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The Invisible War: it’s so much scarier than you think

24 Jan

*This post has been edited to reflect some very useful feedback.

Just as a warning:  I don’t know too much about military parlance so if I called something by the wrong name, I apologize, this sort of thing is slightly outside my area of expertise.  Also, I am not speaking critically about those who choose a career in the military or those who serve for a shorter period of time.  I am simply criticizing the lack of accountability within the military structure when it comes to issues of rape and sexual assault.  I thought women had it bad in this respect in the civilian world but man oh man was I wrong.  Read on if you feel so inclined.

I can think of at least a dozen times over the past few years when I’ve said, in conversation with someone about equal treatment for women, that if there is a draft women should be drafted along side men.  Would I want to be drafted?  Hell no.  Violence scares me.  Guns scare me.  Basic training scares me.  The way I know I would react to authorities yelling at me scares me.  All of that aside I always thought, honestly believed, that women fought for a really long time (in fact, we are still fighting) for equal treatment and that means we have to take the good with the bad.  Along with a desire for equal pay for equal work, we should be required to defend our country if need be.  We should be drafted.  So you would think that when I got a New York Times alert on my phone this afternoon that said “Pentagon Lifts Ban on Women Serving in Combat Roles” I would be happy.  Well, not happy, but relieved.  Well…placated.  Yea, I think placated.  But I wasn’t.  I was angry.

This past Tuesday my friend Dee and I went to the Film Society of Lincoln Center to see “The Invisible War.”  The film was temporarily re-released in anticipation of the Oscars for which “The Invisible War” was nominated in the documentary category.  I had been really interested to see it which makes sense since, I recently discovered, I pretty much only read about sexual assault and urban farming. (Only a slight exaggeration.  I also read whatever happens to be in the New Yorker.)  Anyway, “The Invisible War” is an investigative documentary about the instances, and handling (or lack thereof), of rape and sexual assault in the US military.  Now I knew going into it that it wasn’t handled well (when is it, for crying out loud) but I was not prepared for what I saw.  Not even close.  Just to give you an idea, the movie was 1 hour and 37 minutes long and I probably cried for about 1 hour and 27 minutes of that.  It was, to put it lightly, horrifying.  Honestly, the movie was incredibly done but I just could not wait for it to be over.  I just sat there and watched the women and men they interviewed go back over the most painful experiences of their lives and I can tell you that watching them speak, I realized that I don’t think I actually know what pain is.  What injustice is.  I have never experienced pain or injustice even close to what the victims in this film did and do every day.  How they get out of bed in the morning after what they went through, after what they continue to go through, is an incredible feat.  And the thing is, that the fight they are fighting seems almost hopeless.

According to “The Invisible War,” since women were allowed to serve in the military, there have been at least 500,000 rapes and sexual assaults.  500,000.  And in the overwhelming majority of those cases, there has been no significant investigation, no conviction.  These men, these monsters, continue to serve in the military and in at least one case, receive an honor for service while their rape charge was being argued within the military justice system.  How?  How is that possible?  How is it possible that an act so vile is just ignored over and over again?  That the victim is dishonorably discharged, or discharged for medical reasons stemming from her attack, and the predator is allowed to continue to serve, continue to prey.  And then that predator is released into the civilian population and you’d better believe he continues to prey there.  These are the people that are supposed to protect.  How can we send them into other countries to fight, to represent the United States, when they are drugging and raping their fellow soldiers, when they are hitting a fellow soldier so hard across the face that she has to stay on a soft diet for years, when they are calling a fellow soldier “the walking mattress” because of the amount of times she has been raped.  Who are we that we let this continue to happen within an organization that should make us proud? Whose members we trust to behave in a respectful, or at the very least humane, manner?

So when I read that article this afternoon, I didn’t feel as though another level of equality had been reached, I felt sickened and afraid.  All I could think about when I read that headline was that the more units women can serve in in this current military system, the more women will be raped, their lives destroyed.  Rape in the military, according to the military, is something that happens.  It is something that needs to be prevented by forcing women to have buddies when walking through their own barracks at night so they don’t get attacked.  It is prevention aimed at women.  It is the women’s responsibility to make sure they don’t put themselves in a dangerous situation.  It’s not about the men being told that rape is wrong.  What are women supposed to do when a man, their superior, breaks into their room and rapes them on their own bed?  When they are told that if they speak out they will be killed?  When rape is considered “an occupational hazard” of joining the armed forces?  It makes me sick.

So now I have to change my tune.  You know what?  I do still think that, ideally, women should be drafted alongside men if a draft is required.  I think women should be welcome in every single unit in the armed forces.  But a lot of things have to change before that.  Rape in the military needs to be taken seriously by the military, by the government, by the country.  Rape cases need to be tried outside of the military so there is accountability and transparency.  Rapists need to be held accountable for their actions because if they continue to get away with it, what reason do they have to ever stop?  And rape victims need to be treated as such, as victims.  Whether they be male or female, they need justice to be served.  They need proper medical, emotional and psychological support and treatment.  They need to know it was not their fault.  So until women are treated as equal…no, fuck that.  Until women are treated as human beings by the military as a whole, I am not in support of women in combat roles.  I am not in support of women in any role at all.  And that’s not because I think women are incapable, quite the opposite.  Women are incredibly capable of doing just about anything men can do.  It’s because I think that the patriarchal system within which our military sits quite nicely is not fit to offer women what they need:  protection and respect.  If we put our life on the line for this country, then the least you can do is promise us that we will not be raped by those with whom we serve.  Or, if not that because some evil seeps into every organization, at least promise us that if we are raped, justice will be done.  Promise us we will get the support and protection we deserve.  Until then, you don’t deserve our loyalty.  You don’t deserve our bodies on the front lines.  You don’t deserve women.

(You all should see “The Invisible War.”  Bring tissues.  And maybe a punching bag.)

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Roe v Wade is 40!

