Sweet: "Love Is Like Oxygen"
Today in Rape Culture
[Trigger warning for sexual violence; revictimization; bullying.]
Because my rape culture piece is widely linked, I get a lot of emails from men (always men, and affirming their maleness to me is always very important to them) who take issue with my contention that the rape culture even exists. No preponderance of evidence will ever convince them otherwise, but here is a simple truth: The true and terrible story like the one I am about to share would only exist as a fiction if the rape culture were not a real thing in the world.
A teenage girl with developmental disabilities, who I am going to call Jane, was harassed, assaulted, and raped by a male classmate at her school in Missouri. She reported the abuse to school authorities, who not only refused to believe her and failed as mandatory reporters to comply with the Missouri's Child Abuse Reporting Law and report her complaints to the Division of Family Services, but bullied her into recanting and then, "without seeking her mother's permission, school officials forced the girl to write a letter of apology to the boy and personally deliver it to him."
After being forced to apologize to her rapist, Jane was expelled for the remainder of the school year. And, despite having failed to report her complaints to authorities, school officials did refer Jane "to juvenile authorities for filing a false report."
The story does not end there.
In 2009-10, the girl was allowed back in school, and the boy continued to harass and assault her, the suit says. She did not tell school officials because she was afraid she would be accused of lying and kicked out of school.
In response, the defendants (the Republic School District, Superintendent Vern Minor, middle school Principal Patricia Mithelavage, counselor Joni Ragain, and school resource officer Robert Duncan) have argued that Jane "failed and neglected to use reasonable means to protect herself."
In February 2010, the boy allegedly forcibly raped the girl again, this time in the back of the school library. While school officials allegedly expressed skepticism of the girl, her mother took her to the Child Advocacy Center and an exam showed a sexual assault had occurred. DNA in semen found on the girl matched the DNA of the boy she accused, the suit says.
The boy was taken into custody in Juvenile Court and pleaded guilty to charges, the suit says. The specific charges are not stated in the suit.
"School Officials acted recklessly in conscious disregard of and with deliberate indifference to the risk of [Jane's] safety by failing to conduct an investigation into her allegations of rape and sexual assault, by suspending her from school, and by failing to provide her with any protection from her rapist," the suit says.
This story plucks strings of my memory that play a song of empathetic sorrow. It is a distant memory, to which I am at once intimately connected and dreamily dissociated, as if it were something that happened to me once upon a time when I was another person.
It makes this post difficult to write, in a way most posts are not.
I cannot speak for other survivors—not Jane, and not anyone else. I can speak only for myself, and, for me, to be raped was to be hurt, terribly hurt. To be disbelieved and abandoned by the people entrusted with my safety, sent away to be raped again, and again, was to be destroyed. The latter was harder to recover from than the former.
Rape, argue my disbelieving correspondents, happens in a world full of people. You'll never stop all rape from happening, they tell me. Maybe not. Maybe that classmate would have raped Jane even if we didn't live in a rape culture.
But he wouldn't have been allowed to rape her again.
[This story was sent to me by lots and lots of Shakers. Thanks to each and every one of you.]
Anderson Cooper Has a Gigglefit
Last night, Anderson Cooper added Gerard Depardieu to his "Ridiculist" after the actor reportedly peed in the passenger cabin of an airplane idling on the tarmac after he wasn't allowed to use the toilet. (I'm sure we can all agree that peeing in an airplane cabin is terrible, and rules about denying passengers access to toilets while flights are delayed are also terrible, although less terrible than public urination, and we don't need to debate those things because they're really not the point of the post.) Cooper's segment was chock full of pee-related puns—which are Deeky's second-favorite puns of ALL the puns!—and he almost got through the whole thing before breaking into one of the most hilarious giggle-fits ever captured on camera. Enjoy! (Via Gabe.)
[Full transcript below the fold.]
Time now for the "Ridiculist." Tonight, we are adding Gerard Depardieu: Noted French actor, Academy Award nominee, public urinator. That's right. I said urinator.
Last night on a flight from Paris to Dublin, Depardieu reportedly peed on the floor. Apparently, the plane was on the tarmac and the flight attendant told him he'd have to wait to use the bathroom until takeoff. So Depardieu created his own little jet stream, or as the French would say, "Oui, oui."
When I first heard this story this morning, I thought there was no way it was real. [chuckles] But the airline, CityJet, confirmed it beyond any shadow of skepticism. And by that, I mean, they vaguely tweeted about it, quote, "As you may have seen on the news, we are busy mopping the floor of one of our planes this morning. We'd also like to remind all passengers that our planes are fully equipped with toilet facilities."
Hmmmmm, CityJet. I would have guessed he flies Incontinental. [someone laughs in the background; Cooper grins goofily] Incontinental. Anyway. While the airline was busy putting the pee back in PR, some of the passengers just couldn't hold it anymore, and started spilling their versions of the incident to the press. Can you blame them?
