(content note: discussion of childhood sexual violence)
Now it feels deep into the thick of it, into what we are confronting as a society. There is a baseline of harm in the positioning of Trump. Every headline or soundbite reminds me that he is the abuser-in-chief. A representation of the worst of humanity. A reminder that women and nonbinary people and survivors of all genders don’t matter to a wide swath of the country.
The Epstein Files feel the same to me. A brutal reminder. Exceptionally triggering for survivors of sexual violence, especially childhood sexual violence.
As I try to read about the files, I am brought back to testifying via videotape as a 7-year-old about the abuse I experienced from a teacher’s aid in school. I remember how little I understood. I remember how everything felt unreal. And I am one of the people who supposedly got justice. The man who abused me was imprisoned and at least some of the children he hurt received settlement money from a school district.
None of that healed me. In part because I believe carceral justice doesn’t work, and in part because the wounds are reopened every day of living in a sexually violent culture that privileges the humanity of white cisgender men and people in power.
I think about how today people perceive me as a white cisgender man. How much more of my story lives beneath the surface. How potently privilege is real, as are the impacts of invisibility.
It is easy for me to feel hopeless when I think about how much power a small group of wealthy people have. But when I think about the strength of survivors across time and space, I feel hopeful. I hope that we are creating a world where one day abuse will be so rare that it is a shock. I hope that we are creating a world where people who are harmed can heal, and those who do harm can heal too, because almost all of us hold both.