I’m curious how many women fantasize about violence. Not necessarily violence against themselves, but rather acting out violence against others. Here’s my thought process. I read an article about Asiaphile iphone apps, involving Asian breasts, blowing up Asian girls’ skirts to see their undergarments, and tips on getting a date with a Chinese woman. I am sickened by these antics, that for a few bucks people can carry digitized racism in their hands, accessible at any given moment. How can I get these pricks back? How can I reduce the number of Asian fetishists, lurking about the world, rubbing up against me in the subway, and hitting on me with lines like, “oh so you’re Korean. i think they’re the best looking Asians.”?
So, I began thinking of all the violent things I could do to an Asiaphile the next time I’m approached. This goes against my soft pacifist stance and my Jesus given grace, but nonetheless I fantasized for several minutes. Is this common, this fantasy of violence, of being some kickass superwoman, who kicks ass so hard the tides of racism and genderism are reversed? I know many women who have ‘escape plans’ mapped out in their heads in almost every place they’ve ever gone to. They know what weapon they’d grab or which way they’d run in case of attack. Violence against women is a form of terrorism, so that when we hear of it happening to any woman, we fear for ourselves, because it’s an attack against all women. My fantasy of violence against specific groups of men is rooted in a desire to terrorize them. I want the message sent to all men, not to mess with me or my fellow women. Yet it’s very unlikely I’ll execute any of these whimsical ideas. But it does help me gain power over a situation that, when I’m confronted by it, leaves me depleted and fearful.
Old Yeller
Melinda, I found your post interesting because, actually, I’m pretty much the opposite. My issue is that I yell back too much. I can recall a few different times when I’ve either yelled or spoken in a very strong, straightforward manner to “authorities,” both male and female. One time it was a male coach, once a female coach, once a male boss. I’m sure there are others, but those are the three I am thinking of off the top of my head.
The results have often been sort of a mixed bag. My opinions are definitely heard, but these reactions on my part don’t often lead to long-term changes in policy, actions, etc. As I mature, I’m learning to reign in these impulses to yell, often in favor of a more tactical approach. Sometimes this includes silence. It almost always includes figuring out the circumstances in which an indiviudual person will best respond to what I’m saying or what I want, and that almost never includes yelling. There’s a trade-off involved – to get what I want, I have to cater to another’s logic, sensitivities, etc. It’s retaining control while making the other think he has control. It’s a bit of a manipulative game, one that I sort of enjoy and that I’m getting kind of good at.
I’ve always had issues with authority, so I probably fall on an extreme end of the spectrum. My parents and middle-class, small-town elementary school started teaching me early on that I’m unique!, I’m special!, and I have valid thoughts and opinons, and they should be heard. There’s nothing more frustrating to me than a meely mouse, someone too timid to speak up or have an independent thought. I don’t care what a person’s opinion is, I just want her to have one. I’ve also been taught to question things and to not blindly follow something or someone that doesn’t make sense.
Because of this, my default is to speak out. My newer and more nuanced approach is silence followed by a strategic response. I can see how for other women, the default is silence. I don’t think that silence in and of itself is a bad thing. I think the problem is when the silence is part of a bigger issue of non-assertiveness. In different contexts, silence can be indicative of power or weakness, and the yelling/silence choice is not always a binary one.
“Yell”ow
I picked up a book called Warrior Lessons on a coworker’s desk the other day. Written by an Asian American woman lawyer, I’m only 70 skimmed pages in, but a chapter on finding one’s voice and channeling one’s anger has kept me thinking all day. She recounts the story of the day she yelled back at her overbearing boss. Yet, I resonated with her other stories of Asian Am women who choose ‘silence’ as a means of control rather than assertively using one’s voice. It’s not particularly effective.
I’m almost positive this is something white women or other women of color resonate with, the hesitancy that comes with challenging authority, particularly male authority, even when we are being disrespected and taken advantage of. When have you yelled back?
Racist System/Different Cultures
Becka, interesting that you brought up race as it plays out in the foster care system, because I’m reading a book right now called The Lost Children of Wilder. It traces the progress (or lack thereof) of a lawsuit filed against several foster care agencies in the 70’s that used purportedly racist and religion-biased criteria to accept children into their programs. I haven’t finished it yet, so I’m not sure exactly what the lawsuit evolved into in the end, and whether or not it had any impact on the NYC foster care system (I suppose not significant enough to fix the system). The book also looks at the child/woman Shirley Wilder who is the named plaintiff, and her child, also born into NYC’s foster care system. Their lives are filled with tragedies and more than once I have had to furrow my brow and take deep breaths to keep from crying. Perhaps because I relate; my feelings are a mix of sadness for anyone, including me, feeling unwanted and uncared for, grateful that my experience was very, very different, and guilty for living in a society where this happens so regularly.
