This summer, I gained a new perspective on relationships and women’s empowerment. There are two main reasons for the feminist thoughts in my head – a teacher and the internet.
In the beginning of summer, I was talking to a teacher about relationships and the term “whipped.” (I had told her stories about friends who had let their partners control their every move because they felt that they were “too in love to care.”) Being the amazing teacher she is, she said:
“You have the vagina in this relationship. A man needs you. Regardless if it is for sex, love, or procreation.”
As raunchy as it may be, it’s true: it takes two to have a successful relationship (or more, depending on your own style). There must always be a division of power in order to have a relationship, and when your partner begins controlling every move, it’s more of an imprisonment. When people respect each other, the foundation is set for a strong partnership.
Here’s a scenario: I’m out to dinner with a group of sophisticated, professional-type couples. Someone asks me what I do and everyone politely pauses to listen to my response. I respond that I’m a rape crisis intervention counselor and advocate for rape victim’s rights, and I can literally watch 50% of the group turn off, click, and nonchalantly start to chat amongst themselves about something else. Meanwhile, the rest of the table will either make sympathetic sounds, perplexedly question why I would choose to “spend my time doing that,” or get wide-eyed and stare at me like I’ve cornered them and they’re planning an exit strategy.
The second group is usually comprised of the women. The first group – the group of people that seems to think the topic of rape is irrelevant to their lives – consists of men.
By and large, rape prevention education is targeted towards girls and women, implying that rape is a “woman’s issue” and therefore, of no concern for boys. This strategy has the damaging auxiliary effects of: 1) promoting the antiquated and dangerous belief that a woman is solely responsible for putting on the breaks during sexual activity, 2) communicating to boys and men that they need not concern themselves with such frivolous matters as consent, mutual fulfillment or sexual autonomy, and 3) thereby condoning sexual violence because, you know, boys will be boys.
What we need is a more holistic and comprehensive strategy to end rape. And it starts with men speaking out and stepping up. To be clear, I’m not suggesting paternalism- I’m talking about being a decent person and not letting your buddies step out of line. A groundbreaking study by psychologists David Lisak and Paul Miller provides a lot of compelling reasons as to why this is necessary.
Lisak and Miller interviewed almost 2,000 male college students about their sexual behavior, hoping to gain some insight into the frequency of rape. They found that, out of the men interviewed, only about 6% admitted to raping. But out of those men, about 76% admitted to repeatedly raping at an average of about 6 rapes per person. And 4% of the men surveyed committed over 400 rapes and over 1,000 violent acts between them.
So what we have here is a very small group of the population that commits the vast majority of rapes and otherwise violent acts against intimate partners (ie, slapping or choking). But the most significant finding is that most rapists are serial rapists. What this means for men is that, if you think that someone has done it once, chances are that person will do it again – and again, and again. If we can get past blaming the victim or pretending that it’s none of your business or that it’s just a matter of good guys making bad decisions, and if we can really focus on the fact that men who rape are criminals and predators, I think that our society can stop rape.
Amazingly, the research also suggests that men who rape don’t think that what they’re doing is rape. When the men surveyed were asked questions like, “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances,” they’d answer “yes” as long as the word “rape” wasn’t in there. Lisak spoke to CBS News about his 20 years worth of interviews:
“A lot of these men, especially the serial rapists, are very, very narcissistic, there is nothing they enjoy more than to sit down in a room with a guy like me and impress me with all their sexual exploits. And that’s how they view them.”
Rape doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is perpetuated, justified and promoted by a culture that rejects the idea of women’s humanity. Every time you encourage or sit silently through a story about some “sexual exploit,” you’re contributing to this culture at the expense of women everywhere. Rape will not stop until we successfully teach our men that the systematic abuse and denigration of women is not a necessary, joyful component of manhood.
And who can deliver that message better than men themselves?
Dr. Laura, the “Number 1 Female Radio Talk Show Host” in America, is in trouble for her recent behavior on-air. When a woman named Jade called in to her show, it began a series of troubling, awkward, and-in the words of Dr. Laura herself- disturbing series of racially-charged events.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger is in a whole lot of hot water after she repeatedly used the N-word while talking with a caller during her August 10 radio show.
The profanity insanity began when a woman called asking for help with her husband’s friends. She explained that she was black and her husband was white and that his friends often said racist things or pretended she wasn’t even there. Dr. Laura asked for examples and the caller said they often asked her “Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?” and “Do black people really like doing that?”
