Trouble Shared is Subversive

compromise v. confrontation

2009-04-04T16:48:00.002-04:00

What I’m wondering today is how smaller, more mundane acts of physical surrender contribute to my inability to react powerfully, immediately, when a major violation is in the works. Is it just a sort of sexual violation triage thing? A picking of the battles worth fighting? Choosing what to take seriously and what to brush off is a delicate matter, especially for a survivor. How much is governed by the incredible desire to continue believing -- sometimes until it’s too late -- that this isn’t really happening again? These are a few considerations at work when, for example, a guy real quick all of a sudden sticks his hands down your pants at a club. In that kind of situation, my tendency is to duck through the crowd and find friends, and never think twice about it. What’s the point in confrontation, anyway? But then again maybe there’s something insidious about treating things like that as commonplace when they really, really shouldn’t be.

In a fight or flight situation, I choose flight Every. Single. Time. This kind of reaction may make sense in a case, like one recently, where I was stuck on a secluded beach with one other girl and some strange guy who was doing all kinds of nasty shit to me and wouldn’t stop even though I kept pushing him away and running. I wasn’t in a safe city and I didn’t know the guy, so probably sprinting as far away as possible with my friend was the smartest move. Smarter, anyway, then getting in his face. So I ran, laughingly, like many girls I know would, until I felt safe. And when someone asked, why are you smiling? I said, Because I don’t know what else to do. And then went to have a good cry in my shower, because I felt -- as is too often the case -- dirty and afraid.

But maybe I didn’t act like that because it was the smart thing to do. Maybe I am just still terrified of how a situation shifts and can spin far beyond what you expected if you make someone angry. People can become something else altogether when they are angry. Maybe the memories that kind of situation stirs up are still too close, too vivid. And maybe I smiled through it because I didn’t want it to be real, didn’t want to have to deal with it. Why does it always have to be me dealing with it? I somehow doubt that guy went home feeling dirty. I somehow doubt he cried. It starts to feel like a waste of time to take seriously, or care at all, what people do to my body. Like it would be a better idea to think of my identity, or what matters and defines me, as separate from my physical person. But I’ve been down that road, and I know it leads to a place much worse than this.

I’m still incredibly sensitive to these issues-- references to sexual violence, or the smallest slight to womankind, send me into days-long silences, furies. Part of the reason why I don’t react to the negative ways men sometimes treat me is because I’m worried I’m overreacting, worried I’m equating insults to me as a person with insults to me as a woman. (Although arguably I should react to insults to me as a person, too.) On a political level, it’s probably a good thing to choose only the big fights, so as not to make the cause seem light or petty. I don’t want to confront these issues too frequently because 1) I don’t want them to take over my life, as they did for some time, and 2) I don’t want to cheapen the effect of my words. I don’t want to be angry all the time. When I say something’s wrong, I want it to count.

But on a personal level, I wonder if that kind of quotidian compromise to avoid confrontation is a form of denial, or a way to pacify my legitimate anger, or at least a sad sort of resignation. I wonder if that’s one of the places (albeit not the most significant one) where I get that sick attitude that this is just what my life is going to be like. Because truthfully there are many times I wish I was the kind of person who would turn around on a dance-floor, look someone in the eye, and say stop, or what do you think you’re doing. Or the kind of person who demands the respect, not just the attention, of the people I spend my nights with, and would throw down if I didn’t get that respect, 100% of it. Unfortunately, I’m not that person, and I don’t do those things. I just run.

They Say Rape Isn't About Sex

2009-01-09T11:55:00.006-05:00

The general lecture goes like this: There's no need to cloister yourself, to wear baggy clothing, to hide how pretty you are. Too many rape victims are shut-ins, boys, crippled, elderly. The most typically sexually attractive girl on the block isn't the most likely to get raped, because rape isn't about sex. It's about power, and control. So if you're a cute young woman, not to worry, you're in no particular danger. Or put another way, no matter how safe you think you are (but I'm overweight and over 60!), we're all in danger.

This is true, but it also isn't, I think, and not just because of differences in prevalence (girls are more likely than boys to be victims, for example). Like take this article(PDF) for example, about surgical castration of sexually violent criminals, and more broadly speaking, the impacts of testosterone on recidivism for convicted sex offenders. It's pretty clear, at least from this very small group of (partially archaic) studies, that a reduction in testosterone leads to a reduction in the desire to rape or engage in other violent sexual behavior. So, I mean, it is about sex, right? Or the violence - testosterone connection, about which I know little. Educate me, dear reader(s?)!

But then again, all guys have testosterone, and there's no mention of sex offenders having more of it. And most guys aren't rapists, so the current thinking goes, so that 1 in 4 stat is just because there's a handful of guys who rape a lot of people. So it isn't just about testosterone, or sexual impulses per se. I mean, my incident was about sex for I think the first fifteen minutes, and then about power and control for the last twenty (the fighting and the whole 'I don't get said no to' motif). I can pretty clearly remember when it changed.

So I guess what I'm trying to negotiate is ultimate causes, and that's not really realistic. But the power/sex dyad or interactive duo or whatever you want to call it, it's very interesting to me. I mean, raping a kid or a nursing home patient is about power, right? But then if the above article spits the truth, the desire to do so could be eliminated by eliminated sex drive. I mean, getting surgically castrated hardly makes you more in control of your life, or more powerful, or more loved, or whatever the other x factors in a rape are. Right?

As one of the perpetrator's idiot friends said during questioning:
He couldn't have done it, he didn't even like her!

The Buzzword in the Mirror

2009-01-09T11:27:00.003-05:00

Not to overuse this whole concept of dissociative behavior -- but it's new to me and I like it, I understand it, it explains something to me that eluded me before.

Dissociation is a word that is used to describe the disconnection or lack of connection between things usually associated with each other. Dissociated experiences are not integrated into the usual sense of self, resulting in discontinuities in conscious awareness (Anderson & Alexander, 1996; Frey, 2001; International Society for the Study of Dissociation, 2002; Maldonado, Butler, & Spiegel, 2002; Pascuzzi & Weber, 1997; Rauschenberger & Lynn, 1995; Simeon et al., 2001; Spiegel & Cardeña, 1991; Steinberg et al., 1990, 1993). In severe forms of dissociation, disconnection occurs in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception. For example, someone may think about an event that was tremendously upsetting yet have no feelings about it... The likelihood that a tendency to dissociate is inherited genetically is estimated to be zero (Simeon et al., 2001). http://www.isst-d.org/education/faq-dissociation.htm#depers

Website goes on to talk about childhood trauma, PTSD, those kinds of things. But another thing that interests me, particularly in the idea of childhood abuse, is the idea that at one point serious dissociative behaviors are adaptive, are a way to cope with something that can't be emotionally or cognitively processed. It's only in adulthood, or when the dangerous situation is gone, that the behavior becomes maladaptive, and thus problematic both clinically and i/t/o functioning.

What also interests me, beyond victim-focused discussions, is the possible presence (and I'm reaching here) of dissociative behaviors - albeit not full-blown dissociative disorders - among attackers, traumatizers. Soldiers are a good example of this, being in their own way both the perpetrators and the victims of their own violence. One imagines an otherwise normal soldier forced by a commander to commit some kind of atrocity abroad would have to engage in some kind of derealization or identity interference to be able to follow orders. For a soldier, dissociative behavior can be adaptive. So let's go see this new movie Waltz With Bashir.

And I saw it myself-- the way when the real violence began his eyes became empty of recognition, creepy and blank, their pupils somehow larger. They looked just like the eyes of a friend of mine in high school when she was sleepwalking and turned to look at me. It's not just that he lost control when he got angry, it's that he appeared to lose consciousness of who I was, of the reality of the situation, of the fear and desperation right in front of him. For a long time that expression of his has haunted me, and though I've never seen it since, I see reminders of it. When someone in group therapy dissociates, goes from competent adult to frightened child right in front of me, their eyes go with them.

And so the line between ourselves and our enemies further blurs.

PTSD

2008-12-23T22:01:00.002-05:00

5 people are driving in a car and there is an accident. Only person (not the driver) develops PTSD in the wake of the event. Why?

Diagnosis ---> Resolution:

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat

This quote from NIMH's website is followed by a link for treatment, but it links to a page on treatment for anxiety disorders, broadly speaking. This, I assure you, is not the way to treat PTSD. At least not for me. No amount of Xanax could touch this 'anxiety'. I've been anxious before, I've had panic attacks before, and this was different.

There are four main symptoms of PTSD:
1. Reliving the event, in flashbacks, nightmares, etc.
2. Chronic avoidance of situations that bear some relation to the traumatic event
3. Numbing of emotions, forgetfulness
4. Hyper-vigilance/hyper-arousal

In the program I have found that has finally be successful in treating what I now can comfortably identify as PTSD, the illness is treated differently than a typical anxiety disorder (although copious benzos are always helpful). Rather, it is treated as, to some extent or another depending on the person, a dissociative disorder, like dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality (with which PTSD is often comorbid especially in children). Trauma, for some people, is treated as a fundamentally a dis-integrating experience, and PTSD as a disintegrated worldview. The trick then is not to teach yourself how to stop being afraid -- although that is a goal -- but rather to figure out, slowly but surely, how the trauma and its concurrent reaction can be fit into the rest of your life (or reintegrated). Whether you need talk therapy, cognitive behavioral restructuring, hyponosis, or just paper and pens and a lot of time, the goal is to come to an understanding of Why You. But not why the trauma occurred to you, because that is often (as in my case) the malice of others and shit luck. Rather, why the PTSD did.

Now, in some ways, this requires working ahead of the medical community, whose members know very little about the Whys of PTSD. What they do know is often focused on and limited to war veterans, no doubt an group in need of help but perhaps not a representative sample. But they do not really know much about why that fifth person in the car is predisposed to PTSD. What you can bring to the table, though, is your knowledge of yourself. It may not provide any medical exactitude, but let's be honest, how often do psychiatrists offer that? So in my case, while underlying mood disorder tendencies are no doubt a component, there are other environmental factors, and factors in my personal history, that I realize now made it unlikely that I would find a way to healthily cope with what happened. So I sort of forgot, sort of panicked, sort of dissociated, was always hyper-vigilant, and was too numb to really be any of those things fully. I was textbook.

I'll explain all this more clearly. I've had some revelations. More to come.

P.S. For those in other circumstances, watch out for something called Complex PTSD, possibly to be included in the next DSM. It's what some victims of routine child abuse and other long-term childhood trauma experience, and has distinct symptoms.

What then must we do? (asked Saint Luke & Leo Tolstoy)

2008-09-23T01:38:00.004-04:00

To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." - Chuang Tse

M was right, I think. It is the smell of fall that's bringing it back, almost a year since it happened. I've been having nightmares out of nowhere, waking up to feel how a shaved scalp feels in your hands as you push and pull and bat it away from yourself, with the desperation of someone who - pinned down - took a shot at just closing her eyes and giving in and found her body rebelling. How can you still feel a scalp in your hands a year later, feel it physically, as if it were right now?

