I woke up this morning and that tweet has 66,000 likes. And the screen cap of the tweet on FB has 283 shares. It’s obviously hitting home for some people.

So, in a very, very scary act of bravery here, I want to talk about something I don’t think I’ve told anyone.

The reason that I have never run for office, despite how many people have asked, is revenge porn.

When I was in college, an older guy got me super drunk at a time when I was very vulnerable and took a photo of me that he then used to ruin my life.

He sent that photo to my boyfriend at the time, he posted it on a message board I helped moderate. He blackmailed me, and threatened to send it to my parents and my boss if I didn’t comply with his demands.

It’s been 10 years, but I can still remember the feeling of watching my entire life collapse around me. It ruined a relationship with a man I loved, who I had dated for 5 years. It made me get out of the first community I had ever felt home in.

And until today, that photo sat prominently in the back of my mind whenever anyone asked me to run. The immense, crippling fear of exposure of it kept me from even exploring the idea of running for office.

I was a whore, and I didn’t deserve to lead. This one thing was a disqualifier for the rest of my lif

You know, because I got drunk and made a bad decision when I was 20, and someone engaged me in a sexual act without my consent (wait, that’s rape), documented it without my consent, and used it to hurt me.

Well, guess what guys?

I’m done being scared.

If I run for office one day, I can now stand up and say, I am actually not ashamed of this photo. I’m ashamed to live in a culture where women who get naked or have sex are the ones shamed for their actions — Not the men who rape us.

Not the men who release our nudes.

Not the men who publish a tape on a website or send it to our whole schools or all their friends.

They carry no burden. I want to be that free.

This is me lightening my load.

This is me, unafraid.

Grey baseball pants stretched over my belly. There were three buttons. A tight yellow jersey, seams stretched tight. This was my second grade softball picture. I threw the pictures away.

I was already too big in other ways, hovering over the other little girls in my class. Fatness was just a new way to be different in a world where I was already other — too loud, too smart, racially-ambiguous, poor. Fitting in was not my forte.

My parents had divorced and I had started to eat. I remember the shame as my dad fished soda cans from underneath my bed, or god forbid, a can of frosting. Chocolate frosting, scooped right out of the jar, was my favorite treat. My mom would always get so mad. But in the dead of night, I couldn’t resist.

The years passed and I kept growing, both upward and outward. More and more different than the girls around me. The awful bowl cut is the only thing I am still mad at my parents about.

I ate Duncan Hines frosting and read books on the playground while other girls got chased by boys.

The pretty, skinny girls had to giggle and sit on the monkey bars and dress a certain way. But in my fat, bowl-cut body, I was free. I could read books at recess. I could hang out with whomever I wanted, laugh, run, be weird. I didn’t have to be the one that boys wanted.

It wasn’t foolproof. Men in trucks still slowed down to holler at us, barely 12, as we walked back from the convenience store. My fat little breasts developed at an early age. A mauve Victoria Secret training bra that marked my entry into womanhood is burned into my mind. I cried so hard the first time I put it on.

I went to a music festival in high school. I’m writing music festival, but it was really the Gathering of the Juggalos. Are you familiar? A truly midwestern experience of white, clown-faced rappers and debauchery. I was 15 the first time that my mom let me board a Greyhound bus with my best friend and attend. While the skinny girls were pressured to take their clothes off, my fatness gave me the freedom to stay clothed.

I ate deep-fried Oreos and no one screamed show me your tits at me.

Society teaches us, as fat women, that we are not desirable. That is, until men get desperate. We are an object of last resort, but an object none-the-less.

An object that should feel grateful when it is wanted. No matter how that want is expressed. As fat women, we are told that we should settle. Settle for the guy that hollers on the street. Settle for being treated like trash. What a gift, men’s desire is, for us, the undeserved.

He followed me for 10 blocks and I went home and cried into a pizza.

I’m thinking about how I put on this weight, steady over the years.

Break up with boyfriend, lose 10, 20, 50 pounds. New relationship, gain back 15, 25, 60. Trying to shape myself to be lovable enough.

