Unity monument at Bennet Place State Historical Site (Anne Rubin)

My life has been shaped by two crises: my upbringing in a traumatic household and the rape. I have distilled two core values out of these experiences: the sacredness of humanity and the importance of choice and responsibility.

For some reason these two notions: humanity and responsibility feel like two pillars defining a door. They seem to complement each other. Respect is an attitude of the heart. Responsibility requires observation of the world outside ourselves and how we affect it. Respect for humanity is a precursor of action. Responsibility for our choices takes care of the aftermath.

We seem to have a built-in understanding of the fundamental value of human life. With the exception of the worst sociopaths there are some things most human beings just won’t do to each other. To a certain extent respect just happens and we take it for granted. Only the extremes of respect and disrespect seem to require a great deal of intentionality. On the other hand, responsibility can never happen without a conscious choice. For some perverse reason our natural inclination seems to be to shift responsibility away from the source: onto others when we are at fault,onto ourselves when others are at fault.

After the rape the notion of sacred humanity was burned in my consciousness. The rapist intentionally profaned the sacredness of human life and the body that contains it. The severe absence of respect for the sacred enabled me to see clearly something so fundamental to day to day living that it is almost invisible. No experience in life taught me about the sacredness of life like rape did. No book or tradition either.

The situation in my family taught me forced me to think deeply about responsibility, but unlike the rape, its lessons have revealed themselves slowly over time.

In my 20’s my family situation forced me to wrestled with the question of how life could be at once both so wonderful and painful.  Since my 20’s, responsibility and choice has formed the cornerstone of my approach to the problem of evil, which I see rooted in God’s odd and paradoxical idea that love is only possible in a world that has free will. It is paradoxical because many of things that happen as a result of free will are in fact the antithesis of love. However we cannot love without free will, because love is not love if it is not a choice.

In my 40’s this was not enough.  I began to realize that the pain in my family had created life long insecurities that seemed to flow from one generation to the next.  As I reflected further on the causes of pain in my family, I began to see that something was missing in my understanding of choice. To truly understand choice we need to see both sides of choice: its necessity for love and the price of disowning it.

My conclusions in my 20’s grew out an assumption that choice was a given, a fact of life from which we could not escape. As I’ve reflected on my family’s history of hurt, I realize that while choice is a given, awareness of choice is not. My family history was built around a pervasive denial of responsibility for hurtful actions that made victims responsible for their own suffering.  This denial not only made it hard for hurt to heal, but allowed it to perpetuate from one generation to the next.

As much evil in the world comes from the way we disown our choices as the way we make them. 

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Credit: Al_HikesAZ @ Flickr.com

Survivor Project News

Marcella Chester @ Abyss2Hope publishes a “carnival”, or roundup, of posts on sexual assault related issues on the first and 15th of each month. The latest carnival was published May 15, 2009. If you have an article you would like to recommend for the next carnival (June 1), you can submit the link, using this form. In general, recommendations should be submitted at least 3 days before the 1st and 15^th.

Erin Weed, who founded Girls Fight Back after a friend of hers was murdered, writes about attending and being inspired by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and Women’s Funding Network conferences. She is beginning to talk to major funders about internationalizing Girls Fight Back, possibly with the goal of teaching self-defense to women in war zones.

Art, Literature & Entertainment

Ellen Moody discusses the literary and cinematic influences on two Jane Austin movies originally made for TV: Sense and Sensibility (2008) and Miss Austin Regrets.

Carol Lehman reviews the book Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan . She describes it as a fantasy book that “honestly address issues that child sexual abuse survivors face”. The book is a fantasy story based on the Grimm Brother’s tale, “Snow White and Rose Red”. Note: In 2009, the UK Guardian book reviewer Meg Rosoff called it “the must-read of the summer”.

Purple Stained Skin has written up a list of the major poetry magazines available on newstands and libraries and provides a short description for each. In a second post Purple Stained Skin provides commentary on the poems published in No 23 of the Columbia poetry review. In a third post he has a review of Ally Malinenko’s The Wanting Bone.

White Dove’s Nest has written and posted a beautiful poem about learning across generations: A Boy Looking After Teddy Bears.

Feminism, Ethnocentrism, and other isms

Ayanna Nahmias reflects on the good and bad of a 1917 National Geographic story on North Africa. The photography in the story preserved a culture that has since changed in the face of global connectednes. But the commentary on the photos reflects the extreme ethnocentrism that develops when cultures do not meet each other.

Facts for Working People reflects on spending priorities in California, disputes over African investment policies, the never ending corporate search for cheap labor, and low usage rate of US industrial capacity, all from a socialist perspective.

Body and Self

This week, the body and self category was dominated by posts on the oversexualization of young people.

Abyss2Hope reflects on the phrase “prostitots” and argues that this particular way of describing over sexualized children is problematic because it uses “slut-shaming” to deal with the problem of oversexualized children.

Anny Jacoby comments with concern about a video of 8-9 year olds dancing in the World of Dance competition. She feels that by approving this dance routine the coach and the children’s parents were sending the wrong message and teaching their children to gain applause and approval from sexualized behavior. Note: The video has since been taken off line, but two ABC segments about the video contain partial images, a response by the parents, and commentary by a child psychologist.

Health and Wholeness

Ayanna Nahmias discussed a 7 year old Russian boy whose adoptive mother decided that he was “too difficult” and sent him back. She observes that parenting is a life-long responsibility. Children, whether born or adopted, shouldn’t be discarded because they are too difficult.