The best word is 'shaken'. My body is still a stranger to me. That night it made choices without me, though I think gratefully of the ways it protected me then. It's not so much that I don't trust it, since it fought bravely enough for both of us. It's that I don't think it should trust me. Or that I think of my body and me as two different beings.

We think of our bodies, unintentionally, in very obvious rape metaphors. I want desperately, palpably to be Washed Clean of something that is still torturing me, to Get Rid of Whatever Is On Me and Inside of Me. And it is a terrible thing (not to just realize but to really understand) that there's nothing to wash off, nothing to remove, nothing foreign inside of me that can be expunged or excised. There is nothing, physically, left to be done.

I am searching for something that I can neither feel in a clear emotion nor find tangibly. I don't live in self-hate or obvious fear, and there's also no corporeal injury to resolve. Something else is wrong, something I can't pinpoint anywhere or really give a name to. It makes my body feel out of place in the world, my mind subtly but persistently haunted. I haven't been talking to my confidantes about it because I can't think of a word for it, just like I can't convey it to you now. I'm just starting to try to talk about it because I don't have a choice, because my counselor told me not to be afraid of it.

How do you deal with flashbacks? My best friend asks me. Did they ever give you advice on how to handle that well? I think, I say resignedly, that you just have to face them. I don't think there's much else you can do. Face them until they don't scare you anymore. Don't try to cleanse yourself. Accept that you'll never be the same again. That there are things about your body, about how humans process the world, that you'll never understand. Like how an almost simple physical act of violence that (even months after tangible pain and fear are gone) could cause an echoing pain that hurts so badly for so long.

The trial is over. He won't do any time, but he got a long stint in probation and sex, violence and alcohol counseling mandatory. And about a grand in fines (around how much my sanity is worth). In the end I accepted a plea bargain because I just fucking couldn't do it. Because no matter how much support and evidence and conviction I had on my side, I would have walked into the room and it would have been me, him, and his damn lawyer alone in there. No matter how many people came with me when I'd have had to testify, all I would have seen and felt was the three of us, alone. And people say, Oh! I can't believe he didn't get time! And it sounds like an accusation. I did what I could to send him a message, and it's not like prison ever made anyone less criminal. And don't sit there and think how much farther you'd have pushed it if you'd been in my shoes. You have no idea how brave I was. It was just that in the end, after eight months locked in a horrible, intrusive staring contest, I couldn't do it all.

Now that it's over I realize something, anyway. Everyone feels it, especially me and my dad, who were the most involved in the criminal process. It's the best argument against the death penalty ever, this feeling. I don't feel any better, that's what it is. No matter how harsh his punishment, I don't honestly believe it will prevent him from doing this again. At least not forever. And no matter how harsh the punishment, I don't think I'd ever feel satisfied that justice was achieved. There is no justice because nothing will ever change what happened, and nothing that happens to him will ever heal me.

So that's the wall I've arrived at now. There are no distractions left, no other angles from which to approach my trauma. I have no trial left to focus on, and I can't make the future of this about him anymore. Although I know that one day I will fight hard and fight well to protect other people from living through this, I also know that it will be a while before I can. So I'm facing up now to the awful knowledge that today's battle (one campaign in a fucking unconscionably protracted war) is inside of me, or on me. The real fight is right here, somewhere between me and my body and the false dichotomy I've created between us.

I have absolutely no idea where to begin.

And what?

2008-06-15T21:29:00.002-04:00

In 2002, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1,202 American women were killed by their intimate partners, comprising ~30% of the total murders of women that year. 175 men (~3%) were victims of intimate homicide. Women in their 30s and 40s are the most likely victims.

Over the last 30 years, in the population at large, men represent 77% of homicide victims and 90% of perpetrators. Men are three times more likely than women to be victims of homicide, and 8 times more likely to commit homicide.

In the period from 1976-2005, the incidence of white women murdered by intimate partners rose prior to 1993 and then dropped back down to approximately its 1993 level. For slightly better news, the number of intimate homicides for all other race and gender groups declined over the same time period - and eventually even white women saw a slight decline. The number of black males killed by intimates dropped by 83%, white males by 61%, black females by 52%, and white females by 6%. However, the proportion of female intimate homicide victims to female homicide victims overall is increasing, and while white wives are less likely to be victims of intimate homicide in 2005 than in 1976, white girlfriends are more likely to be victims.

From 1990-2005:
"Over two-thirds of the spouse and ex-spouse victims were killed by guns.
Boyfriends were more likely to be killed by knives than any other group of intimates
Girlfriends were more likely to be killed by force than any other group of intimates."

-Bureau of Justice Statistics
^{http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/intimates.htm}

Race Sex and Fracturing Justice Further

2008-05-05T19:39:00.013-04:00

We're commiserating at the cafeteria table after another week of fighting the endless fight. One of our ranks is sharing another disturbing personal story about pitting the oppressed against the oppressed by racializing sex crimes. She's in a difficult position as both female and black, in dealing with the campus response to a recent assault allegation brought forward by a white woman against a black man. My friend knows the victim and defendant***, and evidence & precedent would suggest the allegation is true. However, discussions about the incident are charged with questions of whether or not the case is being taken more seriously than usual (ie noticed at all) because the defendant is black. My friend is finding it difficult to extricate her feelings about her role as a black student at a majority white college, and the well known prejudices against black males on campus, in the criminal justice system, and in society as a whole, from her personal knowledge that the woman's allegation is true and her anger at some other black students' kneejerk disbelief of the victim.

My friend's confusion and anger got me thinking. Since white woman vs black man is a presidential issue this year, we're probably all more aware of the battles among the ranks of the disadvantaged. The ways in which people feel forced to choose between multiple demographic categories they fit in to, and are open to criticism from the other, whatever the choice. A woman who votes for Obama isn't a feminist. A black woman who votes for Clinton's selling out her race. In democratic nomination-land it's easier to brush off what voters' choices say about their prejudices, or chalk up those choices (probably rightly so in most cases) to variables in which feminism and racial pride as deciding factors per se play less of a role. Still, the issue is fraught and uncomfortable. This is the case to an even greater extent in the land of rape trials, where race can and does play a role not simply in how likely people are to care about a reported rape but even in how they tend to define, in a specific case, what constitutes a rape.It is absolutely true that many accounts of rape and interpretations of how rape is reported are hopelessly naive and ignore racial implications. The racialization of justice is fact fact fact, and black men are much more likely to be reported for rape than white men (there's no credible existing evidence indicating that black men are more likely to rape people than white men, so don't try that rationale).

Since the same statistics show that black men are more likely to be reported, regardless of whether the victim is white or black, it is less likely that the racial element takes place at the level of accusation. Rather, racism probably pervades each subsequent level. Women raped by black men are probably more likely to be encouraged by friends and family to report it, and by police to press charges, since they know that in a racist system the victim is more likely to win the case. In a crime where the criminal justice process is so arduous and difficult and traumatic, in its own right, for victims, the probability of a conviction probably plays a huge role. Here's a good article America's skewed justice regarding race and rape in the past and today: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3880/is_200307/ai_n9242270.

Taking all that into account (yes, a big caveat), racial accounts of rape can also be hopelessly narrow in their understanding of women's perspectives. Take this ending quote from an editorial on the Duke lacrosse case and a 2006 case involving a black Naval officer and a white woman (it is unfortunate for you, beloved reader, that this was the first article I found in a cursory Google search, as it incensed me thoroughly and we will now discuss it for several hours):

"Whatever the outcome, women must feel uneasy about both cases. If the color of a woman’s skin — not her credibility or her character — determines how others react to an allegation that she was raped, members of the fairer sex are in for some tough days ahead."

Speaking, if nothing else, as a member of the fairer sex, I find both cases highly unsettling, if entirely unsurprising, but I find the author(one Gregory P. Kane)'s turn of phrase to be pretty unsettling too. Let's not kid ourselves here. White women who dare to report a rape don't get a warm public reception either (just one Baltimore radio station? Oh, I wish). Just look at statistics about college women (we're often white) and rape (we're often raped) and the pursuit of justice (we're among the least likely to report rapes, much less prosecute them), then survey us about the source of our silence (we tend to disbelieve we will be treated fairly, and most deeply fear the social consequences, the hate and victim blame of our internal pundits). I refuse to believe, whatever the identity of the accuser or the veracity of her accusation, that her rape allegation journey has been a walk in the park. The author's talk of how easy the media has been on her is an implicit suggestion that, for equity's sake, they ought to be harder on her.While race as a factor in how rapes are perceived and treated is a more obviously arbitrary and despicable, the author's standard of "credibility and character" is equally insidious.

I repeat this again for emphasis, credibility and character are not the standard by which the guilt of the accused should be determined. Personally, I think we ought to use evidence as that standard. I want people to look at scars and bruises, at STDs, at broken noses and torn insides. I want them to listen to witness accounts they heard someone say No. I don't care think it should matter what anyone's race is, or what anyone's past is, or what others think of their character (many serial killers, after all, are notoriously charming and productive citizens), because such things will never, ever, offer us the beyond a reasonable doubt evidence that we ought to need to convict. Regardless of the media response (and how shocked can we continue to be that right wing pundits are racist mysnogynist hypocrites?), according to this article the criminal justice system actually did a much more decent job than usual of defending the rights of a black man-- and it hardly favored the white woman.

Lawyers for Owens didn’t just damage this woman’s credibility when she took the stand to testify. They eviscerated her. They picked her clean. By the time they were done the judge was criticizing the prosecution for putting on such a poor witness.Their evidence of her lack of credibility? She was extremely drunk. She was overly flirtatious. She offered to give another guy a lap dance, and when he refused she cursed him out. I know how it is, and how juries are influenced, but I can't seem to understand why any of that matters. Even considering such evidence in a rape trial encourages the persistence of rape myths about who deserves rape, that help many people in their seemingly endless quest to find any possible way to blame a woman - of any color - for her own rape. Why is any of this stuff about the background and demographics of the individual even admissible as evidence? Is there a study that says rich men are less likely to rape than poor ones? That black women are more likely to lie about a rape than white ones? That sexually active women are more likely to allege a rape than (former) virgins? Does any of your personal experience or statistical evidence suggest anything other than that rapists do what they think they'll get away with? Doesn't this mean we should be even more likely to believe a man would choose a less "credible" woman if compelled to rape, whether her credibility is undermined by character or color? It shouldn't matter if a woman is black, a lesbian, mentally ill, addicted to crack, an ex-con, a prostitute, walking naked down the street in a bad neighborhood at 3am. It shouldn't matter if a man is President of the United States or Ghandi or a wonderful public citizen. If there's evidence of rape. If she screamed. If she said no. If she's physically hurt. Then he's guilty, 100%, for what happened. It is his act of violence, no matter who she is, and the blame for his aggression (in terms of convictions if not in religious or rehabilitative terms) belongs to him.