Dr. Laura cut her off and said she didn’t believe that was racist. The caller eventually asked about the use of the n-word and Dr. Laura responded with the argument that the N-word was used all the time on HBO and that it was OK for black people to say it but not white people, which she thought was irrational. But, Dr. Laura didn’t say “N-word” she actually used the N-word! Repeatedly!
As you might expect, the caller was rather taken aback and it only got worse from there as Dr. Laura jumped up on a precarious soapbox, sharing her opinions on Barack Obama, “black-think” and the NAACP!
The transcript is available at the earlier link.
The blogosphere has been alive since the incident. Bloggers and activists everywhere are upset and troubled by the remarks. But everyone has forgotten about Jade: the woman who called for advice in the first place on what appears to be a troubling relationship. I wanted to answer Jade’s question:
Jade,
Your husband and his friends are out of line. You cannot summarize ANY group into a stereotype- I am concerned as to why they think that you should be the representative for an entire race. It seems a bit outrageous, but the fact that you and your husband fell in love and got married says to me that he is not a “hopeless case.” But he does not understand how offensive he and his friends are being, and it’s clear- so I would bring it up to him and simply state that although he might not see it that way, the questions and comments being directed to you are offensive. You do not speak for your whole race, and every member of your race does not agree exactly on all topics. Explain to him that it hurts your feelings, and that it is starting to make you question your relationship with him: he should love you and respect your feelings. I mean, if he is like this with you, how would he be towards your children (assuming you have children or plan on having children)? His attitudes toward race are a joke, and this is something that needs to be dealt with now before it escalates and gets out of hand.
Do not keep quiet. Do not let it slide. Do not feel guilty. You deserve to be respected by your husband and his friends.
National Teen Dating Violence Helpline: www.LoveIsRespect.org 1-866-331-9474 National Domestic Violence Hotline: www.ncadv.org 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Domestic Violence Safety/Escape Checksheet from the Pixel Project, click here
Above is the information that I feel very strongly should have accompanied Eminem/Rihanna video for “Love The Way You Lie”. Video is below. Just one sentence. Just one phone number.
But it didn’t.
Tomorrow you’ll hear my voice about this.
But for today, please listen to the voice of my guest poster, Melissa D:
Watching the video with Rihanna and Eminem felt somewhat “normal” to me; I wish I could say I was horrified or that it was appalling, but sadly it wasn’t. I grew up in a home like that. When I first married my husband I helped create a home like that, because it took me a long time to realize I needed to get some direction on how to end the cycle and change my way of thinking. This is a very real experience for many couples, unfortunately. When you grow up in a home full of domestic violence, you learn to believe that it is love. You learn if someone loves you they hit you or that if they love you they are so full of passion that they can’t take it, they explode.
I think while this video shows a very real depiction of what happens it also needs to be used as a tool to start a discussion about what can be done to end the cycle. Some ask, “Why would a women stay in this situation?” or “Why would a women initiate the violence?” Women stay for a variety of reasons and they initiate it for a variety of reasons; I know for myself I stayed in many types of abusive relationships because of the domestic violence I grew up with, my dad was never punished for it and no one ever saved me from it, so it seemed acceptable.
Young girls are often very insecure, for a multitude of reasons: home life, media, school, you name it, and there are so many ways that women are left feeling inferior. All of this insecurity can be used against them when faced with an abuser. Even if you haven’t grown up in an abusive home you maybe so insecure, much like how my mother ended up in an abusive relationship with my father, that you tolerate the abuse. You think you deserve it or you can stop it. This is one of the many reasons it is SO important to teach our girls to respect themselves and to realize their own self worth; that they can be so much more than someone’s target.
I have found that woman that initiate domestic violence or participate in it are often from abusive homes themselves or have been in a cycle of abusive relationships. They initiate it because it feels like love to them; it’s giving and receiving love. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it can also be very real. In some strange way, when you grow up with domestic abuse you can become hardwired to believe that it’s passion. It feels safe when they hit you; it’s like an old familiar teddy bear, in a way. Much like how Rihanna referenced “I like the way it hurts.” I know that may seem crazy, but in some strange way it can be true.
I hope that the purpose of this video was to start conversations much like the one’s we’ve had on Pigtail Pals’ facebook page, about what we can to do to end the cycle. While it is “entertainment” it is an important tool to teach our children that violence in any form is never okay. We need all of our children, girls and boys, to learn to stand up for themselves without violence. End the Cycle.
