violence

Welcome back to guest poster Natalie Wilson, whose new column, Pop Goes Feminism, starts tomorrow!

It’s not about hating men, it’s about helping Haitian women

If one can wrangle any positive shards from the rubble that now pervades Haiti’s landscape, I would say that it would be the tremendous outpouring of concern and aid. Unfortunately, such concern tends to fade and aid donations shrivel once the media moves on to its next story.

Once the Haiti earthquake is merely a blip on the mental desktop of most Americans (like Hurricane Katrina before it), the situation for the majority of Haitians will not have changed for the better. Rather, especially for women and children, the situation is likely to be even worse than it was before. This is why some organizations are targeting their aid at women and children.

As reported by Tracy Clark-Flory, the “women and children” first aid model some organizations are taking makes sense due to the fact that women and children are typically the ones most vulnerable in the wake of a catastrophe.

Before the earthquake, Haitian women were already dealing with extreme poverty, lack of adequate healthcare, high rates of HIV/AIDS, and huge infant and maternal mortality rates. They live in a country that only made a rape a criminal offence in 2005, where at least 50% of women living in the poorer areas of Port-au-Prince have been raped. Haiti also has a serious child trafficking problem and huge numbers of girls working as domestic servants.

The global mamas of Haiti, as detailed by the International Childcare organization, must cope with the fact that one in eight Haitian children never live to see their fifth birthday due to infectious disease, pregnancy-related complications, and delivery-related complications. In Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, many parents cannot afford to send their children to school, give them proper medical care, or even guarantee that their children will have safe drinking water.

For all of these reasons, Haiti needs what Lucinda Marshall calls Gender-Responsive Aid. As she notes, “there are needs that are specific to women, particularly for pregnant women and mothers with new babies and the need to address the added vulnerability to violence that women face when government infrastructures are dysfunctional.” Yifat Susskind of MADRE explains that disasters are often followed by a rise in gender-based violence: “When men deal with very, very difficult stresses, one of their outlets is violence against women.”

In addition to the tendency for increased violence against women in the aftermath of a disaster (as also noted here), women are already economically disadvantaged in Haiti (due in large part to what is commonly known as the feminization of poverty). As noted by MADRE,

“…women are often hardest hit when disaster strikes because they were at a deficit even before the catastrophe. In Haiti, and in every country, women are the poorest and often have no safety net, leaving them most exposed to violence, homelessness and hunger in the wake of disasters.

Because of their role as caretakers and because of the discrimination they face, women have a disproportionate need for assistance. Yet, they are often overlooked in large-scale aid operations. In the chaos that follows disasters, aid too often reaches those who yell the loudest or push their way to the front of the line. When aid is distributed through the “head of household” approach, women-headed families may not even be recognized, and women within male-headed families may be marginalized when aid is controlled by male relatives.”

To make matters even worse, when the earthquake hit, Haiti’s Ministry of Women was holding a meeting–and nearly everyone there was killed or injured. (For the full story, see here). The loss of these women’s rights leaders is a severe blow to relief efforts throughout the entire country.

Despite all the reasons for gender-responsive aid, some have equated this approach with misandry–as in this article. Such spurious claims miss the point entirely and fail to recognize that gender-responsive aid benefits everyone, not just women. Gender-responsive aid isn’t about hating men, it’s about recognizing a gendered response to this disaster is necessary.

“The future will be gorgeous and reckless, and words, those luminous charms, will set us free again.”  This dazzling quote by Carole Maso serves as the epigraph to Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq, and reflects one of the book’s central intentions — the power of using words to cast light on often dark subjects.  The phrase is also a motto of sorts for Kore Press, a literary press in Tucson, AZ deeply committed to publishing and promoting women authors.  At a time when lack of attention to female authors is a justifiably hot topic this book and Kore’s mission is as vital as ever.

