gun violence – Gender Shrapnel

All of It

I am so thoroughly mad about all of it.

Let me start with the active shooter who last night roamed the halls of my father’s assisted living facility, and then we’ll see how much more “all of it” I can cover.

Last night a gunman shot two people at the Pennsylvania retirement community/assisted living facility where my father lives. The news reported his “active shooter status,” which remained in effect for hours. The assassin killed his parents, who lived in the apartment across from the one where my dad’s best friend lives. Let me repeat: an active shooter took two lives last evening and moved freely through this assisted living facility.

There is more to the story, of course, besides my siblings’ and my anguish about our 84-year-old dad being alone in his apartment, unaware of what was going on in the hallway outside, and not schooled in the world of text messages. The gunman had first gone to the home of his ex-wife, shot at her in her driveway (he did not succeed in killing her), and then proceeded to the retirement home/assisted living facility to kill his parents. It turns out he had received divorce papers yesterday. Here we are, then: yet another incident involving a man angry at a woman and attempting to control her—her decisions and her physical movements–through profound violence and supported by—let’s just say armed by—his country’s love of guns. (*See this Gender Shrapnel Blog post on gun violence.)

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.”

I usually try to write in measured tones in this blog. I like having readers of all sensibilities (who love curse words, who hate them, who believe it’s worth it to reach across the aisle, who think that’s folly, who identify in many different and open ways, who choose no labels, etc.). I have no measured tones to offer today, though. Boiling mad, hopping mad, flummoxed, frustrated, exhausted, yes, these terms all work. But I am also absolutely fucking seething about the state of things right now. I am fucking seething at the goddamned patience too many people are demonstrating.

Enough people have already written far better than I can on Brett Kavanaugh’s bid for the Supreme court and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s bravery in coming forward to make sure the U.S. public understands the kind of person he is. (*See for example this op-ed by Anita Hill and this performance by Samantha Bee; I also want to recommend this piece by David Roberts for its appeal to “dudes” and its nuanced explanation of #MeToo.) By the way, make sure to see Samantha Bee’s clip of Kavanaugh joking around in 2015 (that’s three years ago, not 36, for you folks paying attention at home) that “what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep, and that’s good.” I have written on a few occasions on Trump and Thomas (for example, here) and our not-so-subtle ability as a nation to get rapists and harassers into the highest offices of the land (for example, here and here), rewarding them for their many outstanding contributions to the Christian heteropatriarchy.

In the meantime, Serena Williams also had to apologize again for being a black woman in a white space. It was not enough for the French Open men and women to infantilize Williams by, as my high-school-aged children would say, “dress-coding her.” Then the U.S. Open officials also had to attempt to force obedience through unexplained point and game penalties, a $17,000 fine, and a press conference in which Williams could address only the gender disparity in behavior expectations and not the race disparity. (See Claudia Rankine’s Citizen for a full analysis of this, as well as her op-ed in The New York Times.) I say this all the time, and I do not know how it strikes women of color when I do, but Jesus Christ, what privilege I have to manage only the gender piece. There is such weight, such unrelenting weight to bear. Hurray for Serena Williams, and hurray for Naomi Osaka, too. They both kick freaking ass.

On my own campus, we continue to play nice with racism, refusing to make any serious progress on the recommendations made so thoughtfully in the wake of the August, 2017, events of Charlottesville by the Commission on Institutional History and Community. We are so patient and so nice with the people who still really like our institution’s legacy of slavery, demonstrated through such hallowed names as George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and John Robinson, names that identify the school and are celebrated on many of its buildings. As the recumbent Lee lies in state in the back part of the altar of Robert E. Lee Chapel, we count on invitations to esteemed speakers of color to disrupt the white, sacrosanct monumentality of it all, rather than taking steps ourselves to dismantle the space for university functions. Oh, it’s so nice to be nice, isn’t it? Such a relief? Nothing like again using the bodies of people of color to do the work that can and should be done by white people.

Please know that I am not saying that all members of my community are idle in the possibility of real change. Quite the opposite is true. Good people are tackling these issues from many different angles, expressing their views in sensitive ways, and insisting upon a change that just seems too long to come.

There are real and metaphorical active shooters on the loose, and the level of vigilance required takes its toll. How many of these good, thoughtful people inhabit bodies that are less healthy than they were two years ago? As we battle the criminality and utter lack of ethical standards of our nation’s leaders, how can we also find time to take care of ourselves and each other? This question is plaguing many groups of which I am a part, and I believe there are few ready answers. The only thing I know to do is to keep at it, all of it.