They saw an actual thespian actually thes-peein'. This— [laughs] Oh, it's full of puns. [laughter in background] This probably won't come as a shock, but several passengers say Depardieu was—you guessed it—visibly drunk. But I think there's another explanation. See, as a celebrity, he's not accustomed to being told he can't do things he wants to do when he wants to do them. Things like going to the bathroom.
No, he's probably used to being, you know, pampered. [graphic of Pampers diapers appears] I'd go as far as to say he depends on it. [graphic of Depends diapers appears; Cooper points to it] Put a graphic in case you didn't get the reference... depends on it.
But it's kind of sad when you think about it. This guy has been in hundreds of movies. Will he be he remembered for Cyrano de Bergerac? Probably not. Will he be remembered for Green Card? Nope. This incident is likely go down as his number one role.
Although there is a bright side. [laughs] Will you stop laughing? It's distracting. [laughs] Now that we know he doesn't have any stage fright when it comes to public urination, maybe he can get together with his fellow castmates from La Vie en Rose, and they can have a pissing contest. You know, like a pee-off. Pee-off. 'Cause the movie was about Edith Piaf. So I said pee-off.
So after Gerard took his little solo flight to Urine Nation, the plane had to turn around and go back to the gate and some unlucky cleaning crew had to deal with the Golden Globe-winning tinkle. Now all I can say is they should thank their lucky stars it wasn't Depar-two.
[Cooper begins to laugh] Sorry. [laughs some more] That made me giggle every time I read it.
He hasn't commented on this incident. [laughs; someone is laughing in the background and it sends Cooper into gales of giggles] Depar-two. I know you get it, but. [Cooper completely breaks down into a fit of giggles] All right, okay, sorry. [He starts giggling EVEN HARDER and covers his face with his hands; he's giggling so hard he falls over and tears come to his eyes; his face goes red and he wipes the tears from his eyes and starts giggling again.] Sorry, this has actually never happened to me. [more giggling] You always see this sort of thing on YouTube, and you don't think it actually could happen to you. [He's giggling so hard, the words are coming out of him like staccato notes.] All right, sorry. [He shakes his head and wipes his face with his hands, trying to regain his composure, and clears his throat.]
He hasn't commented on the incident, but if I know the European celebrity spin machine, and, I think I do, there will probably be some excuse like he was doing research for a movie role. As we speak, I bet somewhere in Paris, a screenwriter is furiously typing out a period piece about the potty-training misadventures of an overgrown drunk French two-year-old.
His entourage reportedly says that he wasn't drunk and that he just tried to discretely pee in a bottle, but I'm not sure that version holds water.
In any case, Gerard, chin up. Yes, this incident was in all the papers, but it's nothing but yellow journalism and soon it will be flushed from our memories.
So just go with the flow on the "Riduculist."
Whoooooooooops the Alienation of Your Base During an Election Is Definitely a Terrible Idea!
Or just more evidence that I am very, very stupid and don't understand 12-dimensional chess. ("It's that one."—The Obama Administration.)
So, in their ongoing strategy of totally pissing off the activist base that helps people win elections, the Obama campaign has turned the hippie-punching up to eleven. Amanda Terkel reports on an email sent by the campaign's point person in New Mexico which takes aim at Paul Krugman and the "Firebagger Lefty blogosphere."
"I know many of you have raised frustrations, but please, I implore you, please take 5 minutes and read the article below. It does a great job of explaining the Debt Ceiling deal," Sandoval wrote in bold text.Not only is this email stupidly hostile during an election to the very people who are most politically active and comprise what should be the president's activist base, but it just utterly misunderstands why it is that the "ideologue Left" is angry with the President.
The rest of the email was a blog post taken from a blog called "The People's View," run by Spandan Chakrabarti. Chakrabarti writes that he has "been participating in online and offline liberal activism since 2003, when Gov. Howard Dean ran for president."
The blog post that Sandoval thought was important enough to share with others harshly condemns Krugman and progressive bloggers who have been critical of Obama. From the 1,825-word post:
Paul Krugman is a political rookie. At least he is when compared to President Obama. That's why he unleashed a screed as soon as word came about the debt ceiling compromise between President Obama and Congressional leaders - to, you know, avert an economic 9/11. Joining the ideologue spheres' pure, fanatic, indomitable hysteria, Krugman declares the deal a disaster - both political and economic - of course providing no evidence for the latter, which I find curious for this Nobel winning economist. He rides the coattails of the simplistic argument that spending cuts - any spending cuts - are bad for a fragile economy, ignoring wholeheartedly his own revious cheerleading for cutting, say, defense spending. But that was back in the day - all the way back in April of this year. [...]"Firebagger" is most likely a combined reference to the liberal blog FireDogLake, founded by Jane Hamsher, and "Tea Bagger," a less-than-flattering term for Tea Party activists.
No, the loudest screeching noise you hear coming from Krugman and the ideologue Left is, of course, Medicare. Oh, no, the President is agreeing to a Medicare trigger!!! Oh noes!!! Everybody freak out right now! But let's look at the deal again, shall we? [...]
