This is why we can’t have nice things

I’m so mad right now. I was mad when the Cavs posted the video below. I was mad when I read the apology for making a joke out of intimate partner violence, and I’m mad that I got up this morning to a facebook timeline with “Cavs player” and “domestic violence” in the headlines.

Last week over drinks with a friend, I argues that sports while having violent aspects should be viewed in a larger context. Specifically, football players are on the receiving end of so much trauma should be looked at more closely to see what the impacts are over time. However, when you put this video made by PR people in this context that argument gets kind of blow to hell. Violence against women is just part of the culture of masculinity, and sports culture is also part of it.

There are a lot of problems with professional sports beginning with it is kind of a minstrel show. But because this is one of the few ways low-income Black men can escape poverty, I am usually good for a pass. Until we have another option, this is all we have. I have a friend who argues that these young men should focus on school instead of sports, which is all fine and good if all education was equal. It isn’t so even if these boys were straight A students who worked hard they education would still be valued less than a kid from a middle-class or upper class white neighborhood. Them’s the breaks.

By the same token violence and sports is more complicated than just people who play sports buy into a system and culture of violence and exceptionalism. We can dissect the relationship between violence and economic insecurity, or how and why poverty impacts children including making them more prone to and less reactive to violence. Or we can talk about how none of this is happening in a vacuum.

By that I mean, rape culture, sports, violence, capitalism, racism, etc. all feed off of and reinforce each other. At first I wrote this out, but I think it might be easier with pictures:

The arrows are misleading because it can work in reverse and there should/could be more text boxes. But for the purpose of this discussion. All of these concepts act on one other, changing them, and reinforcing them.

Look, Perkins isn’t getting charged because no one is making a complaint. He was picked up based on a call the police received, but that is as far as it is going to go. But let me be clear, “When you play Cleveland you play the whole city” can act to silence. I’m “all in” for Cleveland. I bought the “nothing is given” language. But we’re cutting from the same cloth here, if nothing is given then passes on IPV insensitivity aren’t given either. This is going to suck man, if we break the curse only to do it in the shadow of a club poking fun at intimate partner violence and allegations being made against players.

You guys, considering how actions impact others is just too much

Judith Shulevitz wrote a piece in the New York Times about how across universities everywhere we’re taking people’s concerns about triggering too seriously. I guess we’re just being too protective. Shulevitz sees it as being in college, but still being under some kind of protective blanket. Her real problem seems to be “safe spaces” which she likens to real world trigger warnings. For her trigger warnings on the syllabus is some kind of personal affront to higher education.

Like many before her Shulevitz doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. She seems to think a warning on the top of a syllabus or a safe space for students to go when a debate on sexual assault is occurring on campus somehow means there will be no discussion. That’s not the case; instead it informs people what they are getting themselves into. She says, “But the notion that ticklish conversations must be scrubbed clean of controversy has a way of leaking out and spreading. Once you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe. It follows that they should be made safer.” What the what?

This is one of those false arguments. One does not lead to the other anymore than any slippery slope arguments. Being aware of what a discussion is about doesn’t mean no one is going to have the discussion. But I’m straight up saying things can be made safer and that the places that aren’t designated safe spaces aren’t safe. That’s why we have a rape epidemic on campuses. I also think we can make things safer by addressing why rape occurs and how to prevent it. This is logic, things are unsafe, one in five women are sexually assaulted. Hell, I’d argue safe spaces aren’t always safe, see that male feminist on the west coast who was sexually coercing and assaulting women?

This isn’t about hurting people’s feelings which is what Shulevitz and one of her sources Adam Shapiro assert. But these are people who don’t understand trauma. Trauma from sexual assault or homophobic violence (the examples in the piece) can lead to PTSD, which means you can have a physical reaction to a trigger. For example, a simple action might make someone feel as though they are under attack essentially triggering a panic attack. That is the point of trigger warnings. However, Shulevitz sees this as hyper sensitive and “self-infantalizing”, which leaves the students unprepared for life. I think creating a ruling class of over educated un-empathetic bastards is more harmful, but hey I’m overly sensitive, ask anyone.

Taking into account how someone could react doesn’t mean you can’t say something. You just have to own it upfront. So people write victim-blaming pieces will be accountable and can’t just shrug their shoulders and say people are too sensitive. Responsibility and accountability. No one is being censored by some magical censor fairy.

I don’t care.

Disclaimer, this is a very gender binary/heteronormative post. Not because rape is exclusive to those communities because obviously it isn't, but because the topic of conversation and examples used were heteronormative.

Someone I consider a fairly good friend and I always have conversations about rape. His understanding is pretty nuanced, which is why I don’t mind plus I’m always game to talk about how the patriarchy fucks us. I do sometimes wonder if I’m like his rape source, but otherwise, I know he’s not coming from a bad place. And maybe this was a perfect storm which is why I got real frustrated with him.

I was on the train last night reading an article about the subject of our conversation, and two things occurred to me: 1. Do the work, and 2. I don’t care. All of this is of course about Rolling Stone and their story about Jackie. I mean we can unpack this; we can talk about ETHICS IN JOURNALISM, or how Jackie is getting defended in some circles while other “alleged victims” who were “discredited” were left to fend for themselves, or we could talk about the nuances of the impact rape has on the mind and behavior of people. Or we could talk about how this impacts rape culture.

This last one that’s where my friend is. He is concerned that stories like this will hurt the cause. Another Duke (which is interesting because a few authors I follow have been drawing parallels and distinctions between the Duke case and Jackie including no one running to the Duke victim’s defense with the underlying understanding is that you can’t rape/sexually assault a black sex worker) he said. But to me it can’t get much worse. There are judges saying 9 year olds led grown men on…in a court room…in the US, where 9 year olds can’t consent to sex. A man recently wrote an interesting article recently about how he doesn’t trust his wife with her feelings and experiences. So we’re supposed to expect people in authority or the masses to believe us? You know when someone comes to a party late and isn’t caught up yet on the gossip? That is what this conversation felt like.

I’m not picking on him. He has a tale of woe from a friend who was falsely accused of rape, and it was amazingly taken seriously by their school. I don’t know anyone who has been taken seriously the first go or at least not guilt tripped by the admin and police. I also don’t know many women who would say that their experience legitimizes a perspective. I mean you can only know what you know (but then you do the work), but here is when you grab a copy of Against Our Will or This Bridge Called my Back. This is when you read about how state sanctioned violence works, how rape isn’t just a tactic of war abroad, but how it was used about black women in the civil rights movement. Rape’s history as a property crime. Fully get a grasp on how rape culture works. This didn’t start with our generation we just named it. Because when my friend mentions his friend, I empathize. But then I think of the recent Kristof article that talked about a rape victim in terms of how the rape impacted everyone else, her father, mother, rapist, cousin once removed but never her. And I think of a friend I used to have who once linked sex and violence (not in the consensual way) together as though it was to be expected. As though her body, her life, belonged to this man who said he loved her, but beat and raped her anyway. You want to know the underlying premise of rape culture we rarely mention? Men feel like they have the right to the bodies and lives of women. This is a fundamental pillar of the patriarchy, but so often we’re trying to get the boys on our team we down play it.

So I’m sorry about your friend, but I don’t care. I don’t care about one guy. I don’t know why we have to prove our lived experiences to journalist and the masses while men just get a I believe you pass. I don’t believe in objectivity, and I don’t believe we can ever really know what happened at Duke or to Jackie or to the dozens of women I know who are survivors or to your friend. And perhaps what I found truly surprising about all of this, is my friend kept referring to his falsely accused friend, but never any survivors he knows. This is probably because Jackie was deemed a false allegation of rape and thus it is connected in his mind, but come one man, we can’t talk about rape and only talk about the one guy you know who didn’t do it. And because I can’t leave him out there on his own, maybe this is me. I mean maybe I’m too in the weeds, and he’s taking a macro approach. He’s thinking about the damage a high profile false rape accusation does, while I’m thinking about all rape cases where women are blamed from the start. But does to what? I couldn’t get my head around that. The damage this does to what? The movement? The movement would point you to the false rape statistics based on an FBI report, which actually never looked at rape but other crimes and extrapolated the data. Still pretty insignificant figures. To the men falsely accused? We’ve covered this I’m empathic, but I don’t care. To the victims that aren’t believed? Well they aren’t believed now (literally just about any book on rape). To our culture and society? A culture and society that blames victims already, that facilitates rape, that marginalizes entire populations of people as distrust worthy. I just realized I don’t care about this either because I’m thinking we need to straight up burn our culture down.  Journalism? But this is about ethics in journalism. I jest. I just don’t know what this damages.

