Rape Happens
For the past few weeks, my work hours have been taken up with reporting statistics and writing commentaries on rape in our local community. It's a truly dreary task, because it's one area in which progress is very hard to discern. The number of rapes continue to inch up each year, totaling over 120 for the past 12 months. The number of convictions, however, holds steady at 5 per year. The culture, as reflected through music, movies, video games, and advertisements, becomes ever more misogynistic.
I am fortunate to have two women working for me who are incredibly engaging and effective sexual assault prevention educators. They walk into high school classrooms, detention centers, alternative schools, and military bases, and they start tackling the hard questions. The resistance they meet is tough. Perhaps because first-term airmen tend to be brash and self-confident, the hostility is right out there in the open. Initial comments range from "bros over hos" to "all women are evil" to "those teenage girls know what's going down. They know you're just out for the sex, and they are glad to deliver."
By the end of the two-hour period, those same young men are less certain of their convictions, and the rest of the group is seriously engaged in reexamining attitudes and beliefs. New ideas and possibilities have been planted in suddenly fertile soil, with positive results. One concrete example is that of a young man who was attempting to rape a young woman on base, when he stopped and thought to himself: "This is just what Miss Stephanie said not to do." So he left and turned himself in. I grant you that it would have been better had he stopped prior to the rape attempt, but it was progress.
But really, can even the most amazing one or two hour presentation make much of an impression when a much different message is strongly embedded in the greater culture? Well-known examples include the appalling video games, and the beer ads, and the rap music lyrics. But even those pale in the face of rape tolerant attitudes ingrained in schools, neighborhoods, and communities.
Like communities everywhere, our county faces regular scandals at some school or other, in which an unpopular girl accuses a student athlete or service club member of rape . The students, faculty and parents immediately start lining up to take sides, and the line in favor of the boy is invariably longer by far. The girl is judged by her status relative to his, and found wanting. Of course, a girl of lesser status is exactly the person most likely to be raped, since rapists (even the youngest ones) select girls who are less credible than themselves, and besides, they feel entitled to take what they want from their inferiors.
Three incidents have happened over the last five years that remain chilling reminders of local attitudes. The first involved a child protection worker sent to investigate the reported molestation of a 10-year-old girl by her stepfather. The worker came back and said, "there is no way I'm going to turn in that father. You should have seen what that girl was wearing. She was just asking for it!" The second involved a woman who was actually working for me as a rape prevention educator. On what became her last day on the job, she was incensed when a teacher at her son's school was arrested for raping multiple 14 and 15-year-old students. "What was he supposed to do?" she said. "Those girls came to his house, flirted with him. Of course he had sex with them." The third involved a local psychiatrist who had sex with a teenage client. His physician friends simply could not accept that anyone they knew would do anything so appallingly unethical and illegal, and refused to believe in his guilt even after he admitted it.
The most immediate thing that stands out about these crimes is that they were hideous betrayals of young girls by men they should have been able to trust. While the general public seems to be most distressed by stranger rape, it is the rape by those who should be protecting and caring for us that has the most devastating effect on the victim and her future. The second thing is the knee-jerk reaction by uninformed strangers to unite and publicly castigate the victim for harming her rapist. Sadly, they are no different from the victim's family, who usually also sides with the rapist as well, especially if the rapist is the primary breadwinner.
What is it about rape that allows otherwise decent and caring people to be so quick to condemn victims, and excuse criminals? I suppose part of the answer is that rape involves such a total violation of the human spirit that we don't want to face the fact that it exists. We resent the victim who reminds us that we are all vulnerable to horror, and we push her aside. Another answer is that by casting victims into the role of "them," we can ensure that people like us are safe. She didn't live by the rules, so she was raped. We adhere to the myths, so we are secure.
However, I think the larger issue is greater than that. From the earliest times, men have equated women's sexuality with sin. Pandora opened the box. Eve ate the apple. Women draw men into sin, and women who have cajoled men into committing sexual crimes are defiled, impure, damaged. In some cultures, women can be executed for the sin of having been raped. In our culture, the stigma is so great that few rape victims will even admit to having been attacked.
So is there hope for a humane society that values women equally with men, and abhors rape rather than condones it? I don't have any answers, but I look at my beautiful daughters, my compassionate son and my tiny grandson, and think that hope must lie somewhere. To think otherwise would be to despair for my children's future, and that, I can't do.
