Random Acts of Observation

In the comments on the Tor.com post in which Patricia Wrede's book, The Thirteenth Child, is being discussed, Tor user Alo, in comment 196, quotes from a rec.arts.sf.composition post by Ms Wrede, discussion her own (then) work-in-progress:

The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I'm not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won't get the right feel. Not that it'll be all that similar anyway; no writing plan survives contact with the characters, and it's already starting to morph.

I repeat my subject line:

She said WHAT?

::head explodes::

It seems that, according to Ms. Wrede, at least on the occasion of the quote:

1. The best way to eliminate sterotypes of marginalised people in writing is to eliminate the marginalised people from one's writing?

2. Eliminating whole nations of people with thousands of years of history and rich, diverse cultures when writing alternative history isn't "widely divergent history"?

I know something about being erased from cultural representations of both history and modern society, and about people who are in certain ways like me being presented as often profoundly insulting and disturbing stereotypes when they do appear in cultural narratives - after all, I'm a woman, a queer person, a person with multiple disabilities, both visible and invisible.

And this just makes me sick at heart.

This isn't even a case of someone not thinking about the implications of making such a decision in developing her created world. No, she actually thought about ways in which the indigenous peoples of North America have been portrayed in settler literature, identified what she saw as problems, and deliberately decided to make the indigneous people vanish so she wouldn't have to apply herself to trying to do a better job of representing indigenous peoples that the problematic literature she identifies as the genre she's working in.

I say again:

She said WHAT?

::head explodes::

I am getting so bloody sick of mainstream North American entertainment deciding that I, as a white person, am so empathy-challenged that I can't possibly identify with a person who is not white.

I assure you it's not true. I've watched dozens of movies (I'd watch more, but they're not all that easy to find) where the characters aren't white, and you know what - I've understood the characters' motivations, I've felt that I could identify with their struggles and their triumphs - in fact, I've enjoyed all those movies just as much as - and sometimes even more than - movies with all-white casts that are supposed to - what? reassure me? make me think "my people" run the universe? protect me from seeing difference?

And I bet you have, too. Even those of you who are also white like me.

So why do things like this keep happening? Who decides that if the source material, which is popular enough that you want to make a movie out of it in the first place, happens to have most or all of the characters be people of colour, that has to be changed for a North American audience?

When are we going to start having real-life casting? When will the people doing their thing in the movies and television shows I watch look like the streets of the city I live on, where there's more than just one black person, one Asian person, and maybe one Aboriginal person at a time?

I've got an idea.

Why don't we decide that for just one year, no movies or TV shows will be made that have white actors in them unless you can "justify" why the person playing the character is white. Let's have people of colour as the default, and only cast white people because it's a major plot point and there's no way to avoid it without making the piece meaningless, or because, well, you have to have one token white person. Who is, of course, either the sidekick or the mentor, and who of course sacrifices hirself heroically to save the non-white hero. Oh, maybe we'll allow two or three big-name white actors to make a movie, just to prove we aren't racist.

Let's see what our most popular forms of entertainment look like to those of us who are white, once we're the ones you hardly ever see. It might actually, you know, teach us something about being the person who's defined as the Other.

Incest.

Rape.

Child molestation.

Sexual abuse.

The sexuality of children.

Yes, I'm interested in these things.

I'd be interested in them even if I hadn't been sexually molested by my mother's husband when I was eight and raped by a stranger when I was 12.

I'm interested in discussion of the issues that surround these acts that humans engage in. Why do people do commit them? Are they always harmful? If they are, how harmful, compared to what? What are the effects of such actions on victim and perpetrator? How best to reduce the harm of such acts once they have been committed? How best to reduce the likelihood that they will happen? What is the history, the psychology, the sociology, of these acts? What functions have they served in societies now and in the past?

I'm also interested in the portrayal of these acts in cultural products - fiction, films, music. All kinds of cultural products. Yes, that means porn too.

