Blessing versus Privilege

I grew up in very religious family.  Even today when I have dinner at home,  my family regularly prays and thanks God for the "blessings that He has provided us."  I'm not writing this to dispute the idea of being grateful and praising God for things that we have every right to be thankful for, and especially those things for which we do nothing to deserve.  But as I've grown up and become immersed in the world of feminist philosophy, I have, in my own life, begun to recognize my "privilege" much more often than I recognize God's "blessings."  And it's not that I think that the two concepts are in direct contrast or competition with each other, but I do believe that talking only about blessings can lead to a form of apathy and even smug indifference to the plight of those around us that is exceedingly dangerous.

Talking about and acknowledging privilege, in the feminist and progressive movements, is an active process.  It's about recognizing those things that we have simply by nature of our economic, social, political, racial, or gendered place in life that those who are oppressed in those same areas do not have.  It's also (and this is, in my opinion,  a far more difficult and important process) recognizing and combatting those systems that allow the privilege to remain.

Talking about blessings, specifically in a religious or spiritual context, doesn't ever call the acknowledger to action.  I can acknowledge the great blessing that I have because I was born in and now live in two countries which both, respectively, allow me to practice my religion without condemnation or any real constraint.  This is a frequent refrain in both Canadian and American church prayers.  But this acknowledgement is passive. I can acknowledge this religious freedom, thank my God for it, and then move on with my life.  But if, instead, I acknowledge that this religious freedom is a privilege that originates in my socio-economic, national, and racial status, I must then also realize that there are oppressive systems (whether political, social, or cultural) at play in countries across the world that deny other people this same privilege. When I acknowledge this hard truth, I must also commit myself to changing these oppressive systems in any way that I can.

This same thought process is true for countless other hard truths.  And I think this difference between passively acknowledging and being grateful for undeserved blessings and actively recognizing, checking, and committing to changing systems of privilege and oppression is one of the major reasons why churches in the Western world are plagued by apathy.

I think we Christians do ourselves and our God a disservice when we acknowledge these same truths using the language of blessing and gratitude.

How can I thank God for my whiteness?  Or my wealth?  Not only did I not do anything for these attributes, but God didn't give them to me as a positive thing to be grateful for.  To think that way is to place the different races and socio-economic statuses on a scale of good to bad, blessing to curse.  If I were to thank God for my whiteness, then doesn't that mean that being black would somehow be a negative?  A non-blessing?  A burden? A curse?

How could I think this way?  How could anyone (or at least anyone who doesn't openly and joyfully embrace racist ideology)?  But if I call my place in this country, my freedom from the tensions embroiling Ferguson a "God-given blessing," isn't that exactly what I'm doing?

I think churches and religious people across the Western world need to move beyond this passive gratitude. There's nothing wrong with thanking God, but I think we need to critically analyzing the thing which we thank God for.  We need to ask ourselves, is this really something to be grateful for? Is it a blessing? Or is it just me enjoying the benefits of being on the winning side of an injustice?  And if that's what it is, then I will not be grateful.  And neither should you.  We should all commit ourselves to analyzing and acknowledging when we are on the winning side of such an injustice, and instead of thanking our Deity for the win, we should commit ourselves to fighting to end the injustice that allows for someone else to be on the losing end of the equation.

I am not grateful for my whiteness.  Instead, I recognize it, acknowledge it, and commit myself to the lifelong process of checking my privilege at the door, seeking out the voices of those who are not white, so I can come to know the best, the most effective ways for me to engage in the struggle to end the racial injustice that allows the colour of my skin to be a privilege at all.

I know a lot of people who strive to view themselves and to be what they label "colour-blind."  I know my Dad will always answer the question of what race he is with the answer, "human."  And while for a long time I loved this response,  and even used it a few times myself, we can't whitewash the systems of racial injustice away simply by pretending that we don't see them.  We can't pretend that I would've faced the same treatment walking down the street in my Naperville, IL next to a cop car that Michael Brown faced in Ferguson, MO.  Calling yourself colour-blind or labeling yourself human instead of white doesn't change the vastly different treatment that Michael Brown and young black men across this country face every time they encounter a member of law enforcement.

If I went to any number of local churches this coming Sunday, I could no doubt hear many a pastor include in a prayer a message of gratitude for the supposedly God-given blessing of living in an area that is not plagued by the racial violence and unrest that is facing Ferguson, Missouri right now.  But what good does such an acknowledgment of supposed blessing actually do?  It allows for and even enables our own innate inclinations towards apathy.  I can easily sit idly by and simply acknowledge that I am blessed to live in a majority upper middle class, white area of the county.  But if, instead, I recognize and proclaim the hard truth that I am not faced with the violence and unrest here in DuPage County precisely because of the privilege I have because of the systems of privilege I enjoy due to my skin colour and my socio-economic status, I must then also recognize that other people, through just the same non-existent effort as my own, do not have this same privilege.  Instead these people are oppressed by these same systems because they live in poorer areas and/or were born with brown or black skin.

And this isn't just about race.  There are so many other hard truths in the world, so many injustices that can just as easily  be viewed as "God-given blessings."  We have got to stop being passive.  Stop being grateful.  We have got to "ready our heart's teeth.  Chew through the etiquette leash," to begin fighting injustice everywhere we see it, every time we contribute to it or benefit from it.

Apathy and Ellen Page

Like so much of the queer world, I freaked the fuck out when Ellen Page came out this past Friday.  And not because I was in any way surprised that Ellen Page is gay.  I wasn't.  Like so many other people, gay or straight (or anywhere else on any spectrum), I was about 99.999% sure that Ellen Page is gay.  And yet, as much as there may be a decent sized list of people who the queer community (especially the online queer feminist community to which I belong) "knows" is queer, every single time one of them actually takes their own affirmative steps to come out of their closets, to declare their own truths, we all cheer and freak out so loud and for so long that we start to forget there was ever a time when that person actually wasn't out.

For days after I saw the internet explode with Ellen Page's announcement, I carried on my life with a huge, probably incredibly goofy-looking grin on my face.  And at first I couldn't figure out why this one person's coming out was making me so incredibly happy.  I mean, I cheered and celebrated when Raven-Symone and Michelle Rodriguez came out last year.  I was happy.  But neither Raven's gay marriage celebrating tweet nor M-Rod's bisexual rumour confirming interview made me this ecstatic for days on end.  At first I thought it was just because of how much I love Ellen Page's movies or how much I crush on her, but, let's be honest, Michelle Rodriguez definitely falls more into the latter category for me than Ellen Page does.