17 Jan

I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about how, sometimes, being a woman really sucks.  I wrote about it here, when I talked about street harassment.  And again here, when I discussed this recent tragedy in Delhi.  And then here and here and here, when I went on about how much certain politicians and real estate moguls are complete asshats.  And, for one last example, here in a discussion of a particularly off-putting experience I had while bartending one Friday night.  Honestly, those are only a choice few, feel free to go adventuring through the rest of my blog for a few more fun examples.  Being female in this world is like constant fodder for me and this blog.  In fact, my first ever post on this blog was inspired by the fact that I am in possession of breasts and a vagina.  Without those things, who knows whether this blog ever would have come into existence!  Along those lines, I would like more than anything to weigh in on this whole Manti Te’o disaster and how disgraceful it is, as was pointed out by Melinda Henneburger here and here, that Notre Dame and the entire country got so riled up over the death of a fake person while, 2 years ago, the death of a real girl, Lizzy Seeberg, went almost completely unnoticed.  The same university machine that has used its resources and soap box to paint Manti Te’o as a victim – which maybe he is (either that or he is unstable and still deserves support) – claimed that Lizzy Seeberg falsely accused a different football player of sexual assault, a player who never sat out a day of practice following her accusal and IN FACT was not interviewed until 5 days after her death which was 10 days after the assault allegedly* occurred.  But I’m not going to write about that today.  Today is different.  Today I am going to use this opportunity, the 4oth anniversary of Roe v Wade, to talk about why I think being a woman, and specifically a woman in America, is awesome.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have now been sitting here staring at my computer for about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to proceed.

Okay.  Here goes.

I love the fact that when I was in school, every sport had to either have a team specifically for men and one for women, or, if there was no women’s team available, women had to be allowed to play with the men, or vice versa.  Granted, there were no female football players or male field hockey players, but the option was there.  Also, our football team sucked and so our sports heroes, as much as we had any really, were the members of the women’s varsity soccer team.  They kicked ass.

I love the fact that I can vote, can drive a car, can live on my own, can walk around with my head held high, making eye contact willy-nilly (but not with people who look like maybe they are crazy and want to (a) attack me or (b) get me to sign some sheet supporting environmental rights and just give them my credit card number right there on 5th Avenue!  Yea right.  Whaddayou think I am, stupid?).

I love the fact that when I was little and swore off skirts and dresses my mom, and society at large, was totally cool with me wearing sweatshirts with “Mr. Egghead” on the front or bright yellow overalls.

I love the fact that, at least theoretically, I can hold any job that a man can hold and that, maybe eventually, I will be paid equally for equal work.  (Well, I guess that one falls a little flat, doesn’t it?)

I love the fact that in my classes from grade school on through graduate school, my opinions were respected and appreciated as much as my male classmates and that my insight, having been gained from my experiences as a woman, were never, at least not to my knowledge, dismissed as feminist ranting.

I love that I live in a country that allows someone like Hillary Rodham Clinton to be where she is today.  (So glad that health thing is okay now!)

I love that I live in a place where I am able to express my opinions while at my job, with my friends, or on this blog without feeling threatened or unsafe.

I love that, at least theoretically and for now, if I, or any woman I know, find myself pregnant at a time when, for whatever reason, I feel I cannot or do not want to carry that baby to terms, then I have options.

I’m sure I am missing some things here.  There are plenty of other reasons that it is great to be a woman and, forgetting some things means that I am taking a few things for granted which is both good and bad.  It’s always good to be aware of the ways in which we have it good, but sometimes its nice to have the luxury to assume a few things, to have that battle be unmistakably won.  I do hope though that, when it comes to historic wins like Title IX and women’s suffrage and Roe v Wade, that we never forget how far we’ve come and how hard we fought.  We’ve got a long way to go, people, but let’s not forget where we came from.  Happy anniversary, Roe v Wade.  Today I would like to renew my vow to fight for your continuance.

*Man, I hate that word and everything it represents.  Something about the word “allegedly” makes me feel like by saying it that I am not believing the victim, which I do, because the overwhelming majority of the time rape and sexual assault victims do not report rape or sexual assault unless it actually happened.  So, “allegedly” is out.  Never again to be used on this blog.  That’s a promise.

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A Reflection Post-Delhi

3 Jan

A little over a week ago when I was at work and before any customers came in, I was listening to the news while I set up the bar.  CNN was covering the protests that had swept through India after the brutal gang rape of a female student in Delhi, a city that is known for having high instances of sexual attacks.  The station had set up an interview with someone they considered important and knowledgeable — a man in his mid-to-late 40s — in order to get some local input on the attack itself as well as the protests that had erupted in its aftermath.  He said the normal things.  You know, how horrible the attack was, how he hoped the young woman would pull through, how surprised he was by the size of the protests when so many similar attacks (although I would imagine the majority of them far less brutal) had elicited nothing to that degree.  And then he said something (which I will paraphrase), by way of explanation of the rape itself, that has been clanging in my head for the past 8 days:

The reason these attacks have been happening is because of the percentage of males to females in the overall population.  These men don’t have women to settle down with.  There aren’t enough of them.  So they are frustrated and this is what happens.

And then there was clattering and screeching noises inside my head and I had to sit down.

Okay, so, it is true.  There are more men than women in Delhi.  According to the Delhi Census of 2011, the city itself has an overall population of 16,753,235.  Of that 16.7 million people, 8,976,410 are men and 7,776,825 are women.  So that you don’t have to do the math, that means that, in 2011 at least, there were 1,199,585 more men than women living in Delhi.  Sure, that’s a lot of people.  And sure, I imagine it is very frustrating for men who want to get married and have sex…or have sex and get married…or just have sex.  Being frustrated, as legitimate as it may be, is no excuse to get together with your friends, pretend to drive a shuttle bus, and pick up a girl off the street who is simply trying to get home and literally rape her to death.  No amount of frustration can ever justify that.  Ever.