I know, as it seems many people do not, that the word, the image, is not the action. Writing rape porn is not rape. Writing fan-fiction about sex between two underage wizards at Hogwarts or proto-slayers hiding out in Buffy's basement is not child exploitation. Writing a novel about Pharoah Ahkenaten and his daughter-wife Ankhesepaaten is not incest. Writing Lolita or Bastard out of Carolina is not child molestation.

The thought is not the action either. Reading about rape, or child molestation, or incest, is not rape, or child molestation, or incest. In fact, reading about rape, or child molestation, or incest, and getting all hot and excited about it, is not rape, or child molestation, or incest either. It's thought. It's fantasy.

The fantasy action is not even the action. Rape play or age play between two consenting adults is not rape or child molestation either.

Rape is rape.

Child molestation is child molestation.

Believe me, I know the difference.

Why don't you?

I've been alternating between sickened horror and an outrage I can barely express without tears or violence for days now.

And I've been struggling to figure out why.

It's not as if I - and all of us - didn't know that countries around the world have been torturing prisoners, both criminal and political.

And it's not as if I - and all of us - didn't know that the countries of the so-called civilised Western world have been torturing people in colonised nations.

And it's not as if I - and all of us - didn't know that these same so-called civilised countries have been backing, supporting, encouraging and protecting dictatorships all around the world that have been torturing people.

And it's not as I - and surely, at least since Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, all of us - didn't know that people were being tortured by or in the name of the so-called civilised countries we live in.

And it's not as if I - and many others - didn't suspect that torture in prisons and jail cells and interrogation rooms and detention centres and other places in these so-called civilised countries was nowhere near as uncommon as those who run these places would have had us think.

No, we knew all that, and I'm sure we all thought it was horrible. and I'm sure that many of us marched or wrote letters or did something over the years to speak out for the human rights of people all around the world not to be tortured.

I think what makes it so much worse now is that at least in the past the leaders and law-makers of the so-called civilised West have at least tried to pretend that they didn't approve of torture. That it was wrong. They tried to conceal the fact that they tortured, or allowed torture to happen in their name or at the hands of dictators they gave political, financial and military support to (at least until it suited them to abandon those same dictators).

Until now, our leaders have at the very least been a little ashamed of what they were doing. They were worried that if they came out and said it, we might get angry enough to do something about it.

But not any more. Now, it's possible to debate how much you should be able to torture someone, to discuss how much pain and humiliation and damage one can inflict before you go too far.

And that sickens and outrages me to the core. How did it come to this, that every citizen of every so-called civilised country has not risen up in their disgust and outrage and demanded that those who want to torture people, or who are willing to stand aside while their allies do so, are not fit to be our leaders?

And no, I am not pointing fingers at any one country. We all, in this so-called civilised West, are responsible for letting it come to this, and for whatever will follow from it. I'm sickened and outraged by my own government's actions, and the lack of response among my fellow citizens.

What kind of people are we, that we can accept this?

Yes, you.


You're probably reading this.

Just in case you had any doubts, yes I am a socialist, a queer, a radical, a subversive, an activist, an environmentalist, a bleeding-heart tree-hugger, altogether the sort of person you don't want in your country.

I disapprove heartily of almost every piece of foreign policy your governemnt has ever adopted, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine (you maybe thought we hadn't noticed your attempts to annex Canada back in the good old days?) and working up to preemptive strikes and invasions.

I also think you have the worst record of civil rights abuses of any developed country, and I rather suspect you do much worse than a good many developing countries, too. (And that's saying a lot, because most developed countries, including my own, have some pretty serious problems in this regard.)

Your internal social and economic policies look pretty much like a disaster to me, but that's up to your citizens to deal with, I'll just boo and hiss from the sidelines on that one.

But don't worry, I have no intentions of risking my health, life and liberty by visiting your country, at least not while the current dictatorship is in power. Yes, I know that if all your master's plans work out properly, that's going to be a very long time.

