When your choice is no longer your own

So, in my morning perusal of tumblr I came across this, which made me say this:

(Read it and you’ll understand why. Don’t worry. I’ll still be here when you get back. I’m just that kind of dependable.)

I, of course, just had to respond. The post has been excerpted for your benefit. I don’t who this girl/woman is, or how much traffic her page gets (not that it matters), but I do know that sentiments such as those highlighted below pervade our society. As a budding feminist, this both saddens and frustrates me.

“[…]the quickest way to set me on the warpath is to tell me you want to be a stay at home mom for the rest of your life and not get an education and mooch off your husband/partner completely by choice (ie: You have the ability/funds/everything else required to attend school and better yourself) BUT THAT’S NOT BECAUSE IT’S AN OPPRESSIVE FEMALE ROLE, it’s because it’s a waste of a brain[…]”

Going to college and having a career is indeed a wonderful opportunity that countless men and women should be proud/thankful to have. But, what you seem to be missing is the fact that white men have *always* had that opportunity. What you’re failing to consider, or are just blatantly ignoring – I’m not sure which – is that people of color and women as a whole were historically denied the choice of getting a decent education and following that up with a career. But, for now, I’ll shelve the class/race element for the sake of brevity and focus solely on women.  Feminists fought for a woman’s right to attend college, graduate school, etc and eventually pursue careers because women did not previously have the option to do so.  Our role was to grow up, go to finishing school if our culture dictated, find a husband, have babies, cook, clean and shut up and look pretty. We could not choose to operate outside of this role. (Again, shelving the class debate, because Black women were definitely working and raising families before white feminists began fighting for a woman’s right to have a life outside of the home. This, of course, informed a large portion of the debate between early feminists of color and early white feminists.)

What we have now, in the 21^st century, is the ability to choose what we want to do.  A woman that chooses to stay at home and take care of her husband, wife, significant other, [insert term of choice here] is no less intelligent than a woman that chooses to pursue a career. And they are no different than women who choose to pursue careers and take care of their families. There is no difference between telling a woman that she has to go outside of the home to be considered worthy and telling a woman that she must stay at home, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, to be considered worthy. Why? Because both claims deny her the right to make the choice for herself. They strip her of her choice. And that’s what feminism is truly about – giving the women the authority to govern their own damned lives. Got it?

 Now, if you think that being a stay at home wife/mother would be a waste of your personal brain space, then that’s fine, but do  not seek to extend that belief to all other women in the country, or on the planet. Such a job (and please believe it is a job, an often thankless one at that) is a waste of brain FOR YOU.

Don’t get me wrong. The last thing on earth I want to be is a stay at home anything, least of all a stay at home parent. But I would never look down my nose and tell a woman (or man) that chooses to do that that s/he is somehow inferior and stupid.

“You want equality? You want to be respected? Well then, the best solution is clearly to just lay on the floor and whine about how disrespected you are. You wonder why women are seen as weak? Do I really need to explain why? It’s because your response is to whine and complain rather than getting out there and eating stereotypes for breakfast. Go out there, get an education, and take over the freaking world..”

I agree that people simply whining about being disrespected and marginalized does nothing to implement change. However, you seem to think that “eating stereotypes for breakfast” is going to somehow show men that women are equal to them.  I see two problems with this assessment. First of all, stereotypes persist because they make the privileged majority (in this case bigoted men) seem superior.  In fact, they are a set of inaccurate, simplistic generalizations about a group that allows others to categorize them and treat them accordingly (thank you www.dictionary.com). Stereotypes continuously marginalize othered groups, making claims such as “women are the weaker sex because they lack testosterone” and “women earn less because they are less aggressive” seem normal and therefore acceptable.  Secondly, you either forget or simply do not know that a stereotype persists regardless of the evidence mounted against it. Women don’t have the drive, don’t have what it takes to be scientists/engineers/politicians/pilots/[insert career of choice here]. And yet, there are countless women who are scientists, engineers, politicians, pilots and so on. And there are just as many stories by women in those professions that detail how much sexism they’ve had to deal with on their way to the top. Having a career and being educated does not automatically mean that sexist men will no longer be sexist. “Herpderp, she has a career now. I guess I have to stop thinking she’s a lesser being.” No. That’s not how it works.

Suffice it to say – negating the stereotype does not destroy the stereotype. So, the onus isn’t upon women to prove to men that they are equal, the onus is upon bigoted men to stop thinking they are superior just because they were born with a penis.

“The harsh reality is that if you want respect you’re going to have to show men you deserve it. Yes, just like any other human being. Oh, you thought men just walked into a business environment and everyone respected them?”