You know what that is?  That sounds to me like you are trying to take the weight of responsibility off of these mens’ shoulders and blame it on sheer numbers.  They simply couldn’t help themselves.  Their desires to stick their penis in something was simply too great.  They were powerless to resist.  You know what I think?  I think that what happened to that woman, what those men did to her, was generations in the making and not just in India but everywhere.  All over the world.  (This analysis does not take the onus of responsibility off the individuals who perpetrated this attack, but simply is an attempt to put it into a greater context of inequality and violence.)  We are all guilty.  Sure, female infanticide is a part of it.  But the fact that there are less females than males is not what makes female infanticide a crucial part of this story.  The mindset that allows the killing, the neglect, the abandonment of female children is what makes this important.  The mindset that many people have that females are worth less than males is what allows people to justify killing their own babies and is part of the society in which these men are raised.  It is what allows them to see women as less human than they are.  As simply a hole in which to stick their penises.

But it goes beyond India.  And it goes beyond infanticide.  That is just one small part of it.  We, unfortunately, live in a world where, as I have said before, the female body is a battle ground.  Where the word of a female does not count for as much as the word of a male.  I read today in the newspaper that the Indian government, in response to this attack, has fast tracked the investigation and the trial of these men in order to show that this is not acceptable behavior.  But what about all the other rapes that were never investigated in India?  What about all the unopened rape kits that sit on shelves in cities and town across the United States, their statutes of limitations running out?  It’s a lot of work, it takes a lot of resources, to go through all those kits and we simply can’t keep up with the rate of sexual assaults.  But shouldn’t that be the biggest sign that something is wrong?  That we are dealing not with a few isolated incidents but instead with an epidemic?  Women are raped every single day.  Every single one.  Every day a man, or a group of men, decide to force open the legs of a women and violate her.  Insert himself inside of her.  And every day a man, or a group of men, all over the world gets away with it and the woman is left to pick up the pieces.  Often it is she is who vilified.  At what point are people in the mainstream, not people in a corner of the internet, but people with power and sway going to admit that we have a worldwide problem with the way we think about women.

We need to stop making excuses.  We need to stop trying to blame specific policies or cultural norms or religious laws.  We need to realize that we have a serious worldwide, cross-cultural, cross-societal, cross-religious deficit in the way we view women.  We can change laws.  We can have protests.  We can even hang a few people.*  But until we look inwards and understand that this view of women is engrained in us, all of us, nothing is actually going to change.  We will have another horrific gang rape in Delhi, or a small town in Texas.  We will have another woman assaulted by a powerful man, be it the French leader of an international organization or the president of the United States, and then dragged through the media, her reputation completely destroyed while, for the most part, the man continues in his pursuit of power and sex relatively unscathed.

Honestly, I just don’t think it should be that hard.  Part of being a human being, in my estimation, is to keep your eyes and ears open and constantly take things in, learn and adjust your behavior.  Maybe you were raised somewhere where everyone told you the Holocaust never happened and that Jews were born with horns.  But then you read Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz” and you realize what you were told simply isn’t true and you set off to learn and understand and adjust yourself to your new understanding of history and the world.   Women and men are physically different, sure, but in terms of our worth in the world we are equal.  It’s simple, just start there.  Without women, there would be no men and without men, no women.  We need each other for the species to survive.  So it’s not just that we need to respond to specific instances of infanticide, of rape, of abuse, of victim blaming. We need to acknowledge, and respond to, the environment that allows these things to continue happening.  We all, barring perhaps the sociopathic, think that murder is wrong, evil.  So why not rape?  Why not date rape?  Why not violence against women overall?  Let’s start there.  Raping a woman should mean the end of a political career.  It should be a sign that something is severely wrong with the perpetrator.  Rape is far too commonplace because people get away with it.  Because, for so many, the woman played a crucial role in her own assault simply by existing.  Because, in some places and to some people, a woman is tarnished by her rape, is considered dirty, undesirable.  The woman feels embarrassed, ashamed.  But it is us, all of us, that should feel ashamed that this keeps happening, again and again, and we don’t really, seriously, try changing the scope of the conversation.  So let’s try.

*For the record I am never in favor of capital punishment.  Let them rot in jail, I say.  And Indian prison, or so I have read, is not a fun place to live out your days.

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Breast is Best Fundamentalism, Take 1

21 Nov

I read this article at work this past Saturday about a topic that has been bothering me on and off for the past 6 months or so:  the so-called “Breast is Best” movement.  I am going to treat this as the first of a series of posts on this topic with the hope that I come back to it on other occasions.  No promises.  Also, I get there, as usual, via a rather winding road so bear with me.  Okay, here goes.

In the article, titled “After Hurricane Sandy, Helping Hands Also Expose a New York Divide,” author Sarah Maslin Nir discusses the post-Sandy emergence (or really highlighting), of a racial and financial divide between those largely seeking help and those providing it.  In Nir’s own words,

Hurricane Sandy, the cliché of the moment goes, created a city of haves and have-nots; those New Yorkers with power and heat and the many other assurances of modern life, and those without. But the storm simply made plain the dividing lines in a city long fractured by class, race, ethnicity, geography and culture.

We are a diverse city.  We are a city that has come a very long way.  But we are no means existing in some utopia I have heard people describe as a “post-racial society.”  So here we are, a few weeks out of Sandy, looking at who needs help and who is in a position to provide it.  Help.  It’s an interesting conundrum and one worth thinking about.  I remember taking a class in high school that talked a lot about aid and charity and wondering why, if we have it we can’t just give it.  Why should donating my time and money be such a weighted issue?  Why can’t it just be easy?  As I got older I started thinking about all the different nuances of help.  What’s the difference — racially, culturally, geographically, financially, historically — between those who need and those who provide?  I started realizing that I have to put the idea of help into a much larger conversation, one about race and class, about access and opportunity, about history.  I also realized I had to start thinking about motives.  For some, donating time and money might just be about responding to the obvious.  It might be about acknowledging a need and addressing it.  For others, though, it’s all about what helping says about you, how it can help you, what you can gain from it.  For some, it’s about some sort of incredibly problematic curiosity.  Again, in Nir’s words:

Those coming to (the volunteers) for relief worry that their helpers are taking some voyeuristic interest in their plight, treating it as an exotic weekend outing, “like we’re in a zoo,” said one resident of a Rockaway project — echoing a complaint often heard in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina — as volunteers snapped iPhone photos of her as she waited in line for donated food and clothing.

