There is so much wrong with this: impromptu feminist thought lesson for everyone

A New Hampshire Representative substituted the word vagina for women because you know women are just female sexual organs. This is not actually true. Take a minute, kiss your kids, do what you need to, to get to a place where we can continue.

I read about this on TheFrisky, Jezebel, HuffPo, and HyperVocal, which is where I pulled the info from Slade Sohmer’s article. So because you think of vaginas when you think of “stand your ground” wait…this makes no fucking sense. Anyway, New Hampshire has a bill up to repeal “stand your ground” or as I call it “open season on people of color by idiot racists.” I guess the festivities kicked off with an 11-year-old brandishing an AR-15 outside the State house over the weekend asking adults to “Come and take it.” Kids, aren’t they cute? Take back the kiss you gave them.

Now, a Representative has used the word vagina as a synonym for women in an official email to the full House email list. The email was sent by Rep. Peter Hansen, an Amherst Republican in his second term (and fingers-crossed his last) was written on April 1^st about the debate over “stand your ground” and sent to the full House email list. Hansen in a moment of unrivaled eloquence states, “What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels of Amsterdam? Why children and vagina’s of course. While the tales relate the actions of solitary male the outcome cannot relate to similar situations where children and women and mothers are the potential victims.”

Rep. Steve Vaillancourt provided several examples of situations where he hadn’t needed “stand your ground” to protect himself. Hansen claimed his email was meant to demonstrate that women and children could have different situations (because women who shoot batters totally are protected under “stand your ground” except no). Hansen then said he was using the word “vagina” to prove a point. I’m pretty sure that point is to demonstrate he’s an idiot.

Hansen is trying to tread water shortly after the email was sent out:

“Having a fairly well educated mind I do not need self  appointed wardens to A: try to put words in my mouth for political gain and B: Turn a well founded strategy in communication into an insulting accusation, and finally if you find the noun vagina insulting or in some way offensive then perhaps a better exercise might be for you to re-examine your psyche.”

This is the equivalent of “hush, a man is talking”. Guys, guys, I’m being snarky, but he’s so smart after all he says so. Gee, I wonder why rendering half the population as nothing more than their sex organs could be construed as offensive? Wait, nope. Pretty sure everyone gets that. I didn’t know of course that anyone who took offense to being called a vag is sexist though. I mean men/boys use terms traditionally used for women as derogatory all the time (see women, girls, bitch, ladies, etc), and while, yes this is sexist language, I wonder if Hansen is trying to subvert that culture of masculinity? No, I’m sure he isn’t. I’ve never been called a vagina, but I have been called a cunt before. And being rendered equivalent to my reproductive capacity is pretty damn offensive. Also, calling me one to my face will get you verbally torn up and possibly punched in the face.

Later he really apologized:

“Can there be any doubt my comment is being misinterpreted and taken completely out of context? It was not, and is not, my intention to demean women at any time. It is apparent that the intent of my remarks has been misinterpreted, the true goal of the message lost and for that I apologize to those who took offense.”

See his apology is for someone taking offense, which is the non-apology apology. My favorite thing is taken out of context by being taken at face value. Idiot. If this man can serve in a state House, than I can, which should make everyone nervous.

Ok, so I’m not going to describe in explicit detail why women are people and calling all women vaginas as a synonym is a way to remove women from the conversation. I think I’ve written about that here before. But I am about to blow your mind: some women identify as women and don’t have vaginas. *drops mic* What Rep. Asshat  Hansen does is reduce women and men to biology when gender is a social construct.

More so, gender is performance (Judith Butler). We perform our gender arguably as society tells us to, and I have a lengthy term paper on the ways society reinforces race, class, and gender though structures, stereotypes, and policies (Ivy Ken). I present my gender as a CIS woman. Butler argues that doing gender is a social relationship. We do not perform gender for ourselves (though I think this conversation can happen), but mostly our gender presentation is for others. This is Foucault, right? Without getting too into Biopower, race and class (a lot of the time) are policed by society and the government, while gender is more often self-policed by ourselves and those close to us. I think the argument can also be made in reverse in specific situations like when a government or publicly funded school enforces a dress code on women only. Or when a person of color is told by family/friends they are acting too white essentially not conforming to the socially acceptable standards, but those conversations need to happen, but this is not where we are having them. So it is stop-and-frisk of a black man compared to a father telling his son he can’t play with a doll or wear a dress. Like I said, it is boiled down to its simplest form right here.

