Mr. Prime Minister:

I read today that you were “disturbed” about the rape of another child in Delhi, a five-year-old girl. My question to you is: just how “disturbed” are you?

What does the rape of a five-year-old female child make you feel? Do you sit in your plush office and shake your head in disbelief? Do you sit in your secure mansion at Raisina Hill eating your good dinner while a five-year-old female child asks for food she cannot eat because of the multiple surgeries she has undergone? Do you share your “disturbance” with anyone? Do you talk to your spouse about this little girl battling for her life? What do you say to each other? Do you both just shake your heads in disbelief and feel helpless in the face of this angry war of men against female bodies and persons?

Do you know that girls and women are now living everyday in a war zone, and that gendered crimes of war are being committed in times of “peace”? Do you know that each day, a female body/person is abducted, confined, raped, raped again, demolished bodily from inside out, and left to die on roadsides of every town and every city in your “new” India? Do you hear them? Is their anguish conveyed? Are you terrorized by their terror? Do you wake from nightmares conveyed by terrorized bodies? What do you do when you wake in night-sweats? Do you cry? Do you drag yourself to the bathroom and empty the contents of your stomach? Do you stand under the shower for hours hoping that the stench of your nightmares may be washed away? Do you lie in your bed thinking about your own life even as sleep escapes you?

Do you think about yourself—the man you were, the man you became or could not? Do you feel shame? Is this shame debilitating to you? Does it cripple you emotionally and physically to the extent that you cannot conduct your everyday existential business? Do you fear for your life? Do you think that someday, you might take your own because your life seems unbearable? Do you look in the mirror and then look away? Do you look at other men and then look away? If you didn’t look away, what would you see of yourself in the mirror and in other men? Would you recognize yourself or be shocked by what you see? How would you take measure of your maleness, its meaning and its affect, as you assess your aging face and an aged body?

What does being a man mean to you? Do you know? Do you know if the men around you know? When did you recognize your male privilege? At what age? Did your mother feed you paranthas made in clarified butter and feed herself regular dry rotis with a slice of onion? You went to school (probably unlike your sister, if you have or had one), but did it matter if you passed or failed? What did you do when your sister, who didn’t go to school, was caught trying to read in the corner of a dark barn? Did you spit on her? In your teenage years, did you stand at the corner of a village turn and tease girls your age? Did you say crude things? Did you ever touch anyone inappropriately?

Mr. Prime Minister, do you have answers to any of these questions? You are the elected authority of the largest democracy in the world, yet you find yourself merely “disturbed” by the rape and torture of a five-year-old female child. I and many other women in India and around the world want to know: Whose heads are you rolling to stop this madness? Why are you hiding behind a broken, ineffective, biased democratic process of redressal in times of war—of male bodies against female bodies?

If the Constitution is a contract between the republic and its equal and free citizens (that the republic will protect and promote the rights of every citizen irrespective of their denomination), then has male privilege severely undercut the viability of this contract to render it null and void for female bodies of every size and shape? Why would castration or hanging until death for male bodies convicted of rape in a court of law be rejected as appropriate punishment by the same court of law? Why would the male bodies populating the benches of such courts of law squirm at the possibility of these punishments and yet feel nothing except “disturbed” by the routine brutalization of a girl-child’s body? What is justice in the court of male privilege? What is justice in a formalized democracy that has been rendered dysfunctional by cultural forms of male privilege?

You do know, Mr. Prime Minister, that “they”—the angry women and their allies—are baying for your blood and the blood of all men who only know the female body/person as a commodity to be bought and sold in the patriarchal/ liberalized bazaar of a culture that is mutating like a bad wound. “They” don’t want you to lead them. Hell, “they” don’t even want your male privilege form of democracy. “They” would rather accept a dictatorship, and hope that this anti-thesis to ideas of freedom and equality would somehow better wield the whip and knife against those who wield their penises as weapons of mass destruction against girls and women. “They” want Saudi style justice—an eye for an eye, a leg for a leg, and a penis for rape.

So what does this say to you, Mr. Prime Minister? It says you have failed, miserably. You have failed this polity and this democracy and these women. You have failed all girls and women to such an extent that you should not be surprised with a future rise of female mercenaries who would “kill, Bill” without a twinge of remorse. Think of such a time, Mr. Prime Minister, and then perhaps you will be more than merely “disturbed” about routine brutalization of female bodies/persons in our contemporary, “shining” democracy of India.

By Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Darnell L. Moore

Stephanie Gilmore @ SlutWalk Philadelphia Photo credit: Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Stephanie Gilmore is an antiracist queer feminist scholar-activist who engages activism through education and writing. She facilitates workshops on contemporary and historical feminist activism, sexual violence, and coalition building. She is the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles as well as two books (Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, 2008; Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Post War America, 2012). She is a member of the editorial collective for the journal Feminist Studies; and a board member for the Committee of LGBT Historians. She welcomes the opportunity to engage with and listen to people, and you can connect with her via Linked In.

TFW: You identify as a feminist antiracist queer scholar-activist. We all have endured journeys that have shaped our politics. Can you say a bit about your own journey and how it shaped your political framework? And how do you embody your political commitments in your day-to-day life?

Stephanie: I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, in the aftermath of much social and cultural change that liberationists made in the decades before. But I grew up in Alabama, where much of that feminist, antiracist, queer change was resisted, even rejected. So my first foray into political activism was challenging that resistance in my daily life and asking questions as to “why” people did not have the same opportunities. When I was 14, my high school administration debated whether or not a pregnant classmate could stay in school. This was 1984! I remember telling my mother that she should be allowed to stay, that pregnancy was not a crime or a problem. I also announced that I was pro-abortion and believe now, as I did then, that any person should have access to a safe, legal, and affordable abortion at any time. Talk about a stand that put me at odds with people – then and now! I started talking to people about birth control, safer sex, and abortion, and once I was sent to my high school principal’s office for asking my brother and sister students about the kind of birth control they used and if they were satisfied with it. It is funny to recall the spitfire of this high school girl who was unafraid to speak, to make political the personal long before I’d heard of the women’s liberation movement that introduced that concept. In my own personal journey, I realized that my voice, however small, mattered.

Speaking up for myself and speaking up for and with others was imperative if I were to survive in this world. When I learned that members of my extended family had been involved in anti-civil rights demonstrations, including bus bombings, I was horrified, but alas not surprised. I’d grown up in Alabama, among people who really did believe that Black people and white people were different and needed to be segregated. But it never dawned on me to feel “guilty” – “guilt” is often self-serving. What I did was become engaged in antiracist work, learning about people like Anne Braden and following a path toward racial justice. Just as I had done with the classmate — who was able to finish her year as a student at school — I listened. But I also spoke out when I heard people engaging in racist talk or perpetuating racist stereotypes – I may not have been the most popular kid at social gatherings but I knew that it mattered to me and to others. Again, I did not have the words I possess now, but I knew that I had white-skin privilege and challenged myself and others to be aware of how it operates. That meant, and means, being openly aware that, as a white person, unlearning and undoing racism is my work.

When I was first sexually assaulted and then raped, I silenced myself. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the man who was molesting me, and I kept that secret for years. One day, at school, I broke down and went to the counselor’s office. That evening, when my mother came home from work, I told her about the repeated molestation, and had no idea how she would respond. We cried and she held me, and she told me the words that resonate with me today: “I believe you.” I realized then – and see nearly every day now – how few people believe women and men who say they have been or are being assaulted or raped. And I make it my explicit mission to let anyone know that if they tell me that they or someone they know has hurt, abused, or violated them, my first words are “I believe you.”

Believing people, and believing in people, is at the heart of my political commitment. Demonstrating that belief can be difficult, to be sure. But I am firmly committed to politicizing people’s lives and experiences and sharing this kind of political analysis through education and activism. What does this mean? I refuse to talk about sexual violence, for example, in a personal, individual way, as if this is something that happens to “me.” To be sure, it does, and I face different forms of sexual violence and sexual micro-aggressions all of the time. But it happens to us — and it is justified in part because “we” are asking for it. We’re loud, bitchy, women; we’re queer; we’re femme or we’re butch; we’re undocumented; we’re college students; we’re drunk or doing something or wearing something or being somewhere or … we all know the tropes. I work to flip the script by speaking against and exposing the forces that diminish and silence our voices. Sexual assault, racism, anti-queer bullying – all need to be addressed through the lens that the personal is political. What happens to you or me happens to us, and we have the power to confront it, to demand change and justice. The first step for me is listening and believing. It is my way to create what I and a student of mine started calling “micro-benevolences.”

TFW: You were a staunch supporter of the SlutWalk movement and were one of the featured speakers at SlutWalk Philadelphia in 2011. And yet, in spite of your support–or perhaps we should say because of your support–you were led to write a very powerful Facebook post titled “Am I Troy Davis? Am I Slut?,” which challenged institutional and individual racism and classism within various progressive movements for radical social change.  Shortly after your posting it on Facebook, the Ms. blog and Racialicious reprinted it on their sites. What does it mean for you, as a white anti-racist scholar activist, to do the work of dismantling white supremacy-even in feminist spaces? What is your advice for others who want to do the same but are afraid of the repercussions?

Stephanie: Feminism, like any social movement, has many historical and contemporary iterations; and there are many strands and sites of feminist analysis and activism. I embrace Sister bell hooks’ definition of feminism as “the struggle to end sexist oppression” (hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, 28). To understand sexist oppression, we must understand how racism, cisgenderism, heterosexism, and classism shape sexism; to end sexism, we have to confront all forms of oppression. Of course, this is the hard work – many forces conspire to keep us divided from one another, perpetuating a sort of “oppression Olympics” wherein various –isms are pitted against each other. When we buy into that perspective, we work at odds with one another. To combat these forces, we need our many voices and to see how our individual battles ARE our collective struggle.

And, as hooks reminds us, the feminist movement must be a space for criticism, struggle, and transformation. When SlutWalk emerged in 2011, I felt the surge of people power, a surge I hadn’t experienced in a good long while. People were mobilizing across the internet AND in person to confront the perpetuation of sexual violence and the dominance of rape culture. And what a moment it was! Around the world, women and men were organizing under the banner of SlutWalk and in solidarity with the women in Toronto who were told – by a constable, no less — that if they wanted to avoid rape, they needed to stop dressing like sluts. But what was even more exciting and empowering to me is how people used SlutWalk to address local manifestations of gender and sexual violence. In Cuernavaca, Marcha de las Putas organizers protested the alarming rates of femicide in the state of Morelos; in Philadelphia, SlutWalk took local significance because Dan Rottenberg opined that “liberated women” needed to be mindful of how they dress because men will interpret sexual confidence as wanting “to get laid.”  From New Dehli to San Francisco, organizers had too many local reasons to mobilize, and SlutWalk started to bring them to the fore.

Now, what’s in a name? Embracing the name “slut” was not going to happen for a lot of women and men, and there are many wonderful responses to the name. What I did find encouraging, however, was the public conversation around the problematic (for some) name – and many people who did or do not claim the label “slut” still participated and supported the cause. This kind of engagement signals vitality in a movement. When I spoke at SlutWalk in Philadelphia, I did not embrace the label “slut” – it is a word I never claimed, so RE-claiming it was not an option. But I also rejected the word in solidarity with many women who had been labeled “sluts” simply because they are Black or Brown, because they are lesbians, queer, or genderqueer, because they are poor. It was imperative for me as a white, cisgender, lesbian feminist to speak out about it.

Indeed, it is important to me to challenge racism and classism in feminism. Radical social change is impossible if we don’t address racism and classism. We have to be mindful that we can have solidarity with people without having to be them. I will never know what it is like to be CeCe McDonald, who survived a violent, racist, transphobic attack on her person only to be charged with second-degree murder. I cannot possibly know what life is like for Shirley Chambers, a mother in Chicago who lost her four children to gun violence, or Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin (who would have turned 18 years old just a few weeks ago, had George Zimmerman not shot and killed him). I am not Troy Anthony Davis, who spent over 19 years on death row until he was executed by the state of Georgia in September 2011. To suggest that I am or can identify with any of these people diminishes the realities of their lives as they are shaped by violent hatred of trans* people, people of color, poor people, and people in prison (not mutually exclusive category). But I will speak in solidarity with those who seek to address, challenge, and dismantle the political and social structures that reinforce such hatred.

Are there repercussions? Sure. I face social ostracization. Peers have harangued me. I’ve been harassed and threatened with physical and sexual violence. I’ve received hate mail. I’ve been called any number of names. And I’m not diminishing the real emotional and psychological impact of it. But I come back to the politicization of personal experiences – and I am NOT alone! I am conscious and aware that when I speak out, I do so as a white, cisgender person who appears to be (and is) middle-class; I have a Ph.D. and publish academic articles and books. I carry social weight and a lot of folks listen to people who look like me – I know this and use this position of privilege when I speak. I am not CeCe McDonald, Shirley Chambers, Sybrina Fulton, Troy Anthony Davis … but I will speak out against the injustices they have endured, and I will believe them as they speak their truths.

TFW: It seems that it is important for you to support young people as they challenge institutional status quo. What motivates you to do this work despite potential risks?

Stephanie: My work in the academy is a deep part of my activism – it is that way for many of us in disciplines that emerged in the throes of social movement activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than shy away from or dismiss the activism that created the space for women’s studies, Black studies, Latino/a studies, queer studies, and more, I embrace it. The pursuit of knowledge cannot possibly be contained to the walls of the classroom! And just as students learn more outside of the classroom, I do more teaching outside of the classroom. I will meet with students where they are and do the work of radical feminism – getting to the root of sexist oppression, a la hooks, and engaging in the struggle to end it. I also want people to think about and understand their experiences not just individually but also collectively. To come back to the issue of sexual violence, it is important for young people to know that sexual violence is a part of the culture in which they live. And it is imperative for them to recognize that sexual violence is a political act – rape is a violent act of sexual aggression against women, queer people, Indigenous people, people of color, poor people. And this is hardly an isolated experience – but it is often treated as if it is. Our society and its institutions silence victims. Even more, we refuse to acknowledge sexual violence as a form of terrorism that has been and IS used to subjugate, humiliate, and dominate whole groups of people – our comrade Andrea Smith makes this case in her power-full book Conquest  (a book I recommend to every young person I encounter in my work) but many others have come to the same awareness and analysis. Students do not have to be in my classroom to come to this reality, nor do they have to be there to know that they have rights to challenge status quo. But it is part of my work as a feminist activist, scholar, teacher, student, and human being to draw out the connections between the personal and the political, to show how status quo and power operate and to contemplate ways that we can create a different world, one free of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism. To me, the greater risk is silence and complicity.

TFW: You’re the author of Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Post War America (Routlegde, 2012) and the editor of the anthology Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States  (University of Illinois, 2008). Both of these volumes shed light on the her/histories of  feminist activists and movements that were not included in the mainstream feminist discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. How did these topics become the focus of your research and published writing? What do you hope readers will gain from both of these books?

