Maybe no one else knows about the cave.

ME: But it’s right in the middle of the Wildlings village or whatever. It’s not they hiked far to get there. You’d think people would be lining up to get into the cave.

ANDY: I just don’t know.

[Hot tub, waterfall, hot kisses]

ME: I love Jon Snow and Ygritte. [pause] She’s going to die isn’t she?

ANDY: [Nothing.]

ME: Jon Snow is so happy and they’re so cute together, look at them, and they’re just going to kill her and make him miserable. Aren’t they?

ANDY: I don’t do spoilers.

(Images: HBO.com and Pink is the New Blog)

It’s that time of year, when the lilacs bloom, the sun shines longer and weddings happen. Weddings are lovely, but it’s really the years after the event that make up the ‘event’. Yesterday, my office hours were spent listening to clients whose lives were either in the middle of divorcing, separating, marrying or waiting to engage. Those four biggies, dominated the conversation.

My parents both remarried quickly after divorcing. My sister has been married for years. My friends, they’re married. Despite the huge rate of divorce, we still marry. We complicate our lives and intertwine our finances, our property, why? So we’re not alone? So we have a person to walk with when the moon is full? To buy saplings to plant and watch grow, over the years together? I never wanted to be married until I wasn’t. My mother’s consolation to anyone wishing they were married? “There are more lonely married people, than unmarried.” She says so with a conviction that defies response. We all know she was married to my father, to argue with her, would be to argue against historical fact.

Ironically, after work yesterday, I saw The Big Wedding. A piece of cinematic schlock that left me weepy.  Often after a day in the office, I want quiet, a break from voices I must respond to. I slipped off to the movies with Raisinets and diet soda, a disgustingly comforting combination, discovered years ago while cheating on Weight Watchers.

The theatre was populated by middle aged women. We were all there for the fantasy, to laugh at the absurdity of Susan Sarandon’s age-defying face and the earnestness with which the young stars portrayed the soon to be betrothed. The main couple, DeNiro and Keaton, divorced for ten years, see each other at the wedding of their son. They are of course, connected because of their children. Cue, tears.

Grief comes at the strangest times. Grieving a divorce is an ongoing process. When one phase has been dealt with, there’s a graduation or a wedding. In the darkened movie theatre, my cackling peers and I grew quiet when the camera panned along the artifacts of the family home, there were no jaded giggles when the divorced parents give the marrying son a gift from the two of them, when the young man cries, there was not a dry eye. Not because the acting was any good, but because the sentiment was. The idea that divorced couples could be civil, a grown child of divorce so comfortable in the presence of both parents and that a child of divorce would dare to marry…

When I admire a friend’s engagement ring, or see wedding parties outside a local church, or my sister tells me about walking with her husband underneath a full moon, I understand something  I didn’t understand when I was inside it, something about being tethered to time and the ‘event’ that is being married.

(Image: longsgarden.com)

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you will know that my header is a photo of Winona Ryder’s character, Veronica, from Heathers. Veronica was my anti-hero in high school. She stood up to the mean girl, the meanest of them all, Heather “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw” Chandler, by accidentally icing her with a concoction of Liquid Draino, orange juice and a phlem-globber.

Veronica’s SAT scores were thisclose to being sent to San Quentin once Heather took a nose dive into her glass coffee table, but in the face of that heinous crime my eyes erupted with heart shapes. I’m not really into killing your enemies (unless it’s Game of Thrones and I’m pretending to be The Khaleesi with a dragon, k?) I don’t go for the death penalty. Or believe in eye for an eye. But an eye for a mean girl? That’s a different scenario. I could subscribe to that–in fantasy, of course.

And though the girl I most identified with was Veronica, the underdog, there was part of me attracted and fascinated by Heather Chandler. Her ability to rally just about anyone for her multiple causes was sheer brilliance. To bully someone into submission. To humiliate her followers and yet seem so utterly in control with infectious words and dry humor. After all, most of the famous quotes from Heathers don’t come from Veronica. They come from Heather Chandler.

“Grow up Heather, bulimia is so ’87.”

“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.”

“Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast? First you ask if you can be red, knowing that I’m always red.”