Now I know you might say many cases don't have such clearcut evidence available, b/c there aren't witnesses, or documented physical injuries, or any forensic evidence, but I counter to you that many cases actually DO have such evidence. And I can promise you that even in such cases, for some god damn inexplicable reason, it still matters to the decision who the victim and the assailant are. It's a long road and most likely fruitless road to justice for the woman described above, no matter the evidence in favor of her claim, mostly because an eerie percentage of the population really doesn't think that anything that happens to such a woman, no matter how brutal, is really rape. Because in the end, the prejudices of the jury matter, and there are people a jury just doesn't feel sorry for.

So Yeah, Mister Cane, the fair sex is in for a rough ride (for a change?). So are black men. And the innocent accused of all colors. And perhaps most unlucky of all-- as the Duke case showed -- black female victims of rape by white men. But not because of what Mr. Kane describes. Suppose a situation of guilt. Suppose a black man rapes a white woman based on overwhelming evidence, and he gets convicted. Suppose we could know that if the exact same jury heard the exact same trial, but with a white defendant, they would have acquitted him. Are we upset that the black rapist was convicted, if all the evidence was good, even if the thing that tipped the scales was his race? I hope any citizen with conscience would fight like hell to make sure that in the future, the white guy is convicted too. I hope that angry citizen would fight even harder to make sure that race is removed as a weight in the criminal justice system, to ensure that innocent black men not be lumped together with this guilty one. But I'll be damned if I feel sorry that a rapist was brought to justice, and I'll be double damned before I argue that the woman's "credibility" should have been the deciding factor instead.

Suppose innocence. Suppose a present-day To Kill A Mockingbird. Even make it a rich white family, the most "credible" sort of family, and a poor black man. Should we argue that the trial should not take place? Or should we fight for a fair trial? Shouldn't we argue, instead, that evidence should be the basis of conviction? Shouldn't it be that if the punch is right handed and the man's right arm doesn't work he isn't guilty? Shouldn't it be that if there's not enough evidence, then no one gets convicted? Shouldn't we fight so that our criminal justice system works like that, for innocent white men too? If the trial were fair, why would we need to undermine the credibility of the accuser before she even goes to trial?

Suppose fact. We live in a country where black men are much more likely than their white counterparts to be accused, and convicted, of crimes they commit, and crimes they don't commit. A country where women are astronomically less likely to report rape than they are to experience it, because too often it is they who bear the highest social and economic costs. We've got a dark history, where nothing boiled the blood of a lynch mob like a black man having sex with a white woman, even (or perhaps especially) consensual sex. A tradition in which the children of black women raped by their white masters were born the chattel of their fathers, and raping a slave was an impossible concept because slave women werent considered as humans. A tradition wherein women spent their lives in marriages where they were beat and raped every night, just to avoid the social and religious consequences of divorce. It's a history that bleeds and bleeds and bleeds into the present. How can you quantify it or balance its individual parts? How can you argue that we should sacrifice one victim of that history to another?

The root of the problem is not what Mr Kane outlines, it is this: There's room for whatever prejudices we can come up with (and we're good at that) to seep into the process and prevent the administration of justice as defined by the laws of the day. This is the core problem, and it will persist indefinitely given these circumstances. For as long as personal opinion plays such a large role in what the word rape even means. For as long as certain acknowledged forms of rape are considered non-criminal -- if the woman has done certain things to deserve or "ask for it." For as long as the law remains unclear, for as long as character is permissible as evidence, then it just makes it easier for racist judges and jurors (racism, after all, is tying character to race) to justify their decisions based on facts and assumptions that are fundamentally unrelated to the crime. That gap in understanding, that ambiguity of definition and mixed feeling about rape, leaves ample room for all manner of sins-- for racism and sexism alike.

As someone who's been lauded for being such a "credible" witness, I have to say this much. What that man did to me is his fault, not mine. But it isn't his fault because I'm educated, or because I look white, or because my criminal record's clean and my shit's in order and my mind is clear. It's his fault because it was his act of abuse and his act of violence, and we expect adults to control themselves, their sexual impulses, and their anger and hate. I know I'm lucky as hell that I have "credibility" going for me, but really I'm not all that lucky. I still have to endure character attacks all the time (from people involved in the trial and from people who just like their own opinions), because of the crime itself, because I'm a woman, because people will use whatever twisted narrative they can to make this my fault or society's fault or anyone's fault but his. And anyway, what makes makes my story "credible" in the ideal courtroom sense of the word shouldn't be who I am, it should be all the evidence. Evidence that it happened, that it hurt, that I tried to stop it, that I pushed and hit and ran and still he didn't give up.

I know it won't be popular to bring Jesus into this, but: 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' Matthew 25:35, 37, 40. What's the point of all these security cameras and forensic tests and witnesses, when the final judgment is still based, inextricably, in here-say and prejudiced assessments of who we are? You think it's a different story when it happens to a different woman? You think it hurts me worse than it would have hurt a less "credible" victim? You really believe a different history convicts a black man, a different tradition than the tradition that ignores a white girl? It isn't. You think the system of belief that undermines any non-white non-male non-straight person as somehow not "credible" doesn't eventually undermine me? It does. That system of belief will find a way to dehumanize me too, it already has-- it'll find a reason to call my testimony illegitimate too-- so don't tell me that such a system favors me. It's the same fucking story every time, with the same hideous prejudices and power plays behind it.

See we're sharing the costs of injustice now, and that is a communal problem that must be addressed with communities in mind. But while criminal justice reform should be dealt system-wide, individual cases need to be centered around the crime itself. By replacing race with character (though we already use both ad nauseum) as a standard in our courts, we'd just be trading one injustice in for another. And though I don't want to minimize the unique way prejudices operate for different people and demographic groups, when it comes to the functioning of a system of justice as a whole, its all the same problem in end.

---

***note: several yrs later and with the trial over i'm now able to say without linking myself too closely to anything specific that, while the rest of the description is faithful, the white student victim under discussion @ the cafeteria table was in fact me, and the black woman student is a close friend of mine (and one of the more inspiring survivor-turned-activists i've ever met). it was an incredibly painful experience to hear not only that my case had made it on the agenda at the weekly discussion forum for the college's black student groups, but that it had been framed as an example of unfair racialization of campus crimes. here is my friend's account of the meeting:

she did not say who brought the issue up, but the situation was described and the identity of the accused disclosed to the forum (mine was not). not knowing the details of the case and having never met the accused-- who was, like me, a new student on campus at the time of the attack-- many of the students at the meeting took the racial account at face value. my wonderful friend stood up against this, and also corrected some initial misinformation about case. thankfully, she was joined by several students (i do not know who they were, but god bless) who did, in fact, know him. these students argued that, for various reasons, the situation between myself and the accused was not a representative example of the phenomenon of injustice toward black men, and would therefore be a poor choice for a cause celebre. these reasons (some more valid than others) included the fact that the accused, who is as i have mentioned a highly privileged expatriate, is neither african american nor disadvantaged in many of the ways that black students often are. his brief tenure on campus had apparently also been sufficient to establish him with a -- somehow unsurprising-- negative reputation (mostly among members of the isolated enclave of new students) for airs of snobbishness, disinterest in socializing with other black students, and general creepiness toward women.

ultimately, as far as i know, no significant portion of the black community on campus ever came out in support of his cause.

the limited law of this land

2008-04-16T13:48:00.004-04:00

Perusing the penal codes of NY state to figure out what the things that have happened to me are called, NOT to be confused in any way with the charges being brought forward in ongoing criminal proceeding, not what the DA's office feels it can easily prove, but what actually happened and how it would be punished. Here is what I found. (I won't, by the way, do my usual irritable pedantic thing and contrast the info below with laws on sentencing in drug possession crimes or anything, just because I'm sure the results would depress me too much on this beautiful afternoon).

So there was this:

§ 130.65 Sexual abuse in the first degree.
A person is guilty of sexual abuse in the first degree when he or she
subjects another person to sexual contact:
1. By forcible compulsion;
Sexual abuse in the first degree is a class D felony.

Oh yes, and then came this:

§ 130.67 Aggravated sexual abuse in the second degree.
1. A person is guilty of aggravated sexual abuse in the second degree
when he inserts a finger in the vagina, urethra, penis, or rectum of
another person causing physical injury to such person:
(a) By forcible compulsion;
Aggravated sexual abuse in the second degree is a class C felony.

Why this crap is only a misdemeanor I don't know:

§ 120.00 Assault in the third degree.
A person is guilty of assault in the third degree when:
1. With intent to cause physical injury to another person, he causes
such injury to such person or to a third person; or
2. He recklessly causes physical injury to another person;
Assault in the third degree is a class A misdemeanor.

And these were like supporting actors or assists in hoops:

§ 135.05 Unlawful imprisonment in the second degree.
A person is guilty of unlawful imprisonment in the second degree when
he restrains another person.
Unlawful imprisonment in the second degree is a class A misdemeanor.

§ 140.15 Criminal trespass in the second degree.
A person is guilty of criminal trespass in the second degree when he
knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in a dwelling.
Criminal trespass in the second degree is a class A misdemeanor.

Soon, I'll give you a socio-legal theory argument for why this should (and someday will (fingers crossed) though not soon enough to help me) be included too:

§ 485.05 Hate crimes.
1. A person commits a hate crime when he or she commits a specified
offense and either:
(a) intentionally selects the person against whom the offense is
committed or intended to be committed in whole or in substantial part
because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national
origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability
or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or
perception is correct, or
(b) intentionally commits the act or acts constituting the offense in
whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding
the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious
practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless
of whether the belief or perception is correct.
3. A "specified offense" is an offense defined by any of the following
provisions of this chapter: section 120.00 (assault in the third
degree); section 120.05 (assault in the second degree);
subdivision one of section 130.65 (sexual abuse in the first
degree); paragraph (a) of subdivision one of section 130.67 (aggravated
sexual abuse in the second degree); section 135.05 (unlawful imprisonment in the second degree); section 135.10 (unlawful imprisonment in the first degree); section 135.60 (coercion in the second degree); section 135.65 (coercion in the first degree); section 140.10 (criminal trespass in the third degree); section 140.15 (criminal trespass in the second degree)

So if NY truly obeyed its own laws, he would get this in return:

§ 70.02 Sentence of imprisonment for a violent felony offense.
1. Definition of a violent felony offense.
(b) Class C violent felony offenses: an attempt to commit any of the
class B felonies set forth in paragraph (a); aggravated sexual
abuse in the second degree as defined in section 130.67
(c) Class D violent felony offenses: sexual abuse in the first degree as defined in section 130.65
3. Term of sentence.
(b) For a class C felony, the term must be at least three and one-half
years and must not exceed fifteen years
(c) For a class D felony, the term must be at least two years and must
not exceed seven years

