victims, survivors, and everything in between

I don't know that I could articulate any of this better than Cara already has, so you should probably go read her post first.
I also don't think that my thoughts on any of this have settled into much of a cohesive post, so this will mostly be a stream-of-consciousness response / expansion on the coherent, articulate thoughts over at Cara's post.


I've talked about the troubling rhetoric around the terms "victim" and "survivor" before. That post, though, focuses more specifically on the trouble with the word "survivor," and the implications of that term and the universal "healing process" that it implies.
Cara's post, though, focuses a little more on the word "victim," and that side of the rhetoric. It's all part of a similar discussion, I think.

A little excerpt from Cara's post, to start it off:

I understand the desire by those who have been raped or abused to use the word “survivor” instead of “victim,” to take the focus away from what someone else did to them and gave them no choice about, to something positive that they themselves have accomplished. But let us be honest for a minute: is there more to it than that? Is there really something there that has to do with shame, with constant admonishments either directed specifically towards them or towards women everywhere, saying “don’t be a victim”? Is there a desire to get away from that embarrassing, horrible word? I tend to use the word “survivor” myself. And I have to wonder.

And if it’s about shame, about stepping away from “victim,” is there any way for there to not be a touch of self-blame in the reasoning?
.....
“Don’t be a victim.” “I won’t be a victim.” “Women always want to play the victim.”

The insult in “victim” is that victims are weak and helpless. Victims are whiners, attention-seekers, cry-babies. They want to dwell on the negative.

My first response to her post was a loud (out loud), "THANK YOU."
It's always unexpected, and so incredibly relieving, to hear other people making arguments along the same lines that I've been making...the arguments that I assume are n the margins, are unpopular. Of course, just the fact that the two of us (and some of her commenters) are saying the same kind of thing doesn't mean that it's not a marginal argument, but it does mean that I've got a little company here on the margins. And that's always a pleasant surprise.


Cara, and a couple of the people in her comments, put into words the other side of my problem with the rhetoric; they open the conversation up even further, beyond my old discussion of why "survivor" doesn't fit everyone and into why it is that "victim" is such a derisive term.
Lea, in the comments of cara's post:

There seems to be a time limit on how long people are comfortable with someone being a victim. It might just only be for a day, or a week, maybe even a few months, but it is never on the victimized woman’s terms. But I think that because so many women are not believed about their experiences with violence, that ‘victim’ becomes a powerful word of acknowledgment. It grants permission to be vulnerable, fragile, to feel ‘degraded’ if she needs to, to take time, to break under pressure if that is all she is able to do. Disparaging the identity of ‘victim’ silences us, it says “get over it and shut up”. People don’t want to hear the rawness, the complexity of violence, they want it in tidy packages that don’t challenge them, or demand any recognition or support.

This, I think, is another big part of why I have been, and still am, so resistant to the limited rhetoric of "surviving" sexual abuse and assault.


I risk getting too personal, too "lying on the couch talking about my mother," but I think the only way to start this off is to acknowledge where my investment in this whole discussion comes from.

heh.

This did actually happen to me (with the shorter, more everyday version of the word) in the Scrabble game played at my moms' house this Thanksgiving.
Come to think of it, this has happened in a lot of Scrabble games I've played...is it because I'm gay?

(click image to go to original comic at xkcd.com)

Related: did you know that the airport code for Charlotte Douglass International Airport is CLT?
This makes me giggle every time I look at my ticket from last weekend, which had me stop in Charlotte on my way to Kansas City.


Yes, I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy. And?

Ann Coulter's Jaw Wired Shut

isn't it ironic? don't you think?

Despite how inhumanly hateful she is, I will not say that I'm happy that Ann Coulter was injured so badly in a fall that her jaw is now wired shut. (As an aside, WTF is it with the NYPost's blurb about this calling her a "leggy reactionary"? She's a hateful asshole, and the "reactionary" label is accurate, but what does the length of her legs have to do with that?)

For the most part, I'm in agreement with Rachel that a woman being hurt so badly that she is silenced is not funny. Especially before the cause of the injury was revealed. A reaction of "haha, bitch deserved it" to this news is absolutely inappropriate here.


However, that said, I'll admit that I did have the slightest tinge of schadenfreude.
And if anyone is ever unsure about or having a hard time understanding the definition of "irony" (Alanis Morissette, I'm lookin' at you), this should be cited as the epitome of all things ironic.

the ignorance, it hurts

I really should stop reading crazyface Steve Hickey's blog. The election's over, we beat him & VYFL decisively, and I have no real reason to keep tabs on the opposition. (I'm pretty sure that most of the hits to his blog come from SDCHF folks, anyway.)