At the end of the day, we have a state Rep being an idiot and a sexist reducing the population to their biologically assigned sex while conflating sex with gender and singling out half the population. Yeah, people should be pissed. You see by equating women with their sex; Hansen is also equating men with their sex trapping everyone in a gender binary.

In conclusion: repeal “stand your ground” and stop using gender and sex as interchangeable. Finally, don’t reduce women or anyone else to body parts because it makes you look foolish. 

I'd rename this article my "institutional rape"

I read a post on Jezebel today, and it gave me pause. Entitled "Workshopping Rape," it summarized a piece written by Elissa Bassist about her experiences of sexual violation. I'm being specifically picky with my words right now because after a lengthy conversation with another women's studies feminist grad this gets complicated. Upfront, V and I took very different approaches to this piece, I took a theoretical approach grounding policy application while V took the legitimization of all individual experiences. Ready? Let's do this. 

Excerpts from Ms. Bassest's piece, "My 'Caffeine-Free Rape'": 

I am in the student health waiting room filling out required forms, writing in my date of birth and social security number and martial status, listing any allergies I have to specific medications, and I reach a box asking if I have ever been sexually assaulted. I either check the box or I don’t.In 2006, I met my first real-deal boyfriend. I was a senior in college, 22, and one of those late-in-life virgins, waiting for the ideal circumstances to have sex. When we had sex the first time, it hurt. When we had sex every other time, it hurt. But I had no way to describe what was happening in the dark, no way to talk about it, no language to explain.In 2008, after we’d graduated and broken up, he e-mailed me confessing he’d cheated with four women (not simultaneously, but just as unimaginable). Like the responsible and terrified educated woman I was, I got tested for AIDS and STIs. During the exam, the gynecologist asked me if I’d given birth. Huh? I’ve never been pregnant. She said my cervix was ruptured, torn in such a way that it looked like I’d given birth to a baby. A human-size baby. I was broken on the inside and nobody knew, not even me.Either I check the box or I don’t. Do the mornings I’d wake up to him thrusting into me count? Does it count that I stopped thinking I was “having sex” and started thinking “I was being had sex with”? A torn cervix, does it count? Check the box or do not check the box.In 2011, I started the second semester of my Masters of Fine Arts program in creative nonfiction, and I workshopped a book chapter about these events — it was my first attempt to describe what happened in the dark, to talk about it, to develop a language to explain. Here are selected passages from the chapter:I never said, "No, no, no." When I’d cry — almost every time we had sex — he asked if he should keep going. Keep going, I’d say. Just finish. And he would. He could. What is the difference between saying “No, no, no,” and praying the man you trust will stop when he sees you crying? How about when he hears you screaming?I would look at him, concentrating every part of me on the mouth that kept saying it loved me … And he didn’t know. I could see that he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong or unusual. He and I could feel things so differently while we were at the center of one another.  A male classmate typed up a one-page single-spaced critique, and in the last paragraph he wrote: “You need to invent a new word for your situation. Diet Rape or Rape II. Caffeine free rape [sic]. A rape substitute. maybe [sic], ‘I can’t believe it’s not rape.’ Just trying to interject a little humor in here. Not sure what to say. I hope your cervix is better.” Nothing but rubber bands go back to normal. I check the box. 

***
The classmate who brainstormed the phrase “Diet Rape” wrote a note in black ink on his critique: “‘Rape’ hints @ a criminal act. Was this criminal?” Do I have to check a box? When I explained to a friend what happened with my first boyfriend, I added the caveat: “I mean, it wasn't like back-alley rape.” Her response: “Yeah, I was not-back-alley raped too.” This was not an isolated, personal problem. 