“God, Veronica. My afterlife is so boring. I have to sing Kumbaya one more time…”

Last Thursday we were blessed with the voice of a new generation of mean girls–one not scripted by a writer, but instead one who is paving her own way through social media and the enchanting world of sorority life. This letter (via Deadspin) written by the now infamous Rebecca Martinson went viral last week giving us insights to sorority life, and more, a window into the mind of a very pissed off mean girl.

For those of you that have your heads stuck under rocks, which apparently is the majority of this chapter, we have been FUCKING UP in terms of night time events and general social interactions with Sigma Nu. I’ve been getting texts on texts about people LITERALLY being so fucking AWKWARD and so fucking BORING. If you’re reading this right now and saying to yourself “But oh em gee [first name redacted], I’ve been having so much fun with my sisters this week!”, then punch yourself in the face right now so that I don’t have to fucking find you on campus to do it myself.

And then we were given the gift of her Twitter feed (which has since been deactivated) with precious gems like this: “Cheers to double penetration.” Outside of her blatant racism and overall disgusting human qualities, she’s the next Louie C.K., right?

Though my reaction should have been What a horrible person, my reaction was Wow, this chick is brills. Just when I thought I was nuts for crushing on her a little bit, my neighbor reinforced all my feelings by announcing “I love her.” It’s sort of like why Parker Posey’s stand out performance in Dazed in Confused made us all want to scream “Air Raid Bitches!” over and over again.

Look, I had my own mean girl! I was bullied, people! This girl singled me out as her favorite, until sometimes I wasn’t. And when I wasn’t, there were rumors. And lies. And aggressive digs. And once she hurt me enough, she’d move onto someone else, someone weaker than me. And yet, her redeeming quality was her humor. Especially when she was tearing someone to shreds. She was funny. Smart. Just like Parker Posey’s character. Like Heather Chandler. Like Nellie Olseon. Like Rebecca Martinson.

I ended my friendship with her long before she could invoke more damage. This came as the biggest surprise–especially to her. I made new friends. I dumped her. Thirty years later I still haven’t forgiven her, isn’t that something? And her? Well, she named her daughter Hayley. Maybe she never got over it either.

It’s possible that our attraction to the mean girl, particularly mean girls like Rebecca Martinson, resembles our attraction to villains and monsters. Yes, as in Darth Vader or The Wicked Witch of the West. I wrote an article years ago about why children (i.e., my child) liked the “bad guy.” Basically what I found was simplistic human behavior: according to studies, kids like monsters/witches/bad guys “superhuman strength and intelligence, not their ability to kill people.” Mean girls get to their position of top dog (though some bullying studies show that top dog comes with a most-hated status as well) because they have something truthful to say… sometimes. As Megan Abbott, author of Dare Me, with one of the cruelest mean girl characters written to date, said to me on Twitter:

“[Mean girls] provide an outlet for our own repressed feelings of anger, rage–they express it so we don’t have to.”

Understanding the mean girl is more of a fascination because we already understand the underdog, the victim. In some ways, we’ve all taken that role. Even the mean girl. It’s why, in some ways, that she’s become victim to her insecurity, her own insistence of needing to hurt others. Because she needs to feel power, or to feel wanted.

Please don’t get me wrong. The purpose isn’t to victimize the mean girl. There’s been too many brutal accounts of mean girls pushing other girls, especially recent rape victims, to suicide. There are five-year-old’s tormenting girls on the playground because they’re not “wearing the right thing.”

Maybe reading sorority girl Rebecca Martinson’s rant is as simple as this: a) We’re not the recipient of it b) we’re adults and c) it’s not happening to our daughters. We can look at it and laugh. It’s not reminiscent of now, only of old stuff that we’re no longer part of. As my friend Robin Fields wrote “Ah the memories,” after I posted the letter on Femamom’s FB page.

Or maybe for some of us, it’s still a reality.

As the Boston Marathon week of questions and grief winds down, the face of the youngest bomber is everywhere. His classmates have been interviewed. They are surprised, taken aback and alarmed that their quiet classmate had slowly been transformed into a foot soldier.

Youthful zealotry, unchecked, is dangerous. Eighteen-year-old’s make great soldiers because they have less fear and more idealism than they will again.

