the defiant dirty, gross, hairy-legged woman

I posted this on my blog and thought it might be well received here (probably more so than on my site :))

Despite the fact that I’ve never written about women and body hair, there has been a rush of comments from men, lately, who always seem to bring up the way they feel about this topic. I’ve dated women who don’t shave their body hair. I’ve dated women who do. It honestly doesn’t make a difference to me whatsoever.

Men who are immediately turned off by women with body hair are always quick to make unsubstantiated claims about these women. They’re “dirty,” their “hippies,” their “dykes” are all common responses. Women who do not shave their body hair are exactly that: they are women who do not shave their body hair. A lot of men do not shave their body hair (remember when hairy chests were popular?…I’m waiting for that day to come back. Damn you Hasselhoff and Bon Jovi with your overkill!). We do not think these men are strange. There is an interesting history lesson regarding the socially constructed image of the “hairless woman,” one that made a refusal to shave perfectly justifiable in my mind. Long ago, in our culture, when it was nearly impossible for a woman to make a living without the support of a man (not that it’s a piece of cake now for many women), many women resorted to prostitution. The strongest market for prostitution was in younger girls. Therefore, when women got older—or rather, when they began to look older (ie body hair)—they weren’t as marketable. So these prostitutes, in an effort to remain independent, began to shave their body hair. As the decades went by, the removal of body hair became an acceptable and widespread social construction. Now it’s expected. Other cultures whose female members shave their body hair have other stories. This is ours. Of course when a woman shaves her legs today, most likely she is not doing it for these reasons and I don’t want to be accused of calling women who shave their legs prostitutes, nor am I accusing the men who are specifically attracted to hairless female bodies of engaging in prostitution. I just think it is interesting and a history worth noting.

Further, men (and women) who are grossed out by body hair, have learned to be grossed out by body hair and they can unlearn it just as easily. And where people learn things, it is because they are being taught. Our media reproduces the ideal body for women (and, of course men) as an archetype, from which there is little to no deviation. When there is the slightest bit of deviation from this norm, when women with hairy legs are asked, as one man put it so eloquently in my comments, to “cover that shit up,” they are viewed as a threat. These women, who do not shave their legs are a threat to our world-views, our understanding and adherence to the way in which women “should” look. As one theorist put it: “Perhaps it is because the division between masculine and feminine hair growth is physiologically arbitrary yet socially and psychologically rigid that any amount deviating from hairlessness is threatening. A woman never knows when she may have crossed the boundary” (p. 231).

In a relationship between a prostitute and a man (which isn’t much of a “relationship” at all), the man is paying and is in control. Similarly in a patriarchal society, where beauty is understood through men’s eyes, women who do not shave are not only challenging the strictly defined gender roles and body image archetypes, but the entire power structure that creates them.

And to me, that is very sexy.

Street Harassment

Sorry to have been MIA for so long. Thanks to Kyle for posting so much. I'm still waiting for our other 2 contributors to materialize. I guess we do things on our own time around here. (I do, anyway).

This blog is strange, I must add. We seem to get a lot of hits here, but few comments, little discussion. It isn't a complaint, just an observation.

Anyway... I keep meaning to write an actual essay about street harassment, its dynamics, and what it means for women. Not just in American society, but worldwide. I haven't had time to write the essay so I'll just spill some thoughts here, informally.

First off, I should just say that I take an extreme view on street harassment. Not everyone will agree with me, but I see sexual harassment in public/in the streets as a form of terrorism. It functions to keep women feeling afraid to go places by ourselves. This has been true for me not just in America, but in every other country I've visited. When we can't walk the streets of our own towns and cities without being prey to men who somehow find it within their rights to pass judgment & share their judgments (usually in a crass way) on what we look like and what our sexual value is... we are living in a state of perpetual terror.

Case in point: in one city where I used to live, the homeless were often men, and the homeless men were often drunk. When I was walking with another male, they kept to aggressive panhandling, which was annoying, but mostly harmless, and kind of funny. When I walked alone, the drunk panhandlers would quickly take to making comments on my appearance. Obviously, this left me feeling afraid to walk places by myself, even in a small and relatively "safe" town.

It says a lot that men don't usually harass us if we are in the company of other men.

Where I live now, I walk my dog a lot along the same stretch of road. There is little traffic. However, on an average, about once per week a car (or truck) full of guys flies by, honking the horn, hooting and hollering. I don't see the point, honestly. Usually when I walk my dog I'm in my pajamas and my hair is sticking up everywhere and really, I don't think there's much to holler about. The hollering seems harmless, but it makes me feel uncomfortable and angry. My middle finger in their rearview feels pretty inconsequential.

