The Washington Post wants everyone to know they really like rape.

Actually, this might be like sexual assault awareness month, but in reverse, so like “Rape is great week” brought to you by the Washington Post. We going to go over two pieces in the Washington Post from the last few days. The first, Richard Cohen’s piece on Cyrus and Steubenville, and the second by Betsy Karasik on how a 14 year old girl was in control during her rape.

Richard Cohen, the man who brought you that god awful piece on Trayvon Martin is at it again, but this time he’d like to blame, and try to follow because I’m not sure how he makes these leaps, Miley Cyrus’ cultural appropriation’s impact on teen culture for the Steubenville rape. So he’s blaming consumed black culture for rape in a roundabout way. Well, there you have it. Feminists, take down the tents, Cohen has solved the mystery of rape culture by blaming a population that has been targeted by white fears of sexual dominance since slavery. Now, I’m going to link to his article, but I encourage you not to click on it, because the Washington Post doesn’t deserve the page views.

Cohen begins by trying to make himself endearing after all he’s just an old man who didn’t even know what trewking was. Then in grandpa like fashion he dismisses the Steubenville rape:

“The first thing you should know about the so-called Steubenville Rape is that this was not a rape involving intercourse. The next thing you should know is that there weren’t many young men involved—just two were convicted. The next thing you should know is that just about everything you do know about the case from TV and the Internet was wrong. One medium fed the other, a vicious circle of rumor, innuendo and just plain lies. It made for marvelous television.”

Cohen continues to dismiss Ariel Levy’s piece in The New Yorker on the Steubenville rape. Claiming, that Levy immersed the reader in “teenage culture that was stupid, dirty and so incredibly and obliviously misogynistic that I felt like a visitor to a foreign country.” I call shenanigans. After all, in what world would Cohen not be familiar with misogyny? Cohen doesn’t believe the rape was a rape, though I’m not sure how he gets there, wait for it…”Illegal is sort of beside the point. Right, proper, nice, respectful, decent—you choose the word—is more apt.” I choose legality.

Cohen wants his readers to separate the legality of the rape in order to view it as something wrong, but not in fact a rape, which is rape apology. A rape was committed, by the legal definition regardless of Cohen’s attempts to rebrand the issue. Cohen then compares the rape in Steubenville to the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed in Queens, NY while many of her neighbors looked on and did nothing. But of course this is “This was an urban legend that arose out of fear of urban living.” Urban, hmmm, I wonder what imagery that is supposed to invoke? Don’t worry, Cohen has us covered, this is when he decided to bring Cyrus’ cultural appropriation of trewking back, “But let me also suggest that acts such as hers not only objectify women but debase them. They encourage a teenage culture that has set the women’s movement back on its heels. What is being celebrated is not sexuality but sexual exploitation, a mean casualness that deprives intimacy of all intimacy.”

Richard Cohen, mansplaining rape, sexual exploitation, and the women’s movement. I do want to take a moment to point out the awfulness of Cohen's piece by saying he is invoking white fears about black sexuality, specifically the notion that black women are always sexually available. If one believes this then black women are to blame for any sexual assaults that happen to them, and by extension if we are to believe black culture is mainstream all sexual violence. It also implies that men's sexuality is completely uncontrollable. This is also a notion that invokes racism when thinking about how black men are portrayed as constant threats, specifically to white women. I won't bother bringing up Cohen's piece on Martin or Zimmerman's defense being "protect the [white] women."

Moving on to an example of when we don't care about protecting women, particularly women of color. A brief background on Karasik’s piece, a teacher, Stacey Dean Rambold, raped his 14 year old student in Montana. The victim killed herself, and Rambold was given a 30 day sentence. In addition to that tragedy, Judge G. Todd Baugh asserted the victim was “as much in control of the situation.” He later apologized.

Karasik begins her piece by invoking Louie CK’s thoughts on child molesters might not kill their victims if the punishments for molesting weren’t so severe. I’m not familiar with Louie CK’s television show or the context this was presented. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, assuming like all things the retelling of a joke, thought, etc is always flawed. Plus, there is an uncomfortable truth to Louis CK’s statement, though sexual assault is about power and so is murder so I’m not convinced fewer victims would be killed. However, what is troubling it this statement, “I don’t believe that all sexual conduct between underage students and teachers should necessarily be classified as rape, and I believe that absent extenuating circumstances, consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized.” Say what?

She does clarify that she thinks teachers who engage in sexual activity with their students should be removed from teaching unless able to prove complete rehabilitation. However, I have to ask, if Karasik is claiming there isn’t a problem then what is with the rehabilitation?

Perhaps the most troubling thing Karasik writes is the victim blaming:

“I’ve been a 14-year-old girl, and so have all my female friends. When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on us. When I was growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, the sexual boundaries between teachers and students were much fuzzier. Throughout high school, college and law school, I knew students who had sexual relationships with teachers. To the best of my knowledge, these situations were all consensual in every honest meaning of the word, even if society would like to embrace the fantasy that a high school student can’t consent to sex. Although some feelings probably got bruised, no one I knew was horribly damaged and certainly no one died.”