(Merida, Spain. Photo by E. Mayock)

Scattered

Anger, frustration, curiosity, and love fuel many of my blog posts—not all at once, but usually two at a time, and sometimes in unusual combinations. This week I feel too scattered by the national news and life’s day-to-day busyness to feel fueled by any singular or dual emotion. Last September, I wrote a blog post, titled “Day of Reckoning,” to organize my thoughts and plan my actions. Today’s post shares a similar impulse but will also reflect how all-over-the-place I am in this penultimate week of classes of our winter term. I am operating on a constant sad, mad, hanging chad, baghdad, ironclad, stalingrad simmer about the state of the union.

The murder of Stephon Clark, another unarmed black man, in his grandmother’s backyard has brought our nation to a new low. Yesterday The New York Times said that the killing of Clark “reignites a furor,” which seems to me an unfortunate way to frame this most recent in a long line of race-based killings. This phrase renders invisible (again) the consistent work done by Black Lives Matter and the significant collaboration taking place now between Chicago teens and Parkland survivors to address broad issues of gun violence across race and class. (*See this March 5^th piece from CBS Chicago and this March 14^th NPR piece about Chicago students’ approach to the Natioanl Walkout.) I am confused about and frightened by our nation’s continued refusal to address what is truly an epidemic. How can we talk about democracy in any sincere way when we are killing citizens and suppressing voters’ rights? Of course, our 242-year-old nation has all too comfortably settled into an EZ chair of smug self-satisfaction about being the world’s finest democratic nation, all the while ignoring a history of slavery, a past and present of colonialism, and an imperial and imperious approach to judging other nations’ governing styles.

I have become sensitive to the criticism that my blog posts and in-person political comments are “too negative.” How can I paint the killing of unarmed people in a positive way? How can I regard a “president” who created a paper-towel-toss television game show out of the destruction of Puerto Rico as anything but deeply narcissistic and destructive? I try to adopt critical postures that allow me to think through theory, practice, history, and current events in order to see positive, negative, and neutral points. I don’t see us making any progress on the Black Lives Matter project because our nation’s knee-jerk reaction is to link the protection of black lives to the immediate mortgaging of police force, which is to say, a weakening of the militarized, hypermasculinized police forces who haven’t learned the lessons of Ferguson or of any other death of a black person since then. (*See related posts: Black Lives Matter, Damn It; Charlottesville (and Lexington); Women in the Resistance; Mary Beard’s Manifesto.)

We learned this week that the 2020 United States Census is slated to include citizenship questions—a fraught proposition in fraught times. This proposal incorporates “build the wall” rhetoric in one simple question about who belongs and who doesn’t—the very same questions we should consider when we think about institutions of colonialism, genocide, and slavery that have shaped our nation. The very same questions we should ask ourselves when we look at the United States legacy of gun violence. I draw some comfort from seeing 12 states challenge this most recent move of Trump’s House of Whites, and I hope that my home state of Virginia soon adds its name to the list of challengers. Local, regional, and national bipartisan efforts to change unjust gerrymandering laws also reassure me that good people can work together to do the right thing. That’s positive, right?

Mueller’s work and, bizarrely, Stormy Daniels’ exposure of Trump’s lying and cheating in personal and professional realms seem to indicate progress in revealing this “president” for the liar, cheater, groper, racist, misogynist {fill in the blank} that he is. We must protect Robert Mueller’s ability to get this job done correctly and forthrightly.

In the meantime, I take great stock in massive, nationwide protests, regional efforts to collaborate on projects for the greater good, and local community groups who resist on so many fronts. In the past two weeks alone, our local community has: announced the first general meeting of the newly chartered NAACP chapter; sponsored an immigrant rights clinic; witnessed its middle- and high-school students organize and bring to fruition their own walkouts; held women’s history and women’s rights events; protested the Atlantic Coast Pipeline; initiated conversations about farms and farmers; seen teachers draft a letter advocating for increased safety in their schools; and encouraged a broad slate of excellent candidates for regional office. There is much to celebrate here, and we should do so.

Thanks for reading this scattered post. Stay tuned for a possible guest blogger for next week’s post to offer a different voice after 88 consecutive weeks of mine! (Damn. I just realized that, if you’ve read 88 Gender Shrapnel Blog posts, I should send you a prize of some sort.)

(Yard signs in adjacent yards. Pennsylvania, 2017. )

Guns

The United States loves its guns. The country loves its guns so much that it is willing to sacrifice seven children and teens on an average day, 96 United States citizens a day, and 13,000 lives a year. (*See this Everytown site for more statistics, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. See this 2016 article from The New York Times. See also this site for up-to-the-minute reporting on gun deaths in the U.S.). The data tell us, too, that 50 women a month are shot to death by intimate partners and that black men are 13 times more likely to be killed by gun violence than white men.

