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At first I thought that what I was hearing was the sounds of drums in the distance.

“Great,” I thought to myself. “Here comes the drum circle.” I looked down the road, waiting to see the obligatory group of blond men with dreadlocks strolling along barefoot, drums in hand.

But all I saw was more people who were closer in appearance to me—a middle-aged lady in sensible shoes—then the cliched image we often (myself included) picture at these kind of events. You know who I’m talking about: the ones who look like they came directly from Woodstock via an Occupy protest. The left Left.

But I didn’t see anyone like that. I did see clergy, and lay people, and grandmothers (one who had brought her teenage grandson), and elected Arizona representatives. But no drums. So where was the drumming coming from?

And that’s when I realized it wasn’t drumming I was hearing off in the distance. It was pounding. It was the desperate, continuous beating of bare hands against plexiglass windows, and it was coming from the detention center we all stood outside, the one where they only held women and children, the one we weren’t allowed to be closer to than a football field away, because this was “private property,” which meant that while this prison belonged to someone it didn’t belong to the people who were paying for it, the Americans who were standing outside in the dark holding our tiny candles aloft, listening to the same sounds that are heard coming from the rubble of a collapsed building, from behind the wall of rocks in a mining disaster. The sounds that say, universally, “I am here. Save me.”

We stood there for two hours.

The pounding never stopped.

Or maybe it did, after we left. After the lights of our candles had gone out and we had all solemnly walked away, back to our homes and our comfortable beds, and, most importantly of all, back to our families.

Of the many speakers we heard from at the Eloy vigil, the one I can’t seem to get out of my head was the woman named Suzanne who told the story of her grandmother, an American citizen of Japanese descent who, while confined in an American internment camp on American soil during World War II gave birth to premature twins. “We only have one incubator,” the doctors told her. “Pick.” And she did. Which is why Suzanne grew up with one uncle, instead of two.

“That is terrible,” I thought to myself.

“This is terrible,” my Self replied.

Whatever your thoughts on immigration are, both legal and otherwise, I find it difficult to believe that you can support the mass internment of immigrants in over-crowded, abusive conditions. And before you reply with the assertion that the conditions are, in fact, “completely adequate,” think back to that pounding. People held in “adequate” conditions Do. Not. Do. That. And people who still have some compassion left do not imply that they would.

As I walked away that night I found myself actually wishing that there had been a drum circle after all—and not just because it would have been better to hear that than the chaotic pounding. But because even though I may mock the drum circle, I get that it can represent community in a deeply primal way that nothing else can. It is, at its best, the sound of all of our hearts beating together as one. It is the sound of the humanity in me joining in with the humanity in you.

And that is a sound I think we could all stand to hear a little bit more of right about now.

If there is one unifying lesson that we can all take away from the last two and a half years, it would have to be this: words matter.

In so many ways.

Whether it’s the difference between a detention center and a concentration camp, or the irony of how the people who say, “I like him because he says what he means” often turn out later to be the same ones who say, “That wasn’t what he really meant,” or even how fitting it is when the same people who used the power of their words to get accepted into Harvard (or other elite schools) become dismayed (and litigious) when their acceptance from Harvard is rescinded after they are caught out using the n-word, this is truly the year(s) of the word(s). And, as such, I feel that it only right that we start any discussion of the power of words with the first word many of us ever really learn: our own names. Which means I’m going to talk about addressing people as they wish to be addressed.

That’s it. Just…call people by their names. This includes using their chosen name, title, and, yes, pronoun, even when—especially when—you yourself don’t “see what all of the fuss is about.” Trust me, if the situation were reversed you would absolutely see what all of the fuss was about.

This, truly, is one of those “things I learned in kindergarten” situations; remember, when your teacher wrote their name on the board and then sounded it out so you would know how to pronounce it? Remember how you argued with them about what you thought their name or title should be, and how you churlishly refused to call them by their name or title all year long? No? You don’t? I guess that’s because you had more sense in kindergarten than you do now.

In America (and I’m assuming a lot of other places as well), the history of refusing to call people by their names is long and dark. I’m sure that there is many a grandfather alive today who can still feel the humiliation of being called “boy,” just as there are surely plenty of grandmothers who have painful memories of “girl.” (Or the even more wretched “girlie.”)