Correction Law: Sex Offender Registration Act
§ 168-a. Definitions. As used in this article, the following
definitions apply:
1. "Sex offender" includes any person who is convicted of any of the
offenses set forth in subdivision two or three of this section.
3. "Sexually violent offense" means: (a) (i) a conviction of or a
conviction for an attempt to commit any of the provisions of sections
130.35, 130.50, 130.65, 130.66, 130.67, 130.70, 130.75, 130.80, 130.95
and 130.96 of the penal law,
7. (b) "Sexually violent offender" means a sex offender who has been
convicted of a sexually violent offense defined in subdivision three of
this section.
§ 168-h. Duration of registration and verification.
2. The duration of registration and verification for a sex offender
who, on or after March eleventh, two thousand two, is designated a
sexual predator, or a sexually violent offender, or a predicate sex
offender, or who is classified as a level two or level three risk, shall
be annually for life. (Darkly humorous addendum: given above inclusion the registry, he will also be subject for life to one single specific employment limitation: § 168-v. -Prohibition of employment on motor vehicles engaged in retail sales of frozen desserts. Just picture him, the only Prada suit-wearing ice cream truck driver in America)

And that's the Roundup for today folks. That these laws and the distinctions are arbitrary (is penetration with a body part always less physically and psychologically damaging than penetration with a foreign object?), and punitive not reformatory (but like duh), and relatively paltry in their severity (compared to sentences on drugs or property rights offenses), is a topic for another time, another day, another moment of obsessive fixation. Today we'll merely look at these laws as they are-- then hold that thought, indefinitely-- and someday compare them to the outcome of all of this for my case. Or rather his case, let him fucking have it.

I can say this much already - even with copious evidence for most if not all of the above - this has been is a war of attrition against hope. Week by week, friends and foes (all you prophets of a harsh reality on my horizon) come forward with news to temper my expectations of a fair outcome, to suggest we whittle down the charges the law and the truth would level against him. To suggest that we break these small codified eggs of justice in search of the omelet of peace of mind. And so you use your pragmatism (friends) or selfishness (foes) to help me to escape the black-and-white world of absolutes I've lived in since. With the hope that in time I'll remember how to blur the stark line in my mind, to imagine gradations instead, between a perfectly just solution and an unlivable one.

Still unable to imagine such gradations, we have to bracket these topics for now, cross that bridge or whatever later on. Instead we wait and try to imagine (or understand) what we're waiting for.

--
See also:
NY state education laws regarding sex crimes - those topics I can discuss now, and will...
Education Law Article 129-A REGULATION BY COLLEGES OF CONDUCT ON CAMPUSES
Education Law § 6431 Advisory committee on campus security.
Education Law § 6432 Sexual assault prevention information

It Feels Selfish and Stupid

2008-03-30T04:01:00.000-04:00

I remember the sentiments I had when I started this, and I think I still believe them somewhere, but I've been featuring this less prominently on FB and avoiding mention of it whenever possible. I haven't been writing much, and what I have written, I haven't published.

I'm still appalled by the silence on issues of sexual violence, on college campuses in particular, and by the apathy (that often borders closely on complicity) with which any discourse about the issue is met. I still believe it MUST be talked about, screamed about, until something changes in a big way. It's a real true and frighteningly commonplace hate-crime we turn a blind eye to when we allow people we know to experience it in silence, or hear about it and say nothing, or even see it and say nothing. Puritanical awkwardness about sex and an unwillingness to burden others with our problems are understandable impulses (I'm feeling them now) but they, too, are just less obvious cultural inducements to silence. We simply can't let these things stop us from telling the truth. No victim should be silenced, I still believe that, and no one should ever think they're enduring this alone. My views have not changed-- if anything I've come to believe in the cause even more.

It's just that at some point it started to feel selfish and stupid, talking out loud about this any more. I wanted other people to speak out too, and many brave people have come to me since I started writing this, people I know well and people I don't, sharing violations they've kept secret for years. I am so grateful to all of them (all of you) for your honesty and bravery, and for the feeling of community you've allowed me to imagine during these last months. It's just the sound of my own voice, bitching page after page, starts to get a little tiring. I'm not changing the world by speaking up, not even a little. I'm ranting and raving. I'm a one issue woman. I wouldn't take me seriously either. I'm desperately searching for a fight, for a solution, for comrades at arms in a war against violent sex, against rapists and predators and all bastards who abuse the weak. But where is my army? What can I do? I'm more exhausted than I've ever been, and I'm no braver than I ever was before.

It's far from over for me, and as the trial continues, and yawns and stretches out like a cat getting ready for a long nap in the sun, I'm faced with an endless stream of bullshit from the defense. Turns out, money can buy you out of your felonies (surprise!) and this bastard is not ashamed to pull any awful exploitative trick he can find to evade the consequences of what he's done. The only blessing I have is a restraining order that ensures that I at least get to hear what he's doing or saying now secondhand. And every minute of every day something reminds me that I'm not who I used to be. Every day I read something in class that makes me angrier than I can bear, and every day I hear someone say something that puts me on the verge of tears. It's ridiculous. I wasn't even this over-sensitive when I was a tween.

I won't repeat the reasons that I have to keep trying. I've listed most of them at some point below in this blog. Maybe it will serve some purpose to let people know that for victims of sexual violence, things aren't ever really the same again. Once you're kicked out of the status-quo club you don't get to join it again. You can find the good in the world again eventually (or so I've been told by some incredibly inspiring survivors I know) but there will always be a little willing suspension of disbelief involved, a glass wall between you and the world of people who think that it's all OK. It isn't OK, but that doesn't mean that nothing can be done.

In short, continuing to talk about this, and hope that others will continue to respond, is a much-needed act of optimism on my part. We are surrounded every day (much more closely than you may think) by acts of incredible violence, and my blog (somehow!) has failed to entirely solve that problem. That doesn't mean I should give up. What happens to women every weekend on this campus, every minute in this country, is unacceptable. Some of us can't find a way to forget that fact; the rest of you should face it too.

Ranting Time: 4 Things That Kill Me

2008-03-29T23:47:00.008-04:00

Four things that kill me (it's not really four):
(Note: In #s 3 & 4, italics are a pretend interlocutor, quotations, unfortunately are real)
Highly rant-heavy moments in smaller font so only the most die-hard of readers need endure :)

#1

The opening of the Godfather, if you'll recall, is a petition for Vito's help from a man whose daughter refused two guys sex, and was then beaten until her nose and jaw were completely shattered. She's in the hospital now and her father wants justice beyond the painfully minute punishment wrought by the legal system (that's how it is, you know). The man starts to cry, and Corleone asks why.

"She was the love of my life," the man says of his daughter, "and you should have seen how beautiful she was. She'll never be beautiful again."

#2

Picking up a Cosmo magazine that'd I'd ordinarily enjoy for the pretty pictures and awful advice, and finding the articles turn my stomach now.

"New sex acts that will keep your man interested!" or "Myth of the Month: Women want a man with a great body. In fact, most women find it intimidating when their boyfriends are more fit than they are!" or "Ten things every man wants to hear: 1. More bacon, honey?"

Man it's insulting to the intelligence of men and women, and I'm not sure who it insults more. It's an insult to personal differences and human complexity. Who gives a shit what these men (whoever they are) want to hear or have performed on their persons. Like half my exes are vegetarians anyway, all of them are a hell of a lot fitter than me (and i enjoyed that every bit as much as any frat-boy slob enjoys a beautiful girl who spends hours on the treadmill and barely eats, minus- i hope- the preying on insecurity bit), and when they, or i, lost interest, no creative sex act could prevent us from moving on.

A Cosmo survey says:
"Awesome: 84% of men think a woman who makes a higher salary than they do is sexy."
"Lame: 56% of men think a woman who has sex on the first date is not marriage material."

The veneer of feminism is almost the most disgusting part. Yes, Cosmo, you're so right-- that 56% of men, many of whom would have sex on the first date, consider themselves to be marriage material but would think badly of a woman in the same situation is indeed VERY LAME. She better learn a lot of cool sex tricks to make up for THAT error if she ever wants the guy to stick around! There's only one Man out there, and he only likes one kind of woman. And she is a Confident Woman-- confident in her sexual conservatism and bacon-frying skills. So be confident in yourself! Hmm...

I know this is an old old grievance addressed nationwide in local zines by teenage girls whose schoolmates refer to them as "feminazis" (i've been getting called that a lot lately, a term that really does justice to the intelligence of the ivy leaguers who keep using it in front of me, and a big change from "dumb slut", which i got called a lot at my old college for some indiscernible reason). This critique is so obvious it's almost embarrassing to repeat it. Of course we're all cynical about any for-profit operation. A magazine may preach confidence, but it's SELLING insecurity.

And as for those of us who're wise to their game (haha), sometimes it's not so easy to ignore. Pick one up and read it sometime-- not the hilarious captions about celebrity fuckups but the actual columns. It's a big surprise. There was a time when I believed that all that such reactionary bullshit had nothing to do with my life, that only some wackos in a mountain range in the deep south still thought that way. I was so wrong to have such faith in the cynically progressive pretenses of my coastal culture. Now that I am involved in an ongoing sexual/gender-based attack, suddenly all those weird victorian ideas are everywhere. And surprise of all surprises, not just a few of my progressive peers believe them. And even if you completely distrust the source, it still hurts to be attacked.

#3

The Welfare System. I mean seriously. Family caps? Family caps from a country that cringes at the One Child Policy. It's a violation of the basic rights of man, plain and simple, when it's mandated across an entire population, but welfare recipients have apparently forfeited those rights to the state.

You have another child, well, we [The Man, dammit] won't help provide for it. Your irresponsible sexual practices aren't our problem.
Never mind the abstinence education we funded, or the agnostic medical care we didn't fund-- care that might have helped you find birth control alternatives or detect pregnancy early on. Better go get an abortion. Oh wait, we're going to make sure that's illegal too. That way your poverty is total and preordained. That way you'll be a criminal no matter what you do. And if you don't abort, we'll let your child live in even greater poverty as a punitive measure against you for your "deviant" lifestyle.

By being born to poverty and finding yourself unable to pull your and your family up by those proverbial bootstraps
a sign of laziness, not of any deficiency in circumstances
you've forfeited not only the right to reproduce, but frankly the right to have sex at all. No sex? Even on the second date? Cosmo says: you will never find a man who'll put up with that! Single motherhood and social isolation for life!
and TANF says: And be sure you meet your workfare requirements or we'll take your kids away.

