What fairy tales can teach about torture and racial profiling

Photo courtesy of Elsie esq.

Dear readers, it has been more than a year since we last posted. A long stretch, but it seems each of us has moved and/or gone through some other major life change (I got married and then moved twice!).

But for my part, it's been more than that. From Kate Kelly's excommunication this summer, to recent tensions over the relationship between law enforcement and people of color, to the heartbreaking report on the US use of torture, I have found myself in a position that's disorienting for a writer: at a loss for words. The internet is not at a loss for words, and in that swirl of perspectives, I've frequently asked myself what I could add that would offer anything new, anything worthwhile. I don't say this out of a false sense of humility - I say it as someone who hears many bright, intelligent voices, and still wonders what yet another bright, intelligent voice will add.

So I've read. I've listened. I've cried. I've worried. But in writing, I've remained largely silent.

What I have written about over the last year are fairytales. That focus might sound like an escape, but fairy tales teach much more about these issues than you likely imagine.

Take this tale of torture and racial profiling for example:


"The Jew in the Thorns" shows up in the Grimms' collection. It begins the tale with a master who swindles his apprentice out of his fair wages by convincing him that a small amount of money is in fact a generous fortune. When the apprentice sets out with his fortune, he soon encounters a stranger, to whom he offers everything he has. To reward the apprentice, this stranger grants three wishes: a gun that will hit anything he aims for, a fiddle that will force everyone to dance, and the ability to make any request of another person and have them grant it.

Further down the road he sees a Jewish man, who watches a song bird and wishes he could catch it. The "good servant" shoots it down and rudely commands the Jewish man to get it, addressing him as "rogue." While the Jewish man crawls between branches to avoid their thorns, the hero plays the fiddle, which forces the Jewish man to dance in agony. The servant continues to torture the Jewish man until he offers him a bag of gold, and the servant justifies accepting it by assuming it must have been stolen in the first place.

After escaping, the Jewish man runs to a judge and tells him that a man with a gun and fiddle assaulted him and stole his money. When the "good servant" - that is how the tale refers to him throughout - is set to trial, the judge at first insists that the Jewish man must be telling the truth because no Jewish man would lie to the court. The servant is sentenced to be hanged but first requests to play his fiddle - the judge can't refuse thanks to the magical gift- and suddenly everyone is forced to dance. When the servant finally demands that the Jewish man confess where he got the money or risk the fiddle's music again, he confesses to having stolen it and admits "you have earned it fairly." At that, the judge has the Jewish man hanged.

It's a disturbing tale. Unlike most of the stories I cover with my students, there's no debating the bias in this one: a man who is initially portrayed as trusting and generous turns his rewards into weapons when he meets a complete stranger, assuming that the stranger is a thief and therefore deserving of abuse and theft, simply because of the man's religion and ethnic background. Perhaps even more disturbing, the story assumes that Jewish men of the time are at an advantage: after all, the judge initially claims to believe the victim simply because he is Jewish. In that context, the tale of racial profiling and torture justifies using violence against people without any evidence of their wrongdoing, simply because of their background. The confession made under duress facilitates the hero's happy ending, a problem that the story glosses over.

From today's perspective, it's easy to see that the "good servant" is wrong. We recognize that nineteenth-century Germany did not systematically protect Jewish criminals from prosecution and that Jewish Germans were no more likely to be criminals than other Germans. We also recognize that this confession comes through torture, which motivates the victim to say whatever he thinks the torturer wants to hear, and we understand that assuming a person is a thief is not justification for a private citizen to assault them.

But when it comes to today's issues, perhaps we're not far from the sentiments of the culture that produced this story. American psychologists designed a system of torture and received an enormous paycheck as thanks, which they likely justified to themselves with similar reasoning: if these men have committed similar offenses against others, is it really so wrong for us to treat them the same way? And if we're sure they're guilty, do we truly need enough evidence to press charges, before we begin torturing them?

Yes, it is wrong.