I too noticed the disparity in foster, kinship, and adoption when I worked as a Kinship Case Manager for a practicum in undergrad. I think kinship appears more in nonwhite than white communities for a few reasons. For one, it could be an unnecessary surplus of black children in the foster/kinship care system. This is because the system not only reflects the racist or preferential attitudes of the ‘market,’ it is itself racist. I think poor black families, particularly poor black mothers, are more likely to be seen as inadequate, and therefore are more likely to have children removed from them. Think: poor woman addicted to crack vs. rich woman addicted to xanax. There is then an abundance of black children in the system, and so family steps in to care for them. Plus, since the prognosis of a black child in foster care is very grim, extended families are more likely to take custody of the child, rather than see them face the injustices of the system.
I also think that if kinship is indeed less common in white communities (in proportion to the # of children in foster/kinship care), then it could be because white communities view families in mother, father, children units. Perhaps there’s less of a “we need to stick together because all we have is each other” spirit and more of an “every man for himself” spirit in white communities? I say this with absolutely no evidence aside from general observations. We all have generations of culture related to our ethnic backgrounds and racial experiences, and this could be one way that our different histories play out.
thoughts on family
Last month I was fortunate enough to spend a long weekend with my sister, her husband and their 3 year-old foster son. They’ve been foster parents for over a year now, so I’ve had the opportunity to learn more than I ever thought I’d want to know about the Florida foster care/adoption system. They’ve had their current foster son since late February, and it’s getting down to crunch time… they find out later this month whether his natural parents’ rights will be terminated. Last month I asked my brother-in-law what would happen if that happens, but for some fluke reason they aren’t able to adopt him. Would it be an easy process to find another family, and how long would it take? My bro-in-law said it would take about twenty minutes, because he’s white. His race being what it is (and to a lesser extent the fact that he hasn’t yet reached school age) means that there is a long waiting list of families who would each jump at the chance to adopt him.
I wasn’t totally shocked to hear that, but I was floored by what my brother-in-law told me next. In the Florida foster care/adoption system, black children are classified as special needs children. I couldn’t believe my ears. Apparently blackness ALONE warrants classification as special needs. This seemed so wrong, and I was outraged to hear it. In this system, each child is labeled based on how difficult it is to place him/her in a permanent home. So, a perfectly healthy black child and a disabled white child will have the same likelihood of being adopted. This is of course problematic, as it assigns value to a child based solely on race or health. Even more so, it’s problematic because it assigns value at all, instead of presupposing that each child is inherently valuable. I was still shocked that a state-wide system could be set up this way, and my brother-in-law pointed out that the characteristics of the system itself are neither here nor there. It merely reflects what’s going on in the society at large. In other words, the system doesn’t label or assign each child as anything at all, but simply mirrors the reality of how Floridians view these children.
At this point, I asked the next logical question and I got more social commentary. How does the Florida system classify children of other races? The part of Florida they live in has a very, very small Asian population. The main races represented are white, black and Hispanic. Mike and Sarah have never had an Hispanic foster child. They’ve had several black children, but all of them eventually were placed with other family members. The white children, however, seem to be good candidates for adoption.
In my view, this speaks volumes about the structure and role of the family unit among different races. At least in Florida, Hispanic children rarely enter foster care. (Not only have my sister and brother-in-law never had an Hispanic foster child, they don’t know anything else who has either). It seems that the Hispanic family is so strong that another family member almost always intervenes before things escalate to the point of a child being removed. In black families children will be taken away, but more often than not someone (usually a grandmother) will step forward and care for the child. In white families, this support is noticeably absent. If a child is taken away, typically he/she will eventually be adopted. There aren’t any other family members available or willing to take the child.
Granted, these are broad observations based on limited anecdotal evidence. But even so, there seems to be a bit of truth here. Why is it that the concept of family is so different among people of different races?
I’m still sort of processing all of this information. I’m not yet in the synthesize and conclude stage, but I wanted to get this out there to see if anyone else has some thoughts. It’s a difficult thing to think about when it’s not just a thought experiment, but you can actually see these things play out in the sobering world of social services.
Animals have feelings, too.
“Animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda,” ends a recent Op-Ed by Nicholas Kristof. This is a victory for animals, and I am unabashedly celebrating it. “Animal rights” are condescended and teased frequently, and I’ve never been sure why there is so much animosity against the movement. I feel like people are finally coming to their senses and realizing that animals can suffer (see further down in Kristof’s column) and do suffer at the hands of humans, and for the purpose of overstuffing our obese selves. We’ve developed an arbitrary designation system for determining what animals are okay to eat and what animals are meant to cuddle with, based not on the animal so much as our own needs. We’ve even gone a step further in wrongly deciding that either animals do not suffer or that their suffering is of little consequence to us. Then, we’ve turned a blind eye to the cruelty inflicted upon animals so that we can eat them. It’s wrong. It’s disgraceful. It must change.