I honestly can’t even talk about this paragraph.  Okay, I sort of will.  First of all, who does that?  And what do those people do, run back to their friends and show them pictures of those “poor, poor people?”  Then they talk about how, “oh, it was just so awful how those people are forced to live but I mean, look at the lines in her face?  Isn’t it also sort of beautiful?”  I just made myself throw up in my mouth a little.  Sometimes I think that in this world of technology and smart phones and Instagram and whatever else we all just think we are observers rather than active participants.  Or that when we are looking at our phone, when we are doing things in our personal internet space, that we are no longer visible to others, that our actions no longer impact those around us.  Well, I can tell you that just because you are looking at someone through the lens of your camera phone does not mean they cannot see you.  They see you and they think you are an asshole.  You’re there to supposedly help, not to help yourself to images of people’s lives.  Get a clue.

Anyway, I got off topic.  To the point! So, this:

As she gave out diapers and cases of infant formula to storm victims, Bethany Yarrow, 41, a folk singer from Williamsburg who has been volunteering with other parents from the private school her children attend, said she was shocked by the many poor mothers in the Arverne section of the Rockaways who did not breast feed. The group, she said, was working on bringing in a lactation consultant.

“So that it’s not just ‘Here are some diapers and then go back to your misery,’ ” she said. (Bold text mine.)

(Deep breathing exercises.)  I want to start by saying the following thing:  fuck you, Bethany Yarrow.  Seriously.  Bethany Yarrow, you have no idea what you are talking about.  How dare you presume to know anything about how the residents of the Rockaways live.  How dare you assume that, without your help and your “lactation consultant” that they live in “misery.”  That sort of thinking is exactly the problem.  Let me just travel down here in my big, fancy SUV and wave my magic milk wand and make your lives like mine, which is so wonderful and blessed.

So there are a few things.  Women, in general, are smart.  IQ smart or not, there is a desire, within most parents I would say, for their children to do well, to have all the possible opportunities available, to be happy and healthy.   Women care about their children and they want the best for them.  That means that they make the best decisions for them based off of their lives, their information, their opportunities.  To assume that poor women do not consider different options is simply incorrect.  But also, to assume they have the same abilities and constraints to come to the same conclusions as their financially wealthy peers is also incorrect, woefully so.  Bethany Yarrow is a folk singer.  I imagine that in her specific career, for the most part, she is able to make her own schedule, meaning the ability to be around to breast feed her children when they are hungry.  If she isn’t able to be around, I imagine that she is able to pump.  Good for Bethany Yarrow.  The conversation about breast feeding is contingent on other things than simply personal preference.  It exists within a bigger context.  (Let’s put aside the women who are unable to produce enough milk to sufficiently feed their children.)  A lot of women have to work in order to provide for their families.  A lot of jobs don’t provide maternity leave, pumping rooms, child care.  So is it your belief, Bethany Yarrow, that women should forgo their paycheck in order to breast feed their children?  That doesn’t seem like a particularly realistic solution.  Is your lactation consultant somehow going to change the perception of women in the workplace?  Not only is the system not set up for women generally, but it is not set up for poor women and it is certainly not set up for pregnant and nursing women.  Being the giver of life gets in the way of productivity and efficiency.

I am going to make a maybe unpopular comparison.  When all of us talk about a woman’s right to choose in the abortion context we are operating under a certain set of assumptions.  We are assuming that women are capable of making important decisions.  We are assuming that women know what is best for them, their bodies, their families.  We are assuming that women have access to clinics, for the making of a decision to even be possible.  Those assumptions should hold true regardless the topic at hand across the board, no matter the color of skin, the god(s) worshiped or not believed in, the economic position.  That means that all women, yes, even poor women of color Bethany Yarrow, are capable of making a decision about whether they want to breast feed and, perhaps more importantly, whether it is even possible for them.  Maybe they, like women living in North Dakota with its lack of abortion clinics, aren’t in a position to even make a choice about their own bodies because the resources they need to make those choices are not available to them.  I just don’t see how women being condescending and forcing their own values on other women in the sphere of breast feeding is any different, on an intellectual level, from male politicians forcing their pro-life agenda on all of us.  It takes away control over our own lives and bodies and it ignores realities of the world.

So, Bethany Yarrow and friends, think before you decide to help.  Think before you assume that your lactation consultant is either welcome or appropriate.  Maybe use your “good intentions” to advance the conversation about requiring break rooms for breast feeding women, protecting the rights of women working in minimum and hourly-wage jobs, and listening to those around you.  Your approach to parenting might be the best for you, but it isn’t the best, or even possible, for everyone.  Look around yourself and figure it out.  Because, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

A Beefcake Ruined my Workout

24 Oct

Today was the first day of my training for the New Orleans marathon which is exactly 4 months from today, on February 24th.  The plan I downloaded suggested that I run 5 miles at a 9:02 pace.  Okay, that’s not bad.  I decided to head to the gym and run on the treadmill because the idea of running the better part of a mile uphill to run a loop of the park (involving another hill) was just too much to handle.  I was feeling runner-lazy.  Obviously I am taking this process very seriously.  My goals are to make it to the start line prepared and injury-free and to complete the full 26.2 miles in under 3:45.  I think it’s possible.*

After my run, I decided to try and get into the groove of lifting weights, something I know is necessary but I hate with the strength of a thousand suns. (Did I get that saying right?)  I headed over to that weird dip thing and did some leg lifts.  Then I decided to do squats.  As I was walking towards the area with the body bars, dumbbells, and kettle bells I saw this rather beefy guy looking at me.  I half smiled at him in what I hoped was a dismissive yet friendly way, turned my music up, and grabbed a body bar to commence the squatting.  I could see him watching me in the mirror.  Then I saw it.  A little condescending smirk and a slight shake of the head, and then he motioned for me to take off my headphones.  I pretended I didn’t see him.  He did it again, this time in a more obvious manner.  I couldn’t ignore him.  I could have just shook my head “no” and went about my workout but I hate to be rude when I’m not (a) working and faced with some drunken asshole who I have to handle or (b) on the move, thereby escaping from the look of shock upon my response to the offensive cat calling or, my favorite, the “god bless you” whisper, I had to endure.  Shudder.  The conversation went as follows:

Beefcake: What do you do?  Run?