And then I thought maybe it's because Raven and Michelle Rodriguez both have histories of awkwardly, defensively, and at times destructively denying rumours of their respective queerness.  And Ellen Page just avoided the subject (or even tongue-in-cheek poked fun at in that 2008 SNL skit).  Or it could be because Ellen Page is still a huge, and likely still rising star, while M-Rod has a long-term and at times messy career of always playing the same bad-ass type of character and Raven's claim to fame rises mostly out her career as a kid on the "Cosby Show" and a teen in Disney's "That's So Raven."

But I think the real reason behind my joyous reaction to Ellen Page coming out is simply because of the way that she came out.  As the icon of gay Ellens would put it, she owned her own truth.  Ellen Page got on that stage and didn't just say, "hey world, I'm gay, now explode!" (even though that's pretty much all that got reported/tweeted in the immediate aftermath).  Instead, she stood up there and slowly built up to her announcement through an exposition of Hollywood culture and societal pressure, both on gender presentation and sexuality.  And, yeah, Ellen Page said those three words "I am gay," and those may forever be the most memorable words from her speech (and after those seemingly simple words, you could see her entire body sigh).  But I truly hope that those words are not the only ones remembered from her speech on Friday.  Because that wasn't the pinnacle of her speech, not by a long shot.  Instead, she went on to explain her own coming out (and why she hadn't until this point), acknowledged her own privilege in being able to come out in such an accepting setting, and ended by saying "thank you" to everyone who enables young people to find the strength to claim their own truth.

Now, while most of the response to Ellen Page coming out was positive and supportive, and I honestly didn't see much hateful or negative backlash, I did see way too many dismissive comments, as Riese over at Autostraddle so beautifully dissects:

Ellen Page said she’d been scared to reveal her truth, and in response way too many people responded with, ”In other news, the sky is blue.” The fact that so many felt comfortable being that rude to someone who’d just publicly shared a private struggle speaks volumes about how important they consider the issues of gay women to be. We should be wary of these people. People like them are why so many believe this country is post-racial or post-feminist when this country is racist as fuck and hates women. This country loves to pass a few laws and then declare everything officially fixed forever. This country has a short memory.

When people respond to a high profile celebrity coming out with some variation of "so what?" or "well duh! who cares?" they perpetuate the notion that the fight is over.  That gay youth don't still face rejection, homelessness, drug addictions, depression, and suicide at exponentially higher rates than non-queer youth.  And the vast majority of these issues stem from familial or communal rejection of them once they come out or are outed.

It can be soul-crushing for a queer person who is struggling with the possibility of coming out of the closet to less than supportive family and friends to see those types of responses to the beautifully eloquent coming out of someone like Ellen Page.  When you are sitting in the darkness of your own closet, having just felt a little bit of warmth and light shine on you because of the encouragement of Ellen Page, and then you see so many self-proclaimed "allies" shun the idea that there is any bravery at all (or even any point for that matter) in someone like Ellen Page ever publicly declaring her label, her truth, you want to slam yourself so tightly back into that closet, nearly forgetting to take note of the incredible support that Ellen Page and her true supporters and community have to offer.

I know what it's like to live for years in a closet.  I've been there.  I spent so much of my life refusing to even let myself face my own truth, the reality of my own attractions and desires.  I wouldn't even acknowledge it in my head because I knew (or thought I knew) that as long as I never faced it myself, I would never have to face even the slightest possibility of sharing that truth with anyone around me.  And I had the vast majority of these frightened and denial-ridden conversations with myself while attending American University, a place so imbued with support and pride for LGBT issues that Westboro Baptist Church (ahem...cult, not church) came to protest us.  And while I felt (and still feel) so much pride at how incredible my school was at embracing and encouraging queers, I still engaged in this circular, internalized-homophobic thought process.  I didn't come out to myself until a good year after I left American.  And, yes, there are many other personal reasons behind the timing of my own journey, but what I know is this: having an immediately supportive community doesn't make it somehow magically easy to come out of the closet.  Sure, on some surface level, would it have been easier for me to face my own truth, to come out as queer, while still at AU?  Of course, without a doubt.  But I also know that if I had come out publicly while at AU, chances are I never would've moved home, never would've put in the work, the sweat and tears, to rebuild my relationship with my family.  Instead, I waited until my family and I were on solid ground for the first time in years before I felt I could even face my own truth for myself.  And then I came out to my family.  And then to the rest of my world.  Now, from a distance, this might seem like I waited until my family and I were on solid ground only to rip the metaphorical rug out from under us by coming out.  I've had people, family members even, say this very thing to me.  But what I know is that I put far too much blood, sweat, and tears into rebuilding my relationship with my parents to allow even a portion of that relationship to be built on the lie that I was perpetuating, by omission if nothing else, that I was straight.  I needed to rebuild that relationship, and then I had to reveal my whole truth, before we could ever be on truly solid ground.  That's my journey.  That's my story.

So when people try to make the argument that coming out in front of an overwhelmingly supportive community like the Human Rights Campaign isn't brave at all, they are flat out wrong.  Because coming out, declaring the truth of your queerness, involves so much more than just needing an immediate pat on the back by those in close proximity to you.  Coming out is a process of finally facing yourself, acknowledging your own truth, and then figuring out where that leaves you in the many different worlds that you navigate.

Some people think that, because they aren't actively spewing hate at a gay person, they don't pull the trigger when a black person makes them nervous (or do but justify it by claiming stand-your-ground), and they don't intentionally try to treat the women in their workplace as less important/intelligent/etc. than their male colleagues, they are not in any way perpetuating the institutions of homophobia, racism, and sexism, respectively.  But for anyone who really takes the time to dig into any of these issues, they have to at some point come to the realization that these oppressive institutions are still very much alive and well.  And once you reach that conclusion, but look around and don't see public lynchings, anti-sodomy laws, or lack of women's suffrage, at some point you also have to realize that it's not just the faceless, nameless "other" that perpetuates these institutions.  It's us.  It's you and me.  Every day we let our own apathy lull us into contentment, every time we let ourselves believe that we don't play a role in perpetuating these oppressive institutions, we are, by that very act of apathy, perpetuating them.