Never getting far enough down the scale where I feel unsafe.

My fat is an illusion of safety.

It does not keep me safe. It hasn’t shielded me from sexual violence, street harassment or stalking.

My fat is an illusion of freedom.

Women are trapped in this life, where it is still acceptable for men to catcall, to sexually harass, to rape. Every time that I’ve gotten more thin, the attention paid to my body has increased so exponentially that I quit working to lose the weight. I never connected the two until recently.

There is this perpetuation of the idea in our society that fat women don’t get raped. When a fat woman comes forward about sexual violence, you can still see the looks in people’s eyes — really, her?

Like we should be so grateful that someone wanted us that we don’t care how they did it.

I want to find peace with my body.

I am a believer in the fat acceptance movement. I believe that all bodies are good bodies. But I also believe that my relationship with my body was build on a false premise — that if I just kept it undesirable, I’d be safe, I’d be free.

With feminism, we argue that women should have agency over their choices in life. Body positivity, to me, should also use this tenet. We should get to have agency over our bodies.

I want to feel like my body is a place where I can do anything that I set my mind to. At my weight, that isn’t a physical possibility. My anxiety is worsened by the stress of the million micro-worries and anxieties that come along with being a fat woman. Things I’m sure non-fats and small-fats never have to worry about.

Will this chair break?

Will I get kicked off this plane?

Does someone think I’m stupid because I’m fat?

I don’t want to be thin, I want to be free.

So I’m stepping into my freedom.

It’s a place where I am able to treat my body with compassion and empathy.

A place where I am truly present in my body.

A place where I understand that food doesn’t keep me safe.

And most importantly, a place where I can know that the only way to protect women from sexual violence is to end patriarchy.

This week we got the news the DNC Chair Tom Perez purged the party of a bunch of people that supported Keith Ellison and Bernie Sanders. For many people that fell into those camps, this news was a terrifying sign of the party going in the exact opposite direction from where we need it to go. We are doubling down on a losing strategy.

Democrats lost everything in the last election because the Party doesn’t seem to understand or care where the American people are at. Moderate Democrats don’t know how to talk to the actual people. The Ivory Tower of the party is out of touch with the world, and is relying on nonexistent party loyalty to win elections.

It’s not working. And it’s because we don’t know how to dream.

The Clinton campaign showed one failure of vision and messaging after another. While young people and progressives were inspired by Bernie Sanders, establishment Democrats rolled their eyes and ran to the middle. Their confidence in their message, that Hilary was qualified, that Drumpf was awful, was so inflated that they couldn’t see the forest for the the trees: People need something to believe in.

Democrats need to realize that no amount of big donor money will win voters that are uninspired by your candidate and message. If we want to win back our country we have to be bold.

We have to overcome the critical lack of imagination and the repeated failures to fight for our values. We can’t afford to lose more seats in the midterm elections. Losing will have especially dire consequences for the vulnerable populations in our county. But in order to win, we have to change course.

We are losing, but we don’t shift our strategy.

Lack of imagination in the party has lead to wide-spread Democratic losses across the board. Under President Obama, Democrats lost over 1,000 seats in Legislatures across America, falling to an all time low in representation. We lost Congress. And of course, we lost the White House.

After the loss of the Clinton campaign, the Democratic Party did a survey and realized it was losing it’s base, and completely shifted strategy. Kidding. They elected Tom Perez, a middle-of-the-road establishment Democrat with ties to the Obama and Clinton adminstrations. Instead of uniting the party and using new energy to move to the left and build a strong, bold progressive vision for America, the party is doubling down on the politics of oatmeal.

What are we afraid to lose, when we have already lost pretty much everything? When people across America are actually dying because of the shit-show that is the Trump presidency? Why can’t Democrats stand up and fight for something, anything, like parts of their base (and so many outside of the party) are desperately begging for?

Why do we refuse to make the implicit explict? Why do we distance progressive social movements instead of bringing them into the fold and incorporating them into our vision.

It’s shameful.

We can’t keep running races the same way we did 30 years ago. The world has changed, and we are failing the American people by losing to a party that is bold enough to lie, cheat and steal their way to the top.

