Monday Reads: Trigger Post for victims of Rape and Assault and Racism

Yayoi Kusama

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

If you read one thing today make it this opinion piece at The Guardian by Rebecca Solnit: “Women are harmed every day by invisible men”.  The title really doesn’t say it all but the body of the essay does.

I was a teenage advocate to challenge how women and children are treated by about every layer of society and the justice system when men do something untoward and harmful to them.  My neighbor was in Junior League that established one of the first rape and abuse crisis lines for women in the country. It is now nationally recognized and run by the YWCA in Omaha.  At the time, we had one phone in a psychologist’s office in West Omaha, training to use the list we had and to listen, and then various resources that we could provide to callers.  It was small but became mighty.  Fortunately, it now has skilled counselors on phones instead of teenage volunteers and homemakers.

I learned many things at the time about exactly how unfair the entire criminal justice system was to women and child victims at the time.  Sex crimes were in the property crimes divisions of police stations.  Women officers?  Nope.  Could a man rape his wife?  Nope. Have at least three witnesses present to see the entire thing?  No? Then, forget prosecution.  My job at the crisis line was to say here’s the person you call, here’s a hospital that will help you, and eventually we started having lists of safe houses and counsellors. This was the mid 70s.  A lot has changed on that front but one thing hasn’t.

Whatever happens to a woman is still likely seen to be her fault. The perpetrator eventually becomes invisible. She asked for it. She provoked him. She had a drink.  I even had a friend while at university who knew I was still passionately working on campus and at the legislature to change things who had just  been raped by the library rapist.  She asked if it was worth reporting it because she had a couple of hits off a joint before she went there to study.  I’m like Go to the hospital! Call the police!  Do not make this man the winner of anything!

Ask any woman and they’ll have similar stories from either their own lives or women they know.  I grew up with my mother pointing to the imprint of an iron on her inner thigh and the stories of how it got there.  My mild mannered banker of a grandfather was violent and abusive.  My family oozed white, WASPY upper mild class privilege so I don’t want to hear any of that other kind’ve stuff that excuses men’s–and especially white men’s–actions and behaviors. It’s still rampant.

Tschabalala Self

Solnit’s writing always hits home but this one hit home so hard my house shook.  She’s speaking to the latest spree shooter who targeted Asian Women working for Day Spas in the Atlanta area.  However, she reminds us that we’ve seen this and we’ve seen the response over and over and over.

Some white guy with no emotional or self control has to eliminate “temptation” or was forced into a “rage” or a “hard on” by some women.  So, rather than get his act together he  kills the “objects” of his temptation or rapes her.  Then, the media continues with his narrative. Women are to blame for what happens to them.  Women are just men’s property.  They are objects. They are less.   These guys have a right to feel resentful and harmed and to correct that by taking it out on the woman or women or they’re just lone wolves, disturbed little boys, men with issues we can’t possibly understand.

This is Solnit’s opening narrative.

The alleged murderer of eight people, six of whom were Asian American women, reportedly said that he was trying to “eliminate temptation”. It’s as if he thought others were responsible for his inner life, as though the horrific act of taking others’ lives rather than learning some form of self-control was appropriate. This aspect of a crime that was also horrifically racist reflects a culture in which men and the society at large blame women for men’s behavior and the things men do to women. The idea of women as temptresses goes back to the Old Testament and is heavily stressed in white evangelical Christianity; the victims were workers and others present in massage parlors; the killer was reportedly on his way to shoot up Florida’s porn industry when he was apprehended.

This week an older friend recounted her attempts in the 1970s to open a domestic-violence shelter in a community whose men didn’t believe domestic violence was an issue there and when she convinced them it was, told her, but “what if it’s the women’s fault”. And last week a male friend of mine posted an anti-feminist screed blaming young women for New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s travails, as though they should suck it up when he violated clear and longstanding workplace rules, as though they and not he had the responsibility to protect his career and reputation.

Sometimes men are written out of the story altogether. Since the pandemic began there have been torrents of stories about how women’s careers have been crushed or they have left their jobs altogether because they’re doing the lioness’s share of domestic labor , especially child-rearing, in heterosexual households. In February of this year, NPR opened a story with the assertion that this work has “landed on the shoulders of women” as if that workload had fallen from the sky rather than been shoved there by spouses. I have yet to see an article about a man’s career that’s flourishing because he’s dumped on his wife, or focusing on how he’s shirking the work.

Informal responses often blame women in these situations for their spouses and recommend they leave without addressing that divorce often leads to poverty for women and children, and of course, unequal workloads at home can undermine a woman’s chances at financial success and independence. Behind all this is a storytelling problem. The familiar narratives about murder, rape, domestic violence, harassment, unwanted pregnancy, poverty in single-female-parent households, and a host of other phenomena portray these things as somehow happening to women and write men out of the story altogether, absolve them of responsibility – or turn them into “she made him do it” narratives. Thus have we treated a lot of things that men do to women or men and women do together as women’s problems that women need to solve, either by being amazing and heroic and enduring beyond all reason, or by fixing men, or by magically choosing impossible lives beyond the reach of harm and inequality. Not only the housework and the childcare, but what men do becomes women’s work.

