a letter to an ex

It's "private," but it's really not, so here it is:

Rxx,

As these public conversations about gender violence, misogyny, rape culture and consent play out, I feel compelled to write you to remind you that I have outstanding grievances toward you which have not been resolved -- furthermore, I'm not even sure they've actually been heard by you.

I had been thinking about these issues in relation to you prior to this recent explosion of public discourse -- I have been having conversation and writing about this for quite a while -- but now that these public conversations are happening, it is difficult for me to not say something directly to you, and that is why I am writing you now.

I am not going to restate all the things I've already said before. I am simply going to urge you to contemplate the space of unresolved grievance that sits between us. I am not going to ask anything of you, because I am not going to open myself up to the vulnerability of whether my safety and well-being means anything to you. I've seen the result of that question too many times.

But I am going to assert that while you seem to believe that "red is red, and blue is blue" and that our accounts of our shared experiences can't be that different from each other, that is very untrue. In fact, your statement is just a continuation of the ongoing dismissal and overwriting of my actual life and my actual experiences and my actual subjectivity. 

I have never tried to stop you from doing anything, I have never tried to take anything away from you -- except for the things that undermined my subjectivity. I only wanted my right to choice (or freedom, as you might call it) to be respected as highly as you respected your own.

I hate that I was so deeply hurt and disrepected by someone I trusted so much -- not only as an intimate friend and a lover, but as a feminist ally.

(Insert angry feminine archetype of your choice here.)
- Stef