Child Abuse Part 1

When I started writing about my experiences with childhood sexual assault, I focused a lot on how terrible I felt. But for some reason I just woke up from a long nap wanting to get into the details. I've been reading/listening to audible a lot about the classes in Amerika. I've been learning about Caste systems. I've been swallowing knowledge whole. The Artist's Way would call me out for my avoidance of producing my own art.  

I wrote about abuses I faced in life and felt that was the last thing I ever had to say. I became protective of my new story. Wanting to control precisely how other people view what I have going on now. But there is still judgement. And there always be. I miss putting it all out there in writing so I feel understood by my friends and whomever my readers are. I always feel it is special that anyone ever reads what I have to say. I always forget what it feels like. But my last post before this brought tears to someone's eyes. 

That is powerful. 

I listen to a lot of comedians in podcasts and audiobooks. In another life I was a comedian. If I don't explode onto the scene like Hannah Gadsby someday out of extreme social frustration. 

I promised myself I'd stop being afraid. 

That I would channel teenage Jackie Lane again. The personna that protected me through the worst of keeping my secrets from the people I love. I don't need to protect secrets but I miss her strength.

God it feels good to not have secrets. 

That is the one thing I wish I could give to everyone in the world. 

I am shameless. 

I feel no shame somehow anymore.

After a lifetime of walking around bearing a cross the size of the World Trade Center Monument. 

All this reading and listening to other incredible authors and artists* has had a common serendipitous theme. 

Nothing changes without action. 

I always thought being abused by my "brother" was a gift. Because anytime I've ever told anyone they responded with, "oh he's your step-brother, so you're not actually related" as if being related to someone is why it sucks when they manipulate and abuse you. 

I have no biological siblings. But that common female response tells me that far More women have been abused and assaulted by their biological brothers than we talk about as a society. Older cousins and uncles, sometimes fathers and grandfathers, of both male and female children influence their early exposure to porn culture. It has gone from leaving Girls Gone Wild in with the regular DVDs back in the day Or accidentally turning on the Playboy or Cinemax Channel as a kid just scanning for some cartoons or a good TV movie; to being shown hardcore while you are looking through Twitter or Instagram. With Tik Tok and SnapChat we adults all know it has gotten worse and that we are in denial about the problem of sexualized children. 

But in typical fashion teenagers and young people always show us the way. They are protesting every injustice imaginable. They want us to have PPE and go to work, to respect gay people, to respect trans people,  to respect sex workers, to confront the corrupt government, to stop allowing white supremecist cops to execute citizens who have committed no crime.

If my story tells me anything. It is that because of the harmful adult world children can be groomed to hurt one another. Right now gangs of children are killing one another in the street and we can watch the livestreams and video footage from the comfort of our own home. Teenage children are raping one another because adults have presented an internet full of the filmed rape and degradation of millions of young people their age. 

I always like to think my CSA wasn't that bad. Which it wasn't. But I also know that Every Single Victim Says That. It doesn't matter that you were not penetrated when you were groped and controlled and manipulated to be mentally broken. Left with a constant feeling of humiliation and shame. Just because on some level your feminist upbringing Did protect you. That you know you used force to stop some things. That you know you were groomed by culture to think this is normal but because of who your mother was... You never did. Even when you were the most brianwashed a little voice inside you screamed from deep within the echo of your belly that there was another way. 

But childhood sexual trauma is going to have to be like all the other problems we are facing as an adult global culture right now. I would say as a country but Amerika is just the tip of the iceberg right now in sexism and male violence. The internet has promoted and exposed things about humanity that have long needed changing. 

Women and children will be protected finally. 

We will have world peace. 

Not without action.

Not without difficult conversations adults do not want to have with themselves about the role they have played promoting violent patriarchy because of internalized misogyny. Men also have deeply internalized misogyny. Men have to deal with being accused of being lesser men when they refuse to participate in porn culture any longer. Every man is raised surrounded by it and can only choose in adulthood to change. When men choose to respect women the men in their life want to know why. What happened to them? What woman has been influencing them? That is how you know. 