 For the past couple months I've been wrestling with the idea of how to fight against the pull of my own apathy, to truly fight for the things for which my heart breaks.  There's this poem, "Etiquette Leash," by the amazing queer spoken word artist and activist, Andrea Gibson, that has opened my eyes and challenged me so much that I find myself repeating it to myself over and over again each day.  As I was editing this post, I kept trying to figure out which section of the poem I wanted to include, but I don't think it carries nearly the same weight in snippets.  So here's the whole thing:

I want a good heart

I want it to be made of good stuff

I want the stain glass window builder to be my drinking buddy

I want to drink only the punch

of a million genderqueer school kids

taking free martial arts lessons to survive recess

I stopped calling myself a pacifist

when I heard Gandhi told women

they should not physically fight of their rapists

I believe there is such a think as a non-violent fist

I believe the earth is a woman muzzled

beaten, tied to the coal slinging tracks

I believe the muzzled have every right

to rip of the Bible Belt and take it to the patriarchy's ass

I know these words are going to get me in trouble

It is never polite to throw back the tear gas

Just like it's never polite to bring enough life rafts

They crowd the balcony where the wealthy shine their jewels

But sometimes love

sometimes real love

is fucking rude

It's interrupting a wedding mid-vow

just as the congregation is about to cry

to stand up your pew to say

"Is everyone here clear on how diamonds are mined?"

Hallelujah 

to every drag queen at Stonewall

who made weapons out of her stiletto shoes

Hallelujah 

to the Blues keeping the neighbourhood awake

To the activist standing in the snow outside of the circus

holding a ten foot photograph of a baby elephant in chains

when it's probably some little kid's birthday

Hallelujah 

to making everyone uncomfortable

To the terrible manners of truth

To refusing to clean the blood off the plate

Bend this spine into a bow

I can pull across the cello of my "Speak up!"

Love readies its heart's teeth

Chews through the etiquette leash

Takes down the cellphone tower

after millions of people die in wars in the Congo

fighting for the minerals that make our cellphones

Love blows up the dam

Chains itself to the redwood tree, to the Capitol building

when a trailer of Mexican immigrants 

are found dead on a south Texas roadside

Love insists well-intentioned white people

officially, stop calling themselves colour-blind

Insists hope lace its fucking boots

Always calls out the misogynist, racist, homophobic joke

refuses to be a welcome mate where hate wipes its feet

Love asks questions at the most inappropriate times

Overturns the Defense of Marriage Act

then walks the Pride Parade 

asking when the plight of poor, single mothers

will ignite our hearts into action like that

Love is not polite

deadlocks rush hour traffic 

with a hundred stubborn, screaming bikes

Hallelujah

to every suffrage movement hunger strike

Hallelujah

to insisting they get your pronouns right

Hallelujah

to tact never winning our spines

To taking our power all the way back

to that first glacier that had to learn how to swim

To never turning our heads from a single ugly truth

To knowing we live in a time when beauty

recruits its models outside the doors of eating disorder clinics

That is not a metaphor

This is not a line to a poem

An Indian farmer walks into a crowd of people 

and stabs himself in the chest

to protest the poisoning of his lands

A Buddhist monk burns himself alive 

on the crowded streets of Saigon

A U.S. soldier hangs himself

with his enemy's dog tags around his holy neck

May my heart be as heavy as a tuba

in the front row of the Mardi Gras parade five months after Katrina

May it weigh the weight of the world

so it might anchor the sun

so it might hold me to my own light

till I am willing to sweat as much as I cry

till I am willing to press into the clay of our precious lives

A window

Might our grace riot the walls down

May the drought howl us awake

May we rush into the streets

to do the work of opening each other's eyes

May our good hearts forever be too loud

to let the neighbours sleep

It's so very easy for me to rest in my own privileged apathy, to not do that hard work of opening the eyes of those around me.  To know and feel the pain and the heartache caused by so many different problems in the world, but to justify my own silence, my own lack of action by claiming that I'm not actively perpetuating any of these institutions (at least not purposefully).  But this shuffling of blame and responsibility is precisely what allows these institutions to remain so active.

Every time a celebrity comes our or there's a story of a young gay kid committing suicide, and so many self-proclaimed "allies" respond with "so what?" to the former and "I would never bully a gay kid" to the latter, the institution of homophobia rolls on.  Every time we see stories of black boys like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis being killed and either refuse to acknowledge the role racism plays in their deaths or separate ourselves from it by saying that we don't shoot every black kid we see walking down the street in a hoodie, we are turning our eyes from the overwhelming racism that is ravaging this supposedly great nation.

How do we not see that I, a cisgender, upper class, well-educated white woman, will never have to justify wearing a hoodie, listening to headphones and walking home alone at night to the man with a gun.  That man with a gun isn't going to assume that I'm casing every house I walk by trying to figure out which one I should break into.  But if I were a young black man walking home alone with my hood up and my headphones in, that's what people assume.  That's what George Zimmerman assumed.

I drive around in my economy car blaring my music, mostly alternative but sometimes hip hop, and even at gas stations, sometimes I'll let it blare while I run inside to grab a snack.  I have never once had to worry that if I don't turn my music down when someone asks, that person may pull a gun on me because my music in combination with my skin tone made him "justifiably" afraid.  But that's exactly what happened when Michael Dunn saw Jordan Davis blaring his music at a gas station.  I'll never have to face that.

My parents have never once had to instruct me on how to act when I'm around a police officer.  They've never had to tell me to be constantly aware of how fast my hands move to my pocket for ID in connection with how quickly the cop's hand can move to unbuckle his gun holster.  I've never had those conversations.  I never will.  Because I am white.

My criminal procedure professor from last semester told us that her African-American husband, an Ivy-educated, powerful attorney, would never feel comfortable saying "no" to a cop who asks to search his car.  Not because of the law.  This man knows the law and knows he has every right to deny a consent-search.  But because his skin colour immediately makes most cops suspicious.  It doesn't matter that this man drives a really nice car, is well-educated, articulate and upper class.  His skin is black, so he does not feel safe exercising his full Constitutional rights.

That is the world that we live in.  That is a society that we perpetuate.