We are condescending towards anyone with new or different ideas.

I was a Bernie Sanders delegate to my local caucus, my state convention and eventually the Democratic National Convention. I have never felt more condescended to. As a person that has been active in the political sphere for the majority of my life, I had never before seen so many political operatives totally dismiss so many people. Even my political mentors repeated toxic narratives that reenforced stereotypes of who Sanders supporters were; uninformed idealists with a lack of knowledge about “how this all works.”

Instead of stopping and asking why people were supporting Sanders, the Democratic establishment just presumed anyone not on the Clinton train was stupid.

Instead of stopping and asking why people were supporting Sanders, the Democratic establishment just presumed anyone not on the Clinton train was stupid.

Sound familiar? Maybe because it’s what Democrats do in all major national debates. And they don’t just make this assumption about people on the left. It’s also how they explain why people on the right don’t get on board with their policies. They are all just stupid hicks, right? It’s not our responsibility to educate them or even talk with them like people.

Except, that isn’t how you win.

What needs to happen?

Excuse my language and my reinforcement of the patriarchy, but there is no better way to put it:

Democrats need to grow a pair. And fast.

We have to escape the grasp of corporate donors and start working for the people who need someone on their side. As an Indigenous woman, it’s been clear that the Democratic party cares more about its big donors than it cares about my life. We have to change that reality.

We need to recognize where the energy in the party is, and where it is outside of it. Look at social movements. The establishment needs to realize that Millennial voters aren’t lazy or stupid, but are actually deeply committed to their values. There are reasons why voices like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters and Al Franken resonate with people.

They believe in something and they are willing to fight for it.

Anyone who has a hope of winning in 2020 is going to have to be someone who can go beyond the status of a political paper doll with graham cracker policies. They need to be someone who can lay out a bold, dramatic vision for a world that is the opposite of Drumpf’s.

We aren’t just losing races. We are losing our country. White supremacists, radical-right Republicans are winning hearts and minds because they give people something to believe in. That thing might be totally awful, but it shows that people need something to lock their sights onto.

We aren’t just losing races. We are losing our country.

We have to give them that thing. We have to give them something to believe in. We have to have candidates that are human beings, who go beyond what people expect from politicians. We need candidates that use plain language to talk about hard issues. We need candidates that don’t build a platform solely at the advice of well-paid consultants searching for a safe-middle. People these days see straight through that bullshit.

Most people don’t know what they actually believe in, at the surface. You have to craft messaging that prompts them to look inside and find those values. You craft a narrative that starts with values and walks towards a candidate.

You can’t shove another person in a suit down their throat and call them stupid if they don’t swallow.

The odds.

The most vulnerable people in our country cannot survive eight years of Drumpf. People in Puerto Rico are already dying at his hands. Democrats must realize what is at stake. If we can’t pull this together, people will continue to die. Families will be destroyed.

What do we believe in?

Let’s fight for that thing. Let’s leave it all on the field. Let’s put our hearts into winning elections to protect our immigrant neighbors, the children in our public education system, our trans brothers and sisters. Let’s remember the victories we have won and use them as fuel to fight to keep them.

Let’s win elections to change systems, not just butts in chairs.

The era of the corporate Democrat must die.

And if the party can’t change, it needs to die too.

Almost exactly two years ago, I was forced to quit my job after a coworker and I lodged formal sexual harassment complaints against our boss. Nothing happened. Our board circled in to protect him, he publicly slandered us, and we were expected to just accept it. But I didn’t. I wrote a post on Facebook naming him and the specifics of what he had done to us. Soon after, he was allowed to resign.

Lawyers and the lawsuits they had brought, quiet conversations with mentors, nothing had the impact that my Facebook post had. Of course, because I am a woman I also faced huge repercussions. I was demonized and hurt by many people, mostly women, in my community.

But he wasn’t able to hurt the young women we worked with anymore. And that’s what mattered.

I share this because this was my first experience with calling someone out. I share this because call-out culture isn’t a sport that marginalized people engage in for fun. It comes from a place of desperation.