The word “powder” evokes a range of nuances — face powder, baby powder, gun powder, the powdery sand of the desert, the rubbled powder left by a blast. As the editors point out, the word “POW” also lurks within.  This moving and deeply original collection is shadowed by the thought that any powder’s fine particles indicate disintegration. The contributors have sifted through the remains of their experiences to find the precious grains within. Powder offers rare insight into the lives of women in the military, acutely highlighting the tensions between speaking and silence, being female in a heavily masculinized realm, the fraught desire to serve one’s country while often marginalized by the very institution to which these women want to be loyal.

Admirably far-ranging in locations, time frames, and wars represented, the book’s rawest power comes from hearing the women’s voices in concert. Unusual within the genre of anthology, instead of a brief bio at the book’s end, each contributor receives a full page with a photo and a paragraph explaining her motivation for joining the military, what she gained or lost, and answers if she would serve again.  In correspondence with her creative work, these mini-autobiographies highlight the contrast between civilian and solider selves, revealing a compellingly reflective aftermath. Some recount horrors experienced, some moments of unexpected tenderness, some furor at the injustice they saw.  Dr. Donna Dean writes of enlisting before Vietnam when the only jobs open to women seemed “killingly boring” and her now unrelenting PTSD.  Some express motivation to use writing for therapeutic purposes and several have impressive MFA degrees.

The writing is viscerally felt, and has been receiving great attention, as contributors describe wartime horrors, both large and small, often what it is like to feel powerful then powerless in quick succession as they reveal the stringencies and rigor of the military, its entrenched sexism and often disdain for woman within its system. The book’s glossary decodes that “WM” stands for Women Marines, but more than one story reveals this is popularly defined as “Whatta Mistake” or “Wasted Money.” The tension between the obedience the military demands and the need to give voice to personal witness is strong.

In the brief chapter “Enemy in the Ranks” Christy L. Clothier gives a harrowing account of attempted rape, along with subsequent trial and the anguishing resistance to prosecution she encounters.  Her piece ends with her poignant recollection of her second day of basic training and how empowering it felt to scream, particularly after surviving domestic abuse as a military wife when she had learned “never to yell.” She writes, “it was the first time I had heard my voice sound strong.”  Her story is followed by the poem “Yes, Sir!” in which Elizabeth Keough McDonald writes about the uncomfortable feeling of being the only woman in a group enduring a sexual joke and consequent abuses of power.

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Over twenty mothers who were mourning the deaths of their children and protesting government violence were arrested and jailed this past weekend in Iran. Valerie Young wrote a great post about it over at her blog, Your (Wo)man in Washington, which can also be found over at MomsRising. Connecting Iranian mothers’ activism with mothers’ activism elsewhere, she writes that

Motherhood instantly ups your ante in the human sweepstakes. It gives you a very personal stake in the future, and makes you vulnerable in every way. It can also empower. Women who hesitated to speak for themselves may find their voice and advocate energetically for themselves as mothers and for the welfare of their children.

Mothers in Iran have been organizing online, on twitter, and on the streets. They have set up a Mournful Mothers Committee with a blog and have been staging anti-government protests on a regular basis in Tehran. They were arrested before Student Day demonstrations planned this past Monday. Watch the video here. Supporters in LA have submitted a petition to the U.N. calling for an investigation of human rights violations in Iran.

I am reminded of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who protested regularly during Argentine’s Dirty War–when tens of thousands of Argentinian citizens were abducted, tortured, and “disappeared” by the government–as well as China’s Tiananmen Mothers, or the Welfare Warriors in the U.S. (The picture above is a poster from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.) Motherhood can not only be a powerful political motivator for individual women but also provide a potent moral ground from which to protest human rights violations and other injustices. Women in various movements around the world have mobilized the symbolic power of motherhood in ways that work within traditional notions of motherhood to claim authority and demand justice to leave the private space of the home and enter into the public sphere with potentially radical demands.

While it’s true that this form of activism can run the risk of perpetuating traditional definitions of motherhood, it’s also true that it can inspire a powerful activism grounded in an ethics of care. Women who may never have considered themselves activists can suddenly find themselves standing their ground in the face of soldiers with guns, as an anonymous Iranian journalist observes in an article about the ongoing women’s anti-governmental activism in the October 5 issue of The New Yorker.

