Tag Archives: women’s rights

When Life Gives You Lemons…

17 Oct

It has been a particularly warm fall here in New York City. So warm, in fact, that today, October 17th, I am sitting here at my desk wearing shorts and a tank top.  You might ask why I am not outside, traipsing around, enjoying the weather.  Well, for your information I already did that.  And I will do it again just as soon as I finish writing this blog.  Moving on.

This past Tuesday, after doing the important morning things (coffee, snacks, newspaper reading) I decided to go out in the world and have myself an adventure.  I wandered down fifth avenue and then I said to myself, “self, today is the perfect day to go admire some furniture you cannot afford.”  So I walked down 9th Street to Find, my favorite unaffordable furniture store, where I found the most beautiful mirror I have ever seen in my life.  So beautiful that I took photographs of it.  Photographs that I will not post here because if one of you sees it, loves it, and then goes and buys it I would be so jealous that I don’t think I would be able to be your friend anymore.  After ogling the mirror for some time, and then wondering to myself how much I could get the store owner to lower the price if I paid in cash, I went on my merry way down to Red Hook to visit Fairway for the first time since it reopened post-Sandy. I love Fairway.  Mostly, I love grocery stores and it is the biggest one with the most things (smoked salmon ends!  HUGE pickle bar!  All of the cheese!) so I love it the most.  On my way there, and just as I was approaching the Added-Value Community Farm, a pick-up truck made a right hand turn in front of me.  As they went into their turn, the passenger leaned out of the window and yelled

“You can walk all over me in those boots any day, baby!”

They subsequently sped off, leaving me alone, on the side of the road, wearing my boots, face as red as a lobster.  There I was having a perfectly wonderful Rebekah afternoon when some motherfuckers in a pick-up truck have to go and piss all over it.  I stormed the rest of the way to Fairway, thinking mean thoughts.

Upon arriving and seeing the vast array of vegetables, the anger started to melt away.  And then I saw them: papaya chunks!  I know that they are not endemic to New York and that some people think they taste like vomit, but I love them and they remind me of happier times.  So, I grabbed them, thought about the other things I wanted to buy and then realized I was in dire need of a basket.  I quickly stashed my papaya chunks on top of one of those wire coupon racks when I saw the most wonderful sight:  the assholes from the pick-up truck walked right by me into the store.  It was like a gift from above.

My mind started racing.  What should I do?  Should I say something?  Then my heart rate picked up.  I knew there was no way I would let myself leave that grocery store without giving them a piece of my mind.  I wandered around, plucking things off the shelves — salmon ends, some soy sauce, black licorice — trusting that whatever had delivered these upstanding individuals to me would insure that we crossed paths at an opportune moment.  And then, it happened. I went to check out and, wouldn’t you know it, they got in the line right next to me!  I was hoping that the timing would work out and that I would finish checking out first, head out the door, and then wait for them like a creeper outside to let them know what was what.  In the meantime, I figured I would give them the stink eye.  I have a really good stink eye.  But then the thing that always happens to me happened.  I picked the slowest checkout line ever and so, despite having gotten in line first and having fewer items, the two men headed out the door.  My only recourse was to burn holes in the backs of their heads with my eyes.  I felt defeated.  Saddened.

But then, I had a realization!  They have a car.  And a rolling cart which, after being unloaded, needs to be returned to its home.  My spirits immediately improved.  When I was done paying for my items I headed quickly out to the parking lot and, lo and behold, there was the maroon pick-up from some 45 minutes earlier.  I strode defiantly across the parking lot, eyes glued to the offending dude wearing those stupid reflective sunglasses that should only be warn by actors playing police officers on television.  He was wearing a wedding ring.  Of course.  When he looked at me and acknowledge my rapid approach I slowed down, smiled and said:

“Maybe next time you decide to yell your opinion on someone’s outfit out your car window, you will consider the fact that you might see her at the grocery store 10 minutes later.”

I stayed long enough to see the shock register on his face, turned on my heel, and walked in the direction of my house, huge grin plastered on my face.  It was the moment I have waited for.  I felt like a super hero.

—

Just as a little extra something to make you laugh, today when trying to send a text with the word “city” in it my phone inexplicably autocorrected it to “butt.”  I was really happy I caught that one.  Otherwise the text would have read:

“You leaving the butt now?”