My goal as a historian is to uncover hidden histories of what civil rights historian John Dittmer called “local people.” I don’t write about activist stars, but instead about the people making change in their communities because they saw a need and embraced feminism as a strategy and a goal. As a feminist scholar, I know all too well how many women’s voices are not entered into the historical record. So part of my scholarly agenda is to locate people and bring their activism into the larger conversation about our feminist movements. I am grateful that we do have repositories that actively collect women’s and feminists’ histories – the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe, and the Sallie Bingham Center at Duke University. But many of the people I write about do not think their activism is significant. Well, I do! In a world that is simultaneously connected via the internet and fractured into isolated communities, we need local stories that connect us to one another. And we need history so that we do not reinvent the wheel – we are fighting many of the same battles, so perhaps we can utilize time-tested strategies, even as we also use new ones as well.

My first book, Feminist Coalitions, features scholarship that engages with this goal, while also turning our attention to the many facets of feminist activism in the 1970s. So many times, we hear that ‘70s feminism was so divided by race, class, religion, location, and the like. While that is not completely wrong, it certainly is not completely right! When we talk about ‘70s feminism in such a narrow way, we miss the many and vibrant strands of feminist thought and action that emerged, and we elide the numerous issues around which feminists fought in solidarity. This isn’t to say that coalition building is easy – “coalition building is hard work,” as Bernice Johnson Reagon reminds us – but they did and do happen. And historically, they show us how people work across very real divides, sometimes with great success. Look at Our Bodies, Ourselves, which started out of a small Boston feminist group in the early 1970s to create a mimeographed and stapled guide for women to take control of their own health and health care. Today, it is a multifaceted book that encompasses so many issues and offers so many strategies for women to care for themselves at all stages of life, with an understanding that there is no singular “woman.” The Feminist Wire’s editorial board is a fine example of feminist coalition building – the group is so diverse and people bring many perspectives and histories. It may be different in that it uses the web to reach people in real time – something just not possible in the 1970s – but its intention to speak with and about the fundamental diversity of feminisms (plural!) has deep historical roots. Some of the complicated histories of feminist coalitions are told in Feminist Coalitions, and I think they can help give us a usable and un-romanticized past on which to build our current and future activisms.

Groundswell embraces a similar overall goal, turning attention to the larger history of feminist activism in the 1970s, but looking at different locations across the United States. A history of feminist activism on the East Coast – while important – has been allowed to stand for feminism everywhere. And we know that no single feminism can possibly represent the whole of our movements! So in Groundswell, I look not at a feminist “wave” but at feminist “groundswells” in Memphis, Columbus, and San Francisco – how did feminists mobilize for change in these cities? How did they define success and what successes did they achieve? What remains undone, and why? They did not surf a feminist wave; they shook the ground beneath their feet! To me, that is the heart of the movement – the rank-and-file activists who did the activist work in their communities, simply because it needed to be done. I hope that with Groundswell, readers will find a usable past, another way to see activism around the many issues that we still face today. And it should give us pause – even as it calls us to action – to know that we still fight the same fights with respect to reproductive justice, poverty, militarization, and rights for basic recognition, racism, and more.

TFW: What projects are you currently working on?

Stephanie: I am currently at work on what I hope will be my next book, a cultural history of the day of the 1968 Miss America Pageant protest. This event launched “women’s liberation” into the public consciousness; it also left us with the legacy that feminists are “bra burners” – a MYTH-conception if ever there was one because it never happened! I’m just starting this project, but already I am able to see that this one protest was grounded in deep feminist thought and a commitment to action. Organizers knew that they were addressing sexism in the form of a beauty pageant that reified conventional white beauty, but they were also organizing and protesting against racism, the war in Viet Nam, corporatist culture and capitalism, and they saw these issues as intimately related to one another. They also embraced liberation as the goal of their movement, and saw themselves as connected to the larger struggle for liberation. This day also saw the first Miss Black America Pageant, which was itself a protest against Miss America. So one single day turns out to be tremendously significant for our feminist histories. If anyone wants to talk further about this project, I hope they’ll contact me!

TFW: How do you take care of yourself in the midst of your radical scholarship and activism?

Stephanie: Ah, self care!! I love so much that you ask this question – it reminds me and anyone who reads this that activists must take care of themselves! It is a most radical act, as Audre Lorde and so many of our sister-mother-activists have reminded us. I spend a great deal of time listening to and sharing with others, in the classroom but especially beyond it. I get a tremendous amount of pleasure and strength from these interactions. Indeed, I remain inspired by the legacy of sister Ella Baker, who knew that working with young people, teaching them but also learning from them, was the greatest inspiration.

But there are times that I simply must stop, remembering that I must care for myself if I’m to keep doing this work. To do that, I cook – there is something very rewarding about making something nourishing for myself and my friends. I also write – after a most inspiring workshop with Cherrie Moraga last summer, I started writing every single day. I even started writing poetry and have found a creative outlet that helps me make sense of some of the things in my head.  I also “date” myself – I take myself out to lunch or dinner, and on this date, I ask myself what I want and figure out ways to give that to myself.  It sounds silly, perhaps, but I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to give others what they need. Now I approach myself with the same amount of care and attention. But the most important thing I do for myself is meditate. Making time every day to sit seems hard, but when I feel like I don’t have the time is precisely when I must make the time. Sometimes I think I must be the worst meditator ever! But I approach it with intention, as I do all of my work. It took a very long time, but I started putting self-care on my list of things to do.

By Qui Dorian Alexander

I came into feminism as a butch Latina lesbian at a women’s college. Today I stand as a brown queer trans masculine person who moves through the world read as a cis brown man. I have often felt like my place in feminism has not always been welcomed, thought it has always been an integral part of my identity.

I came into my feminism hearing brown queer woman tell stories of their struggles for respect and recognition from men, from white folks and from the institutions they had to navigate daily. I come from a community where people steel stories from their hips.

I have learned along my path that we hold stories in our bodies. People think they can read my experience, who I am and where I am from. What my politics are. I often feel those stories are hidden in my body. Along with the struggles, trauma and resilience of my ancestors. My path to liberation must include telling these stories, working through trauma and confronting internalized oppression.

For the longest time I retreated to my masculinity, the misogyny I learned to “protect it” and the inherit homophobia that came with it. For fear of violence done unto my body because it was different. I would perpetuate the patriarchy, particularly around other men or masculine folks of color for fear of being seen as inauthentic. Convinced that if another brown man saw me with my masculine partner would confront me for being gay, find out I was trans and assault me. I grew up with the victim blaming narrative around rape culture and the fear of violence was my rationalization for perpetuating these systems of oppression.

How does one confront these issues? How does one shift to become an ally to the communities to which their non-complaisance becomes oppressive? These were questions that I struggled with constantly. Playing out my internalized sexism on people that I cared about all for the sake of being “man enough.” It was always important for me to “remember where I came from” but was still struggling to tell the stories of my “old self” and feel comfortable in the body I was given.

But it wasn’t until I participated in the Brown Boi Project that I was able to start having these conversations with myself. The Brown Boi Project is a leadership development and organizing project working to build the leadership, economic self sufficiency, and health of young masculine of center womyn, trans men, and straight men of color–pipelining them into the social justice movement. It was then for the first time I had met other masculine folks of color talking about these issues, wanting to breakdown oppressive masculinity and redefining it to be inclusive and affirmative of feminine identified folks. It wasn’t until then I was able to have conversations with people who looked like me to hold me accountable, to be able to better hear my partner’s concerns as a femme identified person, to be able to be critical of my own internalized sexism. It became apparent that my responsibility as a masculine person is to dismantle sexism and patriarchy and that it’s not the job of women and feminine identified folks.

It was then I realized what was needed to shift. I needed community.

I have been struggling with having conversations about white folks around institutionalized oppression and what I call “subtle racism.” The idea that white folks don’t have to call me the n-word to perpetuate racism in my life. Its the erasure of voices of color, its the apathy around cultural appropriation, its the cries of reverse-racism that really hit the hardest for me. I have been in this constant back and forth of what racism is and isn’t, what I should be offended by and what I should not, what I am “allowed to be angry about” and can’t I cannot. Seeing white folks try to prove to me that they get it, but by inserting their voice they ultimately silence mine. After many feelings of frustration and anger, I stepped backed and asked myself, why aren’t white folks calling each other out on this? As a masculine person I know it’s my responsibility to call out other masculine folks when they are perpetuating misogyny, so why are white folks doing the same?

I simply decided to be direct with the white folks in my life and asked, “Do you feel like you have the knowledge/skill set/ability to call out other white folks on racism/institutionalized oppression/white supremacy?” The majority of the responses I got were “no.” Most folks said they might have the knowledge but not the ability. The majority of these folks where also queer and feminist identified. I had seen them call out others on sexism and homophobia, but why not racism?

Some folks explained that they had called out folks before and have been ostracized from friends, other white folks they talked to were just not receptive, they only had luck talking about racism if it was defined as “prejudice against someone of a different race” (leaving space for the reverse-racism argument). It was then I realized that these folks don’t have community. They do not have other white people in their life to hold them and their friends accountable. They don’t even have the space to talk about race in their white friend circles. There are folks who want to do the work but don’t have community to hold them through the process.

In my advocacy work I have learned we can’t just tell me they have privilege and to change. People have to move through their feelings, be critical and have a willingness to feel supported in a shift. People need community to move and shift ideas for themselves to inter effect the collective consciousness. But learning this ultimately just left me with more questions than answers. Why is it so hard for white folks to build community to do these things? Why are all these white feminist groups reluctant to use an intersectional approach, but chastise others if they do not have a feminist framework? Why are these groups so quick to say, “We are all the same” but constantly make me feel othered when sharing space?

I found myself asking “what do I have to do to help white folks build community to hold each other accountable around race?” When I realized that that is in fact, not my job. Just as it is my responsibility as a masculine person to dismantle sexism, it is white folks responsibility to dismantle racism. That is the question I pose to white feminists: how can you create communities of accountability? How can you start conversations about race/institutionalized oppression/white supremacy whiteout people shutting down?

Ultimately starting a bigger conversation on how can we make anti-racism an integral part of feminist frameworks? A conversation that should be in collaboration with feminist of color but must be initiated by white feminists. It isn’t until community accountability is a fundamental part of feminist framework that healing can be done. And until we find healing we cannot find liberation.
_________________________________________________________

Qui Alexander is queer, Black Latino facilitator/trainer, consultant, organizer and yoga teacher based in Philadelphia. Self described as a laugh loving, shape shifting, and nerdy ball of fire, who got into yoga, wellness and social justice, all by accident. A graduated of Bryn Mawr College, started advocacy work during his undergraduate career and continues to do that work in a variety of ways. Qui’s current favorite work is with the Attic Youth Center and the Brown Boi Project. He is committed to teaching yoga to queer, trans and poc communities and volunteers at the local community acupuncture clinic.

Qui has years of LGBTQ advocacy experience and uses his background in facilitation to hold and make space for folks in different capacities. His passions for social justice, self and collective care show up in his work with queer youth, community organizing and consulting work. Whether he is facilitating trainings, writing curriculum or teaching yoga, he strives to make spaces that affirm identities and opens people up to the deeper places learning can take them. He works to inspire folks to embrace change in all parts of their lives. Qui considers yoga a part of his work and home life and self-identifies as both a yoga dork and the target audience for cheesy family tv.

By Bill Patrick

This week brought the startling news of the arrest of Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski, the officer in charge of the Air Force’s effort to eliminate sexual assault within the ranks. His reported crime? That he sexually assaulted a woman in a parking lot.

The woman fought back and left visible scratches on Krusinki’s face, which can be seen clearly in his mug shot.

Hold on. Let me make sure that I understand this correctly:  the man who is supposed to be helping people–women–who serve in the United States Air Force to stay safe from sexual assault was himself arrested for doing just that?

Is it any wonder that the last set of numbers of sexual assaults released by the U.S. Air Force shows that the issue remains a huge problem for women who serve — that they are still not safe from their “brothers in arms”?

Krusinki’s alleged sexual violence raises three startling, but critical questions:

1. Are men really the best people to be trusted with keeping women safe?

This is a difficult question to ask, and as a man it does not feel good to paint my own gender with such a wide swath. But the numbers don’t lie. Men are responsible for the vast majority of sexual assaults. We are responsible for the vast majority of all violence, period.  Domestic violence. School shootings. Terrorist acts. Child sexual abuse. Rape. Are men really the best people to be put in charge of keeping other people, and especially women, safe — when so many men in positions of power have themselves proven, over and over again, to be unsafe?

Male sexual assaults in the chain of command are not just limited to the United States. In 2010, Russell Williams, a Colonel in the Canadian Air Force in command of a major RCAF base in Ontario, was arrested for the rape and murder of two women and for the rape of two other women. He is also suspected of committing hundreds of other break-ins into women’s homes. If this is happening in the Air Forces of United States and Canada, then you know it’s happening worldwide.

I am focusing only on the Air Force here, but there is no reason to believe that it is any worse than the other branches of the military. They are all pretty atrocious when it comes to mistreatment of women, and particularly women of color.

And it is not just in the military where men mistreat women. Just think: if you could isolate the largest single characteristic that most violent people share, wouldn’t you do it? Well, we can, and it’s gender. It’s that we are men. And maybe it’s time that we all took that fact into account when we think about just whom we should put in charge of any of our safety programming.

2. What is the proper role for men in working for women’s safety?

On Tuesday, President Obama sounded a strong message about combatting sexual assault in the military, saying: “The bottom line is, I have no tolerance for this.  If we find out somebody’s engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable, prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged — period.”  And it is wonderful that this issue is on Obama’s radar.  But if the United States military is to be effective in these efforts, it is going to have to discover for itself something that anti-rape activists have known for decades: that reducing sexual assault is not just about stopping specific bad acts done by individual bad men.

Rape and sexual assault are about power. They are about the relative positions of men and women in society. And here’s a simple truth: women will continue to be subject to men’s sexual violence as long as women remain socially and culturally acceptable targets of such behavior.  Lt. Col. Krusinski would not have grabbed that woman if his brain had not on some level — no matter how inebriated it was — connected with the fact that in our society, women’s bodies are literally up for grabs. In a sexist society, men grope women because women are still seen as grope-able beings.

A key part of the solution to violence against women is women’s empowerment. So why the hell does the U.S. Air Force have a man heading up the effort to end sexual assault?   As Gloria Steinem once famously said: “Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.” Men can be allies in women’s empowerment. But only allies. We cannot be the leaders of that effort. And if women are required to depend upon men for their own liberation, well, then Hell itself will be long frozen over before women achieve true equality.

3. What is being done to eliminate all forms of sexism throughout the military?  

Sexual assault is just the vicious tip of the iceberg. It is the brutal acting out of a culture that despises and denigrates women, an act that is surpassed possibly only by femicide.

I once spoke with a woman who flew in cargo planes for the U.S. Air Force. She was the only woman on her crew. Whenever she would go to relieve herself, the male pilot would bank the plane so sharply that the woman would spill urine all down the leg of her flight suit.  This was his way of letting her know that he thought that women simply did not belong aboard military aircraft. It was a humiliating experience for her, and she had no one to complain to.