It’s often our last line of defense.

We live in communities where people who hurt people are protected. Where we can’t call the cops because we fear the death they bring. We live in communities where a circle of aunties will cast you out for raising your voice against a known abuser.

My anecdote is just one of millions. Every. Single. Damn. Day. People I know are forced to share space with people that are knowingly and willfully harming the people around them. With the advent of social media, we are able to use the tool of the call out to warn our networks about these predators. Because, in our eyes, the silence of the communities we live in has fueled the ongoing cycles of trauma of our peoples.

Call-out culture isn’t toxic.

Rape culture is toxic. State violence is toxic. All the isms are toxic. Capitalism and patriarchy are toxic.

Societies like ours that work so hard to silence marginalized people are toxic.

Societies that hurt certain people so much that they take drastic measures, measures that often harm them, because they feel like it’s the only way they can have a voice.

Calling people out is often the only way for us to survive.

It isn’t about political purity or woke points, it’s about safety.

When the people who are least impacted are the ones spreading the message that call-out culture is toxic, we should push back and ask more questions. What harm is really done when people are called out? Are hurt feelings worse than hurt bodies? Are the lives that are saved worth less than the feelings of the people being called out?

I don’t think so. I’d rather see a perpetrator get torn down on Facebook than see one more sister raped.

Cis men, both men of color and white men, seem to be the ones most keenly aware of how bad call-out culture is for our world. So eager to educate us all. Which seems strangely aligned with the fact that they are often the ones being called out.

I can say this. Calling people out is uncomfortable. It isn’t something that should be taken lightly. It does not bring me joy. I don’t think it is a solution for everything, but I do think that is is a perfectly rational, logical response to a culture that is still more likely to call a woman a whore than a man a rapist.

Critiques of call-out culture often sound a lot like simple victim-blaming.

We doing the calling out, we are toxic. We are destructive. We are the problem. We need to play nice with our oppressors, we need to be careful for the feelings of the people that hurt us.

Some of the arguments against call-out culture sound a lot the arguments used historically to frame women as unstable, emotional and insane.

Asking marginalized people to do the heavy lifting of calling people in is asking a lot. Expecting people to welcome people that do them harm into spaces is irrational. Vulnerable people are shamed for trying to create safe spaces, excluding people, when it is the only way we can feel like we have room to breathe.

Calling people in might work with some types of oppression. But there are plenty of people I don’t want to call in to my community. I don’t want to call in abusers. I don’t want to call in predators. Not because I think they are disposable, but because I think they aren’t ready. They aren’t ready to share space with people I love because I don’t want to see more people hurt.

I am done. done. done. living and working along side with men that haven’t done the work to combat their own trauma, internalized oppression and patriarchy.

If people want to be called in, they have to do the work. They have to do that work in a place where they are no longer harming vulnerable people.

That isn’t negotiable.

If you’ve been on social media, especially YouTube in 2017 you’ve probably heard a lot about minimalism. This new wave really came to the light last year, when two white dudes from some hipster city started calling themselves the minimalists and did a TED talk and made a documentary…blah, blah, blah.

They are probably the least interesting thing about minimalism.

Another catalyst was the popularity of the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and her Konmari Method, developed by Marie Kondo. The most important part of that book is the idea of only keeping things that spark joy.

So you have a)The Minimalists, telling you to only keep what you use and b)Konmari telling you to touch all your shit and see what makes you happy. Suddenly every former beauty-guru on the internet is purging her collection. Not to mention the crazy fruit eating vegans who are on a quest to own less than thou.

As a 30-year old former collector who has dove head-first into minimalism (I’ve gotten rid of about half my stuff) and has watched the rapid spread of it, I began to wonder why people were so quickly grasping on to something that seemed to reject everything we’ve been instructed to do. And I think I know why.

We’ve Realized how Broken The System Is

Things have finally unraveled enough for us to see the cracks. Society seems to have lost its collective shit a little in the past year.