So, all of those women who are groped or on the receiving end of disgusting sexual invitations when walking down the street (including myself) need to show those men that they “deserve” respect? Or perhaps all of those women who are CEOs, COOs and CFOs of companies both big and small and are still treated like they are “just” women? Or maybe you mean those women who are legal partners in major law firms, top surgeons in their medical field, or those women who stay at home and raise the children that will become our future. What you fail to understand is that imploring women to show men that they deserve respect places them squarely in a man’s world and thereby at the mercy of what men think a women should be or do. And it makes the fact that they aren’t respected their fault. That’s like telling a black man that someone hurled the ‘N’ word at him because he had the audacity to have black skin. Let’s not play this “blame the victim” game.  It’s tired and oh so boring.

I do not think men just walk into business environments and immediately garner respect, but I do think women sometimes walk into business environments and immediately get even less respect – from both sexes. Think about what women who like to wear high heels and have their nails done often have to face in the work place – in other words women who are conventionally pretty. The stereotypes persist even then – you’re pretty so you must be dumb as a rock. You assume that success (both academic and professional) somehow affords women respect. It does not. When a person believes himself to be superior to another human being, he will find a way to prove his point. Period. It does not matter if I stay at home or if I go out and join the work force. I’ll still be a woman dealing with real woman problems at the end of the day.

So get off your high horse and make decisions about your own life and encourage other women to do the same. But do not tell them that your way is the right way and that their’s is wrong. I mean this in the best way possible - before you go on a rant about a topic such as this – perhaps pick up a book and educate yourself. If you choose not to, that’s fine. But that’s counterproductive and, dare I say it, lazy.

Because anger doesn't preclude rationality. Irrationality, however, does.

“As ‘objects,’ we remain unequals, inferiors. Even though they may be sincerely concerned about racism, their methodology suggests they are not yet free of the type of paternalism endemic to white supremacist ideology. Some of these women place themselves in the position of ‘authorities’ who must mediate communication between racist white women…and angry black women whom they believe are incapable of rational discourse.” bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

The double standard here drives me up a wall. Literally. I’m typing this from the ceiling. It’s cozy up here. I know this book is “old” by today’s standards (even though it looks young enough to be 20) but that makes it no less relevant. I read those words and my blood pressure immediately shot up. We (all women, perhaps especially Black women) have been raging against this idea that emotion negates rationale for decades, centuries even. The hormones, oh the hormones, preclude our better judgment. (It’s why the War on Women is seeking to limit our access to birth control.)

Rather than arguing that I’m/we’re not angry – I’m choosing to embrace it. I’m calling upon my non/anti-feminist counterparts to cease invalidating my feelings/opinions/thoughts/ideas/existence on any issue just because of my emotional, Black or (ugh, the horror) vagina-ized state. I’m calling on my feminist compatriots who are melanin-deficient to help bring an end to this “angry black woman” stereotype – and help everyone recognize that there is nothing wrong with being angry and there is everything wrong with using a powerful tool of the patriarchy against other women. What is wrong is the marginalization of one socially, politically and economically "inferior" group by another, (slightly less) socially, politically and economically "inferior" one. I see this now not only as it pertains to the differences between black women and white women but the west and the non-west (i.e. Muslim women and non-Muslim women seeking to free Muslim women from their “shackles,”).  

Of course I'm angry. All the damned time and about so many things. But, I can be angry and know that 2 +2 = 4. I’m done asking other people if I have the right to be in such an impassioned state.  I'm embracing the fact that I do indeed own the right to live and feel as I choose. And I own that right in the face of men who think me inferior because of my impressive set of ovaries, and women who think me inferior because my hair is kinked and my skin has a year-round tan. 

Our myriad struggles with the perfect body, control over our baby-making and sustaining machinery (both before and after giving birth - breastfeeding anyone?) our varying battles with Darth Patriarchy (Vader’s distant cousin), our fight against gaslighting and so on are points of unity, not division. Unity, of course, does not mean minimization of difference. It means creating a world in which women have the authority to govern their own lives, wear their own clothes and be angry any time of the month they damn well please.

When a man got angry some time around September 2001, he launched an entire war that cost us countless lives. But his act was “rational.”

When I get angry, I’m PMSing, I’m irrational and my thoughts on the issue are thereby irrelevant.

Do you see where I’m going with this? 

I’m not saying anything here that hasn’t been said before, I know this. But I guess this post is really more for me and for those other women like me that get angry and then second guess their anger as though there is something wrong with it. God gave you anger. That’s how you know something is WRONG.

Now, I’m not saying that we should all go bat-shit crazy and run over our significant other’s because they stole our twinkies and that made us angry. I’m not saying we should all morph into Hulkina or Lady Hulk or whatever the hell her name is.

