And I remember what I was wearing.

It was a black satin sailor-style outfit– one piece, with a high neckline and long, knee-length culottes instead of a skirt, white piping on the collar. It was dressy, and conservative, and appropriate to wear to a Bar Mitzvah service. I also thought it was very grown up.

It was dark, and most of the guests had left. The parking lot lights glowed overhead, but it was well into evening and the sky was dim. There were just three of us there, waiting for our parents to come pick us up. I was standing against one side of the arch. The two boys, both boys from my grade at school, were standing against the other side, chatting. I went to a small school, so while I wasn’t friends with them and wouldn’t say I knew them particularly well, I knew who they were, what classes they were in, that sort of thing.

The funny thing is, all these years later, I cannot for the life of me remember who the second boy was. I don’t remember if he did anything or said anything. I know there was a second boy there, that’s all. The other one, I remember vividly.

I don’t know how it started, but they came over to my side of the arch, and I think they chatted with me a little bit. Harmless, casual chat. I don’t remember that either. I do remember that I was downright shocked by the question the boy asked me.

“Can I touch your breasts?” he asked, suddenly, out of the blue, out of nowhere.

I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me. “What?” I asked him, and I hunched my shoulders over to make my breasts look smaller. They were already extremely large; I was already self-conscious of them. “No,” I added, once I came to the full realization that he had really asked that.

He seemed undeterred. “Please?” he asked. “Why not?”

I remember being mostly incredulous that he asked that. I think I laughed. I asked him if he was joking, and told him no again, more firmly, and probably with whatever kind of strong language passed for a swear in my very stuffy preteen mind.

He told me that he just wanted to see what it felt like.

I told him no, repeatedly, and in no uncertain terms. I am pretty sure I told him that was gross.

And then he reached out, and grabbed my breast, and squeezed it, with all five of his fingers. And then dropped his hand, and described it to his friend, as if I wasn’t even there anymore, now that he’d gotten what he’d wanted. I remember him saying it didn’t feel any different from any other body part, and sort of squishy.

I remember my face going completely hot, and I remember being struck dumb. I’d told him no, over and over again, and he didn’t listen.

I was lucky, I guess, that we were in a public place, even if it was fairly empty, and that my parents were on their way to pick me up, and that all he wanted was to touch my breast, because if he’d asked for something else, he clearly didn’t seem interested in taking no for an answer.

I have never written out this story in detail. I have mentioned it in passing a few times. I did drop out of peer tutoring in high school when I was assigned to tutor him. I couldn’t bring myself to tell the advisor why I was dropping out. I just explained that I was too busy.

I was wearing knee-length culottes and a short-sleeved top with a high neckline. It was black, and dressy, and conservative. It was not low-cut, or high-cut, or tight, or fitted. Because men (and boys) don’t take our clothing as an invitation. They take our existence as an invitation. A man who wants to humiliate a woman, or touch a woman in a way she doesn’t want to be touched doesn’t think about a woman as being a person with feelings and wishes of her own to be respected. He doesn’t care what she is wearing.

This wasn’t the last time this happened to me, although it was certainly the most shocking. That outfit was only the first in a line of outfits that I have taken home, and crumpled up on the floor of my closet, and been unable to bring myself to wear again. Because even when I know the things I’ve said above, girls are taught that it’s either something they’re wearing, or something they’re doing. I know it’s not. But it’s still easier to blame it on the clothes, even when the clothes were knee-length, high-necked, black, dressy and conservative.

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Sharp set the truck on fire, igniting ammunition inside the vehicle in what police believe was a tactic to draw people out of the building, Kowalski said. Sharp also attempted to set fire to the truck’s trailer, which was carrying wood chips, road flares, gasoline and ammonium nitrate fertilizer, but it failed to ignite, Kowalski said.

“It looks like it was possibly an improvised explosive device,” he said.”

I need to say something, here.

The “debate” (which would be more appropriately referred to as “vitriol”) surrounding the Cordoba House community center planned for Lower Manhattan has kept me on the edge of tears on and off for days now.

I have heard people refer to Imam Rauf, founder of the Cordoba Initiative, as a terrorist, simply because he has, time and time again, tried in the name of a spirit of tolerance and understanding, to explain why some people feel the way they do about the United States, and why people might be incited into violence against the US and our political allies.

People, saying “hey, they’re pissed off because you have armies in their countries and side with Israel” ain’t terrorism. And he has said repeatedly that he doesn’t feel that this places blame on the US for making those decisions. He’s explaining the line of rationale, not excusing it.