For the most part, his ranting doesn't get under my skin. Mostly, it's harmless, far-far-far-right complaints about the "abortion industry" or how Obama isn't his president. Ridiculous. That stuff is easy to just roll my eyes at and move on to more interesting news and such online. When he makes personal attacks though, it gets to me. (like attacking me, or our campaign manager, or one of our field organizers, or our very brave spokesperson.) It also gets under my skin when his rants go past that line of "ridiculous" and far into the realm of "offensive."
The crap that he posted today is one of those offensive things.
I hesitate to link to him, because I don't particularly want him re-finding my blog and talking about how "hurt" and "angry" I am, and I'd rather avoid him repeating his offer of financial assistance for a therapy session. But here goes, anyway.

the title of his post:
SD abortion law would've stopped British father from raping his daughters for 30 years.
You can probably guess where this one is going.
A horrific story came out of Britain today. A man raped his daughters for years and years and years. The failure here is in the system; nobody asked the questions that needed to be asked, nobody reported things that they were mandated to report, and nobody looked into allegations of incestuous rape.
Crazypants Steve Hickey, though, is somehow...blaming Planned Parenthood? Or the potential Planned Parenthood? The imaginary one that supposedly "wouldn't do anything" if this scenario happened in South Dakota.


It's exhausting, really, continuing to argue for common sense and a realistic picture of the world, in this question.
But here I go again, briefly.


Banning abortion will not increase reports of rape, nor will it fix the broken system that mishandles almost every rape case that comes before it.
Here's why:
You can't scare victims into reporting their attacks.
And also because: Denial of reproductive health care in order to force rape reports is simply cruel.



So please, please, please. STOP already.

south dakota 2008, the conclusion (a little overdue...)

It happened three weeks ago, so this is old news, but just for the record: yes, we did win South Dakota.
Easily.
Nobody thought we would -- hell, at the beginning of this fall, I was pretty sure there was a good chance we'd lose. But I, and everyone else, underestimated both the Campaign for Healthy Families and the state of South Dakota.
We identified and turned out a TON of voters for our side, winning by almost 40,000 votes. In South Dakota, that comes out to a ten point lead. Yeah. We pretty much kicked ass.

We ran an incredible field campaign, and our field organizers and volunteers and the rest of the campaign staff worked their hands to the bone to get this win.
Victory night couldn't have been sweeter. We watched the numbers roll in on SD's secretary of state website, refreshing the page about every 45 seconds, and as they came in, I kept waiting for them to turn against us. I knew we were probably going to win, but I kept expecting the other side to pull something, just like I expected the Republicans to pull something in the presidential election. But they didn't. The numbers held. The margin stayed at 55-45 the entire night.
First, my friends and I celebrated Obama's win. But then we remained tense, watching the numbers and waiting for the official results to be called.
Then, when the AP finally called our race, the campaign celebrated our sweet, righteous, well-deserved and necessary - and decisive win.



We won because South Dakotans made it clear to the country that government has no place in their family's medical decisions.
We won because it turns out that, surprise surprise, South Dakotans do in fact trust women and their families to make their own decisions.
We won because it's what had to happen.
And, of course, we won because our field campaign was tight, well-run, well-targeted, and actually focused on real voter contact, unlike VYFL.

((VYFL, of course, is not listening to the state's voters and giving up. We didn't really expect them to. I, for one, was hopeful, but I knew it wasn't a realistic hope. I don't expect them back in 2010 -- what would be the point with an Obama presidency and Obama nominees replacing the impending retirees on the Supreme Court? My guess is they'll wait until 2012, when Obama's up for reelection, and bank on the hopes of an anti-choice Republican presidential candidate.))

If you want to know why VYFL lost, here it is:

s.d. campaign part two...

So I'm back in Sioux Falls. I'm so, so beyond happy to be back. As much as I love my little cafe in Florence, and as much as I miss my noho family, this place feels like exactly where I need to be right now. I flew back into Sioux Falls late Saturday night..and United promptly lost my luggage. It came the next day, thankfully. But not until after a late night wal mart run (I know, I know, there was nowhere else to go!) for underwear. Yep.

It's been wonderful to be back. I won't lie; part of me really does regret not taking this full time job back in July.


We spent all of today in Huron, SD, about 2 hours northwest of Sioux Falls. We canvassed for about 8 hours today. I'm exhausted.
It was a pretty successful canvass, though!
A few highlights, categorized appropriately...


what the eff?
This was by far the most disturbing part of my day. It had nothing to do with the campaign, really. Which makes it slightly better, I suppose?
I was harassed and assaulted by an 8 year old boy.
I know - already, "what the eff?," right?
As I was walking to my last house (under the "heart sinking" category), I walked past a playground in a small park, where four 8 to 10 year old boys were playing. One called out to me, "Hey girl! Hey! Girl!" When I looked over, he pointed to his friend and said, "this boy has a crush on you!" I shook my head and walked on to the house. The boy with a crush kept sticking up his middle finger at me. I ignored him.
As I was leaving and heading toward the park to wait for my ride to my next canvass location, Crush Boy called out to me, "Hey! Hey Girl! I want to have sex with you!"
Again, I ignored him, and headed toward one of the benches. I called the field director, just to have someone on the phone while I waited, so I wasn't alone. She'd just picked up the phone and said hello when Crush Boy runs over to me, says, "Hey! I want to fuck you!" .... and threw a handful of the wood chips from the playground in my face.
I didn't really know what to do. I've never had experience dealing with that situation. So I brushed off the wood chips, sat down by the water, and told my friend what was going on.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw them getting closer to me, and so I kept an eye on them.
But Crush Boy moved quickly. Next thing I knew, he was behind me, pulling back the neck of my shirt, and stuffing wood chips down my shirt. Then he ran away with his friends, back to the playground.
I screamed after him: "What the hell is wrong with you?!" I mean, really. Who does that?

