Archive for the 'fear' Category

Justice in an Unjust World

Published on February 8, 2010 in Africa, America, Christianity, Cultural categories, Mormons, Social Issues, South Africa, Uncategorized, Zimbabwe, democracy, development, fear, history, homeless, latino/a, politics, poverty, power, race, religion, violence, war and women. 4 Comments

South Africa houseLast May, while I was traveling around South Africa, a relatively new Christian told me the story of his salvation. He knew God was real and God was good the day God gave him a beautiful house at a price that was substantially below market value; the person who was selling it cheap had fallen on hard times and needed to get rid of it pronto.

“Isn’t it screwed up that you’re thanking God that somebody else has fallen on hard times?” I asked.

I don’t think he understood my unstated point: that a gift from God for one person should not represent injustice or hard times for another person. Even if we assume that the person who had fallen on hard times made bad decisions about their finances, can we really give God credit for our ability to, vulture-like, swoop in when the pickin’ is good?

Such logic leads to genocide.

Such logic has led to genocide, many, many times in history.

*** 

 

underground railroad

The first book I remember reading by myself was a biography of Harriet Tubman, an African American slave who not only escaped slavery herself but became known as “Moses” because she returned to the South over a dozen times and helped over seventy slaves escape to freedom. I was absolutely captivated by the phrase, “the Underground Railroad.” I imagined a literal railroad carved out of rock, deep underneath the earth’s surface, with poor, tattered slaves creeping along in the dark, only a candle to light their way to freedom.

Perhaps because that book represented a pivotal turning point in my education—the ability to read by myself—it also shaped my political and social consciousness. The first novel I wrote as an 11-year-old was the story of a young woman trying to help a slave escape on the Underground Railroad. As an adult, I’ve spent years of my life in graduate school, studying African history. Justice for people of color worldwide has been one of my abiding political concerns. I am bitterly aware of the privilege of my white skin, just as I’m bitterly aware of the disadvantages I face due to my gender.

(As a caveat to the conservatives who read my blog: I don’t believe the government to be a panacea to the social ills of our time. But it is obvious to me that injustice is built into the very fabric of our society, and thus into the warp and weave of every bureaucratic and religious institution and every policy that our government espouses. As a result, I don’t think we can create a solution without addressing it from a political and religious standpoint. This doesn’t mean that I believe the solution should be top-down—government forcing the people to do something that’s not in their heart to do. God, no. I HATE INSTITUTIONS. Plus, I am a firm believer in grassroots movements for social change, from the people on up. But the very point of democracy, and of grassroots change, is that at some point, we must change institutional structures as well—from governments to churches to schools. Anyway, that was a little diversion to my main subject today….)

As I’ve grown older, my concept of justice has grown increasingly complicated. I’ve come to recognize that righting the wrongs of the past so that the future can be more equitable might mean that a lot of Americans—white people, wealthy people of all colors, and, ah yes, even the educated middle-class, which includes me—will have to give up things they currently enjoy. Yes. Among many other changes, justice will definitely mean that we in the U.S. will need to give up our boats, extra cars, and expensive vacations and spend more money on groceries, on housing, on other things.

My preference, of course, is that we could right the wrongs of the past without anybody currently living having to suffer. But I’m not sure that’s possible. It’s not exactly that I believe a lot of people must lower their standards of living in order for the very most poor to be able to raise their standards of living. But I don’t think it’s possible for those of us in western nations to continue to ignore the fact that our wealth is based on our power; and our power comes at the expense of other people’s power which, ultimately, leads to their poverty. A person in India or China or Mexico who is hungry and living in a cardboard shack on the side of the hill will not say, “I demand a fair, living wage.” No, they will take what they can get, and so we continue to pay millions of workers worldwide a non-livable wage so that we can get our cheap products. “It’s better than nothing” is the basic attitude that supports our ongoing economic oppression of the global south. Of course it’s better than nothing. But it’s not enough, and we who have too much need to take Jesus’s words to heart: “The worker is worthy of his wage.”

050328_arizona_mexico_vmed_widecTo right the global wrong of structural social and economic inequality will mean a dramatic decline in the material wealth of western, developed nations. Morally speaking, we cannot continue the system of demanding cheap labor that keeps millions poor around the world just so that we can enjoy cheap products. Morally speaking, I don’t see how middle-class whites in America can ignore the fact that every day, we still enjoy the benefits of slavery—and that millions of people of color still suffer because of it. Is it such a mystery that the worst schools in the nation are also in the ghettos, which were created by systematic racism that crowded people of color into small, crappy neighborhoods so white society could keep races segregated?

To stop oppressing people, we will have to give up some of our power and some of our wealth—and that will feel like suffering to a lot of people, even if it’s really not.

 ***

 When I look at the global injustices, I quickly get bogged down with a what to do what to do panicky kind of feeling. The question I always ask is this: What is my individual responsibility to right global wrongs?