I'll venture a little into discussion of other countries, while trying not to get too ethnocentric.

Italy: I was blonde in Italy. At least 6 men (I was there for a week) thought it was okay to approach me and touch my hair without asking my permission. I have probably never been harassed so openly and publicly as I was in Italy. I don't want to get into an analysis of Italian culture or gender relations in Italy, because I really don't know enough to make such commentary.

But I know that Italy is one more place that I won't travel to alone. If you aren't safe in public, the next natural question becomes: how can you be safe alone, or in private?

India was worse for me. A different story entirely, because while most Indian women are OUTWARDLY respected by men, provided that they dress respectably... (This is not to say that women in India are not harassed! But it is more subtle. The women I knew in India frequently told stories of being groped on crowded city streets.) Western women have a reputation, in India, for being loose, easy, sexually immoral. Even when dressed modestly, I fell prey to the long, uncomfortably lingering, judgmental stares of practically every man in every Indian city I visited. Often the harassment was more open than this.

Once, an American friend and I were walking along a crowded street in McLeod Ganj and three older men started following us. Once it became clear that they were following us, and that we were aware of the situation, they started talking loudly in Hindi. Of course, we didn't understand what they were saying, but there was laughter, and there were Indian women turning their modest heads away from us.

I had one of my rare super-tough moments and I spun around and started yelling at the loudest guy in rapid-fire English, half of which he probably didn't understand. "Who the fuck do you think you are? Why are you following us? Don't you have the balls to say what you're saying in English? Would you talk to your mother that way? What about your sister?"

The men seemed stunned for a moment. Then they started laughing at me again. My friend Elise grabbed me by the wrist and we ducked into a shop whose owners we often had tea with. Our tea-serving Kashmiri guy friends stood at the door of the shop and glared at the men who'd been following us.

Problem solved.

But it wasn't my rush of angry English that solved anything. It was the censure of other males; males who knew us as friends rather than sex objects.

Elise actually was angry at me for what I'd done. "Don't you know you can't blow up like that in India? That guy could have backhanded you and everybody would have looked the other way."

I would never walk any Indian city street alone after dusk. The few times I had to walk from an internet cafe in Dharamsala to my flat, I walked fast and stared straight ahead and ignored the stares of every Indian guy who hadn't closed his shop yet. I felt completely unsafe. I carried a flashlight to lead me up the dark winding uphill paths to my flat. My heart pounded in terror the entire time.

I don't mean to say that all men in India (or Italy) are pigs. I won't forget the tailor in Dharamsala whose daughter sat in my lap while he asked me questions about America and practiced his English with me, and offered to escort me to the school where I was working so that I would be "more respectable." It's just sad to me that men like Raja (my friend the tailor) seem to be few and far between. And their presence is too quiet.

Street harassment is just one more way that the majority of men keep women feeling powerless and unsafe. I see street harassment as another form of violence against women. It is another symptom of a very sick society.

language and violence against women

Even within the rhetoric of aiding women and working against oppression, however, we find masculinist patriarchy at work. Consider the now-accepted phrase, “violence against women.” Women are not the subject of the sentence—they are the object. This indicates that our language still reflects and perpetuates this hierarchy, even when that language is constructed around the purpose of benefiting women or calling attention to the violence. In doing so, the rhetoric excludes those perpetrating most of the crimes. If 99% of all sexual violence incidents are perpetrated by men, why isn’t this epidemic properly labeled as men’s violence (Katz 22)?

what is homophobia, really?

Sorry if this sounds a bit too academic; I kinda borrowed it from my thesis....

Homophobia is “more than the irrational fear of gay men, more than the fear that we might be perceived as gay” (Kimmel 277). In short, homophobia is so rampant and so accepted among men because of the real fear of exposing oneself for who one truly is beneath the layers of socially constructed, rigidly defined gender roles. As Kimmel correctly suggests, “Homophobia is the fear that other men will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up, that we are not real men” (277). Representations of men in advertising and the mainstream media, therefore, also offer intriguing examples of this phenomenon. They serve to reinforce and perpetuate the prevalence of homophobia by over-exaggerating the most recognizable—and often generic—traits that make up the dominant masculine ideology. This is what social scientists mean when they refer to "hypermasculinity."