What I am saying is that the next time someone tells you that you’re “just angry” you should reply “And? Your point?” Because anger, or any other emotion for that matter, doesn’t preclude or disrupt rationality. Irrationality, however, does. 

The Moment of Silence is Over

As I sit here on the last Friday before most of my major final assignments are due, I think of all the ways in which female oppression around the world is the same but different, instead.

A woman in Beijing, China confronts the brutal abuse she faced at the hands of her husband. 

Beijing. I was just there. I left with this euphoric feeling of how beautiful the city was, how it was different than the US.  But, it’s so much the same.  Women – silenced because abuse is something to be ashamed of. Something you aren't supposed to talk about publicly.

Women in Haiti are still being raped.  Still being silenced, because girls are so promiscuous… No help from the cops because girls always want it anyway. Men raping women, raping children, raping babies….and it’s the victim’s fault? It’s the victim’s fault that she was held down and violated?

Source: FreckledChimp

Silenced.

I live in a culture of women that think they’re free because they get to walk out of their front doors without having to cover their hair or hide their faces.  They can show off their legs and get into cars with men that aren’t family members.  But, when (God forbid) they are raped – the question lingers: well, what were you wearing? The judgment rises: maybe if you hadn’t worn that tiny skirt…Why did you get into the car with him? Why did you go out with him?

Yes, because men can run the country and tell me what to do with my womb, my reproductive organs, MY BODY, but they can’t control themselves around a woman in a skirt.

Forgive me my Muslim friends if I get this wrong, but isn’t part of the oppressive culture surrounding hijabs and burqas directly related to the sexuality of women? And how women must cover themselves to avoid raising the lusts of men? Please, correct me if I’m wrong.*

Wholly different circumstances, but still so much the same.  America likes to place itself on a pedestal, pointing a naked finger at all of those other countries that are so backwards and must be saved from themselves. “My, look at how women are treated in Iraq/Iran/[insert othered Middle Eastern country of choice here] we must liberate them so they, too, can be free like our women!”

You throw too many stones America.

It seems that women, by their very existence, are responsible for their rape, their abuse and their status as object, as less than in any country.  And when we speak up against it – we’re feminazis, we’re seeing things, we’re not working hard enough, or we work so hard we’re bitches and ballbusters.  When I confront blatant sexism and misogyny I “can’t take a joke." We're liars because "stuff like that" doesn't happen "here." Or, we just don't understand because that's part of "culture." 

Whatever.

STOP letting them silence you.

*Note 8/28/2013: I meant in no way to disrespect women who choose to wear hijabs, etc. My comment was focused on the idea that how women are clothed, in form, is in anyway related to how they are or should be treated. I am still learning. Forgive me if I overstep or mis-speak while doing so. 

Marissa Alexander

Wow. 3 posts in one week! I know I should be focusing on final assignments/exams for the semester, but life just keeps distracting me.

I was minding my on business this morning, taking down my hair and attempting to style the lioness’s mane while listening to the radio.  The TJMS to be exact.  This particular segment concerned the plight of a young, black mother in Florida who is facing 20 years in prison for “defending” herself against her verbally and physically abusive husband against whom she'd filed an injunction.  And I use the word “defending” loosely because what she actually did was warn him.  She didn’t even touch him – but we’ll get to that later.

From what I can tell, he entered her home and began to attack her while she was using the, how shall we say, facilities.  She managed to escape to the garage to her car, at which point she realized she couldn’t get the garage door open due to mechanical failure, she didn’t have her car keys and she didn’t have a cell phone to call the cops. She had no other means of egress.

What she did have, concealed in the garage apparently, was a gun – for which she had both a permit and training. According to her personal testimony, found here, her husband and his two sons were supposed to be exiting the house through the front door. She goes back into her home through the kitchen only to find that her husband is still there.  Her husband yells “Bitch, I’m going to kill you,” and charges.

Now, if someone’s just physically assaulted me in my home, and  screamed that they were going to kill me while they’re charging at me in my home – I’m going to fire the weapon I’ve been trained to fire.  I’m going to protect myself.

And that’s exactly what Marissa did. She fired her weapon into the ceiling in warning. Her husband (now ex) fled the domicile. She was denied the right to have her case dismissed under the now notorious “Stand Your Ground” law because, according to Judge Elizabeth Senterfitt she could’ve have escaped through a window, the sliding glass door, or some other exit.  Mind you, this woman had just given birth 9 DAYS ago. Do you really think it’s fair to ask her to slip out through a window?

More to the point, this man was in her house. He was the intruder, and he admitted to being the aggressor. There was an injunction against him and he violated it, thus committing a crime. There is documentation of his physical abuse toward her. But Marissa had to flee? She had a duty to retreat?