And similar logic shows up when we suggest in casual conversations and on news stations that we don't need to talk about vigilante and police violence against unarmed black men, since black men are more likely to be killed by one another. Or that black men should focus on a different social problem that they are perceived as causing for themselves. By trying to dismiss the violence perpetrated by our own, we white Americans think like the "good servant": many members of this group kill/steal/commit crime, so is it wrong for us to do the same to them?

Yes, it is wrong.

And what about the master from the beginning, the one who cheated the servant before he set out on his adventure? When I teach this story, my students search for a logical connection that doesn't exist. "Was the master Jewish?" they ask, seeking to understand why the servant targeted that group. But the story gives no indication that he was. In fact, the story suggests the opposite. After all, the servant trusts the master, even as he is cheated by him. But he immediately turns against a man who has done nothing to him, simply because he is Jewish. Clearly his judgment is lacking, even if the narrator attempts to justify the servant's assumptions.

But the narrative about the master is there for a reason: it provides the zero-to-hero plot line that we love to this day. Like in any number of comedies, we watch a hard-working, under-appreciated man strike back at a wealthy, system-rigging representation of the powerful men who have taken advantage of him for his whole life. In this story, he doesn't know he was cheated from the start, but the reader does and can triumph over the ending. But the problem with this story's direction is that it distracts from the people who have actually harmed the servant and instead pits him against other victims. Instead of promoting honest employers or a system of government oversight that prevents employers from abusing employees, the story allows the hero to redirect the abuse onto someone new. By imagining that people from a different cultural group are the ones who hurt honest workers, the story fails to resolve the original problem that it set up.

If we imagine that poor people, or even a particular ethnic group, take advantage of government resources, is it really so wrong to attempt to slash government aid programs and tell minimum-wage earners that their problems are solely the result of their own bad habits?

Yes, it is wrong.

And at the end of the day, when I struggle to put into words my reaction to systemically-reinforced violence that the color of my skin protects me from, that's one thing I can say for sure.

It is wrong.
It is wrong.
It is wrong.

Perhaps some day we will see our own errors with the clarity that this other story from the Grimms' collection suggests: in "The Bright Sun Brings it to Light," a poor man attacks a Jewish stranger in order to steal his money, assuming that he has a great fortune from robbing others. Only as the Jewish man dies does he realize the man had no fortune, just as he insisted. And as the victim predicts while dying, the truth cannot remain hidden but eventually comes to light.

In the News

Dearest Readers, this long-overdue post is a hodgepodge of links, which I haven't even bothered to proofread. Internet grammar hawks, read at your own risk.

Recently I wrote an article for Patheos about why feminism needs to be about men, as well as about women. One of my major concerns is that far too few conversations recognize the prevalence with which men are victims of sexual assault. When any female feminist tries to banish the topic of male victimhood from the feminist movement, that rejection and denial only adds to the cultural stigma which these survivors are already fighting to tear down. In a heart-breaking but very necessary project, 27 men share what they were told by perpetrators and/or those they confided in [trigger warning]. Far too many were told that "men can't be raped" or to "man up" and simply get over symptoms of PTSD. I've done enough research to verify that these responses are both common for and feared by male survivors of sexual assault.

If you have sensibilities anything like mine, you might not want to hang out at the beaches in Stockholm now that a judge has ruled public masturbation at the beach to be legal. Yes, you read that correctly. When a man was arrested for doing just that, the court ruled that it could not be considered sexual assault, since it was not directed at any one individual. Apparently the city of Stockholm did not feel it had enough negative connotations attached to its name already.

Next up, for the first time ever, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is live-broadcasting the Priesthood Session of General Conference on the internet and television. Some context: the Mormon bloggernacle (and all of facebook) has been alight recently with debates about female ordination and the role of Mormon women in a church whose hierarchy fills all of the highest position with (predominately white and affluent) men. Understand, please, that I'm stating a fact about the demographics in church leadership and not actually attempting to pass judgment on those demographics one way or another. Make of the facts what you will.

While female ordination has been an ongoing debate for years, the Ordain Women website and organization recently sparked new discussions by requesting tickets to the Priesthood Session of the Church's Semi-Annual General Conference. General Conference runs over the course of two weekends and includes four 2-hour sessions for general audiences, plus a 1-hour session for either adult women or teenage women depending on whether it's Fall of Spring. The conferences take place in Salt Lake City in the Conference Center but are broadcast live all over the world. Up until now, only the Priesthood session was not broadcast live on the internet and TV. Why not? I can't really say - maybe to encourage men to watch it together at church, or perhaps to make sure women didn't feel obligated to watch the session.

Whatever the reason for making the session more restrictive than others, OW's plan of showing up at the conference center unleashed enough harsh responses on the internet that I'll admit I'm trying to forget which of my friends proudly wrote (or shared another's writing) about feeling angry at or hating all the feminists who wanted to be ordained. Let's just say that I've officially lost all patience for anyone who dismisses another's desire for ordination. Disagree with their methods all you want, but don't you dare assume their desire for greater power to serve the Lord is inherently wrong. Granted, some of the tension happened within Mormon feminism, much of it in response to Patheos articles written by Margaret Young. Young has written a lovely follow-up post with ideas on how we can all be more inclusive.

Racial Bias and the Lenses We Use to Interpret Zimmerman's Trial

I was in Georgia when I first heard the story of Trayvon Martin's death, though a few days earlier I'd glimpsed the headline on a newspaper that had been delivered to my hotel room in St Louis. After a week on the road, traveling first to St Louis for an academic conference and then to Georgia to visit a campus where I'd been accepted into a PhD program, I wasn't paying much attention to the news.

So my first real exposure to the story involved seeing African American student protesters in GA, who were holding up signs that called for justice. This was all before Zimmerman had even been arrested, a factor that horrified a national audience who knew all of the incriminating details (such as Zimmerman being told by a 911 dispatcher not to pursue the young man in the hoody) without knowing about the fist fight that would eventually clear Zimmerman's name in court, if not in the public eye.

At the time, I couldn't have imagined how polarizing this case would become in national discourse. Even after hearing details about Zimmerman's injuries and the fist fight that he was using as his justification for shooting and killing Trayvon, it seemed clear that there was enough evidence to at least pursue a criminal trial. Whether Zimmerman was ultimately determined guilty or not guilty in court, the situation merited that day in court. And the local law enforcement's delay in arresting and charging him disturbed me because it was hard not to interpret that oversight through the lens of our nation's historical distrust of black men and disregard for their lives.

It takes little research to uncover that history, a history not nearly so far in the past as most white Americans like to think. And it doesn't take much observation to note the bias with which so many friends and acquaintances treat the phrase "big black guy" as a redundant description of African American and black men. And so what has disturbed me about this situation, more than the outcome of this one individual trial, are the dismissive remarks I've heard others make, where some have even claimed that Zimmerman was only tried because he was not black.

Such remarks reflect great ignorance about American history, including recent history and the role that even subtle racial bias plays in the way Americans make decisions that affect other people. Decisions ranging from which job applicant to hire, to which contestant on The Voice to vote for, to how much pain killer a patient will need. And we're often unaware of the role these biases play, because the bias is only one factor in how we interpret a situation. So it's easy to focus on the other factors in the situation and never recognize that we'd have preferred a different job applicant if only she had lighter skin.

As a white American, I understand that it can feel exhausting to be reminded of our racial privilege and to be frequently asked to recognize that privilege and change our actions accordingly. I recall how I felt the first time a black friend held white Americans as a group responsible for what had been done to her ancestors - we were both ten years old when we had that conversation, and it was not the most eloquent discussion to ever take place. I recall replying, "I know, and it's terrible," while inwardly feeling a bit frustrated by being blamed for things I had not contributed to as a ten-year-old child.

But I also recall the conversation my entire fourth grade class had when that friend was called the N-word by a stranger at a gas station in our rural New England town. And I recall hearing my father and his mother refer to black people as "darkies" or even by the N-word on one occasion. And when I came to college and a friend from North Carolina told me that as individuals black people could be wonderful but that "when they're in large groups they turn violent," another friend from South Carolina insisted that I simply didn't understand his remarks because I wasn't from the South. I can attest that southern states do not have a monopoly on racism or on the ability to recognize it.