I am inspired by the brave and media-savvy Mournful Mothers Committee and the mothers who have not let fear stop them from speaking out. They inspire me to consider how caregiving, by women and men, provides us all with an opportunity to extend our circle of concern to our larger communities, both locally and globally.

erich hagan is a writing performer from a dead-end street in a part of Boston its many fine institutions advise visitors to avoid. He’s honed his direct style of communication and obscenely sincere subject matter in bars, coffee shops, theaters, residences, warehouses and classrooms across the nation. The Boston Globe calls erich “tender, yet violent.” He was a member of the 2007 Providence Poetry Slam Team and represented Boston’s Cantab Lounge at the 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam.

Presently, erich is consumed by a project called The Analog/Digital Debate; a production team and stage show that blurs the intersection of independent music, performance poetry and noise art. In his spare time, he is a freelance audio workhorse and a volunteer sexual assault outreach advocate with no dietary restrictions, no pets, no advanced degree in any of the liberal arts and no idea what his living situation will be by the time you read this.

As long as rape and sexual violence continue, we have to keep talking about it out loud. We need to keep talking so we can figure out how to take action. And, anyway, talking with each other is action.

Click here for what erich has to say—in his own voice—about men and sexual assault.

And you can read it here:

i am here to facilitate a discussion of sexual assault

this is not what i do for a living
i hold no degree in any of the social sciences
yes, i am a man
no, i’m not sure what that means, either

and like many of you
i worry about giving the wrong impression
this is a difficult topic
but i believe that rape is not inevitable

the crazy stranger in the bushes
accounts for a minority of incidences
survivors are mostly acquainted with attackers

the predatory relative
the nice guy who has a hard time hearing no
the abusive partners of every gender, race and orientation

it is not an act of sex
nor a matter of miscommunication
it is a planned exertion of power

exploiting trust, confusion
and silence, relying on society’s
inclination to discredit victims of explicit crimes

what were they wearing?
what were they doing that late at night?
how could they have put themselves in that situation?

truthfully, it’s an understandable reaction
if the mistake was theirs, then the world is fair
we want to believe that it could not happen to us

but it does: one in four, one in seven,
one in thirty-three, nine out of ten times
rapists identify as straight males

statistics are not my expertise
i just recognize a threat when i see it
i can not let this remain a touchy subject

there are boys
taught consent is women’s fault
there are places where forcible intercourse is a military maneuver

i am here
because i believe there is a difference
between risk reduction and prevention

everyone takes precautions
clutches cellphones on the subway
avoids specific colors of clothing on certain streets

it solves nothing
personal awareness is important
but it does not address the source of violence

drunk driving used to be
something we were warned to watch out for
stay off the roads at night, after holidays

later, the issue was reframed
friends didnt let friends, and it was effective
less people were endangered, no one stopped drinking

it just wasn’t an excuse
it became an individual obligation
to stop violators from operating

each of us can intervene
in any way we are comfortable
but someone you know will almost definitely be affected
and it is not funny
that is unacceptable

all a perpetrator needs
is a target no one believes
should’ve known, had it coming, naive

there are dozens of ways to shift blame
none of them excuse the one person responsible
nobody asks for this, lost control is not an explanation

it is the effect, whether or not
she goes silent or fights, whether or not
he can call it assault or explain to his friends

this is not a women’s issue: men, this is one war
you will not be glorified for waging
we can end it

Catch erich performing live:

•Friday 10/16 @ Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NYC (236 East 3rd Street Between Ave B & C)

•Monday 11/2 @ LouderArts, Bar 13 (E 13th St & University Pl, New York, NY)

•Monday 11/16 @ Emerson College, Boston, MA

•Friday 11/17 @ The Bridge Cafe (1117 Elm St, Manchester, NH)

•Thursday 11/19 @ The Inkwell (665, 2nd Ave. Long Branch NJ)

For more contact: info@theanalogdigitaldebate.com

Photo Credit: @ The Mercury Cafe — Denver, CO

We wrote a posted called “The Face of Domestic Violence” back in Februrary and wanted to offer this update:

We applaud Rihanna for having the courage to stand up for herself and the courts ensuring that justice was served. Hopefully Chris Brown can take this moment and grow from this, knowing that laying his hands on anyone especially a woman is absolutely unacceptable.

