Regaining the Fucks

I'm sure that, by now, our readers around the world have gotten an earful about U.S. Congressman Todd Aiken and his unbelievably medieval remarks about rape and biology. I've spent the past few days in a haze of disbelief and rage, including a memorable moment when I burst into tears over a stupid commentator on National Public Radio. I've been avoiding the news ever since, knowing that any mention of His Idiocy (or the idiots that believe him) will set me off again. I'm exhausted from caring to the point where, as Erin Gloria Ryan so eloquently put it, "So many more fucks need to be given, and I have exhausted my fuck supply. The fucks are on backorder." I just can't do it anymore. I can't take the overwhelming tide of misogynistic crap that American politicians somehow keep spewing.

In some ways, it's a bit of a wake-up call. Cis women of any race have never really had it easy during my lifetime- marital rape wasn't federally codified as a crime in the U.S. until I was eight, for example- but all the same, I was born with a lot more rights than my mother and grandmother were. It was never a question that I would be eligible to vote when I turned 18. Going on to university, and later a job, was not only an option for me, but also the preferable one. It never had to cross my mind that being raped could result in a forced marriage. Plenty of cis women in the U.S. and around the world can remember times when they had to fight for these rights- or still look forward to a day when they may have those rights respected. The fact that one fool's lack of basic biological and social knowledge can cause such an uproar in my home country ought to be a sign of hope. Elsewhere, beliefs like Aiken's have been legally accepted for decades and residents of those countries have been working their butts off to change that, with limited success.

At the same time, however, my natural optimism is silent. I guess that's largely because I had believed that, once rights are recognized, they won't be taken away. It's an incredibly naive and privileged perspective to carry, I realize, but I've always been the Scarlett O'Hara type anyway, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to counter it. Hell, I'm in a profession where optimism is an essential trait for survival. I've finally been shocked into (relative) silence by the shattering of that most beautiful illusion. As much as I thought I'd overcome the tendency to take hard-fought rights for granted, I'm learning I have been. What I'm experiencing right now is the abrupt and terrifying realization that yes. It can happen to me.

It can happen to me that I'll be a citizen of a country that will progressively strip away the rights that my foremothers fought so hard to gain.

It can happen to me that I'll live in a country where policymakers make important decisions about my body based on a complete lack of knowledge.

It can happen to me that visiting other, more feminist-friendly countries will mean visiting places where cis women are very much more privileged than I am.

It can happen to me that a potential representative of my country would (and did!) suggest that rape is just another method of contraception.

I can hear a lot of you readers laughing at my naive perspective, and a few others shaking your fists (wait, what? A White American feministmissed something? Never!), and a couple of others telling me to join the grown-up club already (in which case, keep your arrogance to yourselves). I can also hear a lot of our readers from around the world shaking their heads and sighing because you're all much more accustomed to the back-and-forth misogyny that takes rights away as readily as it grants them. I know. I've been living a pretty privileged perspective. It happens a lot to Americans.

With this realization in mind, I'd like to subvert the age-old American feminist tendency to believe that "we" have it right by calling on the rest of the world: how do you get your fucks back? In less cavalier language, how do you find the energy to carry on when you feel utterly overwhelmed by the challenges facing your movements? It's obvious to me that I- we- can't afford not to care, not with so much at stake, so the only answer is to keep on caring enough to do something. But how?

Go Girls (and Go Folk) the world over are a daily reminder that we're all moving, shaking, and changing the world with every step on a plane, every backpack zipped, every tijn spent. Somehow, wherever we're from and wherever we're going, we always manage to keep ourselves in motion. It's unbelievably inspiring. So as a movement, as a tour de force, let's brainstorm. How can we keep ourselves going against not logistical odds, but sociopolitical odds? How can we make and preserve lasting change?

How can we get our fucks back?

You Don't Get to Tell Me How I Feel

The same-sex marriage/civil union/domestic partnership kerfluffle that’s been rocking the U.S. lately has been dredging up the good, the bad, and the ugly in a lot of social discourse. President Obama finally came out (har!) in support of same-sex marriage, right around the same time that Mitt Romney reaffirmed his dislike of the same; North Carolina voters overwhelmingly voted against the human rights of LGBQ members of their population; Colorado’s legislature is (at the time of this writing) in an emergency session to resolve its own civil union dispute. The straight population is divided about the issue, but so are LGBTIQ communities across the country- “Do we even want to participate in this antiquated, money-sucking, heterocentrist ritual?” And the question that has come up to me repeatedly this week: who gets to decide? After all, we didn’t vote on your marriage, right? (Actually, if you want to get technical…who gets to marry whom has never been an easy topic. Just ask the Commonwealth of Virginia.)

Something that’s been communicated from a lot of sources around the Internet has been the idea that straight people should have no say in same-sex marriage rights. It’s not their marriage or relationship that’s at stake. Those of us with rings on our fingers are unaffected by these policies and our civil rights aren’t being called into question.

To this, I’m going to give a big ol’ fuck you.

Let me give you one reason why: like many Americans, I’m bisexual/queer (depending on your definition) but married in the old-fashioned sense. My partner- my husband- is a straight, cisgendered guy, and unless you take the time to ask, you’re probably going to assume that I’m straight too. My current relationship, one that I plan to be in for the rest of our lives, is unaffected by what happens with LGBQ marital legislation. But what if it ends? Or what if, instead of falling for Nick, I fell for a Nicole? Or what if Nick decides to become Nicole? Or the unthinkable happens, and as a widow I find solace and new love with a same-sex or trans partner? My right to a committed, legal partnership with someone I love would be taken away from me. I’m not interested in quibbling about whether it’s worse to have that right revoked, or never have it at all- the point is that the absence of that right is simply wrong. And it’s something I walk around with every day, whether I will ever have to confront it in my own relationship(s) or not.

When I lived in Canada, I was part of a wonderfully vital community of LGBTIQ folk who wanted nothing more than a world in which adults can consensually love one another without restriction. There was often a lot of talk about who “gets” to speak and emote on a given topic, and while I understood the root of their concerns- when a group outsider speaks, are they silencing the insiders and appropriating their right to self-advocacy?- I also worried about how this intersected with alliances. As much as The System has hurt a lot of us, we need the support of its benefactors to make lasting change, right? (Apologies for my ignorance, Ms. Lorde, but I’ve always struggled with this.) There’s a strong undercurrent of biphobia in some lesbian and gay circles because we’re “faking it” or, if we’re in the sort of relationship I’m in, we’re “traitors,” and this leads to accusations that we don’t really understand what it means to be discriminated against because we “can” always retreat to the safety of our straight-looking lives. As the same-sex marriage debacle rages on in the States, I’m hearing these sorts of things more and more. Camps of Us and Them are being drawn, and bi/queer folk are increasingly being grouped in the latter.

I repeat myself: fuck you. Ignorance of the flexibility and depth of human sexualities aside, this whole concept that They can’t possibly understand or empathize has got to stop. The idea that a shared set of experiences means that any two people completely understand each other is reductionistic and categorizes people according to arbitrary rules. “Oh wait, you’re also a cis woman and have sex with cis women? Great! We totally get each other and are basically the same person!” My relationship may not be on the line right now, but my overall rights are- just like yours. The implication of biphobia for people like me in these debates is that, because we “look” straight, we can’t ever experience discrimination. That’s a load of crap.

Same-sex marriages are everyone’s business, whether we’re interested in one or not, because human rights are everyone’s business. Not everyone is as comfortably “out” as I am, and you never know who will come out when you thought you had them pegged, so the breadth and depth the impact of discriminatory legislation will have is incredibly challenging to predict. To me, the right of consenting adults to love each other and legally support each other should never have been a debate at all. But since it is, it’s about time we stopped using appearances to determine who gets a say in what. Since you aren’t in my head or in my life, you have no idea what I have experienced.

You don’t get to tell me how I feel.

Politics, Politics, Politics

I can't believe we still need this image.

Dia ar sábháil! Since my article a few weeks back about vaginal protests and politicians attempting to legislate idiocy, very few things have changed. We have some victories- such as the narrow defeat of Arizona's "show me your prescription" bill- but we also have continued pressure from numerous lawmakers to curtail the rights and personhood of (cis) women across the United States. Foetal personhood amendments, parental consent laws, and name-calling continue to shape the country's political landscape. I recently gave up frothing at the mouth in favour of banging my head against the wall as a result.

