New Roy Moore accuser will disclose allegations at Gloria Allred presser today

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98. Thanks, sweetie.

Thanks for the kind words, Glorfindel! But I've gotta say - my experience pales next to some of these outrages now being described openly, on audio/video and in print, by women who speak out in public and reveal their names, who've suffered degradation LIGHTYEARS worse than mine! Hell, I got off easy!

And I got to thinking - shit, all these women coming forward. And a close friend just confided that she's suffered more than one rape during her younger days. And at the last high school reunion, we shared confessionals and one came up regarding years of parental abuse - that literally left me stunned and mouth agape like some big deep sea grouper fish! NOTHING was said. NOBODY knew. You really get in touch with that old cliche "there's a world of hurt out there." The bottom line thought that gripped me was - is there NO woman who HASN'T been abused, gravely and grievously, at some point along the line?

And I wonder if people will start taking this crisis more seriously?
Will people instinctively lean toward believing the (female) victim?
Will we get beyond such knee-jerk reactions as "what was she wearing?" or "she asked for it" or "well, it's her word against his" or any number of weasel phrases?
Will giving the man a pass because whatever, mainly because he's a man, finally be a thing of the past?
Will women EVER be treated as something other than a mere plaything for the fleeting and random satisfaction of some man?
Will we grow and evolve OUT of this?

And this too: ARE OUR BODIES REALLY OURS? Seriously? Now that we have an admitted sexual predator and molester in our White House (whom a sizable number of voters still support), does that mean that predatory behavior in general is now okay? Normalized? Validated? Approved? Like the sharks do in the Manhattan real estate world (which is where trump comes from)?

I'm so dizzy with delight that this many women have gathered up their courage, and have been bolstered by supporters, and come forward about these abominations. This shit is NOT okay. It's NOT EVER okay! I don't care if the so-called "pResident" says it's okay. It ISN'T and he's WRONG. And he's not legitimately in that job anyway. And it looks like all these disparate faces and names and voices are standing up, and turning the tide. I've never seen it like this. Oddly enough, during the time I worked at that afore-described radio station where the hideous morning degradation happened, I produced a five-part series on rape that would run during one week's newscast. I interviewed rape victims and counselors and even a perpetrator, to hear it all from them. That was back when women weren't believed. And they knew it. They knew they'd go through hell. They knew they'd be PUT THROUGH hell. The defense attorney would dig into THEIR backgrounds and question their credibility and their honesty and their character and some would be really ruthless about it. And many of their friends wouldn't believe them, either. In effect, it was almost like they were being raped again. Defiled again, being put through all that, after they already suffered one massive and degrading ordeal.

I heard some woman on TV this afternoon remark about how amazed she was that people were actually starting to take the woman's word for it. Which had NOT been the way it was, before. Only now, since Harvey Weinstein, has anything changed. It was teetering on the bring with Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly and Bill Cosby. But now it seems the tipping point has been reached and the actual tipping is now underway.

Amazing. This finally means something.