Love, 

Jackie Fucking Lane

*Shout out to my authors/artists: Alex Haley, Malcolm X, Rachel Dratch, Sheila Jeffries, Nancy Tuana, Gail Dine, Cordelia Fine, Andrea Dworkin, Whitney Cummings, Amy Pohler, Ronan Farrow, Julia Camron, Adam Cohen, Danny Haiphong, Glen Ford, Caroline Criado Perez, Isabel Wilkerson, Michelle Alexander, Tina Fey, Bailey Poland, Joe Rogan, Anna Farris) [I highly recommend you look all of these people up, see what they say, read a thing-a-ling]

The Amerikan Civil War 2

Last Summer my mom took my son on a vacation to Gettysburg. They toured the battlefields. Did a little sight seeing around town. My mom's response to all of this Civil War knowledge was, "the Generals on both sides went to the same military Academy, it sounded exactly like what's going on in the country, it could happen again, things sound like that now." I just thought this was the musings of my mom. She has always had a penchant for saying wacky things even before "old age". But this didn't seem wacky or hilarious. It seemed true.

The only thing that I didn't agree with was how fast it could happen. I knew it was happening. And yet I couldn't fathom what a year later would bring. That we would have spent half the year Sheltering At Home to protect us from Coronavirus exposure. That both the radical leftist and the radical right would be protesting frequently in the streets. Not sure of their aims. Wanting things to go back to the way they were. Not realizing things never were that way and that the way things were was an illusion sold to them by the billionaire oligarch ruling class. 

This past week another citizen was excuted with a shot to the head at point blank range by a "keeper of the peace". If our civil war was to have sides it wouldn't be black and white like most people believe, it would be black and blue. Plenty of white people now believe in black lives matter. Black in this case of civil war is not for black people but for anarchy against the system. Blue is not a people color. But it is the color which the violent gang that has taken control of Amerika under Donald Trump identifies as.  

The rulers have taken away their Football, their other Football, Soccer, Baseball, the Olympics, & all college sports. The expression of male tribalism went the only place it knows how to go when misdirected.

War. 

What is it good for. 

Absolutely nothin.

While you want to fight. And feel nobel in whatever your cause may be. Remember the oligarchs of any era never die in war. The proletariat does. The working class. The People die. Our sons die. Their sons become Senators or, the much more powerful, CEOs. 

I am actually shocked that after this week no one has written what I am about to say. A teenage gang member in Kenosha shot and killed people rioting and protesting the execution of a brother from their community. Jacob Blake's sister had some powerful words for the gang that murdered her brother and controls this country with military force. I highly recommend you look up a video of her speaking. 

Under the laws of this country, there is no crime that justifies public execution without trial. 

None. 

Zero. 

Nada. 

Zilch. 

Nothing. 

You get the idea.

We will not rehabilitate the world from patriarchal male violence with solutions that escalate the global level of male violence. 

On the way to South Central Pennsylvania. In the suburbs near Baltimore, which I didn't even realize were in PA until recently, I've seen squadrons of military vehicles traveling on the highways. My favorite combat Hummers from childhood. Caravans of light armored vehicles I'm only vaguely familiar with from obsessively playing Battlefield, because I've never been in the military myself, but mainly because this is my first time on Earth spent living in an active war zone. 

On the 4th of July this year, all of the local large gathering's of Fireworks were cancelled due to CV. In New Jersey my entire life, large personal Fireworks were illegal to purchase. A few people would do the family run to Pennsylvania and pick up some big ones and a few people in town would set them off. But without any big fireworks displays nearby. 

People went All Out. 

It was a perfectly beautiful evening, the sort you get few of a year. We walked down to the Community Garden before dusk. It takes about 30 minutes. On the walk back, last light finally finished as the sun set fully and the sky darkened, and as soon as it did even the slightest, the first bang went off. And then some pop pop pops. 

Ratta tat tat. 

From All Sides. 

Every direction, every block. 

For Miles and Miles along the Toms River you could see explosions of light. But fireworks aren't safety devices, they are literal explosives. As we walked down the long road to my house I said to those walking with me, "This is what War Sounds Like." Random clicking and popping and a few big bangs, hopefully farther from you than closer to you, from any direction at any hour. 