So just go fuck yourself, OK?

Thanks, and have a nice day.

Me.

For anyone who found my previous rant about the Da Vinci Code nonsense interesting, my discussion of the literary histoy of the Holy Grail as presented in Richard Barber's book The Holy Grail: History of a Legend is up on my book journal: bibliogramma.

You know, I wouldn't have minded at all if Brown had said "This is a works of fiction. I've taken some historical people and things and reinterpreted them as is my right as a creator of works of the imagination, but this is literature, not history."

But no, he said it's all based on fact, when it simply isn't, and that makes all the difference to me.

Well, it was an interesting night.

By the time the show started, I was more than a little amused at Heath Ledger's repeated panegyrics to his WIFE and their NEW BABY, just in case anyone thought that just because he played a GAY COWBOY in THAT MOVIE there might be something a little off about his MANLINESS. I mean, really, every time I saw an entertainment reporter ask him what he thought about his experiences doing the movie, he didn't seem to think of much to say about the acting process, just how wonderful it was that he has a WIFE and a NEW BABY. OK, Heath, I hear you, you're an actor, not a gay cowboy.

And then there was Reese. Lovely acceptance speech, Reese. Would you mind telling us what was on your mind when you kept repeating the words REAL WOMAN over and over again?

I want to say thank you to so many people who helped me create this role. Everyone at Fox, Cathy Konrad, James Keach, for producing the film. A very special thank you to Jim Mangold who directed the film and also wrote this character. Who is a real woman. Who has dignity and honor, and fear, and courage, and she's a real woman.

Right, Reese, your character was a real woman. That's not unusual in a biopic, Reese, you didn't have to shout it from the rooftops. Oh, what's that, it's not just your character that's a real woman, you are too?

And I want to say that my grandmother was one of the biggest inspirations in my life. She taught me how to be a real woman, to have strength and self respect, and to never give those things away. And those are a lot of qualities I saw in June Carter.

Reese, dear, if you keep on making a fuss about real women, someone might think that you're trying to make some kind of point. And we know you weren't trying to do that, now, were you?

Thanks for being so open about yourself, Reese. By the way, I'm really looking forward to seeing Transamerica.

Well, now that we have to be able to defend any cultural product, whether it depicts a real or an imagined sexual act involving a person under 18 years of age, I figured that I'd have a look and see what I might need to defend ownership of.

I know that some people will tell me, and all those members of the Canadian artists community, that I'm exaggerating, making a big fuss about nothing, because the law has some phrases in it that would surely prevent them from challenging the status of real "art."

After all, the work has to have "as its dominant characteristic the description, presentation or representation, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years."

And "No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section if the act that is alleged to constitute the offence (a) has a legitimate purpose related to the administration of justice or to science, medicine, education or art; and (b) does not pose an undue risk of harm to persons under the age of eighteen years.

One of the big problems with this is that the onus is now on the originator, distributor or owner of "any written material, visual representation or audio recording" that contains representations of sexual activiy involving someone under 18 to prove:

1. that the sexual activity is not its dominant characteristic
2. that it does not have a sexual purpose
3. that it has a legitimate purpose related to one of the specified areas
4. that it does not pose an undue risk of harm to persons under 18

Now I agree that if the nature of the sexual activity is heterosexual and vanilla, and there's a plot in it somewhere, you will likely get a pass - in fact, if there's enough of a plot, it might not even be challenged.

But let's talk about work that involves kink, or queer sex. You really think that a book about a baby leatherdyke finding herself and coming to terms with her sexuality can easily prove, in this society, it does not have a sexual purpose (whatever that means), that does it has a legitimate purpose and that it does not pose an undue risk of harm to minors? Because the Canadian public and their elected legislators may have just barely agreed queers can get married, but lots of them still don't want to think about what queers do in bed (or on the kitchen table, or in the dungeon), and they don't want their kids finding out about it either, lest their kids realise that it sounds interesting.

And who says that a work in which the dominant characteristic is sexual activity involving minors is automatically TEH EVOL? Can anyone honestly argue that Romeo and Juliet aren't filled with teenage lust right up to the very tragic end?

And who decides what is a legitimate purpose? Obviously, the legislation presupposes that auto-eroticism is not a legitimate purpose. Would a book that helps young women who have decided to have sex (as is their right if they're over 14) develop skills for negotiating safe sex issues with their partners be a legitimate purpose? Is writing a political rant that mentions a book about young women aged 14 to 18 who have decided to have sex a legitimate purpose?

Many people are going to tell me, I expect, that these new restirctions are necessary because of the Supreme Court rulings in the case of John Robin Sharpe (more details here). Yes, the Supreme Court found that under the old law people can't be prosecuted for producing written or visual of their own imagination, for their own use.

And you know what? That was fine by me. It was illegal to show these works to a minor. It was illegal to use these works to persuade a minor to agree to sexual acts with an adult or another minor. It was illegal to use representations of real minors in creating these works. And it was certainly illegal to try to do any of the things in these works if a minor was involved. Making it illegal to even create the works is censorship and creation of a thoughtcrime. It may well be regugnant to most of us, but there's nothing demonstrably harmful about anyone wanking off in private to kiddie porn he or she made themselves without any exploitation of a minor person.

We didn't need laws about creative works to convict John robin Sharpe. He was also using porn produced through the exploitation of minors. That was illegal, and rightfully so. But it was his acts that invovled minors, not his solitary use of written porn, that caused harm.

And if you believe that only people who commit acts of pedophillia with minors would ever get off on kiddie porn, think again. Think about all those people who like to do sexual role-playing involving schoolgirls, or infantilism, or want to be leather daddies, or imagine initiating the hot young pizza boy. Think about people who use porn that depicts teenage sexuality (without actually using tennager to produce it) in order to regain the rush of their own adolescent sexual explorations. If people were only honest about it, there would be a great many people who include some sort of fantasy ageplay in their sex lives. Very few of them ever commit sexual acts with minors. Why? Because they know that what they're into is a fantasy. They don't want to really have sex with a minor of any age. They know that would be wrong. They just want the fantasy. Laws like this are trying to turn fantasies into thoughtcrimes.

So I thought about what I own that might make me guilty of thoughtcrime. My partner and I took a casual glance at a couple of our close to 50 shelves of books, and started making a list of books, both fiction and non-fiction, that depict some sexual activity involving a minor or minors. We don't know what "dominant characteristic" means, nor are we sure about "sexual purpose," because we can think of lots of sexual purposes that have nothing to do with wanking.

Here, in no particular order, is the first installment of the books I own that could be determined to be works of child pornography.

Dorothy Allison - Bastard out of Carolina
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Rita Mae Brown - Rubyfruit Jungle
Michelle Cliff - Abeng
Moyra Caldecott - Guardians of the Tall Stones, Daughter of Ra
Frankie Hucklenbroich - A Crystal Diary
Anita Diamant - The Red Tent
Margaret Laurence - The Diviners
Alice Walker - The Color Purple
Anne Rice - Belinda
Anne Marie McDonald - Fall on Your Knees
Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Mists of Avalon
Lauren Greenfield - Girl Culture, Fast Forward
Bernard Lefkowitz - Our Guys
Susan Faludi - Stiffed
Pat Califia - Public Sex
Susan Hemmings (ed.) - Girls Are Powerful: Young Women's Writings from spare Rib

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Oh, I'm such a thoughtcrimer.

So the poor widdle heterosexual politician just can't feel comfortable sitting on the same side of the floor as his queer-loving former Liberal colleagues.

And some phobic asshats would prefer bringing down the government to letting a federal law defining marriage as a union of two persons be passed in the House.