For years, I've wanted to be a prosecutor.  I still do.  I clerk at a local State's Attorney's Office and I'm earning my Criminal Litigation certificate along with my J.D.  But increasingly I find myself wondering how I'm going to operate within the modern criminal justice system when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the modern criminal justice system operates as a new slave system, a modern Jim Crow.  Is it my own apathy towards these heart-wrenching truths that keeps me on this path?  Or am I simply allowing myself to prioritize the feminist struggle over the anti-racist struggle?  Is that prioritization in itself a form of apathy?

These are my digressions, my internal struggles.  And I will likely wrestle with these issues for years to come.  Finding intersectional answers to the intertwining problems of this worlds is never easy.  But what I do know is that I refuse to remain silent about these issues.  I won't stand by and let people claim that Ellen Page's courage doesn't matter.  I won't stand still when I hear those around me, subtly or otherwise, perpetuating racism and sexism.  I have to speak up.  I have to give voice to the screams inside my chest.

Right before Ellen Page uttered those simple words "I'm here today because I am gay," those words that shattered the internet for a little while, she said that she drew on the "strength and support" of the people at the conference.  Likewise, people like me and other queer youth, whether out or still in the closet, draw on the strength of high profile and courageous people like Ellen Page.  And like Ellen Page, "maybe I can make a difference.  To help others have an easier and more hopeful time.  Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility."  This blog is a part of that speaking up and fighting back.  But I know that I have to do more.  I'm constantly learning and trying to figure out how to keep fighting, to figure out the balance.  What I've realized over the last couple years though, what has become increasingly clear to me, is that I cannot afford, this world cannot afford, for me or anyone else to remain politely silent, waiting our turn to speak or holding our tongues to allow those around us to remain apathetic and comfortable.  We must speak up.  We must fight back.  We must do the work to make each other see, to not rest, to not be afraid.

To end, I will quote Andrea Gibson once more:

I don't believe we're hateful
I think mostly we're just asleep
But the math adds up the same
You can't call up the dead and say,
"Sorry, we were looking the other way."

There are names and faces behind our apathy
eulogies beneath our choices
There are voices deep as roots
thundering unquestionable truth
through the white noise that pacifies our ears.
Don't tell me we don't hear
Don't tell me we don't hear
When the moon is slain
when the constellations disperse like shrapnel
don't you think it's time
something changed?

Facing Slavery

I watch in horror as the images splay across the big screen.  The kidnappers not caring about the man and family they were destroying.  The sadistic slaveholder forcing Solomon to whip Patsy, a fellow slave, until her back is ravaged beyond repair.  The slaver with, seemingly, some semblance of a heart admitting to Solomon that he doesn't want to know the truth because simply knowing would cost too much.

I could go on and explain just how deeply the movie 12 Years a Slave affected me.  It's one of those movies that was so incredibly painful to watch that, although I will never regret seeing it, I doubt I'll ever watch it again.  It makes me question humanity and God and everything I know and love about the world, about humanity, about myself.

It's easy for me to attempt to relieve myself, my culture, the only world that I have ever lived in, of the guilt of these horrible historical wrongs.  And as much as the scourge of slavery and racism and hate have seeped into and stained this country for eternity, it is easy to try and separate ourselves from it.

So very easy.

It's easy to say that this doesn't happen now, not here.  That we're somehow better than them.  More evolved.  More compassionate.  More willing to see the image of God in every person, no matter our demographic differences.

But there are more slaves in the world today than ever existed throughout the history of the "legal" slave trade.

And again, it's easy to imagine and believe that the modern slave trade is a "third world" problem.  I follow and love and support organizations like IJM and the A21 campaign whose entire mission is to rescue people from the international slave trade.

It's so easy to just donate money to organizations such as these, and still remain blissfully and willfully ignorant.

Here's the truth: the slave trade is alive and well in America.

Here's an even harder truth: the slave trade exists in America because there is a demand for it, here and now.

Every year in every city that hosts the Superbowl or any other major sporting event, the rates of sex trafficking skyrockets in the days before and after the event.  There are always women and children being trafficked blocks from the White House and the Capital, especially during national events such as the a Presidential Inauguration.  Florida has some of the highest rates of child sex slavery due, at least in part, to the perpetual interstate tourist demand.  Demand is especially high during Spring Break season.

 This is the stinging indictment that a former child prostitute laid at the feet of Georgetown Law School:

"With conviction and irreverence, Frundt tells the story her staff told her she shouldn’t — one she agreed not to tell — about the time she was walking the streets at night near D.C. She was approached by two johns who mistook her for a prostitute. Frundt told the men they had the wrong idea. She asked where they were from. 'They said Georgetown Law,' Frundt says. 'Yeah, they go to Georgetown Law.' She doesn’t let it sink in. She jams it in. 'That’s right. They’re right next to you.'  In the crowd, there is a look these speakers know well. It’s not fear, nor compassion, nor grief.  It is shame."

So, no, those who keep up the demand for the slave trade in America are not some faceless monsters.  Sex slavery isn't perpetrated by clusters of evil people in far away places devoid of human connections and emotions.  It's an economy trafficked in by our friends, our acquaintances, our classmates, our neighbours.  It's us.

It's the good looking guy not much older than me in a downtown Naperville bar.  The one with the flash of recognition and the gall to say "hello." A nonchalant greeting from a "client" she wished was long forgotten.

I have lived in Naperville, IL nearly my entire life.  It's known as a great place to raise kids, as the home of a fantastic library, and as a bustling, friendly, and fun downtown.

It's also the home to that john who said "hello" like he was bumping into an old high school classmate.  And it's the home to former and current slaves.  I don't know how many.  So often, it's easier for me to just not think about them at all.  To pretend that Naperville is just this privileged, elite home to so many things about the capitalist society that I hate.

It's also easy for my feelings to flash towards revulsion when I see a prostitute crossing the street in the shitty part of Chicago that I drove through, not realizing that this more "direct" route to the airport would bring me face-to-face with my own privileged assumptions I thought I had long rejected.

As much as I know that I'm going to spend the rest of my life actively fighting the horrors of sex crimes, I have no clue how I will survive.  I don't know how I'll muster the courage to not break down and lash out, not just against the men I will try to convict, but against the society that, with blissful, conceited, and too often willful ignorance, allows the demand for sex slaves to continue.

How am I supposed to live in a world where the horrors depicted so brutally in 12 Years a Slave have not ended?  How do I keep my faith in the beauty of humanity when humanity is so damn good at justifying and perpetuating and, perhaps more heartwrenchingly, ignoring its own brutality.