Until the U.S. Air Force eliminates all of these kinds of “minor” instances of sexual harassment — acts that are specifically designed to remind everyone of women’s second class membership in the armed forces — then they will make scant headway in combating sexual assault.

The atrociously high rate of sexual assault within all branches of the military, and the huge numbers of American servicewomen returning home from combat zones reporting having been raped by their male comrades, show that not much has changed in the masculine supremacist culture of the U.S. military. And, of course, these issues disproportionately affect women of color; while approximately 15% of active-duty personnel are women, 31% of military women are Black. White women make up just 53% of active-duty female personnel, whereas white men make up 71% of active duty male personnel.

Every single woman who serves in the United States military deserves the respect and the support of the men with whom she serves. It is unacceptable for any woman to experience harm at the hands of her comrades. Obviously, what we are doing isn’t working. So perhaps it’s time men stepped aside so that women can take the lead in these efforts and there can finally be justice for women in uniform.

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For over 20 years, Bill Patrick has been working to support feminist community-based organizations that try to help to reduce sexual and domestic violence.  As a male ally, he has partnered with shelters for battered women, women’s self defense programs, and rape crisis lines. His Ph.D. dissertation explored how men’s limited emotional repertoire is implicated in their abusive behavior in relationships. His paid career has been spent moving back and forth between counseling and teaching roles. He has worked with male survivors of childhood sexual abuse, researched and analyzed batterer intervention programs, run a supervised visitation center aimed at serving the needs of battered women who had orders of protection, and has taught several university level courses on men and masculinity.

Bill writes a profeminist blog (www.billsprofeministblog.blogspot.com ) that is also cross-posted on xyonline.net, the web’s largest resource for profeminist men. Throughout his years of working with men and boys in various psychotherapeutic, educational, and social justice contexts, Bill has become increasingly convinced that using a feminist-informed approach is the only truly effective and compassionate way to work with men and boys, and that the struggle for women’s equality will ultimately free us all.

Bill currently lives in Eastern Canada with his partner and their five year-old daughter – both of whom are strong feminists!

By Molly Baker

On April 23, University of Arizona student Dean Saxton, better known as Brother Dean, stood on a bench brandishing a sign that bluntly stated in bold, black letters “You Deserve Rape.” Saxton proceeded to verbally harass many women that walked by on their way to class, calling them “sluts” and telling them to put clothes on.  Men and women alike were offended by the blatant immorality of Saxton’s sign.  It caused even more of an uproar as it was the day of the annual national event against sexual violence, Take Back the Night.

In the following weeks, Saxton brought national attention to the U of A via the Huffington Post.  Many were disappointed to see Saxton creating a negative image of their school, and began to counter him with signs of their own.

Being in the middle of what was becoming a national news story, I knew I had to take the opportunity to document it.  I wanted to show that Saxton did not represent the U of A.  In fact, the U of A stands strongly against sexual violence and has many programs and awareness efforts to prevent assault and educate the student population about the complexity of the issue.  It wasn’t okay with me, and many other students, that Saxton made people feel unsafe on their campus.  It wasn’t okay that survivors be made to feel guilty about something they had no control over.

Sexual Assault is such a stigmatized issue.  Despite being a common experience for many, the topic is often avoided. I feel it is my duty as a woman, as a journalist, and as an activist to speak out against hateful words and actions.  I hope this video will spark conversation and positive progress. I hope that the many viewpoints displayed–men, women, LGBTQ, counselors, and survivors–will show that this is not just a women’s issue.  Sexual violence is a human issue that needs to be addressed.

The passion of the community and the people that I interviewed really helped make the movie powerful.  I am very thankful to the people that donated their time, stories, emotions, and words of wisdom to spread the message of this video.

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Molly Baker is studying journalism, media arts, and Spanish at the University of Arizona.  Her interest in journalism began through participation in Amnesty International, reading international news stories. Her first journalistic experience was as the editor of her high school yearbook, where she gained skills in photography, general design, and feature writing.  Through classes at the University of Arizona, she has discovered a passion for multimedia journalism.  She enjoys interviewing people and documenting their stories. Learn more about Molly here.

By Kalima DeSuze, Nicole Patin and Farah Tanis on behalf of the members of Black Women’s Blueprint

To Our Sisters,

To those who have survived sexual assault or any other form of violation along the continuum of categories of sexual violence reserved primarily for women, female body or not, we at Black Women’s Blueprint write you in solidarity, in support and in sisterhood. Many of us are survivors ourselves and/or come from families of survivors all over the Black Diaspora.  We represent multiple generations of women weaving the pieces of their lives back together, seeking justice for harm inflicted by others and damage we had no stake in creating. We are on constant journeys towards healing, towards rewriting our personal narratives and toward reclaiming our bodies and ourselves.   We know all too well what you’re going through.  For that reason, we write you this public letter.

This is to all the girls, the sisters left in back alleys, in heaps on their bedroom or living room floors. It is to those left in building hallways, staircases, backroom parties and basement garages.

This letter in particular, is to our sister recently targeted by the Morehouse brothers.

Last night, we spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on our stories as well as your story.  We want you to know that every woman, every girl in the space has been profoundly impacted and ready to act on your behalf.  Today we think back to the time and space in our history where women banded together to fight sexual violence and deployed their collective voices, and with their pens and their letters, with testimony and sometimes through their marches, they denounced the violence against the women of their day and those who came before them.  Rosa Parks although known for igniting the Montgomery Bus Boycott, her grassroots organizing work began with her  investigating the rapes and torture of Black women in the South. Sister, she investigated and advocated to end the Jim Crow rapes—which were part of the systemic and wholesale attacks on African-American communities who wanted nothing but full recognition as citizens and as equal human beings.  However today, we are under siege from within.  Our fellow Black and Brown brothers have internalized racial oppression. They have picked up and refined the “master’s tools” and continue to abuse, to violate and divide.  There is no pain as virulent as the one that is inflicted from our own.

For this, we stand with you.

Our prayers are that you know and understand you did nothing to cause this violence against you.  Know that no matter what our state, what we wear, what we drink, eat or say, you did nothing to cause sexual violence against you. Despite all the rhetoric, we remain clear that you, that none of us deserve to be raped, ever.  You and all of us should have the right to do as we please: get drunk, high, and even strip naked if we feel inclined and still be safe, still exist and still thrive in environments that consider your and our inherent value, and where those bent on inflicting harm are stopped in their tracks.  You, as the human being that you are, should always be honored. Your ability to consent should have been assessed and respected. Your right to clearly grant or not grant access to your body should always be upheld.  You bear no responsibility for any sexual violence against you and therefore, no matter what the public says, the burden is not yours.

No matter what is said and done in any form to describe you as having given consent, know and understand that consent means mutual agreement, based on a shared desire for specific sexual activities. Consent is an ongoing verbal interaction, taken one step at a time, to an expressed and honest yes. Cooperation, compliance, incapability, lack of awareness or silence is never consent.

Please do not be convinced of or confused by the colorful and what will be rather persuasive arguments that will be heaped upon you.  For this, we enclose you in a circle of Sister love.

Sister you are not to blame. Sister you are not alone.  What you choose to do for yourself from this moment on should be the focus and priority. You will need to be prepared for the onslaught of victim blaming that may have already begun, and that is common in almost all rape cases.  The determination by those who will try to deter you will be fierce and unlike anything you may have ever experienced.  Despite many of our denials, we all know we live in a deeply misogynistic world where the hate for women pervades every aspect of our culture and every system and industry imaginable.  This misogyny is so pervasive that everyone including sister-friends may at some point and time say something accusatory, ignorant, and simply painful. Know that this is a manifestation of their internalized sexism and at times is a reflection of their own self-hate.

You may experience distancing from some, as they will try to assert directly and indirectly they are not like you.  Do not personalize this, as they are still operating under the repressive social and cultural ideology that says women are supposed to act in ways that make others feel comfortable.  In other words it is expected that we practice the politics of respectability even today, though it is not so relevant, nor has it ever been effective in preventing sexual violence, especially where Black women are concerned. Those expectations are not only unrealistic, they are repressive. Whoever says you should have, could have, would have, that’s their stuff; your healing takes precedence. Therefore, resist the downward pull this level of rejection will inevitably cause.

You will experience backlash and public scrutiny for airing the Black community’s dirty laundry.  Unfortunately, our community continues to hold onto an ethic of silence and false loyalty to harm-doers who dehumanize us, and themselves. Ours has proven to be a community which refuses to admit that sexual assault is rampant that it happens to us, in our churches, in our homes and on our historically Black Colleges and University campuses.  Collectively, we all strive to distance ourselves from images, rumors and stereotypes invented to construct our identities for us.  Sexual assault reminds Black communities that some of our people are fallible, imperfect, and yes, violent.  Sexual assault reminds Black communities there are those who will choose to rape us and that we all, at some point will run out of excuses for not acting, for not holding each other accountable.

You will most likely be blamed for incriminating a set of pristine and promising Black men.  Folks will even go as far as to say you’re aiding and abetting the systemic and intentional mass incarceration of these Black men.  But through it all, be clear about this:  you have a right to protect and defend your body, your self, and you have a right to speak against sexual violence.

Our work here at Black Women’s Blueprint has been to act and speak against the very sexual violence too many of us have endured within our own communities.  We’re constantly writing, responding to fighting words on behalf of women and girls who are survivors of rape, defending our right to dignity, to safety and demanding harm-doers be held responsible, repositioning the blame on the rightful parties—actual harm-doers, ill-defined masculinity, power and privilege and rape culture.  The work is ongoing and relentless. We’re committed to doing this for all of us. We’re committed to repeating the call for justice, to repeating the demand that each person act to end rape and rape culture beyond the twenty-one times scientists say it takes for a message to be internalized by a learner, by members of our communities, campuses,  and by families where we should be safe.

It is unfortunate that we live in a society where Black men still rely on the conquest of Black women to affirm and reaffirm their value, manhood, and existence.  Within this context, rape is an abuse of power. It is disheartening and is indicative of a much more difficult and deeper issue to address: the internalized oppression our brothers have failed to uproot even as they benefit from one of the premier institutions of education for Black men.  The true embarrassment is that these young men are not being taught that the possibility of their existence should not include within it, the domination of another, let alone the domination of their Black sisters.  However, that is the history of America. It is the template from which we all live and exist because many of us have not done our work.  Clearly, the work has not been done. This recent incident is a constant reminder that no one will teach our brothers and sons about the rights of Black women and girls and no one will come to our defense, but us.

For that, we offer you the armor of Black feminist sisterhood whether or not it has come from anywhere else.

For this, we will mobilize on your behalf and on behalf of the millions at your side.

Sister, you may be about to embark on one of the toughest battles of your life.  You will need to summon the souls and spirits of your ancestors and cloak yourself in the warrior ethics of our foremothers.

We respectfully speak your name Sister.  You are brave, worthy, and have sisters in the movement to end sexual violence against women and others who are targeted with frequent regularity.

There will be days when you don’t feel like fighting and that’s ok.  You have a multitude of people worldwide behind you, at your left and at your right, in front of you and for sure under your feet as you stand on the shoulders of the fiercest warriors whom across centuries have fought to end sexual violence.

We FIGHT for you and for us, until there is peace.

With militant and abiding love,

Black Women’s Blueprint.

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This written piece is a collaboration between Kalima DeSuze, Nicole Patin and Farah Tanis on behalf of the members of Black Women’s Blueprint. Black Women’s Blueprint is a national Black feminist organization founded by Farah Tanis.  It is committed to amplifying the voices of women of African descent in all their diversity. It provides the personal and political spaces as well as the resources needed for women to engage in intersectional advocacy at the grassroots and societal levels. The organization’s flagship initiative is its Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Sexual Violence In Black Communities. We work to end Rape/Sexual Assault in Black Communities and on Historically Black Colleges and University Campuses (HBCUs). Our Truth Commission combines civil and human rights research using a critical participatory action model, engages in documentation including oral history, community organizing and aggressive public education to prevent sexual assault on Black women and girls. Teach-ins utilizing film, music and dance, theater and other art-making engage men, women and gender non-conforming people in critical conversations around Black sexual politics as well as the systemic dimensions of violence against women and inspires them to action to prevent sexual assault. Black Women’s Blueprint also administers theGender Justice Fund and is home to the Museum of Women’s Resistance (MoWRe).

By Niama Sandy

I went on a date on Christmas day. We went to the Black Cat’s “James Brown Death-Mas” party. My date was a fairly-strapping man, well-known in certain sections of the D.C.’s learned-artsy community. He had been sending not-so-vague hints of his interest in me for about two months prior to this outing. I was just coming off of a bout of bronchitis so I had been a shut-in for a few days; and if I’m completely honest, I went because I was bored and sometimes, it is a nice thing to have your company – hopefully, more than other things – desired.

We moved from one venue to the next, and had more drinks in Adams Morgan.  We kissed; I felt nothing. We left Adams Morgan and instead of him driving me back to my house in Petworth, we headed further East to his. Herb Alpert’s “Rise” filled the high ceilings of his loft apartment. I sat a distance away from him. He offered me food that he had cooked earlier that night – lamb chops, mustard greens and mashed potatoes that tasted as though they had come out of a box. The food came back up not long afterward. I suspect that I had a little too much scotch too close to my last dose of antibiotics. I went to the bathroom threw up silently and lay down to sleep off my drunkenness.

Although I had a very clear recollection of falling asleep wearing my shirt and underwear; I woke up naked. I was equal parts stupefied, frightened, and angry.  He too was naked. The first words I could muster were “Where are my underwear?”  He replied that they were not “a chastity belt.” I can remember wanting to cry but not being able to. I got up and found my underwear wherever they were in the room. At some point he made reference to me “tasting good.” I asked what happened, he asked if I didn’t remember and I said that I didn’t. He said something along the lines that he wouldn’t tell me because I needed to learn a lesson. He got out of bed and did pull-ups on the exercise bar in his bedroom. I remember thinking that he was svelte and handsome but, more importantly, quite the monster.

He took me home. He asked when he would see me again. I couldn’t believe my ears. I asked him if he saw nothing wrong with the fact that I woke up in a different stage of undress than the way I went to sleep. He said verbatim: “I would undress you again.” As far as I was concerned that was going to be the last conversation he and I ever had. There was no way I was about to waste energy explaining that on no level is it okay to undress someone while they are sleeping, in various stages of inebriation, and/or unconsciousness without their explicit permission. I felt like he wasn’t even worthy of my anger, any more words, or energy for that matter.

Are there varying degrees of rape?  Or is rape just rape? Is it rape regardless of how far into the act your “no” comes? What if you don’t know if you said “no,” because you’re unsure of what happened at all? Is that rape too? Because I couldn’t definitively say what had or hadn’t taken place I decided that I couldn’t go to the police. I imagined being asked questions like “What if you came onto him and you can’t remember?” and other decidedly-asinine things that I knew I couldn’t necessarily answer. As a victim, I imagine that you would need to be able to say what happened and I could not do that. It felt like I had been rendered powerless over my own body for those hours.

