No words…

Click here.

life, death, rape, control

I believe there is an emerging cultural movement that isn’t just about women being allowed to wear pants and spit if we want–it’s about a deep, personal, spiritual, and empowering ownership and pride of our own feminine definition of life, politics, and the world. And it’s about sexuality–controlling it ourselves, honoring it, not being ashamed of it, not being used for it.

Getting to this definition inevitably will require healing, the same healing and forgiveness that is needed in our relationships over race.

I like what Sue Monk Kidd says about Patriarchy–that patriarchy is not men or man’s authority, rather patriarchy is a system in which the male authority has been schewed. In many ways Patriarchy is wearing thin, but still we need to step up to over and over in our daily lives in order to press on with honoring our right for a definition of life and systems that includes respect and wholeness for the feminine. In many ways we can be dismembered when we show resistence, but the key to remember is that systems can be changed, the human experience, both male and female, is ever-evolving if we are open to such revelations.

That being said, yesterday at the magazine I work for, some colleagues and I were talking about an interview we are publishing in April about a man on Texas death row, Karl Chamberlain, for tying up, raping, and murdering his female neighbor when he was in his 20s in 1991. It’s been 16 years, and he’s aparently come around 360–carving out spiritual understanding of his fate in a way as to make you believe he is a living example of transforming power and human potential for righteousness.

Well, that isn’t my opinion. I had already read his bio. online a few months ago after I saw some of his poetry in a previous issue of our magazine, some of which touched me deeply. And I was outraged at his crime. This, along with the constant reminder in independent media about women being raped during their work for the military and for security companies and then punished for it, while the men are protected, being slapped on the wrist or promoted, depending on which way the wind is blowing that day; and the constant reminder in my neighborhood of women abusing and neglecting their children, oblivious of what that says about their own abuse (I don’t really see men abusing children, because there are never any men with their children–invisible abuse); and regular reminders from D about his clients (he treats people addicted to drugs, most of whom are members of the poorest socioeconomic class in the country) who are men abusing and cheating on women and women abusing and being raped and used by men–this all informs my daily world view.

So, after reading the article, I hated the way Karl Chamberlain was asking for our readers’ time and attention. I hated that he knew our readership is mostly a demographic that does not believe in capital punishment. And I REALLY HATED that he writes (online) bio after bio about how wonderful he is now, including his understanding that he committed a horrible act by murdering his vicitm, without a single mention of the rape that preceded the murder. That he had gone to her apartment to borrow sugar, then left, and then went back with duct tape with which to tie her to her bed. Where are his notes about that? The nightmares or suffering that caused? I was outraged that he apparently is not repenting for the rape–at least not publicly.

Instead Chamberlain repeats the sentiment over and over that he thinks that punishment by death would be too easy on him. That living with what he’s done would make a far better punishment. To me, his tone smacks of martyrdom. I’m sure he has received a lot of hate mail. But there are also people writing him letters, reading his poetry and giving him a reason to fight death–THIS is why he is appealing his sentence, not because he’d like to live to suffer more.

I don’t know this man, nor do I know what kind of person he’d be if freed from his sentence or even prison. But I do know that I can’t reconcile what he has done with what he now claims to be. To fight for Karl Chamberlain’s life because one does not believe the death penalty is effective or because one believes that the death penalty should also be considered the murder of life that’s better off alive, is to jump over all the mess in the middle where Karl Chamberlain used his power to strip a woman of hers in the most henious way possible. It’d be the argument of someone who hasn’t suffered equally, who doesn’t understand the terrorizing pool of missery and helplessness that people like Karl Chamberlain create in others. I guess it’s possible that the argument against Karl Chamberlain’s death could be the argument of someone who has suffered such, but who has become spiritually transformed enough to forgive–but that could just be a made up story, too. I fear that many of our readers are in the first category, and it pisses me off that he gets to use them and their time in so many pages.

We’ll see when the letters to the editor start to come in, which I’m sure they will! I hope that people will be responding to more than just his story and the surface topics of the death penalty/murder/spiritual therapy, and we’ll be justified in printing his interview with deeper dialog about crimes against women and and the structures of patriarchy that make them possible.