This morning, I received an email from a friend that had me asking another question about justice, one that represents a moral conundrum: What is my individual responsibility to right global wrongs when doing so may hurt another person?  

In other words, where does justice begin and end?

My friend asked me whether she should sacrifice her career by staying silent about secrets she learned in the course of historical research, secrets that would shame an old woman and that woman’s children. Not revealing those secrets kills the basis of my friend’s argument in the monograph she’s writing. Revealing them allows her to explore important women’s issues within the context of religion. She wondered if she was serving the cause of justice by staying silent, in order to be merciful to this old woman and her children? Or was she furthering misogyny by staying silent? Which was it?

ZIMBABWE-ELECTIONS/My friend is faced with a perplexing problem: two different definitions of justice, the personal (keeping somebody’s secret so that they can keep their dignity) vs. the global (advancing the cause of feminism). Which cause is more important? Many people would sacrifice one woman’s dignity in order to serve what they see as a greater cause, women’s issues or some other Big Cause. And okay, serving a Big Cause is important. But are we really serving a Big Cause if we sacrifice one person’s dignity in order to do it?

It reminds me of those old Life Boat Questions: Should we sacrifice one person’s life in order to save a million?  

This is the logic of war, and it’s the logic of most political movements that advocate for one thing or another, but it’s a logic that leaves me cold. Its foundation is an either-or fallacy that fails to look for alternatives. Is it true that somebody must be sacrificed?  

So I ask myself, Is it true that Americans must suffer a decline in living standards in order for developing nations to rise up out of the mire and muck of poverty? Or am I setting myself up with a political either-or fallacy?

My friend’s email went further. One of her friends had recently died in Zimbabwe because medicine for her cancer wasn’t available, and now my friend was wondering whether she was possibly serving the cause for justice if she spent most of her time making meals for her family, making sure they were cozy and warm with a fire at night, books, an apple pie for dessert.

She is not asking a simple question. On the surface, it may appear that she’s asking whether, instead of living a life of American comforts and domestic bliss, she shouldn’t be out there working 80-100 hours a week to get justice for Zimbabweans. And yes, she is asking that. But she’s asking so much more. The average American can’t link their daily life to the poverty of an African nation…but my friend can. Because she’s studied African history, I know she sees the many and varied links that connect the wealth of the westernized global north, including individuals like you and me, to the impoverishment of the global south, like her Zimbabwean friend who died of cancer because the medicine wasn’t available in her country.

So even more than asking whether she should be devoting her intellectual and creative career to the fight for justice, she’s wondering whether the very basis of her domestically blissful life is inherently flawed.

townshipThis is her question: If my good fortune comes at the expense of another, is it really good fortune?

If we Americans enjoy access to cheap medicine and cheap goods, and as a result, we have policies that destroy individuals, families, and nations around the world, resulting in a Zimbabwean woman’s inability to buy medicine for her cancer….can we really say we have good fortune?

I will not entertain the simplistic and foolhardy argument that Zimbabwe’s problems are Zimbabwe’s problems alone. Is Mugabe a maniac running his country into the ground? Yes. But are Zimbabwe’s problems a result of Mugabe alone? No. When you look at the history of that country, the political and other problems of Zimbabwe are directly related to colonial policies put in place first by Great Britain, then by the European settlers, and then, post-independence, exacerbated and compounded and made worse by World Bank and IMF policies. In fact, when you look at the history of every single impoverished country, they all have a symbiotic relationship with a wealthy country like ours, always to their detriment.

 ***

(P.S. This is becoming a book and I just meant to write a simple blog post on justice. Ha!)

 ***

And as to this question, “If my good fortune comes at the expense of another, is it really good fortune?”…well, I don’t have a simple answer to that either.

Back to my opening anecdote about the Christian who thanked God for his new house, even though it represented hardship for another person, and my statement that such logic has led to genocide….

Genocide_sizedWhen Americans thank God for the U.S., for the freedoms we enjoy, I wonder if we would still be so grateful if we thought about the millions of Native American who were killed so we could “get” this land? Or if we thought about the lives that are currently being destroyed because of Native American policies we created long ago, destructive policies that have never been rectified, but which were part of the very basis of our getting this land?

I’m not trying to make an argument of “poor noble savage” against “rich greedy white capitalists.” I’m simply pointing out that it was wrong to kill millions of Native Americans 200 years ago, and that it is wrong that we still have policies that continue to impoverish millions of Native Americans by offering inferior education on the reservations and allowing the cycle of welfare to keep generations in its grip. It was wrong to enslave Africans 200 years ago, and it was wrong to create race-based ghettos a hundred years ago, and it’s wrong that we make only half-hearted efforts to change the situation today.

Is it really God acting on our behalf to give us a cheap house, cheap goods, cheap food, cheap cars…when millions of people worldwide work hard 50 or 60 hours a week to give us those cheap goods and cheap food and cheap cars but yet they still live in shacks and fail to have enough money to feed themselves and their families?