Just Be Real focused on people pleasing and why that can become a destructive addiction. She quotes liberally from evangelit Joyce Meyer. Both Just Be Real and Joyce Meyer are survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Reasons You Shouldn’t Fuck with Kids continues her exploration of the many ways childhood rape can impact a life. This week she discussed the impact of being raped by her brother on her adult relationship with her husband and reflected on how a prior face to face confrontation with evil magnifies her reactions to events like the Columbine massacre.

Crime and Terror: Advocacy, Prevention, and Aftermath

Anny Jacoby tells a wonderful story about how an attempted stabbing was thwarted by a combination of self-defense skills and cooperation. One student ran to security to get police to the scene. The other, Jesse Hladik, worked to subdue the attacker, along with two other students. When Hladik noticed the knife in the attacker’s had, she was able to force him to drop the knife by applying pressure to appropriate points on the wrist.

Anny Jacoby has also written two posts questioning how much protection against dating violence is provided for by current laws in Virginia and the proposed policies of the University of Virginia. University of Virginia student Yeardley Love was murdered by an ex-boyfriend on May 3, 2010.

Abyss2Hope compares the social tolerance for false rape claims to the social tolerance for auto insurance fraud.

Gayle Force @ Unnatural Forces reflects on how rape changes the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. She also shares an example of how the right kind of humor can help us deal with rape.

Theology, Religion and Ethics

Shen @ Reunited Selves has just finished a long series of posts describing a private retreat where she carried out a ceremony she created for herself to symbolize and carry her through a transitional moment of healing and letting go.

• What Exactly is an Awareness Ceremony?
• Part 1: Arrival
• Part 2: Setting up and Settling in
• Part 3: Searching for Courage
• Part 4: Connecting with my Higher Self
• Part 5: We Can’t Move Forward from Yesterday
• Part 6: Final Preparations
• Part 7: Sensing a Presence
• Part 8: Awareness and Acceptance
• Afterwards…

Darlene Ouimet reminds us that sometimes positive affirmations and religiously motivated actions are sometimes the end point rather than the starting point of a journey of healing. Before we can deal with matters like forgiveness or the belief that God doesn’t make junk, first we must give ourselves permission to feel and experience ourselves as we are now, in the moment, and not as we think we should be. Two part post: (1, 2) .

Wanda’s Wings explores her anger at God. Harriet J @ Futitivus describes how taking a risk with prayer helped her defuse her intense anger at her less-than-nice neighbors.

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In Your Love is King (1984) she describes quite a different lover, one whose love “touches the very part of me that is making my soul sing. I’m crying out for more. Your love is king…. This is no blind faith. This is no sad and sorry dream. This is no blind faith. Your love is real”. It is not entirely clear whether she is talking about a lover or following a tradition as old as the bible and using passionate love to portay an awareness of Love (cf. Hosea, Song of Songs) or whether she simply enjoys the ambiguity of a song that could be read either way. In 2008, the UK Daily Telegraph listed it as one of the 50 best love songs of the 1980’s.

King of Sorrow from the Lover’s Rock album (2000) explores the determination to continue despite feeling overwhelmed: “I’m crying everyone’s tears and there inside our private war I died the night before… I suppose I could just walk away. Will I disappoint my future if I stay? It’s just a day that brings it all about. Just another day and nothing’s any good. The DJ’s playing the same song, I have so much to do. I have to carry on. I wonder if this grief will ever let me go. I feel like I am the king of sorrow, yeah, the king of sorrow.

Soldier of Love , the title song of Sade’s latest album, is about not giving up on one’s capacity to love even when hurt and pain and confusion make it seem a distant reality:

I’ve lost the use of my heart, but I’m still alive,
Still looking for the life, the endless pool on the other side.
It’s a wild wild west, I’m doing my best,
I’m at the borderline, I’m at the hinterland of my devotion,
In the frontline of this battle of mine, But I’m still alive ….
I know that love will come, turn it all around.
I’m a soldier of love,
Every day and night, all the days of my life.

The Soldier of Love album was released this year (February 8, 2010). This is the first album to be released in 10 years. Despite this gap, Sade still has a loyal fanbase. Sade has chosen to be defiend by her songs rather than a media created public persona. Though she says her most recent album contains “quite a lot of my history“, she is deliberately reticent about the actual details, because she wants people to be focused on the way the song relates to her life and not to limit its meaning to her particular story.

In an interview Sade give to UK’s Sunday Times just before the release of Soldier of Love, we get a glimpse into a small part of Sade’s history. Sade told the Times that her parents loved each other deeply, but could not live together. Sade’s father is Nigerian and her mother British. Sade was born in Nigeria, but four months after Sade was born her mother took Sade and her older brother. The three returned to the UK, leaving her father behind in Nigeria. Periodically Sade’s parents considered getting back together but never did When her parents married, Sade’s father gave her mother a rose. 30 years later when he died, Sade’s mother took the preserved rose and threw it into the grave.  Sade said that point she realized how deeply her mother had cared for her father.  She had held onto the rose all that time. She traces the theme of unfulfilled love in many of her songs to her parents long lasting but never quite realized love.

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Betty Makoni’s mission is to give girls who have been raped the confidence to transform from victims to survivors to leaders. Through her organization, Girl Child Network Worldwide (GCNW), she has built up a small group of girls in a rural school in Zimbabwee into a force of young women spanning three continents: Africa, Europe, and North America.