By the way, I don’t believe capital punishment is effective or fair, just as I don’t believe our judicial and prisons system are effective or fair. But these days I am leaning towards not understanding why we hold onto life and death as such precious and holy events as though we have any control over it. The more practical concept to hold onto to me would be to make our current lives as enjoyable and comfortable as possible (including the use of great health care), which would require ridding the world of people who cause this much suffering in others. I believe we should revere life and honor it. But to value it over death philosophically might cause more harm than good………

asshole

NO
I don’t need “help with that.”
NO
I’m not uncomfortable.
NO
You can’t “excuse me sweetheart.”
NO
I’m not confused or tired.

Because I’m a woman.

YES
I’m sure I’ve got it.
YES
Because I’m a woman.

Goodbye to the Toxic Viciousness

>Carl Bernstein’s disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?” with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.

>Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.

>Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.

>Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.

>Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?

–An Excerpt from Robin Morgan’s Goodbye To All That (#2)

Why I Love Her: Anita Hill

Anita Hill is particularly well-known for her 1991 sexual harassment testimony against then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. She had worked for him on several different occasions ten years earlier, and her testimony was graphic.

What is undeniably clear about this case is that the courts made Thomas’ case about race, and Hill’s case about sex. And by a narrow margin, 52:48, Clarance Thomas won. His testimony was filled allegations that Hill’s testimony were a subversive way of attacking him because he is black, and were related to previous discrimination he had felt as a black man acquiring power in politics. For shame that he created that possible relationship, thereby diminishing the validity of previous experiences of racism . He openly chastised the court for questioning his behavior towards Hill, using the race card to intimidate the white men into sacrificing a woman’s right to emotional and physical safety for a pat on the back for transcending racism.

Anita Hill is an example of courage, strength, and resolution, who continues to carry with her the stigma some have placed onto her: a liar or a deviant perverted crazy woman who was in love with Thomas to begin with.

During the hearing, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee had refused to let any expert testimony on sexual harassment enter the case. She was questioned as to why she would ever talk to such a man again, if her testimony were true. As June Jordan puts it in here essay Can I get a Witness?: “The senators didn’t seem to notice or to care that Thomas occupied the office of last recourse for victims of sexual harassment. And had the committee allowed any expert on the subject to testify, we would have learned that it is absolutely typical for victims to keep silent.”

Last year, When Thomas’ memior came out, and all of his supporters (including people who think Anita Hill is a liar or crazy person, and including people who think sexual harassment is a fairytale made up by manipulative women–i.e. misogynists) and all of his rage about the case came out into the public again, Anita Hill was faced with the question of whether or not to reengage with the debate that she officially lost in 1991. She courageously stepped up again to defend herself, and ultimately all women. You Go Girl!

It should also be noted that Anita Hill did not originally volunteer her testimony of being sexually harassed by Clarance Thomas. She was pointedly questioned by the FBI for that information, and she was simply telling the truth and following the law by providing the FBI with the information they wanted. Because of her courage, the U.S. culture around sexual harassment took a monumental turn towards exposure and empowerment for women to stand up for themselves.

It’s a shame that almost 20 years later, a lot of us still don’t know what or how to stick up for ourselves and each other when sexist comments and harassments are made. Many are passed off as jokes or harmless. Others are dismissed as unimportant because they are made by strangers we don’t plan to have to deal with ever again.

I believe that woman and men have a significant challenge to expose these things and deny them room in discourse and behavior. Between strangers, colleagues, and even friends and partners.

Taking the Lead

Recently my partner and I have been doing a lot of Salsa Dancing, and at some point we began a conversation about the assumption that the man has to lead the woman in partner dancing.

We ended up agreeing, after some consternation on his part (with some undertones that suggested that my very wish to lead him threatened his manhood…) that there really is no reason I shouldn’t be allowed to learn leading AND following, especially since each position has to be learned and practiced. In other words, being the follower part in a dancing duo doesn’t come naturally to the woman just because she’s a woman.

It’s hard to learn to give up control of your body while simultaneously letting someone else push it around any which way they want. In addition to this, the more I watched the others dancing the more I realized that a lot of men use their women partners as a sort of spinning toy. Throwing her around and around while they completed basic steps; watching her thrust her hips and tits in time with the music while they remain almost in the same position the whole time. One of our more seasoned salsa-dancing friends leaned in to me at some point to let me know I should practice spinning a lot because otherwise I’d get sick eventually with Salsa.

