The Path Is a Hoop

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Now up at The NDN Silver Blog, something different today, and something important. It's October, which means that it's National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It's an issue close to both our hearts, and so today's post is devoted, in its own way, through the filter of Wings's art, to a discussion of the topic.

Because of the topic, there's no sale information in today's post; it doesn't feel right. What there is, at the bottom, is a request to our family and friends and clients to get involved. If you need help locating an organization in your area, or one that specializes in a particular set of sub-issues or campaigns, contact me. I'll help you find one.

And of course, because this post deal with an issue that is truly a matter of life and death, we hope you'll share it on that basis.

Chi miigwech and ta'a.

It isn't about you.

Photo copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.

After the last few days, I'm starting feel as burned and broken — as dead — as those limbs.

This happened when the Sandusky story broke, and apparently, it's something we need to work through again and again and again. And then again.

Someday maybe I'll feel more up to writing about my own experiences.

For now, I've spent the last several days haunted and taunted by the images of my own past. Not even the basic sexism and discrimination, oh, no. This is a whole other depth. Reliving — refeeling — the touches and pinches and gropes and bites and things shoved into places where they're not welcome and not wanted. Memories as tactile physical sensations. 

And the blame, always the blame. It must be your fault. You had no business being out at night. Why are you wearing that skirt? Well, you must have done something to lead him on. You're a tease. You're a bitch. You're a slut. You're a whore. You asked for it.

Day in, day out. Every day, world without end, forever and ever, amen.

So you'll understand if I'm really not interested in tolerating hijacks and derailments. For me, for any of my sisters.

Because it's not about you.

This time, for fucking ONCE, it's about US.

#YesALLWomen.

Misogyny. I have some things to say.

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

No, this is not about Ice; circumstances remain essentially unchanged on the front. It's an image that reflects my mood right now.

For two days, I've been watching a storm blow up over the shootings in Santa Barbara — the white-hot air of honest and well-deserved rage crashing into the ice-cold and culturally stagnant front of misogyny.

I have some things to say. 

No, I'm not going to provide a bunch of footnotes, as links or otherwise. I've written about these issues for decades, and I've done plenty of recent writing here and elsewhere that covers the statistics, the demographic data, the pathologies and effects. You can find them easily enough; it's not my job to do others' work for them.

But as I said, i have some things to say.

If you think that it's appropriate to link arms in solidarity with the MRM, then you've just become a misogynist. I don't give a shit that you say it's about child custody; that bunch is about hating women, and you cannot support their agenda without being tainted by it. And, of course, we all know that when an MRA says, "It's about child custody," it's usually not; it's about not being able to control everything, including another autonomous human who happens to be a woman, and about not being able to treat her or the children in question as property.

And while we're on the subject: I don't give if a shit if they're "your children" biologically (or otherwise). THEY ARE NOT YOUR PROPERTY. Humans are not property, not commodities, not something to be owned, not even the smallest humans.

If you're actually going to hawk up the tired meme that says "there is no war on women": You're part of the war on us.

If you're going to hawk up that equally tired and vastly more dangerous old canard that you don't know a rapist (or, alternatively, that you don't know a woman who's been raped), then you're willfully blind to the point of delusion. That's me being nice, of course; more likely, the willful blindness stems not from anything excuseable, but from plain old misogyny.

If you're going to hawk up the tired and vicious old trope that it cannot be rape because [she was out at night she wore a short skirt she smiled at him she didn't scream he was her husband he was her father he was her brother he didn't have a gun he didn't leave a mark he didn't use a penis or any of the other bullshit excuses], then the kindest thing I can say is that you don't understand what the word "rape" means. More likely, you just don't give a damn.

And if you're defending those memes, like certain people do routinely (and a few of the white men and a couple of the white women in there doing so already have track records: You never met a POC to whom you would not condescend with whitesplaining, nor a woman to whom you would not mansplain, nor any bigotry that you would not defend in the service of the dominant culture): You're part of the problem. And I'll say it, flat out: You're a bigot. You're so invested in defending your privilege and the privilege of those like you that your first instinct, and the one upon which you act, is always, always to defend any statement, no matter how offensive, against the oppressed population it targets. Yes, I see you. Your motives are not the pure idealistic goals you like to flatter yourself into thinking you have.

When a dear friend of mine must must make her signature this . . . when another dear friend must write this . . . when yet another dear friend must write this . . . when a long-established bigot responds with this . . . this is a sick culture.

When my own history is this (and that is just the very top of the visible tip of a very large and very deep iceberg) . . . when merely for a being a girl a young Black girl is subjected to this . . . when our own women and girls are being abducted, assaulted, raped, tortured, trafficked, and murdered like this . . . this is a sick, violent, abusive, murderous culture.

It is a war on women. it is especially a war on women of color, but on all women. It is embedded in this culture, warp and weft, blood and bone. It is in the DNA of the twin evils upon which this country and culture were birthed, genocide and slavery. It is in the DNA of the most fundamental and inextricably intertwined twin characteristics of this country and this culture even today, colonialism and capitalism. 

It is the rape of the earth made manifest in brutalized bodies of our women.

And it has to stop.

I said last night that I have never known what it is to feel "unshaped by fear." Never.

That is true of too many of my sisters.

Go. Read this. Then read the comments. Make yourself do it. 

Can't? My heart bleeds. Because you know what? We have to LIVE IT. Every day.