After months of Sheltering At Home, to be in the middle of the sound of war, with Trump as President, knowing we already had seen the Thin Blue Line Gang (TBLG) with assault rifles protesting at State Capitols, threatening our elected officials with violence instead of election results. All I could think about were the Veterans. Not old Vietnam Vets, the dads of our friends we worried about as children. I thought of my own friends. The ones with PTSD from our most recent and ongoing wars of global domination. I have PTSD for reasons of male violence other than war but even before I truly understood what that pain feels like, I knew that we are harming our veterans. How can we say we honor veterans when our biggest collective celebration of Freedom during the year causes them extreme mental distress so great it may actual cause them physical pain? 

We cannot lie to them.

They know it is not about freedom.

They were personally ordered to or saw others personally ordered to murder civilian women and children because they may or may not be related to someone we think is a danger to our way of life. 

Amerika believes in the patriarchal will to kill with impunity. To destroy others for the sake of capitalist gain. And now Amerika is a global problem. We have infected the world with our supposed "billionaire" philanthropists. People who have bastardized the ratios of understanding that keep people aware of their level compared to the rulers. The numbers are too large for most people to understand because of the current state of disrepair in education.

If we want to change the world we need to promote Literacy. 

The two cousins I have as cops, they were both indoctrinated since early childhood into competitive sports culture. I've never seen either of them read a fucking book in their entire lives. Which is the only way a man can be raised to be so ignorant and gullible as to take up arms in defense of an unjust system who kills the poor, and people of any color or character at all, with impunity. 

The oligarchs are allowing the Thin Blue Line Gang to patrol the streets. To threaten any stupid "masker" who believes in the greater good of other human beings. They really can turn anything into a derrogatory. 

Don't let the propaganda get you down. This is all because their way if life is losing. It Must Lose if we are to save the planet. There are many more peaceful types and silent partners in the world than their are violently brainwashed. 

The constant streaming may have separated us in some social ways. But during SAH we all saw how it could connect us as well. It has given us ways to share guerilla gardening knowledge widely to take the power of food back and give it to the people. 

We have seen people use every single type of social media to share first hand videos of what is really happening with the TBLG on the streets. To counteract the constant propaganda about how Well things are going. For whom are they going well exactly? 

The stock market is up. 

Who gives a fuck. 

In order to have a war, you must have soldiers. In order to have a war people must be armed and willing to fight. Lay down your arms. Men. I beg you. Stop the violence. 

We need a global peace treaty now. 

But here at home, in Amerika, we need to end this Civil War 2 before we can consider ourselves the police force of the world. The world doesn't need our slave patrols. 

Love, 

Jackie Fucking Lane

What Is A Woman?

What is a woman? 

It seems like a very simple question.

To me.

What is a woman to me?

I am a woman.

What am I?

I am strong. 

I am resilient. 

I am objectified.

I am soft. 

I am human. 

I am more human than human.

What is a woman?

A fighter.

A swimmer.

A singer.

A dancer.

A feminist.

A lady. 

A thinker.

A joiner. 

A dooer.

A gardener.

An activist. 

A student.

A leader. 

What makes me a woman?

I have the characteristics of the female sex. 

I have boobs. 

I have hips. 

I have thighs. 

I have a weak chin, browbone, and cheekbones. 

I bleed once a month. Sometimes twice. 

I spend at least 3 to 4 months out of every year from age 12 to 50 cramping and bleeding. 

I had to get out of a race at a swim meet because I had my first period and the pain was too great. I was crying furious tears of anger. My coach and my mom were very impressed.

I've been behind at school work or in dance class because I missed due to my period. It is not something women are allowed accomodations for. You miss it, and that is it. You miss out. 

I have been discriminated against at work for having emotions. 

I have been bullied at work for being a young woman. 

I have been sexually harassed at work. 

I have been bullied online. 

I have been sexually harassed online. 

I have been bullied in class in school.

I have been sexually harassed in class in high school. 

I have gone on vacations and had important milestones during painful periods. 

I have been in pain from ovulating and cramps halfway through the month on top of having cramps during PMS and my period. 

I was molested at around age 12 by a family member. 

I have had family members mention my breasts.

I have had friends mention my breasts.

I've had strangers mention my breasts. 

I've had family members mention my ass.

I've had friends mention my ass.

I've had strangers mention my ass. 

I have had men tell me I am fat. 

I have had men tell me I am a slut. 