I’m full-circle back to the either-or fallacy: to change the system, to bring justice to millions worldwide, means some of us who have never suffered will have to suffer.

 

2-GodThe Old Testament disturbs me because it shows a God who would encourage his people, the Israelites, to commit genocide, and then “give them” the land they had just vacated through murder and mayhem.

I’ve never understood the logic of this kind of justice.

But.

This is the same God my friend was thanking when he said God had given him a cheap house.

This is the same God that Americans thank for giving them this land, despite the millions of lives that were sacrificed as a result.

This is the same God that Afrikaners thanked when they went to war to take land from Xhosas, Zulu, the Khoisan.

This is the same God that Mormons thanked when they came to Utah and massacred American-Indians and then took the land as theirs.

And is this the same God we continue to thank for our good fortune as Americans….? Is it really good fortune if it comes at the expense of millions of people worldwide? I would like to believe in a good and loving God but I can’t believe in the “good and loving” God that many American Christians define as being on their side and helping them get the things they both want and need….not when it comes at the expense of other people. Either that’s a fucked up God or those people are sadly, sadly mistaken—they call it “God” when it’s really injustice operating in their favor. (Ah, here we are, back to my either-or fallacy….Is there a third option?)

***

Daily, my emotional level is kept on a low simmer as I contemplate the multiple ways that American culture, lifestyle, and politics perpetuates poverty around the world. I feel overwhelmed every time I go to the grocery store and realize that, no matter what, shopping means that I’m participating in global oppression.

I realize I must eat, and that the grocery store is my only option as long as I live here….

Where does an individual begin, if he or she wants to right wrongs that exist on a global scale and that we all participate in?

And what does an individual like my friend do when they realize that it’s wrong to expose one woman’s shame in order to change a global injustice?

I wish I had an answer.

  • Share/Bookmark

Womanhood, Fertility, & Identity

Published on January 25, 2010 in Africa, Family, Social Issues, adoption, art, fear, feminism, fertility, infertility, marriage, religion, sex, teenagers, women and writing. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

In college, my best friend once described her hips as “child-bearing hips.” She knew back then that she wanted children and, indeed, now has six beautiful and healthy daughters.

Me? I didn’t even know what hips were. Literally. If somebody had provided me pictures of two headless bodies-one male, one female-I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the outline of hips on the female body.

A boyfriend once pointed out a transvestite, then said, knowingly, “You can always tell the difference between a woman and a transvestite. A transvestite lacks hips.”

My response? “Huh?” The transvestite looked like a perfectly beautiful woman to me!

***

I was never one of those women whose overwhelming desire in life was to have children, what some childless men and women have sneeringly referred to as a breeder.

Motherhood was simply never one of my goals.

One of the reasons I left organized religion, in fact, was the emphasis it all too often places on motherhood. I always felt devalued as a woman in the Christian church, and it never comforted me to have my feminist concerns pooh-poohed with a well-meaning, but completely off the mark, comment like this: “But women are completely valued in the church. There’s nothing more important than motherhood. That’s the most important role in life, male or female.”

I heard a preacher one time say that he was sick and tired of hearing people say that God doesn’t value women. “God chose a woman to carry his only begotten son,” he said. “That should prove how valuable women are! They’re more valuable than men!” (I didn’t have the guts to raise my hand and ask if he actually thought God would have chosen a man to give birth to his only begotten son, which would have truly been a miracle….but I definitely thought about it.)

Whenever I heard the emphasis on motherhood in sermons, I wanted to ask: If women are valuable because they are mothers, what happens to a woman’s value if she’s infertile? Or if she can conceive, but her body is incapable of carrying a baby to term? If women are valued precisely because they are mothers, does a woman cease to be valuable if she is unable or unwilling to contribute to the ongoing human gene pool? And are women to be valued for nothing else? Can’t they be valued as scientists, artists, educators, and healers? What about being valued because we’re funny, smart, thoughtful, or we make a good friend?

I never got around to asking those questions. I just stopped going to church. I was tired of crying all the time, tired of fighting people with stupid ideas about what constitutes a person’s value.

I’d go as far as to argue that this strong correlation between motherhood and saintliness, and the conflation of our value as women with our fertility, can be labeled as spiritual abuse.

A person is valuable because of who they are, not because of the fertility-related identity role(s) they assume in life, roles such as wife, mother, grandmother. A woman should never be valued simply because of her ability to conceive and bear a child, just like a man should never be valued simply because he produces viable sperm.

So why do so many women’s self-images founder on their ability to conceive and bear a child, to successfully raise functioning members of society-at-large?

***

I never thought of myself as a slow learner, but when it comes to parenthood, I’m definitely a late-bloomer.

Throughout my twenties, I was grateful that I didn’t have children. The life of an artist is hard enough without adding babies to the mix, I thought.