The video to the left is the first in a four part series on YouTube describing Marconi and her work in Zimbabwe (1 2 3 4). GCNW is modeled on her work in Zimbabwe and accomplishes its mission with a unique blend of peer empowerment, adult role models, cultural tradition, modern human rights philosophy, and social advocacy. The project began in 1998 when Makoni was working as a teacher. She noticed that there were twice as many boys as girls in her classes and girl students often attended irregularly. One day she decided to start asking the girls why this was so and found out that they were carrying the weight of many of Zimbabwe’s social ills: parents who had AIDS, abuse at home, early marriage, or shame and trauma from rape.  Rape of young girls is especially common in Zimbabwee because as many as 1 in 10 men believe that the blood of a virgin with cause them to prosper financially or heal them from AIDS.

Makoni, an English teacher, decided that her job as a teacher required her to educate the entire child and not just the child’s brain. She started meeting separately with the girls in her class and they began to figure out ways to support each other so that they could come to school. The concept spread to other schools and within a year there were 100 groups meeting in schools around Zimbabwe based on the model used with her own original 10 students.

Makoni’s passion had its roots in her own experience. She knows violence first hand. At six, she and her friends were lured into a shop and then raped by the shop keeper. Her mother, fearful of her husbands rage and social stigma for the family and her daughter, told Makoni to keep silent. Three years later she watched her father murder her mother. She managed to stay in school despite all this with the help of some Roman Catholic nuns who arranged to help her continue her education. Two university degrees later she became a teacher.

Makoni feels that she was always meant to be a teacher but the experience of her childhood made her hunger for other roles as well. Her activism allows the teacher and the other roles to come together in a single mission:

Even though I was meant to be a teacher, I always wanted to act like a lawyer seeking justice; I always wanted to act like a policeman knocking on the door of a rapist saying come out to the jail; I always wanted to act like a magistrate who gives a sentence to a man who has raped. I didn’t manage to be the three things I wanted to be. Then I set up an organization called the Girl Child Network where I became an activist. What’s so exciting about what I am doing with all my heart and all my energy is I’ve got the magistrate, I’ve got the police, I’ve got social services all of them pulled together to help the little girl. When a little girl smiles, mission accomplished. I’m not looking for anything more.  (World Vision Report, April 17, 2010)

In 1999, she acquired land and set up the first girl’s empowerment village. The residential villages provide a safe place where a young girl can take refuge or get help after she had been raped. The village provided legal, medical, and emotional support. If the girl does not have money or resources for school, they provide that as well. Successful women come and talk with the girls and they are encouraged to aspire to become teachers, lawyers, doctors, police officers, and business women.

The villages are modelled on a vision of womenhood that blends traditions from Markoni’s own tribe with modern human rights practice. In her own tribe 400 years ago, chieftains reserved positions of power for princesses of royal families.

Markoni also looks beyond the girls themselves to the wider society. She successfully convinced fathers and local male leaders to advocate for equal rights of women in 10 different districts of Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe branch of GCNW also works to change police practice and rape laws. They have also set up information cafes that coordinate media outreach and provide information about rape and sexual assault to the general population.

In 2008, Makoni was forced to flee Zimbabwe. Her work with rape victims became politicized when some of the girls who sought her help had been raped by powerful political leaders. She is currently living in the UK and is working to expand the program she started in Zimbabwe globally. In an interview with Munashe Gumbonzvanda of TechMasai, she described her vision in a global context.

Makoni observes that gender imbalances exist throughout the world and not just in Africa. Girls need to be represented in technology, polity, and business because without their involvement, girls cannot design solutions to meet their needs. They are limited to using what others have designed for them. Additionally, when gender imbalances exist the world does not work as it should. Women become visible only as victims and beauty objects. The truth worth of women is hidden. She concludes: “Girls have inner strength and power. That is what I want to unleash worldwide.”

Her work is widely respected by adults and children alike. In 2007 she was awarded The World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child. The prize is awarded on the basis of children around the globe. In 2007, over 5 million children participated in the vote. In 2009, CNN named her one of their top 10 heros.

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• adding one’s photo to a worldwide map showing people who oppose rape as a weapon of war
• raising the public profile of rape as a weapon of war through blogging, letters to the editors, media events, and the like
• writing a letter to local elected officials
• hosting a consciousness raising event

Videos, survivor stories, resource materials, sample letters, NGO activity updates and more are available on the Stop Rape Now! website.
Detailed information and support tools for all of these projects are available on the projects website’s Take Action page.

To raise awareness of the project, the United Nations’ special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Margaret Wallstrom was interviewed on NPR radio. They have also placed two PSA’s on YouTube. The first, displayed with this post is meant to both personalize the story and add celebrity appeal. The second features ordinary people around the globe expressing their opposition to rape as a weapon of war.

The political pressure is surely needed. Margaret Wallstrom still is working in temporary office space. A recent press conference several raised questions about whether or not the UN was dedicating sufficient resources to the problem. During the NPR interview, Wallstrom herself explained that the Congo has had good anti-rape laws on the books for a while. However, the laws remain unimplemented due to the lack of resources. Furthermore, the UN has ongoing problems moving its own anti-sexual abuse initiative from a global mandate to local implementation. At the beginning of May, the BBC reported that 10 Pakistani peace-keepers had raped a 13 year old girl. Her village’s elders lodged a formal complaint several months before the BBC investigation, but no action had been taken and the UN is only now saying it will look into the matter.