I have had men tell me I talk too much. 

I have had men laugh in my face as a child.

I have had men laugh in my face as an adult.

I have had men make more money than me at the same job while younger and with less skills. 

I have had men shout at me from a car, in my flannel pajamas walking back from my child's bus stop in the morning. 

I have had men shout at me while I am walking into a concert. 

I've had men touch me while I was entering a bar. 

I've had men shout at me about my clothing. 

I've had men and women I don't know tell me their opinion of my hair. 

I have had to walk through a dark parking lot with a key between each finger and my carabiner supporting my knuckles like a set of makeshift brass knuckles. 

I have been sexually harassed in college. 

I was sexually harassed by another student.

I was sexually harassed by a professor in the same class. 

I have been sexually assaulted while black-out drunk. 

I have been raped while blacked out drunk. 

I have had men try and rip my clothes off while I am drunk. 

I had a man try and rip my clothes off in broad daylight while sober. 

I have been to the police with a crime and not been believed.

I have been to the police with a story of rape and not been believed.

I am a woman. 

Every time I assert my opinion someone comes round to fact check me. 

I can not make any statement of opinion or fact without orders signed in triplicate. Sent in, sent back. Even with every dot on my i's and cross of my t's on my sources I am still not believed. 

Believe women.

It means a lot more than we realize so far.

Love, 

JackieFuckingLane

P.S. I see you. 

House Arrest: Everyone Keeps Asking If I've Written Anything Yet

The answer is no.

I've been out of work officially since March 18th when the order was given. But on Friday the 13th I kept Zack, who is 13 now but formerly asthmatic, home from school. A client at work had the audacity to Hug and Kiss my mom in front of me while we were already at great risk. And I shouted across the salon, "Hey!!! No! I need her healthy! Do me a favor, don't kiss Anyone for at least two weeks from now? Promise me!" I worked a short day. Turns out that 2 weeks would easily become 2 months and I am looking now towards the possibility of 2 years. On Saturday the 14th I felt very uncomfortable being at work.

What have I done while being home so far?

I paid my bills on time.

I cook meals every day and get to eat them at my house.

I walk outside every day the weather is nice enough.

I play board games.

I watch a sunset every day there is one.

I hug my son at least once a day even though he's too old to care about such things.

I TRY to get my 13 year old to do all his school work in a timely manner.

About every other or every 3rd day I lose my shit and start screaming and crying about everything imaginable.

Once a week I read the hundreds of local Obituaries scanning for fringe people I know.

This week I found a friend from High School's mom. I haven't seen this friend since High School. But we are occasionally linked on Facebook or Instagram. I'm not sure why we aren't now. I always liked her. I may have done something to piss her off. I do that a lot. Her mom lost her husband and was coming in the past couple years to have my mom do her hair sometimes. Her other daughter came in with her sometimes for me to do her hair. She was pregnant at the time, she has a young baby now. My mom said, "at least she got to know the joy of being a Grandma." My mom's opinion was always that I was the best thing that ever happened to her, until I had Zack, then he clearly took center stage. But I wonder how I would have survived young motherhood, or motherhood at all, without my mom. Now those acquaintances of mine have lost both their parents in their early 30s. It is far too soon. Their mom was too young. We are far too young. 

My primary distraction from all the death and suffering going around is politics. As usual people online would rather argue with their fellow citizen over which Oligarch is going to fuck us less hard than realize they are not doing the jobs, we pay them to do with our tax money, with our interests at heart.

When will people realize that voting for President doesn't change the world?

When will they realize that how they live their lives from day to day is how we change the world?

One happy thought I've had since all this began is that the Heirloom Seed company I've been promoting for over a decade ran out of prepackaged seeds for the season. More people are planning and growing gardens than ever before because half of us are home with nothing better to do. I ordered my seeds and baby plants this week.

I was one of the first on the unemployment website in NJ before it started to crash. Before the number of people on it skyrocketed. So I've been able to pay my bills so far. Luckily I had savings I was supposed to be using to pay my dad back for my car, and that covered the delays that have happened in the system. I also received the extra $600 this week from the state of NJ for people on unemployment. That is a great way to stave off this crisis because we will only use it to pay our bills and fund whatever is left of the economy. Too many people are being left out because the system is too bogged down to help everyone that needs it.