Now let's get to the fun part: the triggers. The more than half-a-trillion in defense and security spending cut "trigger" for the Republicans will hardly earn a mention on the Firebagger Lefty blogosphere. Hell, it's a trigger supposedly for the Republicans, and of course, there's always It'sNotEnough-ism to cover it.
There has long been this insistence that disaffected progressives just don't comprehend how politics work, this continual implication that we're just whiny babies who don't understand the political realities with which the grown-ups have to contend in DC, but that is manifestly not the issue. The "ideologue Left" know very well how politics work: It was not we, after all, who foolishly believed that "hope and change" was enough to fundamentally alter the political vitriol plaguing the Beltway, who arrogantly believed that politely asking Republicans to rise above petty partisan bickering was going to inspire them to compromise.
We know how politics work. Insomuch as our criticisms are about politics, as opposed to policy (I'll come back to that in a moment), they are designed to challenge the administration to do politics in a different way than they've been doing it.
Greg Sargent lays out this piece of it pretty clearly:
[T]his story does provide a window into what I think is a real problem — the nature of the Obama team's frustration with liberal critics. The problem is that some on the Obama team don't reckon with what it is lefty critics are actually saying. Obama advisers get angry when they think liberal critics are refusing to accept the limits placed on him by current political realities, and when lefties presume at the outset that Obama will inevitably sell out. That's reflected in Sandoval's angry email and in other periodic explosions of anger at the "professional left."What we have here is a failure to listen. The only thing the White House is hearing is a straw-argument that's easily dismissed: They have unreasonable expectations because they are unsophisticated.
But the lefty critique goes considerably further than this. It's an argument with Obama's team about tactics and strategy, about what might be attainable if he handled these negotiations differently. The case from these critics is if Obama approached negotiations with a harder line, it would be better politics because it would juice up the base and show indys he's a fighter. They also advocate for this course because the current dynamic is hopelessly broken — and they think a more aggressive approach has at least a chance of broadening the field of what's substantively possible. (There's a segment on the left that also thinks Obama wants what's in the deals he keeps securing, but the points above are broadly what many lefties agree on.)
Whether you agree with this critique or not — people make persuasive cases in both directions — Sandoval's email shows a broader failure to reckon with what it is that has lefty critics so ticked off. That's the real problem here — and it's one of the key causes of the tension between the left and the White House.
That, literally, could not be more wrong. (Nor, frankly, more insulting.)
It also completely leaves aside that there are deep policy differences between critics on the "ideologue Left" and the administration, legitimate criticisms about the approach to the economy. Atrios sums up this chasm succinctly: "I don't ever imagine the Very Important People sit up late at night worrying about what's being posted on the walls of this humble lemonade stand. But to the extent that something might be in their base bugging their d00dz, I hope it isn't the armchair punditry or even the policy advice. It's that we've basically had 9.0%+ unemployment for 2.5 years and maybe...somebody should do something."
The irony of the administration sniffing haughtily about the "professional left" is that I can think of a half a dozen progressive bloggers who started blogging full-time after losing their jobs, and every progressive blog commentariat includes active and passionate and valued commenters who are unemployed. Unemployment is part of the reason there is a professional left, and the pretense that we are somehow separate from Real Americans, that we see things differently and/or don't speak for people experiencing long-term unemployment, would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.
The White House is missing, profoundly and comprehensively, that there are valid and reasonable political and policy differences with their progressive base, and, at minimum, those differences need to be heard and respected.
And, before I leave the subject of the President's base, I want to quickly mention, yet again, the potential to alienate female voters with shit like this from Obama's current stump speech:
If we're willing to do something in a balanced way--making some tough choices in terms of spending cuts, but also raising some revenue from folks who've done very well, even in a tough economy--then we can get control of our debt and deficit and we can start still investing in things like education and basic research and infrastructure that are going to make sure that our future is bright. It's not that complicated, but it does require everybody being willing to make some compromises.Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.
I was in Holland, Michigan, the other day and I said, "I don't know about how things work in your house, but in my house if I said, 'You know, Michelle, honey, we got to cut back, so we're going to have you stop shopping completely--you can't buy shoes, you can't buy dresses--but I'm keeping my golf clubs'--you know, that wouldn't go over so well."
Listen, the administration can keep getting pissy about the "ideologue Left" just being a bunch of stupid hippies who create headaches for them, or they can PAY ATTENTION to how this stuff looks from, say, my perspective. I'm a professional woman who writes progressive political material, and I'm implicitly being denigrated as a ninny-brained shopaholic who needs her husband to audit her spending and explicitly being denigrated as a know-nothing shit-head who doesn't understand how politics work.
When the election rolls around, and I don't feel the slightest inclination to support the President, his (male) supporters will be lining up to sneer at me, "What do you need—a personal invitation?" No, I don't need a personal invitation. What I need is to stop being given message after message after message that I am worthless, because I am not a corporation, because I am a progressive, because I am a woman.
Question of the Day
What potentially offensive comment has someone made about your body, which they managed to deliver in such a way that it amused, rather than offended?
[Note: My answer contains a description of body-modification.]