As I was walking away, back toward where I came from in hopes of meeting my ride a little further down the street, Crush Boy grabbed his crotch in my direction. And humped the air.

Keep in mind that Crush Boy is probably 8 years old.

Good lord.


the Heart Sinking and Heartwarming after the jump.

i <3 south dakota.

that is not something i ever expected to use as a title to a post.

but there it is.

i'm currently at the airport, waiting for my flight to board so I can be on my way back to Sioux Falls to work for SDCHF for the final push before and through the election. (13 days to go!)


while i wait, i'm going to post this video. you should probably watch it. and then send some money the way of SDCHF. if you're not in south dakota, it's one of the best ways to support the campaign.

because even though this fight is on the ground in South Dakota, and even though the rest of the nation is just now starting to slowly take notice, this isn't just about South Dakota.
if this passes, it will be a direct threat to Roe. the VYFL people are (inconsistently) trying to convince folks that Measure 11, the abortion ban, can coexist with Roe, but that's just absurd. Measure 11 is absolutely unconstitutional.
the majority on the Supreme Court right now is absolutely not undeniably in favour of Roe. our swing vote, Kennedy, wrote the majority opinion in the awful Federal Abortion Ban decision. we could very well lose it.


this is about the women in South Dakota. and this is about the women in every other state in the country. and this is about you. and your rights.


watch this video. and donate now.

reporting rape and abuse

pastor steve hickey, an avid member of the opposition here in sioux falls, wrote about me on his blog last week. he named me as the "gal" coming in to south dakota from massachusetts, and called me an "angry, hurt, anti-life young person." i have no idea how he got to my blog, but i do give him credit, at least, for reading all the way through my post. (even if it does creep me out a little to have someone like him know that part of my life.)

at the end of my post about coming out to south dakota, i explained why my situation made me particularly empathetic to the victims of sexual violence that may need real access to the full gamut of reproductive health care -- which, yes, includes abortion.
Steve Hickey doesn't think that women, like me, who've been victims of rape or incest should have access to this service (he calls it babykilling, of course).
he also seems to believe that every single woman who's been a victim should be forced to report their attack. which means, bringing it back home to me, that he thinks i should have been forced to report my rape(s).
he links to a woman, Dianne Heynen, who, after accusing Planned Parenthood of wanting rapists to go free (a logical accusation for an organization that promotes women's rights...), claims that reporting rape is important, if not essential, to healing.

Dianne Heynen, my dear, you are wrong.

reporting rape is not essential to healing.
reporting rape is not important to every person's individual, unique healing process.
reporting rape can, in fact, be downright detrimental to healing.

if a woman chooses, with her own agency, to report her rape, then yes, it is a powerful tool of healing.
if a woman is forced into reporting her rape, into rehashing every ugly detail of every aspect of her violation? if it's not her choice, if she has no agency? that is not healing. that will only make things worse. that is repeating the violation -- forcing her to do something that she would not have willingly done. force at worst, coercion at best. this is not empowerment, nor is it helpful for any kind of healing, no matter how you look at it.

if i would've reported my rape, i would've been laughed out of the police station.
if i would've reported my abuse, i would have lost my family a full 7 years before i chose to cut my family out of my life. i would've lost my family long before i was ready or able to survive without them.
not reporting my rape or my abuse to the state saved my life. not reporting my violations is what enabled me to get to the point i'm at right now, to the point of calling myself a survivor.

i know myself and my healing process well enough to know that a report of the rape would make things a million times worse.
i know that by looking at myself, and i know that by looking at what was said to me, and i know that by knowing the laws that govern nonconsensual sexual relationships.


introspection:

s.d. campaign, day 1

there may or may not be an update every day. probably not. but today was kinda a big day, being the first (and only) full day of PP's Live Action Camp, so i'll do a little overview of the highlights.


-first was sign-making for the visibility that we did at a fairly busy intersection in downtown Sioux Falls. but wait. more importantly, what came before that:
coffee, from Black Sheep Coffee, the coffee shop that's pretty much right next door to the campaign HQ. they roast their own, and not all of their beans are fair trade, but at least some are. independent coffee house, so it's not shitty coffee like starbucks. i also had a soy latte later, which is my drink of choice, and what i'm most picky about. it wasn't the best i've ever had (the best is a tie between the ones i make and the one i got at The Buttery in boston), but it was pretty good. whoever picked that spot for campaign hq is a genius, and i would like to give them a huge hug.

-the visibility went well. more supporters than not, and only a few rude comments or hand gestures. far less than the supportive honks and thumbs-ups that we got. very encouraging way to start the day...even if we did leave the corner with numb hands and sorta hoarse voices.

