Gender and Violence

The other day I was reading The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, a memoir of her childhood in Texas, when I came across an incredibly disturbing scene that made me start to shake with disgust and horror.

In this scene, 7 year-old Mary has just finished reading Charlotte's Web up in her bedroom and has this revelation about the importance of the book and its true meaning. She calls for her male babysitter to come upstairs so she can tell him about it. He comes upstairs and she starts babbling to him about what she had read, about the significance of Charlotte and Wilbur's friendship. He asks her if she would like to be his special friend, and at this point we know where this is going. In the next few paragraphs, Karr describes (very graphically) how this babysitter gets (forces) her to perform oral sex on him. At SEVEN YEARS OLD.

Now first of all, I read books like this all the time - I was not shocked out of innocence by this occurrence or anything. Second of all, she had already described being raped by a neighborhood boy at an even younger age earlier in this same book. But something about this particular scene - the way she described it or perhaps the vividness of the image in my head - this one had a very different effect on me.

I sat there stone-faced and shaking on the couch, book in my lap. My husband asks if I'm okay. I say "no," he asks why not, I explain the scene to him. He shakes his head in disgust/anger and says "See? That's why I don't want to have girls."

At this point I realize that my take on the situation is quite different from his. I get angry and ask quite forcefully, "Oh, you'd rather have the perpetrator of the crime be your child than the victim???"

I realize that this was a very sexist thing to say, and a very sexist feeling to have in the first place. But I have heard so many people express a preference for having sons because of similar reasons, claiming that boys don't need to be worried about as much, that I reacted viscerally to both the scene and my husband's statement.

What does it say about us and our culture if we would rather raise violent perpetrators than victims? What does it say about us and our culture that we associate a specific gender to one status or the other?

I have heard strong, independent females say things like "Oh, I'm so glad I never had a daughter. Boys are just soooo much easier." As if girls require some kind of high-maintenance parenting and boys just kinda take care of themselves.

My thoughts after reading the passage in Karr's book were essentially that I have to imagine it is much easier to teach a child how to never be a victim than it is to teach a child never to be a perpetrator. How do you teach your son (effectively) not to ever touch another person or force them to touch him against their will without making sex and sexual contact seem dirty, wrong and forbidden (Because we all know where those lessons lead.....Jeffrey Dahmer, anyone?).

Isn't it easier to teach a girl that she has rights, that her body is her own, that she doesn't have to respond to intimidation and that fear doesn't have to control her life? Isn't that easier than teaching a boy to control his hormonal urges, to respect females as equals, to respect female sexuality in a world where all the messages he is bombarded with are to the contrary?

I think the most disturbing aspect of that passage for me was the fact that I never once got the impression that this boy wanted to hurt Mary. He wasn't being mean, he wasn't malicious. I believe he had a strong sexual urge, he needed an outlet for it, he saw an opportunity and took it. I don't think he believed he was hurting her. I didn't get the impression that this boy was the type who would grow up to be a child molestor or a rapist. But nonetheless, he did what he did to her.

And I'm willing to bet this shit happens all the time and no one ever hears about it. The sick fuckers always seem to be adults and get caught because they do it over and over again. But what about the ones who, just once, lost control of their shit and no one ever finds out what happened?

We all know of ways to protect kids from bad people in the world. Sometimes we can't control it, but we all do our best.

But how can we effectively protect our kids from themselves?

Gender Part 2: The "Real" Female Fear

Gender Part 2: Introduction: The Women & The Girls

I have some reading that I want to brush up on before I really delve into the gender issues surrounding women, because I have been away from these books for some time. What I hope to accomplish with this post in particular is to give you some thoughts to chew on before we get into the heart of the discussion, and to introduce you to some really amazing texts that I think should be mandatory reading for EVERYONE, male and female, young and old. 