And my perspective was necessarily expanded when for three of my years in college I lived with a black roommate, who first of all insisted that I add "black" back into my vocabulary, since not all black people are American and not all black Americans identify as African American. And I heard stories from her about the struggles her mother went through to get medical treatment for teenage sons whom inner city doctors assumed to be high and not ill. And I heard a very complicated take on Rudy Giuliani's efforts to decrease crime in NYC, efforts that were largely effective but at the cost of harassing innocent black men and even turning a blind eye in cases where police officers killed innocent black men.

And when I dated a black man while living in Utah, I saw the looks strangers sometimes gave us when we were in public. And one night when I had stayed on campus late and he jogged to campus to walk me home so I wouldn't be in any danger, I watched as a security guard ignored the other students who were leaving campus along with us and focused on me and the man I was dating. As we held hands and laughed together, the security guard trailed us for awhile before approaching to ask, "Everything okay?" Before that incident, this man had expressed fear of being falsely accused of assaulting a white woman, and I had rolled my eyes because I didn't understand the vulnerable position in which the color of his skin left him.

So if you're a white person who's tempted to think that we're living in a post-racial America or that racism would fade away all together if black people simply forgot about events that happened to their parents and grandparents, that might just be because you're enjoying the privilege of not being followed across a crowded parking lot simply because you have darker skin than the woman you're walking home late at night. In other words, it might be the racial privilege you're denying which is preventing you from seeing that privilege in the first place.

In the following video, Obama gives what I think is a fair but helpful response to the national dialogue surrounding this trial. What's of most interest to me is the first ten minutes or so when he explains the type of heightened scrutiny that most black American and African American men experience regularly and which white people tend to simply overlook.

Colorado Fires and Body Memories: What is Trauma?

This post by our very own Erica also appeared in Go Girl Magazine.

Experiencing a fire can cause trauma. But what can help? Image from wildforestfires.com.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s somatic memory. It’s what makes your stomach ache, your throat close off, and your muscles clench when you remember something bad. It’s what makes you feel awful when you encounter stimuli that remind you of that bad thing. Maybe you remember a rape. Maybe you remember a pickpocketing. Maybe you remember being laughed at. Whatever the cause, it feels awful because your memory — your past – is impacting your present in an uncontrollable way.

Here’s a recent example:

Last year, running from the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado, I remember spending days wandering around in a daze, exhausted but unrefreshed by sleep, constantly fighting a cringing, sickly feeling in my stomach. It took several months before I felt normal again. I thought I’d finally recovered when the sight of campfire smoke no longer sent me into a spiral of fear. Then the Black Forest Fire broke out just last week, and the same sleeplessness and nausea returned. Even though I was less attached to possessions this time around — detachment as coping, anyone? — I was still a walking bundle of nerves.

Trauma happens all the time, whether through violent acts or surprise disasters from nature. Whilepost-traumatic stress disorder has very specific diagnostic criteria, “trauma” refers to a much broader range of psychosomatic symptoms that can show up in the aftermath of an unusually stressful or threatening event. Here are a few:

• Restlessness
• Inability to concentrate
• Unusual physiological sensations, like jangling nerves or nausea
• Constant worry
• Hyper-awareness of your surroundings
• Low energy
• Fatigue
• Difficulty sleeping, including nightmares
• Flashbacks
• Numbing out, including using self-harm or substances
• Avoiding anything or anyone that might trigger a memory

Anxiety is a common symptom of trauma. Image from psychologytoday.com.

Why are somatic memory and trauma showing up in a column on sexual politics around the world? Because this is what happens when people are harmed. This is how we, as humans, remember acts of violence and situations of terror. Even when our brains seem to have rationalized themselves into calmness, our bodies continue to carry the experiences forward. Thus, when we are reminded of the original situation — by a plume of smoke, a predatory glance, etc. — we are sent back into the spirals of fear that created these symptoms in the first place.