How will I face this brutality day in and day out for the rest of my life and still keep my faith?

Living Through The Violence

"What I’m trying to tell you is that violence against girls and women is in every move we make, whether it is big violence or small, explicit or hidden behind the word father. Priest. Lover. Teacher. Coach. Friend. I’m trying to explain how you can be a girl and a woman and travel through male violence like it’s part of what living a life means. Getting into or out of a car. A plane. Going through a door to your own home. A church. School. Pool. It can seem normal. It can seem like just the way things are."

I don't know how to write this.

I've been reading a lot of first person stories recently of women, powerful, warrior women, who have survived and thrived through horrible experiences of trauma and assault and brutal violence. So much violence.  And I've read about how women live their entire lives perpetually facing explicit violence.  Violence perpetrated by the hands, feet, mouths and bodies of other humans and violence in the form of the constant triggers the victims, the survivors, the warriors face every goddamn day of their lives.

Violence in the form of the invasion of women's bodies by States that perpetually refuse to recognize and acknowledge women's privacy, women's humanity, women's agency.  I know so many people who have lived through so many of these things and more.  I've devoted my life over and over again to fighting against this pervasive and explicit sexual violence.

Yet I've never personally felt that it was right to call myself a "victim," a "survivor," or a "warrior."  I've never faced the type of violence that threatens and injures and maims my physical body.

So I don't know how to write about the type of violence that I've faced my entire life.  I'm not sure how to claim my place in this worldwide narrative of women warriors when I don't have a quintessential "survivor" story.  And I don't know how to write about any of this without in some way diminishing the many heart wrenching, brutally painful, and exquisitely beautiful narratives of these warriors.  I refuse to do that, and if I hear even a single comment that I am, in fact, diminishing those narratives, or claiming a place in this narrative of violence against women that I cannot or should not claim, this post will come down.  In a heartbeat.  These survivors and warriors and victims have faced enough minimization and dismissal and excuses.  I won't perpetuate that.  So please, call me out if this whole thing is out of line.

So how do I explain facing a lifetime of violence that never once invaded my physical body?

I could try and write about how certain States subject me to the potential for violence if I ever chose to even consider an abortion or even go on certain forms of birth control.  I could talk about how my rights to control my own body depend entirely upon my zip code and financial status.  I could write about the constant, pervasive, and seemingly amorphous threat of sexual violence that every woman faces her entire life.  Or I could talk about how, as a member of the female community, I am injured every time one of my warrior sisters is triggered in any way.

And all of these things are true to a certain extent.

I could talk about how much women's lives and narratives and art and abilities and talents are erased because they are placed in a little box.  I could explain that those issues stereotypically labelled "women's issues" aren't special interests at all. They are human rights, not women's rights.  And every time these rights are denied, an act of violence is committed against every woman.  Against me, against you, against your mother, your sister, your professor, your friend, your lover.

I could ask how to move forward in a world where over fifty percent of the population are prized far more for their subjective levels of physical attractiveness than for what they have to offer to this world.

I could ask how a Christian can believe that all human beings are made in God's image and still view one class of people as somehow "better than," or in any way innately superior to another entire class of people.  I could talk about how we're fed this language, these beliefs, that man is to be the "head" of women just as Christ is the head of the Church.  Men are justified in requiring submission from the women in their lives by this religious cover, and that attitude spreads throughout so much of society.  I could discuss how much I hate that so many amazing women throughout history and presently have had their stories, talents, and entire lives stolen from them under this same religious cover.  I think about the amazingly talented and gifted women that I know who have devoted their entire lives to standing behind the men in their lives, feeling that it is their duty as women to be perpetually hidden, only existing to pray for and serve their husbands.  How do we not see this as the injustice and the travesty that it is?  I could dig into and explain why we should view this erasure of women as the genocide that it is.

I could talk about the violence I feel every time I'm harassed on the street or even on the internet.  I could explain how I feel stripped bare and objectified and victimized every time a stranger rakes his eyes across my body and leers and tells me he wants me.

But how do I explain the intimate violence felt every time a professor, classmate, or even friend or family member fails to even grasp the existence (never mind the extent) of the oppression that I (and every other woman) face every day of my life?  How do I talk about the feeling of having part of myself cut from me every time I hear myself or other women talked about as less than complete humans, but instead referred to as receptacles, incubators, or sexual objects?  How do I talk about the violence I feel every time my agency is denied?  I'm not even sure how to adequately explain the concept of agency...

I've lived with this feeling, with this knowledge, that, because I am woman, I am "less than" my entire life.  I've talked about that before, but the violence that I feel, the pain that cuts me open on a daily basis is so much deeper than just the abstract concept of women as somehow lesser because of their sex.  How do you explain wounds and scars and pain that no one ever sees?  Because we've been taught that this is simply life.  That we have to live with this violence, because "boys will be boys."  Or, worse, we're told that it's our fault.

I've spend so much of my life basing my own value and worth on the external: on my body, and, more than that, on the ability of my body to be sexualized, objectified, and desired by the men around me.  As much as I've learned about and studied and, yes, experienced sexual harassment on the street, there is always this dualistic reaction that I have and that I hear about from other women.  When I am harassed, yes, I feel disgusted and ashamed and embarrassed and naked and so many other emotions.  But I also have always felt a certain amount of vindication.  Because I wasn't just harassed: I was also seen as worthy.  More explicitly, my ability as a woman to sexually arouse men has been vindicated.

It has taken every one of my nearly 23 years on this earth to in any way convince myself that my worth is not based upon my ability to attract and arouse men.  As much as I may have verbally claimed that truth all of my life, I still struggle against it to this very day.  This is the violence that I face most often: the inward voice placed there by this world telling me that I am only worthy insofar as a man deems me sexually appealing.  In the past, this belief ripped me open and exposed me and terrorized me in ways that I can't even admit out loud, never mind on this public blog.  I feel shame and disgust and filth because of what this violence reduced me to.  In so many ways, this world convinced me that I was the one inflicting this violence, because I was perpetuating and enabling it.  And I will likely always feel compelled to seek that same type of violent vindication of my value and worth.

These wounds run so deep, but they are so very hidden and are only beginning to be exposed.  So, again, I ask, how am I supposed to heal from a life of violence that can hardly be explained, never mind seen or heard?  How am I supposed to do something so seemingly simple as sit in a class when the professor nonchalantly claims that women are no longer discriminated against because...Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton...