While men are far more complex than the tough and rugged images of masculinity produced on the screen, the rhetoric that reproduces men's experience in advertising reinforces the idea that the complex identities of men should be hidden, particularly if any of these qualities risk being deemed “feminine.” It is accurate to say that the “fear of being seen as a sissy dominates the cultural definitions of manhood” (Kimmel 278). Because the images of men in advertising favor an ideology of manhood rather than an accurate representation, male viewers are unlikely to object to these false representations, reinforcing the idea that shame leads to complacency, which keeps men silent. This silence on the part of men keeps people believing that this representation must be accurate, or at least, welcomed. This silence, the inability or lack of drive to stand outside of the constructed ideology, is a product of insecurity, fear, and anxiety—all of which fuel homophobia among men in our culture.

Michael Kimmel rocks my socks.

Kimmel, Michael S. “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity.” The Masculinities Reader. Whitehead, Stephen, ed. London: Polity, 2001. 266-287

& a poetic perspective (don't skip the post below)

Kyle is new here & we are very happy to have him writing here. so skip the poem if you want to, but scroll down & read the next post because it's important and awesome.

As you may have noticed, I've been writing a lot about marriage, for mostly obvious reasons. I dug up this poem that I think is part of my thesis and I realized it says a lot about what marriage as an institution can do to a woman. Am I starting to think like Twisty (you know, that absolutist patriarchy blamer that I tend to get in tangles with... or with her readership at least.)

alas, the poem:

married life

He judges like an axe, the blade flat
then sharp against skin that breaks like a balloon;
his father was a soot-soaked miner
his language slick and funky. He muffled yawns
all through teaching school.
He’s who she comes home to,
from California
from London
from the university
from a yoga class
from Bombay, her eyebrows fresh-plucked.
It’s a floral, brutal home. There’s a bruise of mud
on each of her knees, a collection of lists
scribbled on brown paper bags, the writing murky
with time. And out the window after Mass
little boys all freshly blessed run by.
She’s
still now
not traveling this summer,
on birth control,
at the window with her knitting needles.
Now, she
is the one he comes home to.
This vanilla tropic of a home,
her jewel box, a sanctuary of lovely things,
her engagement ring hidden carefully.
A single orchid graces
the front window like a sign of penance
like a holy water font
like it’s been waiting all its life
to be baptized in valentine candies
and words
and the bold code she uses
when she writes her strange acidic poems.

(c) 2007 Silvia Connolly

My interview, representing The MARS Project

My first post on this site: exciting!

A friend of mine is doing a series of essays on rape prevention for his column in The Noise, a northern Arizona magazine. I also write for The Noise and many of my columns (mostly over environmental issues) can be found at my own site. Now that I've got my shameless self-promotion is out of the way, here is the interview. If readers don't know what The MARS Project is, I give a brief overview in question #4.

1) Does a person need to be a part of an organization to prevent rape here at NAU?

Absolutely not. Helping to affect change can be as easy as expressing how you feel. I think that feeling powerless outside of an activist group or organization both over complicates activism and undermines the power of one’s individual influence.

2) How can a person prevent rape if they are not a part of an organization?

Passive bystanders to sexism, homophobia, and misogyny must understand that their silence is compliance. If a guy tells a sexist joke and nobody tells him that he’s out of line, the guy (as well as anyone nearby) has no reason to believe he’s doing anything wrong. In many circles, it is socially unacceptable to tell racist jokes, yet sexist jokes and “gay bashing,” are acceptable. Jokes of any kind that perpetuate a stereotype, fuel violence, and justify oppressive power structures are not funny.

Further, couples, whether heterosexual or homosexual, need to establish safe boundaries. The lines of communication need to be open. Everybody is different and with that come different levels of comfort, expectations, and preferences—all of which must be respected.

3) Do you see Law enforcement as a tool for a reliable rape prevention tool?

Given that rape is notoriously underreported, those who choose to report should certainly do so. I don’t see the police as being particularly helpful with prevention though. Rape and gender violence doesn’t appear to be much of a priority.

If the police were better trained to respectfully handle situations involving gender violence and if more rapists were actually given adequate jail time (or any jail time) for their crimes, I might tell a different story.

4) How does MARS go about rape prevention at NAU?

We approach rape and sexism as a men’s issue. If over 99% of rape is perpetrated by men, there is no reason to believe it is a “women’s issue.”

If between one and four and one and six women will be raped in their lifetime, there are a lot of men out there who have partners, parents, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends, and other people they love who have been a victim of men’s violence. Women and women’s organizations have achieved a lot, but men need to step up, be allies, and realize they have a personal stake in ending the violence as well.

However, we live in a culture that loves to blame victims of any kind of abuse. All too often we hear victim-blaming phrases like, “She shouldn’t have been there,” “She shouldn’t have worn that,” or “She should have known what would happen if…” the list goes on and on. Of course most men are not rapists; most men don’t want to live in a rape culture.