I have been laughing for at least 10 minutes.

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A Bit About my First Twitter Altercation

22 Aug

So this is one of those instances where you, fair readers, are just going to have to bear with me on this little adventure through my mind.

So have you all heard about this incident involving an Irish girl at an Eminem concert at Slane Castle in Ireland?  No?  Well, let me give you the run down. So this past weekend Eminem gave an outdoor concert at Slane Castle.  At some point during the show, some guy (who it turns out is from Belfast) took a photograph of a girl giving head to some other guy and then posted the picture online.  As you can imagine, the picture went viral within hours and people all over Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and whatever other social media the kids are using these days came up with two (that I know of) different hash tags to allow them to discuss how much of an immoral slut she is.  This shit was everywhere.  (To their credit — and because the girl is 17 which, depending on the country, makes viewing images of her in a sexually explicit context equivalent to viewing child pornography — Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have done what they can to remove the photograph from users’ pages.  We will see whether going forward they will track down and report those who have distributed the images over the past few days.)  Following the incident and upon finding out that the image had gone viral, the girl had to be hospitalized and sedated to calm her down.  I hate to think what this girl is going to have to endure in the coming months.

According to the internet, she is a slut.  And according to one Jamie Glavin with whom I had my first-ever Twitter altercation,

“People defending the actions of that fucking #SlaneSlut need to be fucked into a bag, drowned and burned. Fucking stupid Useless cunts”

Okay, so first of all I don’t actually know what that means.  How does one get fucked into a bag?  And once one was drowned, why would it matter that one was then burned?  Or are some of us “fucking useless cunts” drowned and others burned?  Is it an every other?  Do we pick out of a hat?  And where does this Jamie (a) find the energy to fuck all the “useless cunts” and (b) track down all the bags into which he fucks us?  I wanted to ask him all these questions but unfortunately the character limit on Twitter would not allow me the pleasure.  I did, however, report his behavior to Twitter which will likely do nothing.  I still felt slightly vindicated.  He then posted the following status on his Facebook page:

“I have an awful feeling that if I make a slane girl related status I’m gonna end up on the news and eventually in court for hate crimes. I can’t handle that kinda publicity. However, I will let slip that I am more than willing to slowly kill, gut, skin and cook any of the stupid cunts that consider defending her as they are truly the proverbial fucking cherry on top of the fucking miserably disgusting cake that this country and its people have become. I’m a burn this motherfucker down.”

Obviously I have been having a lot of fun cyber-stalking this guy because I have way too much time on my hands.  Also, Jamie Glavin is just a perfect example of someone who is an idiot.  Also, a perfect example of someone who believes that women exist for public consumption. These people are, sadly, everywhere.  Just yesterday, while standing outside of a bar on 1st avenue with two guy friends while they smoked, an old dude walked up to me and said “you really shouldn’t dress so sexy.  It’s making it difficult for me.”  To which I obviously responded, “the way I dress is none of your concern.  Don’t talk to me.” Me being a female in shorts and a tank top in the middle of the summer in New York City makes me a consumable sex object.  Because I am in possession of breasts and a vagina, people have the right to come up to me and comment on how I am dressed and how the way that I am dressed impacts their day.  Me calling people out on that fact makes me a bitch, makes me unable to take a joke, means that perhaps I shouldn’t dress the way I dress because I am “unable to handle the attention” that my behavior generates.

So let’s put this into the context of this incident in Ireland.  So the photo of this young woman giving head goes viral.  As does the photo of her kissing the same young man and the one of that young man with his hands up her shorts.  There is never a time, however, where the young man is accused of being a slut, of being immoral.  His behavior is never questioned.  Him having his hands up her shorts is a demonstration of him accessing that which he deserves, while her “allowing” it to happen makes her a whore.  He is still pure and good and dominant.  She is a slut whose defenders are all “useless, stupid cunts.”

Let’s take this even one step further.  About a year ago a photo of an Irish guy named Eamon Keegan licking a woman’s breast at a soccer game in Poland spread like wild fire through the intersphere.  According to Keegan, this incident came about because, “We were all in Poznan, with all the Irish fans at the game and these two Croatian girls walked through and everyone started singing ‘Get your t*ts out for the lads’ and they actually did.”  The photo went viral.  The Ireland defender Sean St. Ledger starting a Twitter campaign to make Keegan a Twitter sensation.  Keegan even won the “Irishman of the Year” award run by the popular website balls.ie.