I spent a few days being angry at myself. There are lots of arguments that can be made about what went wrong that night. No one can tell me of an angle that I haven’t already thought of. I shouldn’t have been out with him in the first place because I could tell there was something a little too wild in his eyes well before that night. I shouldn’t have had that much to drink. I should have made him take me home. But in making those statements was I saying that whatever did or did not happen was entirely my fault? The “should haves” and “should not haves” weren’t going to change anything. The truth is in some ways it was as much his fault as it was mine. Where was the man’s behavior in all of this? Where was his conscience? His decency? His honor? I found myself wondering how many times he found himself in such a position. To be so ardent that he ‘would undress me again,’ could that mean he had indeed done it again, and again to other women? If there had been other women who woke up in his bed as bewildered as I was that morning, what did they think?

I remember seeing him out about a month before with another woman. She was shitfaced and they were all over each other. I saw them one moment, and the next it looked like they disappeared to the bathroom. Later that week he said to me: “Had I known you would be there I wouldn’t have brought her.” Had that woman, and others like her, felt lucky to be in the bed of a man-somewhat-about-town? Had they been happy to wake up undressed? Did any of those things matter? They did because their acquiescence allows him think that what he does is ok. Although I’m almost certain that those women are out there – I knew for sure I wasn’t one of them. I started imagining him as an incubus-type character. My “maybe rape” was not transactional – he didn’t get to keep any of my power unless I allowed him to. While he kept none of my power, I would keep none of the shame his act. Nor was I going to allow myself to be consumed by resentment and anger directed toward myself or other men.

A little over a month later I was out at an event and spotted the incubus. I hadn’t spoken to him at all since the day I last saw him. As soon as I saw him I made a bee-line in the opposite direction to get as far away from him as possible. Later in the night while I was talking to a friend (who knew about the situation) he came over and started talking to me. It amazed me that he didn’t seem to notice that I was already quite obviously having a conversation with someone else. I finished my conversation with my friend and eventually turned to face him. He said “You look nice as always.” I said “Thank you,” making no effort to continue a conversation. He continued and said “I almost missed you.” I don’t know if it was meant to be an insult but I could barely manage to look at him at all, let alone be offended or respond. If I hadn’t reached out to him in the 32 days that had passed what on Earth made this beast think that I gave a flying fuck if he missed me or not; never mind that I don’t know how he could miss someone he’d only spent a few hours with once. How people manage to walk around so profoundly and painfully un-self-aware I will never know. My friend said after the exchange that I acted “demurely.” I explained to her that he did not get to provoke an outburst of rage. Quite simply, he was not worthy of the energy I would have had to expend to flip out on him.

In the handful of times that I’ve talked to friends about this incident the first thing some of the males said was some variation of “Are you sure you didn’t come on to him in your sleep?” The question is not only offensive, it is also quite possibly the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. Why is the insinuation of disbelief and/or provocation always looming for victims? I wondered if there wasn’t some unwritten rule that men (and women) think exists that says that once behind closed doors with a member of the opposite sex the person with the penis is owed something. Why else would that come out of a person’s mouth? Regardless of how well you and the other person get along; regardless of how much chemistry there is; regardless of whether you’ve even had enough time to figure any of that out; regardless of how scantily clad you may or may not be – the prevailing wisdom is that women should be prepared for sexual advances. Who are we?

The incubus thinking that he should be able to walk over and have a conversation with me brings me to another point. I often find that, in popular culture men seem to think that women must comply with their every whim. I suspect there are multiple root causes of this – one being popular Judeo-Christian culture’s bent toward the male as the progenitor of power. I’m quite far from being a male-basher but I am aware of the ways male privilege and patriarchy are reproduced and reified on an everyday basis. From the cat-calls on the streets of urban cities where men demand that women, who are perfect strangers, smile or come hither like puppies, to the grabbing of women’s appendages in more closed social settings – the entitlement is rampant. The same double-standard is at work when women who dare enjoy sex for the sake of their own enjoyment, or engage in sexual relationships with men who are married or otherwise-committed, are branded “hoes,” “whores,” and so on. Yet rarely in the public consciousness is a man, who does the same, similarly labeled. It isn’t just about perceived virtue, or lack thereof; it is about the fact that these women dare step outside of the gender roles assigned to them.

Why are women shamed when they are attacked by rapists? Possibly, because based on a reading of popular culture, they are playing their roles incorrectly. Why is disbelief of rape victims standard? The same aforementioned reason. What sort of culture do we really live in, where it assumed, by not just men but women too, that a woman loses the right to her body upon passing the threshold beyond a certain hour? The answer is one that is not nearly as equal, fair, or just as we pretend it is.

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Photo credit to Corey Thompson of Photoleer

Niama Sandy is a London-based Brooklyn-transplant of Caribbean heritage. She is a force to be reckoned with in any creative arena she sets foot. A graduate of Howard University’s illustrious School of Communications and current masters student in the Anthropology department at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), Niama is a lifelong creator, lover, and patron of the art of life. Her interests cover a broad range of topics including music, art, the African Diaspora, the constructed nature of history, race, gender, economies (and the nation-state), and their social and political implications on everyday life.

By Matt Atkinson

At a recent healing retreat for survivors of sexual assault, one woman confided that she craved every bit of the healing, friendship, hope, and spiritual connection that she sensed among the two dozen other survivors who attended.

But she didn’t think she’d “earned” it like they had. “I’m not good enough to have what they have.”

In my 16 years of work with survivors of sexual trauma, trafficking, and domestic violence, I’ve learned that this is not an unusual judgment that many women make toward themselves: “I’m not healed because I’m not worthy of being healed.” I’ve also noticed that this judgment comes almost only from women. While male survivors have all of the same complex struggles with shame, self-doubt, and sexual identity that female survivors do, this one particular stuck point seems to be more common in adult women than in adult men. And I don’t think it’s because it’s innate to female gender; I’ve come to see that the “I’m not worthy of healing” barrier is a consequence of cultural myths linking femininity and purity.

Matt Atkinson’s Book: Letters To Survivors

By “purity,” I mean the entire heap of messages constantly directed at women about the importance of keeping their bodies, spirits, minds, and emotions undefiled, and with lousy interpretations of what “undefiled” even means. From childhood, girls are taught that girlhood is about being nice, deferring to the needs of others, being sweet, being delicate and unmarred. Of course, these messages become confusing as they clash against media sexualization of young women in later years. What ensues is a battle for the bodies and spirits of girls: “be sexy” versus “be pure.”

The very notion that there is even any such thing as a woman “defiled” by sexual violence is a repugnant lie, yet it continues to have power. Feminism emancipates us—both men and women—from the sad, ancient property-based  judgment of women’s worth as a condition of ambiguous purity. While “abstinence only” youth propaganda compares women’s chastity to chewed gum, duct tape, and other props meant to horrify children with the dirtiness of a girl’s physical and sexual self, feminism challenges such appalling debasement. “Purity” scolds don’t uphold women’s worth, they diminish it. But what’s their consequence?

When a girl is taught that her worth is diminished in proportion to the degree of her socially-judged sexual impurity, sexuality itself is robbed of its rightful qualities as a healthy, pleasurable, natural part of life. But the consequences are even more tragic when sex itself becomes weaponized against her, when it is the means through which another person intentionally wounds her.

If you are a young woman who has been taught that your desirability, the value of your life, and your standing before God and man are founded on your purity, and then you experience the violation of sexual abuse, rape, or human trafficking, what is the automatic, built-in conclusion? I’ve heard it spoken over and over, each time from a woman stooped over in a shame that does not belong to her, but which she believes she deserves to bear: “I am no longer worthy. The opportunity to heal, to be whole, to be a woman of value, has been irreplaceably taken from me.”

Elizabeth Smart

Recently, there have been many news stories about young women escaping captors after years of being imprisoned or trafficked since childhood. Last month, survivor Elizabeth Smart spoke at the Johns Hopkins Human Trafficking Forum where she revealed that the emphasis on purity through abstinence-only education made her feel worthless:

“After that first rape, I felt crushed. Who could want me now? I felt so dirty and so filthy. I understand so easily all too well why someone wouldn’t run because of that alone…I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easily it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

I have to confess, there was a time when I shared the skepticism of Internet choruses who demand answers like, “Why didn’t the trafficking victim from flee when she had a chance?”  My friendships with women who are survivors of trafficking and sexual trauma have given me an opportunity to learn the answers from them. And there are many answers, but one answer stunned me each time I heard it: “We were made to believe that we had become worthless, and so there was nothing to motivate us to try to save ourselves.”

That’s what it had come down to. One doesn’t try to preserve or protect what one doesn’t see as deserving of either. But where had they learned this idea that they had become valueless as a result of their abuse? Were they brainwashed by their abusers? In nearly all cases, yes; abusers are universal in their tendency to blame their victims as deserving justified abuse. But what surprised me was that women who had experienced trafficking also told me that they had learned that they were worthless from normal culture, too.

For me, that was a jaw-dropping realization: that cultural, religious, and sexist concepts of “purity” as it pertains to a woman’s worth not only doesn’t uplift women, it parallels the thinking of abusers. When a woman who has been sexually trafficked has been made to think that she has lost her worth to the point that she’s become a thing not even worth saving, something is wrong. It’s wrong to tell girls that their value as individuals depends on their sexual chastity, and then become bewildered when the one-in-five women who experiences sexual assault wrestles with concepts of worthiness afterward. It’s sexist victim-shaming built right into traditional morality lessons about femininity and sex.

Purity guilt trips don’t even work. There’s no evidence that they alter young women’s personal sexual choices in the way that those who love purity-based youth sex ed programs hope. It doesn’t help to tell girls that God is outraged at them when their bodies are assaulted. And let me be blunt: it doesn’t help when Rape Crisis Centers use shadowy photographs of defeated, broken girls sitting on beds or in corners, stooped over in eyes-down grief, to illustrate what a “survivor” looks like. What these “broken women” messages do cause are profound and entrenched feelings of shame, worthlessness, and even spiritual injury in those who have become victims of sexual violence.

What’s the antidote for this? Both men and women need to hear messages that a person’s worth is not contingent on the treatment of others toward them. And both women and men need to be the sources of these messages to one another; we need to be heard affirming to each other that surviving abuse, trauma, and trafficking does not alter the worth, the value, the preciousness, of the survivor. It only costs those things of the perpetrator, and it is not fair to ask survivors to carry the shame that belongs to those who caused the harm. We need to move beyond the concept of “damaged goods” as a way to manipulate little girls’ adolescent sexual choices, and claim a healthier concept of survivors as fully valued, even when healing is still progressing. “Still healing” should no longer mean “diminished.”

A healing survivor is still whole.

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Matt Atkinson

Matt Atkinson is the author of Resurrection After Rape and Letters To Survivors. He is a domestic and sexual violence response professional with a background in work with trauma survivors. He has directed programs to prevent domestic and sexual violence, where he developed and implemented programs with schools, colleges, women’s prisons, university sports teams, churches, and Indian tribes. In 2004, he became the first male given the National Award for Outstanding Advocacy and Community Work in Ending Sexual Violence by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

Matt has directed a project to implement more than fifteen new rape crisis response programs to serve rape victims in rural and remote areas where such services had previously been unavailable.

In 2011, his book Letters To Survivors: Words of Comfort for Women Recovering from Rape received three prestigious publishing awards. He has taught several college courses on domestic violence and crisis intervention as an adjunct professor. He also regularly presents trainings at workshops and conferences.

By Mohadesa Najumi

Many people object to the phrase “rape culture.”  They don’t understand how a culture as civilized as ours can be defined by a force as destructive as rape. They deem it an overstatement, an “over-analysis” by angry bra-burning feminists. Some even consider it an oxymoron. And others quite simply don’t understand the term.

Rape culture is the condoning and normalizing of physical, emotional and sexual terrorism against women and girls and marginalized subjects.  It is the production and maintenance of an environment where sexual assault is so normative that people ultimately believe that rape is inevitable.

Society operates formally and informally based on attitudes, beliefs, customs and rituals that members agree are acceptable and normal. Rape is embedded in our culture through our collective beliefs and this has rendered sexual violence acceptable and normal.  Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem that needs changing, people in a rape culture consider its persistence as “just the way things are.”

We’ve accepted rape as part of our society and allocated gender roles only aid in exasperating this.

How do we normalize rape?  Professor Lynn Phillips answers this question very well:  “Everywhere you turn there’s condoning, trivializing, and eroticizing rape, and collectively it sets a tone that says this is no big deal, or this is what women deserve.”  A common misconception is that we have to agree with rape in order to be a part of a rape culture. This is not true.  We do not need to give consent to be a part of a rape culture. We already live in one. Rape culture is not necessarily about you accommodating or agreeing to an actual rape.  It’s about participating in a culture that says “rape is no big deal” via various communicative mediums such as media, advertising, law, jokes, TV, film, etc., and not calling it out and resisting it.

This is most easily revealed in the ways that the language of rape culture exists in everyday conversation; trending social media topics like “the rape sloth;” meme “jokes” like “Oh you don’t want sex? Challenge Accepted,” and even “I’ve got a dick and a knife, at least one of them is going inside of you tonight;” popular phrases like “I raped that test;” and movies where entire plots revolve around teenage boys wanting to throw a party so they can get girls drunk and have sex with them (i.e. American Pie).

Hip Hop artist Rick Ross recently rapped a verse on the Rocko song U.O.E.N.O that not only condoned rape but encouraged listeners to engage in date rape.  He boasted,

Put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it. I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it.

The line preceding Ross’s line, “she ain’t even know it,” explicitly engages slipping a well known date rape drug, MDMA, also known as “Molly,” into a girls’ champagne glass. In this song, regardless of apology or intention, Ross is advocating date rape through drugging women.  There is no consent here, and no consent=rape.  Such examples have a universal impact on how we view rape and sexual violence.

The synthesis between rape and culture is created through social customs and relations, politics, religion, advertising, entertainment, media, etc., which too often sexualizes violence, blames victims, and propagates myths about race, gender, class and sexual assault.  In rape culture, we often take responsibility away from rapists by saying things like “maybe she could have taken precautions to ensure the sexual assault didn’t happen?” or teaching that because a woman wasn’t modestly dressed or drunk, she deserved the rape a little bit more than others. This is wrong.

Rape prevention must focus on eliminating the conditions in society that make women easy targets for it. Victim control or rapist control alone are not effective. Victim control teaches women that they are rape-able and that it’s their job to avoid rape.  However, this is not only sexist, it doesn’t reduce the threat of rape. Furthermore, rape cannot always be avoided, no matter what precautions the woman takes.  Social training and gender constructs exasperate the rape culture that we live in. Men are taught to be powerful and macho and women are taught to be victims–who need saving.

