#ADDRESSINGchallenge

Everyone is impacted by power, privilege, and oppression to some degree. I believe that awareness of your areas of privilege helps you to realize ways in which you benefit from your various privileges as well as how you might help those who need a boost. In school, we had to complete the ADDRESSING Framework for ourselves. It's a helpful tool. I challenge you to complete it and share it to start a dialogue. At the bottom, feel free to add other ways in which you believe that your life is easier or harder when compared with those around you.  #ADDRESSINGchallenge

Age: I'm 31. I am privileged in that I am old enough to drink, vote, drive, and many other things. Though I lack the freedoms afforded to the youths due to the responsibilities of my age.
Development: (privilege) my intellectual and developmental are in line with my chronological age.
Disability: (privilege) I am able-bodied and in good health. I am able to enter buildings and use every day tools without requiring intervention. (Disadvantage) I am short and often need a stool or a helping hand. I also require prescriptive lenses and struggle with accurate depth perception. I take anti-depressants to combat anxiety.
Religion: (disadvantage) I am agnostic/atheist. I don't believe in a higher power or an after life. This is off-putting to many who would assume that I am a sinner or bad because of that.
Ethnicity: (privilege) I'm white. I had never been denied anything that I wanted because of my race. (Disadvantage) I have felt guilty or that people assumed the worst of me because of my appearance.
Socioeconomic status: (privilege) I'm middle class. I make a good wage and can always afford my bills plus the occasional splurge. I have almost no debt. (Disadvantage) I often worry about savings, and feel I need to save for the things I want.
Sexual orientation: (privileged) I a straight. I am attracted to the opposite gender, and have never worried that who I am attracted to will change how people see me or treat me.
Indigenous heritage: (disadvantage) I don't really know my heritage or the history of my family. I assume, because of my appearance and names that I am of European descent.
National Origin: (privilege) I live and am a legal citizen of the country in which I was born. I am afforded access to all the rights that go along with citizenship in the country I live.
Gender: I am a cisgender female. (Privilege) if you look at me my gender and pronouns are readily apparent. I do not get mistaken for a person of my gender. I am (relatively) comfortable in my body. I feel that it reflects who I believe myself to be. (Disadvantage) I have been denied access to things I want because I am a girl. I have had people call me hurtful names, cut me off, or treat me unfairly because I am a girl. I feel unsafe walking alone at night because of fear of attackers simply because of my appearance.
*I might add to this framework:
Political leanings: I am a democrat living in a liberal area of the country. I do not feel that my political leanings will be judged or disregarded. Though, I do have very closed loved ones who I interact with regularly who have starkly different political beliefs than I do.  I have to work hard to check my values and beliefs and balance them with my love for those peoples along with my honesty to myself.

ETA: I also carry privilege in that I feel safe enough to post something of this nature without overwhelming fear of backlash or detrimental judgement.

Two Out of Three

I have never been raped.

I am fortunate. I have been supported by friends and family who allowed me to feel strong and taught me to stand up for myself.  My loved ones have always contributed to my feeling of security and importance in this world.  I am privileged.

I have never been raped.  And still I have been made to feel small, weak, and undervalued.

As a middle schooler, I was followed home by a boy who was bigger and stronger than me. I told him to stop.  The next day, he left before me and jumped out of some bushes a block away from my house.  He wanted to scare me for a joke.  I laughed because I was scared and I didn't know what to do. 

I have never been raped.

As an adolescent, my male friends referred to my stylish braids as "handle bars."  Again, I laughed.  I felt uncomfortable.

Those same friends of mine once worked together to attempt to unbuckle my overalls because they learned doing so would cause them to fall down exposing me in my underwear.  When I protested, the 2 of them pushed me forcefully into the nearby boys bathroom.  I was backed into a stall, and yelled furiously as they laughed and unbuckled my straps.  They then ran away, leaving me alone, in the boys bathroom, in my underwear.  I did not laugh.  I was astonished.

I have never been raped.

In college, I once had to forcefully shove my elbow into the padded belly of a man dressed as a tomato who felt that the dance floor of a Halloween party was an appropriate time to slither his hand up my shirt and cup my boob.  I did not know him.  I could not see his face, but I stomped his foot, elbowed his gut and shouted "FUCK YOU TOMATO!" I laugh about this now.

I have never been raped.

In my 20s, when I went out dancing with my friends, we regularly discussed how we would skillfully dance one another away from the unwanted advances of men who felt our enjoyment of music was an appropriate time to touch, fondle or kiss us. I remember spinning a friend away from a man who randomly stuck his tongue down her ear.  With my back to him, on a crowded dance floor before we could get away, he grabbed my breast.

I have never been raped.

However, I once purchased a couch from a man who copied my phone number off the sales record.  He began texting me.  At first I responded, thinking of the possibilities.  The messages quickly became uncomfortable, and I stopped responding.  He showed up at my apartment a few days later. I hid from him in the elevator. 

I have never been raped.

However I have been hit on by men who had wrong numbers and knew nothing about me other than that I sounded female. I once answered the phone at a clinic for survivors of domestic violence and encountered a man seeking treatment for batterers. After I directed him to the appropriate agency, he asked for my number. 

I have never been raped, but I have clutched my keys in my hand while trying to find my car in a dark parking lot.  I have held my phone tightly in my pocket while riding public transit alone in the dark.  I have asked to be escorted to my car in the secure parking garage of my luxury apartments. 

I have never been raped.  Though some of what I have experienced constitutes sexual assault, I have never been attacked or beaten, and my experiences do not count in the eyes of statistics. Many of my experiences were brief, and easily escaped. Those that weren't, were reported and promptly dealt with before they could escalate.  I have been protected, defended, and able to keep my self "safe."

I am one of the lucky ones, and these are facts from my life.

I have never been raped. At least not yet.

I Am A Writer

"My blog is important to me," I have said to myself, a thousand or more times over the last few years.

"I really need to get back to my writing," I thought, kicking myself repeatedly.

I am a writer.  Ever since the littler version of me asked her mommy to help her make her own story book back in the beginning of my time, writing has been a part of who I am. I went through a melodramatic poetry phase. Then I wrote for my school news paper.  I took creative writing in college.  I kept a diary.  Then, there was this blog.  What I am saying is, I have always been a writer, until recently.

Writing has helped me to process all the thoughts, memories, and experiences that have stuck in my psyche over the years.  It has enabled me to truly witness the development of those I help, while simultaneously appreciating my own growth.

For so much of my life, I have felt like a little girl.  This sense of perpetual youth has admittedly been helped along by my stature.  However, that is not the root of the tension.  I write to process this.  I write to discover myself. I write to understand why I constantly feel that I have tricked the world into taking me seriously as an adult.  I write to understand that it might actually be the other way around.  That possibly, the world has tricked me into feeling like a child.  I write, because maybe that's not so bad.  Children are wonderful, and insightful, and should be celebrated.  Does that mean that as I grow up, I lose those things?

I write, so as not to forget myself.

My Imaginary Friend

Like many small children, I had an imaginary friend.  My imaginary friend and I did everything together.  Her name was Little Min.  She was a miniature, older version of myself.  We played together all of the time.  Then, one day she moved away with her boyfriend.  She never came back after that.