Sick? WTF? What about the dudes? Are they getting sick too? I think not!

So despite all of the really bad examples of partner dancing that we see at our regular Salsa dance party joint, there is one couple that inspires me to keep trying for a better situation at least in my own partner dancing. They are a man and woman, the man is leading, but the difference in them is that they are both extremely skilled! The man shakes his hips, spins and rolls his arms up and down his body in a sexy display, alongside his female partner. Shoot, I’d go just to watch them dance.

Anyway, it’s possible that the inequalities that I’ve seen so far in this dance tradition are a combination of the male-as-dominant and male-as-owner concepts and a simple lack of spirit and skill on the part of more men than their female partners (who are primed to look as sexy as possible to begin with!).

Funnies

Statistic Time!

Women overall earn 76 percent of what men earn–up from 59.4 percent in 1970, though the narrowing gap is partially due to a decrease in men’s earnings, and mostly affects single working women.

Three quarters of women working full-time still make less than $25,000 a year.

Women in executive, administrative, and managerial positions earn 68 percent of what their male counterparts earn.

Women pharmacists get 86 percent of what male colleagues earn.

Women college professors 77 percent.

Women surgeons 76 percent.

Women lawyers 70 percent.

Women engineers 82 percent.

Women construction workers 74 percent.

Women truckdrivers 71 percent.

The number of women veterinarians increased 22-fold from 1989 to 2001 (the fastest gaining occupation for women, who are now almost 43 percent of vets), but they earn 15 percent less than male vets.

And even in traditionally “female” fields:

Women nurses only make 94 percent of male nurses.

Social workers 93 percent.

Elementary school teachers 90 percent.

Food-prep serice workers 89 percent.

And 80 percent of working-poor mothers have less than one week of sick leave per year.

(all from Sisterhood is Forever: The women’s anthology for a new millenium, compiled and edited by Robin Morgan)

Waiting for another meltdown…

I was trying to figure out a way to prove that Energy is a Women’s Issue. But let’s talk progress here: There’s no such thing as a “women’s issue.” If it’s a women’s issue then it’s a human issue. Men who are progressive about life, humanity, and a shared dream and vision for the future also care about these issues (health care, children, disorders perpetuated by media imaging, hate and prejudice, etc.). And anything that pops into my head as a fear for my children goes into the category for me. So here we go.

Part One: Nuclear Weapons Testing. Case Closed in 1963… Not really.

Until the 1963 ban of above-ground testing, called the Partial Test Ban Treaty, the U.S. and several other countries had been testing nuclear weapons in the atomosphere and in the oceans. A lot of people in the generation of my parents (50+) and older know about the adverse effects of nuclear weapons testing, because they were exposed to the testing results: radioactive isotope strontium-90, which spread around the world by the winds and ocean waters.

A recent obituary in the U.K.’s TimesOnline (see this) highlighted Walter Bauer, a pathologist, member of the Greater St Louis Citizens Committee for Nuclear Information and the leader of its study on 300,000 baby teeth between 1958 and 1970, explains more about the fall out radiation exposure in humans:

“The fission products [radioactive strontium-90] were widely spread by the winds. Some radioactivity was brought down to Earth, particularly by the rain, and cows ate some of the contaminated grass. Human beings then drank the cows’ milk and absorbed the radioactive strontium, which behaves like calcium in the body, into their bones and teeth. To speak out about the serious adverse health effects of nuclear testing during the Cold War in the 1950s took considerable courage…. The first nuclear test took place at Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. Between then and October 10, 1963, when the PTBT came into force, about 518 nuclear tests were conducted in the atmosphere, by China, France, the Soviet Union, Britain and the US.

The total yield of these nuclear tests was about 40,000 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The radioactivity from them spread all around the Earth resulting in the pervasive pollution of the Earth, damaging the health of people well into the future.

Today, caesium, strontium and plutonium radioactive isotopes from the atmospheric tests pollute our food and water… It is estimated that more than two million people will die of cancer because of their exposure to radiation from fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests; many have already died.”