My mom has had to attempt to get loans to save our businesses. Our small bank was woefully uninformed as to the process. The process changed every day. Within an HOUR one day her accountant who had been working diligently for her and many other of his clients was cut out of the transaction altogether by the government. While allowing banks to profit 5 percent off of the Billions of dollars they are loaning to small businesses $15,000 dollars at a time. If you are going to gain anything from this crisis you must grab while the grabbing is good. Soon corporations will have funneled all the aid to the top as much as is humanly, or corporately in this case, possible.

I'm glad that my family has learned from our experiences with other financial collapses and with Hurricane Sandy and the trauma that caused. Leading us to bounce back a little stronger this time than we have in the past. We are learning how to handle end stage capitalism. Which is a do what you can while you can sort of plan.

I have friends who are nurses on the front line.
My mom has lifelong friends who are on the front line.
My best friend's mom is on the front line.
I wonder what will be left of their energy when this is all over.
How much PTSD can one overworked and underfunded healthcare system really take?


I wanted to end this on hope. Instead I just left it to sit for a couple days while I thought about things more because I didn't know how to accomplish the task of this unattainable goal I set for myself.

I've been more in touch with like-minded people who believe in the fight for peace and a global disarmament. I've been more in touch with old friends who I know well and who always knew me well. I spent more time with family before the crisis started than most people do. I work with my mom. I spend every day after school and most weekends with my son. My boyfriend works from home and is literally always there for me. My step-dad and uncle run the business under my house. But I feel like I've had more time to actually enjoy their company. I am less stressed out than usual, that is how stressed out I've been, since becoming a young mom at 21, up until now.

I haven't had healthcare most of Zack's life, and when I had it while pregnant with him the health insurance company denied me pregnancy coverage.

I finally have medicare as I am officially a 1 parent household on paper, and my son has healthcare through his dad's job. I know it's the worst coverage ever, but it's a start.

We need to end For-Profit Medicine.

We need to end For-Profit Healthcare.

We need healthcare to be seen as the human right that is undoubtedly is. I am not glad it took this for everyone to see it. But now everyone can see it quite clearly.

I fear that the coming Presidential election in the United States will distract people from the fact that we need to fight for our rights against an unjust system. A system that Drumph did not create, he is only a puppet and large bulbous symptom of. Neither of the two major party platforms include medicare for all, or universal healthcare as I prefer to call it. Medicare has a bad governmental connotation.

However... I am spending much less time in fear than I have in past times of my life. And I want to find ways for us all to encourage the fight in one another. If we do get sick with the virus we will go through the majority of that pain isolated from the people we love most. Hold onto the image, of their love, in your mind and know, that if you suffer and survive, it will be that love that sees you through to the other side.

If nothing else this pandemic can teach us all to see how connected we are as humans even we when don't want that to be true. No one right now wants to think they are connected to Trump Supporters. To Nazi's. To 5G! To the Big Bad that we want to exist, so we can blame it!!! WHO CAUSED THIS?!?!?!?!!?!??!

But my proposition to you is to consider that, we all did. 

We all as a collective looked the other way and did not fight for what was right: having pandemic protections; having universal healthcare; eradication of food desserts; eradication of poverty; eradication of homelessness.

We have supply chains for necessities that are dependent on profits over the lives of actual living breathing (now gone) human beings. We all collectively support global capitalism. Even those of us, like me, who Want to be against it. I am a cog in a very small wheel of this mechanized system, as I'm sure many of you are too.

We can not educate ourselves out of this system.

It is time for action.

This is my call to action.

What are you doing to create the world you want to see?

I will write more about the positive things I see my friends and family doing to create the world they want to see as time goes on.

We all need to settle into this new way of life and realize that we can not easily go back to the way things once were. If we get a vaccine in a timely manner it still may be 2 years before everything is open again and functioning as we were used to. And things will change. Sanitation will become a greater priority at all times. Hand shaking that men have imposed on us as a social norm to assert their dominance will be a thing of the past.

Just keep thinking of ideas that you do not believe are possible. Now is the time for ideas and ideals. They will be possible. Now is the time for speed trains. 


Until Next Time...

Love,
Jackie Fucking Lane