Often at the UN issues affecting women are treated as bargaining chips. Recently, Iran was accepted as a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Iran is one of only a handful of nations that has neither signed or ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. All other members of the CSW have ratified the treaty. Their uncontested nomination was the result of horse trading to keep them off of the UN Human Rights Commission.

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The Rape of Africa (David LaChappelle)

Venus and Mars (Sandro Botticelli)

Throughout the month of May, the mural to the left will be hanging in the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. The mural, by David LaChappelle is based on Botticelli’s Venus and Mars and is meant to comment on the effects of war, mass marketing, and mining on Africa.

Our society is fond of using rape as a rhetorical device, and when it is used well it can send a powerful message. When artists use rape as a metaphor it is vitally important that they use the metaphor in a way that honors rape victims. This painting fails to do that on several levels.

Africa has real rape victims and all too human victims of war motivated murder and amputation. But in LaChappelle’s vision of the rape of Africa, the human cost of rape and violence make no appearance anywhere in the picture. Standing in for them is a beautiful model who was born in London, has never lived in Africa and has been twice convicted herself for assault, one in London for being verbally abusive to a police officer when she didn’t get her luggage quickly enough and once in New York, for throwing a mobile phone at her maid. There is something deeply troubling about a woman who assaults someone in her employ being used as a model for innocent victims of violence in Africa.

Second, LaChapelle’s mural portrays the aftermath of rape. Real rape survivors want to be honored for their courage as well as their struggle. A painting of the aftermath of rape that fails to portray both loss and courage is incomplete. South African activist Carrie Shelver commenting on the 2006 Zuna rape trial, observes “Characterising the survivor as a “victim” who is weak, frightened and voiceless is equally simplistic and damaging to the struggle for gender equality and the advancement of women’s rights. Survivors can be both in need of protection from the criminal justice system and be courageous at the same time.”

Third, LaChapelle uncritically reflects modern societies constant confusion about the difference between love, sex, and rape.

The ancient world understood how problematic it would be to confuse love and violence and went out of their way to insure that rape stayed far away from Venus. Venus has no shortage of liasons, but all of them are consensual.   Venus is the one of the few females in classical mythology that was never raped.  She even managed to successfully fight off Zeus himself, something no other woman in classical mythology was able to do.  Botticelli’s painting reflects the understanding of the ancient world.  Mars has not taken her, but rather she Mars.  Botticelli’s painting presumes a woman so in control of her sexuality that she can even overcome the God of War. In Botticelli’s painting Venus is full clothed and alert. She looks calmly and determinedly outward. The satyrs mock Mars, one stealing his hat, another blowing in his ear. Mars head is tilted back. He is so beaten he doesn’t give any sign of waking despite the wasps buzzing by his ear.

LaChappelle  manages to do what even Zeus could not: rape Venus.   In doing so he confuses love and rape.  Worse yet, he doesn’t think it even needs an explanation and neither do any of the reviews we’ve been able to find.  This fusion lies at the heart of our societies minimization and rationalization of dating and relationship violence.

Fourth, he robs both rape victims and Africa of a powerful redemptive vision.  Botticelli’s Venus and Mars depicts the power of Love over War.   Love of oneself, love of society, love of vision for a healed world is what helps rape survivors overcome their trauma.  It is also what will one day help Africa heal.   All over Africa, the survivors of its violence and exploitation are transforming and healing what rape, exploitation and violence destroyed. They are using the power of love for the world and their passion for righting wrongs:

• Imam, a supermodel who advocates for African children and AIDS treatment through “I am African” and Keep a Child Alive fled her native Somalia as a child and lived as a refugee in Kenya.
• Waris Dirie, another supermodel who has served as UN ambassador advocating against female genital mutilation. Diree fled Somalia at age 13 because her father tried to sell her in marriage to a 61-year old man for 5 camels.
• Wangari Muta Maathai, Kenyan winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in sustainable development. She has been imprisoned many times for her opposition to the government.
• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the current president of Liberia, who lead a peaceful revolution that overthrew Charles Taylor, now accused of war crimes. Her opposition to former Liberian presidents, has forced to flee her country during purges, exiled her in lieu of 10 year imprisonment and placed under house arrest.
• Betty Makoni, a Zimbabwean rape survivor who founded Girl Child Network to educate and empower young girls, hoping to build a new generation of strength in Africa.
• Lumo Sinai, a young Congoleese woman who allowed her story of rape and fistula repair to be featured in a documentary to publicize rape and violence in the Congo and the work of Heal Africa where she received treatment.
• Masika Katsuva who watched her husband murdered, her daughters raped, and was herself raped. She now runs a shelter for housing rape survivors who have no place to go after they have been rejected from their own communities.
• Olive Lembe Kabila, wife of the president of the DRC who has lend her name and political connections to fight rape and maternal deaths.
• Charlene Smith and Alison Botha, South African rape survivors who actively campaign against rape.

Chapelle is not interested in portraying the redemptive power and courage of rape survivors. He only wants to show destruction and dominance. How ironic that in a painting meant to raise awareness and change destructive patterns, he portrays rape not through the eyes of victims, but through the eyes of rapists.