-lunch, then phonebanking. phone banking was good, and it actually might be my favourite campaign activity.
it was great, until Mr. Jared.
Jared was a 33 year old male, registered Independent.
at first, he seemed unsure about the measure, so i launched into an explanation. he had intelligent questions that seemed based in simple uncertainty and a lack of information. i answered all of his questions the best i could, and i made a ton of really stellar points.
turns out, though, he was on the other side the whole time. or, at least, that's my best guess. he said or implied something about babies being more important than the woman's health. he talked about the "greater good" -- basically, telling these women whose circumstances aren't covered by this ban to suck it up and deal, 'cause overall, it's "saving more babies." he claimed, at the end, that our conversation had not only cemented his decision to vote for this abortion ban, but that he saw now that he needed to spend his time working against our campaign.
Mr. Jared is a douchebag.
I wasted 15 effing minutes on him.

-speaking of antis, i'm famous. an anti-choice pastor here in Sioux Falls who's pretty well-known actually mentioned me, by name, linking here, on his blog.
he called me an "angry, hurt, anti-life young person."
cute.
he has compassion for me, supposedly, which...is nice, i guess?
i'm not gonna link to him, he doesn't deserve that. but...there'll be something later about his claim that all victims should be required to report rape because it's "good for the healing process." or something.
because it's not true, but i've not got the time or energy for that post yet.

-after phone banking was canvassing. sorta successful. the supporter houses i found were full of more than one supporter, so that boosted my numbers. but it was long, and i was tired, and the houses were far apart. however, everyone was very nice. i even met a republican man who's leaning toward voting no, and is also definitely voting for Obama on the 4th. he's sick of Bush. and he thanked us for getting out there and doing what we could to make change we saw was needed. very sweet. i liked him.


and now, it's about 10:30pm on my birthday, and i'm going to bed. for some well-deserved sleep.

the south dakota post.

edited to add, 9/27/08:
Below is the post I wrote before I headed out here, in which I question CHF's strategies in not focusing or really talking about (from what I could tell) the so-called rape/incest "exception."
Now that I've spent a day and a half with the campaign (more about that soon), I want to add this: I get now why the campaign's not focusing on the bureaucratic b.s. of the rape/incest "exception." I should've known they had good reason, and they do. I've never really been great at "strategy," because I'm not really stoked about using messages that I see as missing anything. I understand why they're used, and I'll use them without complaint, but in my ideal world (which is, clearly, not reality), I'd be able to use the "abortion as basic repro health care as a human right" message. but i can't use that here, and I get that.
That said, this is the campaign's actual stance on the rape/incest so-called "exception," which I didn't understand when i first wrote this post:
The way the measure is worded creates an awful lot of bureaucratic red tape. Red tape that victims shouldn't be forced to find their way through. Reporting rape is not always in the best interests of the victim. It also, as with most rape laws, is really restrictive, and it'd require victims to fit a very specific set of circumstances to really "count" as victims. which is, obvi, bullshit.

The reason it's not the main message is this: SD voters are more compassionate to women with certain health problems not covered by these so-called "exceptions" than they are to rape victims, mostly because they believe that required reporting of rape will automatically mean more rapists in jail. It's an understandable belief, and one that a whole lot of americans share. It'd be great if it were true, and it'd be great if prison was really the best deterrent for sexual violence. But it's not. However, this isn't really the fight that the campaign is fighting right now, so it makes sense that combating that faulty view of rape law and the state's role in rape prosecution isn't a focus of the campaign.


That said, on to the original post.....

for the record...

• Sarah Palin as potential VP (i.e. president when mccain dies two days into office) terrifies me. Tina Fey, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the clueless Alaskan governor, however, is a genius.


• Like Cara, I'm staying optimistic that Obama will win. Mostly because it's unfathomable to me that he won't. And I don't wanna have take part in that mass exodus to Canada on November 5th. (Although I won't lie; I'll have my passport handy while watching election results come in.)


• Thinking about the economy makes my head hurt. And it makes me sad for what it might mean for my little baby cafe. So I'm not going to think about it. For tonight, at least.


• I may be watching election results come in somewhere in South Dakota, if things go as planned. I turned down a full-time campaign (read: obsession-inducing, inevitably unhealthy) job with the SD Campaign for Healthy Families, but I'm still invested in the outcome of election day out there. I'm still looking for funding for a second volunteer trip out there for the couple weeks leading up to the election (contact me if you want to fund me yourself), but I've got one trip planned and booked. I'll be heading out September 26th (the day before my birthday!), spending a week and a half with the campaign, canvassing like my life depends on it ('cause really, it kinda does), developing a charming midwestern accent (don'chaknow?), and heading back to western mass on October 6th. Wish me luck! In the meantime, watch this new ad from SDCHF:

And my biggest wish, as of 8:30pm tonight, is to explain to this Vote Yes for Life woman, Janet Folger, what it's really like to be a victim/survivor of rape and incest. Because she so, so, so clearly does not understand. And in my optimistic state, I need to believe that if she understood, she wouldn't be making this absurd speech:

community organizing.

I'm a day early on this one, but I've got a few long days of work/babysitting/etc ahead of me, so I'm throwing this up on Sunday instead of Monday. Which is probably fine, since this post doesn't really fit in the parameters of what tomorrow's virtual mobilization of community organizer/bloggers is supposed to be about anyway. I may still throw one up tomorrow, and maybe it'll actually fit into said parameters.

