BRATTLEBORO — I have a reoccurring nightmare: I'm being chased by a man who is trying to stab me.
There you have it. I don't think I've shared this with anyone - well, maybe my therapist. I know it's unpleasant to think about, but let's think about something even more unpleasant: a white man in a hotel room on the 32nd floor, raining bullets down on unsuspecting partygoers.
Our country is divided right now in ways it has never been before; however, everyone in the United States can agree on one thing: that this man is a monster. The fact that he is a white man and not a brown-skinned man is even more significant to me, a writer who participated in the recent Women's Convention, held in Detroit.
Why? Why does it matter what color his skin is?
It matters because he represents the white supremacist fear that is driving our current administration and makes men wearing hoods march the streets boldly and brazenly holding torches and chanting hateful anti-Semitic and racist things. It allows for gun sellers to sell guns to deranged and violent abusers who shoot people praying in a church. Why?
They are afraid.
They are afraid of love, of women, and of people with skin not like theirs, people they have historically oppressed and women they have violated, literally and figuratively taking them down, taking them down from the tower of the hotel room, the Tower of Power that is shaken now and it's surely soon to topple.
One thing I took away from the Women's Convention that surprised me is my own deep-seated fear of being stabbed and/or raped by a man. In my dream, it doesn't show me what this man looks like or what race he is. All I know is that he's a man and he is blurred and perhaps hooded, but the scariest part is that I can hear him breathing.
This man, this unspeakable monster, works in the recesses of my subconscious, and I want to get rid of him.
I'm going to follow the lead of Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who said to all the women attending her rousing speech at the convention, “You know how you feel. And you know when you've been violated. [...] And now we all can say what Hillary should have said: 'Creep, get off my back!'”
I am inspired to move on and travel with my intersectional community of sisters from all over the country. I am motivated to say “#metoo!” and be loud.