living while female

trying to remember to breathe, as i remember

i was crossing Delancey, legally in a crosswalk, and a dude in a big car honked at me, so i flipped the bird, so he pulled over and got out and came after me, so i walked as fast and as casually around the corner as i could and there was a couple with a little kid and i said please pretend to me my friend a guy is coming after me and they were like cool, hey, how’s it going … dude rounded the corner and saw me with them and turned tail and left

believe women

i got off the bus at the wrong stop someplace in the outskirts of denver and was trying to get a cab ... no map before iphones and gps so i had no idea where i was … a pickup truck passed and a bunch of male voices yelled threatening things i can’t remember and i kept walking trying to find an open bodega or gas station or something and they’d gone around the block and came back and slowed down by me and i casually-as-possible racewalked around a corner and hid in a hedge and watched as they drove by again and then again and then waited for a long time … i can’t remember how but i eventually got where i was going

i was out for a run and a bunch of young teenagers surrounded me, six or seven maybe, several pairs of hands reaching toward me …  i froze for a moment and then lunged for a gap between a couple of them and ran and one yelled voice cracking you have a nice ass lady … i have never since gone for a run in leggings

i was walking home from work down fifth avenue and suddenly a hoarse whisper in my ear, i wanna suck your titties, and i turned around with fist raised … he looked shocked and scuttled off

i was riding down east 6th street and there’s a dude with a guitar in the bike lane, i holler scuseme, he reaches out and grabs my boob while i ride by … at the end of the block there are a couple of cops and i stop and tell them what just happened … what did he look like? … white, medium height, short hair, not much of it … whaddya want US to do?

i was riding down the street and a guy wanted to cross so he grabbed my arm and tried to pull me off my bike and then cursed after me when i rode off

i said no, and i said no, and i said no again…

============

i have so many other stories like this. so many women have experienced so much worse. all these situations could have escalated, but i was unhurt. yet i write about them with my heart pounding. BELIEVE WOMEN.

The DOE Just Trumpeted Its True Colors

Here we go. The Trump Department of Education wants you to help it “end DEI” by informing (confidentially) on “illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning.”

This submission form is an outlet for students, parents, teachers, and the broader community to … identify potential areas for investigation.

Students can snitch on their teachers, parents on their kids’ teachers, teachers on each other. And you don’t have to have any connection to a school: anyone else in the community is welcome to use the form. 

The DOE press release announcing the portal quotes Tiffany Justice: “Parents, now is the time that you share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools.”

Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, claims the group is bipartisan though it has ties to the Proud Boys, promoted Florida’s “don’t say gay” laws, seeks bans on books with LGBTQ+ or Black characters or themes (and sexy seahorses) and is closely linked with Republican leaders. M4L members have suggested that LGBTQ+ students should be taught in separate classrooms from straight kids and students with disabilities should be de-mainstreamed, and called a Pride event “perverse.”

If you’re a school librarian, a teacher, an assistant principal, if you’re gay or trans, Jewish or Muslim, a second-generation immigrant or a Black person with generations in the United States behind you — or not! — whether a report is even valid is not the point. 

Being investigated is exhausting and demoralizing. Being investigated alone will make some people think you’ve done something wrong. Targeting individuals, claiming they’ve violated the nation’s new speech laws, makes it harder for others to dissent. 

That is the point.

Gestapo. Securitate. KGB. Frumentarii. Stasi. Secret Police. Whatever you call it, encouraging people to rat on their neighbors is a key feature of authoritarianism. 

A Moms for Life chapter newsletter opened with a quote from Hitler (the writer then apologized). In an interview with Forbes, Justice said it was a mistake for a chapter leader to open a newsletter with Nazi propaganda. But at a M4L conference, Justice said, “One of our moms … quotes Hitler.” Someone in the audience whooped. “I stand with that mom,” she added, to many more cheers. 

It’s not just about trans people. By foregrounding Moms for Liberty in its call for informers, the Trump Department of Education just told us that, loud and clear.

Words Matter — Health Policy

The President says he wants to “make America healthy again.”

Who could argue with that? We lag behind other developed nations in life expectancy. The US maternal mortality rate is several times higher than in the European Union, and well over double Canada’s rate. On various other metrics, we live shorter, sicker lives than people in other high-income nations.

The causes are clear: inequities in access to health care and social services; government subsidies of sugar, grain, and seeds; food deserts and ultra-processed foods. Behind those: poverty, basically, enabled by a combination of government inaction and corporate greed.

But it turns out what really interests Trump’s handlers is that sick kids aren’t eligible for military service.

Take a minute with that. Trump has declared a “crisis” of chronic diseases in children because he is concerned about the drop in military recruitment rates. 

The three most common disqualifiers, per the Centers for Disease Control and the bipartisan Council for a Strong America: overweight, insufficient education, and a criminal record. 

Solutions? Spend more on pre-k programs. Good early childhood education gives kids cognitive and emotional resources that help them stay in school and ultimately reduces crime. Spend more money on K-12 education, especially in areas that have been underfunded since … forever. Spend more money to make sure kids get enough to eat: food insecurity is a significant driver of obesity in children (and adults). 

But Trumpist logic leaps past asthma and cancer to autism, ADHD, and mental health.

Executive Order, February 13, 2025

The cause of this crisis in youth mental health? “Over-utilization of medication” and the “threat” of SSRIs, antipsychotics, and stimulants, alongside electromagnetic radiation, corporate cronyism, Government policies, and corrupt science.

The proposed fix? Radical ideas. Things no one [in Trumplandia] has thought of before: nutritious food, “healthy lifestyles,” physical activity, “transparent data,” education.

Words have power. Promoting “lifestyle” and physical activity while simultaneously blaming childhood disease on medication is disingenous. 

In the context of Trump administration actions —sowing chaos by randomly firing civil servants, destroying social service agencies, deleting websites and databases, and hobbling scientific research — these words are empty.

Mendacious, misleading, meaningless: Trump’s words are dangerous.