Oprah’s cry from the wilderness
This sounds a lot like blaming ourselves, again. Blaming women for keeping “the lid” on domestic violence. I think men and women have reasons for not talking about it, reasons that are probably different from each other, but we both are responsible for neglecting to talk about this problem.
But, I see what you mean, Meagan, as far as your reason for why women don’t talk about DV. It seems women’s rights, and any movement, fails when it doesn’t account for the complicatedness of life. The issue of equal rights is not that we are all the same. And any movement for equal rights that fails to account for this fact, will experience failure. Men are generally physically stronger than women. And women generally have bodies that reproduce and birth children. Equal rights does not assert that everyone is the same, but that differences do exist, and despite these, we all have the right to not be abused, or to be educated, or to get a job. Yet how to recognize and celebrate differences without putting them in a hierarchy?
In order to uphold these rights, women may need extra support and protection because they are more vulnerable to this right being violated. And we need strong voices like Oprah’s to stand up for this issue. So kudos to Oprah. It’s surprising to me that her ‘opinion’ is not general knowledge. There needs to be STRONG social pressure against DV.
Did we “Run It” from “Under the Umbrella”?
Post from Meagan (who may need a tutorial in how to post on wordpress):
Today Oprah talked for a the third time since the Chris Brown/Rhianna incident about domestic abuse on her show. Three times. It seems like a lot but when was the last time you heard anything about domestic violence? I could not tell you the last time I have, even though statistics say 1 in 4 women have been abused. I know lots of people do not like Oprah and her millions of dollars and billions of opinions but she is talking about the actual issue unlike most of the media who is over it and on to the next celebrity misfortune.
I was thinking about it more and wondering if as women we have actually been the ones to put the lid on the subject. We have fought and continue to fight for equal rights and in the process may have altered what people think about the issue of abuse. No matter how equal women are with men, in most cases men are physically stronger. How ever it pains us to admit it, it is true. This is one area where equality may never be achieved. So we don’t discuss it. I don’t want to think of myself as a weak woman that could be overpowered by a man. So now women think things like “well men get abused too”, “she started it”, “maybe she deserved it”. What?! 85% of people that are being abused are women. I would say that is a resounding enough figure to make it safe to say that this issue is mainly about the abuse of women. And since when is someone hitting you or coming at you an excuse to beat them be it a man or a women? As a woman, even a liberal forward thinking new age woman, it is never okay for a man or woman to hit me, but we don’t see many women going around hitting other women now do we? So thank you Oprah for reminding us about domestic violence because equal pay won’t mean much if we all have black eyes.
pardon me: an adolescent moment
I found out that a group of friends are getting together without me, the reason given because they are all the same age, which is about a decade older than I am at the lovely age of 25. I suppose age is a more comforting reason than say coolness or relationship status (I’ve always loathed couples hangouts, though I’m entertaining the idea of organizing one now that I can. But, I hate thinking about the people I can’t invite merely because they aren’t in a romantic relationship. It seems lame to not invite them, but a couples game of scrabble sounds pretty great.). But I want to know why my 20-something self is so different from their 30-something selves? What are the differences between women in their 20’s and women in their 30’s in NYC?
It seems like one of the great things about being over 30 and in the city is that you don’t have to act like you’re over 30. You don’t have to have the obligatory husband/children/minivan to be considered normal. You can still be ‘finding yourself’ or figuring out what you want to do with your life. You can live what is typically considered a 20 something life as a 30, 40, or 50 something and beyond.
The “I’m not invited” situation above makes me feel like I have to sit at the lil kids table again. Is that necessary at all now that we are all adults? I think not.
Making the rounds today is the news that the Vatican’s official newspaper, Osservatore Romano, published an article this past weekend declaring that the washing machine has contibuted most to the emancipation of western women. And yes, it appears that this article (written by a woman, by the way) is serious. Now, I expect this sort of thing from the Vatican, but not from everyone else. London’s Daily Mail solicited a few opinions on what would have made a better choice, and here’s that list: freezer, automatic car, wet wipes, chardonnay, disposable diapers, and the dimmer switch.
Umm, what? What about suffrage and the 19th Amendment, Title IX, Roe v. Wade, Rosie the Riveter and women entering the workforce, contraception, and heck, Gloria Stenem and the entire 70’s movement? And that’s all just off the top of my head. While the choices espoused by the Vatican and the Daily Mail might belong on a list of what has made women’s lives (and men’s for that matter) more convenient, it seems obvious to me that these other things have done far more to enable women to blaze their own paths, or “emancipate” them.
And even if you are going to go with things that have made women’s lives more convenient, while the washing machine would be high on the list, I think I’d go with the tampon.
The Ems 