Unfortunately many men get defensive about such topics. Often I hear, “I’m not violent; I’m not a rapist; I don’t’ need to hear this stuff.” The MARS Project is here to say that the bar is set pretty damn low if “good men” are simply defined as those who don’t rape women.

The media as a whole has painted a shallow portrait of masculinity. They would have us believe that we are naturally aggressive, controlling, emotionless beings driven by sexual conquest, alcohol consumption, and power over others. Frankly, I think most men would find this insulting.

We encourage men to step out of the box from which the dominant masculine ideology limits their experience of the world. The MARS Project simply wants men to step up, be themselves, and cast off sexism, homophobia and misogyny anywhere they see it. And lets face it: it’s everywhere.

5) How can a person or organization book a MARS seminar?

They can contact MARS through the myspace site or they can get a hold of us via Northland Family Help Center, who has helped to make so much of what we do possible.

6) Do you have any final words for a person who wants to take a more proactive role in rape prevention at NAU?

Don’t be afraid to speak out. It might seem a little awkward at first, but ultimately, you’ll find that most people feel the same way as you. You’ll gain strength and encouragement from others, and in turn, people will gain strength and encouragement from you. We need everybody.

This interview can also be found here.

sophie rose checking in

Silvia's post below (well, a couple down from here) made me feel too sad for words. I didn't even have any idea but we've been talking lately now. I wanted to share a link I found about supporting a friend who's experienced domestic violence:

National Domestic Violence Helplines page on supporting a friend

I've talked to Silvia since and she has a lot of doubts of what she has written and whether it was right or not, but i think it is right and important and shes one of the bravest ppl i know.

I feel like all I do for this blog is give you links. I am working on a real article.

I hear that a supercool girl named Jethra something is gonna start posting stuff here soon. I don't know her but I here good things.

You should all check out the above link. It is a UK website but is one of the best most informitive sites I have found on the topic and contains a ton of facts and information on domestic violence.

I'm afraid the justice system may never, ever improve.

I just found this cool new blog called Curvature. Here's a post that really pissed me right off.

If you're too lazy to click on a link, here is the gist of the thing. Some guy in AA got to his 9th step and wrote a letter of apology to a woman that he raped in 1984. The victim used the letter as evidence and, brave woman that she was, pressed charges. (I am so proud of her even though I don't know her!)

Now, the guy's been released on parole. After serving only six months.

Oh, well. I guess saying you're sorry is enough.

I don't know about you, but if my rapist told me he was sorry, I would laugh in his face and push him down and then spit on him.

the battle between speaking and silence

I suppose this post strays more into the realm of the personal diary than the political testimonial, but I've had a lot of feelings about the post below ("Confession: Battered Wife or Feminist?") since writing it and I'm trying to untangle those thoughts and feelings, as I always do, through writing.

I am unsure as to whether or not I should have written it at all, but a kind of moral stubbornness in me refuses to let me take it down. I'm afraid that the post has messed up friendships, shocked people who knew my husband and me together and saw our appearance as a happy couple (which, more often than not, we were). I feel embarrassed for having opened up, here, and to a few other close friends. Yet I would have felt wrong remaining silent.

I've been taught silence my whole life; when I was a child I had an uncle who sexually abused me and I was coerced into silence; when my family found out, they wanted me to keep silent about it so as not to stir up trouble.

I may look brave when I speak up and speak out and publish poetry and testimonials here. The truth is, I'm terrified with every word that I say. I'm very devoted to Kali as a part of my yoga practice, and Kali is all about pushing boundaries; shocking people; letting out everything that is trapped inside. This is why blood drips from her mouth: because blood belongs inside the body. But oh, not for Kali. Kali annihilates every expectation we have ever had.

But I am no dark goddess. I am nowhere near as fierce. And every time I tell the truth I am simultaneously afraid.

organized attack on feminist bloggers

Read all about over at Feministe.

Maybe I'm now glad that not many people read this blog?

confession. feminist or battered wife? can you be both?

Dear readers,

I have a confession to make.

I’m sitting here with my hands perfectly still on the keyboard for two minutes, three minutes, because everything I can think to say to explain myself sounds like something out of a Lifetime movie; something that battered wives say, something that teenage girls say about their asshole boyfriends.

And we’ve discussed this before; being any kind of a women’s rights activist, I personally have a way of feeling elevated. Not better than other women, it isn’t like that. I feel a (clearly false) sense of security because I “understand” issues like rape and domestic violence. These things can’t happen to me; I’m educated, elite. It’s really a horrible uppity attitude, I know.

Then I go and marry someone who abuses me.