Tomorrow, a lot of bloggers will be blogging on community organizing. The idea behind this is to have bloggers who are community organizers blog about their experiences, about what being a community organizer means, and about why it's important work.

----
This is all in response, of course, to the "jokes" about community organizers at the RNC, coming from both Giuliani and Palin. Really? If you're going to make fun of Obama, you've gotta at least find some better material.
This whole thing is just absurd. The reason they need to mock Obama, though? Not because he was a community organizer. Because of what Ezra points out:

But look, let's call a spade a spade: When Giuliani sneered about community organizers on the "South side" of Chicago, it's pretty clear what he was saying: Barack Obama spent his time rabble-rousing among black people. It's no different then when the RNC called him a "street organizer."........
Community organizer isn't being used to describe a job but a background. Obama organized poor black people. Helped channel their anger and grievances and anxieties. That's change you can fear.

----

The RNC debacle created a wave of defense among a whole slew of bloggers, especially feminist bloggers.
As it should. Because grassroots, community organizing is vitally important to movements like feminism. Organizing on the personal, community level is how you build a movement. And community organizers are the people who do the dirty work, who make change happen, who are a lot more in touch with the people they're serving than "public servants" like politicians and most lobbyists ever dream of being.
Except...
The mainstream feminist movement? Not really all about building a movement. The mainstream feminist movement isn't really about community-building on a local level. They do great work on the state level, they do great work in legislative processes and working with bureaucratic bullshit and getting funding toward their causes. They sometimes provide important services to the community at large. But when it comes to getting into a community, becoming immersed in it, becoming part of it, so that they can be responsive to what people really need, they're usually pretty absent. That's not where their priorities lie.

When I say "they," I'm talking about the Big Feminist Organizations. The "career feminists" (most of them, at least). The feminist organizations in the beltway ("national" organizations) are mostly concerned with beltway politics. This is important, but they aren't organizing communities. They're organizing politicians. Rounding them up, gathering them together, getting legislation passed or working within the state institutions to make change. (I suppose politicians can be considered a "community," in some sense, but that's really not the kind of community I'm concerned with here.) This is great. It needs to happen. But it's not community organizing.
Even organizations that function within their individual states don't always engage with community organizing. NARAL Massachusetts is a perfect example. I have a million grievances with NARAL's political choices nationally, but even in Massachusetts, the NARAL organizers are not community organizers. I say this because I live in western Massachusetts. In my 3 1/2 years here, including 2 in college, I've heard about exactly one organized NARAL MA event here - meeting with an aide of western MA's congressman in Springfield. I almost went, but couldn't get off work, and didn't want to pay the gas to drive all the way down to Springfield. I think they drew maybe one or two volunteer activists from the area to that meeting. NARAL MA's priorities don't bring the organization outside of Boston or Beacon Hill. They lobby the state assembly and the state senators. I think they've held events for Obama in Boston. They probably work with some student groups at some of the many colleges that Boston is home to. But that's pretty much it. Their priority is at the state level. Their priority is purely capital-P Political.

What NARAL MA, and NARAL Pro-Choice America, and PPFA, and PPLM, and NOW, and so many of the Big Feminist Organizations do is organizing, I don't deny that. And, depending on how broadly we're defining "community," it could easily be considered community organizing, as well. But what I'd like to see celebrated and validated more isn't just that kind of Big Feminist Organization advocacy. What I'd love to see this movement, if we're really going to be a movement, doing more of is movement-building. Getting Obama elected and fighting court battles and working to get congressional funding allocated to abuse victims is important work. But it's not (necessarily) building a movement.

When I think of "community organizers," much like the organizing that Obama did on the south side of Chicago, I think of movement-building. Organizing state players is one thing. Organizing the community and building a base for this movement is an entirely different thing.



Which I guess is why I, like some other bloggers, are a little confused about why all of these big feminist bloggers are now coming to the defense of community organizers. An awful lot of them are career feminists. An awful lot of them have gone the "strategic" route in lieu of the community organizing, collective route (perhaps because we live in an individualistic culture and collective feminism is not what we do?), because collective organizing is not 'practical' or 'realistic.'
(Thank you, thank you, to the always amazing bfp for hitting the nail on the head and helping me understand, in sentence form, why the sudden rush to defend community organizers seemed so off to me.)




And now, with all of that said, this is how I see community organizing.

hurricane gustav. not katrina part 2...right?

oh, look. the poorest of the poor, the ones without a real, safe opportunity for evacuation, are being conveniently "forgotten" yet again. color me surprised.


CNN has a story on some of the people who can't leave New Orleans to evacuate for Hurricane Gustav, which is headed straight for the gulf and expected to be even more devastating than Katrina.

and this AP article kind of makes me a little nauseous. at least, this paragraph does:

"This is the real deal, not a test," Nagin said as he issued the order, warning residents that staying would be "one of the biggest mistakes of your life." He emphasized that the city will not offer emergency services to anyone who chooses to stay behind.
...
Advocates criticized the decision not to establish a shelter, warning that day laborers and the poorest residents would fall through the cracks.

About two dozen Hispanic men gathered under oak trees near Claiborne Avenue. They were wary of boarding any bus, even though a city spokesman said no identity papers would be required.