I don't even know how to sit here and listen to this, never mind try and explain to him the violent oppression that women still face every single day.  It's not always in the form of a fist or a gun.  It can be triggered by something so seemingly simple as a text message or a song or look.  And we have to live with and through this violence and oppression every goddamn minute of every goddamn day.

I could (and have and do) rant against the "patriarchy" or the ignorance or the blatant inaccuracies in this professor's claim.  Or I could spend hours trying to calmly explain every tangible way that statements such as these obscure real economic and political disparities.  But how do I explain to someone who has never felt it the violence that women face every day?  Especially when the violence has become so fucking "normal" that half the time it's hard to even recognize each time that it happens.  But we feel it.  Every day.  And every day we have to live through it.

So maybe I don't know exactly how to write about this.  Maybe none of what I've just said makes much sense.  But I will keep writing and keep fighting and keep ranting and keep exposing the violence women, myself included, face every day.   Women's silence and acquiescence has been our prison, the violent and hidden cage placed on us throughout history.  So even if I don't know how to write this, I won't be silent anymore.

Deeper Faith or Sacrilege?

For my whole life, I was taught and (to a certain extent) believed that fostering a growing, dynamic Christian faith had to look a certain way.  I'm not talking about the way you are supposed to live your outward (to use the "Christian-ese" term) horizontal faith -- i.e. how  you express your faith through words and actions.  I'm talking about the more introspective, inward, "vertical" aspects of faith.  No matter where I stood with God or my changing belief system or calling, I have always thought that, to be a truly mature, growing Christian, I had to have at least a certain minimum of (relatively) structured prayer and Bible reading time and I absolutely had to be involved in a Church community (though the latter didn't need to be anything near traditional).  And there have been times in my life when each of these components have been crucial, not just to my spiritual well-being, but my mental and emotional well-being too.  When I struggled most heavily with depression, suicide, and cutting, I can honestly say that being able to cry out to God in prayer, no matter the dark or angry content of my thoughts, helped keep me alive.  When I was struggling with figuring out who God is, who I am, and/or how to reconcile the two, reading the Bible and being a part of a relatively traditional faith community were essential to that process.  I know that without having spent long hours digging into the Bible to figure out who God is, I would not have the stable foundation on which to build the rest of my life and beliefs.

But here's the thing: when I was in those times of digging into the Word to figure out who God is to help build that foundation, I, without fail, always felt so challenged by what I read.  I would dig into traditional expository commentaries and look online for historical contexts for passages and read dozens of both conservative and liberal interpretations of passages.  I never ceased to be challenged.

 A month or so ago, I figured I should really try to get back into that habit.  I love feeling challenged and stretched  and pushed to grow in my understanding of who God is, of the way I look at the world.  I love seeing, for the first time, a new and beautiful aspect of broken humanity that makes me love it all the more.  And yet, when I tried to dig into a passage the past several attempts, I never felt any of those things.

Now this isn't me bitching and complaining about a spiritual dry spell.  That's not it all.  Because recently I've been reading so many different things and engaging in an amazing community and feeling so very challenged in my understanding of the world and of people and, yes, of my faith.

But because of the way I was raised and this belief system that I've always had about what a growing internal faith life is "supposed" to look like, it honestly never even dawned on my that the things I have been reading are challenging and growing my faith.

Because I've always looked at faith as this two-dimensional foundation upon which I am supposed to view every other belief that I hold or thing that I learn.  Mostly, I've always viewed my faith as something just relating to religious beliefs.

But my faith is so much bigger than a set of beliefs regarding who or what deity I believe in and then coming to an understanding of the finite ways that that set of beliefs regarding that deity is supposed to affect the way I think and live.

At its core, my faith is a belief that God called me to love my fellow humans and serve them and fight for justice for them.  But that calling, that faith, is so much bigger than just religious beliefs. 

It's who I am.

Yes, my specifically "religious" beliefs explain why I believe certain things and even act or think certain ways.  But my religion falls far short of being able to explain my whole belief system and every thing that I think about the world, about humanity, and about my place as an agent of change in each.  Yeah, my religious beliefs, those things that I've learned from my more "traditional" faith-related activities, definitely inform many parts of my belief system and my desired role in the world's conversation and economy.  But those things I learned in Christian schools and in church and even in traditional Biblical study fail miserably to adequately explain so many crucial parts of who I am and of what I believe.

I've said for years that I believe that God gave us rational minds to help us figure out the world.  I've also frequently said that God gave us the ability to create art in so many diverse forms, and far be it from us to arbitrarily name certain pieces or aspects of art and culture as sufficiently "Christian" to be able to teach us faith-related lessons.  I've never believed that God recorded every aspect of truth and insight necessary to navigate the world exclusively in the Bible.  To me, it's simply a ludicrous thought to believe that a book written by human hands thousands of years ago (no matter your belief about the extent or degree of its Divine origin)  could help a 21st century adult navigate something as (seemingly) benign as social media.  I believe that in so many different aspects of life, God wants us to become well-rounded, well informed, rational people who live by the beliefs that come from that well-rounded and informed rational thought.  There are so many issues and problems we face today that a human Jesus simply could not have grasped and, as much as Jesus being God may have granted this extra knowledge and understanding, the vocabulary and culture Jesus was confined to couldn't have allowed the adequate expression of so many things that are crucial to understanding and living in this world today.

But as much as I believed all of these things, when it dawned on me recently that my faith is being challenged and stretched and grown the most recently by the things I'm reading in queer and feminist media, literature, and law journals, and by engaging in these same communities, I felt like this was somehow sacrilegious.  Like this couldn't possibly be what God wants my faith life to consist of, can it?

Like, if the Bible contained an entire book on recognizing your own privilege, another on having compassion for others who are (for possibly the first time) forced to confront their privilege, and still another on the best way to form coalitions around intersectional systems of oppression and privilege, that's where I'd be digging in my teeth in an intense Bible study right now.  Because my capacity to understand the world and humanity and to learn to love more deeply are so being stretched right now by digging into these issues.  And I honestly can't think of a more faith-related exercise than learning to better love and serve and seek justice for my fellow humans.  So how could expanding my understanding and ability in these areas be sacrilegious?