When I first got married in my mid-twenties, my husband (now ex) and I planned to remain blissfully childfree. I hadn’t anticipated, then, that my biological clock would kick in with a vengeance as I approached thirty. Suddenly, to my surprise, I wanted kids. Oh, not the goobery, snotty-faced, diaper-rashed babies that grow up into delightful, creative, intelligent young people; no, as I approached thirty, I suddenly realized that I’d be thrilled if my children could emerge from my womb, already 10 or 11 or 12 years old. Talking in complete sentences. Potty-trained. Relatively independent already. You know, little adults.

This was an impossible dream, of course, unless I was willing to adopt an older child and deal with the potentially debilitating emotional problems they might have-always a crapshoot.

In lieu of heading down that path just yet, my husband and I have recently been trying for the flesh-and-blood variety, a normal baby conceived in the normal way pushed out of a normal vagina at the normal age of 0 months’ old. I guess I’m willing to subject myself to sleepless nights, poopy diapers, and sore breasts so I can get that pre-teen, teenager, college-student, and adult child I long for down the road.

But even as I embrace my identity as a woman “TTC” (a popular internet acronym that stands for “trying to conceive”), I still vacillate in my desire for children and it has to do with that fragile thing called identity.

There is always one solid reason for me to give up on the idea of motherhood: my identity as an artist. I’ve worked hard to get to the place where I am. I write five or six hours every day, and then teach college writing classes and run my small literary press on top of that. Recently, I’ve started working as a writing coach, and offering private writing classes in my home for children, teenagers, and adults. I easily put in twelve hours a day. It’s hard to imagine how I’ll balance all of that with motherhood.

It’s when I contemplate the vast gulf between what I desire to do with my life and the reality of raising children that I begin to wonder if I really want them.

Yet just when I think I might be “okay” with foregoing the pleasures of parenting, I realize I’m still captive to the idea that being a woman means being a mother. Intellectually, I know that this is a false belief. Emotionally, somewhere deep inside of me, I still believe that to live a full life, experiencing the full range of human emotions, requires adopting the role of parenthood, however your children come into your life.

Why the hell do I continue to associate my value as a woman with my fertility?

And so, I’m on the verge of giving up, of saying, “No more. I don’t want to try to get pregnant any more. That doesn’t mean I’ll try to prevent pregnancy, but I don’t want my life to be dominated by cervical fluid, basal body temperature, and that period that comes late but inevitably comes.”

It’s true that I’ve only been trying for eight months but I’m already tired of the emotional roller-coaster. Twice, my period has been a week late. In those days when I think I might be pregnant, my mind jumps to sugary fantasies of what it’ll be like, and I’m overwhelmed by the I can’t wait-ness of it all.

And then the disappointment sets in when my basal body temperature drops, menstrual blood arrives, and I discover that I’m not, after all, pregnant.

I wonder how women do this over and over and over? You know, those women that try to conceive for years and years and years? Those women that go to heroic efforts, spend all sorts of time and money, all in their quest to have a child?

I don’t think I can keep it up.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m willing to give up on the so-called “fullness of life experience” b.s. I was just blathering on about if it means some emotional sanity.

I’m fortunate. A few days ago, as we were having yet another discussion about my on-again off-again desire to get pregnant, my husband looked at me and said, “You are my world. I don’t need anything else.” And we once again talked about what we will do if we don’t get pregnant-move to South Africa or Mozambique, to the Caribbean, to Ecuador or Argentina or Brazil, or maybe to all of those places for a few years apiece. Or we could take in foreign-born foster children, generally teenagers by the time they make it here after spending years in refugee camps.

Without children, the world is our oyster.

But still, it all comes down to this crux issue: What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean for me to feel valuable as a person?

We all, we all, need to learn to value ourselves apart from these roles we assume in life. For me, that includes the role of artist. If I replace motherhood with artist, am I really any better off? I’m still valuing myself by something that is transitory, fleeting. We don’t achieve immortality through our art. Nor do we achieve it by bearing offspring.

As I move forward TTC, or not TTC, I hope I can learn to value myself as Jessica with no titles attached to my name.

***

Last November, I had a dream about motherhood and identity. In the dream, I was in a house, surrounded by women I know who have young children. I wandered from person to person, but I couldn’t relate to any of them. In fact, I felt inferior as I talked with them-there was a sense in which all of them had experienced a part of womanhood that I lacked, and so we couldn’t connect. I felt, well, robbed. And even as I tried to interest them in non-motherhood-related topics, I realized what I was doing: they seemed to think I was inferior because I wasn’t a mother and so, subconsciously and nastily, I was trying to turn the tables by demonstrating that I’d had an interesting career and had traveled to so many exotic locales and done so many interesting things that they would never do, encumbered as they were with snot-faced babies and dirty diapers.

