robin

one of the purposes of this blog is to have a place to put the stories that turn up in the corners of my mind, out of all the stories i've been told. this one showed up today.

in one of the support groups there was a woman who'd had many children. she shared in the group that there was no consensual sex within her marriage - she named it as rape - and no option of contraception. she told us that she loved all her children though, "so he didn't win me on that".

one of her children had died as a teenager. while this woman was grieving and distraught she would play her son's favourite song on repeat. one day she saw a robin outside and it looked like the robin was dancing and hopping along to the song. it seemed to her that the robin was her son. she put out bread for the robin and it came back the next day, and she played the song to it again. soon the woman's washing line and patio were covered in bird feeders. the robin stuck around. after a while people suggested to the woman that this was not healthy, and she agreed to see the doctor. she told the doctor that she was sure the robin was her son and the doctor put her on some medication.

...that story sticks around in my mind, with its hundreds of story buddies, asking questions.

being accountable to complicated histories

i was so excited to read this:

"Rape has a history.  Histories, actually.  One of the patterns of a more local history can be seen and felt in the ways some instances of rape have the effect of mobilizing, even galvanizing people in ways that other acts of violence do not.  I am not just speaking of feminists.  If my dashboard is any indication, folks in my orbit have expended exponentially more outrage on the recent Julian Assange rape case, and the left’s response to it, than, for example, the human rights abuses that have spurred the prisoner-organized and coordinated strike that’s been going on in Georgia.

[...] 

“If we get rid of prisons,” they’ll say, “what are we going to do with all the rapists and murderers?”  When I hear this, I think that feminist descriptions of rape culture have actually not accounted for the ways in which the idea of rape—is tied up not only with a culture that punishes women for attempting to tell the truth, but with a culture that punishes, full stop.  That punishes populations that include women, but also include people who are gendered differently.  I think about how much we rely on the law, and ultimately, on the penal system, to define what it means to be safe.  To the extent that we experience the incapacitation of the rapist—the locking of those convicted of rape—as if it were justice, overlooking conveniently the persistent evidence that more prisoners do not mean fewer instances of sexual violence.

I think about the idea of prison rape, and how rarely I see this invoked in descriptions of rape culture. I recall the “dropping the soap” joke made by a women’s studies professor in a classroom, and the uncomfortable receding of laughter once it was recognized that I  wasn’t participating in it.  I think about the degree to which indifference to prison rape is also an essential part of popular culture, and how rarely I hear this in feminist outrage toward rape culture.  About how the condition of “prisoner” has an underrecognized resonance with the condition of “woman” to the extent to which becoming a prisoner is, to some extent, not only to become rapeable but to be seen by many as deserving of it.  Rape culture tells you that you shoulda thought about that before you committed the crime.  Crime as submission, before the fact, to rape culture.

I think about how rarely I see the myth of the black male rapist referenced in discussions of rape culture, and I think, at the same time, about witch hunts.  I think about the systematic rape of black women categorized as the master’s use of his property.  Rape culture as the protection and promotion of the sancticity of white womanhood—all of which, I suspect, did nothing to decrease the instances of rape against even those women whom it enshrined as ideal.

I wonder if the victims of prison rape are not victim enough for the feminism I see on my dashboard.  I wonder if a black body swinging from a tree will be seen as the victim, or victim enough of rape culture for that kind of feminism.  I wonder these things because I want to see a movement that doesn’t isolate rape from other kinds of violence, or as a violence experienced by an amorphous and undifferentiated category of “women.”  Because, I suppose, I want to be part of a feminism that understands that certain uses of the idea of rape culture can actually strengthen patriarchy, and that being accountable to complicated histories is not to participate in apologism.  So I have to wonder if it isn’t more than a coincidence that the feminists I am reading are not organizing in support of the strikers.  I have to wonder at the sense of risk I feel in writing that I don’t think that extending the reach of an already problematic criminal justice system is a solution.  I question the flinch I feel in saying that I think it lets this  state, one so deeply and fundamentally complicit with rape culture, off the hook.  I question my reservation in saying that I want to recognize our reliance on this very state to protect some of us from violence and to enact justice as a tragedy.  In saying that I think that rape culture is actually part of a culture that relies on incarceration to solve problems.  This really has so little to do with Julian Assange."

written by low end theory. (via mai'a) there is more amazingess at the start and end so again - please read the whole thing.

We're Telling

and in more good news there's a new tumblr project, We're Telling: (via Flip Flopping Joy)

"Sharing anonymous accounts of rape and sexual assault; demonstrating that rape happens, everywhere, often.