Here's the thing. I grew up surrounded by rhetoric that claimed that America is the greatest country in the world. We have the most freedoms. We have the best history. We have the biggest trucks, too, in case anyone was measuring. Even as a small child I was pretty skeptical of this rhetoric, mostly because my family didn't own a truck and was the product of fairly recent immigrants with their own cool histories. I was, however, raised with a healthy respect for the fact that the United States has the capacity to evolve and change as circumstances require. It's certainly not a speedy or easy process- there was a solid 100 years between the end of the Civil War and the (legal) end of Jim Crow, for example- but it's a process that's certainly possible. In other words, in spite of overwhelming evidence that my home country is a slow-moving behemoth when it comes to social change, I was taught to remain optimistic.

What I forgot to remember is that social change isn't unidirectional, and all the equalities Americans have fought to achieve can be stripped away by an equally determined regressive force. Many of the recent attacks on women's rights have been from the anti-abortion camp, but that's just one piece of a broader movement that apparently seeks to keep women down. Senator Scott Brown, attempting to pander to Massachusetts women recently, praised the "strong women" in his life for teaching him to cook. Apparently, while men knowing how to cook, clean, and sew is a good thing, it takes a strong woman to ensure that that knowledge is adequately imparted. Never mind the terrifying thought that a man might live on his own at some point, or be raised by dad(s), or that women- people- are strong for things beyond throwing a couple of ingredients into a pot. Never mind that his remarks indicate that a woman's strength is in the kitchen.

::insert sound of head hitting wall here::

What drives me crazy is that this is all happening in spite of the aforementioned self-aggrandizing rhetoric. Anyone with a pulse who spends time outside the United States ought to be able to admit that America is a pretty good country but that other countries and cultures have amazing things going on too. Many of us, myself included, might even look at those other countries and sigh wistfully, believing that they could improve a few things about our social systems (coughcough only two parties?! coughcough). But many of us fall prey to the belief that we can- and should- teach Others how to do things. "We might not be perfect on health care," we say, "but at least we're not cutting our children's labia and clitori off! Let's teach Them alternatives!" Off we march to Do Good In the World, forgetting all about our home troubles in the process. I challenge back: "We might not be perfect on genital care, but at least we don't punish the victim of a crime for the rest of their life!" (This is a work in progress as various countries change their post-rape marital and childbirth laws, but you get the picture.)

Note that I'm not trying to make light of genital cutting, which I believe is a pretty serious health risk and a systemic failure to provide alternative cultural and medical options for a specific 50% of the population. I would suggest that there's some hypocrisy, however, when Americans (and other Westerners too, I suppose) decry Female Genital Cutting but circumcise male babies as a matter of course. Believe me, I know that the amounts of flesh removed aren't comparable- but we're still okay with cutting an infant's genitals when the evidence in favour of the practice is rather controversial. To make a long story short, Americans spend an awful lot of time criticizing other countries and cultures for their practices while we've got our own cultural challenges to face.

The term "War on Women" that's been floating around the Internet has me a bit kerfluffled, to be honest. On the one hand, while the coordinated attacks on women's health, well-being, and personhood are certainly reminiscent of a political-military strategy, it also feels like a minimization of the sorts of war experiences that Americans haven't had in the homeland for about 100 years. No one's firing guns (I think) and town after town isn't falling to a literal invasion of policymakers. Yet the rhetoric we're seeing here vilifies women on a regular basis: we're studding bulldogs, we're baby-killers, we're drama queens who (according to Brown, anyway) should save our strength for the kitchen. It's just rhetoric, right? But that's where it begins. Discourse and belief feed each other like crazy, and before you know it, the way we talk about women is the way we perceive women. We might not be involved in a literal war quite yet, but this is a great way to lay the groundwork for one.

Let's nip it in the bud. On Saturday the 28th, all 50 states in America will be hosting marches and rallies to protest the nasty-talk. Check out Unite Women for details specific to your state if you're in the U.S., and if you're reading from elsewhere, please send us your support in one way or another. Goodness knows we can't trust our internal politicians to treat us like humans.

Guest Post: Child Brides and Toddlers and Tiaras: a reflection

This article, written by Danielle, originally appeared here at GoGirl Magazine in January 2012 and is re-posted with her permission.