Look, everyone can make a mistake when it comes to addressing someone. Whether it is accidentally calling the long-haired gentleman in line in front of you “Ma’am,” or calling someone you just met “Steven” instead of “Steve,” mistakes happen. What matters is how you react after you have learned of your mistake.

Again, just like we learned in kindergarten, the correct thing to do is apologize and move on. The absolutely incorrect thing to do is argue about it.

Can you imagine meeting someone named Kristen and then telling them that, actually, their name is Kirsten? If you can’t, (and I hope that you can’t), then how could you imagine telling someone that, actually, they are a she?

The ironic thing is that I started this column because I was annoyed at being called “young lady” by a man half my age even after I specifically asked him to stop. It was only on reflection that I realized that what was a twice weekly occurrence for me was a daily affliction for some.

There is power in a name. Figuring out who we are, and how that enters into our relationships with other people is a huge milestone in the development of a human brain. To take that away from someone is psychologically devastating—the first thing the torturer takes from their victim is their name.

The bottom line is that it is not just “politically correct” to refer to people in the manner in which they ask to be addressed. To call them by their names. It is just normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill human decency. And, if this many years past kindergarten, someone has trouble accepting that concept, then maybe we should take away their name as well.

Because I’m sure that we can all think of a few other names we can call them in the meantime.

This summer will mark the second time I help one of my children pack for their first year of college. The first child managed to live through my helpfulness, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know that I could have done it better. And, since second children are really only there to allow us to redeem ourselves of the mistakes we made with the first ones, I would be remiss if I didn’t take this occasion for what it is: a chance to do better.

Which is why, this time, along with the jumper cables and an electric kettle, I am sending a cactus.

Not just any cactus, though. No, this cactus already belongs to my son, Clyde, the one who will be leaving at the end of the summer. It’s been his ever since he picked it out at a Desert Botanical Garden plant sale almost fifteen years ago, because of course he was the kind of kid who sees a parking lot full of cacti and thinks, “One of you should come home with me.”

And home is where it has been ever since, moving up into a bigger pot every few years, but other than that being essentially ignored and left to do its own thing. It might sound sad, but it’s not: for a cactus, benign neglect is almost certainly a blessing.

The same can sometimes be said of children.

Actually, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between a child and a cactus—especially when they become teenagers. There is, of course, the obvious: the fact that you can’t really get close to either one of them without getting stabbed for your trouble (or maybe that’s just my children). But then there’s also the fact that, besides sunlight, water, a safe place to live and a little bit of attention, there’s not that much they really need. In fact, it sometimes seems that the more you fuss over them, the worse off they are.

That’s not to say they need no care at all. Of course they do. Which is why I’m sending this cactus up to school with Clyde, in the hopes that, just maybe, Clyde and the cactus can take care of each other. Because Clyde, just like all the rest of us, is better at taking care of other things than he is of himself. Hopefully what this will mean is that he will treat himself almost as nicely as he treats his cactus.

So no sitting in a dark room, because the cactus needs sunlight every day to thrive (as do we all). And make sure to drink a little bit of water every now and then, as this is also necessary to life for both cacti and college students. (He knows that plants—and humans—cannot survive on soda alone because his second grade science fair project was whether plants do better on soda, milk or water. The “water plant” was the clear winner. We don’t really know how the “milk plant” would have done, because it was asked to leave the science fair after two very fragrant days of sitting in the sun.)

Also, be careful where you spend you time. Living too close to the edge, either on a shelf or as a student, is not good for cacti or boy. Take a step back sometimes and make sure that you (and your cactus) are in a safe place.

And finally, remember that, sometimes, adapting to your environment means developing a thick skin. Don’t worry—the ones who see you for who you really are will always be able to appreciate your worth. Even if you’re sitting in a tiny pot in the middle of a parking lot at the Desert Botanical Garden—or in your college bedroom, which can sometimes seem like the human equivalent of just that.

As the fallout from the recent college admissions scandal slides from the top of my notifications down to page two, I have noticed that the reactions to the stories seem to fall into two distinct camps. One is shock and outrage: what do you mean some kids get into school based on something other than merit? That’s so unfair. The other is bemusement: wait, are you telling me that you just now noticed that some kids are more privileged than others? Next thing you’ll be telling me is that you just now noticed that water is wet. The one element of this story that both sides seem to be somewhat in agreement on, however, is amazement at the sheer ballsiness of the whole scheme: the way that there seemed to be almost no effort at subtlety. It’s as if Mulder and Scully had both just found out that AT&T has a special “friends and family” plan for aliens—yes, Scully was finally convinced that aliens are real, but even Mulder was shocked by how commonplace they were.