I’m not exactly ready to discuss it in detail, but a large part of the reason I moved back in with my parents this summer was not just because of my “fragile health” (my mother loves that phrase!), but also because my husband and I had problems that I finally had to accept. These knots will never untie themselves. And I don’t have the energy to pull and untangle them now, and I’m advised by doctors not to live alone. So. I left.

Why do I say “I left” as though it were the last option? It was my first option. It has always been an option, but I have never felt that it was, and I don’t even know why. My husband was physically abusive to me before I married him. I married him still. My head is forever full of Simone de Beauvoir and Cixous, Steinem, Adrienne Rich, etc. Full of basic information about domestic violence. Yet I have believed every “I’m sorry,” every “This will never happen again.” These are eyes and hands that I love (loved?), and once trusted.

Last month he threatened to kill me and I reached out to my family for help and help was given, so here I am now miles away. My first commitment is to myself; that’s what I realized. I can’t be committed to a marriage if I can’t keep my commitment to myself, part of which is survival. Survive no matter what.

The need to defend him feels like it’s in my blood. I’m wearing the wedding band. I can’t say truthfully that I won’t go back. I want him to get help and change, but statistics say that only around 10 percent of violent/abusive men “get better” after they go through counseling.

Being in the middle of it makes you see things the women’s studies books will never teach you; that you love the person who hurts you, just the same as everyone else loves, with the heart and the body and the soul and the whole package. And losing love hurts victims of domestic violence just like it hurts everybody else. The loss is a continuing ache. There were good times. It was mostly good times.

Our life together was not textbook. It is individual, the tapestry woven of the threads of highs and lows, this thread the most wonderful week of my life, ecstatic with love, this thread the worst of our fights. I still quote Adrienne Rich even though we’re now supposedly in the “third wave”: “The personal is political.” It is so simple; a key that can open any door.

Personal gets beyond statistics. Personal gets nitty gritty. My husband is normally a kind and gentle person in every regard. People warm to him immediately. He does kind things for strangers. Some of you won’t believe it, but he’s been kinder to me than possibly anybody I’ve ever known. My husband has never tried to control or isolate me. He has never monitored what I wear or who my friends are. He has never used violence to try to control me, not directly, anyway.

I’m manic depressive; I’m no slice of peach pie myself. I have episodes and I go into rages and I can be scary and very, very mean. The violence tends to happen when I am in a dysphoric mania (agitated, angry manic symptoms but with depression and tears and a lot of impulsiveness). I know that there is no excuse for violence, and I can’t figure out if I am just making excuses for him. It isn’t that I blame myself. He goes into an uncontrollable rage sometimes. Usually it’s when I have been crying and screaming and tearing my hair out (quite literally) for a number of hours.

But it still isn’t right, and I know that. It will never be right. Sometimes I am violent too, but not like him. Of course there are other elements too; we are two Pisces people, we got stuck together somehow while we were swimming in opposing currents. We love deep and we think each other’s thoughts. I don’t have any answers to anything, and maybe that’s why I feel stilted every time I try to write.

So heartbreaking, I find it funny sometimes. So ironic, it belongs in a novel. All of it. I can’t write fiction anyway, though.

I want to say more, but I feel very cautious. I don’t want to say too much.

On the other hand, not saying anything would be so hypocritical that I’d have to delete this entire website.

I already knew education does not protect women from violence. Education cannot be the only weapon when you live under a terrorist regime. What other weapon do we have? All I can think of is that we have ourselves. I have never even taken a self defense course! When attacked, I tend to shut my eyes and tighten up and curl up because I don’t know what else to do. I just go blank with fear.

Women, we all need to start learning self defense, and teaching it to every woman and girl that we know. It is a matter of survival.

I can think of no other answer. Can you?

My husband told me once he was a feminist.

love,
Silvia

soph reporting for duty

so silvia hasn't said anything for days... weeks? I'm not sure what is up with her, but I emailed her, and she says someone who's really super cool is going to start posting to this blog soon, so let's all watch and that will be awesome.

as for me, i'm watching my daughter turn from a baby into a girl and i want to write something about being a mom and wanting to protect your beautiful innocent from what the world really is; at the same time knowing she needs to know, needs to know how to protect herself. Her name is Pearl. I'd like to ask of the readership: What is the most important thing that young girls need to know in order to protect themselves from violence?

i think it'd be rad if i posted all your answers in a list together. so answer, answer, answer away. especially moms.

and oh, here's something cool but off topic that i think silvia would love.

knitting for the revolution, man. it's so silvia. Let's stage a knit-in. (can i still come if i can't knit worth a damn?)

