The Gender Shrapnel Blog’s silence of the past month should speak volumes to getting out the damned vote. So, please, vote, vote, vote! This Vote.org link gives you all the information you need to make this happen.
If you still need convincing, read on. I am posting here select Gender Shrapnel quotes from the past two years. Once I come up for air, I hope to get my rhythm back and write more about Kavanaugh, synagogues, Black lives, and community.
All of It. September 20, 2018:
We know it is all linked: the hatred of women, and especially of women who make their own choices, and the need to control those women through violence, often sexual violence, often murder; the hatred of people of color, any person of color doing any daily action in any private or public space, and the need to control people of color through violence; the Islamophobia directly fomented by United States’ leaders and the careful, steady encouragement of U.S. Christian heteropatriarchy (yes, I went there); the dog whistles and direct calls to violence against women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and non-Christians; the reduction of full human beings to less than human beings through violence enacted on their bodies; the love affair with the NRA lobby and guns, guns, guns; the KKK; the United States government. We have rapists, abusers, and/or harassers in all three branches of the government, that’s how thorough we are. One simple and startlingly tragic headline exemplifies our nation’s fascism: “Detention of Migrant Children Has Skyrocketed to Highest Levels Ever” (reported on 9-12-18 in The New York Times). Read this paragraph from the article, and take special notice of the word “quietly”: “Population levels at federally contracted shelters for migrant children have quietly shot up more than fivefold since last summer, according to data obtained by The New York Times, reaching a total of 12,800 this month. There were 2,400 such children in custody in May 2017.” I think “quietly” translates to “chillingly.”
Diners and Deceit. June 24, 2018:
The Huckabee daughter-father tweets are an unethical use of political office to bully and harass, in the most public of media, a private citizen and business owner. Compare this to a quiet conversation on the Red Hen patio and an assurance that the bill was covered—a simple act that reveals how a person stands by her staff and her own belief in the public good. Those who say that Wilkinson should have been silent reinforce how civility codes fortify the status quo. (*See this related piece and this one in the Gender Shrapnel Blog.)
Some people who have come to Lexington this weekend in some odd attempt to protect Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one of the most powerful individuals in the land, are waving the Confederate flag and praising the KKK. This flag, which has so consistently demonstrated hatred of African-American individuals and signaled neofascist tendencies and whose symbolism has so marked this town, has resurfaced in the Huckabee hullabaloo. A fake website pretending to be a downtown historical association has also followed the Huckabee Sanders spin machine, empowered by the press secretary’s tweet and expanding her network of spin, subterfuge, and slander.
Family Values? June 17, 2018:
Last week, I was walking our dog past a neighbor’s house. I called a “hello” to the elderly neighbor, who sat in a chair under a tree in his beautifully tended garden, a garden I have watched him plant, water, and weed for over two decades. He said “hello” and then asked if I was a teacher. When I said “yes,” he asked what I taught, and I replied with the simplest answer possible, “Spanish.” “Damn Mexicans,” he said. I walked on, feeling shocked (even though of course I know how many people in this racist country subscribe to such beliefs), hurt (in a representative way, knowing that this comment towards me is nothing compared to comments made against others, which are absolutely nothing when compared to real acts of hatred and violence committed against real people), and angry (why wasn’t my dog pooping in the beautiful garden at that very moment?).
This little comment from a neighbor who I thought for years was a kindly old gardener should give us every bit of evidence we need that the United States has taken a more dramatic turn, almost two years into the Trump regime, towards violent, racist acts and, in particular, significant gaslighting effected daily through the fast-paced, absolutely wacked GOP spin-machine. The New York Times reports (6-15-2018), “’I hate the children being taken away,’ Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday morning in front of the White House. ‘The Democrats have to change their law — that’s their law.’ A short time later, he wrote on Twitter, ‘The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda.’” The very next line of the The New York Times piece says, “But Mr. Trump was misrepresenting his own policy.” The GOP spin machine does not even realize how good they have it, when newspapers such as The New York Times continue to soft-pedal the language of Trump’s lies, which, in turn, normalizes his racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and blatantly anti-family platforms and actions. While Trump voters continue to sport bumper stickers that say, “Don’t believe the liberal media” and “NRA. Don’t let them take your guns away,” the so-called liberal media is struggling to keep up with reporting and rebutting the extensive lies told by this dictator and his kleptocratic cronies. (*See this 6-14-18 related piece from Slate.) The lies run so long and deep, and their reach allows the regime’s inhumanity to stretch to every corner of the United States and to many corners of the world.