The effect that this story has had on me personally is kind of a cross between the two reactions: on the one hand, with two college-age children (one just beginning, the other finishing up her undergrad), I can’t help but be annoyed at the thought that someone could simply write a check and duplicate the years of study (on one of their parts), practice (on the other’s), and community service (both of them) they undertook. On the other hand, this story has only made it clearer for me all of the ways our own family’s privilege has helped them buy their way into college.

I know this to be true because the first thing I thought when I read about the one parent who paid $15,000 dollars for someone else to take the ACT for their child, (thereby raising their score from a 23 to a 35) was, “Damn, that’s a pretty good deal.” And it is, because even at a state school the difference between a 23 and a 35 is roughly equivalent to about $60,000 in scholarships. More importantly (or, rather, important on a different level, because $60,000 is pretty important), the difference between a 23 and a 35 could be the difference between a thin little rejection letter and a fat acceptance packet.

But that’s not fair, you say. No, it isn’t. But then again, how fair was it that I was able to send my children to study abroad or take school trips to Mexico, San Francisco and LA? How fair was it that they didn’t have to get after school jobs to help pay the rent, and so were able to do volunteer work instead? How fair was it that they got their ACT scores raised by subject specific tutoring? Because if we’re talking a strict dollar to dollar comparison, I am sure that I spent far more than $15,000 on college prep.

In this country there are many different doors to get you into college; unfortunately, almost all of them are in the back. The myth of the promising student plucked from obscurity and given a full ride is on the same level as the myth of the beautiful girl working at the soda fountain before being “discovered” by a Hollywood agent. Sure, both of those stories might have happened to someone, once, but even if they are true it is highly unlikely that they will ever happen again.

When you make something unaffordable, yet necessary, people are going to do whatever it takes to get it. And “whatever it takes” generally implies lying, cheating, and stealing. (And yes, I know that not everyone needs a four-year degree, but community colleges certificate programs and technical schools come with a cost—sometimes quite steep—as well.) It seems to me that the shock and outrage at the “college admission scandal” would be far better directed at the cost of getting into and attending college than at a few people who got caught trying to navigate it all.

Maybe it’s time for everyone to stop hating the players, and start to hate the game.

There are few things in this life that I am absolutely sure of, but one of them is that in the days to come, someone, somewhere will say the following words about the New Zealand mosque shooter: “But he seemed so nice.”

Not everyone will say it, obviously. There will also, I am certain, come to light statements from ex-wives and girlfriends describing the terror he put them through on a personal level before he decided to take his terrorism to a bigger platform. (If these testimonials don’t come forth it will be because this man only terrorized women anonymously and from afar via social media.) And yet, as I mentioned before, somebody will still comment on how, as far as they knew, this guy seemed “so nice.”

Which brings us to the “myth of niceness.”

The “myth of niceness” is the response you get whenever you try and explain to someone why you don’t like/associate/want to get left alone with a particular person, and the person you’re explaining yourself to responds with, “Oh, but they’re so nice.” We’ve all experienced it—hell, we’ve probably all even done it. But think about what you—what we—are saying when we respond that way. What we think we’re saying is, “I have never personally experienced that behavior from that person.” But what we’re actually saying, (and what the other person hears), is “And I don’t believe you have, either.” And frankly, reacting to someone who reveals a grievance to you with disbelief and protestations of “But they’re so nice,” means that perhaps you’re not so very damn “nice,” either.

People are complex. If you’ve ever been on a date with someone who was charming to you but nasty to the waitress you already know that we can be different things to different people at the exact same time.When Brock Turner wasn’t raping unconscious girls behind dumpsters I have no doubt that he was holding doors open for them. These two example might seem like polar opposites, but they actually are not: both are examples of flawed characters temporarily masked by charm. But charm is never a substitute for character. And people of poor character? Not so nice.

Am I saying that we should believe all accusers? Well, yeah, until they are proven wrong, I think we should. Because the current system—the one where we believe the accused until the accusations are proven right—is not working.