My children, not born into a dismal Chechen village, were not transplanted into a new country and culture. They have the benefits of parents, family and roots. They were not primarily raised by a disgruntled and poorly assimilated older sibling. Yet, they still grapple with what is good and bad and wrong and imperfect in this world. Because they are supposed to, they are young adults.

My children are thinking about their world, their choices. And by so doing, they are engaged in developmentally appropriate tasks. I provide them with endless missteps, things that I do that should be done better. I think of myself as a cautious person. I never snorted coke, I didn’t like being drunk, I go for annual physicals and I don’t intentionally eat butter. I also think of myself as socially conscious. I compost and recycle. My children, while thirty minutes away, Boston was on the verge of lock down, outed me as a rule breaker and a fascist.

Here’s how my comeuppance went down:

“You will lose your arm should the airbag engage.” I am gliding around town, one handed driving, listening to the incessant coverage of the marathon bombing. Town is moving in the aftermath of shock, when nothing really focus’ but life picks up and keeps going. I am thinking bombs and terror, when Sadie tells me that if I had a wedding ring on, like many women wear, my forehead would be gouged when my arm snapped back, air bag, engaged.

“Mom, I didn’t mean the wedding ring thing to be insulting…”

“One handed driving is more dangerous than two?” I make small talk. But all I can think about are the innocent lives taken, friends and families affected.

“Yes, you need  parallel hands, at all times.” Sadie stares at the road while I feel around with my free hand for my chap-stick. The radio lists hospitals where victims of the bombing are being treated.

“What, what are you looking for, you’re like a kid!” Sadie’s bag is packed, her wallet organized. She knows where her chap-stick is. She shakes her head in disapproval. We hear on the radio, that the hospitals were prepared for an act of terror. The doctor being interviewed, had worked in Israel, he had seen bombing victims, many, many times.

Briefly, we stop squabbling and listen.

“Mom, do you know you’re tailgating?” The blue car with the Romney sticker in front of us, is going too slowly.

“I am not.” The radio lists gruesome facts about lower extremity injuries, the shattering of flesh by projectiles.

“You are. You can’t see underneath the car in front of you.”

“That’s the rule?” I don’t like that rule, it also makes sense, as rules can. I’m rushing to Starbucks. I’m rushing away from the news on the radio. I listen for days on end.

Later, Gabe comes in from the car, he’s been running errands and doing very helpful things for me. I am grateful. However, I forgot to clear my Starbucks evidence from the car. I’m watching the news. The sister of the boy from Dorchester, the one whose picture holding a sign about peace, is on the television, his sister has lost her legs. Both of them.

“Mom, you know that driving all that way to get tea is incredibly wasteful.” Gabe hands me my Starbucks cup.

“I so enjoy their tea….” The little sister was an Irish step dancer. Her mother has a head injury. They were a family who went everywhere together. I see that, from the pictures. They are happy. A happy group. They were.

“Mom they don’t practice fair trade, they suck.” Gabe looks at me like I’m a stranger, with no  moral compass. I drink tea sold by a money grubbing company. The little sister will dance again a manic newscaster predicts. She will?

The news droned on and on about the youngest bomber eluding the police, running over his brother, killing a police officer. And then, Boston was in lock down. Not since the Boston Strangler escaped, had Boston been in lock down.

I mute the television and look at my children.

I beam. They are safe, for the day. I beam bigger and they ask, what? What’s wrong?  Gabe with his Starbucks’s frown, Sadie with her organized bag, I am so proud of them. They are both capable of making good choices for themselves and the earth. They are smart, questioning, skeptical and critical, true to their developmental task. They are situating themselves to go forth and do better.

How does one young person become a terrorist and another work for Greenpeace?

By sharing their ideas with adults who listen and care? By being engaged in conversations where many ideas and different perspectives are explored? By learning that tolerance is next to godliness? Civics classes, literature classes, history classes – these are places of rich discourse and intellectual growth. Adults are important because we can offer insight, and ideally, tolerance. We have lived longer and we are (hopefully) mellower for it. We have a handle on nuance and the lack of absolutes when it comes to ideas, concepts and politics. It takes a village, it takes more than one adult, it takes many, to nurture and care and listen and encourage a child into adulthood.