Me: Yup.

Beefcake:  Mind if I give you a few tips about that squat?

Me:  (Yes) Um…I guess not.

He then, without getting up, began instructing me on the proper approach to the squat which, I have to say, was exactly the opposite of how everyone else ever in the history of me has told me is the proper way to do it.  Whatever, I indulged him.  I just wanted him to stop talking to me.  He then proceeded to lecture me about the importance of working out my abs and back to make me a stronger runner.  I tried to explain to him that I already know all this, that I just hate the gym but that I am working on it but he was on a roll and wouldn’t really let me get a word in edgewise.  I figured it better to just let him run out of steam and move on.  And then,

Beefcake: I’m a trainer here, that’s why I was giving you tips

Me:  Yea, I figured.

Beefcake:  I’m really good with faces.  I haven’t seen you here in awhile.  You been going somewhere else?

Me:  A little I guess. I just really hate the gym.

Beefcake:  Really?  Why?

Me:  (Because I am stuck talking to people like you?) I don’t know.  It smells.

Beefcake:  Oh, well, do you remember seeing me?

Me:  No.  I don’t pay attention to people in the gym.  I just workout and leave and don’t look at anybody or talk to anybody. (Meaningful stare.)

I guess he got the picture because he walked away.  But then I was too self-conscious to do the rest of my squats because he was nearby, doing all his fancy pull-ups and shit and I knew he was watching and would swoop in and correct me at any moment.  And here’s the thing, I guess I wouldn’t have minded some tips if it weren’t for the following two things.  One, that smirk.  That cocky, rude smirk and that little dismissive head shake that communicated to me not concern for a possible knee injury, but a “you silly girl, let me show you how it’s done.”  And two, the obvious lie that he told me when he noticed me doing my squats ‘wrong.’  I saw him see me walking over from the dip machine, which is located behind a pillar.  He was just watching, and waiting.  I could have done a toe-raiser and he would have corrected me.  So, Beefcake at the gym, I write you this letter:

Dear Beefcake,

If you want to help someone out with something, kindly be a little less condescending and a little less of a liar.  You ruined my workout.  Please never talk to me again.  Ever.

From

The Runner with the Long Hair

*Just a little side note.  I will not, going forward, subject you, dear readers, to the ins and outs of my marathon training.  I might make reference to it here and there, but that’s about it.  So, worry not, details of my Yasso 800s will not take the place of my ranting about peeping toms, people making shitty comparisons to Hitler, or Donald Trump, who easily makes my top 5 least favorite people list.

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Money > People

23 Oct

If you haven’t yet noticed through reading this blog, or if you don’t already know about this through knowing me personally, I work in parallels.  I read things, I get upset about things, but sometimes the only way for me to make sense of it all is to compare the thing I am upset about — but that I lack the language to work through — to something else seemingly unconnected to it and draw a line between the two.  I guess I like to create an equal playing field within my mind and hold dissimilar things to similar standards.  That’s how I got from domestic violence within a human rights framework to trade agreements.  Onward.

This past week I had the pleasure of leaving Brooklyn and traveling, via Bolt Bus, to Washington, DC to visit a very good friend of mine who just recently started law school.  The timing couldn’t have been better.  She was on fall break and needed a small brain vacation from the stresses of the first year of law school which, as I understand it, is a torturous experience.  I needed a vacation from the stresses associated with the ridiculous amount of guilt I feel about avoiding my thesis.  It’s basically become a full-time job.  Anyway, one of the things we did while I was down there was attend a super interesting talk about the idea of domestic violence within the international human rights framework.  Yea, I didn’t really understand how that worked either.  So here is my very basic explanation of the things we learned about, lacking probably crucial details, because my memory just ain’t what it used to be.

So basically what I learned was that being a woman is a lot of times terrible.  And, not surprisingly, this is no different within the legal framework.  The professor and guest lecturer went over a number of cases over the past few decades within the United States that basically eroded the ability of victims of domestic violence (generally women and children) to bring charges against the state for negligence.  When someone takes out a restraining order, the idea is not that the state is in that person’s house, intervening at the first sign of trouble.  Instead, the police (or so I thought) have an obligation to enforce a restraining order if the holder of it calls them, reporting that the order has been broken in some way.  I learned that although one would think that a mandatory restraining order means that the police, an agent of the state by the way (until they are inevitably privatized which scares the shit out of me), are required to protect the holder of the order of protection from the person she took it out against.  That, oddly enough, is not exactly the case.  Mandatory, in this case, doesn’t actually mean mandatory.  The state is under no legal obligation to protect a victim from her victimizer even if she has gone through the appropriate mechanisms to seek guaranteed safety.  There were a few different legal avenues a woman could previously take to bring charges against the state for negligence.  All of those avenues have been systematically eroded, now leaving a victim without means to sue the state if, say, her children are murdered at the hands of her violent ex-husband from whom she is supposedly protected.  Scary, right?  So what is the next step?