It is bad enough that Africa has suffered from exploitation. Do we have to poor salt in the wound by making Africa appear eternally and hopelessly victimized? Fundamentally this is a patronizing message because if Africa is so helpless, then only a patron or third party can help her. This violates everything social activists have learned about the importance of self-empowerment in overcoming subjugation and marginalization.

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Forty years ago on May 4, 1970, 4 students were killed and 11 injured when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a students protesting the Vietnam war on the campus of Kent State Univerisy. The shootings divided the USA. Some wondered how a nation could treat its own children in this manner. Others unconditionally accepted whatever decisions were made by the National Guard. College campuses exploded with demonstrations and within a week 100,000 marched on the US capital to protest.

That day four families lost a child.

• Doris and Arthur lost their daughter Allison Krause. Laurel lost her older sister. On her tomb they wrote “flowers are better than bullets” because only a few days before she had placed a lillac in a friendly soldier’s gun barrel using those words.
• Louis and Florence Schroeder lost their son, Bill. Bill Schroeder was an ROTC student who had committed himself to 10 years in his countries service: 4 as a ROTC student, 4 as a full-time officier, and 2 in reserve.
• On the day of the shootings, Elaine Holstein, Jeff Miller’s mother, was listening to the car radio as she drove home. She heard that four had been killed, never dreaming that one would be her own son. They had both been concerned about the tensions, and she decided to ask him to come home. When she got home, she called his fraternity and asked for her son. A boy answered “He’s dead”.
• Sandy Scheuer was simply passing through on her way to class when the bullets began to fly. Her parents were Holocaust refugees who had come to the US expecting to live in a state that would protect them.

Dean Kahler survived the attack but the bullet in his spine put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In the years immediately following his parents struggled with overprotectiveness and he worked to overcome his anger at the loss of the use of his legs. Even with the anger, the shooting only served to strengthen his conviction that there must always be an alternative to violence and war. To work through his anger he became active in wheelchair sports and helped out with his school’s disability office.

The political allegiances that split the nation also fed the blame-the-victim mentality that so often affects the survivors of violent crimes. Along side many, many letters of support, Dean Kahler received hate mail. Some letters even wished he had died. Joseph Lewis, Jim Russell, and Robert Stamps, belonged to families that were certain that the National Guard was in the right. Their families responded to their injuries with anger and judgment rather than support.

But loss is only the beginning of the story. Kent State has turned into a historic event because the survivors found ways to turn their loss into both personal and social healing. Some worked to preserve the memory of what happened. Some fought to make the government accountable for its actions. Some saw Kent State as a symbol for deeper social problems and sought to address them.

In the 1970’s survivors fought all the way to the Supreme court to give families the right to sue the Governor and the National Guard (Scheuer v. Rhodes). Separate suits by the families were later united into a single suit, Krause v. Rhodes. Though the case was settled out of court in 1979, the judicial decisions along the way set new standards for government accountability.

In April, Alan Canfora (shot in the wrist) and Terry Strubbe (witness) announced efforts to reopen the investigation on the basis of a tape which allegedly has an audible “Right here, Get Set, Aim, Fire”. The government investigation in the early 1970’s had concluded that soldiers fired without orders, but the timing of the start and end of the fire – a tight volley of shots over the course of 13 seconds suggests otherwise.

During the first week of May, Doris and Laurel Krause, Dean Kahler, and Tom Grace (shot in the foot) and several other witnesses are participating in a Truth tribunal , modelled on truth and reconciliation commissions used to address government violence in Africa and South America. The proceedings will be documented by Emily Kunstler, daughter of the William Kunstler, the civil rights attorney that helped the survivor families in their 1970’s legal battles.

A 40 year battle for justice may seem extreme, but Joe Lewis, shot in the leg and stomach, puts it this way:

Many think it should be buried, and they tried to do that by building the gym. You can’t bury what happened. You have to live with it. not necessarily to dwell on it but go on with our lives and incorporate what we all have, or should have, learned that May 4.

The lessons learned from Kent state extend well beyond Kent State and well beyond the 1970’s. Mike Alwitz, a witness to the shootings, became an artist and has dedicated much of his life to painting peace and justice murals in urban centers and areas of conflict. The Kent May 4 Center, lead by Alan Canfora, has a ten point mission statement that includes both Kent State Shooting remembrances and promoting the importance of student social activism on and off campus.

Mary Ann Vecchio, who was standing right beside Jim Miller when he was shot comes to campus each spring to talk to students and shares these words:

I tell them it shows what can happen if the evildoers get too much power. They can take your freedom away. You could be walking to school, and what happened back then could happen to you

Barry Levine who was by the side of his girlfriend Allison Krause when she was killed teaches both the necessity and risks of challenging authority:

You need to be conscious of the fact that questioning authority anywhere can be a benign learning experience, or it can be dangerous, because a government is always going to act to preserve itself. But do I think it’s still vital to question authority? Always, from the beginning to the end of time.”

Arthur Krause, Allison Krause’s father, spoke often about how Kent State taught him the true cost of apathy:

I feel a great sense of guilt because I realized what was going on but didn’t do a damn thing about it. Like most Americans these days, we sit on the fence and depend on the lawyer, the church, and the government to do whatever should be done, but if the government doesn’t have the right people on the job, nothing will be done …. and we, the people, have to make the government good. Apathy will not be part of my make-up anymore. Apathy is what caused Kent State.