The youngest bomber was a young adult, an idealist and a ripe receptacle. He was also perfectly dangerous, because he had no counter-balance to his brother’s ideas. He didn’t have another adult who could point out that change takes time, that violence does not create change. What if he had talked to another adult, a professor a coach, he had many of both, people who cared for him, what if he had reached out to one of them, or they to him? Just one conversation could have changed everything. Everything would be different and the big brother and the little Irish step dancing sister, they’d be eating dinner together.

(Images: businessinsider.com & thenewyorker.com)

But before you dismiss her as a wretch, consider what your reaction would be to a father who wrote the same article. I know that I judge her differently than I would a father. I can’t believe she and I are members of the same club, that we’re both mommas. Also, consider this, she is not alone. She is expressing the way many women feel, but are too frightened to admit feeling. I wonder what type of mother she would have been, if she’d been ashamed of her feelings, if she’d been unable to express her regrets?

(Images: dailymail.com)

 My son Stuart was five days old when the realisation hit me like a physical blow: having a child had been the biggest mistake of my life.

Even now, 33 years on, I can still picture the scene: Stuart was asleep in his crib. He was due to be fed but hadn’t yet woken.

I heard him stir but as I looked at his round face on the brink of wakefulness, I felt no bond. No warm rush of maternal affection.

I felt completely detached from this alien being who had encroached upon my settled married life and changed it, irrevocably, for the worse.

Read the rest here.

This week two teenage girls–TWO–killed themselves as a result of not just their brutal gang rapes, but because their brutal gang rapes were passed along on the internet like horrible entertainment. Feed the girl to the lions. This is not the Coliseum, folks. We no longer feed victims to the Lion, or the Cracken for the stadiums to erupt in a ferocious roar. This is not the Hunger Games. We don’t subscribe to children killing children, do we? We’re not a society willing to watch girls brutally raped and then shamed publicly. Are we?

Are we?

Because in the past seven days, we’ve allowed these poor kids to be destroyed.

1. Audrie Pott

Audrie Pott

Writes Eve Vawter on Mommyish:

In early September of last year, 15-year old Audrie Pott attended a party at a friend’s house while her parents were out of town. The teens, between 8-10 of them at the party, drank hard liquor mixed with Gatorade. Audrie passed out and at least three male teens performed various sexual acts on her. Someone took at least one photo of the assault on Audrie, which was spread around via email and text before it was finally posted on Facebook. She wrote on her Facebook page:

“The whole school knows…My life is ruined.”

2. Rehtaeh Parsons

Rehtaeh Parsons

From Big Fat Feminist:

Rehtaeh Parsons hanged herself in her bathroom, because Rehtaeah Parsons was gang-raped by four boys a year ago.

They took pictures.

It took weeks for the police to even talk to them.

The people in Rehtaeh’s school called her a slut. They passed her phone number around. They asked her if she’d have sex with them. They bullied, shunned, and browbeat her to death.

I like to think the strong reaction to Steubenville is because our society knows this, all of this, the slut-shaming, the misogyny, the rape, is all-too present. That deep down, our society reacted to Steubenville because we’ve had enough.

Girls have been taught not to dress a certain way. Girls have been taught not to drink too much. They have been taught not to be alone with men. But boys have not been taught not to rape. Our society knows this. But we don’t know how to communicate this. And it’s time, people. It’s time to communicate this to your children. It’s time to use those uncomfortable words and language and explain what rape is so that our boys know. We all are to blame for throwing these girls into the arena with the lion because the LION HAS NOT BEEN TAUGHT.

I know this is a hard concept, because we want to believe humanity will allow people to make the right decisions and for common sense and decency to prevail. But it hasn’t.

She deserved it. She shouldn’t have been there. She shouldn’t have had a drink. She shouldn’t have been so available. She shouldn’t have been so pretty. She shouldn’t have had sex the week before with someone else.

This is the mentality.

And then we lose our girl because she’s just a girl. For Christ sakes. Just a girl! Making girl mistakes! Making her own stupid girl choices! We lose her–as we lost two this week–and we wonder why.

This is why.

Donate to the Audrie Pott foundation here.

Rehtaeh Parsons Facebook memorial page here.

Images: the Pott family and the Parson’s family