This is where international human rights enters.  Human rights, or at least the way that I think about them, are based upon this moral and ethical understanding that all people are equal.  I know that is super simplistic.  What has happened in the US in terms of DV is that the state apparatus is protecting itself from the whims of its citizens.  Part of human rights is that they protect individuals from the whims of the state.  So, the next step could be that women, who have exhausted all domestic options in terms of holding someone accountable for the actions, or lack thereof, of the state or an actor of the state, bring their tale of violated rights to an international human rights body.    That body, in the case we heard about it was the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which then looks at the facts, looks at the legislative trail and comes to a decision as to whether or not an individual’s human rights have been violated and then sends that finding to the offending state, allowing the state in question to respond.  In the case of the US who, obviously if you know anything about our record on this sort of thing,* has not ratified whatever it needs to ratify to be held accountable by this organization and so whatever the IACHR might find in the case of the US basically holds no water.  It is an embarrassment to the US, sure, but there is nothing that the IACHR can do.  It has no power.

Part of the reason for this is that the United States, in all its exceptionalism and all its talk about holding other countries accountable for human rights violations, does not want to be held accountable for its own.  It does not want to give any other body jurisdiction over the affairs within its borders.  It’s like human rights isolationism.  So aside from a strongly worded letter, a victim has absolutely no recourse.  No wait while I blow your mind even more.

I just recently (as in about 20 minutes ago when I decided to write this blog) read this article in Salon by Matt Stoller.  It’s worth a read and contains a whole lot more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) than what I am about to say.  Basically, the TPP, along with NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, gives foreign companies the rights to impact US law.  The WTO, for example, can put sanctions on the US if its domestic environmental, financial and social interest laws are too restrictive of foreign products.  Have you noticed that all tuna cans no longer have huge labels pronouncing that product dolphin-free?  That’s because it was negatively impacting companies exporting tuna to the US.  When we are dealing at an international level without standardization in regards to manufacturing and product safety, this is not something we can really afford.  And yet we do it.  Somehow it is reasonable to amend our laws to permit the sale of candy-flavored cigarettes but not to guarantee state-sanctioned protection of a domestic violence victim.  Abiding by international trade laws is more important than human rights norms.  Placating trade partners is more important than protecting our citizens.  Money is more important than people.

* The US has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child or the landmine ban, among other things.  I leave you to imagine why that might be.

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Some (belated) Thoughts on the Debate and Politics

9 Oct

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction this country is going since the (embarrassing) debate last Wednesday night.  As I sat on my sofa, watching these two men vying for a job as President of the United States of America my stomach dropped.  To be entirely honest, the feeling in the pit of my stomach actually kept me from sitting through the entire debate and the residual discomfort will, very likely, keep me from watching any of the other three.  Maybe this feeling will pass and I will give it another go but I doubt it.  Anyway, here are some thoughts.

I am someone who believes in government, who believes that it is important for there to be some sort of check to business expansion, that there should be services provided for people who, for whatever reason, are unable to provide those services for themselves.  Yes, politics can be dirty.  Yes, politicians can be corrupt.  But I am entirely unwilling to write this entire system we have built off and characterize everyone that makes up our government, and the government of other countries, as clowns.  Perhaps I am idealistic but I do not see a better outcome if we scratch the whole thing.  I think the system needs changing, the rules of the game need changing, and the behavior of our politicians  need changing.  All this was very clear by the disaster that was the first debate of this election season.  But I do think the system can still work and, a lot of times, actually does.  I think the system relies a lot on those of us who spend the time reading and learning and take the time to speak out against things, or in support of things, and go out and vote.  Just vote.  As a good friend of mine said the other day, write someone into the ballot if you have to.  Make a statement.  Let people know what we have, the options we have, does not work for you.  That is how change starts.

But I am off track.  Back to some thoughts.

Thought #1.  How can two candidates spend the amount of time they spent talking about healthcare and never, not once, mention that women pay more than men do for healthcare across the board?  Our rates are higher.  We, ladies, are pre-existing conditions.  ObamaCare actually addresses this issue.  Obama never mentioned it.  Romney certainly was not going to given his new found distaste for women thanks to Rick Santorum, Paul Ryan, et al.  So, Obama, let me say this to you:  think about us, like, really.  You did a great thing with ObamaCare.  You included us in there.  Flaunt it!  Women are watching, we are listening, and we care about more than just jobs and education and tax rates.  (Don’t get me wrong, we care about those things, too.)  We are smart, we educate ourselves, we know what makes us better off.  We vote.  God damnit, we matter!  We matter a lot.  We fight an uphill battle every day against things we might not even be able to articulate.  We are so immersed in a world in which we are undervalued, in which we are considered less than, that it makes a difference when a policy is written that actually takes us into consideration.  You did a good thing, Mr. President.  Own it.  Show that you care about women and that Romney and Ryan still think that our internal organs and lady brains somehow make us enigmas.

Thought #2.  Clean coal.  I’m sorry.  Really?  Clean coal?  There is nothing clean about coal, really.  And if you gut the EPA, as the plan is, then there is absolutely no incentive whatsoever for industry to try and make coal cleaner.  Here’s the thing about business.  Business wants to be efficient, and business wants to make money.  Profits.  Period.  Business doesn’t wake up one day and say “oh, hey, I feel like doing a good deed, let me go ahead and spend millions and millions of dollars to lower my carbon footprint.”  No.  If there are no regulations, business has no reason to clean up.  And who can blame business for that?  But guess what?  A few decades down the line when the earth is even more polluted than it is today, when polar bears don’t even have small bits of ice to depressingly float around on in all of those gloom and doom NatGeo specials, and most of the energy sources we rely on in the good old US of A are depleted, a lot of other countries will have come up with other ideas.  And they will have businesses that work on them.  And those businesses will be making money.  And we will have no EPA and water that catches on fire when you bring a match close to it.  Clean coal my ass.  That ship has sailed.  Actually, no, that ship tried sailing and instead sunk.

Thought #3.  Shut up about PBS.

