Gabby Douglas: I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU! WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!!

 It is with a heavy heart that on this day, November 18th, 2017, I hereby order the official cancellation of Gabby Douglas. Around 5 o’clock on November 17th, Gabby apparently lost her goddamn mind and sent out an ignorant ass tweet in response to her former teammate Aly Raisman’s #MeToo. Aly recently opened up about how she had been sexually assaulted for years by a team doctor. While many praised Aly Raisman for her bravery, her teammate for whatever reason felt the need to throw in her two cents stating via tweet, “it is our responsibility as women to dress modestly and be classy. Dressing in a provocative/sexual way entices the wrong crowd.”  

 I could scream. I’m not going to go in on what she said. In previous blog posts I’ve made it very clear about what it is exactly I think about women, and just people in general, who choose to place blame on victims. I will say however that Gabby’s statement seems to be a default for just too many people. I shouldn’t have to explain 1,000,001 times why victim blaming is completely vile.  It was such a passive response. It’s not women get raped by men, it’s men rape women. It’s not men get raped by women, it’s women rape men. It’s not x gets raped by y, it’s y rapes x. I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to get. Stop trying  to shift the blame to anyone but the actual  rapist.

Rightfully so, Gabby is receiving a whole lot of backlash from her insensitive tweet. For some reason though people are choosing to focus on what she has gone through in the past as if that somehow negates what she said. It’s no secret that Gabby has had her fair share of attacks from the twitter trolls. At her first Olympics Black Twitter rushed to her defense when people made racist comments about her hair. At her second Olympics Black Twitter again rushed to her defense when conservative media outlets called her unpatriotic for not placing her hand over her heart during the national anthem. We've invested a lot of time in her. She knows what it’s like to be wrongfully attacked for things she cannot control so color me surprised when she went after her own teammate. 

Yes, I 100% empathize as a black woman, but at the end of the day it’s all irrelevant. What we’re not going to do is make this something it is clearly not. She said something really dumb and there are going to be consequences. We’re not Republicans. We don’t pick and choose what we get upset over based upon whether or not it’s going to hurt our cause. That is not something I will morally except. I get the impulse to do so because the good Lord knows I’ve said dumb sh*t in the past, but I want people to call me out on it. How else are we supposed to learn?

*** Update 11/21/2017: Gabby Douglas has since issued an apology to her teammate and also alleges that she too had been assulted by the same doctor, Larry Nassar. With that in mind, her comments were still 100% trash but I have a better understanding of her perspective. Like so many victims including myself it is so easy to want to blame ourselves. Rape Culture has made it so that it’s always our fault or there is always something more we could do to prevent such tragedies when that is simply not the case. So, I’m taking back what I said about “canceling” her. In the spirit of our fearless, orange leader Donald Trump I propose a temporary ban.