Eventually, not liking that dynamic one tiny little bit, I separated myself from the mothers with babies and went to another part of the house. There, I was joined by my many African friends, and we discussed Africa, and politics, and health, and religion, and we ignored the issue of motherhood. Though many of my African friends are also parents, I felt none of the distance I’d felt from my mother-friends, who were treating me as though I was less of a woman because I wasn’t a mother.

I woke up and felt a moment of grief, like the dream was telling me I’d lost my chance at motherhood, that I’d traded it in for Africa and my writing.

On reflection later, I realized that of course, I have never given up my dream of motherhood-until the last few years, I didn’t have a spouse with whom I could have children. Instead, the dream was speaking to me about my hidden desire to be a mother as well as the obvious calling on my life to Africa and as a writer. My desire to have it all.

It was also reminding me of this unassailable truth: While all the other women in the room had chosen motherhood first-and let me add, they are all young women I admire, who have made the choices they wanted to make by choosing children over career, at least for the time being-I had chosen it second. And ultimately, I found myself in a room with the people I had chosen: Africans.

It was a revelation.

As I embark on this next stage of my life, trying to get pregnant, I’m constantly filled with doubts. Sometimes I wonder if motherhood is what God intends for me, or even if motherhood is something I want to add to my mixture of things I’ve already chosen (or that has chosen me)-Africa and writing. Sometimes I feel desperate to be pregnant, now, and sometimes, I secretly hope I’m not pregnant, so that nothing needs to change. In fact, I worry about how motherhood will prevent me from doing the things I feel I’m supposed to do, in Africa, as a writer-those vague, hazy outline of things that make up my future. I’m still waiting for the clarion call from God, the angel of the Lord appearing to me in a dream, the way he did with Mary and Joseph, and telling me, “This is what you’re supposed to do. I’ve arranged everything for you. It won’t be easy but at least there’s no doubt about it.”

But that’s too easy and, in all likelihood, false. The path that God marked out for Mary and Joseph must have seemed hazy and uncertain to them. It is only clear in retrospect, when written about as a narrative, a narrative that brooks no other possible paths.

I wonder how fearful and frustrated Mary and Joseph must have felt as they walked down that road, wondering all the time if they could veer in a different direction, or if they even wanted to, or if this was really the path they were supposed to be on and if they weren’t just fooling themselves.

I wonder how much of this path I’m following I charted myself, and how much has been charted for me.

I suppose I’ll never know.

And, at least some of the time, I’m okay with that.

  • Share/Bookmark

My Childhood Hero

Published on November 12, 2009 in Children's, fear, feminism, power, public schools, rape, sex and women. 0 Comments Tags: .

Like many girls my age, I had a crush on the Bionic Woman while I was growing up. My bicycle was slathered with stickers that I had gotten somewhere, and I remember impassioned arguments with my older brother about who was better: the Bionic Woman or Wonder Woman. But as it turned out, the Bionic Woman was not my childhood hero. My childhood hero was tall, skinny, blonde, and about 9 years old. His name was Michael. 

Michael and I were on a soccer team together in El Paso called “The Thunderbirds.” I was the only girl on the soccer team, something that had never been a problem until the day my old all-guys soccer team, The Braves, showed up to play us one Saturday.

I had played with The Braves the previous year and, though I never felt particularly welcomed as a girl on the team, it had been mostly okay.

Except for one day.

That was the day Abel, who went to my school, told my teammates about what he and other boys at my school liked to do to me on the playground.

How they would chase me, surround me as a group, and take turns humping me through my clothes. From behind, forcing me to bend over. As I was lying on the ground. Mounting me if I tried to remain standing.  

In other words, they mock-gang-raped me, on a daily basis, for months.

And after hearing that, I was fair game for The Braves, too. Soccer practice became a Russian roulette of possible torture, of boys pressing themselves up to me from behind and pumping their groins against my bottom whenever we stood in line for some soccer drill.

I was eight years old.

I never told anyone.

On the day the Braves came to play The Thunderbirds, I arrived later than usual. Both teams were gathered together under a tree in Crestmont Park, the home field for The Thunderbirds. They all turned to watch as I approached, this line of boys, one team dressed in blue, the other in orange. Then, with one accord, they turned their backs on me.

I sat down and the teammate I sat down next to scooted away hastily as the other boys giggled, “Oooooohhhhh, gross.” My teammates and the players on The Braves stood up, moved quite a few feet away, and sat down again—leaving me very much alone under the tree.

I had no idea what the problem was, but it was clearly sexual in nature, something waaaaaaay beyond “cooties,” something that suggested they would be contaminated by my presence. The leering looks they threw my way from a distance made me feel dirty beyond belief.

I wondered if the boys on The Braves had told the boys on The Thunderbirds that they had “done it” with me. I wondered what they had said. I knew it was bad, whatever it was.

I held it in, because that’s all I could do. You don’t break down in the middle of a situation like this. No, you break down later. Privately. And you never, ever, ever mention it to your parents.