I'm sure there's a cool latin word for whatever kind of fallacy the welfare reforms were based on: One or two notoriously horrible stories (about crack addicted abusive mothers living off the state and procreating like mad to get more money from the state for their additional children, who are actually starving to death in a closet because the mothers are just using the money to buy more crack) and bam, the problem is a rampant one, happening all over.
All welfare moms are on crack!
This is not, and it never has been, a rampant trend among welfare mothers. And the solution to the sad cases in which such things really were (are) occurring was never scaling back access to welfare. As if taking welfare money away would save those poor children. No indeed. Scale back welfare access and the alternative is crime.
See, I told you these people are criminals!
And oh, the lazy welfare recipient myth, another ridiculous misallocation of blame. Another small group of misbehaving people the state has found as an excuse to condemn all welfare recipients and cut funds further. The premise of the welfare freeloader itself is pretty absurd. After all, welfare payments alone are not going to put a family in the middle class, or provide a comfortable life in a safe neighborhood with a decent school district. The idea that welfare recipients are out there coasting along living the high-life off government money and requiring no supplementary income is financially unrealistic. Further, many welfare recipients aren't actually unemployed when they end up on the welfare rolls-- they're trying to balance work and family and are simply unable to stay above the poverty line. Hence all the single moms on welfare- whose
neglected!

children we prosecute for urban crime, often, not surprisingly, drug (ie commerce) related. I've tried it before, and I've certainly done the calculations more than once, and I've got bad news. You simply cannot live off one job that pays minimum wage. You need multiple jobs. You need eighty hour work-weeks. And especially if you're single, that means you need to sacrifice pretty much all of your time with your children if you want to feed them. So you go on welfare, and suddenly the government gets to monitor your every move, and you better pay attention to your kids or you'll lose custody, but you also better meet those workfare req's or off welfare you go. And as little sympathy as I have for many absent fathers, paternafare fees are hardly a reasonable requirement either for a low-wage working man. The fees are disproportionate to what someone in poverty could possibly provide, are just another way to make the poor into criminals when they are unable to keep up with payments.

Should have gotten a better education! Then you'd get a job above minimum wage!

Firstly: It's not actually true that a decent education means a living wage, in the current job market. Secondly: People don't choose their educations, particularly not their early educations, which will be most predictive of their future educational ergo job success. They don't choose parents that don't speak English, or can't help them with their homework. They don't choose school districts with no textbooks. They don't choose not to be able to afford an SAT prep course. Since when do we place this kind of responsibility on children?

It starts to look an awful lot like eugenics once you examine the big picture. I don't even need to touch the racial implications (which I haven't really studied much, but suffice it to say they are always there). The picture's horrible enough if we just look, as the law does (nominally anyway), at a faceless ahistorical individual. It's not a new story either, I know, it just hasn't gone away.

As Mr 2pac Shakur noted wisely, years ago:

Give crack to the kids who the hell cares?
One less hungry mouth on the welfare.

... Instead of war on poverty
They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me
And I never did a crime I ain't had to do

There's far too much academic evidence for this particular conspiracy theory. It's disgusting that we continue to vote for people (CLINTON! AND OBAMA! a woman and a black man!) who have no intention of addressing these issues. We American Dreamers are still unable to accept that history conquered the dream a long time ago. We still blame individuals for circumstances far beyond their control, and penalize them -- in a manner abhorrently arisocratic-- for having been born a certain class or color. And women who have sex, if they aren't married, or they aren't well-off, or they aren't white, or they have sex recreationally. Don't get us started on that.

I know none of this is very clear and most of it is entirely in rant-form, but it's after three AM and I'm just so sick of hearing all these fallacious justifications, reading all these disheartening statistics...

Because oh it hurts me, right to the bone. Because suddenly I've become proto-victim to myself. I am the disadvantaged, the marginalized, the ones you wish would just disappear. My existence is an accusation, and guilt is an ugly feeling no matter how happy and comfortable you are. And so in my own megalomaniacal way, I'm over-identifying with all victims of The Man. I am welfare moms and genocide victims. I am sex slaves and child soldiers. I am every kid I knew in high school who was screwed from the start. I'm a criminal because I don't want to starve. I gave my life to a revolution and nothing changed.

As the Jack Bauer playing card in my wallet says:
This time it's personal.

#4

If a girl wears a short skirt she's asking for you to sleep with her, even if she screams no. And if she gets pregnant, that's her own damn fault because she wore that skirt, and if she dares to have that child and doesn't seek an illegal abortion, she better not be knocking on the government's door asking taxpayers to take care of her and her hatechild.

"How short was your skirt, really?"
"Were you wearing underwear?"
"What kind?"
"Were you sexually active prior to the alleged assault?"

If a woman enjoys sex with one man, other men feel entitled to her. If a woman kisses a man, she ought to be fine with having sex with him, even if its the first date. These kinds of prosecutorial questions don't make or break a case, but the prosecution still asks them out loud, because like it or not, they still influence the way the jury thinks. A woman in a short skirt is just a little less compelling a victim, and to me, that is insane. My peers may laugh at my concerns because they don't believe that anyone really believes those ideas anymore, but a jury of my peers remains a little too easily swayed by them. So says my counsel, anyway.

and so we're back to #1:

"I don't think I can date a sex crime victim"
"I just couldn't have sex with a girl who has been raped"

I'll never be beautiful again.

Can you tell what my agenda is?

2008-01-11T11:30:00.000-05:00

from a David Greenberg Article in the Washington Post

"Obama's Jan. 3 triumph let loose a giddiness bordering on exhilaration among voters and, especially, media commentators, who hailed his triumph as "historic," even though he was not in fact the first African American to win a major presidential nominating contest. (Jesse Jackson won 13 primaries and caucuses in 1988.) By contrast, when Clinton overcame long odds to become the first woman in U.S. history to win a major-party primary, no leading news outlet trumpeted this landmark feat. Many failed to mention it at all."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/11/AR2008011101414.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Ain't that just typical.

Chi Tribune on Rape in College

2007-12-06T10:33:00.001-05:00

Excerpt from an article on Dec 2 in the Chicago Tribune:

"Nearly 3 percent of college women will suffer a rape or attempted rape in any given academic year, and some of those women will be assaulted more than once, according to a December 2000 study for the National Institute of Justice, an arm of the U.S. Justice Department. On a campus with 10,000 female students, the study said, there will be about 350 incidents of rape during an academic year.

Yet the reporting of sexual assault remains decidedly uncommon. Though college women are at higher risk than other women of being assaulted, according to the NIJ study, they are also less likely to report it when it happens. One study for the institute estimated that fewer than 5 percent of college victims tell police or campus authorities what happened.

In comparison, a wider study of U.S. crime victims showed that 38 percent of victims of rape, sexual assault and threats of sexual assault reported those incidents to police, according to 2005 statistics from the Justice Department.

Reporting of rapes cuts two ways for universities. On the one hand, colleges need women to come forward so justice can be served; so the perpetrators, who may very well strike again, can be dealt with; and so the victims themselves can receive medical or psychological treatment.

On the other hand, better reporting would expose to the outside world the jeopardy women face on college campuses. The higher numbers that come from better reporting can hardly help a college's image and recruitment efforts."

-Kathryn Masterson
Chicago Tribune
December 2, 2007

The full article is linked on the right hand bar, or can be plugged into the browser at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-rape_thinkdec02,0,7946324,full.story

Also in the article is an interesting issue regarding the women of University of Maryland protesting during a Sexual Assault Awareness Week by wearing t-shirts with the names of their assailants (convicted or not). I recommend checking it out.

On Sex and Silence

2007-12-05T16:17:00.000-05:00

(Though he rips apart my whole blog concept here), Foucault does put forward some interesting arguments against the Victorian-to-present era tradition of faulting the West (as a culture) for forcing sex into silence, repressing sexuality, and causing us to believe our greatest liberation will come from speaking loudly about our own sexual experiences. The secrecy of sex and then the defiantly explicit confession, Foucault argues, are integral contributors to the power-sex economy (economy being the world he seems to use for the gears and power dynamics of a social system) in the West, NOT a rebellion against it at all.

"This was not a plain and simple imposition of silence. Silence itself-- the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers-- is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies. There is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak of them are distributed, which kind of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses."

-from History of Sexuality, Part I Michel Foucault

So, Michel, if silence AND confession are both part of a sexual discourse that serves a tactical purpose, a means for power within the social system to infiltrate and observe my personal life, What Then Must I Do? If I am not repressed and therefore do not require sexual disclosure, how then to force an agenda for widespread change that focuses around sex as criminally classifiable? How then to confront a sexual "perversion" that (even if it is subtly encouraged by some insidious power, and subtly encouraged even by confrontation) is a difficult-to-avoid source of physical and emotional pain for me and the rest of the 1 in 4? Not with silence, not with speech. With what then?

...Maybe I should finish the book and see if he tells me.

Now Where Was I....

2007-11-29T13:32:00.000-05:00

10 minutes in front of a casual group of 17-26 strangers, no big deal, just a couple questions, the bare minimum needed for an indictment-- the grand jury's nothing to be nervous about. don't be unnerved by the subpoena, many people are, all those words like COMMAND and Contempt of Court can be scary. it will all be really quick and easy.

this is what i was told before being thrown into the lion's den again. they have it backward. subpoena's aren't scary. they're pieces of paper. they couldn't possibly be scary unless they contained a death threat or an announcement that the Defendant had been acquitted. command and contempt are not words that frighten me.

my portion of the grand jury took half an hour, but it felt like longer. i spent most of it holding my hands still, together in my lap. staring at the coffee in front of me. when i looked up, the jurors looked down. they said give as much explicit detail as possible, and then they asked questions, and then they asked more questions. each question was more nauseating and intrusive than the last. they made the next witness cry. it's just a story to them, though i'm grateful for their doing their civic duty and whatnot, it's just law and order, another wide-eyed victim, not a real live girl they're picking apart.

they forgot they only needed enough to indict. they were prying for evidence to convict. a positive outcome is a bandaid on a bullet wound. now all this goes back on the shelf and it waits there, and i'm told to go back to wherever i'm hiding and try to forget everything hanging in the balance. leave it to the pros.

this is one of the situations in which my temper is actually advantageous. the more i perceive the Defendant as forcing unnecessary suffering on me, the weirder the questions ordinary citizens ask about my girl-parts, the more committed I get to fighting. no plea, no matter how severe the offense pleaded to, or the punishment, will be enough for me until the Defendant himself pleads geniune guilt to himself. would that stop him from doing it again to someone else? i don't know. the real outcome of all of this (whether he changes, whether he understands how badly he hurt me, whether he reforms) is one that won't get faxed to me from the DA. no one will call and tell me, or send me a piece of paper, intimdating language or no. it is the one aspect of the outcome of all of this, whenever it ends (which won't be soon), that i won't ever get to know. i'll never know. and i don't know if i'm doing the right thing-- i just still don't have a choice.

How Fragile We Are

2007-11-26T19:16:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving was remarkably nice, not a single stupid comment out of anyone on the topic at hand, and quite a few extremely insightful ones. Only one bad night, when a hope that had been raised regarding the criminal proceeding fell through-- but it aroused no level of angst that a nice long run didn't cure. And I learned my lesson: Assume the worst. Just also assume that, having no other choice, I will survive the worst.