Minimum Wage, Jobs Increase
Earlier today I was reading the unfortunately named, but highly readable, blog: The Carpetbagger Report (at
www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com). The topic was the minimum wage, and how a $1 an hour increase had not caused massive job loss and the derailment of the economy here in Florida. And yet, the service sector industries continue to forecast doom and gloom where ever a like increase is considered anywhere in the country.
There has to be an emotional block going on here, because the rationale as to why an increase in minimum wage helps the economy is so obvious that even Wal-Mart is campaigning for it. Low income families spend every penny they get. If their wages go up, they buy clothes, or medicines, or pay for car repairs. Thus demand for consumer goods increases, and conditions become favorable for the creation of new jobs, even at the "high" wage levels of $6.15 per hour (soon to be $6.40).
This is not just theory. The scenario of increased jobs and better economies occurred at the initiation of a minimum wage, and has been repeated every time an increase has been passed. Voters, who are very close to this issue and are not being offered trips to Scotland in exchange for their votes, understand this instinctively. That's why constitutional amendments or other direct appeals to voters pass by over 70% even in Florida, which is not a wildly liberal state.
On the other hand, the theory that minimum wage increases will force lay-offs and doom businesses to extinction has never panned out. Neither has the companion theory: that the only sure way to stimulate production is to reduce or eliminate taxes on capital (along with reductions in tax rates for the wealthy). Surely we have tried trickle-down economics enough to recognize a loser when we see it. Just having capital is no reason to invest in production capacity, especially when there are already warehouses full of unsold appliances, cars, and clothes. To get factories running again, we have to produce large-scale demand. Placing ever more money in the hands of the ultra rich does very little to increase demand, because there is a limit to how much even the ultra-wealthy can spend, and the Bush beneficiaries passed that mark long ago. The more they get, the less percentage gets returned back to the economy. The rest goes to off-shore banks and European antiques.
The constant refrain of the red zone is that liberals don't pay attention to facts, but I find that a hard sell. The conservative idealogues have taken obliviousness to facts and consequences to levels that are bewildering, and show no signs of stopping.
A Heart Beats in the Red Zone
I have lived, steeped in the red zone, for 26 of my 50 something years. During this time, all my candidates for office have lost their elections, any proposal I voted for was voted down - it was discouraging. But today I am reinvigorated, and proud of my community. Last night, the City of Fort Walton Beach got into the homeless shelter business.
For the past four years, the only shelter available to homeless men, women and families has been the cold weather shelter (40 degrees or less) offered by three churches on a rotating basis. Occasionally another church would pitch in for a while, and we were all grateful, but only three have stuck it out for the whole ride. The problem is, none of these churches can hold as many homeless as need shelter on cold nights. They would try. If the Fire Marshall told them their capacity was 40, they would try to shove 60 in, but still people kept knocking on the door.
Last week, at the urging of a homeless man, I asked the city to let us use a recreation center as an overflow shelter. The city has not had a history of compassion, but with all the dislocations and increased homelessness caused by the past two catastrophic hurricane seasons, I figured it was worth a try. I wrote out a proposal, presented it to the mayor, the city manager, the parks director, and got it on the city council agenda. I rallied the troops, and had a dozen or more church representatives come demonstrate their support for this issue. I got up to make a brief presentation, which lasted over 30 minutes with all the questions being tossed my way. But in the end, the City Council voted unanimously to allow the recreation center to be used as a homeless shelter when needed.
That may not sound like the biggest start in the world, but for us it was huge. The City Council members openly acknowledged that they are going to have to help with long-term solutions and not just stop-gap measures, and I pledged my support to help them find answers.
Thanksgiving is a brighter holiday this year, knowing that there will be blessings for all the members of the community and not just those who can afford a home. Now I guess I need to do something to make it happy for the people who come to my door!
Happy Holidays.
Freedom
One of the many things I've noted about writing from a red zone is how it affects the organization of my thoughts. I'm very careful about looking for common ground, and presenting my ideas in as rational and polemic-free way as possible. I would like to think this is a good thing, but there are drawbacks. It is because I recognize the limitations of being reasonable that I have no problems with my neighbors to the left and right of the spectrum who choose to speak with passion and zeal.
But our administration (particularly Dick Cheney), many members of Congress, and quite a few residents of our community, do not agree. They are convinced that any discussion of the war borders on treason, and will "hurt the troops."
I find this line of "thought" to be absolutely bizarre. The refrain one hears repeatedly is that "we should support our troops since they are fighting to protect our freedom and democracy." We also hear that the exercise of freedom and democracy is devastating to morale. Could it be true that our men and women in uniform, facing suicide bombers, insurgent attacks, and a hostile force, can be brought down not by the enemy, but by debate at home?
There appear to be wide swathes of our citizenry who have no idea what freedom actually is. These are the people who cheer when they find out the FBI has exceeded the already excessive powers granted by the Patriot Act, and has investigated tens of thousands of persons with no conceivable ties to terrorist organizations of any kind. They argue that we have to sacrifice some civil liberties in order to stay secure, although one has nothing to do with the other. We can bow to a police state, and still find ourselves less safe in our homes than before.
I personally doubt that the current war in Iraq has much to do with protecting freedom and democracy in America, and I am certain that it is increasing the terrorist threat rather than reducing it. I am also certain that many of the men and women fighting the war in Iraq disagree with me, although not all. It is the nature of humanity to be fractious and opinionated, and it is the nature of democracy to celebrate that quality and forge a nation that can accommodate everyone. And that is as true in times of war as in times of peace.
Let freedom ring.
The Power of Feminism
Way back when I was a child in the 1950s and 60s,
The Ladies' Home Journal used to run a tagline "Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman." For all I know, they still do. While this quote sounds affirmative, it was derived from a humorist (James Thurber?), and spoke to a woman's "feminine wiles" and power of manipulation. Women as rational, productive human beings were severely underestimated.
Today we have a dichotomy. We still underestimate women, but we greatly overestimate the power of feminism. I hear a great deal of railing by fundamentalist preachers, newspaper columnists, and politicians. All these groups are united against feminists, who are allegedly responsible for the supposed abandonment of families by wives and mothers. As an institution, feminism is only acknowledged when advocating for abortion and against the nurturing of children.
Being a mother myself, I think this anger is misplaced. As much as I believe in respect and equal rights for women, the desire to prove a point would not have pushed me back in the workplace. I went back to work for the same reason every mother I have ever known went back to work: my husband and I couldn't afford the life we want for our children on a single income. Certainly I had come closer than most in immersing myself in family life, having taken 18 years off for maternity leave. However, when my oldest started college it quickly became obvious that even my husband's hefty income was not enough to sustain four college tuitions, weddings, study abroad, grad school, and other advantages we wished to provide for our offspring and ourselves (such as retirement). I took a job when my youngest was seven, and I've been working ever since (he's 17 now).
There has been an incredible social revolution within the family structure, but the root cause is not philosophy, but economics. Wages first flattened, and then entered into a period of decline. Manufacturing jobs were outsourced overseas, and the low paying service jobs that took their place forced many formerly middle-class families into lower-class status. The basic standard of living became more expensive, and the range of available extras mushroomed. Although it is possible to live with a black and white TV, or no TV at all, few people want to do so. We all want "entertainment centers," and computers, and cable connections. Our children want IPods, hand-held computers, and camera cell phones with bluetooth technology.
Several trends emerged. Many men were relieved at not being the sole financial support for their families. Many women found that they loved being in the workforce, and were pleased to be recognized for their intellectual and organizational skills as well as their pot roast. Some children thrived in a day care environment, though the jury is still out as to whether this has been a good thing overall. And for an enormous number, primarily low-earning families and single moms, it was simply business as usual.
But the results were not consistently wonderful across the board. A large number of men felt emasculated at the idea of needing their wives to help provide for the family. Other women found that the jobs open to them were often menial and paid poorly, and were unimpressed with the "new" freedom to make beds at hotels and wash dishes in restaurants. The women who had dedicated their lives to nurturing their husbands and children were often resentful, both of having to work, and of seeing their peers flourish at the new challenges.
With all this angst and drama being enacted around the country, it was natural that those most adversely affected looked to demonize someone else, and to push the responsibility for change (and individual failures) onto an outside group. And thus, the women who had a short, glorious moment in creating social change relating to equal rights and opportunities in the 1970s became the witches of the ensuing decades.
Feminisn as I knew it while a idealistic and passionate college student in the 1970s was a marvelous force. It pushed us to build upon what our foremothers had won for their daughters: voting rights, access to education, and freedom to make our own choices. It empowered us to consider a myriad of dreams, including full-time motherhood as well as engineering, medicine and law. And yes, it allowed us to view ourselves as sexual human beings who could make decisions about how we wanted to conduct our relationships.