Look I want the boys on our team, and I hate this always seems to boil down to a men vs women thing. I just don’t think this one story is going to push anyone who didn’t already believe women lie off the fence. It will be the talking point, the story they point to when they are saying women lie, but if not this one then Duke, and if not Duke, then some other story. And I don’t see why this is the story that is getting people outraged, except that we live in a patriarchy that latches on to something that supports and promotes the narrative of white, male, heteronormative domination over society. We’re after all not talking about The Hunting Ground or any other “true” account of sexual violence. But never fear patriarchy proponents, this isn’t going anywhere. I’m sure the “liberal” media will keep trying to rake Rolling Stone over the coals. I’m sure the journalist will keep apologizing, no publicity is bad, right?

Excuse me my cynicism is showing. 

Poetweet owns

Us terrorists
by Kari O'Donnell

We're talking about national issues
Of a professional journalist.
I think we have different values.
This friend doesn't actually exist.
Of black children by the police?
On a banjo, I'd subscrib to that.
Say women have the right to choice.
What?!
To show your anti-woman colors.
New project.
Treatment of three rape survivors
Resigns to Avoid Criminal Charges
How is this day not over?
Woman in jail, lawsuit alleges

Um, I think Poetweet really gets me. 

In a surprising turn of events, only men support the anti-abortion bill

I know you’re shocked. You’re thinking, “Kari, what do you mean only men would want to subjugate women to second class citizens? I thought for sure there would be some woman somewhere who hates women.” Well, of course there are, and one of them even spoke in favor of this shit show, but then other lady Republicans decided they were going to shut that down, you know like pregnancy (Akin, #neverforget).

These lady Republicans were concerned about the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act’s” restrictive language as it would most likely hurt the GOP’s chances to appeal to women and young people. Guys, there are now signs of life and strategy coming out of the GOP. I don’t know if I should be trilled or very scared. This specific legislation could ban abortions after the 20^th week of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, but only if the rape was reported to law enforcement, and I’m going to make the leap here and assume that reported means the police believe her…because we don’t have a problem on the right not believing rape victims. The vote was scheduled for Thursday, but Wednesday night the ladies pulled out. The resistance block out of the right was led by Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) and Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.).

Of course, after the bill was dropped the Republicans scrambled to set up another one. This one reaffirms no federal funding for abortions, which is terrible, but also called the Hyde Amendment, which has been on the books for a while. Of course, this fancy new one will increase taxes on businesses. But I digress.

This whole thing is amazing to me. First because the Republicans are showing signs that they have little control over their members. Second, which members are they having trouble with: the women. I can’t imagine a group of men more out of touch with women than the GOP, but at least now we know the women in their party aren’t insane. Finally, the women seem to know what is up, which we got a glimpse of before when the lady Dems met with the lady Republicans and didn’t let the boys join in the games. Then, you know, legislation was passed.

Show of hands, anyone else for the removal of men from the legislative process? Just throwing out ideas here.

“I know, because I won both of them.” get on Obama’s shade level

Arguably the best line of the night, most likely adlibbed. The 2015 State of the Union address was, well I had low expectations. Ok, so here’s the thing. I’m not happy, and I know that is because I’m tired, old, and cranky, but this whole President Obama gives no fucks thing needs to stop. It needs to stop because Obama does in fact have fucks to give. You can tell by the way he didn’t threaten to veto a 20 week abortion ban during the speech, which he did that morning. He didn’t say, I’m pro-choice, and I’m going to veto any anti-choice bills. No he said, “We still may not agree on a woman’s right to choose, but surely, we can agree it’s a good thing that teen pregnancies and abortions are nearing all-time lows, and that every woman should have access to the health care that she needs.” Yeah, we can’t all agree that women should have the right to make their own medical decisions. Well, I don’t care people disagree with me, and a man giving no fucks wouldn’t either. Just saying.

What else was missing, well women at large. You’d think I’d be used to it. Also, couldn’t say NetNeutrality? Oh, and Ferguson “We may have different takes on the events of Ferguson and New York. But surely we can understand a father who fears his son can’t walk home without being harassed. And surely we can understand the wife who won’t rest until the police officer she married walks through the front door at the end of his shift.” Now, I don’t want the police murdered, but I’m not sure the murder of children and the deaths of police are on the same level, after all, police sign up for a dangerous job while black boys are just going out for some skittles. #BlackLivesMatter, not all lives matter. Of course, everyone matters, but the point of #BlackLivesMatter is to draw attention to the murder of people of color by the police, which isn’t happening to white people.  And of course the phrasing isn’t mutually exclusive, by saying the lives of black people matter isn’t the same as saying all other lives do not matter, or more specifically, white lives.

All that said no one throws shade quite like our President, and that I can respect. While, I’ll never be on that level of shade throwing, I’m going to need the Obama administration to get on my level when it comes to progressive issues because this shit is weak. 