"The problem is," said Pictor Soto, 44, of Peru, "there will be immigration people there and we're all undocumented."

bfp has a post with links for how you can help.
i've already sent some money to INCITE!, whose members are working on getting help to low-income women of colour, and i suggest you do the same, if you can. and/or donate to the red cross. and check out BFP's post on how to help prisoners in New Orleans.

peerless.

(full disclosure for this post: i have a personal investment in the subject of spelling. here's why: i was thisclose to making it to the national spelling bee when i was in 8th grade. at regionals, i missed the word that is the title of this post - peerless - because the word-giver [is there an actual job title for this?], who i have yet to forgive, pronounced it "perilous." the sentence she gave could've gone either way. had i asked for a definition, i would've easily gotten it -- and every other word that would've fallen on my turn -- and, most likely, gone to nationals. but instead, i spelled "perilous," and was eliminated. and no, i'm not still bitter about a contest that happened over ten years ago. why do you ask?)


according to this article on spiked (via), some "progressive" educators are arguing in favour of de-emphasizing correct spelling and, instead of engaging in the tedious task of correcting students' spelling, accept the most commonly misspelled words ("truely" in place of "truly," for example) as "variant spellings." they claim that an adherence to correct spelling is elitist, discriminating against people from "disadvantaged backgrounds."

my first thought: have these people not seen Akeelah and the Bee? a young girl, quite disadvantaged, from south LA, wins the National spelling bee on her first trip there. a talent for spelling did not elude her, so why should it elude other similarly disadvantaged students?

thought number 1.5: what kind of generalization is that? assuming that "disadvantaged" (read: low-income, people of color, inner city, Other) kids can't spell? talk about elitist assumptions.

my second thought: ok, there's a good possibility that kids who've grown up and have been placed at some kind of educational disadvantage perform less well in spelling than their more advantaged counterparts. it's not as if educationally disadvantaged students are the only ones consistently employing these "variant spellings." really. this fact comes from a girl who was educated in a very good public school and attended a top tier college. even if it were confined to those "disadvantaged" students, the answer is not to meet them at their misspellings. maybe a step would be to, i don't know, stop de-funding education, put a little effort into these neglected schools, actually make the educational changes we've needed to make for years.


maybe i'm a spelling purist. if it's "progressive" educators that are lobbying for the acceptance of "variant spellings," maybe that makes me "conservative." for once, for the only time in my life, i'm ok with that label. literacy is not a luxury of the elite, and correct spelling is an indispensable facet of literacy. illiteracy is not a badge of honour, or, like the article rightly bemoans, a "virtue." spelling is not arbitrary. spelling things incorrectly does not show your self-expression or creativity.

there is a place for self-expression and creativity in literature, of course. literature would not continue evolving if that weren't the case. it's ok to sometimes cast off some of the restrictive grammatical rules in order to expand literary creativity. you'll notice that i rarely construct sentences that include capitalization, and that often, i include sentences with one or two words - not a complete sentence, by definition. this is not, however, because i don't understand correct grammar or sentence construction or literary rules. i generally do not capitalize the first word of sentences for aesthetic purposes. i like the way paragraphs look without the interruption of capital letters. (i could probably make an argument challenging the hierarchical nature of capitalization, but that's really not my motivation.) my incomplete sentences exist for the sake of the literary voice that i've chosen. the voice i write with reflects the voice i speak with. i think that's an important similarity for a writer.
the difference here is that i know what the literary rules are. i'm consciously choosing to break them, for reasons that are defensible in the literary world. misspelling words due to ignorance of their correct spelling, though? that's not "variant" or "self-expression." that's just an aspect of illiteracy.




lastly, a note on the argument Frank makes near the end of the article:

In essence, variant spelling is a true companion to the idea of variant truths. Contemporary cultural life has become estranged from the idea of Truth with a capital T. In academia, social scientists never tire of informing students that there are no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers. Instead of the truth, people are exhorted to accept different perspectives as representing many truths.

The demotion of the status of truth calls into question the purpose of gaining knowledge. Celebrating variant truths, like variant spellings, is presented as a pluralistic gesture of tolerance. In fact it represents a reluctance to take education and its ideas seriously. And not surprisingly, those who do not take ideas seriously are also not very worried about how they are spelled.

as an avid challenger of accepted capital-T Truths, i disagree with this. the calling into question of the status quo, of long-accepted social Truths (i.e. normativity and homogeneity) does not call into question the value of gaining knowledge. on the contrary; gaining knowledge is one of the things that allows the status quo to be challenged. the academy is certainly not the only place that Truths can be challenged, but it's been an important front in that for a while now. for example, i (and many feminist scholars) absolutely disagree with the long-accepted "Truth" that small children have inherent differences based on their genitalia. little boys can be just as sensitive and pink-loving as little girls, and little girls can love to play with trucks and do science experiments just as much as little boys. challenging that Truth had absolutely nothing to do with employing "variant spellings." there is absolutely no connection.
seeking and accepting a pluralistic version of truth(s) doesn't mean taking ideas less seriously. making the connection between progressive scholars advocating for the acceptance of a variety of truth and "scholars" advocating for the acceptance of "variant spellings" is a red herring, and an ineffective one at that.