The story doesn’t end there, though. Radiation is coming at us from another direction, too.

Part Two: Nuclear Power.

Nuclear power is a clean alternative to fossil fuels for our energy needs. Heard this before? Me too. Well here’s some evidence against that highly political slogan–and I’m only offering some because there isn’t much to give. We are in greaet need for more studies and investigation into the effects of long-term, low-dose radiation on peoples’ health.

For example, there is Thyroid Cancer, and I quote here from a study done by the Radiation and Public Heath Project:

“The rate of thyroid cancer, which is rising faster than any other cancer, is highest in Pennsylvania. Within the state, the highest rates are in the eastern counties closest to and east (downwind) of four nuclear power plants. Because radioactive iodine found only in nuclear weapons and reactors is known to cause thyroid cancer, it would be helpful to conduct closer examination of reactor emissions and the disease.”

While this study acknowledges right off the bat that there is still not enough information or analysis to determine why Thyroid Cancer is the fastest rising in the country, when it breaks down the rise in cases into states and then geographic locations within those states, the results are staggering: “The risk factor most commonly associated with thyroid cancer is exposure to radioactive iodine…. When iodine enters the body, it seeks out the thyroid gland, where it kills and injures cells, leading to cancer and other disorders…. Radioactive iodine is only created when atomic bombs explode or when nuclear reactors operate.”

The study continues to prove that in Pennsylvania, Thyroid cancer rates spike just down-wind of nuclear reactors. And it states the implications of this study thus: “Implications. There is considerable state-by-state variation in the incidence of thyroid cancer, fastest-rising cancer in the U.S. The rate in some states is more than double that of others. In Pennsylvania, the state with the highest rate, there is considerable variation by county. Rates are highest in the counties in the eastern part of the state, each of which lies east of a nuclear power plant. The release of radioactive iodine into the atmosphere from these plants raises the possibility that these emissions are driving up thyroid cancer rates. More detailed study should be undertaken to better understand this relationship.”

Note the call at the end for more investigation into this matter.

Here is a link to the study, which is a quick read and will supply you with graphs.

I can understand why a lot of politians LOVE nuclear energy–including Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton is on board if you can come up with a good way to keep all of the aforementioned facts from surfacing too much. They love it because it’s like a peace flag that they can wave at everyone scared for the environment, pretending to have a solution that will save our children and grandchildren from ecological disaster. But it’s not that simple, as more and more evidence will show.

In this election, Kusinich and Edwards were the only real “change” candidates as far as environmental issues. (And, as a matter of fact, read This if you want to know what other issues Obama and Clinton aren’t really progressive about. If you’re going to vote Obama or Clinton, you might want to think twice before throwing around “Change” as the reason.)

Holy Shit, C’mon People

I’m reeling at this. And at how people are reacting to it, and how Clinton was forced to react to it.

First of all: God forbid Hillary Clinton get upset about something that she deserves to be damned angry about. She calmly and with some humor, stated: “Oh the remnants of sexism, alive and well tonight.” The woman can’t move an inch without someone speculating on whether she’ll break down as president or is too aggressive about her politics. She is maneuvering through a field full of tightly rigged land mines ready to go off about how incapable she is because of this or that expression of humanity.

Second, as I drop my jaw, there are people speculating now that the Clinton camp planted these guys. WTF? Are we really going to sit back and watch as men and women who claim to to be enlightened belch out the sentiments of chastity belts and head coverings for woman because women are guilty of their own mistreatments?

The NYT’s journalist called the men “Yahoos” and followed them outside to find out “what the heck they were thinking”? This is ridiculous. The tone here is of chastising a naughty school boy, not a serious confrontation with someone who JUST BROKE THE LAW..

Why is it that people don’t see sexism as clearly as they do racism? It’s not rocket science–If someone in the audience of an Obama gathering had shouted out “Pick my cotton, pick my cotton,” I doubt the NYT would call him a Yahoo or “a couple of jokesters,” and let it be at that.

Obama still inspires me more, and I’m having a hard time not contributing that to the fact that I am supposed to think Clinton looks out of place in a position of power, and that I am supposed to be likening Obama with MLK.

With every sexist remark or look a woman has to repell, she is fighting for her share of power that she has barely been able to touch yet.