Slut, and Slut-Shaming: Important Distinctions

This video deals head-on with the word slut, and how we use it to think about women and make them wrong--and not that they did wrong, but that they are wrong--which is the definition of shame. This video, by John Fugelsang, is very well presented and well worth the 3.75 minutes it takes to watch. This goes right to the heart of how we marginalize women, and it seems particularly timely in light of recent events on Twitter, and the shocking treatment of Caroline Criado-Perez, and many others. Tell me you don't see, on some level, a contribution you make to the status quo on this issue. Yeah. Let's stop that.

Escaping the Narcissistic Family IV

I've decided to remove this post.  Though I stand by the content of the observations I made, I am not comfortable with how I made them.

My thanks to everybody who took the time to comment, including comments that don't appear below.

If what you're doing isn't working, keep doing it. - Harper

At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, Stephen Harper conceded that the war on drugs isn't working, which strongly suggests a continued and vigorous prosecution of the war on drugs.  The failure of the war on drugs has been so obvious for so long, and drug policy has remained so obviously ineffective for so long, that there is no reason to expect anything to change.

What we're in denial about as a society is that using drugs appropriately is pleasurable, just like using sex appropriately is pleasurable.  And we don't prosecute people as criminals for adultery, so we shouldn't prosecute people as criminals for abusing drugs.  Making mistakes is easy.  Eating too much chocolate cake is easy.  When we criminalize the drug abusing behavior we perpetrate a secondary harm that is commonly more harmful than the behavior itself.

So getting arrested for possession of pot is more harmful to a human life than using pot.  And the fact that people are dying over pot, killing each other over the illegal profits, is as stupid as people killing each other over chocolate cake.  Let's stop it.  Let's stop criminalizing the behavior.  Let's stop criminalizing the supply chain.  Let's stop declaring war on people and things and start helping them instead. 

Where I live there is no market for illegal booze.  A kid walking down a street in my city has an easier time buying a joint than buying a beer.   Making something illegal makes a thing artificially scarce, which drives up the price, which drives up the profit, which is a gift to criminals, which is a gift to enforcement agencies, which is how our current system works; paradoxically promoting the thing it's intended to prevent.

Aren't the real criminals the people, like Harper, who know what's going on, who see the harm, who can do something about it and don't, even when the leaders of a variety of ostensibly friendly nations want to talk about change and want to talk about solutions?  We are the fat cats, and we are corrupt, and we are hurting ourselves by maintaining this silly status quo.

GOP Misogyny: Out There for the World to See

From MoveOn.org, this video powerfully repeats comments made by prominent US Republicans.

Guns Don't Kill People, Hoodies Kill People: Trayvon Martin II

I don't know what to say.

I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman.
- Geraldo Riviera

Well then, someone arrest the f**king hoodie.

Trayvon Martin: Wrong Place, Wrong Time.

Trayvon Martin is that kid who got shot by the neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, who is alive today because he had a gun, which was smart of him.  Guns don't kill people in much the same way that cigarettes don't kill people.  The only thing that can kill people is, of course, people.

Or maybe the flu.  I guess the flu can kill people, if it's Spanish or Swine or SARS, so I guess flus that start with 'S' are the most deadly.  Oh, and there's snakes of course, sometimes people can die at the hands of snakes, except snakes don't have hands, nor do they seem to need them. But it's clear that just because they can't handle guns doesn't mean snakes are safe, so clearly deadliness is not something we can strictly associate with guns, or cigarettes, really, since there are so many, many ways for people of frighteningly large minorities to die, and not just gunshot wounds.

So really it's more of a 'wrong place, wrong time' kind of thing, since in the right place at the right time everything would have been fine.  So Trayvon was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was dark, which is not surprising.  It could probably be proved that a lot of 'wrong place, wrong time' kinds of events happen when it's dark, and when seeing is clearly hard.

So the lighting could have been better, and if he was carrying skittles and ice tea it might have looked like a gun, which couldn't have killed people, but might have frightened George Zimmerman, and what if he was afraid?  It was dark, and Trayvon had dark skin so maybe it was harder to read his intentions, and if he didn't get a bag for his ice tea then probably he was grasping it and pointing it at George.

Nobody deserves to die, obviously, but just yesterday I was sitting at home and *bang* a bird flies into the living-room window and breaks it's neck, and so can we blame the window?  If the bird leaves it's nest it takes a chance, really, and hopes for the best for that day, like we all do.

To sum up, guns are a symbol of our freedom and our right to keep ourselves safe against--you know--the living-room windows that any of us might, and often do encounter on a dark night, or if it's so bright that you see a tree reflected in the window and you go to fly into that tree and *bang*.  Also, if I was Mr. Martin, I would think about carrying a gun in the future, not so much to hurt somebody, but so I could feel safer, and to exercise my inalienable second amendment rights.

Simplified: Why it's Easier to Take the Side of the Perpetrator

Through my sister, through her therapist, Andrew Feldmar, I read and re-posted this quote on Facebook.

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering."
--Judith Lewis Herman

But after a little Googling I found more of the quote and some info about the author.  Judith Lewis Herman is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Training Director of the Victims of Violence Program at The Cambridge Hospital.  A fuller version of the quote follows, and loses none of it's power...

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of the pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering...

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.

The perpetrator's arguments prove irresistible when the bystander faces them in isolation. Without a supportive social environment, the bystander usually succumbs to the temptation to look the other way. This is true even when the victim is an idealized and valued member of society. Soldiers in every war, even those who have been regarded as heroes, complain bitterly that no one wants to know the real truth about war. When the victim is already devalued (a woman, a child), she may find that the most traumatic events in her life take place outside the realm of socially validated reality. Her experience becomes unspeakable. . .

To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered."

This crystalizes for me some dynamics I've observed in my family of origin, where injustices seem to be swept under the table, and "the problem" is the person who is upset about having been victimized.