Just having finished the book I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced & a recent National Geographic article on child brides (Too Young to Wed, June 2011), I feel compelled to explore the ramifications both within the countries perpetuating child marriage , as well as take a closer look at our own practices here in the United States of ‘growing up’ our girls.

In over 20 countries around the world from Afghanistan to Yemen, girls, often considered property, are married off without their consent at the excruciatingly young ages of 8,9,10 years old to men frequently decades older. According to the International Center for Research on Women, 25,000 girls are estimated to marry every day. That is a staggering statistic. The projection is that 100 million girls will be married off in the next decade. This practice not only hurts the girls themselves, but hampers the whole country’s development by keeping half of the population uneducated and focused on the hearth and home (included is the religiously-justified marriage of young girls in the US and Canada by the likes of Warren Jeffs).

Nujood, now 14, is an incredibly brave young woman. Married to a man three times her age, he raped and beat her every day. This is when, she said, she learned the definition of cruelty. Her escape is one of the most heroic acts I’ve heard of and her courage earned her the first divorce ever in the country of Yemen for a child bride. She has set an example to other girls married off in the same fashion; so far two more girls, ages 9 and 12, have successfully sought divorces from men that deprived them of unrecoverable innocence.

As with so many acts of VAW, poverty, custom, and lack of education are pillars upholding the convention of child brides. Both tradition and culture justify this patriarchal and soul-robbing practice, but marrying child brides also holds monetary value. Young girls are used to pay back loans, right family wrongs, preserve family honor, and bring in cash or commodity that carries economic benefit. As child marriage is receiving more attention, governments are slowly changing laws to accommodate a more moderate version of marital ‘readiness.’ Indeed, Nujood’s case influenced her own government’s take on marriage, moving the official age to 17 for both girls and boys in 2009. NGO’s and women’s organizations are working in local capacities to identify other ways to make ends meet and keep girls in school longer, thereby postponing marriage.

While my rancour is initially directed to the practice of marrying off young girls, I reserve a good portion of it for messages, often seen as benign, aimed at girls in the US. The show Toddlers and Tiaras reveals to anyone with cable that we continue to value girls, toddlers in fact, for their looks and their entertainment value. These little girls are dressed up in suggestive outfits, wear make-up, sport painted nails, fake eyelashes, spray tans and incredible ‘up’ dos. It is the essence of making tiny girls look and act grown up, channelling them into the stereotypes women’s rights activists have been working so long to redefine.

Source: Amelia Alisoun Blog

This show highlights a struggle (one of many) in the US: perpetuation of gender stereotyping at an age when girls should be able to express interest in many other activities beyond those traditionally “feminine”. An unfortunate consequence, Toddlers and Tiaras provides an example of yet another type of pageant for girls to follow, focusing on shallow hallmarks of traditional femininity. Unremarkably, it appears as if the mothers of these little girls are the ones most eager to perpetuate the gender stereotype that girls should be pretty and perform for others. While incomparable to the practice of child brides, this show lauds a perverse form of sexism for entertainment.

Newest Miss Representation Trailer (2011 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection) from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

Girls in the US are pummeled by mainstream media to grow up quickly. From Disney films that embody gender stereotypes and roles (think Beauty and the Beast), to the shows Bad Girls and Real Housewives, which maintain that women are bitchy, self-absorbed, back-stabbing, one-uppers, girls need to purposefully seek out role models who profess a range of qualities, intelligence and talents apart from what is routinely offered. I hear from friends and family who have girls of Nijood’s age express with frustration that “they are 10 going on 18,” implying that they already are reflecting mainstream needs for the beauty and glam of mainstream women. Our media culture, constructed in bulk by men (men own all the media conglomerations), is a key factor for girls wanting to pursue womanhood as narrowly defined by sexism in order to feel valued.

This is tragic.

And begs a bigger conversation around culture and women’s and girls’ rights. A couple of suggested websites to visit are:Gender Across Borders and Miss Representation. The latter, a documentary everyone should see, is coming to SIFF at Seattle at the end of the month.

Allies in the Aftermath, Part One

After my last post, a Not Another Wave reader asked me what someone can do to support a friend or loved one who's been sexually assaulted. The question surprised me a little because, as an advocate, supporting someone in that position is (literally) my life's work and I've come to take the knowledge and skills associated with my job for granted. It occurred to me that the things I know to do, the things I understand before I walk in the room, aren't common sense to everyone. I thought that a good way to answer this reader's question would be to start by giving some background information about victimization before writing a to-do list for the next post, so that we can all be supportive to those who need it.