I know that the reason why I struggle with the thought that calling these activities "faith" is sacrilege, though, isn't just because studying feminist and queer issues doesn't "look" like religion.  It's also because I'm realizing that, for me, what I describe as my "faith" is something so much bigger than just religion.  It's about my entire outlook on life, on the world, and on myself.  Yes, there is certainly a traditionally religious aspect to it.  But it's so much more than that, too.  When I say "faith," I know for certain that I'm no longer referring to the strictly Webster's (or AWANA club's, for that matter) definition about believing in something without fully understanding it.  It's not about taking a "leap of faith."  I think what I mean when I use the term "faith" is something more akin to the terms "worldview" and "calling" put together.  So, yeah, perhaps I should think of a better word for it, but the fact is that the reason why I consider these things to be part of my faith is because they are all inextricably linked to what I believe about God, about the world, about people, and about my place  within and among all of these things.

So I'm going to continue to open my eyes and mind to the beautiful and challenging insights around me.  I'm not trying to say that I'm completely forsaking the Bible.  I'm still a Christian, and as much as I'm re-thinking what I believe an active and growing internal faith life looks like, I'm not saying that I'm turning in my Bible in exchange for Autostraddle.com (although the latter is my browser homepage).

Part of growing up, if you were raised in a traditional Christian home, is about re-examining every aspect of your beliefs, faith system, and worldview.  So many of these things have changed so drastically for me over the past decade of my life; I doubt I would even recognize the pre-teen girl blasting Rebecca St. James in her room 24/7, dreaming of joining the Aussie singer and abstinence-only activist on tour.

I have learned so many amazingly complex and beautiful things since then about God, about the world, about myself, and about humanity.  I've learned to love and see so much beauty in all of the brokenness; I've cried for the suffering and pain and felt paralyzed by the guilt of my own privilege and the depth of my own compassion; I've become a feminist activist and I've come out as queer.  I've perpetually been drawn to stories and lives of brokenness, suffering, and beauty.  I've felt and given myself over to an inescapable calling to spend my life seeking and fighting for justice and equality.

I could sit here and try to list every single way that my faith has influenced me through each of these times of change and trial and pain and growth and beauty and love.  But that list could never be any where near completion, because, as I said, my faith is who I am.  Who I believe God to be, the Jesus that I have fallen in love with, has governed each of these phases of my life, has been the deciding factor in every one of my belief systems.

So when I feel close to God after reading a call to feminist action, when I feel challenged to lookdeeper at my own privilege, when I read a post that pleads compassion for those who cannot see the injustice in their beliefs, when I research and write a paper formulating a plan of action to end a pandemic of violence against an entire class of people, even when I begin to grasp both the depth of the beautyand the scope of the problems in the media that I consume, how could these things not be pushing my faith deeper?  How could I not have a better understanding of God and of humanity?  How could the preparation for and pursuit of the calling that God has laid before me be anything other than an action of my faith?  How could calling any of these things part of my faith be sacrilege?

The Queer Choice

"We want sexuality to be biological because then it's more about instincts and nature pulling people together.  Choice isn't very romantic.  Love is about surrender -- the absence of choice -- the irresistable pull of another body.  We don't have faith in the rest of it because we doubt the permanence of anything we are capable of changing with our minds."

I just read these word by Riese, the founder of one of my favourite websites, AutoStraddle.  I've always loved her writing about pretty much any topic.  But when I read those words, they hit me so hard I couldn't breath for a couple seconds.  It was written by her in a journal many years ago when she was still struggling with coming to terms with a label, any label, be it bisexual or lesbian or queer or anything else.

When I read those words, I flashed back to those months that I spent silently struggling with the fact that I had finally allowed myself to admit my sexual attraction to women.  I vividly recalled when I "came out" to my brother; I told him "I'm bisexual."  Because even though I had allowed myself to admit my same-sex attraction and had even (for the most part) reconciled my faith with that pull that I felt, I was still struggling with labels.

Oh, labels...

It's so easy to just slap one on the moment you feel you've "figure it out."  When I first admitted my same-sex attraction I (somewhat reluctantly) labelled myself "bisexual."

Then I came to realize that being able to find men attractive doesn't mean that I could ever actually have a romantic relationship with a man.

Everyone, male or female, gay or straight, intersex, trans*, bisexual or simply queer, is capable of (and likely does) see beauty and attraction in every gender variety and presentation.

That doesn't mean that everyone is pansexual.  It simply means we all have eyes and hearts and minds.  We all have the simple ability to see beauty.

Once I realized this, I knew that the label I had ostensibly embraced didn't fit.  And then because I was still struggling with how to reconcile my faith with my sexuality, and then trying to figure out how to come out to my family, I kind of gave up the question of labels for a while.

And yet...

When I came out to my family and then to the world on this very blog, I still felt uncomfortable embracing a certain label.  I called myself "gay," because I felt weird, queer even, embracing the term "lesbian."  I couldn't (and still can't to my sufficient liking) articulate why that label made me uncomfortable.  I know that it has something to do with the stereotypes that surround that term.  But I couldn't fully explain why it made me so uncomfortable when the term "gay" did not.

As I've more fully embraced the queer community and my place in it, I've come to see that the problem wasn't the label of "lesbian."  The problem was the fact that it was a label.  I saw "gay" as a broad category, not a constricting label.  "Lesbian" was (and is) something very specific.  And I'm not saying that I don't/can't fit the category of "lesbian," whatever that might entail.  I do and I can fit.  I am exclusively drawn to romantic/sexual relationships with women.  It's as simple as that.

And yet...

There's nothing simple about attraction.  And here's where I come back to Riese's words.  When my parents and I were first talking about my sexuality, we kept coming back to the age-old (not really age old, but I digress) argument about whether or not my orientation, my same-sex attraction is a so-called "choice."  We argued about whether it is something biological or produced through circumstances or, very simply, a distinct human choice with not much else playing into it.

And it makes the whole thing easy, simple, cut-and-dry if I simply claim that my orientation, my "label," is biologically-ingrained.  It makes the argument simple.

But it'll never resolve anything.  Peope can (and likely -- though I hope not -- will) alway argue about "choice" until the end of time.