These symptoms can keep us safe, sometimes, but they can also interfere with our ability to be bold explorers of our worlds. So what can we do to cope? Here are some ideas:

• Engage with counseling, especially EMDR
• Use physically active techniques, in keeping with your level of ability, to help your body work through its symptoms
• Talk to other survivors, knowing that you each have your own experiences
• Accept your symptoms as being a natural part of the healing process
• Find a trauma-sensitive yoga or meditation class to re-connect with your body
• Write or draw a journal of your experiences
• Take time to focus on yourself and your own needs

Healing from trauma takes a lot of time and patience. It’s unpleasant and doesn’t happen overnight.But when you can recognize it, and nurture yourself in its aftermath, you can empower yourself to take on the world once again.

You Don't Get to Tell Me How to Forgive an Abuser

Emily's Note: The topic of abuse and forgiveness is a sensitive one for me, and it's a topic that recently arose in my personal life when a member of my extended family attempted to publicly shame me (and others in my family) for not maintaining contact with someone who abused us in the past. When I privately asked that individual not to make such statements, their response was that I was obligated as a Christian to forgive. And so, with this topic once again at the forefront of my mind, I decided it was time to explain why such advice is in fact damaging to victims and survivors.

For a victim or survivor of abuse, one of the most damaging things a person can say is, "You have to forgive your abuser."

If you're religious (as I am), my statement might sound sacrilegious. Even if you're not religious, you may want to encourage a survivor to forgive those who hurt them so that they can move on with their life and let go of that pain. And I don't disagree with you that letting go of that anger is one essential part of the healing process. But I'm not concerned with the message you're trying to share - I'm concerned about the way you're sharing it and the unintended consequences your statement may carry.

1 - Telling someone to forgive assumes that they are doing something wrong, and a survivor of abuse has been hearing that message for years.

For the context of what I'm going to discuss here, suffice it to say that I grew up in a home with an abusive father, and some (but not all) of his siblings reinforced the abuse by accusing me of causing it. I once came home to find one of his siblings in the kitchen, waiting for me, in order to lecture me on being a better daughter. When I went to the police in order to get a restraining order so that my family and I would be safe from him, his mother and some of his siblings accused me of lying, despite those individuals possessing knowledge of similar abuse which he perpetrated against others when he was younger. To put it lightly, my relationship with those particular family members has been strained ever since.

Research and anecdotal evidence suggest my experience is not at all unusual. I've heard first-hand and second-hand accounts of mothers who accused children of lying when they came forward about abuse or who even accused preteen daughters of seducing their stepfather after he sexually assaulted them. And I've read studies where alarmingly high percentages of survivors reported that the initial adults they   confided in blamed them. I've posted about victim-blaming before, but I cannot over emphasize the damage that a culture of victim-blaming enacts on those who are abused. Victim-blaming leads to victims feeling so much shame that they hide what is happening, and it helps abusers evade prosecution. As a result, the abuser is likely to continue abusing.

2 -  Telling someone to forgive faster interferes with their healing process.

Most survivors spend years sorting through their experience. For many survivors, even reaching a point where they can openly express anger toward those who hurt them is in fact a step in their recovery. They may have spent years convincing themselves that what an abuser did was okay, or even pretending it never happened. Acknowledging anger is essential in working through the repercussions of abuse. And acknowledging the abuser is necessary to eventually forgive. After all, how can you forgive someone if you never come to terms with the fact that they did, in fact, hurt you?

3 - Forgiveness is a process that is different for everyone.

Perhaps you were abused, and you forgave that person by restoring a close relationship. Perhaps you never stopped loving that person or considering them your father, your mother, your brother or sister. Perhaps you forgave them and let them back into your life, after they had stopped abusing you.

But it doesn't work that way for all of us. For some of us, no longer praying for an abuser to die in their sleep is forgiveness.

For many survivors, it is unsafe to maintain any sort of contact with an abuser. And I don't just mean physical safety - yes, that's a major concern. But if you think that's the only issue at stake, you won't understand when another survivor refuses to even be in the same room with their former abuser. For some of us, hearing an abuser's voice or seeing a photo of them alone is enough to give us nightmares for two weeks straight. Enough to trigger old fears and leave us vulnerable in ways to hurt our efforts to simply live our life.

4 - Forgiving does not require staying, and yet many victims convince themselves that it does.