Thought #4.  I think manners are really important.  One of the things that always gets me into hot water at the bar in which I work is that I really believe people should have manners and should respect those around them.  I consider this a high expectation when copious amounts of alcohol and late nights are involved.  I am going to go out on a limb and assume that there was no alcohol involved in the poor performance delivered by both the President and Mitt Romney.  It would be inappropriate and, besides, Romney is a Mormon.  Anyway, the smug looks they both delivered have got to go.  And the interrupting.  I’m pretty sure I learned to let people have their turn to speak in kindergarten.  Or!  Maybe we should institute a talking stick at debates.  Could you imagine?  It would go like this:

Obama:  So, if you look at Romney’s plan, he wants to cut 5 trillion dollars from blah blah blah blah

Romney:  That!  That is not true!  That is not in my plan!

Jim Lehrer:  Now, Mitt, do you have the talking stick?

Romney:  (looking down at his very empty hands) No…but..he started this round and…

Lehrer:  No talking stick, no talking.

Now that’s a debate I could get behind.

More thoughts undoubtedly to come.  But for now, dinner.

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Donald, Revisited.

20 Sep

As anyone who read my previous post knows, I think Donald Trump is a complete idiot and an embarrassment and someone who should just do us all a favor and shut up.  But apparently, Donald Trump just keeps talking.  So, as a follow-up to a tip from my friend Michael, I bring to you complete gender-bias, a la Donald Trump.

After his tweet regarding Kate Middleton sunbathing topless:

Kate Middleton is great — but she shouldn’t be sunbathing in the nude — only herself to blame

he added these wonderful words of wisdom on, of course, Fox and Friends:

Who wouldn’t take Kate’s picture and make lots of money if she does the nude sunbathing thing. Come on Kate!  While we’re all fans of Kate, can you imagine why she would ever be out in the nude? Why would she be standing in the nude in a swimming pool or wherever she was. She’s Kate. It’s terrible what they did, it’s terrible to take pictures, but boy, how can you do a thing so stupid?

I just have to add here that me.  Me and all the people I know.  (I’m pretty sure.)  I wouldn’t take Kate’s picture and make lots of money even though it would really help me in paying off my annoyingly stressful student loans.  I would, personally, rather have debt and be able to look at myself in the mirror and feel good about how I didn’t violate someone else’s privacy and then make money off it.  Donald, obviously, even though he has a lot of money (I think?  Or is he bankrupt again?  Who can keep track?!) would take her picture and make lots of money, even though he is a “fan” of Kate, whatever that means in his fucked-up misogynistic Trump mind.  (Which makes me wonder.  Is he a fan of Kate all the time?  Or only when she gets caught sunbathing in the nude?)  But it gets worse!  He then said the following thing in regards to all the hooplah surrounding the sale of photos of Prince Harry’s penis to the tabloids (which, for the record, I also think is really morally wrong.  See?  I care about the menz, too!):

The Harry thing you can almost say he was less… his security did a pretty bad job. But to be outside at a swimming pool without a top on and you’re Kate… you know. Maybe they can stop it but it is a very, very foolish thing she did.

Harry’s penis?  Security should have stopped that!  Kate’s boobs?  Her fault!
I just…ugh.  I am going to sit in the corner and watch this until all the frustration goes away.
Copyright BBC and Urban Myth/Toto. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED.
Also, I learned how to insert video into my blog.  Let the fun begin.

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Donald Trump is a Dope

18 Sep

There are very few people, famous or otherwise, that get my blood boiling quite like Donald Trump.  To me he is the epitome of everything that is wrong with the United States and at least some percentage of what is wrong with the world.  He is excessive.  He is greedy.  He is a total misogynist.  And good god that hair.  Seriously.  What is with that hair?!  I am so annoyed by Donald Trump, in fact, that I don’t even like to say things like “you trumped me” because there was a time in my life when I was fairly convinced that the word “trump” was actually Donald’s last name repurposed.  (That time was up until about 6 months ago when my mom assured me that the word “trump” actually predated Donald Trump.  I am still not fully convinced but I will give my mom the benefit of the doubt because she is really smart.)  I mean, let’s be frank, what could be more ego-boosting than having a word created using your very own last name?  (Get it?  Frank?!?)  So what has brought about this sudden Trump-inspired outburst?  No, there wasn’t an Apprentice marathon on TV.  No, I didn’t go to midtown to have my eyes assaulted with the myriad Trump-named properties.  No, I didn’t attend a beauty pageant.  I simply went online and noticed the following tweet, compliments of Donald Trump himself:

Kate Middleton is great — but she shouldn’t be sunbathing in the nude — only herself to blame

Ugh.  Nothing like a little victim-blaming to get the heart rate up!  Way to be, Donald!

I actually had a conversation this past weekend with one of my customers in which he, also of misogynistic tendencies, said roughly the same thing as Donald but, being aware of his audience (read: me) attempted to tone it down a little.  He failed.  Basically he said that she is famous now and should know better than to go sunbathing topless to which I responded with strongly worded opinions.  And then I thought to myself, why should I waste my brain-space worrying about images of the breasts of famous people?  Well, here’s a little bit about why.

This issue is symptomatic of something way bigger which is that famous people and, let’s be honest, all women, are generally thought of as public goods — anyone can look, touch, snap pictures.  Famous people and women have no grounds upon which to object because we should know better.  Well, I am calling bullshit.  Just as I should be able to walk up a flight of stairs without a nagging fear in the back of my mind that some creatch is going to snap an image of my underwear, Kate Middleton should be able to sunbathe topless in an environment in which she has a reasonable assumption of privacy.  She wasn’t walking down Broadway in the middle of the day.  She wasn’t standing outside of the Palace in London.  She wasn’t on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  She was in a private, isolated French chateau (is that what they’re called?) that she and her princely husband rented for the purpose of enjoying some peace, some quiet, and some not photographs.  So some asshat with a long-lens camera comes and takes some photos and suddenly it’s her fault?  At what point are we going to take the weight of responsibility and place it squarely in the hands of the person who made the immoral decision to violate someone else’s privacy rather than on the shoulders of the one with no actual control over said decision?