There's so much I wish I could share, so much that it seems insane to me that I have to keep secret. I wish I could scream from the rooftops, across the internet, through every paper in the country how impossible they make this for victims. How much injustice money can buy (who says we got no aristocracy here?). When all of this is over, I will tell it all, but until then I'm furious that I have to hide my fury. I swear the silence is designed to help the defense, no matter how many lawyers explain that it is to protect me.

A study in Carol Gilligan's book, which I just re-read while babysitting, for inspiration (and because I had it in my purse to give to my little cousin... which I forgot to do) had a group of men and women look at a series of four pictures and write stories to accompany them. Two of the pictures showed intimacy (a man and a woman sitting on a bench by a frozen river, and two trapeze artists holding hands in mid-air), while the other two pictures showed separation (an executive sitting alone at a desk, and a women conducting a lab experiment while being watched from behind by two other female lab workers). The study then analyzed the prevalence of violence in the fantasies written by the respondents. Results showed that a majority of male respondents wrote stories that contained violence underneath the pictures that showed intimacy, the focus often on betrayal. Women, on the other hand, almost never associated the intimacy pictures with violence, while a substantial number of them included violence in their accounts of what was happening in the pictures showing separation/isolation/competition. Gilligan thus posits that men associate intimacy with uncertainty and therefore personal danger. Perhaps, Gilligan writes, this is because coming to understand relationships, and differentiate truth from lies in a non-mathematical/logical context, is not nearly as large a portion of male developmental processes as it is for females. Women, having spent less time as children learning rule-oriented competition (such as sports), associate isolation, even the isolation of success, with potential for violence.

What interests me particularly is that these respondents' impressions, in one fundamental arena, are actually an inverted version of reality. That is the arena of physical violence. Women are far more likely to encounter physical violence in intimate contexts than in public, competitive ones. Conversely, men are probably more likely to be physically harmed by others in competition. Logic would then dictate that men ought to be more fearful of separateness, and women of intimacy. What this study may suggest, then, is something that applies across gender lines-- that both women and men find physical violence to be less threatening than emotional pain.

I frankly have a hard time distinguishing between the physical and emotional violence in terms of severity. Is there much of a difference? I hear some recent neurological studies suggest that there may not be. Or perhaps its just my situation; sexual assault is unique in that it rather evenly straddles both kinds of violence. Most concrete of differences seems to be that the body heals faster than the mind.

Talking to some wise young relatives of mine, I wonder whatever happened to feminism. A recent graduate in the field suggests even Third Wave feminism is taught more like history than like current events. How can these gender issues have fallen under the radar? The assault stats against women are 1 in 4. These assaults serve no real function, they are goals in and of themselves. If hate crimes were being committed by one ethnicity against another with anything close to that kind of frequency, can you imagine a day going by without a front-pager on the topic? Why then is this most common of hate crimes so downplayed and ignored? It's insane.

Let's start a Fourth Wave, but lets not call it feminism. Let's call it humanism (or wait did someone else already coin that one...) Whatever society leads to widespread domestic abuse, to 1 in 4 women being sexually attacked -- and most of us not just once-- by people we know, is obviously wreaking some kind of emotional havoc on our assailants as well. What's the evolutionary purpose of violence against women? We are not men's natural competitors, right? Why would you hurt your key partner in survival? What human sees something weaker than him or herself and wants to hurt it? It isn't a natural, primitive state of affairs, not at this level. It's a disorder that transcends race, class, borders, and perhaps most notably, genders. Until October 5, I'd always been glad to have been born a girl, allowed whatever personality I wanted, the leeway to depend on social networks (as all humans do), permission to cry when I'm sad.

The oppressor is also oppressed. Boys face constant pressure to act like a Man, as though there is one monolithic personality that belongs to Man. Boys have to suck it up (though many girls do this too) no matter how hard it is. I swear the concepts of pride, toughness, and the whole Suck It Up regime are responsible for most of the violence in our society (well ok maybe violence is caused more by glaring economic inequality and social isolation, but i'm trying to make a point here). I've said it before, Bravery's facing yourself in all your glorious weakness and silliness and pain, and finding out how to be proud of yourself anyway. Self-Honesty's the only way to stay strong and sane. Sucking it up doesn't ever work-- the things you hide about yourself and your past, the things you refuse to deal with head on, the things you don't cry about, they come out later on in the form of violence. Tough guys (men and women) eventually become either violent toward themselves (drinking, smoking, self-destructive behaviors) or violent toward other people (verbal, physical, whatever).

I once asked a British Army commander with whom I was acquainted (in a context not worth explaining): Sir, you've spent the last four years in Baghdad, why are you so frightened of a little girl?
He yelled that there was so much I would never understand.

I have much more to say along these lines and my head feels full to the brim but I have to be at the courthouse early tomorrow morning (eep) looking and behaving more or less like a normal person. Thus, to sleep.

City Life, Perspective, Slow Leaks

2007-11-10T22:30:00.001-05:00

A friend sees me and smiles widely at my head, tells a narrative from a few days ago:

S: "Ed cut off all her hair"
N: "That's definitely not surprising, especially in the circumstances"
S: "I mean, she cut it off with kitchen scissors five minutes before I came to pick her up for happy hour."
N: "Yeah, still not surprised..."

When I'm not hanging out in my room writing angsty songs (some of which may actually be decent, and then I will share them with you) it is good to see the people who know me best. They're even more amazing than I expect them to be. Although, I must note, happy hour (even with the tame, 50% married crew) was not a good idea-- I almost punched an overly friendly bartender in the face.

I love this city, I really do, but every time I come home it's to disaster. Among family: Politics worse than ever, stress levels higher, one radioactive boob in the house, a diabetic in denial, a dead bunny that was the best bunny ever. Among friends: Job-quitting (again, again), one over sorrow, another over union-busting racist bosses, oh and still another too-young casualty, and an acquaintance duct-taped and tossed in a trunk, a heart surgery needed on a twentysome, a friendship fractured permanently, a dog left a little drooly now blind and dying. It's better than being in school if only because man, everyone I know here has problems of their own. And my girl friends older than me all begin their thoughtful responses to my premature return with "Well, I know after I got raped..."

When I go to see a counselor to help me through the trauma, or whatever it is, she mostly makes me tell details of the Event again, describe fears and weird aftermath behaviors, and when I leave her office I'm flushed and shaking like the leaves in the chilly November wind around me. I know I have to go back up for the grand jury soon, and I know they'll make me talk, and I'll shake then too, probably in that awful northern snow. And I don't really care. It doesn't make a difference where I am when it comes to that. When I get riled up, the lawyers say Oh! Remember THAT for testimony! And I know that it's just knee-jerk advice but I want to laugh bitterly every time. What do they think I will do? Forget? Not a chance in hell. I wish.

I'm sending thank you cards, that makes me feel good, but the thought of actually seeing people still frightens me. So not looking forward to thanksgiving when all the wonderful people who love me will descend en masse like well-intentioned vultures onto boy-haired Carcass-Me.

The Dad says most self-defense classes for women focus on fighting on the floor, and he exclaims how odd, one never pictures oneself fighting on the floor. Just hearing that and my gag reflex gets going. The worst part is what happens on the floor. And I'm still having trouble hiding how simple comments like that affect me, and no one should feel bad for making mistakes I'd make myself. I don't know what's going to upset me until it does, and then people feel bad. And then I feel bad. And we all feel bad. Bad!

Life is hard. Can I get a witness?

October Sucked At Home Too

2007-11-07T20:02:00.001-05:00

so i'm enjoying buying non-generic yogurt (ah the bank of mom) and working on the chords for our latest piece with the hot boy from janney (yay a project) and relaying to a very amused audience the highlights of yesterweek (like the triple un-date and the debacle on the sixth floor of the applied math building) and getting all happily agoraphobic (at least for today)

and then they tell me my bunny died.

No Surrender, No Defeat

2007-11-01T03:24:00.001-04:00

If you want to coo sorrowfully when you hear that I'm leaving for the rest of the semester, do it because you'll miss me, not because you think I've given up or lost my life here.

Don't slip into some zero-sum mentality where the loss of part of a semester for me is a gain in the power of the Defendant over my life. He's already done his damage-- this is me fighting back still. This is me prioritizing, saying screw up the end of my semester, that's fine (I've got enough perspective, well, because I've been in undergrad for a very long time, to know that a little leave of absence never hurt anybody) but you're not going to screw up my education. My beautiful wonderful $100,000 nerd education I love so very much. And you won't mess with my social life-- if I'm going to learn to go out again without being scared, it's going to be with my DC crew, not here where my network is still comparatively small and the nightlife scene comparatively uninspired.

So if it looks to you like I'm giving up, well the answer's NO:

I won't let him make college something I'm paying for but not enjoying fully
I won't let him destroy a perfectly good school for me by forcing myself to work beyond my capacity at a time like this
I won't let him define my sex life (which he's rendered non-existent here, at least until I'm ready to meet new guys, ack!)
I won't let him keep me away from the people who make me happy, who make me better, just to make a point

Again the familiar theme, a wise young gentleman told me a few hours ago something I already knew and wish more people wholeheartedly believed-- that acting like nothing happened is the easy way out. That denial is weak, is a way of running from reality rather than stepping up to the plate. I'm not too prideful (not too deeply in self- or lifestyle- preservatory denial) to admit that my GPA's taking a turn for the worse because of this, that I'm about the least socially enterprising person alive right now, that I need some Me Time to go back to being myself again. All that, though, is because I love being myself, happy as a clam with my irritable academic side and my insatiable sociable side, my endless curiosity about new people and experiences. I've worked pretty hard to find the College Experience, and I'm not settling for anything less. I'm just coasting right now, and that's not good enough for me-- I Demand JOY not contentment, because I'm usually quite joyous, so the bar is quite high.

AND I'm straight broke and going home means grabbing some paid labor (no concentration skills req'd)
AND I can still graduate on time despite a leave, says Ms. Dean Lady
AND the brothers will be home and recording will be done in earnest, a great outlet for my angst
AND I'll be back up for the grand jury later this month, and I'll be glad for the visit
AND I'll be able to focus on getting my muddled brain shit taken care of so I can bring my ol' academic A-game

AND I'll be back in school with a beautiful new apartment and a fresh start come spring semester, no longer having to live two feet from the Defendant's friend in the apartment of the Pariah from which all others flee -- some in genuine fear, some just because they've caught the faintest scent of required responsibility in the air. Also in theory I'll have stopped being this bitter, haha, oh my.

AND eventually they'll make a movie about my leave of absense creatively titled How Ed Got Her Groove Back (which will hopefully involve at least a few tall gorgeous guys in linen shirts telling me (NO TOUCHING) to learn to love my beautiful body again, which since it's DC it probably will).

