As a writer, it feels like an accomplishment when an evil man like Liam T. Yore is so threatened by your eloquence that he tries to have you put in jail for a poem. Yes, Liam succeeded in having a judge revoke my first amendment right to call his barbaric behavior "sexual assault." While I am still of the opinion that it was, because well, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a fucking duck.... I will change my language to confront what he did to me in different terms. Since he was my doctor at the time, I will call it patient abuse. Since he himself has blogged that mental health patients are "Just Crazy" and "are last on the list for a reason" (http://allbleedingstops.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-better-way-to-think-about-altered.html),
I am also going to call it a stigma-based bias-motivated hate crime. Furthermore, I am going to assert that I agree with the international criminal courts in referring to forced nudity as a form of torture (https://www.justsecurity.org/31325/forced-nudity-international-law-practice/), and given that ER best practices guidelines banned the practice in 2005, I am also going to call it willful ignorance and medical malpractice ( http://www.ndrn.org/images/Documents/Issues/Community_integration/NDRN_emergency_standards_all_together.pdf).
So, you win Liam. I won't call the action of forcibly removing my clothing and using my stigmatized disability as an excuse, a sexual assault. I will no longer call you a sexual predator. I will call you a bigot. Is that better?
And now for another piece I call "Four Points". I wonder how long it will take little Liam to call the cops because he is such a coward that he can't handle a 90lb girl's poetry.
Four Points
These heavy chains were forged to contain me
blankets woven to keep me warm
walls that lock with doors to confine me
they'll call it "safety" while doing me harm
As commodities go, compassion's expensive
and people like me, we don't get to complain
expected to sink deeply into our station
they just don't see us as real human beings
Tears fall and dry on our faces like rain-drops
but crying no longer brings any relief
they'll act like I'm making mountains of mole-hills
they're too numb inside to understand grief
Making my fears so much more real than ever
triggering memories of the abuse
once you know trauma, you'll know it forever
trying to stand up, but there's just no use
Stigma's a mountain-top I cannot summit
the other side's always where I want to be
but prejudice, it comes with my diagnosis
therapy never brought any relief
I think I struggle because the world's ugly
I have been bullied and beaten and shamed
I'm just reacting to all that I'm seeing
calling out bigots to ruin their names
You feel the same things that I do but keep them
just under your breath so that no-one will hear
all I have done is adjusted my volume but
when I speak up they just react with fear
I'm not the person they've made me out to be
they treat us like we're all one and the same
like I should be judged on the actions of others
and categorized and dismissed as insane
Don't they realize that we're people with feelings
our bodies hurt just like everyone else
four-point restraints and disrobement by force
tortured and brutalized, libeled, defamed
When were they over-turned, our human rights
they were taken away and I wasn't aware
so now we must fight to remind cops and doctors
that reliving trauma should not be called "care."