leslee unruh: traces of humanity?

normally, just hearing the name "Leslee Unruh" or seeing a picture of her face gets a whole lot of angry blood pumping through my system. it's not often that one person can incite that much negative energy in me. Leslee, though, is a sure bet. she infuriates me...and, as much as i hate to admit it, she scares me. not because i think she can win this fight she's working so hard at, but because she can come close. because, unfortunately, she's a good strategist. and because there's just something about her that instills fear. when i worked on the campaign against South Dakota's abortion ban a couple years ago, my friend Christine told me that some of the CHF staffers had dressed up as Leslee for Halloween. it would be a totally appropriate, totally horrifying costume.


so normally, my reactions to Leslee range from terrified to horrified to hate-filled to infuriated.
which is why this article, published in the most recent issue of More magazine threw me off. i expected to be angry. i expected a description of the work she puts in to limit women's lives and choices, and i expected to be appalled that this woman could exist. that a human being could exist like her.
my reaction followed the same lines as Cara's: she called it "creepy and compelling." on some level that shakes me up a little, it also intrigues me. she intrigues me. and i'm a little more convinced that maybe there's a little bit of human being in her still.
and my grand Theory of Leslee has changed: maybe instead of being just pure evil incarnate, maybe she's just possessed. because little bits of humanity peek out in this article.


it was written by Amanda Robb, whose uncle, Barnett (Bart) Slepian, was an ob/gyn and abortion doctor back on my home turf in Western New York. He was murdered in 1998 by an anti-abortion activist. it's an incredibly well-written article - for journalistic value only, it's worth the read. Robb was somehow able to get close enough to Leslee to make her seem human. real. it showed her for how crazy she can get, but it also showed her as a real person, with what appears to be a trying past.



i could look at the article, at the discrepancies between Leslee's story of her life and the lie that Robb catches her in and call her a dirty liar. i could look at the legal/safe (though not incredibly well-executed, patient-advocacy wise) abortion she got a while back and call her a hypocrite. i could look at the manipulations that Unruh describes, the manipulations that make up almost all of Unruh's campaign work, and say that she's utterly deplorable. but i'm not going to. because even though it was a very long article on one of the people i most deplore, i wasn't left with a nasty taste in my mouth. i was left wanting to know more.
i was left feeling....well, i feel kinda bad for Leslee.



what else has she gone through to make her feel this need to construct her life around controlling everyone else's sexuality and sexual choices? what does she gain from this? does it really give her the satisfaction and fulfillment that (i'm guessing) she's pursuing? and if so, why does the control of other people fulfill her? what void is she trying to fill here?

south dakota? colorado? where to, this time around?

two years ago this november, i went to south dakota for a week to volunteer with South Dakota Campaign For Healthy Families, the coalition formed to oppose the ban on abortion (Referred Law 6, that year) that was placed on the ballot by the same coalition. (for the few of you not in the know: the south dakota legislature had passed, and the governor had signed, a ban on abortion in march of that year. putting it on the ballot was safer than going through the courts system to make the ban go away.) it was a totally amazing, incredible experience; i missed a week's worth of classes, flew to a state i've never been, mostly closeted myself as a queer (...well, sorta. that is, if making out with a girl in the front seat of our rental car still counts as "closeted"), picked up a midwestern accent, and actually made change. saw a victory, and was part of it. incredible.

we won by a pretty decent margin...but in a weird way. the way that the campaign strategy worked, we opened ourselves up for exactly the ban that's currently on the ballot for this year: the ballot initiative, this time, includes the exceptions for rape, incest, and women's health that were our strategic points last time around.
(i fucking hate leslee unruh.)


so it's back.
i'm working on finding a way to get back to south dakota for november, to volunteer again with the SDCHF. to work again with some of the people still kicking around SD, still working against the ban, to work for this amazing coalition, to help them win again (they have to win again. we have to win again.).

footage from SDCHF's and PPMNNDSD (planned parenthood of minnesota, north dakota, & south dakota) follows:

(also see PPMNNDSD's blog, Stand Up South Dakota)



now, though, i'm torn.
do i go back to south dakota, work again with the coalition i love, work against the crazy that is leslee unruh and her campaign?
or do i go to colorado, where there is a full zip code full of evangelical woman-haters (focus on the family's frightening hq is in colorado springs), where there's another abortion ban on the ballot for november?
the campaign against this ban in colorado is Protect Families, Protect Choice. (interesting how they both use the emotionally loaded word, "family," in their campaign names.)
this ban is really frightening for a lot of reasons. mostly, because it's not explicitly a ban on abortion; instead, it's a "personhood amendment." meaning that it would change the state constitution of CO to define "personhood" as beginning at fertilization. this definition extends to the sections of the state constitution regarding due process, inalienable rights, and equality of justice.
this, by extension, makes abortion illegal. this makes a lot of forms of birth control illegal. this makes emergency contraception illegal. this has no exceptions, whatsoever. not for rape, not for incest, not for the health (maybe even the life) of the mother. nothing.

