Screaming at the Supreme Court: A Love Story (Part Four)

            A really cool thing happened and then a really dreadful thing happened. Lots of protesters were sitting and having a rest along the planters that lined the sidewalk across the street from the Supreme Court. Amy and I went over there to relax for a minute and make sure our phones were charged. I opened the foil-wrapped PB& J from my purse and ate it with panic-hunger. We still joined the chants going on across the street. I wondered aloud why we weren’t BLOCKING the street. If this were Philly, we would definitely be blocking the street.

            Sometimes, tourists would come by and talk to us about what was going on. A group of Chinese women stopped to ask me what my “E.R.A. Now” sign meant. One woman in the group, tall and thin and brightly dressed, didn’t have much English at all, but she had two words:

“Me too.”

            Her face was shiny and happy, maybe just excited to have found the right words. A lightning bolt of connection, sadness, and heart from all across the world went through me. We smiled at each other. We had something beautiful and horrible and profound: Me too.

            Not too long after that life-altering exchange, a white, middle-aged, American man with a goatee, walking his bike and wearing yellow bicycle clothes, stopped to greet some friends who were sitting near me. In my freaked-out, hypervigilant state, I overheard what he was saying, and it FUCKING CONCERNED ME.

In an offhanded, chitchatty way, he said this:

“It’s just a shame because you know the ones voting yes today are the same ones who went nuts when Franken…”

“NO. NOT HERE.” I went from peaceful PB&J mode to spitting-nails mad in half a second. “YOU ARE NOT going to talk about that FRANKEN BULLSHIT HERE. NOT. TODAY.”

Like so many “liberal” men, he was super-ready with:

“You shut the fuck up, bitch. I’m just talking to my friends.” He shook his finger at me and said something physically threatening, I wish I could remember what.

“GO. AHEAD.” I said, holding my sign aloft and bracing for impact.

It seems so foolhardy now, but I WAS physically ready to fight him. I wanted him to come at me so I could rip him to FUCKING SHREDS and with him, all of the troll-farm- indoctrinated Bernie Bro rape-apologists I’d been tormented by for the past three years.

It felt like the crowd around him was treating me as a threat, but it’s likely that some of them were trying to protect me. NOT the white woman that the Bicycle Man had stopped to greet though--she stood between us, shielding the man from my attack. A black man with a very gentle manner tried to get between us on the other side. He was trying to help, I think, but I felt boxed-in and snarling. People were filming with their phones—I’m sure I’m on some feeds looking and sounding like a caged beast.

“You need to get some help.” The white lady acting as the patriarchy’s human shield kept telling me.

“You’re crazy,” the bicycle man kept saying.

1.      I am getting help! This protest IS me getting help.

2.      Nothing calms a girl down like some good old-fashioned gaslighting.

The worst part was that I ‘knew” in this moment that I was the threat here, not sleep-rape-joke making Franken (Who, in my fury, I kept calling Frankl. Sorry Viktor Frankl! Love youuuuu!”) not this man gaslighting me and telling me to shut up, not even Kavanaugh. To this little crowd, I was the scariest thing at the Capitol that day. Maybe I’m a little bit okay with that, except:

            “You’re making my daughter cry!” said the woman angrily.

            Her daughter, a curly-haired twelve-something, was indeed sobbing, in the same way my then-littlest nephew sobbed when I ruined the Thanksgiving before last screaming at the adults about Nazis and racism and the homophobic Catholic church and rape culture and Water Protectors and god knows what else. I recognized and empathized with both kids’ fear, but I tried to understand that neither I nor my anger was the problem.

            “YOU’RE making her cry! WHY DON’T YOU STAND UP FOR WOMEN?”

            “You need help,” the woman kept intoning, and I really can’t argue with her there.

            “What if it was HER in that fucking picture? What if it was YOU?” I screamed as I started to walk away.

            Although some people said words of encouragement (“Stay strong, you can do this.”) as I was led (by Amy, thank goodness) away from the scene in shock, I felt like the worst monster ever, like I’d ruined the movement, like I’d set back the Democrats by a million years. I was shattered, and ashamed of myself, but I can also see who did this.

            AL FRANKEN FUCKING DID THIS. He fucked women over in person and then he fucked us over as a party. Liberal men did this, by dismissing the concerns of all non-white non-men as “identity politics” and insisting that “real people” only cared about money.

            While I admit my anger was scary and I’m sad that that little girl cried, I hope she’ll remember my fury on her behalf. I hope, someday, it’ll spark some fury in her. That doesn’t make me not-ashamed, but it does make me a little hopeful.