Photo of the night: 

I quit with dudes.

I’m not even kidding. I can’t with dudes. Seriously. This week has been rough for a number of reasons, but dudes; mostly it is you. Yes, all men. I started my week reading about how one in three college men would rape if they could get away with it, which by the way makes my stats, of most rapes are committed by a small number of men, garbage. Because wanting to rape and being a rapist aren’t that far from each other on the “I want to burn off my skin before I let you touch me, ever” scale. What? Like you don’t use that metric?

Look, I’ve come to terms with a lot. I have terrible taste in men from the start so I’m well informed about what’s going to happen here, but seriously? Then we moved into the a high profile rape case—where the defense is claiming a drunk rapist can’t be held accountable for his actions, WTF, right only women . A second where the father is pretty much writing a swan song about his son being railroaded by the FEMINISTS, which I guess means we have super villain powers, ok cool. Not like the victim had to transfer and move. Oh, and did I mention there is some kind of rape money which all women get for being raped? Which is totes true guys, why else would we be expected to pay for our own rape kits? All I want to do is watch Selma, basketball highlights, and drink until none of this exists anymore.

The new study out of the University of North Dakota, says about one in three men would rape if no one would find out and they wouldn’t face any consequences. Take a minute and shower. I read about this over on ThinkProgress in a piece by Tara Culp-Ressler. Of course, when the researchers used the word rape, the numbers dropped because you’d rape someone as long as we call it something else, I guess like non-consensual sex, which is in fact rape. Obviously, forcing someone to have sex isn’t the same as the crime of rape because REASONS. I’ll make a leap here, and assume it is because rape is something bad men do, who happens to look like an population underrepresented in higher education.

The survey was small with 73 men in college as participants, and 31.7 percent said they would act on “intentions to force a woman to sexual intercourse” if they were sure they’d  get away with it. Happily only 13.6 percent said they would act on “intentions to rape a woman” with the same confidence of getting away with it. I feel like these are the people who drop buzz words in interviews, but have no idea what any of them mean. Rape has a connotation, and that is what this is about. We have successfully trained a group of men to realize the word rape is bad, but not that committing rape is bad. And don’t even get me started on those who would straight up rape. Researchers want to do this study again on a larger scale in hopes of informing the conversation around sexual assault on college campuses.

The study also found men who were open to raping a woman were more likely to display hostile attitudes toward women (shocked, shocked I say), but men who would force a woman to have sex, but reject the term rape were less openly hostile to women. However, these men were still linked to what researchers called “callous sexual attitudes,” which are a set of cultural stereotypes about women as objects and men as aggressors that contributes to hyper-masculinity. To quote the researchers, “In this sense, using force to obtain intercourse does not become an act of rape, but rather an expression of hyper-masculinity, which may be thought of as a desirable disposition in certain subcultures.”

Culp-Ressler’s article concludes with a list of other studies that have similar findings where men feel entitled to women’s bodies, entitled to coerce sex, and women to expect violence.

This week in women aren’t funny

I’m just kidding. Women are funny. Hell I’m hysterical, and might well be the funniest person you know, well me or M…there is an ongoing disagreement there. It is hard to be funny all the time, anyway mine is a finely honed defense mechanism from childhood, as it turns out so is M’s…maybe a lot of people who work at quips. This leads me to two topics: Charlie Hebdo and the Golden Globes.

First, Charlie Hebdo, those comics are racist. And to begin, let’s back up and get the citation right, Evelyn Beatrice Hall originally said the famous Voltaire quote about defending to the death your right to say something I disagree with. Hall wrote under a pen name. Amazing how every awesome thing ever said wasn’t said by a man, huh? Moving on, those comics were racist, and it is hard for me to generate the outrage everyone else seems to be because of free speech in comedy. I don’t think people should be killed even for the most evil of things they say…I don’t think anyone should be killed. But let’s not pretend Charlie Hebdo was the great shining light for free speech and comedy…But continue dying on this hill people, while real journalists are being murdered with little attention being paid. At least spread the love and awareness.

Secondly, the Golden Globe’s Cosby joke. Well, the punch line there is we all know Bill Cosby is a rapist, and we don’t care. Well at least we didn’t care. I love Tina Fey and Amy Poelher, but come on ladies aim higher. A better joke would have been just to say that. I don’t mind rape jokes where the rapist is the target or rape culture, but this joke was just kind of a “we all know what’s up” moment. And that isn’t a joke, that’s just rape culture. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a professional comedian but come on. That said the George Clooney joke was boss.