I'm _________ years old.

[  ]  old enough to not want to begin a pregnancy at this age.
[  ]  a grown damn woman who has my birth control plan on point.
[  ]  experiencing intermittent periods, but not fully accepting that I'm perimenopausal, so wondering if I should take a pregnancy test.
[  ]  all of the above.

I'm here for this purge.

All the people who "made a joke" at a woman's expense 40 years ago--them too.

Voluntarily head to the nearest exit.

If you are an elected official, give your constituents a chance to re-elect you ONLY if they demand it, years from now after you have re-earned their trust.

Instead, spend time in your district listening to young leaders with whom you normally habitually haven't interacted.  Who among them needs a nudge, your mentorship, door opening, and millions of dollars of fundraising experience?  Help that person to replace your seat in Congress. 

Create and support a pipeline of these diverse young leaders, to replace you, yes, but to also use your influence to create the more perfect union in our communities and through government. You used your power and influence and frankly the structures of the patriarchy, racism, etc to nudge your way ahead in line, ahead of their mothers and fathers.  Give this diverse young generation of leaders the direct support they need to build the structures and new systems that we all need to navigate the future:  to support aging boomers, in an increasingly automated age, while developing post-carbon infrastructure and more equitable social systems and processes.

Surely you know that you can be both the problem and the solution.  Your money derived from the crumbling paradigm funds the new leaders so they are not beholden to gun lobby or pharmaceuticals or whatever other money makes it so even the best politicians cannot actually vote in their constituents' voice.

The problem, the hurt.  The women who were humiliated by your "joke" were hurt by you.  As Cohen says in her tweet "it's deliberate gender-based public humiliation of a colleague."  Those women you intentionally humiliated were hurt.  And also the young women and girls who witnessed the humiliation--either directly from you, or from hearing their aunts or sisters or mothers or community members talking about the humiliation.  Some of these women later chose to avoid working around powerful mean people like you, which incidentally often means doing lower paid work, because of you and your behavior.  And all the men who laughed.  And all the boys who watched.  And all the women who laughed.  And all the girls who watched.  They're all hurt by your behavior too.

Atonement means fixing  the things you broke, including relationships you didn't even know you had. 

This this the conversation I've been waiting for.  These are the actions we deserve.

If you genuinely don't understand the Black Lives Matter thing, step aside.  Let others who better understand serve in office instead.

If you genuinely don't understand the transgender thing, step aside.  Let others who better understand serve in office instead.

If you genuinely don't understand the water protectors, step aside.  Let others who better understand serve in office instead.

If you genuinely don't understand the million other perspectives we'd be better off having represented in our government, step aside.  Let others who do understand serve in office instead.

That's better than issuing an apology.  Be the leader who learns and repairs and empowers and survives and is redeemed.