WE'RE TELLING is a new blog whereby anyone can anonymously share their own accounts of attempted or completed sexual assault or rape."

demonstrating that rape happens, everywhere, often. it's been up for a day and there's already loads of posts. it's overwhelming. so important. i love the internet sometimes. i hope it's helping. i'm sure it's helping. is it just me or is there a real feeling in the air - in all sorts of cultural - political - personal ways - of the truth coming out, of belated acknowledgement of what really is...?

BFP on Wikileaks

BFP is on fire at the moment. i feel privileged to share a planet with her.

here:

"What’s important is what actions are being taken–not even so much against Assange–but against wikileaks. Against supporters of wikileaks. Even against those who have no idea who the fuck wikileaks is or what it’s done. 

Because indeed–those of us who care about gender liberation must, absolutely MUST, be aware of and understand that the nation/state that *F*eminists have entrusted to mete out “justice” for violated women–is using “justice” to criminalize all of us. It is up to us to understand that this isn’t a simple case of did he do it or didn’t he or “stand in solidarity with rape victims.” This is a case of our own tools being used against us. Not against Julian Assange. Against us. Because all of us who have been there understand on some gut level–how likely is it that these women will actually receive justice? What horrific price will they have to pay (in testifying, getting their names dragged through the mud, etc) to “get justice”? At the same time, how many of our lives will be dramatically affected by the “threat” we all now present to the nation/state?"

and here:

"it is the US government that seems to have perfected the role of patriarchal duality that we have all assigned to Assange. The advocate for the dispossessed rolled into a messy soup with dirty slimy scum bag that beats his girlfriend on the side.

It is the US government that is both rapist and activist. It is the US government that we all pretend not see hear the beating on the other side of the wall–because it’s doing such good for the community!

Just as we have to wonder why it makes sense to tell soldiers or policemen that it’s ok to kill when they have a certain uniform on, but not when they’re wearing clothes bought at Target–we have to wonder why it makes sense to condemn men who rape and abuse in private, while willfully and continuously ignoring the private rape and assaults of our government in the name of the “good” it does in public.

And that’s not to say that we let the man off scott free–but rather instead to question: if our goal is to stop rapes before they happen–how do we negotiate the dissonance of the “model” of public advocate/private rapist the US reinforces continuously with the idea of “anti-gender violence citizen”?

Specifically: how will gendered violence ever end when gendered violence remains, at the core, a esteemed value of the US government that we all live under?"

...and so much more in those posts. read them! 

i, just...

this is so upsetting. i can be tough when it comes to hearing about domestic violence(!) but reading this makes me cry.

"Woman jailed for retracting rape claims is refused appeal." from the Guardian.

she reported being raped by her husband. then, under pressure from him she retracted this. and so now she is being jailed for 'perverting the course of justice'. and since she is now in jail, her children have been put in the care of her abusive husband. against whom no charges have been upheld by the CPS, despite abuse having taken place in front of one of the children.

i am absolutely speechless. what should we do about this?

and i was struggling, one post ago, to articulate why the prison industrial complex is A Bad Thing. jesus.

forced debrief

this blog is supposed to be for debriefing, which is just as much a part of looking for patterns as my newfound excitement in book reading and intellectualising. sometimes i have to force myself to tug out already half-buried memories of what i've been told recently. ok. so. what's got to me this week?

child sexual abuse. always knocks me. it's too much a part of too many people's stories. it's not what i'm a support worker for, and i never encourage women to talk about it. they almost never do in detail, only in passing to provide context. and considering i never ask specifically, there is probably a whole undersea iceberg of child sexual abuse as context that i don't hear about. i actually can't immediately bring to mind how it's fitted in this week. which i guess is unhealthy. i just remember a sense of anger and overwhelm while on the phone and during a face-to-face session, both this week. come on.

ok. the anger and overwhelm was to do with how ridiculously, unbearably, far-reaching a single act of abuse can be. ah yeah i remember now. a woman was telling me as a side-note that her mother had been raped as a young woman and how this had caused her serious mental health problems which had caused the woman speaking to me to become her mother's carer and how this had impacted on her education, life-chances, confidence and ultimately contributed to her being in an abusive relationship for multiple decades. this brought to mind something i read years ago in Inga Muscio's book, Cunt, which i shall go and dig out... (jeez, doing that link i've just seen that the second edition only has a foreword by derrick jensen! that dude gets everywhere)... yes, she's writing about the affect on her and her sister's childhoods and lives, of her mother having been raped by a stranger aged nine:

"A man could, feasibly, sacrifice his coffee break raping a woman [child. she was nine.].
That woman would then spend her entire life dealing with it.
So would her daughters.
So would theirs.
This distibution of power is not acceptable."

i'm sure there are other things lurking in my unconscious from these first days back at work, but that'll do for now i guess.