First, I would like to quote to you from Jean Kilbourne's book Can't Buy My Love, a treatise of (mostly) depictions of women in the media. The images alone will shock you. Social psychology has shown time and time again that we are ALL affected by advertising and the media, even when we firmly believe that we aren't. When you take some of these images, slogans, commercials, etc. out of their context in a magazine or tv channel, we begin to SEE the messages that are conveyed. Normally they slip past our conscious awareness, but when you really look at what's there, you will likely be stunned. Google Jean Kilbourne to see some of these images. Her speaking engagements can be found on YouTube. Here is a sample summarizing the major themes of her lectures:

But here is a (long) quote from her book that really, deeply struck me when I read it:

"When men objectify women, they do so in a cultural context in which women are constantly objectified and in which there are consequences - from economic discrimination to violence - to that objectification. 

For men, though, there are no such consequences. Men's bodies are not routinely judged and invaded. Men are not likely to be raped, harassed, or beaten (that is to say, men presumed to be heterosexual are not, and very few men are abused in these ways by women). How many men are frightened to be alone with a woman in an elevator? How many men cross the street when a group of women approach? Jackson Katz, who writes and lectures on male violence, often begins his workshops by asking men to describe the things they do every day to protect themselves from sexual assault. The men are surprised, puzzled, sometimes amused by the question. The women understand the question easily and have no trouble at all coming up with a list of responses. We don't list our full names in the phone directory or on our mailboxes, we try not to be alone after dark, we carry our keys in our hands when we approach our cars, we always look in the back seat before we get in, we are wary of elevators and doorways and bushes, we carry pepper sprays, whistles, Mace."(p. 279-280)

When I read this paragraph, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. Men (in general) truly do not and cannot understand what it's like to have that constant fear. My husband doesn't check the backseat of his car before he gets in it. He's not afraid of being in a parking garage at night. He doesn't understand why I feel the need to firmly latch and lock every window and door in the house before going to sleep at night when I am alone. It's not that he doesn't sympathize, it's just something he doesn't GET. 

Now the flip side of this, of course, is that it's unfair for women to immediately be wary of all strange men. The men's movement hates the idea that they are all labeled as potential attackers until proven otherwise, but they also understand that this MUST be the case. At least for now. 

This will come up again in the subsequent posts regarding transgender and intersex individuals, but Sandy Shoes and DuWayne mentioned the concept of the unisex bathroom in the comments on a previous post. 

For a woman, transgender, or intersex individual, a multi-stall, public, unisex bathroom is a scary place. It is out of public view, it has locks on the stall doors and often on the outside door as well. Unless we know every single person well who uses said bathroom, it is simply not a safe place to be. If a woman in an office goes into a supply closet that locks from the inside, and a male co-worker who she doesn't know very well enters this closet, she is going to feel uncomfortable. A unisex public bathroom is no different from the closet, except our pants are usually already down while we're in there. 

Should it be that way? Absolutely not. 

But women are raised with a heightened awareness of possibly threatening situations and places. We are taught from a very young age to avoid them whenever possible. 

The mentality of fear that women possess is often silent, extremely subtle, and most of us are not even aware of it until it is pointed out, such as in Kilbourne's book. But it is very real. No amount of feminist rhetoric can make it go away. 

"Nonetheless, the rate of sexual assault in the United States is the highest of any industrialized nation in the world. According to a 1998 study by the federal government, one in five of us has been the victim of rape or attempted rape, most often before our seventeenth birthday. And more than half of us have been physically assaulted, most often by the men we live with. In fact, three of four women in the study who responded that they had been raped or assaulted as adults said the perpetrator was a current or former husband, a cohabiting partner, or a date."(p. 280)

Quite often, what we are taught to fear in the outside world is what we ought to fear in our own homes, schools, and social events. 

But what we see in the media is much more often violence at the hands of a stranger. What follows is the most disturbing portrayal of violence against women that I have ever seen in my life. I cried when I watched it, because it shook me to the absolute core. (The first minute or so is just the beginning of the scene. Bear with it.)

****Advisory: This is very explicit, very violent, and very disturbing. Please do not watch when children are present****

(I couldn't find it on YouTube, YouTube failed to convert it when I tried to upload it, so please go to the following direct link to watch):

Watch video.

Now, assuming I haven't upset you too much (I personally can't watch it again), here are the books I highly recommend that deal with the material I will be covering in subsequent posts about women: