This is part of my response, on the topic of victim blaming, to an essay question for a job application.

Within the context of sexual assault, the abuser rationalizes his violent behavior by blaming the victim for “causing” him to behave that way, though triggers for violent behavior are defined, quite arbitrarily, by the abuser. The inequitable power dynamic at work in such a situation speaks not only to the way men are taught to enact their masculinity, but it also clearly exposes the way women are taught to behave toward men.

Because of the way gender roles are constructed in our society, many women are made to believe–either implicitly or explicitly throughout their lives—that it is their duty to make men happy. This is reflected in and reinforced by the media, pop culture, politics, religion, and other details relating to the familial and societal structures of the dominant culture. Therefore, when an abuser is violent, the victim is made to feel guilty; she is made to feel that she is not adequately fulfilling her role some how.

In this way, victim blaming takes the emphasis off the source of violence and places it upon the victim of that violence. Therefore, the emphasis is on the victim to change her behavior within an inherently and fundamentally violent context. As long as the victim is fixated on her behavior, violent masculinity and the institutional patriarchal power structure that informs violent masculinity goes unexamined. In this way, victim blaming serves as a way to detract any meaningful thought that attempts to get at the root problems of violence in our communities and within the dominant culture.

I wanted to thank everyone who came to and participated in this weekend’s MARSfest. I thought it went pretty well despite attendance being better last year. Last year, I had all the bands play last, so when the music stopped, everyone left. This year, I ended the night with Luke’s great anti-porn talk and concluded with an engaging discussion on that and other related issues. So thanks again to all who came, particularly to Babies and Summit Dub Squad who played two shows that day.

Also, check out Babies in the latest episode of Flag Underground.

Take Back the Night, Flagstaff, is tonight. We’re all meeting on North San Fran near the hospital and marching to Heritage Square for the rally. I will be speaking as well as a number of other people at 6:30.

Many people have no idea how big of a problem gender violence is, even in our small groovy mountain community.

Daily Sun

Nationally, less than 40 percent of sexual assaults are reported to law enforcement agencies, Pope said.

According to Flagstaff police reports, there were 51 rapes reported in Flagstaff in 2007, up from 46 in 2006 and 49 in 2005.

The event has been organized by NACASA, NAU Safe and Victim/Witness Services for Coconino County.

For more information on Take Back the Night, visit www.takebackthenight.org.

A little something from the vault: Last year, I wrote an article for The Noise explaining my thoughts on gender violence and how it is related to the destruction of the planet. Here is a word doc of that essay (please do not modify or reproduce elsewhere without asking me).

Yelp, it’s that time again. Spread this around.

This is messed up.

What does one say to a young woman gang raped by men paid by us to work for a company from which our vice president profits, men who have yet to be charged with any crime, a company yet to make amends in any way, and a presidential administration effectively granted immunity by our representatives in Congress?

A petition has been set up in the hopes that the ad will be dropped.

Event #1

Myra’s Women’s and Gender Studies 191 class is doing a fund raiser, sponsored in part by Northland Family Help Center.

WHAT: Film Screening of- Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes by Byron Hurt

WHEN: Monday, November 19th at 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm)

WHERE: Gardener Auditorium (First floor of the new Business Building on South Campus Room 101)

The first goal if this event is to raise funds for the new Indigenous Youth
Media Center & Infoshop Bookstore. The class is suggesting a $2 donation;
there will also be a book list in which you can buy a book for the infoshop.

Event #2

WHAT: The PEACE Project is performing!

WHERE: Northern Arizona University Studio Theatre

(College of Arts and Letters- between the parking garage and cline library
on North Campus)

WHEN: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm)

Let me know if you have any questions.

First rally: Monday, Nov. 5, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., public sidewalk in front of Flagstaff Planned Parenthood on South Plaza Way.

As many of you know, Flagstaff Planned Parenthood has recently begun to experience weekly anti-choice protests by fundamentalist Christians (see background information below). The protestors are not simply exercising their First Amendment right to free speech – they are harassing patients, family and friends by shouting through bullhorns, taking photographs of people entering and leaving the clinic, standing in the shopping center parking lot and handing people pamphlets, and generally behaving in an abusive manner. Several protestors have been cited for disorderly conduct. Nearby business owners and patrons have also spoken of harassment. These protests take place on Thursdays.

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact me and I’ll send you a weekly e-mail to let you know the day and time of the weekly rally. Lisa Rayner, Lisa@LisaRayner.com

Background on the anti-choice protestors

The protestors belong to NAU Students for Life and the Flagstaff Chapter of Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust. Members have also been tabling with graphic photographs of late term fetuses on the NAU campus and outside Flagstaff high schools. Members attended a fundamentalist “pro-life boot camp” this summer. They hold extremist views on sex and contraception. For example, they lie to people about hormonal birth control and emergency contraception, claiming that birth control causes abortion (in reality, hormonal birth control methods prevent ovulation). They consider a single-celled fertilized egg that has not yet implanted in a uterus to be the moral equivalent of an infant (or adult woman for that matter). “Survivors” chapter leader “Bud” Shaver was arrested in July in Wichita, Kansas for entering a Lutheran church during the Sunday service and screaming Bible verses at the congregation (a doctor who runs a women’s clinic is a church member).

About a year ago, I realized that I often use the word “girl” when I really mean “woman.” Ever since I realized I was doing that, I’ve recognized it every where I go. Everyone, it seems does this and I’m curious as to what that means.

Once upon a time, men were boys and women were girls. Once I reached a certain age, I wasn’t a boy, but a man—or more regularly, a “guy.” But in the way we continued to speak of the opposite sex, the girls stayed “girls.”

What is the female equivalent to “guy?” Lady? Who says that? “Lady” goes with “gentleman” and nobody says that unless they’re addressing a crowd. And even then, nobody really means it. I’m 27; the girls my age aren’t girls, they’re women. Still, they’re referred to as girls, even though I’m referred to as a man or a guy. Nobody would call me a boy, so I don’t understand why, in the great age of equality (at least ideologically) and political correctness, we still call women, girls.

I’ve been interested in dating again, but I don’t want to date a girl, I want to date a woman. If someone asks me if I’m dating a girl, it makes me feel creepy, like I’m trying to be with a 14 year old or something.

This might seem like I’m making a big deal out of nothing, at first I thought I was doing just that. But language is important and meaningful and the impact of language is always underestimated. Our world is shaped by the language we use to describe it. Our identities are shaped around the words we use to describe ourselves and what we do.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a student say, “That’s gay” in class, to which I always immediately address: “is that an appropriate way to describe this topic? What is homosexual about the issue of water usage in Arizona?” They always say that they didn’t mean “gay” literally and of course they didn’t.

Our culture is notorious for using language in a way that produces a disconnect between what we say and what we actually mean. This also helps to produce a similar disconnection between our ideologies and our actions. We’re not deforesting, of course (who wants that?), instead we’re “developing natural resources.” We can buy all the “green” products we want, but that doesn’t realistically mean we’re doing anything positive for our environment. The Bush Admin is fantastic at this. Lets forget that the “clear skies act” allows for more air pollution, that the “healthy forests initiative” results in increased deforestation, that the “no child left behind act” does nothing to address individual needs, cuts funding from schools that need it the most, and that every teacher I know hates this with a passion.

So if we use the word “girl” to describe women, what are the implications of this? Why do we do it? What are we hiding?

We should not be surprised to learn that the subjugation of women, alternative masculinities, and the environment are fueled by the same dominant masculine ideologies. As batterer-intervention counselor Lundy Bancroft concludes in his book, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, abusive men have internalized cultural beliefs about what it means to be a man that legitimize their behavior. One of the central issues at work in the construction of these ideologies is characterized by an initial sense of entitlement. “Entitlement,” according to Bancroft, “is the abuser’s belief that he has a special status and that it provides him with exclusive rights and privileges that do not apply to his partner” (Bancroft 54). When we consider the ways in which men have similarly legitimized their control over the natural world, we might understand that “the attitudes that drive abuse [of women, alternative masculinities, and the natural world] can largely be summarized by this one word” (Bancroft 54). Consider the roots of men’s sense of entitlement over the natural world in one of the oldest and, arguably, most influential texts, The Bible.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (Genesis, chap. 1, v. 26)

The most problematic word in this passage of The Bible is the word, “dominion,” which is defined as “lands or domains subject to sovereignty or control,” thus the derivative, “domination.” Thousands of years of identifying the environment in this way has had, as we have seen, devastating effects for the natural world. Further, identifying the natural world as one giant smorgasbord, whose purpose lies in the service of men, has brought with it the comforts and privileges we’ve grown accustomed to. This dominant ideology, however, similarly fuels the kind of battery and abuse that Bancroft describes. “Over time, the man grows attached to his ballooning collection of comforts and privileges” (Bancroft 152). This “attachment” is primarily in relation to the ideology that produces these comforts and privileges. Therefore, in the same way one must be defined in opposition in order to justify inhuman treatment of them, the ideologies that characterize the dominant masculine ideology must similarly never be questioned because of the comforts and privileges such an ideology produces for those in power.

As the question in the title of Bancroft’s book suggests, as long as women ask, “Why does he do that?” the emphasis is on the victim to change her behavior to avoid the abuse. As long as the victim of abuse is questioning his or her own actions, s/he remains blind to the systemic violence that underlies entire relationship. This also exemplifies a strong disconnection between the ideology and action. “Power, like property, like land and water, has become privatized and concentrated. And it’s been that way for so long that we believe it to such an extent that we think that’s the natural order of things” (Jensen 42).

Similarly, the discourse surrounding sustainability right now challenges us only to ask questions that do not question the entire abusive, destructive, and inherently, unsustainable system. “Global timber harvesters are squeezing more and more fiber out of a hectare of forest and yet deforestation proceeds unabated” (Princen 33). Similarly, our culture is feverishly examining alternative fuels such as hydrogen fuel cells, ethanol, bio-diesel and scores of others, but because the discourse surrounding sustainability is focused on the question of “how are we going to run our cars, sustainably?” it is rare that anyone considers the underlying premise that questions whether or not cars can ever truly be sustainable in the first place. “The outcomes, the goals of the institutions, are to ‘improve’ the environment, to use the resource more efficiently, to ‘green up’ consumption,” without questioning the culture of consumption itself (Prinsen 33). In this way, the dominant masculine ideology has us identify with its creations and its needs, which produce the comforts and privileges gained through a sense of entitlement, instead of identifying with real world needs.

Bancroft, Lundy. Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. New York: Berkley Trade. 2003

Jensen, Derrick. Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization. New York: Seven Stories Press. 2006

Princen, Thomas. “Principles for Sustainability: From Cooperation and Efficiency to Sufficiency.” Global Environmental Politics. Vol. 3, No. 1. 33-50. 2003

Despite the fact that I’ve never written about women and body hair, there has been a rush of comments from men, lately, who always seem to bring up the way they feel about this topic. I’ve dated women who don’t shave their body hair. I’ve dated women who do. It honestly doesn’t make a difference to me whatsoever. 

Men who are immediately turned off by women with body hair are always quick to make unsubstantiated claims about these women. They’re “dirty,” their “hippies,” their “dykes” are all common responses. Women who do not shave their body hair are exactly that: they are women who do not shave their body hair. A lot of men do not shave their body hair (remember when hairy chests were popular?…I’m waiting for that day to come back. Damn you Hasselhoff and Bon Jovi with your overkill!). We do not think these men are strange. 

There is an interesting history lesson regarding the socially constructed image of the “hairless woman,” one that made a refusal to shave perfectly justifiable in my mind. Long ago, in our culture, when it was nearly impossible for a woman to make a living without the support of a man (not that it’s a piece of cake now for many women), many women resorted to prostitution. The strongest market for prostitution was in younger girls. Therefore, when women got older—or rather, when they began to look older (ie body hair)—they weren’t as marketable. So these prostitutes, in an effort to remain independent, began to shave their body hair.  As the decades went by, the removal of body hair became an acceptable and widespread social construction. Now it’s expected.

Other cultures whose female members shave their body hair have other stories. This is ours.  Of course when a woman shaves her legs today, most likely she is not doing it for these reasons and I don’t want to be accused of calling women who shave their legs prostitutes, nor am I accusing the men who are specifically attracted to hairless female bodies of engaging in prostitution. I just think it is interesting and a history worth noting. 

Further, men (and women) who are grossed out by body hair, have learned to be grossed out by body hair and they can unlearn it just as easily. And where people learn things, it is because they are being taught. Our media reproduces the ideal body for women (and, of course men) as an archetype, from which there is little to no deviation.  When there is the slightest bit of deviation from this norm, when women with hairy legs are asked, as one man put it so eloquently in my comments, to “cover that shit up,” they are viewed as a threat. These women, who do not shave their legs are a threat to our world-views, our understanding and adherence to the way in which women “should” look.  As one theorist put it: “Perhaps it is because the division between masculine and feminine hair growth is physiologically arbitrary yet socially and psychologically rigid that any amount deviating from hairlessness is threatening. A woman never knows when she may have crossed the boundary” (p. 231). 

In a relationship between a prostitute and a man (which isn’t much of a “relationship” at all), the man is paying and is in control. Similarly in a patriarchal society, where beauty is understood through men’s eyes, women who do not shave are not only challenging the strictly defined gender roles and body image archetypes, but the entire power structure that creates them. 

And to me, that is very sexy.