Something useful

While I know that this blog is not necessarily a "survivors' support community," I thought it would be rad to create a "resources" tag for when we find good support resources online or anywhere else.

One site I've recently found is Daily Strength. It's a site where you can join communities (not just for rape survivors, but there are communities for people with all sorts of mental health and health-related issues), and write in a journal that other members can see. It's the most positive support site I have ever found for rape survivors.

I don't like the sites where all anyone ever does is post their personal story of rape or trauma. I guess those places have their purpose but I just don't walk away from those websites with a good feeling inside. I like to look toward the future and look for posi ways that I can change my life for the better TODAY.

Do you know of any other good survivor resources on the web?

ring of roses (by silvia)

I wrote this poem years ago but I keep revising it. It used to be called "Rape at 21" but now it's called "Ring of Roses." It was the first poem that I wrote about this particular event.

Ring of Roses

The way they tell it you’d think Persephone triumphed.
Four months a year in the underworld. What time I’ve wasted,
remembering this, held down by throat, by wrists, by hair.
I was a girl still, twenty-one, everything just beginning.
Now I want to know that girl.
She’s all underworld now, ghost-flesh,
goose pimple ripple flesh, elusive and pale.
She was reading Frost at the time, all of Frost
in a great thick volume. It was 2001.
She was going to study in Ireland.
Everything still ahead of her.
(Relax, enjoy it, be good, stop whining.)

Fast,
merciless betrayal.
Held down by the throat, I remember best
cold window glass; sharp wind of October.
(How long without a breath? The thought:
I might die oh god I might die here.)
Look at me, bitch, look at me.

Held down by the throat, by the hair.
(ring of bruises like roses, swollen throat,
ashes, ashes)
Next morning, finding the soft, blonde clumps,
they seemed to me fine-spun, like angel hair
ripped from scalp-skin
like weeds from wet soil. Perhaps they were never mine.
(except look, they match, same length, dark blonde)
Calmly I threw the hair in the dumpster
with the sheets and my clothes.

I hid my face and pretended it wasn’t true,
that pieces of me weren’t missing: the bridgework
from my lower teeth, those bits of hair, a little blood.
Ignore the ring of roses, lip busted open, black eye,
et cetera.
The other gaps would show themselves in time.
(you like it rough? I can give you rough)

There is no time for sympathy. I’m hard-shelled,
I hate pity,
but for the record
I’ll tell you I heard sirens blaring on Route 66
and in my addled brain I thought they were for me.
(I will even tell you how I begged, was slapped out
of every conceit I’d ever known. How long it took to exhaust me.
I’ll knock your teeth out of your head you fucking whore
How the fight went out of me
like air from a child’s red balloon.)

It’s taken me all these years to write this poem
and I want it this way, without lies.

I’d like to know the girl I was, but she’s out of town,
she’s off in Hades somewhere.
(you’ve been asking for it since the day we met)
I’d like to brush her long fine hair.
(I wear it short, now).
Let her keep believing she’ll never know these things,

will never wear
a ring of bruises around her throat like roses,
mark of plague. (ashes, ashes)

Let her think she’ll never come to any harm,
because I could never warn her anyway,
because she cannot conceive, anyway,
of the stained and silent weight
she will one day learn to bear.

(ashes, ashes, we all fall down)

(c) 2007 Silvia Connolly

I just had to.

There was an article about these types of emails recently in Bitch magazine (my favorite subscription!) and the basic premise of the article is that these chain emails that "warn" women of dangers (such as dark parking lots, gas stations, and this latest--fake cops) actually work to perpetuate the myth that rape is something that happens "out there." (By out there, I mean out in the world, perpetrated by strangers, not in our homes or the homes of our friends, perpetrated by people that we know).

Of course a minority of rapes are committed by strangers. But how many chain emails do you get warning you that you're more likely to be raped by a friend or acquaintance than you are by a stranger?

I have this well-meaning aunt who sends me warnings ALL THE TIME. Hence the text of this email that popped into my inbox this morning:

MUST KNOW *77


I knew about the red light on cars, but not the *77. It was about 1:00 p.m. In the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. *Lauren's parents have always told them never to pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather to wait until they get to a gas station, etc. *


Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called *77 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull
Over right a way. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren't, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way.


Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground. The man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes.


I never knew about the *77 Cell Phone Feature, but especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going to a safe & quiet; place. You obviously need to make some signals! That you acknowledge them ( I.e. Put on your hazard lights) or call *77 like Lauren did.


Too bad the cell phone companies don't generally give you this little bit of wonderful information.