Dignity and Indignation. May 23, 2018:
While the United States continues to allow, and too often to condone, the killing of black people, the country also sees the smaller indignities, or reductions of worthiness, in the acts of white people calling the police on black people and the police responding to these racist and frivolous calls. These daily indignities are the everyday bits of proof of the gigantic problem of assassination and incarceration of people of color, a problem exposed through film, fiction, academic studies, and activist organizations, including, but not limited to, Black Lives Matter. (*See this Gender Shrapnel Blog post on rarity and reporting and this one on Black Lives Matter.) We as a nation ignore these everyday occurrences at our peril, as they must form a part of our reckoning with racial injustice and our solutions to these profound problems of humanity, worth, and dignity.
Gender-Based Violence. February 28, 2018:
This all brings me back to the man Donald Trump, Orrin Hatch, and a host of others protected through reports of gender-based violence, Rob Porter. In this CNN piece (2-18-18), Orrin Hatch issues an apology to Porter’s two ex-wives for having jumped to Porter’s defense; Hatch is reported to have said, “It’s incredibly discouraging to see such a vile attack on such a decent man.” Even when Hatch walked back the defense and issued the apology, he had to maintain that his interactions with Porter were “professional” and “respectful.” Hatch, CNN, and everyone else seem to forget that of course Porter knows to respect his higher-ups, who have infinitely more power than he does. It is his treatment of those with less power than him that we have to worry about. The fact that Hatch maintains, even in his apology, a half-defense of Porter as a good man tells us a lot about our boys-will-be-boys culture, our constant propping up of mediocre politicians and violent men, and our constant willingness to kind of, sort of not believe the victims.
Guns. February 15, 2018:
I was going to write this week’s post about gender-based violence on the national and international stages, and I still am. This is because what is becoming a type of gun genocide in the United States stems from an ever-more-dangerous toxic masculinity fomented through our government representatives, television shows and movies, commercials, and video games. This inculcation of violence influences mass shootings and supposedly behind-closed-doors incidents of domestic violence. It tells men to reject all attributes and feelings coded as “feminine” and to embrace ultra-power and dominance. (*See this 2013 summary of an article about print images in advertisements that promote hyper-masculinity.) Time Magazine in 2014 reported that 98% of mass murderers are male, attributing the statistics to many phenomena along the age-old gender binary: cultivation of men as hunters and warriors; men’s protection of their status in a group; influence of violent media; etcetera. It is no accident that we use the metaphor of “guns” for highly developed muscles.
‘Reasonable’ People. February 1, 2018:
160 women testified that Larry Nassar sexually assaulted them. Some of the women were as young as six years old when Nassar committed such felonies. These assaults happened over decades, permeating just about every corner of USA Gymnastics and, quite apparently, Michigan State University. The world is ready to believe in the integrity of a single male doctor before it is prepared to believe hundreds of women and girls with an entirely credible claim. Nassar’s non-apology statement and self-defensive testimony combine to re-harass and re-assault the 160 women who had already, miraculously, survived his abuse. Nassar’s most salient statement, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. It is just a complete nightmare,” serves to do what so many non-apology defenses have done in so many others of these recent cases—to deny wrongdoing, cast doubt on those who have filed suit, assert some kind of moral high ground, and minimize the gravity of the actual crimes committed. Nassar believes himself to be the objective white man in the white coat in the white laboratory.