Melissa D’s story of the life long cycle of Domestic Abuse, and of her survival:
The abuse in my family started long before I was born; my dad grew up with two alcoholic parents and my mom grew up with a single mother and a semi uninvolved father. My dad started abusing my mom very quickly into their relationship; you would think she would leave right? Unfortunately not, she was so insecure that I think she actually believed she could make it stop, that she deserved it, and that he must really love her if he’s so suspicious. They married and the abuse continued, however my dad did quit drinking and has been sober for many years. I remember very little from before I was five years old as you might expect, but I remember everything after that very well. My sister was born that year and that’s when I really remember the abuse amping up. I never saw my dad hit my mom and I’m fairly certain it wasn’t going on during that time. My dad was a very intelligent man with very little ambition to do great things, he believed things were owed to him, not that he had to work for them; this made it very difficult for my mother as she always had to try and keep a steady income as he could never hold down a job. Plus, I think working was an easy escape for my mom; sadly this left him with us girls most of the time. I am the oldest; I have a middle sister as I said five years younger and a baby sister eight years younger. My dad really tried to focus his abuse on me as my mom was always gone and my sisters were too little. As I look at it now I think I spent a lot of time antagonizing him just to protect them. The worst was bedtime, I was a bed-wetter as the result of his abuse, but then every night from the time I was five years old he would come in; in the middle of the night to see if I had wet the bed. If I had he would yank me out of bed andthrow me on the floor and then when I would get up I would have to take my sheets off and put them in the washer and wait to switch them to the dryer, school night or not. You can imagine the impact this had on my school life. The abuse continued to escalate for years, I remember one of the most embarrassing times was when I had a birthday sleepover and I had all of my friends over and my dad got mad that I had taken chips out of the cabinet so he bit me on my thumb right through the skin and flesh, I was bleeding pretty profusely and my friends noticed and we spent the rest of the night huddled under blankets scared of my father. It’s funny really, that I would have had people over to the house at all, you would think I would have wanted to keep that a secret, but I think it was such a normal part of life that I didn’t consider until I was an adult how strange it really was, plus I am fairly certain I was hoping someone would save me from this hell. Unfortunately, we looked like a normal family from the outside, my parents were very active in the community and at school and we never showed any signs of abuse, or at least not one’s people noticed, I guess.
The abuse went on with daily stories much like the one’s above until around my 12th birthday. My mom took me to get a perm for my birthday, I was really excited. School had just started and I was in 5th grade with Mrs. McClure (only the best teacher in the whole school!!) One night I woke up in the basement where my sister and I had rooms and I heard a shrieking and sobbing sound coming from upstairs; so my middle sister and I went upstairs to see what was happening. My mom was crying and my dad hurried us back downstairs, my mom assured us everything was okay and my dad took us back downstairs. What I didn’t know until later is that while my dad took us downstairs my mom had called the police, my parents were fighting because my mom told him she was leaving him and he threatened to kill her and they must have started fighting. Shortly after my dad took us downstairs a police officer came down and asked us to come up, I was 12 and my younger sister was 7, it was scary but somewhat of a relief, FINALLY SOMEONE OTHER THAN US KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON!!!
My Mom never talked to us about what happened. The police hauled my Dad off and we went back to bed, we had school the next day. My mom worked at the elementary school that we attended so my teacher already knew what had happened the night before, as soon as I came in she hugged me and the tears rolled down my cheeks, it was such a safe feeling, a little release from what had been a very heavy load.
My dad never came back into the house after that, the next weekend my mom, sisters and I loaded up his belongings into his van and drove it down the street for him to come and get. Several weeks later he moved into an apartment down the block from the duplex we were living in. My parents fought in court for two years, but our visits with dad started up shortly after he left. The abuse continued and no one did anything. I was not forced to go, but I couldn’t bare to let me sisters go alone, at least not until they were old enough to take care of themselves, so as they got older I saw him less and less although he would call and verbally abuse me several times a week.
When I was 14 is when I started looking for boys and choosing acceptable “mates” the boys I had my eyes on were nothing but trouble from the word go, we lived in a very dangerous neighborhood on Madison’s west side, so there were plenty of troubled boys to find everywhere I looked; gang bangers, pedophiles, and criminals galore. My mom was gone working most of the time and I was left alone with my sisters, but still struggling to become a woman. I put myself and my sisters in very dangerous situations. This is how I truly understand the meaning of “but for the grace of God go I” because it is a mystery how we didn’t end up dead or kidnapped or worse.
My first “boyfriend” was a 14 year old boy that was really putting the pressure on me to have sex. He wasn’t the first boy to ask but he was my first boyfriend, so it was a much more intense pressure. Thankfully I had the good sense to wait, but it wasn’t easy. Our relationship was intense, I ran away from home to be with him. He was “so nice to me” which at that time meant he wasn’t hitting me. He was a good guy and actually turned out to be a decent man. While I was busy with him, my mom was busy dating too many men to count each of them weirder than the last, mostly because she was so insecure that she was looking for the wrong type of relationship too. It’s strange really, because growing up I never thought of my mom as insecure, I used to think she was the strongest woman I knew.
