I Wanted To Be Rescued

When I was raped as a child, held down and forcibly penetrated from the rear, I wanted to be rescued. For years I had difficult relationships with my parents because they didn't save me. Of course they didn't know.
So when I read the reports of the allegations of child rape and other offenses against former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky one image tormented and haunted me: This image of the little boy, 10, whose rape was interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Mike McQueary a six-foot-four 213 pound graduate assistant who could have overpowered that old man but did not even try. He did nothing. He left that brutalized child to be further brutalized.
I can hear his rapist saying, I told you no one cares about you. I can do anything I want to you. See? He's letting me do this. Even if you tell, no one will believe you.
I don't know what if anything Sandusky said to that child but I can hear those words non-the-less. And McQeary spoke to that child with his actions as well: You're not worth saving. No one will help you. You deserve this.
Ronnie Polaneczky poignantly gave voice to my horror and fury on behalf of that child in her editorial, touching specifically on his opportunity for rescue that walked out of the door. Now we know that McQueary did not even call the police. He called his father, and at 28 years of age allowed his father to talk him into waiting until the next morning to tell his boss, Penn State's legendary coach, Joe Paterno - leaving that child to endure no one knows how many more assaults that night and successive nights. Apparently that fulfilled his legal obligation, but certainly not his moral one.
JoPa, as his fans call him, reported a milder version of events to his bosses - he didn't say rape, or intercourse or sexual penetration. And that was enough to fulfill his legal obligation - although questions are being asked about that as well they should, but he certainly did not fulfill his moral obligation. His bosses have been fired and charged with failure to report and perjury among other things. He planned on retiring at the end of the season and was instead summarily fired.
And Mike McQueary, he is still employed by Penn State and scheduled to coach this Saturday.
Football has been long lionized in our culture for building the character of young men and teaching them leadership and other skills our society values. Penn State has upheld those values by firing the University President, Coach Paterno, and the other officials. Jerry Sandusky was allowed to retire long before these allegations became public, and some are wondering about that...
The failure to intervene is unimaginable. Yet comprehensible for McQueary and his defenders. The failure to report is widespread, particularly among some churches and clergy, sadly that is more imaginable.
We do a pretty good job in our society demonizing child predators. It is way past time to deal with those who permit and enable their crimes. Like the mother of the seventeen year old boy who raped me when I was six or seven. She was in that apartment...

I Am Not A Slut

It's taken me a while to think through my response to Slut Walk, the anti-rape and anti-harrassment marches in which some/many women dress as sluts to make the point that nothing a woman or girl wears (or doesn't wear) makes it acceptable for her to be raped. (While not denying the experience of male rape, the Slut Walk phenomena is a woman/girl movement in response to the comments of a Toronto police officer who said that women who didn't want to be raped should stop dressing like sluts.)
Obviously his comments are reprehensible, violent, disgusting and more.
I share the outrage of the Slut Walk organizers. But I was immediately put off by the phenomenon and it took me some time to figure out why.
Finally it came to me: slut is not a word I chose to claim for myself or other women. I am not a slut. I am not a bitch. I am not a c*nt. I realized my response to the Slut Walk phenomenon was the same as my response to one of the Vagina Monologues monologues. Some words cannot be redeemed for me. I am not a n!gger. I am not a whore. I am not a 'ho. I am not a slut.
I am a woman created in the image of God. I am beautiful and brilliant in every sense of each word. And no one has the right to touch me without my permission. Not my hair. Not my skin. Not my body. And there is nothing I could ever do - or have ever done that would justify anyone breaking into my body.
Nothing I wear (or don't wear) makes me a slut, whether or not someone else finds me attractive, desirable, or sees me as in need of domination, subjugation or feels entitled to have access to me, to violate, injure, degrade or rape me. None of that is about me. Whatever names they might call me, whatever narrative they may create for themselves to justify their conduct; I am not a slut. I won't own that label at the hands of rapists, sexists or anti-sexist anti-rape activists.
One aspect of the marches that I did appreciate was the range of attire worn by the participants. That is where I would have looked to name the response: What Raped Women Wear - not nearly as sexy catchy as Slut Walk.
I know that some speeches addressed this issue, but I would have needed this to be the headline and organizing principle in order to participate.

What Raped Women Wear...
Grandmothers in housecoats and slippers
Critically ill women in adult diapers in hospital beds
Mentally ill and developmentally disabled women and girls in jumpers and jeans
Infant girls in onesies
Little girls in their Sunday best
Muslim women in hijab
Nuns in their habits
Businesswomen in business suits
Students in jeans and skirts
Girls and women in their pajamas, nightgowns and skin in their own homes, in their own showers, in their own beds
Prostitutes and strippers in their uniforms
Police women and soldiers in their uniforms
Any woman or girl anywhere, wearing anything
this is what raped women wear.

Life or Choice?

As with all binaries, this presents a false choice. Even if one believes that conception produces life immediately, that life is not the only life involved, or even at stake. Women’s lives matter. And the quality of our lives matter.

Many have argued convincingly of the so-called “Pro-Life” movement’s disregard for human life: anyone designated an enemy in war or other armed conflict – with no consideration for the possibility of false or even fraudulent identification in the case of enemy combatants, those condemned to die by our justice system – in spite, or perhaps because of the race and class based inequities in the system and, those who perform legal medical procedures that the movement wishes were illegal – along with anyone standing too close to those medical personnel.

I have been thinking about women’s lives and bodies in a particular way in this dispute. I am struck that women do not hold political office in proportion to our numbers in our communities anywhere on the globe.

Male-dominated religious and legal enclaves have decided that immediate post-conception life is more significant than any other life, particularly women's lives and, women must sacrifice their bodies and lives to accommodate it.

What almost no one seems to comment on is the role that men regularly play in forcefully impregnating women.

Rape is woefully under-reported, in part because it is under-prosecuted; those rapes that are prosecuted have a low conviction rate and even lower rates of incarceration. And there is stigma. All of these circumstances operate in male-dominated spaces in spite of the advances women have made in most areas of our common, public and political spheres.

This irony becomes harshly apparent when male-stream politicians make allowances for rape and incest exceptions to their theology, ideology and legislation for forced gestation – although there are many who believe that women must carry to term all pregnancies, even if they are raped into them as they were in Bosnia and are in Congo and Darfur and, on too many marriage beds in the US and around the world.

It is a disgusting irony that many women are sentenced to longer terms – nine months – than are the men who rape them. And what of the children? I certainly don’t want the Pro-Life people adopting children, not that they are anyway. Some are too busy thawing our and growing cells that in their current condition do not require food, housing or shelter.

So how would a rape or incest exemption really work? Would the woman or girl-child have to prove that she was raped? Would a conviction be required? Would the rape exam be legally required and binding? Would a woman have to report a rape no matter how that would affect her life just to get health care?

Abortion is a difficult topic. It is hard for me. I do not believe that any legislation can address all of the situations in which women find themselves – and are forced by men. At best I think of abortion as a necessary evil.

At this moment, I think that abortion should be rare, safe and legal.

And, I think that rapists should be executed.