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how I had been in my bed and some guy yelled at me through my window.  One of the first things I felt was the weight of responsibility.  It was my own fault that some guy noticed my open shades and, rather than avert his eyes, decided to look through my window and yell at me.  Upon further inspection, I realized how ridiculous my logic was.  Sure, it would have been better if I had remembered to close my blinds, but it is not my fault that this man watched me sitting on my bed.  I didn’t invite him to look.  I didn’t hold a gun to his head.  The only person at fault, clearly, was him.  There is no way in which my logical brain will allow me to see the situation any differently. That knowledge, however, doesn’t make me feel any less violated.  But the scope of my violation was so much smaller than Kate Middleton’s.  If I felt as strongly as I did about this one person I can’t even imagine what it must be like to know that millions of people are looking at images of your naked body that you did not approve, did not ask for, did not want taken.

Now normally, I think that talking about famous people is a colossal waste of time.  I think that people who make a living off of analyzing the lives of people they will never meet are lame.  This, I think, is different.  First of all, I am not making any money off my opinions at all (although I would like to say at this point that if someone would like to pay me for being me, that’d be awesome and I accept with a resounding YES!).  Second of all, this incident is something that I think a lot of women can relate to, even if it might not seem like it at first.  We’ve all been there.  We’ve all felt violated.  We’ve all read stories about women being masturbated to on trains, had photos taken of them, been touched inappropriately.  This, in my mind, is not much different than that.  Just because she is famous doesn’t mean she should be expected to give up her privacy, her rights, her anger.

Also, Donald Trump is scum and I wish he would go take a long walk in the ocean.

(I would  also like to add that I am annoyed that I spent any of my free time at all on Donald Trump.  He is a turd.  And!  Someone found my blog by searching “Rebekah Frank bartender” and it wasn’t me!  Rock!)

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Here’s to Strong Women. Here’s to Sandra.

6 Sep

Sometimes, while I make my rounds of news sites, both mainstream and not, I feel hopeless.  I read about statements made by members of our government, legislation passed, Planned Parenthood centers closed, mainstream “cancer research foundations” whose actions tell me that maybe they don’t care as much about women and women’s health as they claim.  I learn about the victimization and revictimization of young girls, the blame placed unduly on the mother rather than on the perpetrators of the crime and the society that spews its truth of “boys will be boys.”  I get sick thinking about how money and power go hand-in-hand and how so often they land in the hands of white men, born to privilege into a world where they live by rules different than the rest of us.  I shake with anger when I think of the women who are dehumanized and tossed aside at the hands of these men and then how they, and not the victimizers, are forced to defend themselves, are accused of lying.  Because how dare we place those who have achieved the ultimate dream — success, wealth, power — anywhere other than on a pedestal.  But then sometimes, I remember that it’s not just me that feels this way.  There are a lot of us.  And at the Democratic National Convention we were handed the microphone and able to speak.   Our voices were heard through Sandra Fluke.

So, here is her speech from the DNC.  I was going to write a little about the speech given by Cecile Richards, who’s President of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, but I was just so taken by Fluke’s entire speech that I couldn’t choose pieces.  Everytime I listen to it I have the same reaction:  a little bit emotional, a little bit goose-bumpy, incredibly proud.  She said what I have read in different articles by different strong women online, what I have heard representatives say on the floor when forced to face-off against the horribly bigoted statements made by male co-workers, and what friends have said to me in endless conversations about the realities of being female.  She put it all together and she spoke to that room and she got them on their feet.  So here’s her speech.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think it beats the hell out of an empty chair.

“Some of you…some of you may remember that earlier this year Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception.  In fact, on that panel, they didn’t hear from a single woman even though they were debating an issue that affects nearly every woman.  Because it happened in congress, people noticed.  But it happens all the time.  Too many women are shut out and silenced.  So while I am honored to be standing at this podium it easily could have been any one of you.  I’m here because I spoke out.  And this November, each of us must speak out.

“During this campaign, we’ve heard about two profoundly different futures that could await women in this country.  And how one of those futures looks like an offensive obsolete relic of our past.  Warnings of that future are not distractions, they are not imagined. That future could become real. In that America, your new President could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs.  A man who won’t stand up to those slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party.  It would be an America in which you have a new Vice President who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms. An America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds that we don’t want and our doctors say that we don’t need.  An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it.  An America in which politicians redefine rape and victims are victimized all over again.  In which someone decides which domestic violence victims deserve access to services and which don’t…. We know what this America would look like.  And in a few short months that’s the America we could be but that’s not the America that we should be and it’s not who we are.

“We’ve also seen another America that we could choose.  In that America we’d have the right to choose.  It’s an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance.  In which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives.  In which we decide when to start our families.  An America in which our President, when he hears that a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters, not his delegates or his donors.  And in which our President stands with all women, and strangers come together and reach out and lift her up.  And then instead of trying to silence her you invite me here.  And you give me this microphone to amplify our voice.  That’s the difference.

“Over the last 6 months I’ve seen what these two futures look like.  And 6 months from now we’re all going to be living in one future or the other.  But only one.  A country where our President either has our back or turns his back.  A country that honors our foremothers by moving us forward or one that forces our generation to refight battles that they already won.  A country where we mean it when we talk about personal freedom or one where that freedom doesn’t apply to our bodies or our voices.  We talk often about choice.  Well ladies, and gentlemen, it’s now time to choose.”

And…standing ovation.  How Sandra Fluke managed to get through that without breaking down I will never know.  I can’t even read it aloud for type-o’s without getting a little misty-eyed.  To hear her voice say all the things I have thought, that my friends and I have talked about, and in such a well thought out way was really amazing, a breath of fresh air.  Sometimes it is easy to feel frustrated and alone sitting here behind my computer, preaching to the choir.  But then there are people out there who are doing the leg work, who are making a difference, and then I get shivers and realize that some day, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, it will be okay.  We just have to keep speaking out in whatever ways we can.

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