***The three women in the group, including me, had stories of sexual violence. After a few drinks, the male friend grew frustrated and admitted he didn’t understand why women were “stupid” enough to remain in situations of violence or trauma or pain when no obvious force was forcibly being forced at them, at us. He asked, “Didn't you know he was tearing your cervix? How’d you let that happen? Why didn’t you leave?”Why didn’t I say no, no, no.Instead of answering him, I could have gone into even more silence, a deeper fear, an ever-widening chasm of shame. But I did not. The only way to escape being the victim, acting the victim, or blaming the victim is to stand up for the victims. I gathered up all the questions he asked me and asked them of him, to this man who is no longer my friend: “Would you know when someone you thought you loved for the first time was tearing your cervix? Do you even know what a cervix is? No? Are you stupid? Do you get called stupid because someone made a promise to love you, and you were hurt because you trusted him?”He didn’t understand it. To understand it would be to think about it, which he didn’t want to do. To understand it would mean going through his own history, a history where he might recognize how he hurt someone else or failed to accept what someone else had done because it scared him.“Be kind to the wounded,” I told him. Those who are abused have to deal with (1) abuse; (2) being unable to talk about it because they don't know what happened to them or they are ashamed they'll suffer blame or further distress; and (3) being called stupid for having “let” it happen. 

***
I originally (and regrettably) titled the chapter I workshopped “How Not to Lose Your Virginity.” My classmate titled his critique “How to Make a Guy Cringe,” and when I read that I thought, This is his tragedy, too, and not because reading about what happened to me and what happens in the world made him uncomfortable, but because of the way he’s been socialized to sex and violence against women.I thought the problem was out there, in the back alleys. I believed the classroom was far from the back alley. I hoped the people who used the phrase “Diet Rape” were not in educational institutions, sitting next to me, cringing. It’s his tragedy, too, because the problem is not just out there, it’s also in here, in my classroom, in my relationship, in the way I thought about and talked about and had sex — the problem is in him, Mr. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Rape.

I chopped this up a bit, and encourage you to read the original excerpt. A point of concern for both V and myself is that we were lacking in information to fully understand the situation. So we can all agree this woman deserves our sympathy and understanding, but I'm not sure this is rape. The guy asked if he should stop, and she said no. She gave consent. As V pointed out coercion could be a factor, but the author doesn't say that. So again, V argues Elissa's experience in legitimate, and I agree. I argue that you can't use a word as loaded as rape after the fact, because if she does she isn't the only one impacted: so is her former boyfriend. If she is a victim, then he is a rapist. And he did what we ask men to do, ask for permission. 

This brought our conversation to an impasse. I also expressed concern when misinformed idiots run around talking about "gray rape" and "legitimate rape" then we can't be unclear. One of Elissa's classmates suggested they come up with a word for this; I don't think so. I think when we do we leave the window up for others to come up with their own versions of what counts. Problematic. V then pointed out that coercion requires an awareness and understanding of rape culture, which Elissa may not have had at the time. Additionally, the man involved did say what is expected, but ignored the nonverbal signs. 

This is when we applied "institutional rape." Institutional rape is rape facilitated by institutions, it includes the systematic rape of women in times of war, acts of rape within institutions such as prison facilitated by the state and prison administrators, and we would argue rapes facilitated by rape culture. As you can imagine in some of these cases, the rape is directly and indirectly sanctioned by the institution. Now, institutional rape isn't really recognized outside of women's studies. Often, it is references when we discuss violence against women of color or other marginalized groups. And I'm not aware of a situation when it was applied to rape culture with the working theory that the culture is facilitating the sexual violence. 

So where do we go from here? Was this all an intellectual exercise in understanding or do we use this to continue unpacking rape culture? Well, I know I will continue to unpack this, but I'm not really sure anyone outside my insulated feminist group would think this through at all. 

A few important things...

Kari got in to graduate school! I feel like a proud mom today :) Everyone leave her congrats in the comments if you wanna. She'll be studying women's studies (go fig :P) so we are lucky to have her around dropping knowledge!

Also, Kari, I set it up so you can blog from your phone. Go to your dashboard and click the little phone next to our blog name and you can set it up!