Some people just don't get it. It doesn't matter that over half the country agrees with legitimating same-sex marriage. It doesn't matter that the fucking Supreme Courts of seven provinces and one territory have required governments to accept the legitimacy of same-sex marriage in those jurisdictions. It doesn't matter that the Supreme Court of the whole fucking country has examined the proposed legislation and declared it to be constitutional. It doesn't matter that it's an issue of human rights, and we're supposed to be big on that sort of thing up here - unless of course you're a Reformer disguised as a Conservative, or even a Liberal.

No, same-sex marriage is TEH EEVOL and some of these asshats would rather bring down the government than let queers get hitched. Because marriage is so special, you know, and if queers get their deviant and debauched claws of doom on it, all marriage between heterosexuals will immediately collapse into the same primordial slime the rest of us are condemned to live our lives in.

Or some such rot. I still have not been able to find one opponent of same-sex marriage who can make an effective argument, without resorting to religion, about how the marriage of two men or two women is going to irretrievably damage existing marriages between a man and a woman, or the concept of marriage, or society, or the fate of the universe.

Well, maybe more hot queer sex would delay the onset of heatdeath and allow the universe to survive a few extra millennia before ending with a whisper, but aside from that, just plain WTF?

It’s all over LJ, so you probably know about anniesj and her visit from the Secret Service over comments she had made in her LJ that she describes as “some rather inflammatory things about George W. Bush in a public post in my LJ, done in a satirical style.

She has written a new entry in which she responds to some of the discourse that has occurred in response to her experience. Now, anniesj has every right to her own thoughts and responses to this experience, but I also have every right to say that I think she is very wrong in some respects.

In her follow-up, she says:

1. I made a very big mistake in posting what I originally posted. I did not intend to threaten anyone with what I originally said. I was pissed off by what President Bush said, and I ranted about it without thinking that what I said could be construed as a threat against the president's safety. Obviously, I was wrong and I admit responsibility for making an inflammatory post. I apologize to anyone it may have offended, and I will be much more careful in the future when expressing my political beliefs.

2. My political beliefs did not trigger this, and what happened to me was not political. The reason why I was reported to the FBI was because I made the mistake of posting something that could be misconstrued as being a threat to the president's safety. I understand this, I apologize for it, and I will not make the same mistake again. I repeat, I do not seriously wish to harm anyone else on this planet, and in the future, I will make certain that I never give that impression again, no matter how pissed off I get.

sistermarysith has already written a wonderful response to this, but I need to put in my two cents’ worth as well.

Free speech is one of the most important rights that a citizen can have. Any attempt to suppress it is a political act. It’s true that most democratic nations have placed some prudent limitations on some forms of speech, such as inciting crimes, hate speech against minorities, slander and libel. But citizens must remain able to challenge any and all of the cultural and political assumptions, issues, policies, processes, parties, and powerful individuals in their society. And to ensure this, limitations should not be placed on speech because it is offensive, or satirical, or speculative, or obscene, or even violent.

Satire, in particular, has a long history of using violent images to make its points. And satire is a mode of speech that is open to anyone, not just professional comics and satirists. The use of violent imagery in satire does not mean that a real threat is being made. Emotional utterances are another area in which people use a lot of violent imagery that has no literal intent. Again, just saying something violent doesn’t mean you are going to do it, or even that you really want to do it.

For instance, I could make a satirical comment about George W. Bush being too arrogantly sure that he is doing God’s will and under God’s protection to bother getting out of the way of a deadly plague of locusts. Does this mean that I, personally, am planning on making this happen, or even that I want to see harm come to him?

I could write a play about George W. Bush waking up one day and finding himself transformed into a pregnant women, and cover in great detail the agonising process of trying to find an abortion and failing, only to end up bleeding to death on a back-street abortionist’s table. Does that mean I really want to see that happen?

Or I could create an animation in which George W. Bush can be made to walk into a toxic waste dump and die choking on the chemical fumes while all the birds and animals harmed by his environmental policies express their hopes that a new President will do something to let them live. Does that mean I want him to die a slow and painful death?

