Toni on Surviving Diddy and Surviving Abortion
Trigger Warning!
S*xual Ass**lt, R*pe, Inc*st, Intimate Partner V**lence, Domestic V**lence, Survivors of V**lence
Toni (she/her) is a Black woman reproductive justice practitioner and advocate, and a worker in movements that are invested in liberation (including, but not necessarily limited to, the abortion access and reproductive health, rights, & justice movements). She is a Helpline Volunteer for Carolina Abortion Fund (CAF), and is a CAF Intern for the Spring 2024 term. She is a native New Yorker, but has recently made a home in Charlotte, NC.
This is not the topic I was intending on delving into for my second blog post. I’m writing this on the night of Friday, May 17, 2024.
Today–I was triggered. And now I’m writing to feel some relief, hoping that someone truly hears my words. Not much is making me feel better in this moment, so I feel compelled to transfer my intrusive thoughts to the page.
How can we move on when we’re constantly reminded of the past?
And when it arises, who does it serve?
These are the questions that I exhibit in moments like these. The words echo from my body and resound like sound waves. The tears that drop from my eyes somehow extend deep into my bones and tug at the strings that cross my heart.
Today–CNN posted a video of R&B music star Cassie being physically assaulted by ex-partner and hip hop industry mogul Diddy, which was caught on camera in a hotel in 2016. I don’t know all the specifics of its release, who leaked it and why, and I can live the rest of my life without knowing. In the grand scheme of things, those details don’t really matter (to me).
Earlier at the top of my Instagram feed, I saw a lovely post of some tweets expressing support for Cassie after this video had been leaked–and it’s sad to say, but this kind of public support is rare. Although I didn’t love the topic being discussed, or the fact that people believed that Cassie was lying about her experiences with Diddy after news about her civil suit went public last year, the love being shown to her slightly outweighed the bad. That is, until The Shade Room, a gossip outlet that’s attuned to all happenings in the Black community (for better or for worse), shared this video to their social media–with no sort of warning or disclaimer blocking the visuals. I saw a few seconds of the video, including a highly-aggressive slap, and then I completely closed the app.
Tonight–I’m in a despair that I can’t explain, and I’m mad as hell. And although Diddy is inarguably an absolute piece of shit, I’m not angry at him. I’m mad at every single person who shared that video lightly today, is treating it like a sensational piece of gossip, and isn’t taking the time to think about how they can discuss this topic of intimate partner violence in a way that centers Cassie’s experience as a survivor instead of Diddy’s experience as an abuser.
In other words, let us think about the ways in which Cassie may have regressed in her trauma process, because we have nonconsensually dragged her into this mess again. I can only hope that her phone is turned off, or that at the very least she is logged out of her social media accounts, because otherwise everyone would be engaging her in something that she maybe didn’t want to be a part of today. The sharing of this video–which I’m assuming is something she’s not responsible for–is not only violent, but violating. It isn’t trauma-informed and doesn’t center her dignity as a survivor who wants to share her story on her own terms.
And tonight–my mind, which is constantly thinking about the intersectionality and interconnectedness of experiences, started thinking about how domestic/intimate partner violence trauma connects to the trauma of trying to obtain an abortion, in a country as unsupportive and trauma-inducing as the United States.
In the almost-year it’s been since I started volunteering on the helpline (and SB20 went into effect), I’ve had callers who were domestic violence survivors. I’ve had callers who were raped by their partners, or by strangers they met at parties or bars. I’ve had callers who have mentioned in passing that they had been or were currently being abused, because they desperately needed help to pay for their abortion and needed to stress why they couldn’t keep their pregnancy. I’m sure that I’ve had callers who have experienced abuse and weren’t ready to tell anyone, let alone a complete stranger like me. And I know that I’ve had callers who had become pregnant by their abuser, were getting close to that 12-week limit in North Carolina, and had to make the difficult choice as to whether they wanted to report their abuse in the hopes of getting more time for their procedure.
But did you know that the after-12 weeks exception is allowed only in cases of rape, incest, “life-limiting” fetal anomaly, or medical emergency? So, say you have consensual sex with a partner who then physically or psychologically abuses you later on, and then become pregnant from that consensual sex, you might not fit the rape exception. The life-limiting anomaly takes the fetus’ life into account, not the pregnant person’s. And a medical emergency is in the eye of the beholder. This is especially relevant as we’ve been hearing awful stories of pregnant people experiencing emergencies in ER waiting rooms who weren’t able to receive care, while we await a decision about the EMTALA case at the Supreme Court.
But wait–it gets worse. If by some miracle you meet one of these exceptions, you must get your abortion procedure done at a hospital–which can be just as hard as getting to an abortion clinic, if not harder. There are 20 counties (out of 100) in the state of North Carolina that don’t have a hospital, so patients would need logistical ride support in getting to a hospital. The need for abortion fund assistance likely wouldn’t go away just because the patient has an exception to the amount of weeks they could have the procedure in, because all the normal abortion hurdles would stay the same. The procedure would become more expensive, as a result of it being done at a hospital and as the patient gets further along in weeks. And lastly, in order to actually qualify for the exception, patients would have to disclose their sexual assault experience with doctors; and if that patient is a minor–who may have also needed to get a judicial bypass through a court judge–they would have to disclose their experience to a doctor, who is required to report the crime to the police. How a minor who’s experienced incest is supposed to keep all of this under-wraps from the family member responsible for the act is beyond me. And as someone who’s recently faced a lot of government social services-trauma just to be able to maintain various disabilities, and is also a survivor, the idea of fighting this hard for abortion care is terrifying to me.
Now that you have that legal background–does it give you a yucky feeling?
A feeling of deep dissatisfaction?
Are you a little pissed–maybe a lot pissed?
And are you frustrated?
Well I feel all of these things–and more–compounded with a trauma response.
Survivors are treated like shit. We’re damned–whether we share our experience in the hopes to free ourselves, or in the hopes to free others who have yet to find their liberatory space; or whether we keep quiet, to protect ourselves from the harmful people and words around us, and preserve what’s left. Stuck in a small corner that is slowly squeezing us of our air, taking our lifeblood, and writhing our insides.
I empathize with Cassie, a public figure who’s having videos shared of her in one of her worst moments, when she’s tried so hard to create a different kind of life for herself; and I empathize with the metaphorical helpline caller, who lives in the same house as their abuser, doesn’t have access to a car, has no idea how they’ll make it to a hospital to get an abortion, and knows that in order to get that abortion they’ll have to share the most vulnerable part of themselves.
So again, I bring up the words that I started this piece with:
How can we move on when we’re constantly reminded of the past?
And when it arises, who does it serve?
Getting an abortion–in many states, but in North Carolina in particular–is not a trauma-informed process. The way that we talk about and navigate abuse usually has the wrong priorities, resulting in re-traumatizing people and triggering other people. And the process of obtaining an abortion certainly doesn’t serve survivors.
Sources
https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/en/news/what-will-change-under-sb20
https://www.carolinaabortionfund.org/textabby