My friend chuckles, “We see what you're up to on social media: there goes Magali, marching again with her two-year-old.”
He’s referring to the fact that since she was born, my husband and I have taken Sophia to women's marches, marches to reunite migrant children with their families, Martin Luther King Jr. Day marches, and rallies to stop climate change.
My friend says, “Sophia is probably already a feminist.”
“She sure is,” I show him one of my daughter’s board books, titled My Feminist ABCs.
Now he is really laughing, “Wait, I need to take a photo of this to show my wife.” He gets out his smart phone and takes a snapshot. For him, it is a moment of hilarity.
For me, it's different. When anyone brings up my feminism, I flash back to the great watershed moment of my life. The event that divided everything into before and after. One month after I turned 18, I was pregnant by rape. No matter how much work I have done to heal myself, the pain of that moment is preserved, like a dragonfly in amber, in a place where I can touch it. Regardless of the more than two decades gone by, I can never unknow what it is like to be female, young, poor, hurt, pregnant and alone.
One day I will tell you my whole #metoo story, one more among the ocean of stories. Rape is all too common: 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys will experience sexual abuse in their lifetimes. Statistics are higher for people of color. Sexual violence is just one of the many noxious consequences of sexism, one among a thousand reasons why we need to be feminists.
I didn't become an activist until I was in my 20s. The first time I marched for a cause on the streets happened in the year 2000, shortly after I moved to the United States to live on a permaculture farm with my first husband. My friend Tammy, who saw me struggling and heard my story, offered to take me to Take Back The Night. Having grown up in Mexico, I'd never heard of college students marching against rape.
Tammy drove us to Eugene in her pickup truck, and we parked by the University of Oregon campus. As soon as we were cocooned in the throng of mostly young and female students on that cool April evening, I was awash in tears. These students were protesting against sexual violence because it had happened to them, or their friends. These people understood me. More importantly, they weren’t hiding or slinking around in shame, they were marching for the world to see. Tammy held my hand and I leaned on her as we walked.
The event organizers in purple t-shirts chanted out of megaphones as the crowd repeated, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, sexual assault has got to go,” and “However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no.” I wanted to chant but I was crying too hard to speak. I just let my feet carry me as my mind was being blasted open. It was okay to speak the truth of what happened to us in public? We could place the blame squarely on the perpetrators? It was possible to demand justice?
Yes, we could, and yes, we were. Just as I can never unknow the pain of my rape, I can never untaste the nectar of collective power I experienced that day. There is no vaccine against sexual violence, but this was a hell of an emotional immune-booster shot.
I don't remember if I spoke at the rally. It doesn't matter, because two years later I was working at Sexual Assault Support Services, the agency that co-organized the Take Back the Night event. I attended many more marches and rallies, where I told my story and sometimes acted as translator for other Spanish speakers to tell theirs. I facilitated support groups where hundreds of survivors told their stories and I was one of a team of advocates who gave support to every scared woman who reported a rape and underwent a forensic exam at the ER.
It’s clear to me now that helping other survivors and participating in public demonstrations were necessary dimensions of my recovery. Individual healing can only take us so far. If we want to be free from sexual violence, we have to change the world.
Fast forward to 2016: four months after I became a mother to a girl, a man who brags about assaulting women and stands accused of sexual misconduct by 23 women became U.S. president. This country has a perpetrator-in-chief. After riding a roller-coaster of shock, grief and rage, most of the people in my life channeled their energy into the Resistance.
In my postnatal yoga and writing classes, in my meditation and shamanic journey circles, and all over social media we supported the Standing Rock protest, demonstrated against the Muslim ban, turned our city into a Sanctuary. My first local Women’s March saw tens of thousands of demonstrators, with and without pussy hats, pouring into the streets in celebratory defiance.
The signs were an education unto itself. Protesters understood that this country needed to reckon with its origin in the Native American genocide and the brutality of slavery. They understood that violence against people of color, women, people with disabilities and GLBT folks is unacceptable; climate change is a reality and we must halt our destruction of the planet; corporate welfare is neither capitalism nor democracy; the people are sick and tired of corruption and greed.
As I marched down the streets playing my drum, people around me clapped their hands to the same beat. We saw kinship in each other’s eyes. Once again I was refreshed by the delicious taste of collective power in action. Once you really feel it, you never forget it and you will always want more.
During the first Women’s March in 2017, my husband stayed home taking care of my daughter, who was sick with a cold. The following year I made matching pussy hats for Sophia and me and the three of us marched together. I wanted us to bathe in that energy and let it infuse our very DNA so we would never lose it, as we face the huge amount of work still left to do.
My child is a girl and a person of color. My greatest hope is that she may have a life free of violence. How could I not give her a feminist education?
Do you have a #metoo story of your own? What has helped you heal? How do you participate in the creation of social justice? What are your hopes for the children and their future? I would love to hear your thoughts about making those wishes a reality.
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