*Speaking to a service representative at ** Bell ** Mobility confirmed that *77 was a direct link to state trooper info. So, now it's your turn to let your friends know about *77.


Send this to every woman (and person) you know; it may save a life.

Thanks, auntie, but information like this has never saved me from violence.

more news on rape from New Delhi

Maybe it's my perverse love for the city itself, but I keep checking the Times of India for cases like this.

This particular case stands in sharp contrast to similar cases in New Delhi that I posted about recently. India's supreme court decided to uphold charges against an accused rapist despite the absence of "medical evidence":

The key for them is that the testimony of the victim should be "cogent, convincing and trustworthy". And they feel that was the case when the apex court upheld the charge against the accused.

Aparna Bhat, head of the government-run Rape Crisis Cell of Delhi, claims that the chances of conviction based on false charges are scant.

Still,

Bhat, however, does not rule out the possibility of a small number of women trying to harass men by levelling false rape charges as they know that the law as well as the sentiments of the judge would be in their favour.

Of the 600-odd cases being handled by the 'Rape Crisis Cell', only 25 to 30 fall in this category, which also includes police pursuing false rape charges against men to save them of tedious investigation to catch the real culprit, she said.

This last bit is hard to swallow. How many women, honestly, would put themselves through the humiliation of a rape trial simply in order to "harass men?"

Still, this seems, overall, like progress for women in India.

And I promise to get back to U.S. cases soon enough.

Rose's very first post

My name is Rose. My full name is Sophia Rose Scott Warrington, and I tell you that because you should know that I’m not ashamed of anything I will write in this blog. Thanks, Silvia, for including me as a contributor. Me and Silvia go back to when both of us were writing zines. That’s how we met, never imagining that one day we’d collaborate together on a blogging project.

I’m really stoked to be adding to this project because I think I get what Silvia’s trying to do with this and I think I have something unique to add to the conversation. There isn’t much that I’m afraid to say. I’m not much for poetry, but I like to write essays and short stories. I think I can add some personal experiences to the blog.

Because my mother was raped by a stranger (my father), I feel sexual violence has been a part of my life literally since I was born. Being the “product” of rape is a very strange and (in my opion) unique experience. My mother was kind of a perpetual victim. So she ended up having 3 husbands after I was born and all of them were violent with either her or me or both of us in one way or another. My mother died when I was 15 and then I lived with my aunt in Phoenix until I was 18. I’m 25 now but I still live very close to Phoenix, and my aunt, because I don’t have much other family.

I wonder if I look like him. If my dark eyes are his. When I was a kid, before my mom told me about the rape, I used to think that my dad was a pilot. No matter how often my mom told me that my father had left and was not coming back, I used to think he’d fly into Vermont and land in our back yard in a private plane and he’d want to make up with us (I was sure, you see, there’d been some terrible fight and if I could just talk to him, if mom could, that it could somehow be resolved) and live with us forever and we would all live happily ever after.

When you know that “you” (or the embryo that would be you one day) were created during and as a result of the ugliest possible act of violence imaginable, you grow up feeling kind of cracked and worthless; you weren’t meant to be and your existence reminds your mother all the time of her greatest pain. For me it was like that, anyway. I could see the pain and recognition when my mother looked me in the face. I could never forget the fact that her life would be better if she hadn’t been raped, which would naturally imply my non-existence. This kind of thing will fuck with your head early on.

In middle school I took a creative writing class. One day the teacher was talking about how every story has to have a conflict and how there were only so many conflicts you could write about, and he put them on the board and everything: “Man vs. Man,” “Man vs. Society,” “Man vs. Himself,” etc. I raised my hand and asked “What about man versus woman?” He didn’t even know what to say. Some of the other kids laughed. He said that it would fall under the same category as “Man vs. Man.” I was only in the seventh grade but I already had his number. I knew that man vs. woman was a totally different kind of conflict.

Changes

So, you'll notice the page has changed. I wanted the text to stretch further across the page, so that's that.

Also, the major change that's coming up around here is that this is soon to become a multiple-user blog, meaning that other writers will have access to post their work here. So far, actually, there's just one, Rose Scott of Tempe, AZ, and we all have her first post to look forward to sometime in the next week (from what she tells me). Rose is a passionate and, I think, tireless writer and I look forward to seeing what she'll bring to the blog.