One of the biggest mistakes that people make is not taking advantage of what flexibility their lives do offer, not enjoying different ways of living, taking their own sweet time to decide where they're headed. I need a BA because I'd like a better salary, but I don't need to force suffering upon myself to get it. It is such a privilege to be young and fairly responsibility free-- it'd be just plain wasteful not to take advantage of it at a time like this. I know from long personal experience that there's no place you Ought to Be at 22 (although law school would have been nice), no one trajectory you have to follow to find fulfillment. We're all so different, of course happiness will be different for each of us.

So, home I go. As that Shakespearean Friar would say: "Go to DC, where thou shalt live till we can find a time... to call thee back with twenty thousand times more joy than thou wen'st forth in lamentation."

And me taking time to take care of myself is some puny victory for the Defendant. The storm is still a-coming. I've agreed to take the criminal proceedings as far as they need to go. I'll be there to testify at the grand jury. I'll be there to say no to unacceptable plea bargains. And come springtime, I'll be there for the trial, and part of me can't wait for cross-examinations. I'd love to hear the twisted way the defense will try to make this my fault (it'll be a daunting intellectual exercise and I'm glad it ain't MY job). And because the defense is a consent argument, the Defendant will probably be there, using his very best vocabulary to cushion his pathetic excuses and obvious lies. And I have to believe there's no jury anywhere in this country that could respond favorably to BOTH his reactionary sexual views AND his smug aristocratic narcissism. He's got this incredible sense of entitlement, of an ownership of everything (including me), and I'm going to be there to show him that he's also entitled to a fair trial. And that he's going to lose.

It isn't me you should feel sorry for.

....

Press on bravely sweetheart
There are 9,909 different roads to heaven
-from Hong Gaoliang (red sorghum)

Sister Ed - A Poem (from my oldest brother)

2007-10-25T21:42:00.000-04:00

Upon reviewing this poem after a gloomy afternoon, I realize it's too good to just hide in the comments section of post #3, figured I'd feature it more prominently. B wrote this for me a few days in, and posted it on his own blog. Word girl feels threatened and proud all at once. Read on.

Sister Ed:

There are things so light, so faint, that they cannot be seen by the human eye.
But they are there.

Inside us, around us, they are.

I heard that if you point a properly equipped camera at the mist near the base of a waterfall in Kyoto in the moonlight, a rainbow will appear across the silver, as light slowly builds, over the length of a long exposure.

To our un-aided eyes invisible, but it is there.

Further, someone told me, a special tripod is used by Japanese photographers with an interest in astronomy. Just under the camera is a device that is programmed to steadily track the sweep of a star as it advances with the assurance of time across the night sky. The camera tilts with the tilt of our planet.

Though our eyes are like lenses, we blink too quickly. We are too forgetful. Our minds imperfect.

But a telephoto lens and a long exposure will reveal in time the corona, the halo, and the nebula.

Light gathers. Like strength and hope.

There Will Be No Other End

2007-10-24T18:50:00.001-04:00

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision- then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
-A.Lorde

Imagine me sitting on a bus, trying to go incognito and failing as usual. A girl walks up, one I have only talked to on a few occasions (I know her about as well as I knew the Defendant) but who stands out because she's got this perfect face. She sits down next to me and we talk a little before something dawns on her, and she reaches into her backpack and pulls out an envelope. The envelope has my name on it. When I open it later its a ThankYou card, dated October 9. "Thank you for being brave," is all it says. It's like I'm in a movie, a bewildering movie, and it's moving and cathartic but it's such a sorrowful thing. Because everyone in the audience knows exactly why this angelic person reached out to me. I'm learning the strange camaraderie that exists within a community of quiet pain.

I understand criminal processes can be protracted, I've seen the TV shows, but man do they ever keep calling me in class to cancel appointments they've forced me to make down at the DA's Office (which is the last place I want to be, no matter how deeply indebted I am to them for the help they're giving). And while it is sort of fun to give the professor a portentous look that silences any criticism of the phone interruption, I'd actually rather just pretend everything's normal. I'm having enough trouble concentrating as is.

Dad called to say it's been 18 days since. To say he's been writing his own little memoir from what he remembers during that long week-- wry funny things the popo said, who knows maybe he even how he felt (I'm not holding my breath on that one). He's adding women's issues to his usual talking points on race and class-- the whole trifecta! he says with glee. I'm so proud of him, but it secretly makes me hope I never have a daughter myself. I can't imagine.

I feel a little ridiculous that I haven't gotten over this by now, that it's kicked up so much dirt from my odd little past, that I can't seem to just pick myself up and keep going. Where I'm from its most important to be productive (mental health is not an issue until it interferes with Performance) -- be Sad, fine, but be Successful. Be an alcoholic, no one's gonna talk about it, but you better be a Functional one. No curse word like Average for us. I realize how absurd that worldview is, and I feel like a years-younger version of myself even considering it, but it's still in there somewhere waiting to pop out at the moments I need it least.

To me, thus, it feels weak to be lost in this, weak to realize that of all the things I am right now, Functional is not one of them. And then I get mad at myself, and that makes me less functional. So it begins.

Point of Inquiry: BOYS (young men, age span 8-40) seem to struggle with this issue more in general than girls my age. The boys I know (and I know they know, and they know I know they know) give me sideways glances and greet me with too-loud voices, manic smiles. If it comes up in conversation in front of them, they spend most of time staring at the table, and where girls cry out in (true, sometimes irritating) validation, go-girl slogans, coos of sympathy, boys are quiet as the grave. Gay, straight, friends, ex-boyfriends, brothers. Doesn't matter. Of course the caveat is that some of the most powerful notes I've received have been from boys, but by and large it seems to make most guys not only upset but somehow very uncomfortable. Does anyone have an idea why that is? Is it because emotions are involved, and they're worried I'll collapse or ask personal questions, or is it because of the sexual element of the crime? Are they worried I'm going to blame them, or that they might do the same thing some day? I can't really figure out why it would be different for a boy than a girl, discussing these matters. In fact, I'd have suspected before that boys might consider themselves to have less to fear (alas not always true), and thus less invested in the issue. Anyway, general thoughts on the matter (this is where you come in especially oh-my-brothers) appreciated.

Another thing that the pamphlets don't lie about: The nightmares. As the waking experience of Coping becomes less tolerable, and avoidance more appealing, the sub-conscious picks up the slack. Dreamworld punches land closer to the nose. Sleeping gets more difficult, the Protagonist ever less functional. But ever more determined.

Song on the End of the World - Czeslaw Milosz
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179559
Written in Warsaw, 1944, when people had far bigger problems than mine. To me it's a call to wake up, to act, to not wait any longer for a worse Worst to come.

IDST ID Politics

2007-10-17T22:06:00.003-04:00

All the worst coping mechanisms you've developed during hard times in your life, all the underlying issues you never quite finished dealing with, well they all come back in full force at a time like this. I'm not alone in this bit, I know. For my part, in times of woe I tend to quickly become self-destructive-- an old habit from many years cultivated in a time when I felt those woes to be neither justifiable nor significant enough to talk about. It's particularly crucial now, Those Who Know have told me, to stay vigilant. If I feel like drinking, risk taking, starving, whatever, it's more important than ever that I don't.

Ross Szabo, this fellow who gave a lecture on campus tonight, points out rightly that whether you cry or not, let it out or not, it doesn't make you strong or weak-- just unique, individual. People just handle stuff different. And really it's so much harder to face these things than it is to turn them inward, let them out only in the form of bursts of upset at the trivial, avoidance of true confrontation. Ross was talking about mental illness, from his personal perspective, something so deeply interrelated to the issues that I'm confronting right now that it was all I could do not to get up and leave. His thesis is that we have to face up and talk about mental issues, to focus on mental health (something that affects us all) rather than just mental disorders (something that only affects... most of us). Why do we stigmatize people who are realistic enough to confront their problems? Why do we torture ourselves and each other (and physical or not, it is genuine torture)? We're all complicit, Ross believes, in this madness and isolation created by a society that pushes people to hide their problems, even illnesses--unless we talk.

I, for one, don't believe you can be a rapist if you aren't at least a little insane. It's quite conceivable that if the Defendant (not to make it ALL about me) wouldn't be the off-the-handle psycho that he clearly is when he drinks if he had just been allowed to let his inner turmoil out, whatever it may be, in a non-destructive way. He must be so angry, so full of some self-hate somewhere, to be able to do this to another person. Unfortunately for him, for me, we don't live in a culture where people are allowed an emotional outlet, especially not men. Because that, my friends, would be weak. As if uncontrolled violence toward people you have no reason to feel anger toward per se is such a display of personal strength. Does ANYONE really buy that?

Anyway, Ross's lecture was dead on (and funny too) and he seemed to be getting through to all the increasingly-tense-as-semester-progresses students in the audience. He suggested I go to his friend Erin Weed's workshop on Monday (www.girlsfightback.org), which is a speak out self defense women's sort of thing she started after the rape murder of her best friend years ago. The event listing said something about improvised weapons. Count me in.

The world is continuing on in its usual trajectory and I'm in freeze-frame still. I can't figure out what I'm doing here, since it isn't Having Fun and I can tell you at the moment it definitely isn't Studying either. In my ideal vision of myself right now I'm just a pure chainsmoking intellect, no body at all. And the boy I like(d) is sitting next to my intellect not talking just replacing cigarettes when needed (intellects dont have arms) and laughing at my jokes, which are really, really funny. And I'm telling it like it is, and no one is looking at me and seeing frailty or confidence, or pretty or gross, or boy or girl, so they're hearing what I'm saying for once.

I'm still getting some of the most bizarre, awkward, amazing gestures of support you could possibly imagine (in fact I wouldn't believe that you could come up with such amazing things if you hadn't already). Your notes are evidence-- people are so eccentric, so crazy, so (potentially) redeemable if only we'd all just try to be honest about what's going on inside us. Because cope as you will, mental pain does come out eventually, and it often comes out physically, brutally, destructively, and that's the when how why of Events like mine.