And yes, there will be false accusations, and genuine misunderstandings, but the compassionate response to someone telling you their grievance will always be “tell me more,” not “I don’t believe you.”

Listening to victims is painful, even when we have no relationship with the accused. The reactions to the recent Michael Jackson, Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, Brett Kavanaugh (it really has been an endless parade lately) accusations are proof enough of that. Imagine, then, how much harder it is to be the victim, instead. Especially when the accused is almost universally beloved.

One of the saddest truths I know is that some people will always bear an unequal burden when it comes to keeping the myth of niceness alive. Unequal in power to the predators that attacked them, they also become unequal to the people who refuse to believe them. But power does not only belong to individuals who are powerful—on the contrary, in the same way that millions of raindrops coming together can turn into a flood, we can also come together to take down the powerful, because there is also power in solidarity. When we stand together we can take down giants.

And what could be nicer than that?

As parents, we’ve all experienced that moment when our child says something utterly mortifying in public. (And, if we are blessed/cursed with perfect recall, we can even remember way back to when we ourselves were the mortifying ones.) Oftentimes these cringe-worthy moments come because of an unexpected encounter with an individual who is facing some sort of a challenge or difference: the woman in a wheelchair, the man with a severe burn, the person who dresses in a way we’ve never seen before. And the mortification comes not from the curious questions we expect (because that’s just ignorance, and ignorance can be quickly remedied with knowledge), but rather from the whining questions we never saw coming. Questions like: “Why can’t I have a chair with wheels?” and “When are you gonna get me a dog like that?” Those kinds of public questions are the truly mortifying ones, because it makes our child (and us, as the parent), seem not just ignorant, but insensitive. And insensitivity is a much harder fix than ignorance.

If you don’t believe me, just look at the latest news, where it seems like an entire swath of the white male population looked at current events and then proceeded to whine to themselves, “But what about meeee?”

The most obvious, of course, is the infamous “Smirk Seen ‘Round the World.” The Smirk© happened when three different groups of protesters came together in a sort of dis-harmonic convergence on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, something that will probably happen again and again in the coming years since there is now so much to protest that groups literally have to take a number. The question of how smirky the Smirk© in question actually was is debatable, but the question of what set the entire process in motion is not, because the group that started it all (by taunting both of the other two groups with slurs and insults) has been occupying that corner in DC for so long that locals regard them as just another form of (really annoying) street theater. For the residents of DC, getting upset at the comments made by the Black Hebrew Israelites would be the same as going to a showing of “Rocky Horror” and getting upset because you got rice in your popcorn: it’s all part of the show.

The smirkers, of course, couldn’t have known this: they didn’t have the life experience. Their chaperones, however, should have been worldly enough to figure it all out, but that’s a topic for another time (probably after I, myself, have finished chaperoning school trips.) Then again, their chaperones (and parents) should have also figured out that being caught in the crossfire between two historically oppressed groups was not the best time to play the “reverse racism” card, despite what their PR firm might have told them.

But what do I know? Clearly it was a successful tactic with their base, a group that was still in the throes of using a razor ad to complain about something they called “toxic femininity” when the whole Smirk© went down. (Something that, while it sounds like the cultural counterpart to “toxic masculinity,” is actually just another symptom of internal misogyny.)

Look, I understand that the Covington boys suffered personal attacks. That makes them the victims of a bunch of assholes, not the victims of racism. Racism isn’t a personal attack; racism is the systemic practice of social and political institutions whose sole intent is keeping one group in a position of power. In the same way the Gillette ad was not attacking masculinity, but, rather, toxic masculinity, which, again, is a hegemonic systemic practice that legitimatizes men’s dominance over women in society.

Neither is personal (although being on the receiving end of either one can cause a great deal of personal pain). And, as someone who is opposed to both, while I freely admit to feeling individual disgust for other individuals who represent these systems, my true goal will always be to dismantle the systems, and not the individuals.

But these aren’t discussions you can have with someone who feels jealousy when they see someone parking their van in the handicapped spot, or responds to an encounter with a historically oppressed group by asking, “But what about my feelings?” In other words, these are discussions you can only have with people who are adults, or who are trying to become ones. Not with people who still see the world through the eyes of an ignorant, insensitive child.