But feminisn, a movement allowing women the freedom to choose their own direction in life, and to be supported whatever that choice, has been marginalized. Most women must go to work, and they are anything but supported in that effort. Our society does not offer universal health care, or sufficient access to subsidized child care, or sufficient quality child care whatever the cost. Women still do not get paid as well or promoted as often as men. A transient life style has reduced the impact of extended family support. While the vast majority of women make the best of their situations, and often (like me) find jobs that utilize their talents in fulfilling ways, it is a struggle. Women forge their paths individually, and do not come together as one for any idealogy, feminist or not.
Feminism as I knew it barely exists, and what is left has been so cariactured that it is hard to recognize. Still, it is remains a noble dream and a proud history, and one that has insinuated itself into the fabric of our lives even if primarily driven by economics. We have flexed our muscles and found them strong, and that's a good thing no matter what our life choices.
To get a much younger woman's take on feminism, check out my daughter's blog at
www.myspace.com/hmajors. I'll use this excerpt as a teaser:
I feel that modern feminism should focus on equal pay for equal work, easing social mores about sexuality being immoral, respectful and egalitarian relationships between men and women (which does not mean turning women into men!), and just as importantly, the well-being of children and establishment of happy well-adjusted families. Economic justice is an important corrollary!
The Power of Myth
Recently, I had a conversation with a young man, who thought to engage my attention with a story about a homeless person looking for a handout from a minister.
I interrupted the narrative early on, and said, “So because one man was unwilling to get in a car with a stranger who may or may not have been taking him to a work site, you believe all homeless men are lazy, shiftless and manipulative?”
Since this young man very much wants to marry my daughter, he instantly backed down and said, “No, of course not.”
“Then what,” I asked, “was the point of this story?”
This conversation came back to me when reading a local newspaper column this morning, in which the author described homeless people thusly: “These are our dirty, our tired, our poor, our troubled, our hungry…making choices many of us wouldn’t make.”
This particular columnist is a generous, caring person who tries to do a great deal for our local homeless. But she and Stephen demonstrate the incredible power of myth, especially when it serves to comfort the comfortable. The myth is that the homeless make up a mysterious, underground community of “them,” who have nothing to do with the larger city of “us.”
This myth, while widely embraced, has little connection to the truth. And although it serves its purpose of reinforcing our belief in our security, it has its destructive side. This is illustrated by the incredible reluctance of local churches to offer cold weather shelter, and the even greater reluctance of our community to open an emergency shelter for the homeless.
The fact is that homeless people are very little different from anyone else. Head down to a soup kitchen, or day labor facility at 5:00 a.m., or an emergency shelter if you live in a community where such things exist. The homeless people you will meet are as clean as they can possibly make themselves, and are as a whole stunningly articulate and often well-educated.
The overwhelming majority work consistently and dependably. They have skills I can only envy. For example, one intermittently homeless man manages a church Saturday lunch kitchen. He gets a budget of $50 a week, and feeds 80 or more persons at a time. Others are carpenters, painters, and craftsmen. Most are eager to make better lives for themselves, and should they receive adequate resources now, will never be homeless again.
The reasons why these men, women and children are homeless are as numerous as the number of men, women and children themselves. Causes range from the lack of adequate care for the mentally ill, to family abandonment, to medical disasters, to the low wages offered as contrasted to the high cost of housing and transportation.
But in the end, the reasons why people wind up homeless, or how they lead their lives while they are homeless, should not matter to us. What should matter is that these are human beings, beloved of God, who should be beloved of us as well.
The Evolution of Education
As the theory of evolution makes its way through the news cycle once again, it would seem that everyone with a stake in the educational wars has weighed in with opinions, “facts” of varying degrees of credibility, and lines drawn in the sand. However, there is one player, presumably the one with the largest stake in the outcome, who is strangely silent: that of the educational establishment. We do hear from individual teachers and science organizations. We do NOT hear from educational superintendents, teacher unions, colleges of education, or other institutional representatives of academia. These are the very institutions that could stop the dilution of scientific understanding in a moment’s time.
Perhaps one reason could be that the educational industry is embarrassed. After all, the fact that 50-75% of Americans (depending on the wording of the question) think that creationism or its alter-ego, intelligent design, is valid science is a stinging indictment of the inadequacy of our schools. It is obvious that an enormous segment of our society cannot distinguish between an opinion offered at a cocktail party and a scientific theory. This shows up not just in evolution debates, but in the consistently miserable performance of American students on international science tests (and math tests, and history tests, and geography tests, and literacy tests).