I was at a festival in Southern California, and a well-known piercer/tattooist was there. I chose to have my labia pierced, and climbed up into her tall director's chair, with her perched on a stool below, staring pretty much directly into my crotch.
She very clinically pulled my (very long) labia out from my body to assess a potential site, saying: "Nice lips! I could pierce you a dozen times on each side and just sew you up like a turkey!"
It took a long time for me to stop laughing enough for the procedure to commence safely.
Today in Rick Santorum Says Something Stupid
Letting the family break down and in fact encouraging it and inciting more breakdown through this whole redefinition of marriage debate, and not supporting strong nuclear families and not supporting and standing up for the dignity of human life. Those lead to a society that's broken.LOL FOREVER.
...If you think that we can be a society that kills our own, and that disregards the family and the important role it plays, and doesn't teach moral values and the important role of faith in the public square, and then expect people to be good, decent and moral when they behave economically, if you look at the root cause of the economic problems that we're dealing with on Wall Street and Main Street I might add, from 2008, they were huge moral failings. And you can't say that we're gonna take morality out of the public square, morality out of our schools, God out of our schools, and then expect people to behave decently in a country that requires, capitalism requires some strong modicum of moral consciousness if it's gonna be successful.
You know, I actually agree with him that capitalism requires "some strong modicum of moral consciousness if it's gonna be successful," but I'm a lot less (not at all) concerned with the allegedly nefarious (positive) effects of same-sex marriage and single mothers and abortion and secularism than I am about corporations' VORACIOUS GREED and the EXPLOITATION OF WORKERS, which, apart from being immoral, break the fuck out of a capitalist system because workers can't afford to consume the products and services they're employed to provide.
[Via.]
Two Reasons Why I Am Happy
1. Chris Christie still has no intentions of worming his way into the field for the GOP nomination.
2. Somewhere out there lives a beluga whale who loves mariachi bands.
[Video Description: A mariachi band serenades a beluga whale, who looks to be enjoying the music immensely.]
Q&A
Q: Just how far right are the Republican presidential candidates this election?
A: Karl Rove has become a voice of measured reason in his party, despite being as solidly a horrifying epic garbage nightmare as ever.
Barack Obama, when he ran for president in 2008, wrote a book, and, in that book, he first of all attributed to me a comment that I've never made, which was that we are "a Christian nation." I find that remark offensive: We are based on the Judeo-Christian ethic, we derive a lot from it, but if you say we're a Christian nation, what about the Jews, what about the Muslims, what about the non-believers? I mean, one of the great things about our country is the First Amendment guarantees you the right to believe or not to believe, as you choose.Note, of course, that Rove is only "offended" by this idea when he can use that offense to criticize President Obama, and not when, for example, he's conceiving a Federal Marriage Amendment that seeks to codify religious beliefs that are not shared by large swaths of the population.
Rove is a colossal hypocrite—but my point is not that he's got a modicum of integrity (he doesn't); my point is that none of the Republican candidates, save for possibly Jon Huntsman, would get caught dead making any kind of argument that could be mistaken for a tolerance of atheists, or non-Christians of any stripe.
My point is that the collection of bozos running for the GOP nomination make KARL FUCKING ROVE, the architect of Bush Conservatism, look liberal.
Number of the Day
38: The number of US states in which child poverty has increased in the last decade.
Nearly 15 million children, or 20 percent of America's juvenile population, were living in poverty in 2009, according to a child welfare study released Wednesday.MORE TAX CUTS.
More than double that number were in households where no parent had a full-time year-round job, according to the report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which noted that the child poverty rate grew about 18 percent over the past decade.
"This is really troubling because we had made so much progress in the 1990s in reducing the percentage of children in poverty," said Patrick McCarthy, the foundation's president and CEO. "Essentially the recession has put us back to where we were in the early 1990s."
...The recession has been especially hard on minorities, the study found. Black children were twice as likely as white children to have an unemployed parent.
The study found that poverty rose in 38 out of 50 U.S. states and that Nevada had the highest rate of children whose parents were unemployed and underemployed. The state is also home to the most children affected by foreclosures; 13 percent of all Nevada babies, toddlers and teenagers have been kicked out of their homes because of an unpaid mortgage, the study found.
*seethe*
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda does intense.
Dudley does lazy.
(That's Dudley all tuckered out after a trip to the dog park. If you look closely, you can still see the traces of grass strains on his back foot.)
Sophie does mysterious.
Olivia does frisky.
Matilda does regal.
The Obligation of Happily Ever After
by Shaker sbvds
[Trigger warning for coercion.]
When I think of romance, I picture thoughtful gifts, candlelit dinners, and two (or more) partners forgetting their cares as they simply enjoy the company of one another. Romance is a wonderful thing, for those interested in participating. However, more and more, I'm becoming aware of how the word has been co-opted by the patriarchy and used against women in disturbing ways.
Liss' post, "Your underdog lovelorn romantic may be my rapist," has certainly demonstrated this in several ways. The celebration and excitement over grand romantic gestures can be, and sometimes is, exploited by a cunning stalker to gain access to someone. People like that security guard can be talked into doing something unsafe – even contrary to their very job descriptions – for the sake of romance because we love these gestures so much and especially love it when we can participate.