The Grim Reaper, starring Me

2007-10-12T01:56:00.001-04:00

see i've got this great new capacity to ruin your day. anyone who comes up to me smiling walks away a little shaky in the hand region, a little watery around the eye. no matter how circuitous i am, no matter how euphemistic, no matter how lamely i try to joke my way around the story, everyone sees through it and straight deep into a part of my life that should be personal.

see commander evans was wrong, sometimes i do inspire the trust of other people. i did last night at the hearing-- it was not me they found inherently untrustworthy. the sad thing is that i'm honest beyond what is required of me, and i say exactly what i think whether its helpful or not, and there's no veneer to pick through because its all right there on the table. that fact, while it would make me a terrible secret agent, makes me more trustworthy than those people with more polished presentation. but even if its worth something to me as a victim in court to be terminally unable to disguise my feelings, its also making me depressing and alienating to be around.

i hate this.

there's some weird terminology thing going on involving substituting the word 'victim' with the word 'survivor'. and though the latter may be more pc, i find it equally difficult to conceive of myself as either. calling myself a survivor doesn't make me feel any more empowered, it just suggests a callous where victim suggests a wound. never thought i'd be the one saying it, but they're just words, and they aren't impacting my physiological state right now, which seems to have a mind all its own (and a mind with some pretty cliche coping mechanisms, at that). i can't really eat or sleep, i can't be touched, my body couldn't be reacting in a more typical typical textbook sort of way.

is it some medieval holdover about ruined women that makes you actually feel less attractive after something like this? it's not just that sudden motions (my housemate playfully hitting me, a friend reaching helplessly for a hug after a long pause) make me so jumpy that i can't imagine i'll be able to get near someone any time soon-- it's also that for some reason i can't imagine anyone would want to be near me. i'm stiff and cold and that's so far from who i am by nature it just feels nuts.

and i can't concentrate on my homework, just on myself; i feel like a teenager again.

Sweat, Victory, Sorrow (and Some Notes for the Defense)

2007-10-11T12:18:00.000-04:00

I will miss the Econolodge. The fact that a motel room so quickly starts to feel like home to me probably suggests either a psychic need to feel apart from this town, a nostalgia for last year's transience, or just a weird personality thing that makes my dad and I particularly well suited to motels. I love having my own queen size bed, and pre-made waffle mix downstairs every morning. I love the crazy red-eyed night receptionist with his slow speech and constantly pleasant attitude, the stoned teenager surfing for porn on the lobby computer, the bowl of ancient mints sticking together on the counter, all the unrefrigerated left-overs you can eat. Leaving the campus court hearing for my beloved Econolodge feels like a retreat to family vacations in the South, a return to the ideal Anywhere, a submersion into the Great Brahman, an eight-hour Moksha. In fact the only thing that indicates that I might be situated in a particular region of the USA is that next there's a book of Buddhist teachings next to the Bible in the nightstand drawer (only in a college town).

The scenery here is beautiful, more beautiful every day, which makes me feel sort of cynical inside. It's false advertising! I'm really getting into this criminal justice system humor thing. It's a whole reserve of comedy I hadn't yet tapped, a new frontier. It used to be that only a precious handful of people found my jokes funny-- now no one does!
My dad says 'You remind me of my friend W, he's got the same sense of humor as you.'
I ask what kind of sense of humor that is.
Dad says: 'It's like... so complicated that you can't even really figure it out.'
See? Doesn't sound particularly funny.

Yesterday's hearing went horribly, but the outcome was great. The inner workings of the process are confidential, so I can't share them here, but suffice it to say the Defendant was present, that he talked for an hour, and that as of last night he was voted unanimously by the board to be a persona non grata on our campus via a piece of paper with no expiration date on it. Amazing.

Here's the good spin on things:
1. He's gone from town and he can't come back, indefinitely, except for mandated criminal court appearances.
2. I've only been on campus for six weeks and I've already made the front page of the local paper (just call me the Notorious E.D.)
3. I just got word I won some freshman and transfer essay contest, and $200 toward textbooks, which means my net worth is up at around $530 as of now. The only downside is the essay gets published, and it's actually kind of a bad essay. It's just preachy, which those committees really like.
4. My net worth is $530, so civil litigation in the future is unlikely. One less thing to worry about.
5. I'm actually getting used to lengthy discussions of the length of my skirts, the style of bra i prefer (disgustingly irrelevant), and the state of affairs in my vagina in front of dozens of people.

Hearing the Defendant tell lies didn't hurt, because they just sounded sort of absurd. The part of the story he told that was too true, about what he did to me physically (and oh right! tenderly, romantically, consensually!), THAT made me want to crawl into the Econolodge and never show my face. I woke up this morning sick to my stomach again, thinking of the things he said about my body, and worse, the shit he did. I don't know if I can ever get over it.

unexpected consequences of all of this:
Most people are rallying, its true. But some people are running away from me. The housemates want to move out of the crime scene. I understand their feeling, our apartment is isolated and not ideal, but I feel like no matter where I am physically there's just no getting away, so what's the point in moving? A handful of people are avoiding me entirely, knowing what happened. And I can't fault anyone for any of this, because it sucks-- in some ways it sucks worse for the people around me than it does for me. My angst has social legitimacy in this case, and they feel less justified. I was able to take action to protect myself both in the moment and afterward, they have no choice but to think of what could have been and be afraid, passive. Different people handle things differently, and I understand that, and I feel nothing but compassion for people who can't handle this. I have no choice, myself, though. I have to handle it, or the Defendant wins, and this skewed awful social order wins, and I lose everything I've worked so hard to build for myself in the last few years. Still, I feel so lonely in the face of this, and I miss last week so much.

But loneliness is relative, and I also feel surrounded by love, pride, encouragement. People have written such over-the-top incredible messages to me in support, people I never would have expected even necessarily remembered me. I am learning some awful truths right now, but I'm also learning how much good and beauty people are capable of, how much strength we have. I've heard so many stories from people I'd never known had been assaulted, coming forward to share their experiences with me. It's appalling. It really is. But it's inspiring too. You are blowing me away right now with your eloquence and kindness-- two words I don't think I've said without irony in the last decade. This really is a new chapter in the book of me.

I'm thinking in songs, angry, then sad:

Thieves in the Night - Blackstar:

Not strong, only aggressive
Not free, we only liscensed
Not compassionate, only polite
(Now who's the nicest?)
Not good, but well behaved
Chasin after Death so we can call ourselves brave
Still living like mental slaves
Hiding like thieves in the night from life
Stop hiding, stop hiding, stop hiding your face.
Stop hiding, stop hiding, cause ain't no hiding place.

And it's a battered old suitcase, to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal...
-Tom Waits (Waltzing Mathilda)

Quantifying Shock

2007-10-08T15:25:00.002-04:00

An omniscient narrator might say, as the camera spins into an aerial of me lying dry-eyed and numb on my back in a motel, that at on this very night:

7 phone calls are being made about my case
16 people are on the phone (one of the calls is conference)
2 of the calls are international
20 people can't stop thinking about it
5 people forgot their cell phone chargers in their hurry to get somewhere else
10 people know they feel weird about something and can't put their fingers on it (me, for one)
15 people wish I'd told them sooner
4 people (not counting the defendant's mother) wish they hadn't been told at all
3 people are looking at the big picture
3 little wounds are healing slowly having been photographed for evidence already-- as i presume are the bruises only the nurse and the doctor saw

5 relationships are falling apart
8 hypothetical outcomes are being posed
2 restraining orders are in place
2 locks are being changed
6 people have their heads in their hands

The big questions keep coming:

1. What will it be like to face off with the defendant, even through a screen, on Wednesday?
2. How will the people that love me (and even the people out there who potentially love the defendant) cope with this? And to what extent is my role as victim just to relieve other people of their concerns on my behalf?
3. Will the defendant's financial power and diplomatic connections skew the process away from justice, and by how much?
4. How many times will I have to graphically describe violent acts being done to my private parts before this is all over? How many strangers will hear me say words I don't say to lovers?
5. For how long will we check our deadbolts with neurotic frequency?
6. To what extent are my interests and the interests of NY state aligned w/r/t the case?
7. What will become of my dubious verbal facility during cross-examinations to come?
8. How much will the poor beleaguered witnesses resent me as well as the defendant by the time all this ends?
9. How effective is our criminal justice system, and thus how relevant is it to the verdict that the defendant is guilty, guilty, so very incredibly guilty?

That the defendant is even attempting to defend himself, and that there's any concern that some hot-shot lawyer could argue him free of responsibility for this, is unbelievable to me. My case is not an ambiguous one, not subject to the usual defenses employed through mainstream misogyny and denial. It's not a date rape type assault, it's not a consent in the form of alcohol or silence, its not an assualt with no witnesses and no one has disputed the identity of the assailant. It was a screaming, violent thing, and it left its marks, not just on my person but also ringing in the eardrums of and burned into the memory of the witness-- a witness far more upset than I am. Advocating anything but serious punishment for him would require a philosophical argument undercutting the whole moral foundation of our legal system, the kind of argument suited to abstract class discussions at our illustrious university on the hill, not to lower courts. Freeing him of guilt and punishment would require denying fundamental assumptions deeper than supreme court cases and constitutions, in fact, it would require refiguring the entire politico-legal structure of the western world. Somehow I don't think the local city court will be so responsive to such abstractions, so I can't imagine what they will dig up to get him out of this. They say I just have to be ready for anything the defense may throw my way.

I can't cry, though everyone else seems to be able to cry on my behalf. I keep looking in the mirror and trying to scrunch up my face, but it's dry as the sahara in my creepy wide empty eyes. I can remember only bits an pieces of the aftermath, mostly only the things people said that were funny in that not-actually-so-funny police station joking sort of way. Mouthwash and scrub brush and how cold the bathroom floor is at 3am. Learning that you really do throw up for no reason after something like this. A lot of people throwing legal jargon in my direction, forcing me to make decisions only god could make without any doubt. The forgetfulness, the numbness, the squeezing inward of everything, all this they call post-traumatic something or other. And I want two things I'll never have.

1. I want a utopian system where the meaning of justice isn't punitive or even just preventative. I want him to undergo treatment, not punishment. I don't want him to suffer, I want him to stop.
2. I want my life before Thursday back.

Everything in the world, every feeling in my life, seems to be marching to one side of The Event or another. Either to the halcyon 'before the event' territory, or the surreal landscape of 'after the event' territory. Even people are dividing ranks, becoming those who showed some promise before this happened, and those who have actually been there for me since. A world of solidity and support requires different inhabitants than the one I was building for myself before. Exploring a new school, conquering a new set of academic standards and social problems, will no longer be a blithe activity for a confident girl. The margin of error has been cut too thin for that. It has become infinitely more difficult to make a home out of this place, to conquer irrational fear (and it is irrational) enough that I can even step outside my door.

The hardest thing is not to just cut and run. I've been around the world in all kinds of predicaments and there's nothing more appealing than just moving on, knowing I have a unique capacity to Make It On My Own. I could go find a new, untarnished place to get a college degree, somewhere the defendent and the rest of the 'before the event' world have never existed for me. But I know I shouldn't run, because I have a uniquely good case and am especially equipped to tackle this situation, in part because the defendent is so guilty, in part because I have experience and perspective in this matter, but perhaps most importantly because I've got the best team of compassionate friends and brilliant family members to back me up. And with all that in mind, I know I have to fight through this, because so many survivor types have paved this road for me, and I want the world to know how much and how little we've evolved and accomplished in preventing sexual violence. For as long as private space is forcibly violated, private matters can't remain private, and silence is irresponsible to the point of being collaborative in the violation itself, and in future violations. I can't run because l've got a job to do.

It's so hard not to be ashamed to talk about this.