Ididnt take my first chance to vote.
I was 18 in 2004.
I was a virgin.
“This election determines more than just our access to abortion," writes Lena Dunham. “It also determines how we are treated when we seek treatment and, ultimately, who is given a shot at life.”
I didnt watch the news.
I was probably at a party or popping in a pretentious VHS tape or kissing someone wearing Vans.
I could not have been more wrong.
Lena Dunham in September 2024
For some, its the changing climate destroying their homes; for others, their experience withcollege loans.
Our health care system is the place where the Venn diagram of every form of injustice meets.
Its no secret that I have been a weary traveler through the medical-industrial complex.
What I have written less about were the menso many menwhom I met on that journey.
Some were established doctors, some were interns, some were anesthesiologists.
After my first endometriosis surgery, I was placed in the urology ward at a prominent New York hospital.
I was told to walk every day after the surgery, up and down the hall eight times.
I thought of the women who wouldnt even consider parking outside.
If that was my experience, it was impossible to calculate the amount of pain occurring across our nation.
Its so big that it cannot even be described as a problem.
Growing up with apro-choice activist mother, I knew what abortion was before I knew about sex.
In the 2023 fiscal year, $110 million of research money wasallocated to prostate cancerby Congress.
The average yearly expenditure on cervical-cancer research is $51.6 million.
$45 million for ovarian.
It should be noted that none of these statistics focus on the mental health crisis in our country.
Just like theDobbsruling, these statistics are the clear result of a country run by men.
Men whose values remain on the homestead, when women were vessels for reproduction and queer people were invisible.
The fish rots from the head.
Im not voting for Kamala Harris because of her gender.
That the people she places power in the hands of will use it to empower.
That the literal and figurative cost of living in a marginalized body will decrease as access increases.
Black voters show up more consistently than any other group for the Democratic party.
They feel, from the depths of their being, thatthis is not abstract.
There isonly so much that can happenwhen the face of power is not theirs.
Fights with the pervasive perception of female pain as weakness and the female form as indecent.
I am far from alone in that fight.
In fact, I am a lucky one.
I wish I had known that our bodies are still the battleground.
We cannot let them win.