I might blurt out in the heat of anger or frustration that often surrounds intense political debate, that the world would be much better off if George W. Bush were dead, or even that he deserves to die because of all the Afghani and Iraqi civilians murdered in his wars. Does that mean that I want the man dead, much less that I plan to kill him myself?

I have the right to be offensive. I have the right to think about violent acts, and to speak about them. It may well be impolite and inconsiderate and even counter-productive to utter offensive and violent speech, but unless it’s coupled with immediate threat of bodily harm, it’s still just speech and it’s my right to utter it. And it’s a lot less offensive than sending armies to kill innocents, or wilfully turning a blind eye to policies that ravage the environment.

What I - or anyone - do not have is a right to commit violence, or incite someone else to. And if a government cannot understand the distinction between the act of speech and the act of violence, if it tries to limit speech about a public figure, no matter how offensive or violent that speech may be, that would be an act of political repression, no matter how nice and polite the brown-shirted thugs in their government-issue camouflage suits are when they arrive at the door.

And that is what bothers me, not just about what happened to anniesj, but also about the tone of her response to it. anniesj was silenced, and unless we fight that silencing, it could happen to anyone else. The lesson I take from what happened to her is not to be cautious about what I say, lest someone think it is offensive or threatening and call down the dogs of thoughtcrime upon me, but rather to struggle for the right of everyone to speak in freedom.


First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Pastor Martin Niemöller

No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

The other night I watched a film called “Prey for Rock and Roll.” Not a great film, but one scene was very powerful, at least for me. In an all-woman band, one of the band members has been raped. Another band member writes a song about rape. They sing it. The song is:

Every Six Minutes

Every six minutes, someone says "no"
Every six minutes, she gets ignored
It's not what you're wearing, it’s not where you've been
The fact that they think so tells you somethin' bout sin.
Every 6 minutes, a woman cries
Because every 6 minutes, her pleas are denied
No one's asking for it, it's no woman's secret desire
The fact that they think so is a man-made lie.
The passing of time brings you closer to me
Cause I've got love and justice keeps you free
I've got .38 special reasons at my side
Face the ultimate "no" big boy, this time I'll decide
If I had a bullet, for every six minutes
I know just where to put it, every six minutes
If I had a bullet, for every six minutes
I know just where to put it, every six minutes
If I had a bullet, for every six minutes
I know just where to put it, every six minutes

By Cheri Lovedog and Grace Chapman
(lyrics incomplete)


The song hit me to the core. Even though I abhor violence, even though I believe that revenge is never the answer to violence, even though I don’t want anyone running around with a gun for any reason. Deep inside me, something roared “Yes!”

And yesterday, I found that misia’s powerful statement about sexual violence, and people’s responses to it, had migrated to the small corner of Ljland that I inhabit.

So now many people around me are writing about sexual abuse and sexual violence. It’s a hard topic to start writing about, I find. Do I talk about my personal experiences with it? Or its history? Its sociological meanings? The different kinds of sexual violence? Who does it, who has it done to them, and why? The way sexuality and violence mixes together that makes so many blurred edges? The questions of fantasy versus reality, of consensual sex and power play versus the violation of the will that is rape. So much to talk about.

Back in the sixties and seventies, when some of us first started saying things akin to “no pity, no shame, no silence,” we also used to say that the personal is the political. And politics is about power. And so is sexual violence. So here’s the personal:

In my own life I can think of at least half a dozen occasions where a man, or a group of men, have tried to block my path, encircle me, trap me, prevent me from getting away from them, while they made sexual comments or threats of violence, mostly sexual, to and about me. One of these times, it was a groups of about five adolescent males in a car, who made several moves as if they were going to run me over if I didn’t stop and let them say, and possibly do, whatever they wanted to me.

On several more occasions, a man has followed me on foot or by car, making sexual comments or gestures whenever he got near enough to me.

