I've mostly steered clear around the right-wing wholesale dismissal of AOC's experience because it's subtextually triggering. The dismissal doesn't surprise me - we all heard what the GOP has said about Parkland survivors, and Sandy Hook - with...literal babies - before then.

Just last year in January 2020, when Ilhan Omar discussed how retraumatizing it was to listen to details of Trump's new attacks on the Middle East as an adult who had fled her country of birth AT AGE EIGHT, Republicans dismissed her, stating that only vets can have PTSD.

***CW: Rape***

I didn't bring this to anybody's attention at the time, but in more than one of the discussion threads commenting on Omar's very brave discussion of her childhood and the resulting trauma, I read comments that basically said, "Well...it's not like she got raped."

Every time I encountered one of them, I like...physically recoiled. These are odious sentiments, bereft of empathy or anything I recognize as humanity, so being outraged and appalled was expected. What threw me was how those comments seemed to just SPONTANEOUSLY emerge.

Y'all just. Thread after thread. 75 percent of the time from (White) men, sometimes enthusiastically seconded by (White) women.

Why.

Well. Fast-fwd to nearly a year later. The events of January 6. Many of us Black tweeters watching those unbelievable scenes unfold noted wryly just how quickly that makeshift gallows went up. A couple of folks said) of the insurrectionists) lynching was "in their DNA."

When I read that the mob was also targeting the squad - especially AOC - my blood ran absolutely cold. I didn't say what my fears were until days later, when everyone was shaken but safe, with reinforced security surrounding them.

We are aware of what is also in their DNA.

***CW: Rape***

The VERY VERY REAL threat of rape by insurrectionists has been mostly talked around. We left it unspoken, eliding it into "...and God knows what else" after we talk about stated plans to kidnap and torture certain women. We aren't examining it AS MOTIVATION.

This, right here, is the reason why Republicans are howling about the so-called "rape card." (Seriously, can they be more despicable?) It's not outrage at unfair accusations, or about AOC's supposed emotional manipulation.

This is the self-consciousness of sudden exposure.

Survivors of this kind of horror know EXACTLY what she was feeling, and later tried to relay. AOC's sexual assault trauma was reawakened and yanked to the surface of her own consciousness that awful day because it was atmospheric. It was in. The fucking. AIR.

Anyway.