For those victims, being told that they have to forgive just reinforces the old belief that they are obligated to accept the abuse, never fight back, and not try to leave. A victim who holds that belief is likely to feel guilty for resenting the abuse. And even if a survivor overcame that belief in order to leave, hearing you tell them that they have to forgive is likely to dredge up the shame they felt when they were abused.

Again, not helpful in their recovery process.

5 - It's simply not your place to say, and you may be saying it for the wrong reasons.

Forgiveness is a complicated process, and no other person has the right to look at a victim of abuse and assume that their approach to forgiveness is wrong. You may be telling your friend to forgive because you're worried about how their anger seems to eat them up, but you simply can't know enough about their situation to know that for a fact.

If you've given this advice to someone, you may also need to reevaluate your motives. You may have had nothing but good intentions, but you also may have been looking for a way to stop them from sharing an experience you were uncomfortable hearing. Perhaps you have been abused yourself, and hearing their experiences leaves you feeling raw about your own pain.

Perhaps you care about the abuser so much that you're afraid to admit the severity of what they did, so you're treating it like something minor enough that it could be forgiven quickly. Or perhaps you witnessed abuse and you feel guilty that you didn't protect the survivor. If any of these motives ring true for you, please do whatever it takes to work through it. Confide in friends, write in a journal, go to a counselor, pick up a hobby that helps channel that energy.

But please, don't try to tell other survivors how to forgive. Because it's probably hurting you as much as it's hurting them.

That Kind of Girl (from the archives)

I originally published this post more than three years ago, in response to a conversation I'd had with a roommate and some friends. When this topic came up again in recent conversation, I decided to revisit my post from the time. As is usually the case for a writer, I found myself shuddering over the awkward phrasing and wondering how I could call myself a writing teacher back then. But alas, in the name of authenticity I have changed nothing from the original post. 

The other night, some friends accused me of something I found so insulting that I instantly cried, "I am NOT that kind of a girl!" What had they accused me of? Cooking dinner for a man.

They were both shocked by how defensive I was on the issue, and as I tried to explain why that was a sensitive topic for me, and why I am uncomfortable with cooking dinner for men, they became even more confused. In the end, they criticized me for what they saw as inconsistent behavior, and they insisted that if I was ok with my roommate's brother coming over and fixing our kitchen sink, I was a hypocrite for refusing to cook dinner for a man.

And I, for my part, am still confused by their confusion. It's not like I'm anti cooking with a man on a date, or cooking for family and friends. I just refuse to prepare a meal, by myself, for a man I am on a casual date with, and I'm cautious about doing so with a boyfriend too. And I get really upset when people think I have done that very thing. A few years ago, I invited a guy I'd been on several dates with over to my apartment. I had baked bread earlier in the day, and I offered him some fresh bread and homemade jam. He later bragged to a mutual friend that I had baked bread for him, and she immediately corrected him. "That's my friend you're talking about," she said. She explained that I bake bread all the time and had probably just offered him some of the bread I'd already baked. "She is not that kind of a girl," my friend continued, "and don't you ever say that again." He promised her that if he asked me to bake some bread for him I'd do it in a heart beat. Needless to say, I didn't respond well when he asked.

Why am I so loathe to cooking food specifically for a man on a casual date? Well, I can't really explain it rationally. For some reason I just shudder at the thought of doing so. I picture a man sitting expectantly at the table, waiting for me to bring the food to him, a smug, self-satisfied look on his face. It doesn't help that my father usually did that when I was young, even though my mother worked (and he did not), or that there are a lot of men in my extended family who take the attitude that cooking and cleaning is a woman's job, even if both he and his wife are working equal hours outside the home.

And contrary to what my friends from the other night insisted my aversion to cooking for men must mean, it's not that I'm against people who are in a relationship or who are going on dates doing nice things for each other. I appreciate it when a man opens a door for me, and I love sharing the food that I cook or bake with other people, romantic interests included. If I'm in a relationship and I bake bread, I'll specifically bring some to the guy I'm dating. I'll leave nice notes for him to find, and do other little, spontaneous things. I'll unlock his car door after he's unlocked the passenger door and opened it for me. I'll grab extra napkins for him while we're grabbing food. I'll wear my hair a way I know he likes it, and humor him by playing board games or watching movies I'm not terribly fond of. Honestly, roommates who've seen me in a relationship have always been shocked by how often I'll bake something to share with a boyfriend.