This man is not a terrorist:

This man is a terrorist:

I am a New Yorker. Our city still has wounds that desperately need to be fixed. You, people spewing your hate at people who live in our city, work in our city, lost loved ones in our city, simply because they are of the same faith as the people who caused that dreadful event, maybe because they don’t look like you or share the same cultural habits as you, you are the ones tearing the scabs off our wounds. You are the ones who will not let us heal. Every time you rationalize, claim some more and more preposterous excuse for why people should not be able to practice their faith, teach other people about their faith, improve their community and help contribute to the healing process, you, you are compromising the values of the American ethos, but the values of nearly every major world religion. Every time you call a man who has dedicated his life to spreading tolerance between faiths “a terrorist,” you are failing to open your eyes to the most basic kind of love we can feel for each other as human beings.

And I want to be able to remember what happened at the World Trade Center with a spirit of love, with the beautiful and bittersweet memories of the way New Yorkers came together to help each other and mourn together in the days that followed, not with the horror, fear, and confusion of those life-altering hours. I want to be able to say that what happened that day made me a stronger and better person, made me more compassionate and just, and that it made all of us stronger and better people, more compassionate and just.

You are making that impossible. You are destroying my memories. You are demanding that I feel misery for something I already felt too much misery over. And I will not stand for that.

I would urge you all to think on the message that Imam Rauf is trying to spread, and not the message Patrick Gray Sharp tried to spread. I don’t know if I agree with everything Rauf says in his Ted speech, and we don’t know what Sharp was saying when he tried to hurt those police officers, but I certainly approve messages of tolerance, compassion and love over messages of terror, hate and fear.

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“The mainstream media won’t tell you, but government thugs are coming after all of us, and won’t stop until they take away your guns and leave you defenseless when gay Marxist Muslim illegal immigrants come after you.”

“We are under siege by a parade of militant homosexuals who are working with our enemies to change U.S. currency by putting Al Gore, Michael Moore, and Keith Olbermann on $1, $5 and $14 bills. Add up those numbers and what do you get? 20, which is the same day of the month Hitler was born.”

Make your own

The only problem with this thing is that most of them actually sound like things Glenn Beck has said.

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This happens a lot, but most specifically it happened to me on the train last Friday whilst going up to see my parents. It was especially annoying because this guy sat down next to me in one of those “family” seats where they are facing both ways, so I moved across and opposite from him so that we would both have legroom AND armroom– and he proceeded to lounge over the entire three seats of the now-free row he had, effectively cutting off my ability to stretch my legs.

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It was one of the most uplifting things I have seen in my life. They were acting exactly the way straight kids that age act, where they are shy and very sweet about kissing, and with no pretension. They didn’t act the way people expect gay boys to act– they were in no way effeminate; they were very boyish little boys with high top sneakers and denim shorts and oversized tee shirts. But they were kissing and holding hands. In public. On a crowded city street. And that says something about how people’s perceptions are changing. That two very young boys are okay with not only telling each other that they like each other, but letting strangers know.

This is in sharp contrast to what is going on in a country where, according to their President, this would never happen because they don’t have homosexuals.

I have a few things I would like to say based on some misconceptions I have seen from other people. I have seen a few people point out that Moussavi may not be any better a man than Ahmadinejad. That is beside the point.

We, Americans and Europeans and anyone else reading this or watching the news or checking Twitter or anything else, we do not have a right to choose Iran’s leadership. We can have opinions about the candidates, but our opinions about the candidates have nothing to do with the issue at hand. The issue at hand is not even whether the election was rigged (although it seems pretty obvious it was.) The issue is that people have a right to complain and protest and question the system and not worry about being censored or silenced or, more importantly, beaten or killed. They have a right to say it was rigged and not fall victims to human rights atrocities. It does not matter who the election favors. It is not about that. It is about a country’s leadership doing everything but leading. It is about the right of these people to choose their government and then to expect that that government will answer to them.

The way the Iranians have responded to this makes me ashamed that we in the US did so little when we had an obviously corrupt election in 2000. Which brings up another point. I’ve seen people say this is just like our Presidential election in 2000. The fact of the matter is that there will never be a wholly uncorrupt election. The whys and hows are not the point. The point is that why the hell weren’t we doing anything about it? How much braver and stronger are the Iranian people who are out in the streets risking (and in some cases, giving) their lives to have a fair election? It makes me feel ashamed that we were so complacent, that we just sat back and let things run their course, when we live in a country that wouldn’t have shut down our access to the outside world, that wouldn’t have put dissenters under house arrest or killed students if they questioned the outcome of the election. It makes me feel like I didn’t do enough in my own country, that these people are willing to do so much when the risk is so high. And because of that I feel like I should do everything I can to help them, even from half a world away.

I’m about to go out to Union Square to join the rally in support of the Iranian protesters. I know they have been shut off from the world but I hope that, though it might not do much for them, they can feel the love and support, the admiration and outrage that so many of us are feeling for them. You are not alone. None of you are alone and every one of you is an inspiration to the rest of the world.

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