Time for some serious talk about men’s violence. I’ll break it down to make a difficult point really simple.

Number one: Men’s violence against women is a men’s issue.
Number two: Prevention is the best solution.

It’s been almost two months since Chris Brown’s infamous and brutal attack on Rihanna. With our three-second Twitters, four-second sound bites, and a five-second news story shelf lives, it’s like this assault happened a million years ago. It’s so easy to collectively forget and move on to the Next Big Story.

But think back to the leaked police photos of 21-year-old popstar Rihanna’s bruised and swollen face. Although her bruises may have faded along with our collective voyeurism, a crucial issue remains.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that 1.3 million women are victims of assault by an intimate partner each year. Do the math. That works out to nearly two-and-a-half women assaulted every minute, typically by a boyfriend or husband.
We live in a culture that shrouds these facts of violence in secrecy, silence, and misunderstanding. We’re taught to confuse abuse with passionate love. Our culture links violence with romance with lines like, “Baby, I only hit you because I love you” — the kind of relentless refrain we see repeated in mainstream movies, TV, magazines, and music.

If a celebrity woman stays in a violent relationship, or gets back with an abusive guy, the takeaway for most people is that that male violence is not so bad. This insidious message, comments journalist Katha Pollitt, reinforces ideas that male violence is a natural part of life, and something in which women are complicit by provoking it, using it, even liking it.

This is dangerous misinformation. It contributes to a culture that normalizes violence and is accustomed to looking the other way, even with the rates of abuse so astronomically high.

But here’s the thing. Whether we’re talking about two megastars in Hollywood or the couple living right next door, we might scratch our heads and ask, “If he’s abusive then why does she stay?”

It’s a fair question. But the wrong one. The question that goes to the heart of the matter is Why does he hit?

Men are certainly victims of domestic assault. But the vast majority of cases are women hurt by men’s hands, words, and control. Direct service agencies and hospital samples indicate that men commit nearly 90 percent of domestic abuse. Yet, ironically, we’re trained to think of abuse as a woman’s issue. When we’re talking about male violence against women, says violence-prevention educator Jackson Katz, we’re really talking about a men’s issue.

This isn’t about blaming men. The point is more profound and the goal more constructive than that. The most effective way to end violence against women is to stop the problem before it happens. Doing so means we need men on board. We need men taking responsibility, getting in on the conversations about male violence, and refusing to be silent bystanders to the problem.

Rihanna and Chris Brown are high-profile cultural icons. Millions of fans look to them as trendsetters and culture creators. With media giving so much attention to their personal lives, the couple’s private relationship has powerful public impact.

The Rihanna-Chris Brown fan base skews young. So does abuse. Girls and women between the ages of 16 and 24 are more likely than any other group to be in abusive relationships. The NCADV reports teen dating violence is one of the major sources of violence in adolescents’ lives. A full 20 percent of dating couples report some type of violence in their relationship. Teen dating violence is particularly insidious because it happens at a time when young people are navigating intense relationships, sorting out their values, and laying emotional roadmaps for their futures.

A recent study of Boston teens that found nearly 50 percent of the 12-to-19-year-olds surveyed blamed Rihanna for getting hit. But this isn’t just about pop-star punditry. The issue literally hits at home. According to the Boston Public Health Commission, 71 percent of the teens they questioned said arguing is a normal part of relationships and 44 percent said fighting in relationships is routine.

This is startling.

So let’s seize this cultural moment to keep talking — really talking! — about masculinity, violence, and pop culture. Honest conversations across communities about male violence against women are crucial for the safety of teenagers at risk, for children who witness abuse, and for survivors everywhere. We need to start talking across communities because men’s violence against women is a men’s issue. And prevention is the best solution.