Sadly, I don’t think embarrassment is the obstacle. From what I can see at the state and local level, our educational institutions are pretty complacent. Perhaps there are problems elsewhere, but our schools are doing just fine. There is no need for change, for additional resources, longer academic years, more dynamic teachers, updated textbooks, and certainly new educational content. In the profound words of Paul Simon, we can “slip-slide away,” and be perfectly happy about it.
School boards and superintendents are rarely voted in because of their ability to embrace controversy. This is not a profession in which all publicity, negative and positive, is considered a good thing. This is a profession that plays it safe, in ways that are not always obvious on the surface.
Let’s go back to evolution. Our school board is not about to launch a publicity-generating attack on evolutionary study. Instead, they simply hire science teachers with little grasp of science. They do not teach any branch of science with certitude; certainly they do not seek to challenge prevailing religious beliefs. They use science textbooks with chapters on the “big bang” theory and evolution, but they soft-peddle the evidence, and in some cases, contradict it. One teacher of International Baccalaureate level science students informed the class that there had never been a “moon walk,” it was all a Hollywood stage set. If students emerge unimpressed with the science of creation and evolution, it is ascribed to faults in the science itself, not in the lack-luster and noncommittal teaching thereof.
If the United States is to maintain (or regain) its global competitive edge, we need to get serious about education. We need to invest in teachers, from teacher education to teacher reimbursement. Colleges of education must move beyond the “medium is the message,” and start seriously empowering their students to teach the content of their courses. Courses should emphasize logical thinking, not rote recitation of pronouncements. Schools need to embrace the year-round academic calendar, and start recognizing that their mission is not placating the public, but creating a future in which the public will thrive.
We live in an ever-changing world. It’s not too much to ask that education leave behind the debates they know to be false, and join us in seeking and utilizing new frontiers in knowledge.
Vision in Action
Yesterday I broke from my normal routine of writing grants, running coalitions, driving 400 miles each way to serve on a statewide board of directors, writing more grants, organizing two capital campaigns, and leading continuing education courses on sexual assault and domestic violence. I agreed to the diversion as a way of earning some additional money, but I came away richer in more than funds.
Sometimes renewal comes in the most pedestrian of packages. What surprised me most about this surge of energy is that it was the result of an effort designed just for that purpose. I have attended many strategic planning sessions before. Some benefit was gained, but the entire structure seemed artificial, and thus became its own barrier in creating new thought and insight.
Facilitating a strategic planning session, however, created an incredible sense of synergy. As the energy flowed toward me, I was conscious of how vital our work is, no matter what individual jobs entail, and how small daily actions further large, magnificent goals. I started the day off with a quip as to how we would be creating a map for world peace. At the end, several participants pointed out that they felt that was exactly what had been accomplished.
All this resonated with me, as I was reading yet one more column on the inability of Democrats to offer a vision, to define solutions, to do anything more than complain about Republican mistakes. Even the most liberal commentators seem to buy into the idea that at least the Republicans are doing something, and all the Democrats can do is cavil at the results. The fact that the results include launching an eternal war of occupation that is further destabilizing the Middle East, and a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the ultra-wealthy doesn’t seem to be nearly as vital as the supposed inability of the Democrats to act at all.
And yet, here I am, along with thousands of others, laboring in Democratically-envisioned services for the most fragile of our citizens, and accomplishing amazing things every day. The local Republican cant is that the poorest among us are responsible for their condition, and must better themselves. The Democratic position has always been that children born of children, into homes of deprivation and want, do not automatically have the skills necessary for creating a better life. The appropriate action is to engage in programs like Even Start, which enhance parental literacy skills and allow parents to raise children who can grow into their full potential. Another action step is to utilize subsidized child care to increase the quality of child care available to the poor among us, allowing for later success in the academic and career environments. The starry-eyed idealists who perform these tasks do so with fewer resources and longer odds all the time, courtesy the Republican administrations (state and national in our case) and Congress. Their creativity and vision is making a better future.
For those of us in the “field,” it is Democratic vision, and Republican myopia, that shapes the terms of tomorrow’s society. It is the Democratic Party that offers practical solutions to difficult problems, and the Republican Party with nothing to offer at all.