Under the “Stand Your Ground” law people who feel threatened have no duty to retreat.  Under this law, they have the right to defend themselves. I’ve included the important bits of Stand Your Ground as they apply to this particular case:

“A person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another if:

(a) The person against whom the defensive force was used...had unlawfully and forcibly entered, a dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle...and

(b) The person who uses defensive force knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry or unlawful and forcible act was occurring or had occurred”

“A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

Marissa is now charged with 3 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with no intent to harm, and child abuse because she fired a weapon with her child in the house because, according to Judge Elizabeth Senterfitt, she had an opportunity and the means to escape.

Once again, the victim is blamed. Once again, the victim is made out to be a criminal and once again - women's rights, especially in the face of violence directed at them, are abrogated. 

If you do nothing else today, please follow this link to the blog her family has put together for her and follow this link to sign the petition in her honor.  This woman does not deserve 20 years in jail for protecting herself, especially when Florida has granted her the right to Stand Her Ground. 

The Conversation That Never Was

At this point in my life I've been told more times than I can count to 1.) think before I speak, 2.) think before I act 3.) do my own research and 4.) don't jump to conclusions about what I see on the internet. 

By now, many of you have seen, read or heard about the Great Swedish Cake Controversy of 2012.  If you haven’t, allow me to direct you to the only article I’ve read that makes an effort to examine the facts and remain unbiased by the immediate assumption of racism.

I’ve seen the now infamous picture of a crowd of white people laughing as the cake in the shape of a naked black woman’s body is carved for their pleasure.  I’ve seen the crumbs of red velvet cake run like rivers of blood as slice after slice is made into her body, a body that offers pleasure to those amassed to view her. I’ve thought about the racism that such an image implies.

And, from that vantage point, it seems like another issue of white vs. black, of racism in its most abhorrent, overt form. And if you take that picture as the alpha and omega of things that occurred in a Swedish museum that day, then you’ll see it that way too. But, what I’m going to ask you may shock you to your very core, it may cause you to shiver in disgust, it may even cause you to walk away from the computer screen to you get your sudden urge to vomit under control.

What I’d like you to do is this. Take a moment to think about what happened before and after that picture was taken.  Think about the fact that this image that’s come to represent “racism in its most abhorrent form” is merely a split second shot in a timeline of events that most of us can never know much about….unless, of course, we have a video. 

I want to examine this work of performance/visual art, the images that ensued and the anger it’s created.  Some have attacked the artist, believing that what he did was “racist,” whatever the definition of that word in this context may be. I want to ask,  “did this piece of art do its job?” Doesn’t the image make a profound statement about the pain and victimization of women in any male dominated society? Doesn’t it give voice to the trial of woman everywhere, the fight to have her voice heard in a room full of people that would otherwise laugh, point and objectify her with their finger-pointing and photograph taking?  The act itself, the cutting of the cake, the screaming initiated by the head of the cake whose artist is housed therein – doesn’t it make a larger statement about voicelessness and silence in the face of female gential mutilation (for the artist), and women’s oppresion, racism, othering (for the rest of us)? 

I think it makes all of those statements when you take a moment to really think about it.  

However, it seems that it failed in generating the sort of conversation the artist seems to have sought.

What I’m really trying to get at here is that – while we’re busy pointing fingers and getting upset over the image, we need to have the conversation about the  issue that it’s supposed to be representing. After all, isn’t that what we – the othered – always ask people to do? To engage in dialogue about the nature of the issue? Aren’t we always saying that problems such as these arise when people refuse to have honest, open discourse?  Why aren’t we teaching people about female gential mutilation (FGM)? Why aren’t we talking about what this image, what this cake, what the videos, etc, mean about the nature of being subjugated as not only a woman, but a black woman? The artist has opened the door, and we’re refusing to walk through it with him.

After watching the video, I can tell you that the visual makes me uncomfortable to the point of cringing and it makes me think about how much my cringing pales in comparison to the screams and pain of girls that suffer from FGM. But the people in the video were obviously not uncomfortable enough or aware enough of the stark reality of the differences between their own situation and that of FGM victims to forgo the temptation of some delicious red velvet cake, even as the plated victim screams in agony with each slice.  I want to ask these people – why were you more concerned about cake than about what it was meant to represent? Why didn’t the torment of the woman on the table and her screams speak louder than your need to eat cake? (And, while we’re at it, doesn’t this say something about the concept of “herd mentality?”) As you watch the woman approach in the beginning of the video and ready her camera – think about how it seems to be one big joke, one big assed spectacle.

The people in this video missed the point, and so, I’m afraid, did the rest of us.  So, to beat the dead horse, why in the hell are we so busy pointing fingers and not busy talking?