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Dealing with family sexism at Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. Aside from the awful history behind it, I am just not a fan of turkey. However, the one thing I like about Thanksgiving is the fact that I get to see my family. For the most part, I love my family very much, and since I don’t get so see them very often, Thanksgiving is a special sort of reunion.

Despite all my love for them, sometimes my family pisses me off. Disclaimer: I am the token liberal of my family. Some of them strongly identify as Republicans while the rest claim to be independent, but hold ridiculously conservative views and vote Republican 95% of the time. Needless to say, I have to hold my tongue around them very often or risk getting into a debate that no one was interested in.

What I most often have to endure are the homophobic comments. Sometimes they’ll tell a homophobic joke and expect me to laugh, so to keep the peace, I just laugh at their ignorance. Sometimes they’ll hold very victim-blaming attitudes, and since violence against women is my “soapbox issue” and they are very well aware of this,  it is especially difficult for me to keep quiet and I usually don’t, but censor myself as much as possible. 

Stop including rape in abortion politics!

TRIGGER WARNING:

I wanted to send this to every single Republican politician, but instead I’m just venting by posting it here.

I am a survivor of sexual assault. It has taken me a long time to come to terms with that sentence. I’ve told a lot of people, but not everyone because I know some people will place judgment on me while others will feel uncomfortable. But I’ve already placed enough judgment on myself and, believe me, being raped is more uncomfortable than learning that someone you know was raped.

The reason I’m declaring this now for everyone is because I am so SICK of the political climate mentioning rape every other day. Let me make some things very clear since they’re apparently ...

TRIGGER WARNING:

I wanted to send this to every single Republican politician, but instead I’m just venting by posting it here.

I am a survivor of sexual assault. It has taken me a long time to come to terms ...