In this post, I want to address the removal of women's agency inherent to public romantic acts, specifically in Western heterosexual relationships, where this trend is most visible by virtue of media attention that both encourages and rewards "fairy tale" romances.
Most of the straight married men most of us know will have "popped the question" to their girlfriends to become engaged. I've sat at many a table, usually during wedding receptions, listening to women take turns telling their stories about how their fiancés/husbands proposed. This paradigm irks me to no end, and doubtless it irks some of you.
Despite being one half of a couple, women are not presumed to have an equal say in when they should become engaged, which reinforces the patriarchy's disdain for women having control over their own lives. Consequently, we have scenarios in which women wait and wait and wait for their boyfriends to propose, they give their boyfriends a deadline or ultimatum, and/or men feel immense pressure to plan something spectacular and elaborate. They can't just discuss the matter rationally and make a decision together because then the woman would have agency it would not be ROMANTIC!
Public proposals are even worse, and this was touched on a few times in the post and comments section of the above-linked "lovelorn romantic." In private, though it would be a very hard conversation to have, she can say no. In public – is that even a realistic option? Here, a woman not only does not get to decide on when or how it happens, but she doesn't even get to decide how to answer. Not really. Not free of the obligation to give the "fairy tale" its happy ending. Naturally, public proposals are considered far more romantic than private ones and invoke more excitement and story sharing.
Finally, we have la pièce de résistance and the main reason for this guest post: The surprise wedding. It is the first time I've ever heard of such a thing, but it was the natural consequence of the way men making important decisions for a couple has been celebrated as romantic.
This is a life-changing event in their lives in a more immediate way than an engagement date is. Everyone who was invited, and everyone who saw the website planning the event, participated in this romantic conspiracy: Literally hundreds of people withheld information from this woman pertinent to the rest of her life, apparently without thinking that she should be part of this decision and that he does not automatically speak for the both of them.
According to the news article, they had previously talked about marriage and he knew what she wanted regarding details of the wedding. We are supposed to regard his planning their entire wedding without her active input as romantic and enviable, but it plays into the trope of a woman's commitment being a reward for good behaviour, a trophy earned by Romantic Guys whose efforts entitle them to coupledom.
Even though they were already in a relationship; even though she told him what dress she wanted; even though she seems happy about the whole thing, he tricked her into showing up to a wedding into which the overwhelming pressure to marry him right then and there would have made saying no to the event difficult, and there's no way around that. A woman can want to marry a man but not want to do it like that, under the duress of matrimonial shock and awe.
If they had agreed to have children someday and then he decided to secretly sabotage their birth control so that he could surprise her with the pregnancy, we would be outraged. Apparently, if we gave reproductive coercion a better euphemism it would be applauded.
Not only does this version of romance allow stalkers or rapists to recruit unwitting co-conspirators, it clearly also entrances us into cheering on a man subverting a woman's agency in important decisions about her life.
Wow, That's Meta
I just scrubbed the toilets with a toilet bowl cleaner that smells like a dirty toilet. Brilliant.
Seriously, the bathrooms smelled fine before. Now there are no bowl-rings, but the areas smell like poorly-maintained public restrooms. This smells like case of ammonia gone terribly wrong*.
P.S. The cleaning product is called "The Works". I cannot recommend it, unless you really love irony.
* UPDATE: It may smell like ammonia gone wrong, but it is actually hydrochloric acid, according to the MSDS (PDF). Thanks to canyonwren in comments for the clarification.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by doodles.
Recommended Reading:
Carole: Working with Dr. Tiller: His Staff Recalls a Tradition of Compassionate Care at Women's Health Care Services of Wichita
Fannie: [TW for violence; homophobia; transphobia; gender policing; victim-blaming] Narratives in the Lawrence King Case
Andrew: Gay Activists Plan Kiss-In For Pope's Spain Visit
Renee: The Problem with Liberal Anti-Racist White Folks Being Voices of Authority in the Movement to End Racism
Andrea: This Isn't That Documentary: Gloria: In Her Own Words
Tigtog: Congratulations, Sensei Fukuda!
Tami: [TW for fat hatred; food policing; misogyny] Boris Kodjoe Has Nightmares about Fat Chicks in Thongs
Lara: [TW for discussion of dieting] How Loving My Body Saved My Life
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Same Script, Different Cast
[Trigger warning for racism; classism; sexual violence.]
A caveat: I have not seen "The Help." I do not plan to see "The Help," yet I feel pretty confident that I have "The Help" all figured out. If you don't know about this film, please see this post. I'm going to ground my thoughts about "The Help" in two other documents I will link: Valerie Boyd's review entitled, "'The Help,' a feel-good movie for white people" and "An Open Statement to the Fans of 'The Help'" from the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH). A brief description from Boyd:
"The Help" — the film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Atlanta author Kathryn Stockett — is a feel-good movie for a cowardly [wrt to the ways we deal (or don't deal) with issues of race] nation.And there you have it, the problem at the heart of works like "The Help" that blossoms into myriad other problems—the centering of white women in a story that is supposed to be about women of color, the positioning of white women as saviors who give WoC voice. As my colleagues in the ABWH note,
Despite its title, the film is not so much about the help — the black maids who kept many white Southern homes running before the civil rights movement gave them broader opportunities — as it is about the white women who employed and sometimes terrorized them.
Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers.I want to meld these critiques of "The Help" with my own, which is rooted in who I am: My name is elle, and I am a granddaughter of "The Help." And while I can never begin (and would never want) to imagine myself as the voice of black domestic workers, I can at least share some of their own words with you and tell you some places you can find more of their words and thoughts.
I. The Help's representation of [black domestic workers] is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy… [p]ortrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites…—ABWH
Early on in "The Help," we hear the maids complain that they've spent decades raising little white girls who grow up to become racists, just like their mothers. But this doesn't stop Aibileen from unambiguously loving the little white girl she's paid to care for. —Boyd
When you put white women at the center of a story allegedly about black women, then the relationships between those two groups of women is filtered through the lens and desires of white women, many of whom want to believe themselves "good" to black people. That goodness will result in the unconditional love, trust and loyalty of the black people closest to them. They can remember the relationships fondly and get teary-eyed when they think of "the black woman who raised me and taught me everything." They fancy themselves as their black nanny's "other children" and privilege makes them demand the attention and affection such children would be showed.
From a post I wrote some time ago:
I hated, hated, hated that my grandmother and her sister were domestics.But, as the granddaughter of the help, I learned that the woman my grandmother's employers and their children saw was not my "real" grandmother. Forced to follow the rules of racial etiquette, to grin and bear it, she had a whole other persona around white people. It could be dangerous, after all, to be one's real self, so black women learned "what to say, how to say it, and sometimes, not to say anything, don't show any emotion at all, because even just your expression could cause you a lot of trouble."** They wore the mask that Paul Laurence Dunbar and so many other black authors have written about. It is at once protective and pleasant, reflective of the fact that black women knew "their white people" in ways white people could never be bothered to know them. These were not equal relationships in which love and respect were allowed to flourish.
Not because I was ashamed, but because of the way white people treated them and us.
Like… coming to their funerals and sitting on the front row with the immediate family because they had notions of their own importance. "Nanny raised us!" one of my aunt's "white children" exclaimed, then stood there regally as the family cooed and comforted her.
Indeed, with regard to the white children for whom they cared, black women often felt levels of "ambiguity and complexity" with which our "cowardly nation" is uncomfortable. Yes, my grandmother had a type of love for the children for whom she cared, but I knew it was not the same love she had for us. I think August Boatwright in the film adaptation of "The Secret Life of Bees" (another film about relationships between black and white women during the Civil Rights Era that centers a white girl) voiced this ambiguity and complexity much better. When her newest white charge, Lily, asks August if she loved Lily's mother, for whom August had also cared, August is unable to give an immediate, glowing response. Instead, she explains how the situation was complicated and the fragility of a love that grows in such problematic circumstances.
Bernestine Singley, whose mother worked for a white family, was a bit more blunt when the daughter of that family claimed that Singley's mother loved her:
I'm thinking the maid might've been several steps removed from thoughts of love so busy was she slinging suds, pushing a mop, vacuuming the drapes, ironing and starching load after load of laundry. Plus, I know what Mama told us when she, my sister, and I reported on our day over dinner each night and not once did Mama's love for the [white child for whom she cared] find its way into that conversation: She cleaned up behind, but she did not love those white children.II. The caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them.
From films like "The Help," we can't know what life for black domestic workers is/was really like because, despite claims to the contrary, it's not black domestic workers talking! The ABWH letter gives some good sources at the end, and I routinely assign readings about situations like the "Bronx Slave Market" in which black women had to sell their labor for pennies during the Depression. The nature of domestic labor is grueling, yet somehow that is always danced over in films like this.
As is the reality of dealing with poorly-paid work. In her autobiographical account, "I Am a Domestic," Naomi Ward describes white employers' efforts to pay the least money and extract the most work as "a matter of inconsiderateness, downright selfishness." "We usually work twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week," she continues, "Our wages are pitifully small." Sometimes, there were no wages, as another former domestic worker explains: "I cleaned house and cooked. That's all I ever did around white folks, clean house and cook. They didn't pay any money. No money, period. No money, period."**
Additionally, the job came with few to no recognizable benefits. The federal government purposely left work like domestic labor out of the (pathetic) safety net of social security, a gift to southerners who wanted to keep domestic and agricultural workers under their thumbs. After a lifetime of share-cropping and nanny-ing, my grandmother, upon becoming unable to work, found that she was not eligible for any work-based benefit/pension program. Instead, she received benefits from the "old age" "welfare" program, disappearing her work and feeding the stereotype of black women as non-working and in search of a handout. (I want to make clear that I am a supporter of social services programs, believe women do valuable work that is un- or poorly-remunerated and ignored/devalued. So, my issue is not that she benefited from a "welfare" program but how participation in such programs has been used as a weapon against black women in a country that tends to value, above all else, men's paid work.)