In memory of those who died and in gratefulness for those who lived, may we also say: “Apathy will not be part of our make-up anymore.”

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Looking back, there can be no question that he did something awful. It was a terrible thing to do to a young girl. But it was also 25 years ago — 26 years next month. And, honestly, the publicity surrounding it was so traumatic that what he did to me seemed to pale in comparison….

I know there is a price to pay for running. But who wouldn’t think about running when facing a 50-year sentence from a judge who was clearly more interested in his own reputation than a fair judgment or even the well-being of the victim? … My attitude surprises many people. That’s because they didn’t go through it all; they don’t know everything that I know. People don’t understand that the judge went back on his word…..

The one thing that bothers me is that what happened to me in 1977 continues to happen to girls every day, yet people are interested in me because Mr. Polanski is a celebrity. That just never seems right to me. It makes me feel guilty that this attention is directed at me, when there are certainly others out there who could really use it.

Looking back at all the verbage spilled over the Polanski rape case I’m wondering why so little is being written on these questions. We say child rape should be punished strongly because it is so hurtful to victims. But aren’t we also hurting a victim by ignoring her questions? The first rule of compassion is to give what a person needs and not what we want or expect them to need.

Rape and the media. Geimer declares that the media treatment was more traumatic than the rape. Was she merely exaggerating? Should we not take her at her word? She seems to mean it. In October, 2009, shortly after Polanski’s arrest she was back in the news, pleading to be left alone and warning that the media circus that accompanies celebrity rapes discourages victims of celebrities from filing complaints.

Rape media coverage can be brutal, especially when the alleged rapist is a celebrity. Anyone following the shenanigans of Ben Roethlisberger in the US or Jack Tweed in the UK knows this. To see just how brutal, take a look at our in depth review of the trial coverage and scroll down to the description of the Daily Mail’s equal opportunity slam. Or alternative enter “Ben Roethlisberger Andrea McNulty” into google. Even when the coverage isn’t hostile, excessive attention can be very disruptive. She is raising a very important point and she is being ignored.

I’m not the only victim in town. We’ve also largely ignored Geimer’s worry that society marginalizes rape unless there is a celebrity involved. There are other cases that have just as much or more need for attention than hers.

Geimer isn’t the only one whose raised the question. Way back in September, ABC interviewed UCLA law professor Peter Arnella. Why, he asked, would a prosecutor spend so much energy and money going after a one-time offender from 30 years ago when it is cash strapped? The prosecutor brushed it aside as a case where principle matters more than economics: “offenders don’t get to choose their punishment”.

But in this case, do principles really matter more than economics? What is the opportunity cost of pursuing Polansky? How many below-the-poverty-line kids have abusers that aren’t being prosecuted because it would divert resources from the Polanski case? How many prosecutions are only half prepared because there isn’t enough money budgeted for the case? How many local crimes are we going to prevent by spending money on legal sparring with Polanski rather than on locking up that local guy breaking parole by hanging around outside of school playgrounds?

A deal is a deal. Geimer contends that the judge made a promise and then reneged on it. Lies and broken promises by an authority figure are a key element of Geimer’s rape complaint. They are a key element of almost any non-violent rape. Assuming she is telling the truth about a deal, is it any wonder she should react negatively to a judge’s broken promises? Is she being overly sensitive? Or are we minimizing? Can we really afford to treat her concerns about judicial deception lightly?

Is this really about Polanski? If we think the original deal gave too light a sentence, perhaps then we should be asking why the prosecutor made that deal in the first place?

A 90-day sentence for a drug facilitated rape of a minor should make us mad. But we shouldn’t take that anger out on the victim. We should place it where it belongs: on a judge who thought that Polanski deserved no more than a slap on the wrist. The transcript from sentencing reads:

The probation report discloses that although just short of her 14th birthday at the time of the offense, the prosecutrix was a well developed young girl who looked older than her years; and regrettably not unschooled in sexual matters. She has a 17 year old boyfriend, with whom she had sexual intercourse at least twice prior to the offense involved. The probation report further reveals that the prosecutrix was not unfamiliar with the drug quaalude, she having experimented with it as early as her tenth or eleventh year……..However, although the prosecutrix was not an inexperienced and unsophisticated young girl, this of course was not a license to the defendant, a man of the world, in his forties, to engage in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with her

Do you see the hint of “it isn’t rape unless she’s a virgin” ?

A judge who truly understood rape would not care whether Geimer had tried sex or drugs before. The only thing that should have mattered was the gap in their ages. In essence the judge is saying “yeah, it is wrong, but not wrong-wrong. Sure, Polanski shouldn’t have done it, but It isn’t like we are spoiling a pure innocent child. He didn’t introduce her to sex or Quaaludes.” Is it any wonder the judge gave such a light sentence? Isn’t it time the State own up to its own mistakes?

Geimer wants the case closed because a deal is a deal. Polanski wants testimony about the sentencing decisions unsealed so he can prove a deal is a deal. The State wants to keep them sealed. Why? If the State behaved itself, what does it have to fear?

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This is not an invitation to rape me

Two years after Italian judges concluded “jeans cannot be compared to any type of chastity belt”, a Sydney jury has decided otherwise. On April 30, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a jury had acquitted an alleged rapist because they couldn’t believe that her jeans could be removed without her assistance. To the jury this constituted reasonable doubt.