But what does "choice" matter?  If someone chooses (assuming there are no consent, coercion, or violence issues at play) to be in a romantic or sexual relationship with someone of the same gender, can anyone really argue that they have zero attraction to that person, that they are not in some way drawn to each other?  Very few (if any) people choose, when deciding whether to pursue any form of romantic or sexual relationship (whether long-term or fleeting), to engage in that relationship with someone whom they feel no attraction to.  That attraction may be physical, intellectual, emotional, or under any other category that draws them to each other.  Because, for whatever reason, good or bad, we all engage in relationships with people whom we are drawn to.  That "pull," as I'll call it, is the basis for most meaningful human interaction (by "meaningful" I simply mean those interactions that aren't purely task-oriented, i.e. any customer service interactions likely aren't very "meaningful," so there's likely no "pull").

I felt that "pull" to become close friends with several people who are still my best friends to this day long before I was ever willing to acknowledge my "pull" to them and others was more than just platonic.

I choose to embrace who I am; I choose to embrace this pull.  But I think I've also come to a place where I'm not entirely comfortable with slapping a confining label on who I am.  I think the only "label" that I could embrace is "queer."  Because "queer," as it's been embraced and redefined by the LGBT community, is anything but confining.  It's empowering and freeing and unfettered.

This isn't some very round-about way of saying that I'm really bisexual.  That's not it at all.  What I am saying is that I don't really care about the boxes that the typical label of "lesbian" would put me in to the extent that it forces me to accept the idea that who I am is immutable, biological, or based on anything other than my surrender to the pull.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this well.  In fact, I know that I'm not.

But what I want to say, the gist of what I realized when I read Riese's words, is that accepting who I am, embracing the truth regarding the people whom I am attracted to and desire to spend my life with, was, to one degree or another, a choice.  But it wasn't a choice about who I am going to be with.  It was a choice to have faith.  To surrender to that "pull," that desire, that beauty and joy and life that I feel both in embracing who I am and in acknowleding to whom I am attracted.

I believe that we, as humans, are meant to spend our lives in community with one another.  I believe that we are meant to find people to spend our lives with.  I believe most of us are supposed to find a person who complements who we are, who challenges us and pushes us forward, and excites us and draws us in and makes us whole.

And how could I ever be whole if I choose to spend my life with someone who will never do all those things?  Who will never complete me or challenge me or draw me in?  How could I plan on spending my life with someone for whom I know I will never burn with passion?

I'm still not sure how to articulate why it is that I'll never feel that pull towards a man.  Maybe that's part of why Riese's words hit me so hard: because it forced me to recognize that it is a choice to have faith, to surrender to that pull, even though I can't articulate why.  I may never be able to articulate why a man would never be able to make me whole in the same way that a woman can.  But I know it.  And I've accepted it.  And I choose to surrender to it.

Advancing the Dream

Note: This post is long overdue.  I wrote it a few weeks ago, but just kept forgetting to finishing editing it and then post it.

As I watched a re-airing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech in commemoration of its 50th anniversary, I wrote the following Facebook status update: "Watching the indescribably breathtaking 'I Have A Dream' speech being re-aired in its entirety on MSNBC right now with tears in my eyes and so many emotions in my heart.  How far we've come.  How far we must still go."

Over the past couple months, the reality of the latter statement became explicitly clear to me.  Watching the George Zimmerman acquittal, I came to realize that the biggest problem with the verdict wasn't the fact that Zimmerman "got away with it" (because, truthfully, the prosecution's case wasn't that strong, so I really don't fault the jury for reaching that verdict).  Instead, I struggled so strongly accepting the reality of the legal precedent that it sets: if someone with racial animus in their heart sees someone in their neighbourhood that (in their opinion) doesn't "belong there," s/he can follow that individual, say or do something to instigate a fight (even if it's just making the person feel intimidated by being followed), and then pull out a gun and shoot that person.

I was particularly struck in the aftermath of the acquittal by one viral tweet: "How cool would it be to live in a world where George Zimmerman offered Trayvon Martin a ride home to get him out of the rain that night" (Tom Crabtree @itscrab).

A few weeks ago, I watched Fruitvale Station, the movie chronicling the final day in Oscar Grant's life.  This was a young African American man (my same age, 22 years old, at the time of his death) who wasn't perfect, but he was a good man.  And yet, after getting in an altercation with someone on an Oakland train, was pulled off the train, had his head smashed into the ground repeatedly, and then shot in the back by an Oakland cop (who claimed to have mistaken his gun for his tazer).

And then you have the spotlight being put, in recent weeks, upon the "Stop & Frisk" program in New York City which, even the law's proponents admit, highly unequally targets young African American males than any other demographic group.  And I hear stories of young men, my own age, who, since they were as young as ten years old, have been frisked by the police up to a dozen times.  And how, after so many times, you just stop trusting the police.  You stop looking to them for help, because you assume that they'll immediately look on you with suspicion simply by virtue of your skin colour.  One young man said that he didn't even call the police when he was robbed for this very reason.  And I highly doubt that his story is an anamoly.

Sure, you can make arguments and justifications and excuses for all of these things.

But is that really the type of country that we want?

Why are we still settling for excuses and justifications behind unequal treatment based upon race?

Yes, things have absolutely gotten better since Dr. King shared his dream with us 50 years ago.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a single person who would disagree with that.  There are no more weekly lynchings or images in the media of elementary school kids being sprayed with fire houses.

Yes, the world has changed.

We have an African-American president, dozens of African-American members of Congress, and an African-American attorney general.  And those are just the most high-profile figures nationally.  There are hundreds of African-Americans in positions of power in dozens of fields across America, without such a stark contrast anymore between the northern and southern states.

But we still have a long ways to go.  Changes still have to be made before we can say that we have finally fulfilled the dream which Dr. King prophecied over America 50 years ago.

Dr. King's dream is about more than just having most people be "judged by the content of their character" instead of their skin colour.  It's about economic equality.  It's not just about universal voting rights, but about having something worthwhile to vote for.

I'm not going to pretend to understand every length to which this nation must still go before we reach Dr. King's dream.  Because I think there's more to it than the specific examples that Dr. King proclaimed.  It's about living in a world where no one goes hungry, no one is denied rights due to some demographic category, no one is without the highest quality education, no one is left behind.

And Dr. King's dream doesn't stop at the edges of this nation.  It extends far and wide to every nation on earth.  It's ambitious, and will likely never be fully reached.  But that's not to say we should stop trying, stop reaching, stop changing, stop advancing the dream.

It's been 50 years, but so much of King's speech is just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.  And his dream will never become irrelevant.