We Will Bury You

How do you deal with the vast disappointment and anger and rage and grief and rage and RAGE and RAGE and RAGE when a community icon, who did so much to help your gente, is found to be the type of monster that still makes me believe in capital punishment?

I don’t know.

I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. There’s no true answer for this. I don’t want to research it. I don’t want to feel it. I need to feel it. I need to feel the full depth of what this means. It feels like there’s no meaning. It feels raw and too fucking goddamn present. I woke up to the New York Times article and I won’t stop myself from writing.

Even that I’m writing this semi-coherently feels like a mask of professionalism to cover my full rage.

Rage is not even enough. I am driven to violence.

Fury. Indignation. Temper. Grief. Agony. Anguish. Heartbreak. Mourning. Sorrow. Desolation. Anger. Hatred.

I scour through this pile of words to try and string together the broiling thoughts in my head that want to murder this dead man.

Ana Murgia, I mourn for you.

Debra Rojas, I mourn for you.

Dolores Huerta, I mourn for you.

The too-many other forsaken-and-community-minded women, I mourn for you.

“Ms. Huerta, who was 36 at the time, said she chose not to report the assault to the police because of their hostility toward the movement, and she feared that no one within the union would believe her.”

These women loved their community, and believed that the work was more important than the man. He was the face for improving labor conditions for farmwokers. (Another unfortunate aside: he was a bastard to undocumented immigrants.) But Esmeralda Lopez said a simple and extraordinarily and stupidly profound sentence:

"Cesar Chavez is just a man.”

She stated this to her mother, and her mother understood immediately and told her to come home.

Her mother should not have to know what that means. None of us should have to know what it means.

I shouldn’t have to relate to so many other women and non-cismen about our assaults, as I’ve written about over and over again. We shouldn’t have to protect a man on behalf of protecting our community.

I shouldn’t have to have conversations swirling around the word "r*pe" because we are trying to avoid the well of grief that comes with directly saying what happens to us.

I don’t know what words Dolores Huerta said in her interview, “but she speaks of the attack in a startlingly matter-of-fact manner.”

For me, and from what I’ve seen from many of us, it’s not startling that she was matter-of-fact about it. It’s simply our reality.

Maybe she did use the word "r*pe" because it’s been decades. Maybe she’s built a thick enough callous to do so. It’s been almost 10 years since mine, and my callous still feels thin.

Time and again I’ve seen a version of “Everyone woman knows a survivor at the hands of a man, but no man knows an assaulter.”

The next italicized section is a description of my own assault. Please skip as needed.

My senior year of college, I was pressured into sex by a grad student at a nearby and respected school. I still respect the school. But I was the one who invited him over, and I had originally wanted to have sex but I changed my mind. He didn’t want me to change my mind. He was twice my size and in the moment I couldn’t think enough to go to the bathroom and call my friend to get him out of my dorm room. We had "sex." When he was done and pulled out and saw that I was still spotting old brown blood, he was disgusted and I immediately relished in that. I sent him away when it felt safe to do so.

Over the next few days I told my friends "his definition of consent and mine didn’t match." What the fuck? What kind of fuck sentence is that? What kind of asinine thing to say? What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK. I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO SAY THAT. I. SHOULDN'T. HAVE. TO. SAY. THAT.

It wasn’t until months later that I used "r*pe." I’m still "grateful" it wasn’t "violent." There are, un-fucking-fortunately, worse ways to be assulted. How are you supposed to be grateful for a lack of overt violence? I shouldn’t have to grateful for that.

I only reported anonymously, years later, on the school's website because if he did it again, I wanted there to be something of a track record.

I didn't report it publicly because I didn't - and still don’t - think I would be believed, and I don’t have the fame to get written about, and I don’t have the money for an attorney. All because I’m the one who invited him.

I don’t want to write about my r*pe again. I don’t want there to be a situation where I think writing about my r*pe is important.

There are devices we can put in vaginas that are like teeth in defense of unwanted penetration. We shouldn’t have to do that.

"Shouldn’t" is strong in this writing because it’s true, and because I want to show these asinine "not all men" people that all this just fucking means TOO MANY MEN.

"Cesar Chavez is just a man."

We shouldn’t have to understand that.

Those women shouldn’t have had to stay quiet to protect the community! Why stay quiet for a community that you don’t think will believe you?

They shouldn’t have had to sacrifice for a community they thought wouldn’t believe them, and some that still don’t.

I so highly respect the writers of the article who spent five years researching what they knew would be devastating for a community because they felt the women deserved to be believed.

I am devastated by this, but I am truly grateful that the women are being believed. I’d rather tear down the statues of this man than have the gente not believe these women.

Bring a shovel.