While minimalism and politics are rarely mentioned in the same context, there is something radically political about this movement. The beginning of social media has been deeply, deeply rooted in capitalist pursuits. Haul videos. Tutorials for makeup and hair that push you to buy product after product. Dudes smashing iPhones just to see what happens. Always seeking something bigger, better, sexier.

And here we are, and most of us still can’t afford health insurance or our student loans, much less a house or a retirement fund. And we aren’t happy.

Minimalism rejects what we’ve been taught, that consuming will make us happy. And more than that, it clears the clutter from our lives, giving us room for other pursuits. As a generation, we’ve grown up watching our parents consume. They got the house, the car, the debt, the divorce. A lot of us who grew up in poverty watched our parents long for a day that they’d finally get all the things that they thought would make them happy. And they either did, and they still weren’t happy, or they didn’t, and felt like failures for it.

So maybe the answer wasn’t stuff.

And maybe it didn’t matter if it was stuff because we can’t afford it all anyway.

Minimalism says “live with less. live more. do more. work less.” It is, at it’s core, antithetical to the American Dream, which so many of us have come to realize is a fallacy.

Space to Breathe in a Scary World

Even more, in a time that is politically frightening for so many people, minimalism is also a way of self-soothing. Lightening your load, freeing yourself from as much debt as possible, clearing up money for self-care, all make it a little easier to survive a daily reality that is often hard to digest.

We have a President that threatens the lives of so many queer, undocumented, Indigenous people and people of color. A president that shits in a golden toilet and believes that he is the picture of success.

Minimalism is a rejection of that idea of success. Of Trump. Of the business-oriented, work hard and eventually you’ll own a BMW and finally be happy life we were lead to believe was our savior. It is a reject of the idea that 14 dresses from Forever 21 are going to make you feel fine about your body, or that you need 3000 sq. ft home to justify that your college degree was worth it.

Minimalism tells us that no thing, nothing, is coming to save us from ourselves. We have to reconcile with our world, we have to make peace with ourselves, our homes, to stop confusing the pursuit of things with the pursuit of happiness. We have to stop consuming to save our lives, our planet, and our future.

And the lack of clutter looks super sexy in your Instagram feed.

I don’t feel any sort of solidarity with women.

That’s a hard thing to write.

I want to. I want to feel some sort of sisterhood, I want to connect. But I don’t. I don’t really know what it is. Maybe because I am not feminine in the ways that matter. I don’t feel like a nurturer. I’m not great at giggling, and I hate baby showers.

Maybe it’s because everything about me is so, so far off from the feminine ideal. I am loud, I am big, I am fat, I am opinionated and assertive and extroverted. I take up space, in all senses.

Maybe it’s because I never lived with a sister, and my mom isn’t very girly either. No one ever taught me how to do my hair or do my makeup or really connect with other women. Thank God for YouTube.

I like sports. I like to play poker. I’m more comfortable with guys for the most part, socially. For so much of my life I’ve been the only woman in the room. For most of my life, I’ve had male best friends. And been shamed for that by the women around me.

I am a mixed-Native woman that was goth in high school. Being ungirly just felt like one other way I was different. Femininity was either super white, or super native, but not native like ME.

I look at women who embody what I find beautiful and feminine, and I find myself longing. It feels distinctly foreign. Petite. The softness. The voice that rests gently on your ears. The sisterhood-witch-energy that knows how to find each other. The hair that curls perfectly at the ends. Sundresses and heels.

Even those stupid squatty sorority photos.

It’s not me. It’s not my life. And it can’t be for so many reasons. (Partially because that seems like a nightmare.) I dive deeper into why I worry about these things and why they upset me and I find it’s because no matter how confident and self-assured I am, there is part of my internalized patriarchy that finds myself indigestible.

On difficult days I long to be easier to swallow. I resent the part of me feels this way because I feel like I only want to be more traditionally feminine because it seems like it would make me more desirable.

I know what complete and utter bullshit it all is, the construct of gender, that women don’t have to be a certain way. But I can’t logic away my feelings. I still feel like an outsider.

Every day I get to be around these women that embody this soft, but strong, beautiful feminine energy and I hope that one day I’ll be able to call someone sister and not feel like a fraud.