Is gun violence a disease? Which other organizations are tasked with stemming the tide of violent crime, and especially violent crime committed in our schools? Why do we now think it is normal or acceptable for our children and their school teachers and staff to experience violence in schools and to have to prepare themselves for violence through repeated lockdown drills? What the hell is wrong with us? Why are we such cannibals? (*See this Gender Shrapnel Blog post, especially Act 5, about the shame of it all.)

None of what I am writing today is news. We all know it, and we all know it to be true. We are catering every day to the hypermasculinist NRA lobby, which has infiltrated every level of government and affected the safety and/or sense of safety in every one of our schools. We know it.

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.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) adds to this toxic mix by encouraging gun sales, discouraging anything that impedes gun sales, and thereby openly motivating gun violence. I was reluctant to visit the NRA website and give it any more traffic than it already gets, but it behooves us to know what this billion-dollar lobbying organization is up to. The website informs us that NRA-TV is alive and well, promoting television shows about guns and gun violence. Trending on its blog right now is the proud announcement that the AR-15 is the most popular gun being sold right now. Remember that this is the gun purchased and used to kill dozens of people in recent mass shootings in the United States. The website also lets you know (to me, menacingly) that, “The NRA is closer than you think,” as it provides maps and directions to local stores and shooting ranges. It features the story of an “armed citizen [who] protects his family,” making me wonder if the armed citizen’s children ever go to school and if they are protected there. A photograph of two beautiful lions invites “American hunters” to shoot them. And don’t miss the pitch to young people: “The NRA has been actively involved in promoting the shooting sports to youth since 1903. We wish to ensure the future of the shooting sports by providing proper tools and resources to America’s young people.” In other words, “we hope to promote gun sales to kids as young as five or six who can accidentally shoot each other. If they survive that, then they can shoot others when they get a little older. Don’t miss out!”

I just visited the NRA online store and am feeling more than sick to my stomach. It’s all about “protecting freedoms,” “not being tread on,” and weapons, weapons, weapons. What is this war? It is Wayne Lapierre’s fear of himself, of not being enough. It is Wayne Lapierre’s followers agreeing that not being enough can be compensated by owning a gun. It is the United States afraid to confront its own deeply-rooted, ever-growing pornographic affair with its guns. You don’t have to be a literary critic to understand what the gun compensates for, and you don’t have to dig too deep to worry about how we cater to this.

Guns have no other purpose than to kill. Let’s remember that.

OpenSecrets.org shares information about NRA contributions to candidates, elected officials, and party committees. (*Here are the statistics from 2016.) As far as I can tell from the list, all of these candidates, government officials, and political parties are Republican. Every last one. This is not at all surprising, but it should allow us to become more draconian in our condemnation of the GOP. For those of us living in Virginia, let’s remember that Ben Cline, who has declared his intention to run for Bob Goodlatte’s House of Representatives seat for the 6^th District, has an A+ rating from the NRA. Ben declares this proudly on his “pro-life” website. (*See Gender Shrapnel Blog posts on Ben Cline here and here.) As Voluble blogger Robin Alperstein has said, GOP candidates want to get re-elected and therefore respond to vociferous voters, many of whom promote the gun lobby. The best way to defeat them is to increase contact with our representatives to encourage smart gun regulations. Gabby Giffords’ Law Center is an excellent place to get information for this kind of massive effort, so necessary for 2018 midterm elections.

I promised I would talk about gender-based violence, and I already have, in part. Gun violence is gender-based violence from the start. Gun violence requires that we understand toxic masculinity and reverse it, just as it requires deep change in public policy surrounding the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments. (*See related Gender Shrapnel blog posts here [free speech], here [Charlottesville], and here [stop-and-frisk].)

The GOP’s massive and perverse power has placed our own country at war with itself. This civil war relates in no small part to our Groping Old President, whose decades-long anti-women actions and comments extend to his support for other violent misogynists who wield great power. Let us not forget that the White House delayed a full week in condemning multiple reports of Rob Porter’s violent acts against not one, but two, wives. (*See Dana Milbank’s take-down in The Washington Post of the all-too-conveniently evolving White House stance on domestic violence.) The Groping Old President (assaulter-in-chief) also “boasts of a great relationship” with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose most recent recommendation to shut down female rebels was to “shoot them in the vagina.”

State-imposed misogyny and state-indulged gun violence are not news. None of this is. We have got to get on this now, yesterday, 30 years ago.

Ben Cline. Sigh.

(Poster from the Lexington-Rockbridge Women’s Rights Rally, March, 2017)

For this week’s post, I am sharing a version of the letter to the editor that I have just written for our local newspaper, The News-Gazette (Lexington, VA), along with some additional comments about Ben Cline’s town hall meeting, held last month in Buena Vista, VA. For those of you who are reading from outside the Virginia 24^th or the Federal 6^th District, you might want to re-read this Gender Shrapnel Blog post from last March. Please note, too, that Ben Cline has declared his intention to run for Congressman Bob Goodlatte’s U.S. House of Representatives seat, which conservative, deaf-to-his-constituents-Goodlatte has held since…wait for it…1992.