Once I was stalked by a man for several weeks. I first became aware of him when he started a perfectly normal conversation with me in a public library, and then asked me out. I declined politely. He kept showing up at the library whenever I was there, and kept approaching me. I started being very careful about the path I took going home from, always going a round-about way and making sure he wasn’t following me. Eventually, I stopped going to that branch, even though it was the closest and one of the best in the city for my interests.

Two or three times a man has grabbed one or both of my arms and tried to hold onto me or pull me somewhere while making a sexual threat or suggestion.

Once, when I was 12, I took a short-cut one summer evening through an overgrown area by the river that ran through the city I lived in. A man started following me. He moved faster and faster. So did I. It was dark, I was scared. I tripped and fell. I don’t remember much more about it, other than his hands around my neck – interesting that that’s the one physical detail I recall so clearly. Maybe he was holding my throat so tightly that I blacked out – I’m not really sure. I do have fuzzy memories of pulling my clothes together, getting to my feet – he was nowhere in sight – going home and taking a long, long shower and throwing out the clothes I'd been wearing. My mother was away for a while on business, and so was her husband (of whom I will shortly say more), and I was alone for several days after that. I told no one for years afterward, not so much out of shame as because there was no one I could really think of to tell.

In most of these situations, no physical harm was done to me. Nonetheless, I believe all these things count as sexual violence. Certainly, the way I felt after each incident - the combination of fear, disgust and rage - wasn't all that different from how I felt the time I didn't get away. Some would probably say that's because I was stranger-raped at the age of 12, and these situations from later in my life bring back those original feelings. But I believe that words and gestures can be violent. Threatening sexual violence is an act, and a violent one.

I’m not sure that I consider child sexual abuse and sexual violence to be the same thing – or perhaps, it’s more that child sexual abuse, while never right, is not always sexual violence. Certainly, my feelings about being a survivor of sexual violence are different from my feelings about being a survivor of child sexual abuse. I remember my mother’s husband exposing himself to me, and getting me to touch him and fondle him, many times, beginning when I was seven or eight and continuing until he and my mother divorced when I was almost 13. I told no one about that for a long time, either, because even though I didn’t really like what he asked me to do, he treated me a lot better than my mother did (but that’s another story for another time). I don’t carry quite the same kinds of wounds. I think this is possibly because, twisted and sick though it was, there was an element of relationship. Sexual violence made me angry. Sexual abuse made me distrustful. Not saying one experience is any more or less harmful or wrong, just that they may sometimes have different dynamics – partly, I think, because sexual violence is power and control expressed through sexual acts, and child sexual abuse is, I think, more about sexuality expressed in a context of power, control and sometimes violence.

I wonder what it says about us as a species that sexual violence is so common among us. My guess is that, by my definitions of sexual violence, most women and at least a quarter of men are survivors of sexual violence. Sexual violence, as both an individual and a cultural means of exerting power and control and evoking fear, is directed not just at women but at sexual, ethnic and faith minorities. Wherever we look, we can find it - in homes, on battlefields, and everywhere in between.

Survivors of sexual violence have been talking about it for decades now. I know that speaking out can help the survivor to heal, and sometimes help others in their healing as well. So far, I’m not sure it’s done much to heal the human race of whatever dark knot is coiled inside, waiting for the time and place to strike. Maybe that’s just because there’s still not enough of us talking.

No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.


Addendum: It’s curious – when I began writing this entry, I considered putting some of my comments after an lj-cut, but decided not to, because concealment is so often associated with both shame and silence. I know that the cut is used for many reasons having nothing to do with concealment, and that many people will argue, with justification, that material about sexual violence could be very uncomfortable, even painful, for some. And if what I’ve written here has caused pain to anyone, I am sorry that this has happened. But I’m not ashamed about anything I’ve spoken of, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been silent about any of it. And in the current context, I think it all belonged right out front.