Rape can be viewed as a means of control over women.  A strategy for eliminating women’s vulnerability to rape involves altering the power relationship between women and men. This would require eliminating the erroneous gender constructs that facilitate this imbalance. Some women are reluctant to challenge men’s offensive behavior because of their social conditioning (i.e. it’s not proper to “make a scene”).  And frequently, women psychologically distance themselves from the issue of rape and from each other by adopting the attitude that “It can’t happen to me,” or that “Only immoral women are raped.”

So, what can we do to help change this?

1. Interrupt jokes that are sexist/misogynistic and make rape an issue. Laughing or saying nothing when someone tells one of these jokes normalizes rape and sexual violence against women.
2. Write a letter to the editor or producer if media coverage of sexual assault is disrespectful, objectifying, or victim-blaming.
3. E-mail complaints and concerns to advertising agencies, magazines, broadcasting companies, and newspapers who participate in the production of images that degrade minorities or glorify violence.
4. E-mail compliments to artists and public personalities who publicly take a stance against rape.
5. Refuse to buy products whose advertisements promote the notion that women should or do get sexual pleasure from being dominated against in any way–without consent.
6. Engage male allies. Explain that rape is not simply a woman’s issue, and that men play a key role in stopping rape.
7. Help dispel some commonly held rape myths.
8. Make rape culture known to everyone around you–friends, family and colleagues. The more people that know about it, the more chances we have to rid our society of its destructive force.
9. Continue to educate yourself about rape culture by reading books, such as Transforming a Rape Culture by Emilie Buchwald, Pamela Fletcher, and Martha Roth or by watching documentaries such as Rape Culture.

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Mohadesa Najumi is a History and Politics Undergraduate and a passionate feminist. Originally from Kabul, Afghanistan Mohadesa lives and studies in London, England. Her interests range from global politics, history, writing, gender, development, political economies, democracy, Venezuela, US and MENA. You can follow her on @mohadesareverie.

By Kari O’Driscoll

I may be just one more voice in the wind when it comes to this issue but I just can’t stay quiet in the face of so much rhetoric about ‘rape culture.’  I want to add my energy and words to the current outcry about the pervasive problem of sexual assault in the military in a way that speaks to the root of the issue.  Our society is a violent one and unless we can be honest about the way in which that violence affects every one of us and the myriad ways in which it manifests itself (gang violence, mass shootings, rape, assault), we can only chip away at the surface in anger and frustration instead of having an authentic conversation about how to deal with the effects. The military is but a microcosm of American society and its culture of violence and rigid pecking order has a great deal to do with the prevalence of rape within its ranks.

Let me just say this: RAPE IS NOT ABOUT SEX. RAPE IS ABOUT POWER AND CONTROL AND VIOLENCE.

In early May, Air Force General Mark Welsh testified in front of the United States Senate with regard to the alarming number of sexual assaults in the military.  He explained it by saying, “Some of it is the hookup mentality of junior high even and high school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it…”

His implication that non-consensual sexual activity occurs as a direct result of young people assuming that they can have multiple sexual partners and/or casual sexual encounters without consequences is a dangerous one.  There may indeed be a degree of promiscuity present in the military, but it has nothing to do with rape.

Rape is no more about sex than vacationing in Paris is about the Boeing 767 you took to get there. Sexual trauma is one method, one vehicle used to inflict pain and humiliation on someone. It is the mode of violence in this case, the way that the perpetrator achieves power and control.  Shaming another human being is a great way to keep them quiet.

Among the voices rising in outrage at Gen. Welsh’s remarks was Nancy Parrish of Protect our Defenders. Although I admire her work and her passion, part of her statement rebutting Gen.Welsh’s ‘hookup’ remark struck me as misguided:

“General Welsh should know that the solution lies in reform of the military justice system and culture of misogyny, victim blaming and failure to prosecute perpetrators.”

I disagree that it is the culture of misogyny that is directly responsible for rape culture within the military.  If that were true, men would not be getting raped in the military.  But they are, and all accounts point to the fact that they are getting raped at the same or higher rate as their female counterparts.

This week, Senator Chambliss (R.-Ga.) displayed his lack of understanding of the core issue by saying that “…the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things [rape and sexual assault] to occur.”

If rape were about sex, men would not be violating other men sexually with foreign objects like broomstick handles. If the ‘overly hormonal’ perpetrator was simply seeking sexual satisfaction, they would likely (openly or not) self-identify as either homosexual or bisexual. These attacks would not be as violent as they are, nor would they be perpetrated by multiple individuals against one other, if rape were about sex. These attacks are about control, power, and humiliation, plain and simple, not misogyny or testosterone-gone-wild.

If rape were about sex, it would be useless as a war tactic.  Are we to assume that bands of rebel soldiers invading a small African village with intent to rape the women are simply horny? That a group of boys who stalk and gang-rape a young girl are experiencing synchronized arousal?  It is difficult to separate violence from sex in cases of rape, but that doesn’t give us license to disregard it as the root cause.  It is far more difficult to talk about sexual assault than it is to talk about stabbings or beatings, but a victim with a gunshot wound is no more at fault or inherently shameful than a rape victim is. Passing off rape as the result of ‘hookup mentality’ or ‘hormones’ belittles the brutality and misinterprets the intent of such attacks.

Until we as a country, a culture, and a society acknowledge that rape has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with violence, we cannot hope to prevent sexual assault.  Labeling sexual assault more ‘sex’ than ‘assault’ is a perilous way of distancing ourselves from an honest discussion about the violence inherent in military culture, where power and control are fundamental objectives.

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Kari O’ Driscoll is a writer with a background in medical ethics and quality assurance. She writes about social justice, women’s issues and parenting for the BlogHer Publishing Network at the-writing-life.blogspot.com. Her work has appeared in Buddha Chick Life magazine and anthologies about women’s issues and she will soon publish a book on reproductive rights. She is active with the Women’s Funding Alliance and committed to helping girls and women use their unique perspectives to make the world a better place.

By Darrian Wesley Thomas

Dear Uncle Rush,

Pull up a chair. We need to handle some family business. So, I saw the “Harriet Tubman Sex Tape.” The acting was believable and actually pretty good, but I didn’t laugh. Why not? I kept thinking about that one part of the Underground Railroad running through my home town. I kept seeing the Harriet Tubman I have read about year after year. Imagining myself as her in 1860 when she, on one of her 300 plus journeys, returned to the South to rescue her parents. Remember? And reading what Frederick Douglass said about her, “I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than [Harriet Tubman]” (emphasis my own). Wow!

The vilification and discrimination for being unwed mothers crossed my mind, too. How many women endure, not solely for the sake of Blacks but for the added nomenclatural pineapples of womanhood in our lifetime? And you, uncle Rush. I thought about your efforts against human trafficking in 2009. Time really got away from you on that one. Halfway through your twitter-bashing, I read your short apology statement. “I don’t condone violence against women” and up until this video post, I could have gone along with that but…I don’t know.

You pre-viewed the video Uncle Rush, right? You know it sends a contrary message to what was said in your apology. One that ignores the historic assault(s) on Black womanhood through acts of violence and defames the legacy of one of the few who made it into commercial American history books/discourse. That legacy of resisting violence and liberation has been passed down and is kept alive in hashtags like #BlackPowerIsForBlackMen. Pulling the video and apologizing were the least of the actions which need to take place soon. Your “sensitivity chip” to African American culture and history really is missing or is damaged. When else has it ever been funny to see our mothers in the act of being raped? And now with the added characterization of Black women somehow enticing their rapists in the name of blackmail. Sick jollies unc.

There is nothing hysterical about the violent present and historical practices of suppression against women, Black or otherwise, wouldn’t you agree? I mean just start watching #NerdLand because as Serena Williams learned a few months ago, the victims of violent crimes are not to blame for what has happened to them nor is their pain an adequate topic for laughter, ever.

Stay up.

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@DarrianWesley Thomas is a poet, educator and workshop facilitator. He has his BA degree (2011) from Bradley University and is currently pursuing his MFA degree at Adelphi University, where he is a faculty member in the English department.

The post Op-Ed: Not Okay, Uncle Rush appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Sukjong Hong

I long for the day when a woman can speak about her experience of rape with all the force of her convictions, as she would for any other experience of injustice. On such a day, rape survivors will not place the blame on themselves for the violence they experienced, and society will not compound their suffering by scrutinizing their outfits or their dating histories. Their ‘no’s’ will be enough. Of course, this is only the bare minimum needed to establish an environment in which rape is called what it is, in which sexual violence is not an experience that an individual must cope with alone and in secret. But this day will not come when we have a female president. It will not take place when we have more female CEOs. It will happen when our institutions, from the government to the workplace to the classroom to the family, view rape as an act of gender-based violence rather than a “natural” enactment of desire.

For the millionth time, rape is not sex. Surely this has been established by now, you may argue. But looking at the recent report from Yale University, a venerable institution of higher education and my alma mater, I am not so sure. In its fourth “Report of Complaints of Sexual Misconduct,” released via a reporting process mandated by the Department of Education as part of a Title IX complaint resolution, the university determined that over a period of six months, six students were guilty of “nonconsensual sex.” The report offers a disclaimer that, due to privacy concerns, it does not convey the “diversity and complexity of the circumstances associated with the complaints or the factors that determined the outcomes and sanctions.” But the qualifier “nonconsensual” is all the detail that is needed. It is lack of consent that defines rape. Not force, not bruising, not visible scars. The victim said no or was unable to give consent, but the perpetrator proceeded anyway.

Of the six Yale students found guilty, four were given written reprimands, one was placed on probation, and one student given a one-year suspension. All six will graduate with Ivy League degrees after committing a crime, which if committed outside the bounds of campus, would lead to far more serious repercussions. In the report, the resolutions to each complaint of “nonconsensual sex” note that the perpetrator is restricted from contacting the complainant and counseled on appropriate conduct. Very few of the cases move to the formal complaint level, even if the university finds sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. In other cases detailed in the campus newspaper involving charges of sexual harassment, students are discouraged from pursuing a formal complaint option and even made to sign non-disclosure agreements in exchange for back pay owed to them by a sexually harassing supervisor. Cases of intimate partner violence, unwanted sexual advances and physical restraint by perpetrators were resolved in a similar manner.

The message could not be clearer. Sexual assault is reduced to a private negotiation between two parties, rather than established as an act that cannot and should not be tolerated on campus. Yale University essentially spells out its institutional commitment to the status quo: protecting rapists.

Those who are cynical might argue that the children of privilege live on another tier, one for which different rules apply. But this is not what the students who filed the Title IX complaint against Yale believe. One in four college women will experience rape or attempted rape. Every year, 4,000 U.S. college students report rape to their schools, a small fraction of the total number of rapes committed on campus. The few who are publicly speaking out about their experiences with college administrators have emboldened many others to hold their universities accountable. Beyond the 16 plaintiffs at Yale, they include more than a hundred women and men on campuses across the country, pressuring the Department of Education to adequately defend their civil right to attend schools free of sexual violence. It is a growing movement captured on Know Your IX and End Rape on Campus, websites that guide students in the process of taking action to stop sexual violence on their campuses and file Title IX complaints.

As an incoming freshman at Yale, I remember thinking with excitement that I was leaving the boring Midwest to meet the Smartest People in the World. But on my very first night, while hanging out with other freshmen, a male student tried to force me to sit on his lap. He kept pulling me down, even as I kept pushing away. “What’s wrong with you,” I asked, as I pulled away for the second time. “He’s just drunk, he doesn’t mean any harm,” someone tried to explain. But I was shaken. As the semesters passed, I realized what a contradiction the “campus safety” regulations were. The implied threat in all the precautionary guidance was the non-Yale outsider, the townie, especially the African-American residents of New Haven. Yet who could hurt us but those whom we knew best, the students and staff at Yale? Who else had access to our rooms, who could force us to have sex against our will, who became threatening behind closed doors?

Photo credit: Know Your Title IX

I do not know how many sexual assaults happened in my four years at school. I do know that, while working at the Yale Women’s Center for several years, rumors of women being discouraged from filing complaints for rape swirled around us, like a toxic vapor. I saw older male students prey on younger female students, including one particularly horrible system in a student organization in which upperclassmen lined themselves up on a list to date certain freshmen women members. While women’s equality and human rights were hot topics in the dining hall, it certainly wasn’t okay to speak personally of sexual assault or harassment. It wasn’t even okay to identify yourself as a feminist. Friends would joke, “Ugh, I’m not a feminazi!” When we organized Take Back the Night, we encountered hecklers, detractors, and the sad fact that it was just one night out of 365 providing people with the space to talk openly about sexual violence.

Obscured somewhere between the explanations of boys-will-be-boys and a-few-bad-apples-ruining-the-whole barrel is the simple and terrifying fact that someone who rapes and does not face the consequences of that rape is free to do so again. In a large-scale study of male college students by David Lisak and Paul Miller, 120 out of 1,882 students admitted to forcing someone to have sexual intercourse or forcing sexual intercourse with someone too incapacitated to resist. Seventy-six out of the 120 admitted to trying again an average of 5.8 times. A more recent study by Stephanie McWhorter, with a sample of 1,146 men enlisted in the Navy, found that 71% of those who had raped or attempted to rape did so again an average of 6.36 assaults each. Ninety percent of those who admitted to rape targeted someone they knew. An Ohio State student found this out the hard way, discovering only much later that the student who had raped her had sexually assaulted someone three weeks before her, and then attempted to rape three women after his assault on her.

Underlying this behavior is an even more disturbing pattern. Lisak and Miller’s study found that college rapists shared common motivational factors with incarcerated rapists, including feeling more anger at women and a strong need to dominate and control them. They were skillful at identifying prospective victims, their attacks were premeditated and planned, they used force instrumentally and strategically, and often used alcohol to make their victims more vulnerable to attack.

Considering the high rate of repeat offenders and the threat they pose, Yale’s approach to rape as a private interaction gone awry is seriously misguided. It demonstrates a timidity that contradicts what it teaches in the classroom, and shows a higher priority being placed on protecting the public image of the school than on the lives of the young women who attend.

Yes, it is imperative that a rape survivor be a willing participant in the process of pursuing justice. But this does not preclude the university from taking decisive steps on its own to protect its student population. For many students, the fact that their rapist was someone they knew or dated complicates the resolution they hope for. They fear censure from their classmates and their social circles. Not all survivors want to undergo the long and painful process of a legal proceeding or a university grievance procedure. But it should not be the burden of the survivor alone to mete out the consequences to protect a campus. A school should be just as willing to enforce strong measures for those who rape fellow students as it does for those who plagiarize.

When I graduated Yale, I volunteered for four years as a rape crisis counselor in the emergency room of a Manhattan hospital. My role in the emergency room was to be an advocate for the sexual assault survivor. This meant presenting them with all their options, guiding them through the medical exam and intake procedures, and assuring them that every emotional and physical reaction they were experiencing was normal. Police from the Special Victims Unit, the nurse on duty, their significant other or parent could all be squeezed into the closet-sized OB/GYN room, pressuring the survivor to pursue a certain path. But ultimately, the process was survivor-centered, and I worked mightily to clear a space so they could make informed decisions.