Editor, The News-Gazette:

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.

In 2012, Ben Cline, of the Virginia House of Delegates, supported the shackling of pregnant inmates, despite evidence that such barbaric practices caused injury to the babies born in these conditions. In her Letter to the Editor of The News-Gazette (12-13-2017), Ann Huebner rightly links Cline’s shackling stance to his support of medically unnecessary trans-vaginal ultrasounds, his sponsorship of a personhood bill that “would have the potential to outlaw in-vitro fertilization and certain types of birth control, as well as force rape and incest victims (even young teenagers) to bear children.” Huebner also correctly recalled Cline’s inhumane “Day of Tears” resolution of 2017.

The scant information offered on Ben Cline’s website tells us that, “Ben Cline’s values were shaped growing up right here in the Shenandoah Valley” (italics his), and that Ben never fails “to champion common sense, conservative legislation that challenge[d] the liberal orthodoxy of several sitting Democratic Governors.” As voters in this area, we cannot possibly link Cline’s support of torturous shackling to “common sense, conservative legislation.” Shackling pregnant women and women in labor should go against anyone’s values, especially those who impose their “family values” on their constituents.

ELLEN MAYOCK

Lexington

(*Visit this link to Ann Huebner’s guest blog post (2012) about Ben Cline’s support of shackling pregnant women and his double-speak about that support.)

The 350-word limit on letters to the editor means that I didn’t address in the above missive Ben Cline’s town hall meeting, held on December 19, 2017. In January of 2017, Cline held a town hall meeting in now perennially blue Lexington, Virginia. Many of us here praised Cline for being accessible to all his constituents and for being willing to meet “across the aisle.” His move less than one year later to perennially red Buena Vista, Virginia, just six miles down the road, signals more Goodlatte-like tactics: disappearance from view from any constituents who might dissent; movement to more conservative meeting places; limiting full conversation and expression of a range of views. By November, 2018, we will have had 26 years of Goodlatte’s fat-cat, me-first, damn-the-rest strategies in the Sixth District. Ben Cline seems to be following in Goodlatte’s selfish and morally bankrupt footsteps.

We should look carefully at Ben Cline’s website, which expresses this kind of pride: “Ben’s efforts have earned him the American Conservative Union’s (ACU) “Conservative Excellence Award” as well as top ratings from leading conservative groups like the VA Tea Party Patriot Federation, the Virginia Family Foundation and an A+ rating from the NRA.” The “A+ rating from the NRA” seems problematic for an area that witnessed a decade ago the deadliest campus shooting in the history of the United States (Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007).

Approximately 65 people attended Ben Cline’s Buena Vista town hall meeting, held in an office of Buena Vista Public Schools. The public school’s hall included a room to meet and seemed to boast also an extremely large weight room—for whom and for what purposes, I don’t know. There was a group of boy scouts at the town hall. They were attentive, and some were even taking notes. There were concerned citizens from the Buena Vista, Lexington, and Rockbridge areas. Issues raised included gerrymandering, education and, especially, teacher pay, healthcare and Medicaid, law enforcement, and job and business development. Cline insisted that he is strong on deregulation, that he wants to remove governmental control from private citizens’ business. When I asked him if this hands-off approach applied as well to reproductive rights, Cline sighed, and said, “I am pro-life.”

This individualistic, church-IN-government, theocratic, and controlling stance says it all. Cline is pro-life but is uniquely interested in shackling pregnant women and women in labor and causing harm to newborns. He is pro-life but is keenly proud of being sponsored by the National Rifle Association, a lobbying organization that boasted of its surge in membership following the Sandy Hook massacre in December of 2012. (*See statistics on gun violence in the United States through the BBC [2015]; NPR [2017]; CNN [2017]; The New York Times [2017]). He is pro-life but willing to sacrifice necessary healthcare for the people he represents. He is pro-life but believes that poorly-paid public school teachers should just keep doing their work “for the passion of it.” He is pro-life but anti-real people.

Many people like Ben because he seems to be a pleasant, God-fearing, middle-aged white man. This misguided affinity should lead us to read Cline’s website, which codes him as Goodlatte- and Trump-like, communicates very little real policy information to his information-hungry constituents, and makes the assumption that former Goodlatte staffers like himself will simply accede to the next rung of the ladder, the next bit of power, the next opportunity to ignore the wants and needs of the people he represents.

I can’t think of a moment in which we more urgently need to discard shackles and embrace a variety of views, values, wants, and needs.

(I like feline fat cats, but not human ones.)

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