See, no one died, which is obviously how we should measure whether any sexual contact is bad or unwanted. She goes on to talk about sexual harassment back in these good old days, but I guess that wasn’t so good. Karasik would have rather her former boss be taken through the legal system than any of her teachers. I guess it is because she was the victim that time. Karasik completely ignores the power in these relationships. Teachers have power over their students in addition to the age differences. While, I’m not opposed to age differences or teenagers having sex, we should probably address the differences between two consenting adults or two consenting teenagers having sex vs. a teenager and an adult. There are differences in the power each has in the relationship. Assumedly, two adults have the same power and agency (though with IPV we know this isn’t always the case), and two teenagers would have similar agency and power. However, a teenager would have less agency and power in a relationship with an adult, then add the power issues from the adult being a teacher. This isn’t sexual exploration and experimentation. That is exploitation.

In the end we can all agree to disagree because the law is the law. But perhaps the Washington Post should stop printing pieces blaming the victims. That is what both of these pieces really do. Cohen wants to blame teenage culture for rape, but doesn’t want to call it rape. While Karasik calls it rape, but thinks we’re all being too hard on the teacher for raping his student after all teenage girls think about sex and want to have it. Which translates into a willingness to have it with anyone? Teenage girls are not responsible for their rapes as much as Cohen, Karasik, and the Washington would like us all to believe. This is misogyny, rape apology, and rape culture.

Alright Cleveland (and Miley) it is time we have a talk about racism and false narratives

Cleveland strikes a lot of people as being racist. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the one that really sticks out is Cleveland’s pride in “the Tribe” or Cleveland Indians. This comes up for me every time someone says the Washington Redskins needs to change their name, don’t get me wrong they do, but I view the Cleveland Indians in the same way.

I was reading RustWire, like you do, when I saw an article entitled, “Cleveland’s ‘Image Problem’” by A.S. A.S. points out that Clevelanders’ pride often has us ignoring any criticism,

“Any national, or even local, criticism of the city is generally dismissed outright rather than considered on its merits. Big time civic energy is devoted to dispelling ‘incorrect’ ideas about the city, and more so, I’d say than any other issue, short of vacant housing maybe.

“The latest effort at image control, in my opinion, is this idea of ‘rust belt chic.’ Rust belt chic means that Cleveland isn’t poor and depressed-it’s ‘gritty’ and ‘real.’ This concept could not have been better designed to flatter the vanities of ‘elites’ living in Cleveland, and by what I mostly mean college-educated white people.”

Now, listen Cleveland readers, I enjoy Tremont and Ohio City’s renaissance too, but we have to acknowledge who benefits here. First let’s unpack this phrase to demonstrate the class and racial implications. Rust belt chic invokes imagery of the steel mills and blue color work, which in the Midwest makes you think of white guys. Yes, men of color and women also worked in the factories, but often the white men are who we refer to. As for class, while these phrase invokes images of the middle class (and later low-income), these images are being employed as a guise. After all, the old steel yards was turned into Steel Yards Commons, a shopping center where poor people can pour the little money they have into box chain stores (both Target and Wal-Mart are represented). This guise allows people to wear flannel and pants with holes without any of the real dirt, sweat, and blood that used to follow through these areas.

A.S. asks why someone might think Cleveland is racist, and proceeds to answer the question with a pretty good takedown of the Cleveland Indians, and specifically, Chief Wahoo. A.S. then suggests that if Cleveland wants to change its image it might start with by letting go of the dogma that says “Cleveland, perfect the way we are,” learn to take some criticism, and build up public transit. And here is where A.S. and I find each other,

“Here’s another negative idea about Cleveland: it’s segregated and desperately poor. And this is perhaps the hardest thing to acknowledge. What is our regional strategy for addressing segregation and concentrated poverty? I don’t know that there is one, although there are some close approximations.”

Cleveland is profoundly segregated. You can see it by driving through Cleveland, you can see where neighborhood change from black to white to Hispanic, to foreign born. When I was conducting my thesis research the one white woman enrolled in the back to work program showed up one day and then had her mother call A (the director of the program I partnered with) to say the class’s demographic was too diverse. I’ll never forget, A tells me this, and I respond, “This classes isn’t diverse at all, the participants are all black women.” The program was housed in a traditionally low-income, black neighborhood on Cleveland’s eastside. Caseworkers refer you to back to work programs in your area as a requirement of TANF, but if you don’t succeed in obtaining employment you get placed in another program, maybe farther away, also, sometimes the one closest to you maybe full or non-existent. All this said, it is easy to forget when living in Cleveland how racially segregated it is. I know, but never gave much thought to it. Slavic Village was a white working class neighborhood when my father was young, maybe on the lower income end. Then when we were young it was a black neighborhood, and now it is a Hispanic and foreign born neighborhood. The majority of my neighbors have never been white as long as I’ve been there.