But the university differs from the streets of Manhattan in so many ways; it is only accessible to a select population of young people every year, and at high cost. It expects those who enter to fulfill numerous requirements in exchange for a degree, and houses thousands of people together in close quarters. By allowing rapists to continue attending a school, campuses become safe havens for them to inflict more violence on others and continue to traumatize those they have already hurt. It would be the equivalent of asking the rape survivor in the emergency room to go meet her attacker in the waiting room, day after day.

Rather than treat campus rape as bad publicity, Yale and other universities should see rape as a public health problem. It has causes larger than the individual perpetrators, and the solutions require large-scale action. Rape can be prevented and stopped. Even in conflict zones, actively training soldiers and paramilitary against rape and demonstrating serious consequences if they attack women has prevented rape from being used as a weapon of war.

Surely, if an active conflict zone can be free of rape, a university, with its resources and a centralized administration at its reach, can train its staff and students to identify, stop, and prevent rape. But shifting the climate that permits rape must begin with the leadership. Yale’s public report is not enough. Its transparency in public reporting must be accompanied by a substantive commitment to end sexual violence. The report is only the beginning.

Update:  Students Against Sexual Violence at Yale have drafted an Open Letter to the administration with a list of concrete, actionable policy changes.

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Sukjong Hong is a non-fiction writer, most recently a creative non-fiction fellow for Open City Magazine, a publication of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She is also a Create Change fellow at the Laundromat Project working with oral histories of Asian American communities in New York City. She tweets @hongriver.

The post Yale’s Response to Campus Rape is Not Enough appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Brittany “Beebs” Burton

Until you’ve been raped, you have no idea what it’s like.

You don’t know what it’s like to walk into a crowded room and automatically note where the exits are, just in case someone decides to attack you.

You have no idea how guilty it feels to be grateful that your amazing new boss has a secretary. Because at least that means there’s someone there to hear you scream.

You have no idea what it’s like to hear someone say the word: r-a-p-e. How much it actually. physically. hurts. The acid you have to swallow back down. What kind of images it brings to the front of your mind. Images you thought you had pushed so far back they’d fall out. Images that make you realize, in that second, he is burned into your memory. Images that will be there on your birthday, and your holidays, on your wedding day, and every other normal day in between. Images that will never leave.

You have no idea how horrible it is to have to present about sexual assault to rooms full of people. How hard you’ll try to convince them that they should just be decent  and kind. But you’ll do it. Because you’re scared that if you don’t, no one else will. And then how will they ever learn?

You have no idea how terrifying it is to think that if someone else had felt as passionately as I do now, back then, I might have had no reason to be writing this essay. That I could be sleeping without these reoccurring nightmares and making love without fear.  And that I could be crying for people and things far more pressing than some boy who wouldn’t listen when I said no.

You have no idea how much it pains me to remember myself as one of those people who assumed I’d never have to worry about it or that it didn’t matter. Mostly because I grew up in the same rape culture as you, but also because we don’t consider that bad things ever happen to “good” people.

You’ll never know how many times I’ve questioned what I could have done differently. If maybe I deserved it or had it coming. You have no idea how many times someone can replay the details of ten minutes in time. You’ll never get why I do any of the things I do, or say the things I say. Why I’m so dramatic and moody one minute, and lighthearted the next. And you’ll probably think, at least once, that I’m a psychopath.

You have no idea how exhausting it is to feel this way. To get so emotional about a stupid comment, or a situation, or one word. When you feel like screaming and crying and talking and falling, all at the same time. But all you can do is put your head down and pray to a God that you’re not even certain exists anymore, for things to get better, for things to change.

You don’t know what it’s like to consider your life ahead, to plan accordingly. To wish for only boys when you have children so you can teach them to behave like gentlemen. To wish for no girls, because God forbid they ever have to live in a world where it’s normal for a woman to feel the way I feel.

You have no idea how defeating it is to hear universities tell their students that they can take rape defense classes, to know that they provide education on how to “party smart,” and that they teach girls to “respect themselves so others will respect them too.” But that they don’t teach a class for men on how raping someone ruins a victim’s life.

You have no idea how frustrating it is when people–strangers, family, and friends–tell you to find something you’re passionate about. To “be the change you want to see in the world,” but then have them shut you out, or judge you, when you try. To be the one they look at and pity, to be the one that makes them uncomfortable, or to be the one who forces them to recognize the realities of these crimes.

And most importantly, you have no idea what it feels like to write this. And don’t get me wrong, no one should have to. But so many of us do.

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Brittany “Beebs” Burton is currently a Residence Director at Lake Forest College in Illinois. A survivor of sexual assault, Brittany works with universities to prevent sexual misconduct on college campuses by researching, writing, and presenting to students, community members, and peers. She has been previously published in Perspectives, an Upper Mid-West Region Association of College and University Housing Officers (UMR-ACUHO) seasonal magazine, discussing women’s issues in the 2012 presidential election and the appropriate ways to educate students on political platforms. Brittany has also presented her thesis research on benchmarking institutional sexual misconduct policies and procedures at the UMR-ACUHO annual conference, to her colleagues in the profession of Student Affairs.

The post You Have No Idea appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Anonymous

I should have known before reading Brittany Burton’s essay, “You Have No Idea,” that it would reopen what I thought I’d so carefully packed away. As I read, I felt for her as I thought that her rape must have been so much worse than mine. I wanted to tell her that she can move on and that it doesn’t have to be so haunting. Instead, after reading it, I found myself back in Corbett Hall, Room A415, with the sickening glow of the blue stereo dial.

It was 1980. I was 18. I was in a dorm room, waiting for my boyfriend who was at work. I don’t remember how I got into his room. I was drinking heavily. He came back from work. I poured him a drink. I was in a silk blouse. I was in love with him. I was a virgin. We had agreed that we’d wait until I was ready and we were in a special place. Corbett A415 was not a special place, even with music playing in the background. His roommate was visiting his parents back home, and my boyfriend’s bed was the top bunk.

We ended up there in short order. We were kissing, and the next thing I knew, he was inside of me. No birth control, no “request,” no consent. And then, as I held onto the bed frame, he finished, jumped off, and hollered “woo hoo” to echoes of the same down the hall. I was numb and shocked, and stared at the blue dials, and wanted out of that room. I threw on my pants and ran to the door. It wouldn’t open.

We had been “pennied in,” a technique wherein people tape together pennies and shove them between the frame and door so it won’t open. I went to the phone to call the desk to open the door. The phone was gone. So I went to the bathroom suite door. Locked. The blue light from the stereo glowed menacingly.

It was planned. Premeditated. A group effort. Something I had saved and wanted to give freely to the man of my choice was taken from me. By a group of young men who conspired to trap me in Corbett Hall A415.

I crawled into the bottom bunk. By now he was accusing me of not being a virgin as there was no blood on the sheets. I had no idea why the sheets weren’t bloody. I hugged the pillow. He passed out in the upper bunk.

Morning came. For some completely unexplainable reason, we went to breakfast together and I paid. After that, I went back to my dorm room feeling irreparably changed. And then I began to worry about pregnancy.

Fortunately, I did not get pregnant. But the experience amped up my lifelong fear of being pregnant.

“Date rape” was not a part of the nomenclature in 1980. A few years later, I watched a TV movie that made what had happened crystal clear. Prior to that, I had figured it was my fault. I was in a dorm room voluntarily, drunk, and I was kissing him. I was raised fundamentalist Baptist. I had saved “it” for the man I wanted to marry. That was that, and so I married him.

It sounds pathetic. I married my rapist. A Dr. Phil show. My shame around this, coupled with my mourning for the uninformed girl I was, is still extremely painful.

I have never fully recovered from what happened. I don’t live life in fear of rape, but I will fight like hell should that ever cross my path again. I don’t blame myself for not fighting then. But knowing that I would fight now doesn’t change the fact that he altered the trajectory of my life, and it haunts.

Like Brittany, I am leery of those who pontificate on and belittle rape or the women who are raped. They have no idea of what they speak. Nor do those who talk about battering, unless they’ve been there. And yes, I was battered, too. By him, my rapist.

I don’t know where he is or what his life is like. We divorced after four years. About a year into our marriage, I confronted him and told him that he had raped me. He became volatile, so I didn’t mention it again to him.

I have never fully trusted men since. I sought the sensitive types after him, and I called the shots. All of them. That’s not a good formula for a marriage, and both subsequent marriages also ended.

If I dig deep, I think this is I part why I don’t have children. I’ve yet to spend the time to fully untangle my thoughts on this, but I doubted my ability to protect a daughter and raise her to protect herself. I doubted my ability to raise a son in a culture that would give him so much privilege and so many messages and avenues of power. And I never met a man I trusted enough with whom to have a child. These were not in my conscious determination to not become pregnant, rather they float to my mind with hindsight.

Part of my experience is that I often feel as young as I was when I was raped, as if I haven’t aged. I am not psychotic, I see myself in the mirror. But I feel inside as though I’m 18, in the sense that I’m not always ready for what comes my way. I’ve handled it with a bravado that often fools people. I’ve succeeded in a career, and I’m financially independent. I have survived. But Brittany is right about the re-visiting. It’s not 24/7, but it lingers. And in an ironic twist, sex became the validation I sought from men that I was attractive. Though, I believed, on my terms. I’m just now unpacking that little gem.

With the move on campuses to distinguish date rape, and the silencing of victims because they aren’t squeaky clean and sober, I quietly seethe. But I’m still under the shroud. I am not as brave as Brittany. I don’t want you to know my name or to look at me. And perhaps that’s the worst of what he took from me.

I have had a privileged middle-class life on all other counts. I don’t think of my rape daily, or even monthly. But it changed me. It changed how I see men. It changed how I navigate life. It changed my sexuality. It warped my issues of control. It’s been a life-long struggle to trust myself. Brittany is right, you just don’t know unless you’ve been there.

The post Date Rape: The Aftermath appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Marcus Lee

During a recent community discussion on sexual violence and consent, I was forced to reveal something very troubling to myself.

It started shortly after the forum began. As in many discussions about sexual violence in heterosexual affairs, patriarchy took center stage in the space and demanded affirmation—the men in the room began to complain about how they were being “vilified,” how the women in the room were “suppressing their voices,” how they felt like they were getting blamed for things they didn’t do, and people began to make mention of women’s complicity with rape culture by way of their choice not to wear “appropriate clothing.” Nothing new here; just the incredible idea that women are somehow responsible for a form of oppression that cruelly attempts to negate their humanity and usurp their control. At this point, my friends and I have internalized this fallacious line of thinking as an indication of the need for an even more urgent response to sexist oppressions.

One man bravely stood up and said the thing that apparently many of the other men in the room were thinking [considering the deep, roaring grunts of agreement that permeated the room after he finished his question]: “I understand sexual assault, right! But, what if you’re with a girl and you ask her to have sex with you and she says no; and, you just talk to her a little bit more and then she says yes later. Is that still considered rape?” A woman on the panel responded quickly and deliberately to his question by citing it as a perfect example of what people are talking about when discussing sexual coercion. The man—frustrated—got up shortly after her retort [and the powerful feminine applause that followed] and later tweeted “Another male bashing session. Smh.”

When I saw the tweet, it inspired me to raise my hand and show solidarity with the women in the room in order to disrupt the feeling of this conversation being a trivial “boys vs. girls” debate rather than a serious discussion about creating anti-sexist environments. When I was called on, I stood up and—probably anticipating what I would say based on who I was sitting with and what I’ve said at similar forums in the past—the men in the room shot me vicious looks; their eyes pierced me like daggers. As I affirmed what the anti-sexist advocates [mostly women] in the space had already said and added to the discussion, I could almost hear the scolding behind the angry eyes of the men in the room: “You’re a traitor! You don’t see how women oppress us! You always gotta be on their side!” These unsurprising, misinformed pleas for me to renounce my support didn’t bother me.

But, when looking into one man’s eyes, I heard this: “You don’t even have a stake in this conversation because you’re gay! You don’t understand where we’re coming from!”

I felt compelled to work this out in my head—don’t I understand consent? I must be able to understand how it works personally since I have such a big voice about how it should work politically, right? Don’t I give and receive consent before having sex regularly? When I realized the answers to these questions for myself—answers that weren’t the ones I wanted to hear—I became a bit uncomfortable and began to do some self-reflection.

I began to realize that the paradigm used to discuss consent in heterosexual affairs could not account for some of the different complexities in homosexual affairs, and that much of the sex that I have had has not been completely consensual.

I remember once getting intimate with a man who was not open about his sexuality. Based on where we were, how the room looked, and how and where he wanted me to touch him, it seemed clear that he wanted to be intimate with me; however, every motion he made was undergirded with ambivalence—it was as if he wanted an out to be available should he need one. I recognize this in retrospect, but during the interaction I assumed that what he was feeling was shame and ignored it [thinking I was doing him a favor as the openly gay one in this affair]. Additionally, we had been drinking alcohol before we began to get intimate, and as we were drinking, he kept saying “Haha! You’re trying to get me drunk! I know you. I need to stay away from you!” Since he initiated the intimacy shortly after these remarks, and since we didn’t really drink a lot, I left those remarks in the closet with his ambivalence and we pushed forward.

As things began to get more hot and heavy, I noticed that he seemed a bit uncomfortable—his demeanor changed and so did his body language. So I asked “Are you ok?” He responded “I don’t know” in a very uncertain tone; so, I ended the intimate interaction immediately. When he noticed that I’d stopped, he shot me this look of surprise—he was shocked that I’d actually stopped. We put on our clothes, he gave me a hug and he left.

This memory made me realize that, unlike in many heterosexual sexual encounters, one, both, or all of the partners in a homosexual sexual encounter may be operating in bad faith—that is, they may be lying to themselves about what they’re actually doing and/or what they actually want. In my scenario, the man I was with used uncomfortable laughter to suppress the real reason he invited me to his room, and he introduced alcohol into the space as a scapegoat. Everything he said and did was done such that, at any time before we began to get physically intimate, he could say “Woah! I didn’t invite you over to have sex with me! Haha! We’re just talking!” and at any time during, he could say “You got me drunk to do this to me!”

The obvious answer to this issue would be for me to have asked him explicitly if he’d like to have sex; however, what I’m realizing now—and what I sort of knew in that moment—is that consent is much more complicated when having sex with someone operating in bad faith. If consent is a confession between two or more people about a reciprocated desire for sexual intimacy and an agreement to act on that desire, then in my scenario, getting consent from my sexual partner would have also required him to confess to himself that he has had sex with other men and that he wanted to have sex with a man in that moment; a confession of his immediate sexual desire would have required prerequisite confessions to the self regarding trans-temporal sexual inclinations. Knowing this, my sexual partner and I decided not to talk explicitly about sex and to just allow it to happen [which turned out to be problematic].