The control of black people's income also paid a psychological wage to white southerners:
[Their white employers gave] my grandmother and aunt money, long after they'd retired, not because they didn't pay taxes for domestic help or because they objected to the fact that our government excluded domestic work from social insurance or because they appreciated the sacrifices my grandmother and her sister made. No, that money was proof that, just as their slaveholding ancestors argued, they took care of their negroes even after retirement!The various forms of verbal and emotional abuse suffered are also glossed over to emphasize how black and white women formed unshakeable bonds. By contrast, Naomi Ward described the conflicted nature of her relationships with white women and being treated as if she were "completely lacking in human dignity and respect." In Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody says of her contentious relationship with her employer, Mrs. Burke, "Mrs. Burke had made me feel like rotten garbage. Many times she had tried to instill fear within me and subdue me…" Here, I wrote a bit about the participation, by white women, in the subjugation of women of color domestic workers.
And what of abuse by white men? " 'The Help's' focus on women leaves white men blameless for any of Mississippi's ills," writes Boyd:
White male bigots have been terrorizing black people in the South for generations. But the movie relegates Jackson's white men to the background, never linking any of its affable husbands to such menacing and well-documented behavior. We never see a white male character donning a Klansman's robe, for example, or making unwanted sexual advances (or worse) toward a black maid.This a serious exclusion according to the ABWH, "Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness."
Why the silence? Well, aside from the fact that this is supposed to be a "feel good movie," when you idolize black women as asexual mammies in a culture where rape and sexual harassment are often portrayed as compliments/acknowledgements of physical beauty (who would want to rape a fat, brown-skinned woman?!), then the constant threat of sexual abuse under which many of them labored and still labor vanishes. But black women themselves have long written about and protested this form of abuse. My own grandmother told me to be careful of white boys who would try to make me "sneak around" with them and an older southern man who was a fellow grad student told me that he and other southern men believed it was "good luck" to sleep with a black woman. Here, in the words of black women, are acknowledgements of how pervasive the problem was (is):
"I remember very well the first and last work place from which I was dismissed. I lost my place because I refused to let the madam's husband kiss me... I believe nearly all white men take, and expect to take, undue liberties with their colored female servants."*
"The color of her face alone is sufficient invitation to the southern white man… [f]ew colored girls reach the age of sixteen without receiving advances from them."*
"I learned very early about abuse from white men. It was terrible at one time and there wasn't anybody to tell."**
These stories abound in works like Stephanie Shaw's What a Woman Ought to Be and Do, Paula Giddings's When and Where I Enter, Deborah Gray-White's Too Heavy a Load and other books where black women are truly at the center of the story. Black women's concern over sexual abuse is serious and readily evident, but "The Help," according to the ABWH, "makes light of black women's fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief."
III. The popularity of this most recent iteration [of the mammy] is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.—ABWH
This mention of the White House is not casual (Boyd opens her review with an Obama-era reference, as well). I'm currently working on a manuscript that examines portrayals of black women and issues of our "desirability," success, and femininity in media. To sum it up, we, apparently, are not desirable or feminine and our success is a threat to the world at large. Many black women are trying to figure out why so much is vested in this re-birthed image of us (because it's not new). One conclusion is that it is a counter to the image of Michelle Obama. By all appearances successful, self-confident, happily married and a devoted mother, she's too much for our mammy/sapphire/jezebel-loving society to take. And so, the nostalgia the ABWH mentions comes into play. It's a way to keep us "in our place."
It happens every day on a smaller scale to black women. I remember someone congratulating me in high school on achieving a 4.0 and saying that maybe my parents would take it easy on me for one-six weeks chore-wise. The white girl standing with us, who always had a snide comment on my academic success, quickly turned the conversation into one about how she hated her chores and how she so hoped the black lady who worked for them, whom she absolutely adored, would clean her room.
Even now, one of my black female colleagues and I talk about how some of our students "miss mammy" and it shows in how they approach us, both plus-sized, brown-skinned black women with faces described as "kind." I do not need to know about the black woman who was just like your grandmother, nor will I over-sympathize with this way-too-detailed life story you feel compelled to come to my office and (over)share.
IV. [T]he film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers' assassination sends Jackson's black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight.—ABWH
Embedded in this is perhaps the clearest evidence of the cowardliness of our nation. First, we cannot dwell too long on racism, in this case as exemplified in the Jim Crow Era and by its very clear effects. "Scenes like that would have been too heavy for the film's persistently sunny message," suggests Boyd. I'd go further to suggest that scenes like that are too heavy for our country's persistently sunny message of equal opportunity and dreams undeferred.