Before beginning, however, I'm going to reemphasize what I said in my last article: rape and sexual assault are never, never, NEVER the victim's fault. I don't care if the victim was making "stupid" choices; the perpetrator/offender is the one who ultimately used those choices as an excuse to commit a crime. We need to place blame on the appropriate person, which is the person who violated someone else's rights.


Let's start by looking at sexual assault as a crime. For the most part, sex assaults are committed by someone the victim already knows and feels at least some trust for- a partner, a friend, a date, a new acquaintance at the bar- and not by some stranger in a dark alley. Most offenders "groom" their victims before committing the assault. In the case of new acquaintances, for example, offenders follow the same pattern that people follow when trying for a consensual hookup: they look for a person who's out with friends (more relaxed), they ingratiate themselves with the group, and they slowly push boundaries (i.e. stroke the target's thigh). They then try to get the target alone. So far, nothing amiss, right? The crime occurs when they go for something sexual (a grope, a touch, a kiss), the target doesn't say yes, and they keep going anyway. The victim might fight back; but then again, the victim might not. Everyone's different. After the crime is completed (i.e. penetration), the offender continues to groom. They may cuddle their victim. They may make excuses (i.e. "You got me so turned on, I just had to"). They may make threats. Whatever they do, they will do whatever it takes to make their victim confused about whether consent was given and whether anything wrong took place (because rapists don't cuddle, right?). And because the things that happened in front of other people are a normal part of consensual hooking up, it's often hard for the victim to find validation that anything seemed out of place before the two were alone together. Hence the very reasonable fear that "no one will believe me."

Even for those who do report, getting a conviction is like winning a very painful lottery. Sexual assault forensic exams (SAFEs- please don't evercall them "rape kits" again!) require excruciatingly close examination of a person's body, including plucking hairs (head and otherwise) for DNA evidence and taking photographs of your body. Police interviews, even when done by the most compassionate of officers, require telling and retelling of the incident- including the embarrassing details- and being willing to answer questions that might feel victim-blaming. All of this is for the chance that the offender might be prosecuted and thus might be convicted, which also requires telling and re-telling the story in the public venue of a hearing. Most of them aren't. Evidence isn't sufficient to counter the claims that "it was consensual," the offender strikes a plea bargain, the victim can't take it anymore and refuses to testify...the list goes on and on. It's a wonder anyone reports in the first place (see statistics here).

Regardless of whether or not someone makes a report, they have to live with what was done. For everyone, this means something a little different. I could rattle off common trauma reactions- recurring nightmares, fear of encountering the offender, being hypervigilant, drastic changes in your reactions to otherwise-normal occurrences- but these things don't mean a whole lot until you live them. I can say nightmares, but that doesn't help you understand that some victims spend months avoiding sleep because every time they close their eyes they're reliving the rape. Sometimes victims lose their partners because they can't have sex anymore- or because they have sex with too many people, to try and "overcome" the assault. Some victims run ten miles a day; others down Jack like there's no tomorrow. Some will panic because the person who assaulted them is someone they loved, cared about, and/or trusted- and now they're scared that they can't trust anyone ever again. Some will tell you they're fine. Some won't.

The thing to understand is that everyone, eventually, has to deal with their experience in some capacity. Healing from a sexual assault isn't like healing from a cut or a scrape, and it's not an event- it's a process. Commanders here at my job like to give victims a few days off work, but then expect them to come back in a week later as though nothing ever happened. That's not how this goes. Trauma- including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD- can take a lifetime to heal. A person might be a wreck one day and seem their usual self the next. Someone else might appear to be recovering nicely, only to lock themselves in their house the day they have to face their offender in court. There's anger, depression, sorrow, self-blame, not in any linear fashion, and not in a predictable pattern. Counseling can help, but not everyone wants that. Regardless, the aftermath is often hellish to live through and has no definable end.

So what can you do to be an ally or a supportive friend or loved one? Expecting a victim to return to the person they were before the assault is insensitive and unrealistic, and yet we want to be hopeful that the people we care about aren't irrevocably taken from us by the offender. Tune in next time, and I'll give you some places to start.