As far as I know Cleveland has no formal proactive plans to help the poor or end the segregation (and I’m sure they’d called it self-segregation). However, I can think of an informal plan to end poverty in Cleveland and segregation. By pushing the low-income people of all races out to the suburbs where they can be a different city’s problem by cultivating an image to draw “young professionals” into Cleveland. I’m actually going to begin research for a project at work on suburban poverty around DC, and we’ve already seen the racial changes in these suburbs indicating people in the suburbs are going further out into the suburbs to avoid poor people, usually people of color.

A.S. concludes by discussing the importance of introspection on Cleveland’s part, but also this paragraph that gets to the heart of this rebranding,

“The thing that really bothers me about all this is these marketing efforts, these ‘image repair’ campaigns, that have a way of pretending like big parts of the city don’t even exist. We try to make our very real problems small, to dismiss them. We emphasize the positive, which is fine and great, but we do it by erasing the parts of our community that are more difficult to rationalize. We do this consciously and unconsciously, we ‘elite’ Clevelanders.”

This is the perfect summary of gentrification. Ignore sections of the city in poverty while we build something shiny over here. Then continue to spread hipsters where the rents are low displacing poor people everywhere. It sounds like a Bond villain’s plan. But I’ve talked about gentrification, and the blatant ignoring of portions of Cleveland by leadership before.

However, I thought this conversation of guising one’s city into something else without any of the consequences of authentic experience made me think of someone…Hi Miley!

Let me begin this portion of this post by saying I’m going to be brief and this is complicated.

Cyrus performed with Robin Thicke, and the Internet imploded. I didn’t see it, and I have no interest. I can’t. However, there seems to be two conversations going around one about sexism, Thicke was exploiting Cyrus because she’s young and clearly in the middle of an identity crisis the way he exploits his dancers (see the Blurred Lines video). This coincides with the “slut shaming” of Cyrus for willingly participating, invoking phallic images, and generally wearing her sexuality.

However, is it her sexuality? Which leads us into conversation two: racial appropriation and exploitation. Batt Mamzelle’s Cate wrote an amazing piece on all the things wrong with Cyrus’s cultural appropriation. All the things. Read all of it. Cyrus’ new look and projected image is one that invokes “ratchet” culture, which is a term that I think originated out of Southern black environments (specifically, Cedar Grove in Shreveport, Louisiana) to describe someone of low social class. It was originally an insult, but has kind of been reclaimed, by some black women.

Cate begins her piece with a clear statement of what is happening with Cyrus’ performance (though I use the term lightly):

“What Miley did last night was easily one of the most racist displays I’ve ever seen. From her insistence on twerking to her use of all black women as literal props (they were teddy bears) to her smacking of her dancer’s ass and the simulation of rimming, it is very clear to me, that Miley thinks that black women’s bodies are to be enjoyed, devalued and put on display for entertainment purposes.”

Minor note, Cyrus isn’t alone in this. This is a near perfect definition of objectification so next time you watch “Blurred Lines” or just about any music video that is the statement being made in most of them. Cate notes that historically black women haven’t had control over their bodies via slavery, sexual exploitation, and the reinforced idea that a black woman’s body isn’t her own. Cyrus surrounds herself with a specific black woman body type and proceeds to only interact with these backup dancers in a sexualized way:

“Essentially, what Miley has done here is indicate that 1. She wants to be sexual and 2. She needs to associate herself with black bodies to do it.”

This also, isn’t anything new. The hyper-sexualization of black bodies is seen throughout history, and interestingly enough, a very clear example is in the porn industry where racial stereotypes are frequently employed.

This is where we begin to have a conversation of cultural appropriation, I wasn’t away that Cyrus wanted to “sound black” on her latest album, but by invoking ratchet culture and the use of black bodies to further this goal, she is trying to distance herself from her Disney image and reap the rewards in her career. Some of the author’s mentioned in Cate’s piece referenced Cyrus’ performance (large picture, not just the other night) as minstrelsy. Cyrus gets to benefit from “black culture,” albeit one aspect of black culture, while suffering none of the stereotypes associated with it.

Cate continues to bring in the diversity within black culture. Cyrus’ cultural appropriation implies there is only one aspect of black culture, but in reality she is picking and choosing what aspects to exploit because “black people are not a monolith.”  Essentially, Cyrus is playing at blackness, but really she is just projecting a stereotype of what she thinks it means to be black, again with no consequences. Cate then explores the comparisons made between Rihanna and Cyrus, where Rihanna is constantly being criticized for her decisions and expressions of her culture, while Cyrus does all of this for profit without the same criticism.

I know there may seem to be a disconnect given Cleveland is a city and Cyrus is a pop star, but I think there is something to be said in how institutional racism plays out in both of these situations where an entity projects an image that they have artificially shaped themselves in where they reap the benefits without any regard for the consequences of these actions. At the end of the day these are both false narratives that aim to simplify complex cultures and societal issues.

In conclusion, Cleveland and Miley, your behavior is kind of racist.