Losing My Perspicacity, September 4, 2025

(CW: Sexual assault)

Good morning and Happy Thursday. Congrats to us all on nearly surviving another week in an America that has been taken over by cartoon villains.

Yesterday was a hard day for me, personally, and for millions of other Americans (yes, millions) who have survived sexual assault. According to the CDC, back when it was doing CDC things, over half of women and one in three men have experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetime. A conservative estimate, using 51 percent of women and 30 percent of men, still means we are taking about over 130 million Americans who have been the victims of some version of sexual assault.

I’ve spoken before about my own experience with SA, and I really don’t want to go into it again, because I always get accused of making someone else’s pain about myself, when what I am trying to do is convey the fury that so many victims feel. If you’re curious, you can read about it here. Despite what the trolls like to say, I will never stop using my platform to advocate for victims, because I desperately needed someone to do that for me.

Anyway, I didn’t expect yesterday to be a hard day. At all. I thought I would watch the Epstein victims’ press conference and write about it like I do any other story. Instead, I found myself inert on the couch for most of the day. So let me try to explain.

We live in a rape culture. When a man found to have sexually abused a woman by a jury of his peers is elected President, when women who come forward against famous athletes and celebrities too often wind up going into hiding and refusing to cooperate out of fear, when juries listen to women describe the trauma inflicted on them by men like P. Diddy and Harvey Weinstein and still can’t decide if they are guilty, when a man accused of sexual assault is confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States, well, that’s rape culture. Go on social media and remind people of the extremely credible allegations against Kobe Bryant. Watch what happens.

The most traumatic thing rapists do to their victims is to take away their power. I knew, as a young woman, that leaving a club, drunk, with a guy I didn’t know meant that I could not tell anyone about my own assault. It was never even a question — I had seen Anita Hill try to tell her story to the men in Congress years before. But after a while, that lack of power starts to eat away at your soul. It’s so unfair and so unjust. Victims have to be perfect to maybe be believed, while all the perpetrator has to do is sit back and cast doubt on their story, which more people than not are eager to accept as the truth.

The inequity of it all eats and eats and eats at you. I’m not sure it never ends, even if you tell the truth in a very public way. Patron Saint of SA Victims Olivia Benson once told a victim, “Healing begins when you bear witness and tell your story.” That may be when healing begins, but I don’t know that it ever ends. Victims simply learn to live with the resentment. I’m not sure having to relive trauma over and over again to try to convince people that you matter is all that healing, anyway.

All of those feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and rage at the unjustness of it came flooding back while I watched Jeffrey Epstein’s victims stand on the steps of the Capitol and beg the men (and women!) in Congress to listen to them. To believe them.

I’m in awe of these amazing women, and I’m so grateful that they are finding strength in each other. They were children when they were abused, despite the media’s insistence on calling them “underage women.” I can’t imagine their frustration of watching a man who was, at the very least, complicit in keeping quiet about their abuser, assume the highest office in the land, become a cult-like leader for the worst among us, and pressure lawmakers to keep the details of their abuse under wraps. Thankfully, these women are tired of waiting for Congress to release the Epstein files, so they are putting together their own list of the men who abused them.

And what did Donald Trump do while these women were pleading for cooperation from Congress? While they were begging for our leaders to side with them and not their abuser? First, he scheduled a military flyover to try to drown out their voices. Sure, it was ostensibly for the WH visit of the President of Poland, but wow, what a coinkydink that it just happened to occur at the same time as these women were speaking!

And then he called the entire thing a “Democratic hoax.”

Meanwhile, here is Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), of whom I am no fan and who is an SA survivor herself, after meeting with the victims.

If you can’t tell from the video, Mace is clearly distraught and crying. She’s a bigoted GOP shill with serious issues who has no business being anywhere near a congressional seat, but I believed those tears. I was crying them myself.

So this is where we find ourselves, America. Over half of our lawmakers have chosen to side with a President who has already been found to be a sexual abuser and are refusing to vote to release investigative files that may well implicate said President in a pattern of abuse of children. Because we swim in rape culture every single day in this country. There is literally nothing victims can do to make powerful men care, despite how many of them claim to be devoutly religious.

As of the time of writing this newsletter, only four Republicans have signed the petition to discharge the Epstein files:

I don’t even have words for how angry and hopeless this makes me feel. When we are not willing to hold powerful people responsible for harming children, we have truly lost our way.

I’m pretty emotionally drained after wallowing in my big feelings all day, but here are a few other things worth noting. Naomi Osaka is headed back to the semifinals of the US Open; Ted Cruz is truly the worst; I am never, ever going back to Florida; and The High Note.

Let’s do it (quickly).

Naomi Osaka is headed to the semis

Watching Naomi Osaka cruise into the semifinals of the US Open — in front of John Turturro and Christine Baranski, no less! — was so satisfying. Not to mention that two Americans, Jessica Pegula (yes, those Pegulas) and Amanda Anisimova, have also advanced to the semis (remember, Naomi plays for Japan).

Over the past few years, Osaka has struggled with an overbearing and over-invasive press, mental health issues, and has had a child. Now she’s back in a balloon dress with flowers in her hair and a blinged-out Labubu (named Billie Jean Bling), and she’s kicking ass. And while I hated watching her take down Coco Gauff, who I was also rooting for, it’s so lovely to see her playing so well and seeming so happy.

Feels like Naomi is due to win another major.

Ted Cruz is such an ass

Check out how proud Ted here is of his fat joke:

Hey dumbass, Chicagoans don’t eat Domino’s. You couldn’t even come up with a single Chicago-centric pizza joint? Not Gino’s East? All the tourists know about that abomination. Not Lou Malnati’s? Not Giordano’s? Not Aurelio’s, the favorite pizza of both the Pope and me?

Imagine looking like Wolverine after he really let himself go and taking a shot at someone else’s appearance. God, he’s such a loser.

Anyway, Governor Pritzker handled him just fine.

Hahahahaha. Burn!

Reason 37, 982 I am never going back to Florida

If the book bans, the concentration camps, the anti-trans bigotry, and Ron DeSantis weren’t enough, now Florida is going to be a petri dish in a peninsula.

Congrats to Floridians, who are all about to find out if their childhood vaccines are still protecting them. And because, as one person pointed out to me, Florida is a travel hub, those communicable diseases are going to be spread across America, from sea to shining sea. I’m pretty fired up to try out polio, myself.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

Today, a reminder that there are still good people in this world who strive every day to make a difference.

Survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.