So, for now, the Covington boys get a pass, even though the “aw, youth” argument is not one that their supporters have ever offered or allowed for other young people of color. But as for everyone else out there complaining about “reverse racism” and “toxic femininity”?

Grow up, already.

Recently, a friend of mine shared a disapproving article about newly sworn-in Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib referring to Donald Trump as a “motherfucker.” My friend’s comment on the article was, “She said it in front of children,” implying that what she herself disapproved of was not so much the Congresswoman’s words, but who was with her when she said them. Which is fair. Although I certainly have sworn plenty in front of children (mine and everyone else’s), and will almost certainly continue to swear in front of children in the future (probably even more than I do now, depending on whether or not I learn some really nifty new combinations), I acknowledge that other people have a right to find this offensive.

There is a problem with this story, however: Tlaib didn’t swear in front of children. She was in a bar, well into the evening when she uttered those remarks, leading me to believe that any children present at that time were probably too deep into their third cocktail to have given the word “motherfucker” a second thought. Of course, my friend didn’t know this detail, because the article she shared had only contained the fact that Tlaib swore, and an (unrelated) picture of Tlaib standing with a group of children. In other words, it was propaganda.

Propaganda is biased information that is distributed with the intent of influencing people’s opinions. It has been around for a long time. And it can be deadly. In 1994 the propaganda that was broadcast unceasingly from anti-Tutsi radio stations was directly responsible for the 100-day genocide in Rwanda that wiped out nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Beginning by simply slandering the characters of Tutsis in general, the radio stations eventually directed people to kill their Tutsi neighbors, giving names and addresses. In fact, the genocide only stopped when the radio station was destroyed.

As I mentioned before, propaganda has been around for a long time—the earliest written record of it is from Persia in 515 BCE. So it’s not like we as a species are unfamiliar it, or unfamiliar with how to combat it. But, as happens so much with modern technology, the solutions we have always used have not kept pace with the problems we have created. One of the solutions that used to work against propaganda was education—any form of education. This was because for many years the more subtle forms of propaganda were limited to people who could read, and therefore to people who had obtained a modicum of critical thinking skills. Radio changed that dynamic, and then film, and then television, and now, finally, the internet. Now propaganda can reach into everyone’s home, everyone’s pocket, with just the click of a “like” or “share,” no special skills (or thinking) required And they don’t even have to pay us to spread it—we do it for free.

Before the internet, spreading fake news to a large number of people took genuine effort: think leaflets dropped out of planes, handbills pasted in high traffic areas, or newspapers with a dedicated following. There was a physical aspect to this propaganda, and consequently, a physical cost. Even after the internet came along (but before social media), spreading disinformation was mostly limited to chain emails forwarded by your paranoid Great Uncle, and so its reach was, again, somewhat limited—mostly to the current-affairs impaired.

Not anymore.

The propaganda we are seeing today is flashy and hip. It has enticing pictures and provocative headlines like, “Can You Believe…” and “You Don’t Want to Miss…” It counts on our love of the new, the shocking, and the terrible to get us to view it. But it counts on our love of judgement and superiority to get us to share it. Which are the exact same traits the radio stations in Rwanda were counting on when they broadcast their own propaganda.

Some people have told me that they don’t see the “harm” in sharing propaganda (AKA “fake news”). That, sure, the articles might not be 100% accurate, but they contain a little bit of truth, or they made you think about the issue, or even, they were kind of funny. But the truth is that in the end your non-malicious intent in spreading propaganda probably will not matter to the people it hurts. And it definitely won’t matter to the people it kills.

Look, no one is asking you to stop sharing stories. All we really want is that the next time you are tempted to share a piece of “news,” do the world a favor and consider (and research) the source, even if it takes an extra few minutes of your time.

Four-hundred thousand Rwandan orphans would really appreciate it if you did.

“Free is when you don’t have to pay for nothing or do nothing. I want to be FREE!”

Frank Zappa first recorded those immortal lines in 1981, which was an impressionable year for a lot of people my age. Too impressionable for some, it seems, judging by the social and political commentary coming from people who, for want of a better description, are ostensibly “grown ass men and women.”

Somehow, despite growing up in a country with safe drinking water, uncontaminated food, and bridges that didn’t fall out from underneath us as we drove over them, my fellow middle-aged Americans have decided that the answer to all of our problems is to get rid of the rules. In other words, “be free.”

