Finnian Burnett

HI Guys,

You’ve let me down again. I’m not actually surprised. I’ve been trying to make peace with you for most of my life and I know how fruitless it is.

I’ve tried to tell you that I’m inviting violence every time I interact with one of you, simply because I was born in a female body. I’ve tried to explain that more women are killed in genocide worthy numbers by men. I’ve told you that almost every single woman I know has been raped or hit or grabbed or kicked or beaten. And the ones that haven’t been physically hurt have still been the victims of verbal assaults. I’ve tried to make you understand that women are under siege in this world.

I’ve even tried to make it personal by explaining that I’m afraid. That I’ve been a victim of your violence and that you scare me. And I’ve asked you to please listen and understand that it is our whole culture that contributes to you feeling as if you own women, that we owe you something.

I’ve tried to show you the news articles about men who kill women who say no to a date or to sex. The one where the man slammed his fist into a woman’s vagina and eviscerated her intestines. The one where the woman was beaten nearly to death, then set on fire and then managed to crawl to a road where she was found and hospitalized and lived for several days in unbearable agony until she finally died. The one where the guy asked a woman to marry him and she said no so he shot her. The one where a woman had acid thrown in her face because she said no. Male violence.

I’ve even learned to control my words, to say them in nicer ways because your feelings get hurt when I just tell the truth. So I sugarcoat my sentences. I start by saying, “I know not all men rape, but can we please talk about the ones that do?” or I say, “I know *you* care about this. So maybe you can help me understand why you’re the only one.”  Even when I sugarcoat my words, you still get upset and shout me down and yell about not all men. And you call me an angry feminist and you try to invalidate what I have to say by calling me too sensitive. I’ve learned that men are more concerned about their feelings than they are about the fact that the women in their lives are in danger every time they leave the house. (And even when they don’t.)

But now something has happened that affects you, too. We have a man in the white house who has gleefully admitted to sexually assaulting women. We have a rapist misogynist in the white house. I know that’s not enough to alarm you. But he is also threatening immigrants and people of color and the LGBT community and those on medicaid and the poor. And the things about that is that those groups include a lot of men.

And even though you have let me down repeatedly and even though I have never seen you share statistics about violence against women and even though you didn’t speak out when I was trying to get you involved in the fight against female genital mutilation and even though you didn’t answer when I asked you to talk to me about male violence and the cultures that create it, I am still going to stand with you when your group is targeted. When your group, whatever it is, is the next on the block, I am going to be there, trying to help. Because even though you have let me down and you’ve refused to help me and you are part of the biggest wave of violence against any one group in history, I believe we still have a chance to work together.

Let me know if you need some pointers on surviving a ubiquitous enemy. I have years of practice.