(one of my big fears: the colorado campaign will go the way of the SD campaign and use the so, so problematic strategy of opposing it based on the lack of exceptions. it worked in sd two years ago, sure, but now the ban is back, with a much worse prognosis for us than before. please, colorado, learn from this. please please please.)



so, decision-making time:
colorado?
south dakota?
(or maybe california, where that fucking parental notification bullshit is back on the ballot again?)




où vais-je?

(my) truth about causality, queerness, and abuse

When I came out to my birth mother, one of her first questions (or, more accurately, accusations) was: “This is because of what happened with your brother, isn’t it?” She couldn’t speak the words that held the truths of my life; “this,” for her, was as close as she could get to admitting that her only daughter was queer. “What happened” was as close as she could come to admitting that her only daughter had been abused by her own son. The causal link that she saw linking these two unspeakable truths about this girl she birthed was terrifying to her, but at the same time, made it easier to dismiss and refuse to engage with each hard truth.

These are my terrifying, real, hard truths:
I am queer.
I am a survivor* of childhood sexual abuse, a survivor of emotional abuse and neglect, and a survivor of rape.
I do not see these aspects of my identity as separate, or separable. They do not exist as isolated truths. Each identity plays into and informs the other. (Yes, intersectionality applies here, too.) I cannot say that the abuse does not affect my current sexuality, just as I cannot say that my sexuality wasn’t an aspect of the abuse as it happened.
I was victimized in part because my sexuality was already a point of vulnerability.
And here’s the other part of this truth that nobody wants me to say, nobody wants to hear: I am queer because I was sexually abused.

Yep, I said it. The way my life has panned out, there is a connection. There is a link. It is, at least in part, a causal one.

Which isn’t to say that every queer woman is drawn to women because she was sexually assaulted (although the number is a little overwhelming), or that every woman who was victimized “goes gay.” But it’s my reality. And I do not think I am alone.

I’ve spent almost the entirety of my “out” life (5 years now) running away from that truth. Denying it and downplaying it and making it not mine, fitting myself into the mold of the (already marginal) rhetoric of queer survivors of sexual violence. I was terrified to lose that legitimacy as a queer woman, terrified to open up that most painful part of my past to scrutiny and disbelief (as if it weren’t already). And maybe, in most people’s eyes, and certainly in the eyes of the mainstream alphabet-soup (LGBTQ) movement, I just lost my claim to a “real,” “legitimate” queer identity. But when it comes back to it, this is my truth. This causal link between sexual violence and my queer identity is real.

(so much more to say after the jump)

Here are some more truths about that link:

immigration is a feminist issue

just in case you needed more proof that immigration is, indeed, a feminist issue:


the vast majority of women are sexually assaulted on their journey across the US-Mexico border.

According to experts, rape is now considered "the price of admission" for women crossing the border illegally.

But this scourge goes largely ignored, and is suspected to be vastly underreported. Not surprisingly, few women care to describe their ordeals to authorities in stark government detention facilities.
...
Civilian border-watchers tell of hearing these women's cries.

"I thought the wailings we heard at night were the coyotes barking at the moon," one volunteer told The Washington Times. "I didn't know until later that those sounds were the cries of women being raped in the Mexican desert, some less than 100 yards away from the border. There was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it."

The rapists are known to hang women's bras and panties from tree limbs as trophies.
.....

read the whole article. really.

coming soon to this space

check back soon.
there's an almost-done post on queer survivors of sexual violence coming up.

(similar to the last paper i wrote at Smith, on queer survivors of childhood sexual abuse, but less academic / with more heart. also, dissimilar in that i don't think this post will come close to killing me in the way that paper did.)

{ETA: the post is now up, but I'm leaving this one up so that I can keep the totally awesome sytycd videos up.}


in the meantime, enjoy this, my love from SYTYCD (sadly, eliminated last week).
not gonna lie, half the reason i love her so much is 'cause she danced to Ani. what? it's an easy road to my heart.

also, her totally fucking amazing (also Ani) audition:

trauma, bodies, healing, revolution(izing)

what she said.

Unfortunately, what I most often witness is people’s trauma around their bodies getting in the way of uniting. As queers, as fat people, as people with disabilities, as people of color, we have often located so much of our pain in our bodies. We internalize so much anger, we get sick from it and throw up walls and make divisions. I get inspired when I see the connections made on an individual level. But on a larger scale I don’t really see it happening yet.

I think there are two main obstacles: 1) Most of us spend a lot of time outside of our bodies. I’m not sure how many people are willing to get into their bodies in the way it would require in order for this kind of movement to build. Phat Camp was an amazing place to witness people going through this. They come in with their brains in a tizzy, wondering “What is empowerment? What is self-acceptance?” and then they realize we don’t want their brains to do the work—we want to go to a deeper place. A place where all of our bodies are unified in the struggle to be whole and real.

2) People who don’t have to think about their power usually don’t. Sometimes I wonder if we can really build anything effectively without figuring out how to cross over and get people to examine their privilege. There is so much mythology about health and wellness, that it’s hard for me to picture having a deep moment with someone who more than anything believes I just need to lose weight. Even if we agree that the prison system needs to end and Bush is a motherfucker.

I see the goal of all work like this to be community building, healing, and revolution. In that order.

(via bfp, via nadia)