We only had half an hour before our game, though the way the boys were treating me made it seem like hours and hours and hours were going by. The coach tried to put us into lines to kick balls into the goal. Nobody would get into my line. If I stepped into a line, everybody moved to the other line.

I stood in my line all alone, bravely kicking ball after ball towards the goal. The two lines were supposed to take turns. So I took turn after turn after turn, returning to my invisible line, only to find a ball waiting for me.

The coaches tried to change the routine, suggesting we pass the ball to each other before we kicked it towards the goalie. But nobody would kick the ball to me and I was the only person in my line, so they decided we could keep doing what we were already doing.

Like the teachers on my playground who could have stopped the mock gang rapes I experienced on a daily basis, my coaches did nothing.

They heard the sexual taunting and they did nothing.

This went on, like I said, for what felt like hours. I was wondering how I was going to make it through the game. I was wondering about future soccer practices. For some reason, it never occurred to me that soccer, unlike school, was voluntary. If I had to endure the boys and what they did to me at school, I figured I had to endure it at soccer practice, too.

And then Michael, my shining angel of strength, deliberately moved from the other line to stand behind me.

My teammates were vocal and loud as they shouted at him, as they told him how disgusting he was to come even within inches of my flesh.

But he stood behind me in that line and jeered back. “You’re being stupid,” he said.  And I have never ever ever felt so grateful for another person’s bravery as I did at that moment.

I don’t know what kind of person Michael became. But in that moment, at least, he bucked the crowd and became my hero.

  • Share/Bookmark

When Perfect Strangers Violate You in Small but Significant Ways

Published on October 15, 2009 in Africa, fear, feminism, fertility, healing, health chronicles, marriage, power, sex, violence and women. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Yesterday as I walked to my doctor’s appointment, some random dude leaned out of his car and screeched something at me that I couldn’t understand.

But I definitely understood his final epithet: “BITCH!!!”

His scream startled me so badly, I jumped and tensed, the pain from a day of hunching over my computer shooting through my shoulder blades and one sudden, hot tear smarting my right eye.

It’s a small thing, really, that some stranger would get their rocks off calling you a bitch as they fly by in their small white car, insulated from any real retaliation, probably horsing it up with their buddies, not really meaning it in a personal way. For that guy, I’m a bitch for reasons that have no real bearing on who I am. Maybe, to him, I’m a bitch because I’m a woman, or because I was walking down Portola Avenue at 4:15 in the afternoon, or because I was wearing jeans and a sweater, or because I have long brown hair that reminds him of his ex-girlfriend.

And while I know that, like gays with the word “queer,” some feminists have reclaimed the word “BITCH” as part of their self-description, I also know that when someone hurls it at you as an invective, it’s a violation. A small one, but a violation nonetheless. You can reclaim terms for personal use, but you can’t dictate how others use those terms.

 It got me thinking about other times I’ve experienced small, but important, violations with complete strangers. One of those moments came to mind right away and it’s amazing how much it smarted to remember it several years later. Unlike the stranger calling me “bitch,” this one seemed more personal, even though I had never met the woman who violated me.

 I was a graduate student at Stanford at the time, and I had recently come to the conclusion that I no longer wanted to use the Mirena IUD as my form of birth control. The conclusion had come pretty quickly after it was inserted, for a variety of reasons. 1) The way my uterus cramped and bled for two days after it was inserted convinced me that it’s not a good idea to have a foreign object camping out and having a party in your uterus. 2) I suddenly started having skin problems that hadn’t bothered me for years, skin problems that started occurring within two days of the insertion. 3) While I’m pro-keeping-abortion-legal due to some complicated reasons that don’t belong in this post, I am not pro-abortion, and the realization that the IUD is, essentially, an abortifacient was keeping me awake at nights. 4) My sister-in-law, who had never had a miscarriage in her life and had already had two healthy children, suffered 3 miscarriages after using the Mirena IUD for only a few months. Coincidence? Perhaps. Worth the risk to my personal health? Absolutely not.

 Anyway, the point was, I wanted the IUD out. And I wanted it out now.

 So I went to my friendly Student Health Center on the Stanford campus, Vaden Health Clinic, where I know many of the staff by name (and they recognize me by sight as well) because I spent so much time going there after that truck hit me while I was crossing a street in downtown El Paso. They were all very good to me and I love them very much.

 My nurse practitioner at Vaden, Carolyn, is a wonderful, kindly, caring woman, in her fifties I think, who teaches yoga on the side. She reminds me of one of my sisters-in-law who is a medical doctor. She takes her time with her patients and always listened to what I had to say and, the next visit, would remember it. I felt well cared for her in her hands.

 I dressed in that little flimsy cotton gown that opens in the back (or the front, if you put it on wrong, as I have on occasion) and she did my pap smear and we chatted about this and that, joking about how I was getting wrinkles and acne at the same time, which somehow seemed really wrong and unfair to me. She needed help to remove the Mirena IUD, so she left the room to fetch another nurse.