So you know what? The problem is not the women and men who defend the honor of yet another teenage girl who unwittingly became infamous online.  The problem is the people who take these photos and share them, immortalizing moments that maybe we wish we could forget because, honestly, we all have them.  The problem are the people who think that the victims of these online bullying campaigns deserve to be criticized by people all over the world.  The problem is the attitude that “lads” should be celebrated for public sexual acts while the women are lambasted.  Eamon Keegan is a hero while this young lady is a piece of of garbage who opened herself up to public criticism because she dared engage in sexual behavior at an outdoor concert.  It is people like Jamie Glavin who think it is their right, no, their responsibility, to denigrate a young woman that are the “the proverbial fucking cherry on top of the fucking miserably disgusting cake that this (world) and its people have become.”

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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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Friedman’s Not-So-Novel Idea

29 Oct

Yesterday in the middle of my work day I received a text from one of my really good friends. It read as follows:

The Friedman column is fucking pissing me off. Why would I expect him not to fucking pretend that what he is writing is nothing feminism has been saying for YEARS!

I could feel the anger pulsing through my cell phone. Obviously, I had to read it immediately if not sooner.  I checked up and down the bar to see the status of all my customers drinks and got to reading.  The premise of the article is basically that Friedman is “pro-life” but not in the way we all talk about being pro-life, as in the opposite of pro-choice.  He is pro “respect for the sanctity of life.”  Friedman has seen the light.  This paragraph basically says it all:

In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”

Friedman makes a good point.  Read the article.  But the thing is, just like what my friend said to me in her enraged text, he is making the point feminism, the point women have been making for years.  Being in support of a woman’s right to choose is not only an end, but it is a means to other ends.  Allowing women to choose is part of a bigger conversation about quality of life, about freedoms, about capabilities, about possibilities, about empowerment. In the mainstream acceptance of the terms “pro-life” (or “anti-choice” as many of my ilk refer to it) and “pro-choice” I think of the former as an exclusionary opinion and the latter as inclusionary.  Pro-choice people are not requiring women to terminate a pregnancy.  Some of us might not even be comfortable with the idea  of abortion for ourselves.  I think all of us would love it if there didn’t have to be any abortions at all.  There is room in the pro-choice movement for everyone to do exactly with their bodies as they think is appropriate for themselves and their lives, be that terminate a pregnancy or carry a pregnancy through to term.  Pro-life takes that choice away, that legal and safe choice, and makes the decision for someone.  Either carry the fetus to term or endure a possibly life-threatening, illegal, unregulated procedure.  There is not room in that school of thought for everyone.  There is not room for me.

I guess this is a topic that I have been having a hard time with.  While I want to include men in the conversation about women’s rights and bodies, while I want more male allies, I don’t want men dictating the parameters of a conversation that women have been having for decades.  Let us spearhead this one, guys.  Listen to us.  Talk to us.  Take us seriously.  This is an important issue all the time and not only when you decide to give it a minute of your time.  This has been mattering to us for-fucking-ever, and not just every four years.  We’ve been talking about it.  We’ve been educating one another.  Where have you been, Friedman?

But I’ve gotten off topic.  Friedman’s point is an important one for sure.  But as a woman, it is incredibly, incredibly frustrating and angering to see that a point that feminists have been making for years and years does not get mainstream space until it is said by a right-leaning white man acting like he came up with it all on his own.  I’ve seen my friends sharing the link to the article on Facebook and, though I’m glad the point is making its rounds in the interwebs, I am frustrated that as women we have become so accustomed to our opinions being ignored and then, years later, being co-opted and taken seriously only through the medium of a male voice that we don’t even notice it any more.  It’s part of life.  It’s like, “wow!  Friedman!  What a great and original idea!” without the follow through of “wait, didn’t I talk to my mom about this very same idea when I first started learning about abortion clinic bombings and assassinations of abortion providers?  Hasn’t this term ‘pro-life’ always seemed somewhat misleading?”   It’s like that old saying, “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”  Only I’m gonna change it.  “If an opinion is voiced by a woman and no one talks about it, did that opinion ever actually get shared?”

And to my friend who sent me the text in the first place, I am thankful for you.  You help keep me sane.

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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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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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