Sexual shame, secrecy, and suppression [in certain shapes in one’s consciousness] necessitate sexual aggression and a lack of discussion around sexual acts. In order to safeguard the concealment of their sexualities, [some] closeted gay men operate sexually on the premise that other gay men will not take the first “no” as the final answer—Ex. If I’m a closeted gay man and you hit on me publicly, I cannot reciprocate the attraction in front of others. So, I may reject you publicly and expect you to continue to pursue me privately, although I’ve already said no. Or, if I’m a gay man who is not ready to admit my sexuality to myself, and if an explicit talk about sexual desires would be damaging to me, I may need you to commit to having sex with me without an explicit negotiation of exactly what we’re going to do.

But those are exactly the things we expect people to do in heterosexual sexual affairs—our advice for them is often to have explicit discussions of exactly what they want to do to one another, and we encourage men to take the first “no” to truly mean “no.” When these practices are avoided, problematic and dangerous sexual precedents are put in place.  Since I’m committed to understanding sexuality as a phenomenon that is fluid and limitless, and since I’m committed to eradicating the idea that being “out” is the only way to be if you identify as anything other than heterosexual, then I’m wondering how we can expand our notions of consent to account for those whose sexual practices fall outside of heteropatriarchy—what does consent look like with a partner who is not “out”? What does sexual coercion look like? In light of the stigma associated with being anally penetrated, how do gay men express consent to one another about sexual positioning when the sex they plan to have includes penetration? How are we to decide who penetrates who and for how long? How do we come to agreements about what shape our relationships will take after the sexual encounter? What if I want an emotional relationship afterward and [in this case, because of internalized homophobia] you can only imagine sex as the extent of our encounter—can a discussion of that be included in how we understand consent? What if after sex, you ignore, avoid, and ridicule me in public for my sexuality? Is that considered abuse? How do homosexual people negotiate consent within homophobic spaces which encourage secrecy, suppression and shame?

Moreover, as the politics of respectability operate to “uplift” the Black community, how do Black gay men discuss openly their sexualities with their partners and the racialized complexities that are relevant? How do we negotiate discomfort with negrophilic infatuations with Blackness and penis length [inside and outside of the Black community]? As immorality invades conversations about STDs, how do we give and receive consent about sex in relation to condom usage? These are just a fraction of the questions with which I’d like to begin to prompt discussions.

As I sat there in the forum frustrated about what I had just revealed to myself, I was reminded of something wise that someone once told me: “Queer people and their relationships need evaluation by a feminist critique just as much as anyone else.” Although queerness is portrayed and often understood as the antithesis to hyper-masculinity and sexism, queer people are just as able as anyone to perpetuate these issues in their own way on their own turf; we are not immune to [practicing] sexual violence. In short, I need help rethinking consent for myself and my relationships so that I may respect and care for the people in my life just as much as I asked the men in that space to respect women. Any ideas?

Sex – Why must something so wonderful be so complicated?

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Marcus Lee is a junior Sociology major at Morehouse College originally from Charlotte, North Carolina. He currently serves as the President of Morehouse SafeSpace–Morehouse’s Alliance for Gender and Sexual Diversities–and the Morehouse Sociological Association. He is an undergraduate researcher with the UNCF Mellon Mays program. His research focuses on Black men and how race, gender and sexuality intersect in their lives. His future interests include being an educator at the collegiate level.

The post Consensual Sex, Bad Faith, and Gay Men appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

Tresses

My father rings our apple trees with his own urine,

says the scent will scare off starving deer which strip

his low limbs bare at night.  His foot is almost healed,

the bones screwed together, re-strung with tendons

from a dead teenager, who was at least alone in his

Camaro as it came apart on 85 near Charlotte.

That could’ve been you, my father says, how you

used to drive, then remembers I’m less his son already,

the process cumulative, accelerating.  He mentions

another trick if piss won’t work, will buy a garbage

bag of hair from a salon and cast it through the field.

And I’m thinking of all the haircuts I never wanted,

trimmed always far above brow line, and imagine him

scattering what fell from every forced summer buzz –

hours worth of shears droning at my scalp, a barber

shuffling the checkered floor, one a pervert with his

hand beneath the nylon cape – and how much different

it might have been for me, the other way around,

had I been born a girl but was really a boy, hair blond

and grown long by summer and the heat too much,

begging a five dollar cut, and to run nearly bald across

the ballpark as long as other boys would let me.  Deer

still range below the field each night, become their own

loose ring of seasons in this drought-made decade,

and even Lake Jocassee’s baring mud except dead center

where no children swim, its turbines slowed and power

dimmed.  My father will still limp from living room

to kitchen, kitchen to front door, stooping the gravel

drive to welcome me beyond his own startle and

amazement, whomever steps from my familiar car,

softer now, with rounded face, hips wide as

my mother’s, who cannot look at me so very long.

The Living is Easy

Citronella candles flickering now my neighbors’ laughter draws me

in although I know I don’t belong.  Someone caps another bottle,

the cooler slamming shut.  Someone tells a joke.  “Where do they put

a missing tranny’s photo?  On cartons of half and half.”  And I’m

remembering my life in Richmond – years ago, my mouth still split

from saying no too often or too late another time to the first man

that I trusted – and the night an artist took me home to dried acrylic

lacing color arcs across her studio, palettes struck with brushes her

exhibit a success.  Leaning at my chest she cupped her palms there at

flatness without laughing:  I’ll fuck you tonight if you shave your beard off first.

Whatever she could tell I couldn’t say there by her sink – Barbasol,

cheap razors, our Stolichnaya gone – traffic echoing the gallery below

and steam across the sliding mirror.  My tits, she joked, still look like

mosquito bites.  And drawing her syringe her estradiol the needle jab

quick into her thigh – you might as well learn how to do this now.  Afterward

I followed her up flights onto the roof to see the student tenements,

neon liquor districts, neighborhoods by order of surrender: Shockoe

Bottom Church Hill Jackson Ward Oregon Hill dim rows of shotgun

houses fanning out in all directions, bronze generals astride their horses

lit up from below and past the river distant suburbs, silent lots, estates

of perfect manicure, somewhere the one she’d left, no turning

back allowed until we reached the crumbling edge to feel again

that urge to fall from which I never taught my body to recoil.

Gresham Court

My father warns against change, though my chest’s already sore

with swelling, my biceps smooth – I trade some strengths for others.

How will you live this way?  I tell him about the older man I dated

who drove a freezer truck in the suburbs, bought beer, paid for liquor,

so I brought him home, his arms sleeved with tattoos, one a burnt

skull, its sockets black hollows.  And everything expected – insistence

and anger, blood welling in my mouth.  I watched a traffic signal

flicker across the flat wall – the room sliding from memory, sweat

in his shirt.  Then hospital, police report, valium for sleep, the room

walled off by curtain from a hall full of ruin, one man dead by heart

attack, the stench of singed hair, lights burning all hours, fluorescence

and pain, the on-call repeating his one word consent, a nurse

changing ice packs, my broken wrist x-rayed, wrapped, a night

nurse to check swelling, take down vitals:  Honey, buy a gun.

Jordan Rice’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, and Witness, among others, and were included in Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume V, Best New Poets 2011, A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, Collecting Life: poets on objects known and imagined, Best of the Web 2009, and Best New Poets 2008.  Her work was also selected for the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, the Richard Peterson Poetry Prize from Crab Orchard Review, the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, the Milton-Kessler Memorial Prize from Harpur Palate, the Yellowwood Poetry Prize from Yalobusha Review, and the AWP Intro to Journals Awards.  She received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Ph.D. from Western Michigan University.

The post 3 poems by Jordan Rice appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

Zerlina Maxwell holds a JD from the Rutgers University School of Law and a BA in International Relations and Affairs from Tufts University. Over the past few years, she’s become a force to be reckoned with regarding policy and culture, especially domestic violence, sexual assault, and victim-blaming. In 2008, she served as a field organizer managing President Barack Obama’s “Campaign for Change” office in Virginia, and she is also a frequent contributor and guest host on “Make It Plain” with Mark Thompson on SiriusXM Left, Fox News, and MSNBC.

Maxwell reigns supreme in cyberspace, so much so that BuzzFeed named her one of “19 People Who Forced their Way into the Political Conversation through Twitter,” The New York Times named her “A Twitter Voice to Follow,” she was named one of “The Feministing Five,” BET named her “16 Political Commentators to Watch on Twitter,” and she made Salon’s “Twitter 50” list during the most recent Presidential election. Additionally, the State Department invited her to conduct a video conference for the U.S. Consulate’s American Studies Resource Center at An-Najah National University in Nablus about social media activism. She has over 27K followers on Twitter, up more than 10K from just last year. She is also a regular contributor for Ebony, BET, RH Reality Check, and The Grio. She also contributes to the New York Daily News, Loop 21, Feministing, The Root, and many other publications both in print and online.

********************

Part I: Feminism and Social Media (approx 5 mins)

Part II: Rape and Sexual Assault (approx 6 mins)

Part III: Law School (approx 7 mins)

Part IV: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (approx 9 mins)

Part V: What’s Next? (approx 7 mins)

Suggested Links:

Maxwell on Hannity, “Giving every woman a gun is not rape prevention!”

“5 Ways We Can Teach Men not to Rape” by Zerlina Maxwell
Spark’s “5 Questions with Zerlina Maxwell”
Zerlina Maxwell Responds to Backlash on Melissa Harris-Perry
Zerlina Maxwell on the “N-Word”
Zerlina Maxwell’s YouTube Channel

The post Feminists We Love: Zerlina Maxwell (Video) appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Janell Hobson

Having seen 12 Years a Slave twice (first at a fundraising event and later at a private screening and discussion), I am struck by the story of Patsey (superbly portrayed by Lupita Nyong’o), the enslaved woman who is “prized” and “favored” by Solomon Northup’s second owner, Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender in a chillingly predatory role).  Northup’s survival narrative is a harrowing tale and poetically captured in Chiwetel Ejiofor’s sensitive portrayal.  However, like so many of the slave narratives written or dictated by formerly enslaved African American men, it highlights the abject sufferings of black women who, as I had already noted in my review of the film, are often reduced to “ultimate victims,” to reiterate slave narrative scholar Frances Smith Foster.

I think of this, especially in the way movie audiences were audibly sobbing during the climactic scene in which Patsey is excoriated in an unbearably long whipping scene. Her punishment is for daring to leave the plantation without Epps’ knowledge, an action that emerged from a simple desire to keep her body clean: She simply wanted to borrow some soap from a friend (Mistress Shaw, played by Alfre Woodard) on the neighboring plantation since her mistress, out of jealousy, had deprived her of these basic necessities. Despite Patsey finding “favor” from her owner (if we want to categorize rape as such), despite her ability to out-pick any other enslaved worker when it comes to daily pulling in “500 pounds of cotton,” there is no safety for being a “good worker” or “finding favor” in the enslaver’s eye.  Of course, director Steve McQueen drives home the point when, after the graphically violent scene, his camera redirects us to the piece of soap that caused this grave injustice.

I think of Patsey because she was a real woman, according to Solomon Northup, one who did not escape from slavery – unless she lived long enough to be emancipated (the story ends with Northup’s rescue from slavery in 1853, just 10 years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation).  However, with this cinematic story, Patsey is now magnified among other black female icons from the slave era.  I especially think of her when I weigh her story against my own longing for a Harriet Tubman movie (one where the black female body would not be relegated to “ultimate victim” status but cast instead as the ultimate hero) or my own adrenaline-rushed excitement over Angela Bassett’s latest performance as Marie Laveau, a worthy nemesis on F/X’s TV show American Horror Story: Coven, based on the life of a nineteenth-century New Orleans Vodou Queen, who uses her magical spells to raise the dead and avenge both enslaved and lynched victims alike and across time.

In contemplating Patsey’s suffering, I long for a story of how she got rescued by Harriet Tubman and avenged by Marie Laveau.  A story that boldly mixes history with myth, fact with fiction, and truth with super-truths.  Despite the victimizing narrative about a truly victimizing system that capitalized on the productive and reproductive labor of black bodies, the story that matters is the story of how our ancestors survived and transcended their victimization – against all odds.

In reality, Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad work never reached further than the Border States between the “Free North” and “Slave South,” so her ability to rescue Patsey from the “down river” hellishness that was Louisiana would have been impossible.  And whether or not Marie Laveau, a free woman of color, could avenge for the sins committed against her is mere conjecture.  The dilemma presents itself: How do we honor the historical truth of women like Patsey entrapped in systems of racial, sexual, and class oppressions while fulfilling our deepest desires for justice for black women, even though Patsey’s story confronts us with uncomfortable truths about sexual victimization – both hers and ours and, yes, even our larger-than-life figures?

How do we situate Patsey’s narrative alongside the grander, dehumanizing myth of black female hypersexuality – a myth that even managed to taint the legendary Harriet Tubman, whose triumphal feats of rescuing nearly 100 bondspeople before the Civil War and 750 more during the war got undermined by a “sex tape,” rather than magnified for the big screen?  Despite the over-the-top dramatics offered in television’s faux-Vodou-ceremonial rituals that embody Marie Laveau’s powers, her primal scream captured all the rage I felt for the Patseys in history.  Hell, I want to raise the dead too for how this suppressed narrative has been handled and passed down to us in demeaning tales of “Jezebels” and “bed wenches.”  When do we get that incredible cinematic story of Patsey’s pain and suffering alleviated and avenged?  What, exactly, are the “permissible” images of black women from the slave era for our own contemporary consumption and contemplation?

During post-screening discussions, certain audience members expressed discomfort and discomfiting interpretations about the opening scene of the film, which featured a light-skinned enslaved woman (an unnamed character who disappears altogether from the rest of the film) who assertively initiates a sex act with Solomon Northup sleeping next to her.  Solomon is quite reluctant but eventually complies, bringing temporary relief for the woman and heartbreaking sadness for Solomon, who then flashes back to his earlier life with his wife and children back in Saratoga, New York, before he was kidnapped into slavery in 1841.  What I imagine was a scene that McQueen created to capture these bonded people’s deepest (and most human) cravings for love and desire, others in the audience saw a perpetuation of black sexual stereotypes.  One person, invested in preserving Northup’s legacy, was offended that this scene would be included since it undermined what to her was the “truth” of Solomon’s faithfulness to his wife.  Another audience member thought it was significant that the woman in the scene was a “mulatto,” thereby suggesting the stereotype of the lighter-skinned black woman as “sexual temptress” for both the white and black man.  The public forum, in which silence greeted both statements, certainly indicated our reluctance to discuss sexual politics or to challenge respectability politics.

Perhaps this is why no one discussed the rape scene between Epps and Patsey, a scene that was mostly framed through the extreme close-up shot on Epps’ orgasmic yet pained face, while we barely see Patsey’s own facial expression, except at the end when she is laid bare like a lifeless doll.  No close-up for her!  Indeed, the focal point for much of Patsey’s suffering – including the infamous whipping scene – is on her body, from scarred back to disfigured eye (at the hands of her mistress).  Patsey’s body is the object of our horror and pity, while her internal reflections remain hidden.