Second, when we do have discussions on the Jim Crow Era, we have to centralize white people who want to be on what most now see as the "right" side of history. They weren't just allies, they did stuff and saved us! And so, you get stories like "The Help" premised on the notion that "the black maids would trust Skeeter with their stories, and that she would have the ability, despite her privileged upbringing, to give them voice." Or like "The Long Walk Home," (another film about relationships between black and white women during the Civil Rights Era that centers… well, you get it) in which you walk away with the feeling that, yeah black people took risks during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but the person who had the most to lose, who was bravest, was the white woman employer who initially intervened only because she wanted to keep her "help."
These stories perpetuate racism because they imply that is right and rightful that white people take the lead and speak for us. (On another note, how old is this storyline? Skeeter's appropriation of black women's stories and voices, coupled with the fact that "Skeeter, who is simply taking dictation, gets the credit, the byline and the paycheck" reminded me so much of "Imitation of Life," when Bea helps herself to Delilah's pancake recipe, makes millions from it, keeps most for herself and Delilah is… grateful?!) The moral of these stories is, where would we have been without the guidance and fearlessness of white people?
I know this moral. That's why I have no plans to see "The Help."
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*From Gerda Lerner, Black Women in White America.
**From Anne Valk and Leslie Brown, Living with Jim Crow.
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[Commenting Guidelines by Liss: Please note that if you are a white woman and your immediate response to this is to focus on the Patriarchy's role, or classism's role, to the exclusion of white women's role in what is a kyriarchal dynamic, or posit any other alternative theories, that reaction is likely an indicator of unexamined privilege. I strongly encourage you to receive this post not as an indictment, but as a gift: It is an invitation to self-examine, and an opportunity to learn. Please be inclined to listen rather to reflexively challenge the presented concepts.]
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for domestic violence; misogyny.]
"She got a little upset. Girls do that."—Ohio State Senator Kris Jordan (R-Ealpieceofwork), explaining a 911 call during the course of which his wife Melissa said: "He's mad; he's got the gun." She declined to press charges.
[H/T to Shaker Robert.]
Great Candidate! Very Successful Banter!
Truly, the crop of Republican presidential candidates this election are grim even by the usual standards. And even the veterans of this trail of garbage nightmares seem to be engaging in unusually egregious amounts of nincompoopery.
Mitt Romney was in fine form while touring an elevator company in New Hampshire yesterday:
"Ian. That's kind of a British name," Romney said to a 7-year-old boy asking for an autograph. The boy, Ian Sandhage, responded with a question.Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.
"Are you going to take Obama's house away from him?" he said.
Later, Romney continued guessing the origins of people's names.
"I'm Lisa Dellisola," one woman said to Romney. "That's a Spanish name? Italian?" he responded. (It's Italian, and she confirmed Romney had her vote.)
As Romney began to leave the company after his hourlong visit, he looked at the Ellen Boss, the girlfriend of the company's general counsel, Cory Hussey.
"Nice," Romney said as she blushed. "Nice choice. Just like me," a reference to his wife, Ann.
Playing guessing games with people's names is a bad idea for a whole lot of reasons, from inadvertent offense—a lot of USians have a bad habit of pretending that conflating Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, or Scottish, English, and Welsh, or Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, etc. is No Big Deal, when in fact such mistakes can cause offense for several reasons—to obliging adoptees to out themselves. I was at a public event years ago at which a local politician noted that a young women "didn't look Irish," to which she replied, "That's either because it's a Scottish name or because I'm adopted." Oof.
And I don't imagine I need to explain why it's gross for a man to compliment another man on his "nice choice," as if his attractive girlfriend is a piece of prized property. Whooooooooooops your retrofuck misogyny!
Jobs Schmobs
In case you were worried that President Obama might accidentally pursue some progressive economic policies, DON'T WORRY HE WON'T:
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday a plan to boost economic recovery that he will unveil in September will not include creating a new jobs department.Phew! Thank Maude we narrowly averted that potential crisis of competence.
"We're going to take one more run at Congress, we're going to say to them here is a comprehensive approach that gets our debt and deficits under control and also accelerates job growth right now," Obama said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room."LOL! HOW DARE YOU! I have no intention of creating a new jobs department! Good day, sir! I said GOOD DAY.
Asked about reports that he might consider creating a new jobs department, Obama replied: "That is not true."
If you're wondering what Obama will be proposing in his "major speech on the economy" next month, in which he will "unveil new ideas for speeding up job growth and helping the struggling poor and middle class," let me not keep you in suspense:
The president's plan is likely to contain tax cuts, jobs-boosting infrastructure ideas and steps that would specifically help the long-term unemployed."Jobs-boosting infrastructure ideas" sounds great—and the only thing on that list with the conceivable potential to actually create jobs—but we can't pay for infrastructure renewal when we're cutting revenue, and paying for infrastructure renewal at the expense of social programs is not a wise or meaningful solution.
...On a significant and related front, Obama will also present a specific plan to cut the suffocating long-term national debt and to pay for the cost of his new short-term economic ideas.
His debt proposal will be bigger than the $1.5 trillion package that a new "supercommittee" of Congress must come up with by late November.
That the president, or anyone else in Washington, is even talking about tax cuts at this point is categorically absurd.
Jobs. The word is JOBS.
