I was molested when I was six, my cousin used to touch me whenever he got the chance, in my car pool the boys used to take turns touching my vagina, when I was fifteen my first boyfriend forced himself on me and I tried to convince myself that I wanted it when he would do so for the next five years… Everything I saw and heard in my daily life said that this is how it was and what it would mean to be a woman- to be used until I was old and unattractive. Then I read that old women were being raped in their homes and I thought that this is how it would be for the rest of my life. I hated being pretty. Being pretty meant I was not human, it meant I was a doll, a plaything to be undressed and broken at whim. My father used to beat my mother and he never took any responsibility. His ability to wipe it from his memory was something I envied. When I finally broke up with my first boyfriend I dated another man for about five years also and he never forced himself on me, he called himself a ‘feminist’ so he would emotionally manipulate me to do things I didn’t want to do. He also said that what my first boyfriend had done was not rape. He, my second and last boyfriend to date, made me feel worthless and so “female” that I detested the word ‘feminist’. I’m a feminist now. And I am finally starting to awaken to the fact that being a woman is a feared thing in this country and all around the world. Everyday we are made to feel smaller and smaller and we are made to blame ourselves for how we feel so that it seems an insignificant and useless fight. It happens every day! It has been happening everyday for centuries. It is not right. My gift is that I was finally able to see it for what it is and now I must fight it; as my gift to other women.
