The GOP has done
it again. They’ve tried to marginalize women in every way possible. For the
likes of Todd Aikin and Paul Ryan, both of whom have a long history of writing
and backing misogynistic legislation, I wish upon them the chance to walk in a
woman’s shoes, high heeled shoes, for just a bit, maybe a week if they’d even
last that long.
I’m not sure what
Aikin meant by legitimate rape in his comment that women’s bodies can’t get
pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,”
a non-scientific lie. But what it says to me is that he believes there is an
opposing illegitimate rape in which the victim is lying or really wanted it.
The proof would be if that woman became pregnant then it must have been an illegitimate
rape. Sounds like a witch hunt to me.
He has since tried
to worm his way out of the argument by saying that all rape is bad and that the
perpetrator should be punished but the child should not be punished just for
being conceived. He has not spoken about the victims of rape, the women the
act is perpetrated against.
Ryan is also a
strong anti-abortionist and supported a change in the definition of rape that
included the word “forcible” as opposed to marital, incestuous, or statutory rape.
He later said in an interview, given after Aikin’s ignorant statement, “Rape is
rape.”
Ryan went on to
say, “I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea
that, the position that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition
of life.”
The life of the
woman is expendable in his world. I don’t want to live there.
The GOP is
drafting their platform to ban all abortions, no exceptions. I’m pro choice but
that doesn’t mean I support abortion specifically. I support a woman’s right to
choose. Given access to proper health care, birth control, and sex education,
abortion would become less likely a choice when women clearly have other
options. But they may not have other options in the case of rape or if a woman’s
health is at risk. Sometimes abortion is the answer. But the GOP would like to
keep women from having access to sex education, birth control, and proper
health care. And they want to protect the rights of a fetus above the rights,
health, and choice of the woman carrying the fetus. In the GOP world, women aren’t
human beings. They are just baby vessels.
I hate that
victims of rape are still stigmatized in our society. It’s difficult enough to
be a woman. We still make less than our male counterparts in the work world.
The burden of birth control and childcare is still predominately our burden.
Many men have children with many different women and choose not to support
them. Single parenthood is difficult in even the best circumstances. Women are
sexually objectified, and in this day, more young women are turning to the sex
industry to make a living because it’s hard to make a life off wages one would
earn at a place like Wal-Mart or to pay one’s way through school to get a
better job. Men accept them into
the sex industry with open arms and little compassion for how that life will
diminish and marginalize the women. I can’t decide if the whole trend is
further subjugation or a new kind of sexual freedom on the part of the young
women. I lean toward the former. Other
young girls are dressing androgynously, perhaps to avoid any form of gender
discrimination.
I think what
everyone is forgetting in this horrible debate about rape is that rape is an
act of violence and subjugation.
I grew up thinking
women are supposed to be beautiful and sexually attractive but are whores if
they are too eager and frigid if they say no. One of my high school nicknames
was “The Ice Queen.”
I never understood
why Ma was always on my case when I was in high school. I thought it was
because she didn’t trust me. Maybe it was because she was in her fifties and
she felt that envy a woman of that age, like myself, feels, when she sees a
young woman. Probably it was because she thought I might end up in a situation that
I couldn’t handle and that would turn out all wrong.
I had two stalkers
in college. Ronald took care of each one. Ronald offered to beat up the first
man, who lived in my dorm, in the middle of the record store, but his friend
grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the store before fists started flying. The second man I had never even spoken
to, yet he followed me in his green Volvo each morning as I left the apartment,
that I shared with three other women senior year, and cut across the park to go
to class or my work-study job. He knew where I lived. He knew my schedule. One
day he stopped his car alongside me and asked me if I wanted a ride. I was
polite. “No thank you,” I said, and kept walking. The next day his car slowed
as he passed me but didn’t stop. A man on a racing bike flew past me a few
seconds later, but he turned around and came back.
“Do you know the
guy in the green Volvo?” he asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Well, I think
he’s waiting for you up around the bend. You better take a different route.”
I cut across the
grass and came out a block up the road so I wouldn’t run into him. I called the
police when I got to my work-study job.
My voice was shaking as I explained how this man always seemed to be
around whenever I left my apartment.
“Take a different
route,” the cop on the phone advised. The next day I stayed on the streets that
circled the park where there were sure to be lots people, but when I turned my
head, there was the green car slowly trailing behind me. I dialed the police
again.
“Miss, unless he
touches you, there is nothing we can do,” the cop on the phone said,
exasperation in his voice.
“I’ll be sure to
call you after the rape and my cold, dead body is discovered in the park,” I
said, hanging up the phone. There were no stalker laws in place back then. I felt
vulnerable and terrified.
A few days later
Ronald and I were walking down Marshall Street, the street where the eat
places, bars, and stores were close to campus, and everyone hung out there at
lunchtime and at night. I saw the green Volvo parked by a meter, and the guy
sitting on the hood of the car.