The Australian legal community has yet to comment on the case, but rape victim advocates inside and outside the blogosphere have been quick to protest. News of the story was picked up by papers in India, US, and the UK.

A Norwegian self-declared “anti-feminist” blogger declared it a small victory.  Veronica Wensign, chairwoman of the Australian National Association of Services Against Sexual Assault questioned a jury member’s assumption that women were unrapable in certain clothing. ”Any piece of clothing can be removed with force.” The jury had sent a note to the judge which read: ”I doubt those kind of jeans can be removed without any sort of collaboration,’.  Odalisque observed physical force is irrelevant: “Even if he had stood up, walked to the other side of the room and quietly said ‘remove your jeans’ it would still be rape if she didn’t consent. Abject terror is not consent.”

The Village Voice (New York City) observed that even if the complainant had willinging removed the jeans, equating jean removal with consent implies that a “No” thereafter can be ignored. The Well Timed Period blog raised the question of a double standard: when a mugging victim reaches in his pants to take out a wallet we don’t call it a gift. So why do we call it consent when rape victim takes off their pants at the command of a rapist?

In the Australian case, one has to wonder what instructions were given to the jury. How were they told to measure consent? Did the judge point out that collaboration in jean removal did not prove consent? Would he have been allowed to?

Australia is not alone.

In 2006 in Korea a woman jumped out of a 6th floor window. She later testified that she had been trying to escape an attempted rape. Defense argued that she was drunk, had lured the alleged rapist into a bedroom, and voluntarily undressed. To support his case he pointed to the neatly folded jeans found in the bedroom. Despite this he was convicted, but in 2009 the conviction was overturned because the judge was convinced that (a) the neatly folded jeans indicated consent (b) difficulty in removing the jeans indicated that the jeans could only have been taken off by the victim (c) a six story jump could be explained by her drunkeness rather than a desire to escape attempted rape.

Once again the tightness of jeans became a measure of consent. But this case raised a second issue. A reasonable person would have to wonder: if a woman was so drunk as to jump six stories without cause, how could she possibly be sober enough to consent to sex?

In contract law, a contract is null and void if one party knows that the counter party is intoxicated. The contract will not be binding, regardless of whether the counter party is voluntarily or involuntarily drunk.   What matters is that one party knew of the impairment of the other. On the other hand, criminal defendants are normally held to a higher standard. They can only use intoxication as a defense if the intoxication is involuntary.

Presumably sex requires mutual agreement. Consenting to sex is not a crime. Why not apply the same rules of consent to sexual consent as to contracts?  If a defendant is arguing that no crime has occurred because the sexual interaction was consensual, shouldn’t the presence of consent be measured by non-criminal standards?  And if we do judge sexual consent by criminal rather than contractual standards, what does that say about our real understandings of sexual rights and obligations?

These questions lead to yet another question: to what extent do definitions of consent reflect our current cultural understanding of sexuality?  In 1977, when an Italian Supreme Court used tight jeans to overturn a rape conviction, it created an uproar. Female Italian legislators showed up in sessions in jeans to protest. Legal treatises were written about what happens when law and society are out of step.

Is the skinny jeans decision out of step with Australian society? Or does it reflect it? If it is out of step, what can prevent future such decisions? If it is not, what needs to be done to change society’s attitudes so that removal of jeans no longer equals permission to insert?

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He shows how even in love passages, Shakespeare’s choice of imagery contains allusions to rape narratives in classical and contemporary literature. The poem on which Romeo and Juliet is based, Arthur Brooke’s poem “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet” casts a much dimmer view of Romeo’s motives.

These allusions help the audience understand that both Juliet and her families concerns about Romeo’s motives are more than just the modesty of young love or family prejudice. They reflect tendencies and concerns about rape in the surrounding culture. For example, Juliet’s second suitor is named Paris. In Greek mythology, Paris stole, and presumably raped, Helen of Troy. Watson further points out that forced marriages were recognized even by contemporaries as a form of socially sanctioned rape.

Though Watson does not use the term “rape culture”, Watson astutely observes its presence even in this most romantic of plays. He also makes a secondary observation that this juxtaposition of perfect romantic love and rape is intentional and meant to disturb.

Watson thinks that Shakespeare is challenging our tendency to force all male eroticism into two categories: romance and rape. He argues that resistance to this idea is

a the fantasy that there is nothing between the benign melting-together of angelic lovers (as in Donne’s “Air and Angels” and Milton’s Paradise Lost, devoid of any element of physical aggression or potential exploitation) and sub-bestial attacks (as on Lucrece and Lavinia)” and that we need to acknowlege (sic) a middle ground between the two. (pp. 31-32)

A middle ground between the two? Isn’t the confusion of violence and sex one of the most common ways of defining rape culture? Is Shakespeare arguing that rape culture is an acceptable reality? Or is there more to this?

Shakespeare is indeed deconstructing social expectations, but he is doing so to criticize the confusion of sex and violence, not to argue for a middle ground. He is deconstructing a society that recognizes certain forms of marriage and sexual aggression as rape and then condones them in the name of family rivalry and alliances – be that of ancient Greece or Renaissance Verona. The juxtaposition of rape and love in “Romeo and Juliet” serves to underline the difference between the two and the tragedy created by a culture that confuses the two. By declaring some sort of liminal space between rape and love, Watson’s conclusions in fact reinforce the very culture that Shakespeare is trying to call to task.

