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Okay, so in order to accurately convey this story I am going to need to give you some background on the characters, history and the time line leading up to this unfortunate instance. My style of story telling is chaotic; so bear with me and thank you for taking the time to read this.

To give an overall precursor to my personal stand point on feminism and once being a repressed young woman myself; I want to give the "readers digest" version of who I am. Born to a bold and wonderful woman who ran away from home with a racist, bigot, close-minded "man" 14 years her senior; I was raised with a split perspective on what it is like to be a woman. My beautiful mother was blinded by love. I'm familiar with this feeling so I hold nothing against her and only love her more now, knowing her strength.

While my mom struggled to make ends meet by working during the day and attending night school throughout the week, my dad, who was often jobless, was left to watch me and my two older sisters when we were home. We were each mentally and physically abused by him to different degrees and taught that we gained our worth through our looks. So, inherently, we were born "sluts" and were shamed and humiliated for needing to wear bras, shave, and something natural like menstruation. Instead of raising girls who were proud of our bodies and encouraged to be good students and athletes we were ridiculed for our less than perfect performances and ordered to hide our figures under baggy clothes. Fortunately, around my 13th birthday in 2005 the torture ended and we were liberated from his dictatorship when my sister threatened my mom. She told her she would kidnap me and run away if she didn't leave this shell of a man that she used to love and now only abuses us.

Every day is a new beautiful day to be proud of my body and womanhood, from that day on.

 Now the time was roughly around May of 2015. I had graduated from college at this point and was fiercely working on getting as many work hours in as possible to prepare myself financially to move out of state by July. I was in love for the first time with someone who made me feel proud of my body and mind, and had been for 2 years. My best friends/roommates from college had also just graduated with me and their final semester courses revolved around art, history, feminism, self actualization and everything else that comes with pre graduation anxiety and preparation for the post grad blues. Most importantly it involved feminism. Not your stereotypical "feminazi" feminism, but the real deal, true blue "everyone should be politically and financially equal and validated, Feminism. I could go on and on about the feminist art history class that two of my roommates took but I'll digress. My friends and I talked about everything, so even though I didn't personally take these classes, I felt that I could have taught a course on all of it with all the information and conversations that I shared with these girls on a daily basis.

Along with these girls were two amazing friends I had made at my then new job at a local coffee and dessert bar in downtown. Both girls were also very well educated, diverse and active feminists. One of the girls is an active thespian with a heritage in the Jewish culture and Native American culture. I love these girls because not only are they brilliant, goofy and loving, in my mind, they are profound representations of modern goddesses. Their opinions are strong and informative and unfortunately tend to run against the grain of political correctness and what may currently be considered "in". Because of that people tend to not agree with them, yet I am biased because I love who they are. And yet they stand strongly on their opinions while also keeping their minds open to discussion and further knowledge.

Okay, so to get back on track a little bit. During May of 2015, Mad Max was released in theaters and being a fan of the old Mel Gibson films and hearing so many good reviews, I had decided to go see it with my boyfriend at the time. I had heard that the post-apocalyptic film had a powerful female role and empowering storyline. I was also excited to see it with my special someone at the time because he proudly considers himself a male feminist. We both LOVED the movie and the story behind the chaos involving a misogynistic society and the liberation of women.

All of my coworkers then had known that I was excited to go see the movie, so when I went into work the next day, naturally some of them asked me how it was. One of which was a coworker who was a senior at the local high school. He was your typical dumb high school jock. Not to hate on high school jocks because I very much was one myself and understand that not all jocks have a hard time in academia. Many of my athletic and academic peers in high school were very hard working students, so don't think that I'm cutting this kid off at the knees just because I know he's a popular football player/homecoming king/prom king (which he absolutely was). This kid also had strong political stand points with zero validation or personal research to back up his opinions. He takes a strong conservative position on topics such as religion, gay marriage and abortion. No joke, this kid actually argued with me once about how mad he was that Michelle Obama made schools offer healthier lunch options:

"If I want to eat grease and chicken nuggets then get that leafy shit out of my cafeteria. If kids want to be healthy then they can pack their own lunch."... an actual quote.

Here's where it all goes down.

He asked me how the movie was, naturally I answered "AWESOME" and he smirked and shook his head.

I asked him "What, did you see it?"

He replied with a yes and thought it sucked. When I asked him why, I shouldn't have been surprised. He said he liked the action and everything else but he didn't like the plot. He thought it seemed "out of place" for a girl to play the bad ass.

"That's why you have Mad Max, so the girl can be rescued."

I tried to keep my cool with this "out of place" response, but my coworkers couldn't. The discussion quickly escalated and interfered with our work performance, being that this all happened on a closing shift where we typically had a dessert rush that lasted 4 hours. He quickly discovered that he was out numbered with 3 girls telling him how wrong and ridiculous he was so he followed up with incredibly offensive feminist jokes and sprinkled it with some Holocaust jokes. This lasted the entire shift. I tried to play it off like it wasn't too serious and laughed it off while reminding myself that he was just a high school kid and didn't quite get it yet. But I was heated enough to get off the serving floor and relocated myself into the dish pit to cool off. My supervisor had reprimanded all of us at this point for talking too much and getting distracted. Before closing that night, while I was still doing the dishes this kid comes back into the dish pit to tell me another "anti joke" that he thought was really funny.

"You wanna know how to really piss off a feminist?"

No. I didn't want to know and I didn't care to know because I knew it wouldn't be funny, but reluctantly I replied with an agitated, "What?! What could possibly piss a feminist off?"

"You rape her." He chuckled.

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Stories of resilience is a series of stories of sexism, harassment, and assault submitted by all genders. These stories are posted just as the writer chose to write them. Unedited and unabridged from their original form, they are a raw take on what happens every day in our society. 

If you are looking for your story to be heard when you have been silenced by others, please write. If you are looking for someone to believe your truth when others deny it, please write. If you are looking to stand by others who may currently be going through such adversities, please write.

email Be__. at be.empowered.be.equal@gmail.com

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What’s in a hashtag?

#BoysWillBeBoys comes from the old-fashioned societal stigma that sexual harassment is just a thing that men do and women need to change their own personal behaviors in order to correct it. As if to say, “he said this inappropriate thing to me but, it’s okay. Men will be men and I must have been ‘asking for it.’” This same stigma is what fuels the attitude behind victim blaming. 

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Stay tuned...

I am now accepting submissions of your experiences with assault and sexual harassment. All submissions will be anonymous. These stories will be unedited and unabridged. I hope to give a voice to those who have been effected by assault and give support to those who are still being effected. Please remember that all genders encouraged to submit stories and quotes. Help me in this fight for equality by being kind enough to share your story. 

Please email me at: be.empowered.be.equal@gmail.com

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Everyone should be encouraged to fulfill their highest potential, no matter our gender, no matter our race. Sexism effects us all. Let’s be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.