Election 2026 Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow it begins.This is the next year. This is the election year. This is the calm before the storm. This is what is coming. This is the new hope. This is putting the war paint on and going to war—not a physical war, but a war of words. A war of campaign promises. A war of tweets. A war for women.

This transcends me. This is bigger than me. This is my crusade.

I used to teach that war—real war, not the proverbial war I speak of now—has only two causes: belief or economics. You can take any war and break it down to one of those two things. And there is one kind of war that is unwinnable: belief.

You can take someone’s land, their home, every material possession, even their freedom. You can starve them with blockades, destroy their homes, kill their families—and still, you cannot strip them of belief. History shows us this again and again. People do not abandon true belief. It does not matter whether you agree with it or not. If someone believes in something deeply enough, you cannot force it out of them.

I say this as a historian, and as someone making a comparison—not a threat, not a call to violence, but a point.

I believe.

I believe women should be protected by the laws we already have.

I believe no means no, regardless of the circumstances.

I believe my sisters around the world are not being protected or treated like human beings.

I believe that has to change.

It happens too much. Too many relationships contain sexual violence. Too many women go unheard, unacknowledged, and unbelieved. Why? Because we stay. Because we don’t always know what is happening is illegal. Because no one talks about it. No one listens. No one tells us we don’t deserve it.

We don’t deserve it.

We deserve to be safe.

We deserve to be unharmed.

We deserve a voice.

We deserve a say in what happens to our bodies.

What I have learned about rape through extensive trauma therapy is this: no one else’s opinion matters. The woman draws the line. Your line may be in a different place than mine. Both are valid. It is personal. It is our choice. We are the only ones who get a say. No one else gets to tell us when it’s too much. We decide that.

I find it baffling that I begged and screamed on video. It is recorded—me saying no over and over again. I wasn’t quiet. I wasn’t coy. I wasn’t indirect. I said no loudly and clearly, in every way possible. I drew the line. I set the boundary that, once crossed, becomes a felony criminal offense.

And I am still disbelieved.

How is that possible?

We have all been there. There is a sisterhood of far too many women who have lived this—who have endured it, survived it, and then been turned away by the very systems charged with enforcing the laws that give us that right to say no.

We need to rise up.

We need to be heard.

We need to fight this—because it will never end for our sisters if we don’t.

There are women who do not even realize they are being raped. That sounds insane, but I was one of them. I didn’t see it. I thought I had to endure it. I thought, men are men, they do things like that. I thought, I can’t go to the police—they won’t believe me.

Case in point: Brian 2. What he did to me was constant. Coercive. It took full control of my body. Hours a day. There is not a chance in hell he could ever be prosecuted. The only reason I believed this case could be prosecuted is because it is on video—and even that has not been enough, despite the laws that exist.

That is the point.

So this election year, my decision is to try to convince the Attorney General candidates to join us—to fight for the enforcement of the laws we already have. These laws exist because we fought for them. My case? There is no legal reason it should not be prosecuted. None. I have poured over the statutes, the case law, everything. This case is supported by the law.

What it is not supported by is belief.

Beliefs must change. The public must be educated. We must understand that relationship rape—intimate partner sexual assault, marital rape, whatever label you prefer—is rape.

Listen to that video.

That was rape.

Legally.

Morally.

Psychologically.

It meets every definition.

So the election starts tomorrow. Tomorrow we see who is willing to stand for this cause. I am willing to share that video. I want people to understand that when it is someone you love doing this to you, it looks exactly the same as a stranger raping you—and in many ways, it is worse. It is someone you trust harming you. Someone you believe when they tell you that you have a say over your own body.

I hope I find even one candidate willing to believe this. To believe that relationship rape is real. That it is devastating. And that staying does not mean we wanted it. We didn’t know. We didn’t know how bad it was. We didn’t know we had the right to say no. We didn’t know how to leave. Our bodies and brains were not even functioning normally enough to escape.

We needed help.

We needed support.

We needed enforcement.

We needed protection.

We needed education about boundaries.

At least I did.

I pray for a world with enough goodness—and enough courage—to finally make this change. We cannot let our daughters and granddaughters live in a world where this is still up for debate.

We are a sisterhood of victims. We see each other. We know what it is—and we know the second violence that comes when the system ignores us.

I will not be ignored.

I will not fall prey to institutional malfeasance any longer.

I will not stop screaming for change.

Join me.