As brilliant as this film is, and as important as it was for both McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley, to include Patsey’s story alongside Solomon’s, I find it curious that McQueen did not delve further into their intimate lives (nor are the other bondspeople given much of a voice except through songs).  What if McQueen had taken artistic license and inserted a “romance” between Patsey and Solomon, for instance, even if only to create desire, love, intimacy – necessary emotions to contest dehumanization? What if Patsey had been that unnamed woman in the opening sex scene? Could she have later emerged as the martyred heroine that she is quickly becoming in our post-film discussions?

Patsey does not desire Edwin Epps, and in maintaining a platonic relationship with Solomon, she transcends “sexual temptress” status by serving only as Epps’ ultimate victim.  What sexual agency does Patsey have, or Solomon for that matter? What does Solomon’s “faithfulness” to his wife mean in a system where both enslaved women and men did not control their own sexuality, where their owners could randomly couple and separate lovers on a whim? Where, indeed, Epps – who was ready to battle Solomon like a bull territorializing his sexual ownership over Patsey simply because Solomon exchanged more than two words with her – would obsessively undermine such a budding romance, if they were so inclined.  Would such a “romance” represent resistance if they did pursue it, or would we – the audience – also be invested in respectability politics: in which we demand Solomon Northup’s faithfulness to his wife, despite his 12-year-absence from her, and in which we demand Patsey’s sexual virtue?

In maintaining a faithful adaptation of Northup’s narrative, McQueen missed some fruitful developments of subtext that a Victorian moral sensibility muted; a contemporary artist needed to fill in the gaps and silences of a narrative that Northup produced under the white abolitionist gaze and out of respect for his family.  Because of this, we still encounter simplistic divides between an unprejudiced “Free North” and racially oppressive “Slave South,” along with virtuous heroes and martyrs.  The film is extremely stark and powerful, but outside of the brutal picture of slavery, McQueen needed to dig deeper into the interior lives of bondswomen and men.  Patsey’s story still needs to be more fully realized: where she is more than an ultimate victim and a woman with agency enough to carve out her own path for survival.  Maybe then I could accept her historical truth without Tubman or Leveau’s intervention.

*I am grateful to Tamika Carey, Brittney Cooper, and Rebecca Wanzo for their contributions to conversations that helped flesh out my ideas for this piece.

_______________________________________________

Janell Hobson is an associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany. She has authored two books – Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender (2012) and Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (2005) – and regularly blogs and writes for Ms. Magazine, including the cover story, “Beyonce’s Fierce Feminism,” in the Ms. Spring 2013 issue.

The post Imagining Patsey’s Rescue by Harriet Tubman (Or, Marie Laveau’s Vengeance) appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Kenneth Pass

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Kenneth Pass is a native of North Carolina and a senior at Morehouse College studying psychology. He is an undergraduate research fellow funded through the National Institute of Mental Health, a health policy intern, and serves as the Vice President of Morehouse College Safe Space, a gender and sexual diversity collective. Currently, he conducts research looking at how black males negotiate alcohol use and sexual-decision making, as well as how identity plays a role in the sexual health of black gay and bi-sexual men. He is also editing an anthology entitled The Amazingness of Knowing.

The post Sexual Violence: Why It Can Destroy Us All appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

Farah Tanis

Farah Tanis is a transnational feminist and human rights activist. She is co-founder and Executive Director of the Black Feminist Organization Black Women’s Blueprint. She launched and Chairs the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the U.S. ever to focus on Black women and their historical and contemporary experiences with sexual assault.  Tanis is a 2012 U.S. Human Rights Institute Fellow. For the past seven years she served as Almoner for the Havens Relief Fund, was on the Board of Directors of Haki Yetu working to end Rape in the Congo region of Africa and the Board of Right Rides which provides safe rides home to women and queer people in New York City. Tanis founded the Museum of Women’s Resistance (MoWRe). Currently housed at Black Women’s Blueprint’s HerStory Archives, MoWRe is internationally recognized as a Site of Conscience. Farah Tanis created Mother Tongue Monologues, a vehicle for communicating Black feminist praxis at the grassroots and for addressing Black sexual politics in African American and other communities of the Black Diaspora.

Aishah: Foremost, I must thank you from the depths of my Spirit for making the time for this interview in the midst of preparing for the fourth annual Mother Tongue Monologues. I honestly do not know how you do it all, Sister. In the words of our grandmothers, “Who are your kinfolk? From where did your people literally come?”

Farah: My first knowledge of my kinfolk came from my grandmother in whose home I was raised the first years of my life. “Nou se neg Guinea”, “neg Benin” she would say, referring to two countries in West Africa to which I have never been. A proud Haitian, born in Haiti, a land my ancestors took from French colonizers literally through blood, sweat, tears and revolution in 1804, I consider my kinfolk to be Haitians and West Africans. However, the question “who are your kinfolk, especially for people of African descent can be very complicated, if not just painful. Many in the African Diaspora don’t always feel a sense of belonging no matter their location in the vast geography of this planet.  We are all displaced, and so I believe that your kinfolk are those you deem to be kinfolk, regardless of place of birth. My wife is African-American tracing her U.S. lineage back to Mississippi, and I was also raised here in this country where I’ve been considered African-American. And so, I am deeply honored to also call African-Americans my kinfolk, as through their labor for justice, they made it a little easier for me and millions of folks from the Black Diaspora to live here in this country.

Aishah: Your powerful answer is a great segue to my next question. You are a visionary organizer and activist who has spent almost your entire adult womanhood building, supporting, working at, and/or leading grassroots organizations, whose focus is on Diasporic African women’s human rights in the broadest definition of the term. Using the words of the brilliant, clairvoyant, and radical African-Carribean-Feminist-Lesbian-Scholar-Activist-Santaria Priestess Dr. M. Jaqui Alexander from her Signified Project interview, “Why did you come here? I don’t mean coming to the US or Brooklyn. Why did you come here, ie come into this world for what reason?”

Farah: My life’s purpose is to continue the work of the great women of my lineage, a long line of Vodoun priestesses—to shift energy and to move mountains, collectively with others, mountains that bar the paths to justice, peace, safety and freedom. I want to be clear that I myself am not a priestess in the literal sense, not like my foremothers, but I do understand my place/power on the wheel of life. I came here to fulfill what I believe is my destiny, to be a part of creating a new, more just world, to promulgate the living legacy of great Black women who’ve traveled this road before me and write a new chapter in Black feminism that makes it explicit that Black women can be unified, are powerful beyond measure, and they can work to turn this world right side up again. Like our Black feminist foremothers, we may not be able to accomplish all of it in this lifetime, but I think of the whole thing like trying to open a tightly shut jar of sweet jam, sometimes several folks have to try, and they loosen the lid, before finally one actually opens it.

Aishah: I see your paradigm shifting activist and organizational work as a part of a multi-generational continuum of Diasporic African women who have built grassroots institutions in the service of our communities throughout the world. Who are some of your role models?

Farah: I have been blessed enough to have lived in the time of Myriam Merlet, a Haitian woman and one of the greatest transnational feminists to ever live. She was not only my role model, she was my mentor. Having died in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Myriam has left a gap on this planet and in my heart I doubt can ever be adequately filled. Fearless, brilliant and bigger than life, she worked to get the first law passed in Haiti against rape in 2006. She taught me how to speak and stand without flinching in the face of horrific injustices. She taught me how to still and quiet my mind, and how to steady my gaze even while the opposition is shouting.  One other great woman, I have never met but whose writings and speeches and life examples left for us in this generation, is Ella Baker. Ella Baker, the great African-American civil rights activist is indeed another role model in the way she led and in what I saw as her humility and deep consideration for the greater good. She understood the profound wisdom in sometimes just “getting out of the way” so that people could have a voice. My favorite quotes of the great Ella Baker are,

strong people don’t need strong leaders

within which is contained a message to the leaders of her day. Another of my favorite Ella Baker quotes is,

the major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence…

Aishah: Let’s talk about the inspiring (yes, I’m biased!) Black Women’s Blueprint (BWB). After learning about your extensive herstory as an international organizer and activist, I honestly don’t even know how you had the wherewithal to co-found another organization in 2008. Why did do it? What does the literal name “Black Women’s Blueprint” mean and how is it implemented in the organization’s mission and structure?

Farah: Black Women’s Blueprint began meeting in sister circles in 2008, on living room floors, backyards and around kitchen tables, where we grappled with the state of Black women in the U.S. across ethnicity/nationality, class, sexual orientation, identity, etc.  Our main focus was the 2008 Democratic Primaries. While we developed our personal, critical consciousness, parallel to this process was the political and public debate around the Obama/Clinton primary elections where Black women were being asked whether we were voting our race or our gender.  Both democratic candidates presented their “blueprints” for change but neither took full stock of the particular problems Black women are facing within their communities and in greater society (violence, the feminization of poverty, increase imprisonment of black women among others). What was manifesting itself was the cultural tendency to erase Black women by conceptualizing white women as speaking on behalf of the rights of the sex and Black men as speaking on behalf of the race.  Something had to be done to unearth the intersections of race and gender in our own lives as Black women.  Black women needed to offer their own voice, their own “blueprint” for change that equally reflected and benefitted us, thus Black Women’s Blueprint was formed.

Aishah: As you know, I’m a survivor of incest and rape. I believe it’s important that all of us who are able (many are not) publicly name the abuses that happened to our girl and woman bodies against our will. There is so much shame and blame amongst all victim-survivors of sexual violence.  And yet, Black women are often taught and expected to protect the men perpetrators in our communities so that they are not brutalized by the white supremacist criminal (in)justice system. Dr. Charlotte Pierce-Baker writes in her book, Surviving the Silence: Black Women’s Stories of Rape,

We are taught that we are first Black, then women. Our families have taught us this, and society in its harsh racial lessons reinforces it.  Black women have survived by keeping quiet not solely out of shame, but out of a need to preserve the race and its image.  In our attempts to preserve racial pride, we Black women have sacrificed our own souls.

BWB is the convener of the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission (BWTRC) to focus on sexual assault against Black women in the United States. {Full disclosure, I am a Commissioner}. While TFW readers will hopefully read about the Commission on your website (www.myfreedomlounge.com ), is there anything specific that you would like to highlight about this groundbreaking initiative our interview?

Aishah: Too often marginalized communities can easily get caught up in what Native American feminist scholar-activist Dr. Andrea Smith calls the  “Oppression Olympics.”  Since sexual violence is a global atrocity that knows no racial, ethnic, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexuality, class, religious boundary, will you please share why Black women are the sole focus of this groundbreaking commission?

Farah: We fully understand that our liberation is intertwined with that of all oppressed peoples and we stand in opposition to any competition for first place as “most oppressed.” Having said that, what makes Black Women’s Blueprint unique is our specific focus on Black women and our departure from the rubric of “women of color” which we find also often supports racial hierarchies and doesn’t fully allow for Black women to deal with the ever-present history and legacy of slavery, sexual and reproductive exploitation, and subsequent periods of holocaust. Black women are the sole focus on this Truth Commission because Black women, and their sexuality have occupied a definitive place in the U.S. labor, political and sexual economy and that cannot be ignored. As a survivor myself, I know that the sexual abuse that happened to me at the age of five, was not an isolated incident. My mother was raped and so were my grandmothers and great grandmothers by their own kin and by slave masters. We declare a Truth Commission on Black women and their experiences with historical and present day sexual assault. We do this for our ancestors on plantations where Black female bodies and their sexual and reproductive relationships were indeed an integral part of the political economy; our sexuality, part of a market economy which created wealth for masters who understood and actually organized their lives around what our bodies was worth. As with many other Black women I know, I still feel the impact every time I open my eyes and look around me, in communities systems and our own kin benefit from and partake in white patriarchy. They partake in male supremacy. Never again should my Black brother get gender benefits from racism, not in our names, not over our bodies. We declare it, not just for ourselves, but for our ancestors whose iron-willed bones lay at the bottom of the Atlantic. We do this for our offspring and the future generations not-yet-born who deserve to live in a world, in communities and in homes where there is no rape, no molestation, no violation of any kind.

Aishah: Mother Tongue Monologues (MTM)! Okay Sister, MTM is another example of your conceiving yet another visionary program in the service of communities of African descent with a focus on women and girls. In a few short years MTM has become its own phenomenal annual entity, which uses culturally specific theatre/performance/music to educate and celebrate while simultaneously raising funds to make sexual assault prevention based on collaboration and community based initiatives possible across the African Disapora in the United States.

In 2013, MTM took a bold and courageous step by examining one of the most taboo topics in Black sexual politics – lesbianism, same sex love, and gender non-conformity. Frankly, under your leadership, MTM, did what very few non-LGBTQIA identified nationally recognized organizations have been able or willing to do. MTM “Queered the Line” in an African centered-framework. Your honorees were from the African Diaspora (African-American, Jamaican, and Zimbabwean). In the context of institutional and individual heterosexism and homophobia, this could’ve been viewed as organizational suicide and yet, BWB took the necessary (my words) risk. Speaking as one of the honorees, it was an incredible experience to have all of my identities that are embodied into one celebrated in the community from which I come in this lifetime.

(Video from #MTM2013 Opening and Awards Ceremony)

Let’s talk about #MTM2014, which has a powerful mission and goal.

Farah: Our Fourth Annual performance of Mother Tongue Monologues is occurring on Saturday, February 8, 2014. The Matinee program will begin at 2:00pm at the Brooklyn Museum, Iris and B. Cantor Auditorium, 200 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York. The program will culminate in a post-performance reception honoring Barbara Smith Author, Activist and Independent Scholar who has played a groundbreaking role in opening up a national cultural and political dialogue about feminism, race and sexuality.  It will also honor Melissa Harris- Perry Author, Educator, Political Scientist, Television Host and Liberal Political Commentator, MSNBC who has provided new analysis on the lives, the internal and external experiences of Black women.  Mother Tongue features poets, drummers, dancers and actors dramatizing and imitating how Black communities react to sexual assault. They will speak of the devastating silences and insidious allowances that impact sexual and racial dynamics and that remain intensely controversial in Black communities. This year’s performance entitled, Mother Tongue: Monologues for Truth Bearing Women, for Emerging Sons and Other Keepers of the Flame, will lay the groundwork for justice, intra-racial healing and reconciliation and will intentionally engage its audience in deeper conversation about one of the most contentious subjects in Black sexual politics—the violence of Black men toward Black women. You can still get tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/518650

Aishah: How can one support the work of BWB?

Farah: With this year’s Mother Tongue Monologues, we’ve launched Take Back Our Lives, an online fundraising campaign on Indigogo to democratize community education about sexual violence and to spread the word about how we can actually take action to end rape. With the support of the community we will spread knowledge, we will take action, and we will insist on safety as a right, a standard, and an expectation. With support from the community we will insist on and provide access to anti-rape information, and make these available to every single person in every community that people who give will help us reach. Information will no longer be in the domain of the few who create curricula, instead, we will make accessible language and education that can help all understand what rape is and what we can do to prevent it. To support the campaign go to http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/take-back-our-lives/x/214519

Aishah: Finally, how do you take care of yourself?

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