 The other nurse came marching in to the room, Carolyn on her heels. “Now, exactly why do you want to remove the Mirena?” she asked, her voice busy and important.

 “Well, I’ve been having some skin problems ever since it was inserted and I’m not convinced it’s entirely healthy for the body,” I said vaguely.

 She peered at my face, one of her hands on her hip. “Your skin problems don’t look bad to me,” she announced.

 “Well, they’re bad for me,” I said. “For what I’m used to.”

 “Well,” she said, “a lot of women in their thirties start having skin problems.”

 “Okay,” I said.

 “You might regret having the Mirena taken out,” she said.

 Carolyn interrupted. “Jessica and her husband are talking about starting a family,” she said.

 “But you’re going to Africa next week,” the nurse said. Everything she said came out forceful, almost like an accusation.

 “Yes,” I said, wondering what her point was. I was, in fact, leaving for South Africa a few days later.

 “You don’t want to get pregnant when there’s a chance you could get malaria,” she said.

 “There isn’t any malaria in South Africa,” I said, beginning to feel frustrated and defensive about wanting to remove the Mirena IUD, “at least, not the areas I’m going to. And my husband won’t even be with me while I’m gone.”

“Still, that’s a risk you don’t want to take,” she said, the little wagging finger in her voice. “It would be very very bad for your baby if you got malaria.” She stared at me, strongly concerned, and waited for me to agree with her.

“I’m not in danger of contracting malaria,” I repeated. “And, anyway, I’m not in danger of getting pregnant while I’m there either because my husband won’t be with me.”

Did she think I was a floozy and would be getting it on with a bunch of strangers while I was overseas?

“It’s not a good idea to remove it right now,” she said.

I don’t even remember what else she said, I just remember that I was holding my tears back as she talked me out of removing an IUD that I no longer wanted inside me just in case it was fucking up my reproductive system.

And Carolyn pressed forward and said to me, looking me directly in the eyes, “If you want the IUD taken out, we will take it out, right now.”

She was trying to repair the damage that the other nurse was creating. She was, subtly and kindly, reminding me that this was my body and my choice.

This was precisely why I always chose Carolyn as my primary health provider. And I was glad in that instant—and ever since then—that I had never before or since encountered that other nurse in my many trips to the health clinic.

Nevertheless, as I write this, my throat aches with unshed tears. Why? Because despite Carolyn’s reminder that this was my body, the pressure from the other nurse—a perfect stranger, but one who had some power over me—was so great that I backed down and decided against removing the Mirena that day.

Later, it made me angry. Later, I wished I’d made a scene and told that nurse to shove off. Later, I wish I’d asked her, “Why do you have such a personal investment in preventing me from getting pregnant right now? What fucking business is it of yours?”

Later. Later. Later.

But at the time, I let myself be violated.

A small violation? Sure, small, though it won’t seem so small in ten years when a group of women come together in a class-action suit against the makers of IUDs because of some health problem that’s occurred—like they’re doing with Yaz and Yasmine right now.

A small violation? Sure, small. I went to another doctor a few months later and, two seconds later, it was out. “Do you want to see it?” he asked, and I said, “Yes,” and the reason I said yes was borne out of that encounter with that nurse, with the sudden fearful stabbing thought that a doctor could say he’d removed something like an IUD from your uterus but, in fact, leave it in. That’s a paranoid thought, I know, but not so paranoid after my encounter with that nurse who really really really wanted me to leave mine in, wanted it so badly that she applied considerable pressure and used manipulation, even to go so far as to suggest that I’d be putting my as-yet-unconceived-child in danger if I didn’t leave the IUD in. And not so paranoid when you consider all the violations of human rights that have occurred in the medical profession since the profession was created.

I love doctors and nurses, I do, and this is not an invective against them, though it does point out the ways they have power over their patients in ways both large and small, and the very fact of that power makes violations so easy to occur. The jerk that yelled “bitch” at me as he passed didn’t have any power over me because there was no relationship but he managed to violate me anyway.

The only thing that connects these small violations is the fact that both of the people who initiated them were perfect strangers. I’ll never see either one of them again. And I suspect that the other thing that connects them is that I’m a woman. I’m not saying that perfect strangers don’t try to do these kinds of things to men, but I suspect they occur less frequently, and that most men respond differently (both at the time and after the fact) because they’ve been socialized differently. I could be wrong. I’m curious to hear from men about it.

Why do perfect strangers have such an investment in us that they would behave in these ways? And how should we deal with these kinds of small violations, when they happen so often?  

I don’t really know how to end this blog post except to invite you to give your thoughts.

  • Share/Bookmark

What Saved You From the Monster in the Closet?

Published on September 23, 2009 in Books & News, Children's, Family, children's literature and fear. 0 Comments

Last night as I waited for my husband to come home from teaching a night class, somebody rattled my doorknob and rang the doorbell. The puppies galloped to the door, woofing and panting and barking, sounding a lot bigger than they really are. I thought maybe it was Chris at the door. He likes to get the dogs hyped up when he comes home by doing things like that. Still, it was dark so I checked through the window before opening the door and didn’t see anybody standing there. Nervous, I went around shutting all the windows in the house. Just in case.

