Nobody puts baillee in the corner

Trigger warnings: emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual assault, eating disorders, sexual trauma

This post isn’t the usual. You see, it has taken me over two weeks to write because it’s been so emotionally draining. The Brock Turner case infuriates me, and the letter his victim wrote triggered me in a lot of ways, and her absolute agony has stayed with me. As a writer, once I tap into my emotions, the words start flowing, and I have to get it out. This post is the result of my anger and sadness. It may cause backlash, and it may be painful for some to read, so I won’t be offended if you have to stop reading, but I had to get this off of my chest. Thank you.

Dear Brock Turner,

I have been cat called, sexualized, objectified, fetishized, emotionally abused, and verbally abused. I have been harassed by grown men trying to prevent their wedding rings from sliding off their slimy fingers. I have been called a bitch for not speaking to strange men on the street as they recite the parts of my anatomy in a disjointed, hellish chorus. I have been force fed that my worth is only equated with what I can do silently with my mouth. However, all of these things pale in comparison to what you did.

As I read your victim’s letter, every single encounter came flashing back with a crippling force. I tried to make a river with my tears so that she could float away from you and all the pain you caused. Every word she wrote punched me in the stomach and the womanhood. I could feel your fingers clumsily unbuttoning my safety and fumbling with the zipper of my humanity. I felt empty as her words gutted me, but you tried to force and penetrate your way inside me to fill the void.

I was stripped of my security and laid bare behind the dumpster with her, unable to clasp her hand in mine as a sign of solidarity. She was nothing to you, and you were only swim times to them. You stroked your way into the news without having to come up for air. She was cast aside as a cardigan, a pile of pine needles, a statistic lost in the white noise of someone’s Facebook feed. She’ll be immortalized on an infographic while you’ll be immortalized as a victory for privileged male rapists everywhere.

You’re the reason so many voices are silenced. You’re the reason so many lives are taken. You’re the reason we can’t leave our drinks unattended. You’re the reason our mothers beg us not to walk home alone at night. You’re the men who looked down my shirt and made my sister’s words drip with putrid misogyny. You’re the men who circled the block while I waited at the bus stop to scream about my “pussy.” You’re the men who rewarded my eating disorder like some sort of fucked up merit badge.

You treated her like she was your personal playground when she was simply a person. She wasn’t a drunken mistake. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t another beer, another shot, another glass of wine. She wasn’t coherent. She wasn’t a yes. She wasn’t a way to prove yourself. She wasn’t trash to be discarded. She was a person.

She IS a person.

I hope my 20 minutes of writing don’t ruin your life.