Anonymous

What do you do when you have no choice on how you get to work?

Over those five years, I volunteered on hot summer days and rainy mornings. I stood in snow, wearing warm layers and fleece mittens. I volunteered beside women and men, many of them young, like me, but some older and wiser and living out a lifetime of experience on those sidewalks.

For more than 20 years, I believed I was a slut. A shameful, vile, one-time slut, but a slut all the same. It was you, Mr White Canterbury shorts, that led me to believe this. But, since reading the letter from Brock Turner’s victim, I realized, what you did, Mr White Canterbury Shorts, was in fact rape.

It never felt like sexual assault, him taking the sex I didn’t offer. It felt more like a silent agreement. I surrendered to sex; he didn’t complain.

Like too many others out there, we have a father who gave us some of his genes and not a whole lot more. Specifically, my father is an alcoholic — has been for the entirety of his adult life.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted to say to him about porn. The way I parent is to give my children all the information and then let them make decisions for themselves. I feel that if I restrict activities I make them more alluring. That’s why I don’t join my mom friends in banning technology throughout the school week and that’s why I don’t ever ban junk food. Instead I sit the kids down, explain my concerns, and then monitor their use or consumption, making suggestions along the way.

I had grown to learn that fighting=love. I was dead wrong.

My dad had an explosive anger that he took out on his children. My father abused me and I love him in spite of myself. I don’t want him to die.

My own father was, and still is an alcoholic, and is no longer a part of my life. Although he was never violent, his alcoholism still deeply affected and damaged our family, and me.

A fresh perspective from a straight, cisgender man on what it's like dating a trans woman...