I grew up afraid. I remember being scared to look in the mirror when I was alone in a room. I was afraid that I’d see a big, beefy-red face, a grinning lunatic, his hands closing around my throat as he throttled the breath out of me. I remember looking up, realizing I was alone in a room, and panicking, running screaming through the house. “Mom! Mom!”

Apparently, I wasn’t always a paragon of fear. My mother says that I changed from a happy-go-lucky little girl to a scaredy-cat about the time I turned four years old. The change was so dramatic, she thought maybe some of the teen boys on the block had molested me.

The fears changed as I grew older. When I was nine, I read one of those Chick Tracts  about a guy who was possessed by demons.Chick Track 3

God, that tract scared the bejesus outta me!  

That night, I couldn’t sleep, shivering in the top bunk of my bed in my room where I was alone, very very very very alone and very very very very very afraid.

 And…..I couldn’t sleep for months. Somehow, the idea that Satan could possess me—could be that intimately connected with me, could enter my body and spirit, could make me do things I didn’t want to do, could put me in danger, could (worst of all) make me desire to go to hell and then actually end up there!!!—took hold of my imagination at the deepest possible level and turned my life into a living hell for well over a year.

And this began my life-long intimate introduction to fear. Stomach-clenching, sweat-inducing, pure raw unadulterated fear, the kind you would feel if you were a young woman, alone in an alley in the middle of the night, facing three knife-wielding men who plan to have their way with you.

The terror would begin after lunch. Because after lunch, the day was a downhill march towards nightfall. To bedtime. To the time when I had to go to my room, alone, and face the horde of demons who occupied my stuffed animals, the dolls who sat innocently at the table in my dollhouse, the books on my shelves.

Chick Track 2This was no monster in the closet. Unlike the monster in the closet, who disappeared when the light turned on, this was real. Demons were there, you just couldn’t see them. The Bible said so. And all the reassurances in the world that God would keep me safe, that the blood of Jesus would protect me from this Evil that stalked me and watched me and drooled over me, night and day, just waiting for the chance to devour me alive, didn’t make me feel safe. Not one teensy, tiny little bit. The only thing that made me feel safe was the presence of another person. Somehow Satan seemed less real if somebody else was in the room.

But my brothers didn’t want to sleep in my room every night and they didn’t want me to sleep in their room every night. And my parents didn’t want me to sleep in their room either. (As a kid, I didn’t get that. As a married adult, I kinda do.)

And to be fair, I don’t think I shared the magnitude of the terror that gripped me with any of them. I was too frightened to utter the words out loud: “Satan spends every night in my bedroom, waiting for his chance to possess me.”

So I didn’t have people around to save me. Between me and the hordes of hell, I had a paper-thin prayer that I said over and over and over, trying to keep myself safe. The mantra went like this: Dear-Jesus-let-every-single-thing-in-this-room-worship-you-and-only-you-keep-Satan-away-from-me-protect-me-Jesus-protect-me-Jesus-protectmeprotectmeprotectmepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasekeepmesafe…

The prayer was a lifeline between the time I had to turn out my light (9 p.m.) and the time my parents turned out their light (around 11 p.m.). That lifeline kept me afloat until their light went out. And then you know what saved me? Books. Books saved me.

I would creep out of bed and get a book, a safe book, a children’s book, one that wouldn’t contain demons or violence or anything unsafe. I would huddle in the very back of my closet, bathed in the harsh light of the light bulb. Or, better yet (because it made me feel less sequestered from the people I needed to be near me in order to feel safe), I would gently ease open my bedroom door and sit on the cold cement floor of the entryway just outside my bedroom.

I would read and read and read and read and read andreadandreadandreadandread (that reading was like praying, better than praying actually because it put me in a safe world with people, real people, and I wasn’t alone anymore). I would read and read until I was so exhausted (1 or 2 or 3 a.m.)—really, until I had inhabited another world long enough that I knew I could keep Satan at bay—that I could crawl back into bed and go to sleep.

And I would wake up at 6 a.m., to my father tickling my toes, and the cycle would begin all over again. Safe, only in the morning hours.

I will never know this for sure, but I am certain my fierce need to be a writer began sometime in the dim, dark hours of those many nights when I faced my fears by submerging myself in the worlds of children’s literature.

I love books because books saved me, literally.

I have said in the past that writing is prayer to me, for a lot of reasons which I won’t go into here. But it’s true that reading is a sort of prayer for me as well. This may be hard for people to understand, but not, perhaps, if they hear my story. 

Books are what saved me. Music saved my husband from the fears he battled with as a teenager—specifically, the music of Bob Marley. I’m curious what your fears were and what saved you.

  • Share/Bookmark