So, maybe the issue here isn't that I'm unusually prickly about cooking for a man. Maybe I'm just prickly about the phrase "cook for him." Maybe it brings up images and emotions that upset me so much that even when I talk with other women who are a lot less likely to cook food with the intention of offering some to a boyfriend I end up sounding more anti it? And I become much more comfortable with the idea of cooking for a man if he first cooks for me. I got very upset when one man interpreted my invitation to a group date where we would all prepare dinner together as me offering to cook dinner for him (your words, Carl, not mine!) But when he later cooked breakfast for me, I felt much more comfortable the next time he thought I was "cooking dinner for him."

But what's really crazy about that last example, is that his idea of me cooking dinner for him was me buying the ingredients, and then him making it along with me. Which brings us back to language - am I against going through the physical act of cooking dinner for a man, or am I against some sort of cultural association I have with that language?

Murdering John Walks Free, Mothers and Daughters Sharing a Husband, SLC Pride Parade, and More: Links of Note

It's no secret that Erica, Rachel, and I have been a tad absentee recently, due to our work (and in my case, grad school) obligations, so instead of trying to catch up I'll just cover a few recent things.

First off, in our distraction we haven't been checking the notanotherwave email account as frequently as we used to. Several months back, someone contacted us in response to a post about attachment parenting and asked if we'd be interested in their graphic about helicopter parents in the workplace. Not the most obvious fit on NAW, but I figured we'd give it a shout out, as readers might find it interesting, and since she was gracious about my delayed response.

Next, this article about a Texas man who got away with murdering an escort has been making the rounds on facebook. Long story short, he hired an escort through craigslist and paid her $150 in advance. When she didn't have sex with him as he'd expected and tried to leave, he shot her in the neck, paralyzing her and causing her death seven months later. His attorneys argued that the victim was stealing from this man and that he therefore had the legal right to shoot and kill her. The jury somehow agreed, despite the fact that her "theft" was in refusing to follow through with prostitution, which is itself a crime. I don't even have words for how disgusting it is that this man was found "not guilty" and that he isn't at least being charged with soliciting a prostitute. The irony is that if he'd pulled a gun on her and she'd shot him in self-defense, she'd probably be serving life in prison.

From a few weeks back, Twisty of the radical feminist blog, I Blame the Patriarchy, recently posted her thoughts on how rape is portrayed on tv and whether those portrayals are inherently misogynistic.

Next, an article on an unusual and rare marital practice from a remote region of Bangladesh that a friend of mine aptly summed up as "both heartbreaking and fascinating." The title of this Observer article is "'My Mother and I are Married to the Same Man': Matrilineal Marriage in Bangladesh," and the details are worth reading in full, so I'll let that title act as the basic summary I usually give along with a link.

In news that I find exciting, the group Mormons Building Bridges marched in a Salt Lake City pride parade this past Sunday. I knew about the parade in advance and was sad I couldn't make it, as I'm very supportive of the work MBB has been doing. Last year they marched in the pride parade, and this year they built on that work with the theme "Family Reunion," to encourage other Mormons to fully accept and love their lgbtq friends and family. 

And lastly, on a fun note, I'll confess that I follow The Voice. The Voice sometimes infuriates me, mostly in their habit of starting off with about half of their contestants being people of color, only to systematically eliminate the majority of contestants who are not white in the battle rounds. (Don't believe me? Watch the battles where one contestant is white and the other isn't. In all but one, the white  performer was declared the winner). Anyway, despite all that, I've been impressed by Michelle Chamuel, one of the top artists in the current Top 5. Chamuel is talented, confident and charismatic onstage, and intelligent, confident, and gracious off-stage. In the following interview she discusses her wardrobe and makeup decisions in a way that sheds light on the creative process while also stressing her confidence in maintaining an appearance that feels organic and comfortable to her:

I'm pretty sure I've got a girl-crush on Michelle Chamuel.