As a reminder, I am still looking for other writers. Contact silvia.connolly AT yahoo dot com for more information.

for the poetry eaters

I've got no idea where this came from:

poem untitled

the poems have gone tumbling down the cellar stairs
one day, I don’t remember when,
the poems went turning into glass
I’d go after them
but I’d cut up my feet
and my hands
so bad
I don’t want to wash the poems in my blood they're so
pretty
brilliant maybe and I am on a mystery hunt for
brilliance and pianos
I surprise myself in the mirror my dark hair my eyes
more gray than blue
I was the prettiest baby
blonde and blue and fat
the day i was born, what's happened since then?
this sky was exactly the same
nothing’s changed but me
the sky here has always been this way
constant drizzle
grayer than it is blue
I want to be spiderman I want
to scale walls fast and throw webs for protection
maybe I want to do terrible things
maybe I want my own web for capturing and torturing
I just said that out loud fuck I just said that out loud
maybe I want my own web and to be a red tongued
goddess of destruction
tossing the pretty poems downdowndownstairs
those terrible splinterwood stairs

(c) (seriously) 2007 silvia connolly

news: justice systems everywhere fail to understand psychology/circumstances of rape victims

News item a: (in keeping with discussion of treatment of women in India): New Delhi man accused of kidnapping and assault is released on bail, for reasons (I might add, in light of recent discussions here and elsewhere) eerily similar to certain actions of the American justice system:

...the victim was deliberately avoiding court appearances ...

Gee, wonder why any rape victim who has "lodged similar complaints" (per the cited article) in the past might avoid court appearances? Case in point: In the good old U S of A, most women who report rapes are torn to pieces on the witness stand. (Here's one example from Feminist Law Professors.) Does anyone else remember this case? A circuit court judge threatened to hold a 20-year-old woman in contempt of court for refusing to watch a video of 2 men raping her at the age of 16. (The decision was eventually rescinded.)

I'm not totally sure how rapes are prosecuted in New Delhi, but if it's anything like it is in America, a woman can expect to be torn apart on the witness stand. And yes, I suspect this young woman, having reported other rapes in the past, had likely experienced the frightening and traumatic thrashing that defense attorneys are permitted to give to victims of rape.

Another quote from The Hindu:

The court took cognisance of the victim’s counselling report, prepared by Swanchetan Society for Mental Health, which stated that she had narrated the whole incident to the doctor “very calmly” and showed no unusual effect of trauma throughout the session.

It sounds like the Swanchetan society needs a bit of training in some basics, such as the symptoms of Rape Trauma Syndrome (a syndrome that, not surprisingly, the DSMIV refuses to officially recognize, sticking all rape victims into the category of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, despite the distinct differences of many of the symptoms of Rape Trauma Syndrome.)

At any rate, in the the above-cited piece on RTS, Atosha Clancy writes that during the "acute phase" (hours immediately following the rape), victims will usually experience one of two typical reactions:

Victims may present in a variety of ways, from

* expressed style - feelings shown in such behaviour as crying, sobbing, smiling, restlessness, tenseness, joking.
* controlled style - feelings are masked or hidden behind a calm, composed, or subdued effect. (emphasis mine)

Under "Immediate Effects: First Weeks," the author includes

Emotional reactions that may be present:
shock, numbness, embarrassment, guilt, powerlessness, loss of trust, fear, anxiety, anger, disbelief, shame, depression, denial, retriggering, disorientation.

So being calm while discussing a rape makes your whole story crumble? Why am I not surprised? It seems that most justice systems worldwide, if the country even has laws about rape, approach such cases with little understanding of how victims will react to the trauma of sexual assault.

Coming back to New Delhi, in light of psychological evidence to the contrary, how can any court diminish the importance of a woman's report of rape simply because she "seemed calm" while discussing the experience? Also from The Hindu:

counsel for the accused had also submitted that the victim and her parents had registered similar complaints at police stations in Bawana and Narela in North-West Delhi and also the Sector-58 police station at Noida in U.P.

Right... so having experienced multiple rapes discounts your current allegations. I've heard of plenty of U.S. defense attorneys using the same sort of tactic in order to weaken the prosecution's case in a rape trial. In fact, it seems to be the norm. Evidence shows that rape is even more prevalent in India than in the US or many other countries (this linked article being only one of many examples: just google "india rape statistics" and find out more), so should it be at all surprising that a victim could have experienced multiple attacks?

Returning again to the news story at hand: the accused man had similar complaints lodged against him last year. Why is it that multiple victimizations hurt a victim's case, but multiple arrests/attacks do nothing to further the case against a rapist?

Meanwhile, in Japan, a football player gets his sentence reduced for his part in a gang rape, under the reasoning that "the drunkenness of the victims helped trigger the crime."

When will criminal justice systems stop operating under commonly held myths about rape and sexual violence, and start recognizing the reality of the terror that women worldwide face every day?