Please Read the entire thing.  Then, consider this stream of tweets by Bruce Bartlett on research by Pew Research. It’s basically a reading list of things surrounding white–but especially white male–fragility.   Yes.  Racial discrimination is a problem for white males in their minds just about the same way that the mass murderer felt women tempting him were his problem.

Minnie-Evans

The research thankfully shows that the majority of all of us in this country see racial discrimination and even white people.  But, then there’s the wipipo that think it’s all about them.  Bartlett writes about this at The New Republic: “The Ultimate White Fragility. White people in not-insignificant numbers maintain a persistent belief that they’re the ones suffering historic levels of racial discrimination.”   Robin DiAngelo, coined the term in a best-selling book in 2011. Yes, that’s 10 years ago and look where we are on this.

Over the last 10 years, the issue of reverse racism and its social and political implications have drawn extensive interest from social scientists. The most well-known study was by Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers of the Harvard Business School and Tufts University, respectively, in 2011. They found that whites increasingly viewed racial prejudice as a zero-sum game—reduced bias against black citizens automatically led to increased bias against their white counterparts. As the chart from their article shows, perceived discrimination against whites by both whites and blacks rose as discrimination against blacks was perceived to have fallen. (This analysis is available through Tufts University.)

Further studies in 2014, 2015, and 2016 confirmed that many whites do indeed see racial progress as a zero-sum game. However, the latest study, published last year, was more skeptical of this trend. Nevertheless, the idea of zero-sum racial discrimination is very popular in the Republican Party. Then-Senator Jeff Sessions expressed the widely held GOP sentiment in 2009 when he said, “Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another.”

Grace Hartigan

Notice it’s the same set of white evangelicals and republicans that tend to come up in all the quotes and polls that Bartlett cites in that 2019 article.  It’s a complete taste of Trumpism.  All of this is deeply intertwined with both patriarchy as viewed by many religious traditions like white evangelical Christianity and white supremacy which has been at the root of native genocides and slavery of Africans and black Americans since the country’s inception. It continues to poison the well.

So, the Supreme Court is considering reinstating the death penalty of the Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  Remember that Domestic Terrorist Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma bombings was the last to receive the federal death penalty in 2001 until Trump went on killing spree at the end of his term. You may remember that a woman was one of them. The other were primarily black men   This is from January and BBC Canada.

Lillian Bassman

President Biden does not support the Death Penalty.  This is from the AP link.

The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider reinstating the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, presenting President Joe Biden with an early test of his opposition to capital punishment.

The justices agreed to hear an appeal filed by the Trump administration, which carried out executions of 13 federal inmates in its final six months in office, including three in the last week of President Donald Trump’s term.

The case won’t be heard until the fall, and it’s unclear how the new administration will approach Tsarnaev’s case. The initial prosecution and decision to seek a death sentence was made by the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president.

Queenie McKenzie

Justice and jobs are not generally meted out equally in this country and many white men fear they will be.  The Capitol Hill Riot/Insurrection will be a test of this certainly.  Today’s NYT: “Evidence in Capitol Attack Most Likely Supports Sedition Charges, Prosecutor Says.“I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,” said Michael Sherwin, who had led the Justice Department’s inquiry into the riot. “. This is from Katie Benner.

Evidence the government obtained in the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol most likely meets the bar necessary to charge some of the suspects with sedition, Michael R. Sherwin, the federal prosecutor who had been leading the Justice Department’s inquiry, said in an interview that aired on Sunday.

The department has rarely brought charges of sedition, the crime of conspiring to overthrow the government.

But in an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Sherwin said prosecutors had evidence that most likely proved such a charge.

“I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,” Mr. Sherwin said. “I believe the facts do support those charges. And I think that, as we go forward, more facts will support that.”

Scott Pelley’s interview on 60 minutes can be found at this link.

I’d like to point you to a more inspiring read from Vogue:  “5 Female Artists From Around the World Who Celebrate Women in Their Work.”    If you’d like to share something with the kids or grand kids, try the Multicultural Kids Blog.: “7 Women Artists Who Changed History.”. You can also check out this from Art and Design: “Famous Female Artists – 5 Incredible Women Artists That You Need To Know”  

I hope you have a good week.  It’s so nice to have so many flavors of spring decorating the avenue now.  All the azaleas and camellias are in bloom. I hope they’re finding they’re way to your corner of the northern hemisphere!

Meanwhile enjoy a live performance of Suzanne Vega and her song “Luka”.   And then listen to Natalie Merchant and “Motherland”.  Gee, I like this Women’s History month thing!  And, I notice I’m really late in the day already!  This was my morning to sleep 2 hours later than the I usually get up in Fake Time and 1 hour later in Real Time. My body is really not liking this time change.  But, anyway … your turn!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?