Portrait Partials (Carolee Shneemann)

Part of the problem is that Watson’s analysis of perspective only goes skin deep. A multiplicity of perspectives does not necessarily shift an event into some compromise zone of shared reality.

In fact the failure to give up one’s own reality in favor of an irreconcilable opposing view held by a weaker, vulnerable party is at the heart of many of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Macbeth loses the loyalty of his nobles because what he sees as royal strength his subjects see as tyranny. When the witches, quintessential symbols of marginality, tell him he will certainly die, he effectively denies their prophesy by concluding there is no such thing as a threat from a man “not of woman born”. His subject Macduff knows otherwise and Macbeth’s naive belief leads him straight into the hands Macduff and death. Othello’s refusal to believe in his wife’s chastity leads to both her death and his own. King Lear’s refusal to believe either his fool or his youngest daughter, lead him to madness and death. Tarquin’s lavish insistence that Lucrece’s hospitality, beauty and terror implies passion lead to his death and the end of the Roman monarchy.

Rape and love co-exist in Romeo and Juliet for the same reason that filial love and betrayal coexist in King Lear – they create the polar opposites around which themes of perception, deception and power revolve. Rape happens when a stronger party refuses to accept the will and perceptions of a weaker party. One calls it love. The other insists there is no reciprocal desire. What better forum to discuss the confusion of rape and love than a tragedy that juxtaposes perceptions of love and rape?

In the processing of rape both now and in the Renaissance there are many different stories to be told: the story according to the survivor, the story according to the rapist, the story according to the rules of evidence, the story later on as life experiences give perspective on earlier life experiences.

Checkmate (Ramon Borges)

Not all of these perspectives are reconcilable. Sexual intercourse is not merely a set of physical acts. Our perceptions of meaning and intent are key to the experience and meaning is inherently subjective. It is entirely possible for one person to see the event as rape and another person to see it as love. Shakespeare is surely aware of this. His poem “The Rape of Lucrete” is a superb study of the contrasting perspectives of rapist and victim. As a survivor of rape I found his depiction of the differing perceptions of victim and rapist so on the mark I felt I was reliving my own rape.

A perpetrator will often try to convince himself that force shows the strength and sincerity of love. But for the victim, force vitiates love. Compromise for ulterior motives, for example, family honor or future economic security, should not be confused with a middle ground between love and rape. It simply means that human beings have always had and always will be driven by more than one agenda.

But there is yet another reason why we should be wary of the idea that Shakespeare is exploring some sort of shared liminal truth. In almost every instance where differing perceptions reconcile into a shared conception of reality, the play is either a comedy or madness is a pervasive and dark theme hanging over the play.

Romeo and Juliet ends in neither laughter or madness. We have only the sorrowful realization that “For never was a story of more woe, Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” Romeo and Juliet die never understanding the truth about one another. Montague and Capulet continue to misperceive the true source of their loss. Both in her perceptions of love and rape, Juliet is the powerless truth bearer that each character in turn refuses to recognize.

Romeo’s hanging around Juliet’s balcony could be true love or it could be stalking or casual interest or even a deliberate attempt to humiliate her family. Juliet insists that Romeo marry her if his intentions are true, because she knows a dalliance with a young man that does not end in marriage will likely take her out of the marriage market all together. She cannot afford to make a mistake. Furthermore, deflowering your enemy’s virgins was a common form of humiliation. Given the enmity between the families, she had special reason for concern. In fact, the opening of the play begins with such a threat against the house of Montague from her own house, the house of Capulet:

Sampson: …women, being the weaker vessels,
are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push
Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his maids
to the wall

After they marry, differing perceptions of love and rape, honor and violation, and life and death intertwine and lead to the final demise. When Tybald, Juliet’s cousin, challenges him to a duel, he refuses. Romeo cannot tell his cousin Benvolio that Tybald is now family, so Benvolio thinks Romeo is merely being a coward. These conflicting perceptions lead Tybald to fight in Romeo’s stead. When he is killed, Romeo has no choice but to seek vengence and kill Tybald. This in turn forces him to flee town without Juliet.

Meanwhile Juliet’s father wants to make an alliance with the family of Paris and tries to force her into yet second marriage. To Juliet this is rape. Her heart and now her body belong to Romeo. To the family the marriage to Paris is the beginning of joy and love. Her father even advances the marriage day thinking that Juliet would welcome such an alliance to distract her from grief. She has no power to choose and is too fearful to tell her father that she is already married. To escape a forced marriage, she takes a sleeping potion that makes her appear to be dead. When Romeo hears that Juliet is dead he returns. Not knowing that the death is faked, he despairs and kills himself. When Juliet awakes and sees her “true love” dead, Friar Lawrence offers to hide her in a nunnery. These key moments, the death of Tybalt, the announcement of her planned marriage to Paris, and the offer to hide in a nunnery are bound together by the use of the words “dispose” or “disposition”. These are the only times these words are used in the play. Rather than acquiesce to the culture that lead to her sorrow, she too kills herself.

Although Montague and Capulet reconcile with one another at the end of the play, the cultural context that lead to their demise will continue. Marriages will still be made for the sake of political alliance. Young women will continue to lack social recognition for their right to choose a mate and will go to extreme measures to escape forced marriages. Young men will continue to die in duels fighting for family honor. Montague’s offer to build a golden statue of Juliet may honor Juliet but it will not change the culture that lead to her death. “For never was a story of more woe, Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

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