So far this “freedom” has brought us deadly lettuce, ever-shrinking public lands, and the knowledge that there is absolutely no place you can go—your school, your church, your doctor’s office, your grocery store, the movies, the dance floor, the mall—and not have to worry about getting shot.

The scariest part of all this, for me, is knowing that my children have never known anything different, which means that every year the chance to bring things “back” to normal gets a little bit smaller. Those of us my age and older—we remember what it was like to live in a time and place where things, while by no means perfect, were slowly getting better. Our children don’t know what that’s like; our children are the first generation to have their life expectancy grow shorter, not because of disease but because of the increased likelihood of death by suicide or drug addiction (which is really just a slow-motion form of suicide).

It’s like when you have an illness that is controlled—not cured, but controlled—by medication. And one day you decide that you feel pretty good—good enough, in fact, that you don’t see the point in taking those pricey and inconvenient pills any longer. And then, when all the symptoms come rushing back, you somehow don’t remember how it was that you treated them in the first place.

In our case, the medication—the bitter pill—was taxes and regulations.

We had already learned—the hard way—that the only way to make things safe for everybody was to hold everybody accountable. That just because you might be wealthy enough never to need to rely on public drinking water, processed meat or open access to public lands didn’t mean you weren’t subject to the same laws and rules as those of us who weren’t so lucky. After all, the men who owned the slaughterhouses that featured so prominently in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle already knew better than to try and eat the products that came out of their charnel houses—the laws were imposed on them to protect us. And this was only after we finally realized that we were the only people who were ever going to protect ourselves. In other words, it was only after we finally realized that the “benevolent overseer” was a myth, and that we were the saviors we had been waiting for all along. It wasn’t the Wizard, it wasn’t the Good Witch—it was just us.

And yet, somehow, here we are again.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, one thing that parenting teaches you is that there is no rule that doesn’t have to be occasionally reinforced. In my house, we called this the Gravity Check, as in, “Does the law of gravity still apply to me?” (Also known as “Do I still get in trouble when I do this?” The answer, of course, is always “yes.”)

My generation, as befitting a generation that has always liked to do things in a big way, is experiencing the biggest Gravity Check of them all. “Do the systems designed to protect us all still work when we dismantle them?” I dunno—does the car still drive when the engine is in pieces on the floor? The answer, as we are too slowly coming to realize, is “no.” Always “no.”

So here we are. Exactly where we didn’t want to be. And while it is true that no one can say for sure what the ultimate fallout will be from Brett Kavanaugh taking his place on the Supreme Court, almost everyone can agree that things are not looking so good for the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. And so, as we inevitably draw closer to the day when we see American women lose the right to choose, I think that now would be the perfect time for me to tell you all about my own abortion.

I was twenty-one, in my last semester of college, and was not in a relationship. In other words, I was not financially or emotionally ready to have a child. More importantly, however, was the fact that I didn’t want to have a child—not then, and, as far as I was concerned at the time, not ever. So I didn’t. I went to my local Planned Parenthood, was walked through the protesters by a volunteer escort (who just happened to be a fellow student from one of my classes—there are no secrets in Flagstaff) and had a safe, affordable abortion. Like a lot of medical procedures, it wasn’t particularly awful, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant either. I got a ride home, made friends with my heating pad, and moved on.

Eight years later I was in a different place both financially and emotionally, and so my daughter, Clementine, was born. In the weeks that followed her birth I thought a lot about the abortion I had had when I was younger, and every time I thought about it I was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude: gratitude that I had been able to make that choice eight years earlier. This was because it was only after Clementine was born that I realized two things: one, that having a child was much more rewarding than I could have ever imagined; and two, that it was also much, much harder. Hard enough that I soon realized how terrible I would have been at it when I was alone and twenty-one. So terrible, in fact, that I highly doubt I would have ever gone on to have another child—would have ever had Clementine. Which would be tragic, because she is a badass who is going to change the world.

I’m telling my story not because I think it is particularly unique, or interesting, but rather because I think that it is not: in fact, I think it is incredibly common. (Although, actually, it’s a bit of both: the need to make the decision is common, while the decision itself is unique.) Look: every day, all over the world, people are making decisions about their future—some decisions are difficult, some are laughably easy, but they all sharing certain common threads: they are based on all of the information that particular individual has available to them at the time, and they are all private. Or at least, they should be.

