What I Saw in the Debate

A story from when I was 13 years old. This was the immediate, proximate cause of my being made a ward of the state and put into a home for boys. But it was only the final inevitable break after a lifetime of abuse in that house.

My mother liked to provoke and humiliate me, and men. She would deliberately say insulting or emasculating things to my stepfather, especially when either her mother or his mother was there to witness it. She knew he was violent, and she did it anyway.

Mother liked to do the same to me as a child. She enjoyed provoking my anger or fear or humiliation to the point where I trembled (really, bodily) with rage, trying to control myself and trying not to cry. It pleased her, which you could see in the expression on her face.

We had one final blow-out fight when I was 13. The content of the fight is lost to time—I have no idea what the subject was. What I do remember is my mother stalking me around the house, refusing to let me get away from her as she yelled and taunted me.

She backed me physically into a corner and said something so degrading and vicious that I saw rage red. I have never been this angry at any other time in my life; the closest second was my final fight with her over the phone.

As soon as she saw me in that state, a smirk-smile spread across her face. She smirked at me and made sure that I knew she meant to communicate pleasure in how upset I was.

I was white hot and out of body. I wound my arm up and hit her open-handed across the face with all the strength I had, and said, "You are a cunt."

That is the only time I have struck anyone, let alone a woman, in anger. It is the only time I have spoken that word out loud to a woman's face as an insult.

It got me put in a glorified orphanage and then a group home for criminally inclined boys, and that was better than the alternative. It was worth it.

That's what I saw in Kamala Harris' debate performance with Donald Trump. A brazen, shameless liar who deliberately provoked him with the specific purpose of putting him on the defense while he knew no one would check her.

That histrionic smirking, the hand poses with her chin on her fingers, the Hillary Clinton-esque derisive smiling head shake. It's disgusting.

If this country elects Kamala Harris, they will be electing a facsimile of my mother. I've said before that we're all living in my childhood home, but it will be literally true if this happens.

She is much more dangerous than I knew before watching this debate. Heed the commentators pointing this out; they're right. She is a highly skilled Cluster B chameleon. Do not underestimate her. She is a clever serpent; I saw a new side of her in that performance.

Many don't wanna talk about "toxic femininity," I know. Toxic femininity is already talking to you. It can get worse.

I want to break the spell you’re under. Half of America is Snow White about to take the poison apple.

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