As time went on my relationships with men got more complex, I wanted so badly to be with a man that “wouldn’t hit me” but I kept choosing one’s that would. I realize now that it was because I was truly more comfortable with hitting than with not. The last boyfriend I had before I met my husband was an amazing man and truly deserves a medal for putting up with me. He would have never hit me no matter how hard I pushed him. We dated for several years and he finally had enough of being pushed and left me two weeks before I graduated high school, it was devastating. I wish I had realized then the help I truly needed, but unfortunately no one that knew what had happened with my father or how I grew up guided me towards getting help. It wasn’t until after this amazing man broke up with me that I realized how much help I truly needed. Over the summer, I got help and learned that I need to start seeing the world differently, so that I can change my perception that abuse=love. In order to move on with my life, I moved to Chicago with a friend. This is where I met my husband. We started off so in love we met in November and by June we were engaged, I was 20 years old, by July I was pregnant and we were on the fast track to a family. He had grown up in a horribly abusive home full of drug use and domestic violence, thankfully not directed at him but between his parents; initiated by both his father and his mother. We truly believed that we could create a normal life together without abuse; it was a nice dream but an almost impossible one because we were both hardwired to believe that domestic violence is an acceptable way of life. By the time our son was six weeks old we were fighting weekly like prize fighting boxers. I initiated it, he initiated it; it just went on and on until one night at the bottom of the stairs I was screaming for help and a neighbor called the police. The police came and explained that they would take us both away if we were fighting especially with a newborn in the house. It was interesting really, that we were under so much stress that we just resorted to what we knew best, domestic violence. Along with the violence came passion, if we had fought we would “make up” like crazy, it was a horrible cycle but it felt like love. We realized after some time that this wasn’t working and had to make changes. We started making changes and realizing that we have to rewire ourselves so that we can rewire our future together. We still have some arguments, but we never put our hands on one another. We also realize that we have to make a conscious effort to end our cycle of domestic violence and remove it from our family’s history so that our children don’t repeat the same behaviors.
Confession: I have hopped aboard the A-line skirt and Gimlet bandwagon and am completely addicted to Mad Men. More specifically, though, Christina Hendricks, who plays fiery secretary Joan Holloway, is a solid source of intrigue. The curves! The sass! I find the way that character carries herself and flaunts her confidence sexy and enviable, and Hendricks is also the focus of one of the most resonating and powerful scenes in the show: the episode where Joan is raped.
In this episode, Joan’s fiance drops by the office after hours to visit her. Upon his suggestion, she reluctantly takes him on a tour of her boss’s office, where he begins to kiss her. Joan hesitates, playfully pushing him away, telling him that she doesn’t want to have sex. His advances become stronger (as does her resistance)- until he finally pushes her on the ground, violently hikes up her skirt, and renders Joan’s attempts to stop him into resigned passivity. She lies on her back, emptily staring into the middle distance.
At first I was upset, shocked, and frustrated that the writers completely dropped the rape subplot. But Joan’s silence, and her unwillingness to fault her fiance for his actions (they eventually wed), reflect the stories of thousands of survivors and tell a larger story about women and sexuality.
Christina Hendricks, in an interview for British GQ, described her favorite scene from Mad Men. She mentioned the scene in which Joan, while conducting a focus group for lipsticks, uses a two-way mirror to reveal just as much of her body to the onlooking men on the other side as she chooses. “She’s controlling the women – she has more knowledge than them – and she’s also manipulating the men at the same time,” Hendricks said. While Joan is hardly a feminist, she has a deliberateness to her sexuality. Though she is working within the misogynistic confines of the office, she still finds a way to be treated with respect by the men inside of it, conveying an unstoppable strength as she struts from desk to desk. She is also a proudly sexual being, comfortable with her body and okay with having flings with coworkers because she wants to. But when she doesn’t want to, as we see in the scene with her fiance, that power that she holds becomes her downfall. The look in her eyes as she is pinned to the office floor perfectly conveys that sense of betrayal.
Women today are still in Joan’s office. We are often told that our worth stems only from our bodies, our beauty, and our willingness to be sexual objects. We often try to reach, against our better judgement, the ideals of our society- and they are thrown back in our faces when we are raped or sexually assaulted. Our outfits, demeanor, and looks are often used to justify our worst experiences.
Joan’s rape, and the context surrounding it, is no different from what we experience, and must fight against, today.