Everyone should take a look at this fascinating article at the New York Times on the phenomenon of teenage girls sticking by Chris Brown after his beating of Rihanna. According to the article:

In a recent survey of 200 teenagers by the Boston Public Health Commission, 46 percent said Rihanna was responsible for what happened; 52 percent said both bore responsibility, despite knowing that Rihanna’s injuries required hospital treatment. On a Facebook discussion, one girl wrote, “she probly ran into a door and was too embarrassed so blamed it on chris.”

I caught a clip of Oprah where Oprah opined that women who return to abusive relationships do so because low self-esteem makes them think that they can’t do better, or that they “deserved” the beating. She was speaking to a teenage girl in her audience who had argued that if Rihanna had gotten back together with Chris, she must have done something to deserve the beating and knew it. As Oprah tried to explain a more complex psychology behind the relationship, the girl adamantly shook her head “No.” I was pretty shocked by this response at the time. The Times article seeks to shed some light on this, but raised from childhood with the mantra that “guys never hit girls no matter what,” I’d be interested in further ideas as to why why teenage girls are being so supportive of Chris Brown.

Another incredibly resource-rich guest post by domestic violence expert and friend of GWP Madeline Wheeler.  You can read Madeline’s previous posts here and here.  -Deborah

As we all know, by the end of National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Week, Rihanna and Chris Brown made national attention with their violent altercation that had media moguls drooling, dropping the ethical bar, and sensationalizing a human health crisis. Is she pregnant?  Are they married? Whoopi tried to quell the hype on The View stating she doesn’t even know if it’s real—a girl may have hit Rihanna.  Oprah warned on Friday that “He will hit you again!” No intro could keep up with this media carousel.

My go round? Chris Brown is still a teenager! You may recall Deborah’s call for research on Teen Dating Violence (TDV) in Quick Stats: Teen Dating Abuse at the year’s start.   People may be getting the message that 1 out of 3 women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused, but what is not as widely known is that 1 in 5 teens in a relationship report being hit, slapped, or pushed by a partner.

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In case you missed it, an article in today’s NYTimes (“A Rise in Efforts to Spot Abuse in Youth Dating“) highlights the increased prevalence of violence in teenage dating relationships.  Here’s a quick and depressing glance at the stats:

• According to a survey by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene showed that dating violence had risen by more than 40 percent since 1999, when the department began asking students about the problem.
• Public health research indicates that the rate of such abusive relationships has hovered around 10 percent.
• According to a survey last year of children ages 11 to 14 by Liz Claiborne Inc., a quarter of the 1,000 respondents said they had been called names, harassed or ridiculed by their romantic partner by phone call or text message, often between midnight and 5 a.m., when their parents are sleeping.
• A study published last July in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that more than one-third of the 920 students questioned were victims of emotional and physical abuse by romantic partners before they started college.
• In the C.D.C.’s 2007 survey of 15,000 adolescents, 10 percent reported physical abuse like being hit or slapped by a romantic partner. Nearly 8 percent of teenagers in the survey said they were forced to have sexual intercourse.

The good news: “Last month, a group of Indianapolis organizations won a $1 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help schools tackle the issue, part of $18 million in grants to 10 communities to help break patterns where children exposed to violence at home repeat it in their adult relationships.”

The bad news: There are no definitive national studies on the prevalence of abuse in adolescent relationships.

Clearly there is a need.  (AHEM – calling researchers!)

We’ve been marinating on 2008; what an incredible year! Turbulent, exciting and really most of our wishes seemed to be granted in one fell swoop with the outcome of the US election.

There was China’s Olympic moment of glory, the first female Mayor in Egypt and of course the highs and lows of the U.S. election and then the same sex marriage Proposition in California. For all the leaps forward there is still more to be done for gender equality globally. Next year we want more inclusion! We wanted to share our top 5 wishes en route to inclusion. Enjoy and add your own in comments.

Our Top 5:
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