Ben Cline. Sigh. January 10, 2018:
There was already cause for concern that Ben Cline has been elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for an eighth term, but Lexington and Rockbridge County voters should be even more alarmed now that Cline plans to make a bid for the United States House of Representatives. That’s right, the person who claims on his website to be “cleaning up the political cronyism that grips our system” hopes to be anointed Goodlatte’s successor in November. Let’s not allow that to happen.
In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won an historic decision in the case of an Arkansas woman who was shackled to her hospital bed while in labor in 2003. The woman was a non-violent offender but was shackled throughout her labor. When the ACLU won this case, one of the organization’s representatives rightly stated, “Today’s decision reaffirms that pregnant women in prison do not lose their right to safe and humane treatment.” The decision reaffirms that women are human beings and, as such, have the right to safe treatment. At that point, groups from various points along the political spectrum, along with over a dozen non-partisan health organizations, celebrated this decision.
Free Speech. For Whom Is It Free? November 28, 2017:
WE THE PEOPLE of the United States…
Yesterday the so-called president of the United States had what should have been the pleasant task of honoring Navajo code talkers from World War II. As we all know by now, he did so at the White House, in front of a painting of Andrew Jackson, fetishized Native peoples, and then, for at least the twelfth time, referred to Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.” Donald Trump’s and Elizabeth Warren’s workplace is the Unites States government, whose buildings include the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, and media venues and publications. This racist epithet, repeated now so many times, constitutes not only demonstrated racial harassment of Elizabeth Warren as employee in the national workplace, but also racial harassment of Native peoples in general. This could be grounds for a Title VII lawsuit against the harasser-in-chief and should be added to the long list of discriminatory, harassing, and retaliatory actions taken by this individual.
Labor Day, 2017. September 3, 2017:
Tomorrow is Labor Day, 2017, here in the United States. The White House celebrates this milestone by creating a 37% gender pay gap within its own ranks. This The Washington Post piece (7-5-2017) informs us that, “According to the Pew Research Center, the Trump White House gender gap is wider than the national gender pay gap stood in 1980.” I haven’t been able to find data for pay gaps based on race in the Trump White House, presumably because there are not enough employees of color hired by Trump even to generate data points. (I do not know the statistics for the long-term staff who cook, clean, and organize the day-to-day needs of this big enterprise.) Nevertheless, we do know (Politico, 1-24-2017) that 85% of Trump’s cabinet choices are white, and 75% are male. Henry C. Jackson writes in the piece, “The numbers don’t lie: Trump’s Cabinet is older, whiter and richer than his predecessors.” Jackson informs us, too, that there are “no Hispanics” at all in this “president’s” Cabinet.
Charlottesville (and Lexington). August 20, 2017:
This week my mind has done daily roundtrips between Charlottesville and Lexington. The major issues that keep popping up include (but are by no means limited to):
-Real violence and real threats of violence being enacted by white domestic terrorists on communities of color and their allies;
-White House cultivation and support of these groups, including Neo-Nazis, Neo-Confederates, and the KKK;
-Discussion of white supremacy, systems of oppression, our nation’s history as the present, and the need for greater awareness and action, especially on the part of white people;
-Awareness of increased tensions for Jewish peoples and women as well;
-The clash between the 1st and 2nd Amendments; how to protect free speech and the right to assembly when weapons of war are used against us;
-Monuments and memorials (See Barton Myers’ interview in the Los Angeles Times);
-Complicated conversations among people on the left, revealing some intersectional and generational splits, or rifts; a recognition of the need for more education, dialogue, and action on the issue of white supremacy.
Our “president” is both a symptom of and a catalyst for oppressive systems that have been in place here in this nation for centuries. His “vice president” can’t be much better. Therefore, even an accelerated change in the leadership of the White House to an entirely different administration won’t reduce or eliminate white supremacy. We citizens have to do it, and we’ll need to do so with a multi-pronged approach. This should include firmness about the terms we use, the legal implications of the 2ndAmendment and the powerful NRA lobby, the monuments we remove, and the hours we devote. We also need a heightened understanding of the politics and ethos of non-violent protest. And we need to show up. The resources are out there. It’s time to read, learn, and act.
Let me say it again, folks: !
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