“That’s him,” I
whispered to Ronald. “That’s the guy.”
Ronald started
walking directly toward him. My arm was looped on his arm, and I tried to pull
him back. He was only one hundred thirty pounds back then, but he spent his
first twelve years in the housing projects, and I didn’t think anything scared
him because he told me he’d already seen it all.
As he got closer
he started pointing at the guy. “Is this the guy? You’re sure?”
“Yes, yes,” I
said, still whispering, and still trying to steer him away. I didn’t want to be
near that guy.
Ronald walked
right up to the side of the car and poked his finger in the guy’s chest. He
said, “Stop.” Then he looked at me and said, “He won’t be bothering you
anymore.” I didn’t see the guy again.
Not everyone has a
protector. We need laws that protect us, not laws that marginalize us.
In the workplace
things just seemed to get worse. I ended up at JC Penney after I turned down a
teaching job. See my post Rumble Jumble.
The managers
treated the mostly female sales associates as their private harem. They were all middle-aged, white men
who were married with children. The one that audited the registers liked to sneak
up behind young women and trap them between him and the register as he plunked
his key into the lock, a decidedly sexual overture. I told him to stop when he
did it to me, and he laughed. One day, as I was rushing back downstairs from
taking my break, I turned a corner in the stockroom hallway and stumbled upon
him with his arms wrapped around the receptionist and his tongue down her
throat. I sucked in air and skidded to a stop. The receptionist took off. The manager laughed. “If you thought
that was good, you should have seen what she gave me for my birthday.”
She thought he
loved her. I felt sorry for her.
Another manager
asked me out day after day after day. Then he invited me to “skinny dip in his
pool” with the promise that he wouldn’t be home. I asked him repeatedly to stop
but he wouldn’t. One day he stopped at my counter and asked me to go camping
for the weekend.
“What? Chris, how
many times do I have to tell you no? Besides, I’m engaged. You don’t want to
get Ron mad, now do you? He will hurt you.” I hated using Ronald as my defense,
but nothing else had worked.
“Don’t tell him. What
he doesn’t know won’t hurt him or me,” he said, grinning.
“That’s not what
he’d be mad about,” I said, looking deadly serious.
“Oh? What would he
get mad about?” he asked, hoping this meant he had an opening.
“He’d be mad about
you, me, and him sleeping in the same tent.” I turned on my heel and walked
away. No one had heard of sexual
harassment back then. If you
didn’t take care of it yourself, it didn’t get taken care of.
After Christmas
everyone’s hours were cut. I needed full time hours to pay my rent and car
payments, so I marched upstairs to the personnel manager’s office and asked him
for more hours. He smirked and offered to put me in the men’s department. I
lasted two hours. Men of all ages kept asking me to measure their inseams. The
thought of getting down on my knees or squatting in front of a guy and holding
one end of the tape against his genitals made me sick to my stomach. Besides, I
was pretty sure most men’s inseams didn’t change from one pants purchase to the
next. I marched upstairs again.
“I want more hours
but back in women’s accessories,” I announced as I sat in the chair in front of
the manager’s desk.
“Oh, and what
makes you think I’ll do that?” he asked.
“Because it’s the
right thing to do,” I said.
He got up and shut
the door, sat down, adjusted his tie, and leaned forward. “Okay, you got it.
Now you owe me something in return.”
I knew all about
this guy. He had called my (married) friend a rabbit because she had gotten
pregnant twice and miscarried both times, requiring time off work. He
completely ignored how emotionally painful it was to lose two babies.
He fired another
young woman because she requested emergency time off when her mother fell ill
and had to be hospitalized.
I looked him
square in the face and leaned forward, too. I knew exactly what he meant. “Have
you ever heard the word “rape” screamed at the top on one’s lungs?” I asked him,
my voice calm and confident. I wasn’t afraid of him.
He moved back a
little.
“Well, you are
about to hear it if you don’t get up and open that door in the next five
seconds.”
He jumped up and
opened the door.
“I don’t owe you
anything,” I said as I walked out of his office.
That’s how it
was back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. We fought for the Equal Rights Amendment
back then, but when the prerequisite number of states willing to adopt it fell
short, it died in 1982. See Wikipedia for more information on the ERA.
I had hoped for
more change by the time my daughters grew into young women. But I see the
backlash and the regression. There is no equality for women today, no more than
there is equality for any minority in our country. Any stride we make is stopped
by other obstacles, like unequal pay for equal work, unequal access to health
care, limited quality child care options, and, worst of all, paternalistic
lawmakers who think they know better about our bodies and morals than we do.
After I told the
personnel manager off in his office, he was transferred to a new store. As he
walked around the store saying his good-byes, he stopped at the costume jewelry
counter where I worked.
"I just wanted to
say thanks,” he said. “You kept me in line.”
“That’s because
I’m your goddamned conscience,” I said. “Don’t you forget it.”
We need to stand
up and be the GOP’s conscience. There is no louder way to make our message
heard than to vote in November.
