Meghan Chamberlin says:

This article is everything to me. I can’t thank you enough for it. I’ve felt so completely slighted and alone in all of this. I’m not going to lie, though. In light of the exposure of her criminal activity, I am “LITERALLY” scared for my safety and more importantly, my family’s safety. How can someone get away with “apologizing” for the “white male comment”, give an “EXCUSE” for disgusting, harassing, stalking, thievery of ANOTHER woman and yet her and the institution that keeps her in “POWER” have nothing to say to me except “I didn’t know she was raped” (which she didn’t say to me… I got to read her sentence, spoken by someone else, somewhere online). I actually gave her the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to believe that what happened that day didn’t affect me as much as it did (still does); I wanted to believe “no way: a) another woman; b) another woman who has felt marginilized; c) a very educated person; d) a very educated person with a PhD; e) a PROFESSOR at some pretty elite universities; e) a FELLOW smart, educated woman, period… could EVER talk to me that way while knowing it. I hadn’t looked back at that thread since it hit Fox News. I couldn’t because it was a trigger. Now that I can’t avoid it and I am forced to really look at this event objectively… I feel victimized again. Please keep in mind that my previous sentence is honestly very scary for me to say because I’ve been afraid to say “yes, I can be a victim too” for so long because I’ve been conditioned to think “okay, so some bad things happened to you… a lot of bad things. but, it doesn’t compare to what other people have suffered, therefore I should keep my poor-me, pity-party mouth shut up.” However, I’ll tell you one thing… I’ll be DAMNED if my girls ever grow up feeling they aren’t deserving of every right that anyone else on a leveled playing field would be given. They will never feel such self-deprecating behavior that robs them of their life”. Such self-deprecative behavior that overwhelms so many victims of sexual/physical/domestic assault & all too often therefore suffer a lifetime or what feels like a lifetime of mental health issues. We’re not weak, but we are very impressionable at times… (it “LITERALLY” is science that victims, especially of multiple assault traumas, often feel like they have to protect their oppressor because of fear and then after enough time has gone by, the brain convinces itself that it has no worth or it wouldn’t matter etc.) It hit me one day… “This is going to kill me; this feeling and the way it makes me treat myself is going to kill me unless I say “STOP”, find my voice and call out the intrinsic horrid consequences that come with intersentionality. I’m still waiting for a discussion on that. There are those of us out there that need a voice, a platform, a team behind them and not lost, silenced or postponed for the poor sake of intersectionality. So it stops with me. Another key point is that by American standards I am “poor”. One income family; one car; two kids; paycheck to paycheck; can’t even afford to pay co-pays, therefore my illness suffers so much more; My husband who has MS can only make his BARE MINIMUM, at best, appointments for same reasons… so that pay-grade part? That’s another discussion altogether. Her flaunting her education, when mine was robbed after the PTSD said “nope” (also another conversation). Oh, and just an f.w.i. to Dr. Grundy, I’ve used the term “intellectual altruism” since I was a freshman in high school, just about every weekend/weekday when prepping for my regular cross-examination debate/extemporaneous speaking tournaments, locally, state wide and nationally. Ironic? Don’tcha think? I at least have to laugh to myself about it to keep some kind of humor in this, which is what keeps me sane. Again, thank you Victory Girls… probably more so for putting up with my signature “novel comments”. Thank you for helping me to feel so much less alone in this. It really does mean the world to me.