For over half the population of this world, the ability to make our own decisions has been historically at risk. And, before I go any further, I just want to get one thing straight: this conversation is not about “saving babies.” It is about power. It is about control. It is about women wanting to have autonomy over their own bodies, and men (and some complicit women) not letting them.

You disagree? Tell me, then, if conservatives are against abortion because they are trying to protect the “unborn (or the even more Newspeak-y pre-born), then why did they celebrate when the courts affirmed the right of Hobby Lobby to withhold birth control coverage from their female employees? Wouldn’t someone who was solely concerned with the rights of the fetus want to prevent a situation arising where a fetus was in danger of abortion?

No, just as rape is never about sex, but rather power, outlawing safe abortions was never about saving babies, but rather retaining control.

Knowing that, I find it incredibly ironic that our best chance at preventing an anti-choice activist from sitting on the Supreme Court came down to a woman telling her story about being held down and silenced as a young girl—I guess sometimes literature just has to step back and let real life steal the show. But what I find even more ironic is that just as that young girl grew up to be a powerful woman who found her voice, so too did those of us who were watching her. And, just like her, we will not be silenced again.

I was never ashamed of the abortion I had when I was twenty-one, but I also never really spoke about it either. No more. In the weeks and months ahead, every woman needs to find her voice, and be silent no more. If not for ourselves, then for our daughters. Because I think that they are probably all badasses who will change the world—but only if we all start using our voices to let them.

Dear Nonvoter,

We need to talk.

You know how they say that one of the secrets to maintaining a great relationship is to make sure you never go to bed angry? Well, lately I’ve been going to bed angry with you every damn night.

You might be confused by this, because you probably didn’t even realize that we were in a relationship. This is understandable, and since you don’t seem to get out much (or read the newspapers, or watch the news, or, apparently, look up from your funny cat videos long enough to notice the sea of protesters marching past your front door,) I’m going to explain our relationship to you.

You see, once you turned 18 the two of us (along with millions of other legal adults) got hitched. Tied together. ‘Til death do us part. Irrevocably one. We entered into a partnership wherein each one of us was given a small part to play in steering the ship of state, each one of us with one hand on the wheel, turning this great ship wherever it needed to go (hopefully away from rocky shoals and into clear open waters). Sure, it was an arranged marriage, but those can work out if both parties just put forth some kind of an effort. Which is exactly what we need to talk about.

You haven’t been doing your part. At all. And in consequence we are not only headed for those rocky shoals, we are straight up on them. And it is. All. Your. Fault.

I know that you don’t agree with this. I know that you think sitting back and watching us crash somehow absolves you of any, let alone all responsibility, but I am here to tell you that you are wrong.

I can hear your protests now. Me? I’m to blame? What about that guy over there, the one who is trying to steer the ship into dangerous waters; how am I more to blame than him? Nonvoter, please. You and I both know that he was always going to behave irresponsibly, that if he was given a chance to control the wheel he would steer us into a cliff every single time. So for you to sit back and watch us crash, all while saying it’s not really your problem is pretty disingenuous. And even if you, like him, actually believe that the ship is better off destroyed completely than continuing on as it has been, don’t you think the decent thing to do would have been to allow the rest of us to at least get off of the ship first? After all, there are a lot of people here who can’t even swim.

Okay, enough with the metaphors: I’m going to put it to you straight. Vote, dammit. I don’t even care if you vote the same way I do, or even close to it. I really don’t even care if you turn your vote into some kind of ineffectual protest vote (*cough*Gary Johnson/Jill Stein/Mickey Mouse), because I know that once you get that out of your system you’ll at least be familiar with the mechanics of voting, and therefore prepared to come back around the next time and vote a little more wisely.

Remember that unless you are a white male who owns property, it wasn’t so very long ago that someone died just so that you could have the chance to vote. And if you are one of those people who are outraged that people aren’t showing enough “respect” to our veterans by not standing up for the flag, than consider how much more disrespectful you are being when you refuse to participate in what that flag itself stands for.

And, just so we’re clear about what the future holds: I am through going to bed angry about this. In fact, I’m through going to bed at all. And as far as I’m concerned, until you step up and start taking this relationship seriously, I’m going to be making it my job to make sure that you don’t get any sleep either.