Tag Archives: sexual assault

#MeToo Has to Support Men, Too

26 Aug

 

 

What a month. Asia Argento, one of the first women to speak out against Harvey Weinstein and lead the #MeToo movement last year, was accused this week by a younger man who claims she coerced him into sex when he was underage. Argento denies the charges.

Early last week, Professor Avital Ronell, who is lesbian, was found guilty by New York University of sexually assaulting one of her students, who is a gay man. Throughout the university’s investigation, many feminist academics–including superstar Judith Butler–defended Ronell and slandered her accuser in ways reminiscent of how so many women of the #MeToo movement have been.

The next day, a grand jury investigation into six Pennsylvania dioceses was released, which is the largest study by a government agency of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church to date. The investigation found abuse of over 1,000 children by 300 priests over the course of seven decades. Most of the victims were boys.

In a rant that now appears astoundingly prescient, Samantha Bee kicked off the month of August by pointing to a fact that is as harrowing as it is simple: we are really bad at talking about men as victims of sexual abuse. Even if you don’t like her humor, her argument is rock-solid.

Studies range widely in the estimate of how many men and boys are raped or sexually assaulted. The CDC says 1 in 71 men in the U.S. have been raped; the National Crime Victimization Survey found in 2013 that 38% of victims of sexual violence in the U.S. were male. As with all cases of sexual assault, statistics are muddied by the vast problem of under-reporting and by variations in definition. In many jurisdictions around the world, it’s not considered rape if your partner did it, and it’s not rape if you begged your partner to stop after sex began, and it’s not rape if you’re not a virgin, or anything less than a flawless human being, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

Even the more liberal estimates confirm the already widely held belief that more victims of assault and rape are women and girls rather than men and boys. But that doesn’t mean we should only afford male victims a cursory mention. Human rights means justice for everyone, no matter how rare their experience, and if you believe in equality for minorities, then you know fighting for their rights demands particular rigor because minorities are so easily shoved to the margins.

For almost a year now, the #MeToo movement has shed much-needed light on the horrors wrought up on straight, white, cis, non-disabled women. But its failure to communicate the horrors wrought upon victims of other demographics with the same frequency has been disturbingly persistent. And it’s not just because straight, white, cis, non-disabled women are the most common victims. They’re not. As shown earlier this year, disabled women are far likelier to be victims of sexual assault than the general population.

Before anti-feminists joyously insist that this just proves women’s rights activists are a bunch of dumb hypocrites, it’s important to realize that almost no one has done a very good job of talking about rape victims who are men. It’s traditional gender roles that say that guys can’t be raped by women because we should assume guys are constantly horny and would never turn down a chance for sex. It’s traditional gender roles that, at worst, find it funny when a man is raped by a man because it means he’s either weak or gay or both. It’s traditional gender roles that, at best, recoil in horror at the idea of a boy or man being forced but ultimately have no idea what to say about such a thing.

Two years ago, Raymond M. Douglas published a book, On Being Raped, about his experience and the failure of modern society to equip boys and men with the appropriate language to talk about it. Mainstream feminism has failed to tackle this problem. Now’s the time if ever.

As #MeToo founder Tarana Burke wrote on Twitter last Tuesday:

I’ve said repeatedly that the #metooMVMT is for all of us, including these brave young men who are now coming forward. It will continue to be jarring when we hear the names of some of our faves connected to sexual violence unless we shift from talking about individuals… and begin to talk about power. Sexual violence is about power and privilege. That doesn’t change if the perpetrator is your favorite actress, activist or professor of any gender.

And as Douglas told NPR in his advice to other victims, “The most important thing: You’re not alone. There are so many more of us out here than you think. Don’t give up.”

 

*I use the term “victim” in deference to Douglas, who says, “One of the reasons that a lot of people are a little squishy about the word ʻsurvivor,’ is that it seems to imply that once you’ve attained that status, it’s all done and dusted, it’s all safely in the past. And for a huge number of people, it isn’t and it won’t be, it won’t ever be.” It is imperative to note, however, that many other people prefer the term survivor.

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Aziz Ansari, #MeToo and the Problem of Empathy

21 Jan

(Public Domain image used under CC0 1.0 via)

 

Over this past week, articles about the allegations against Aziz Ansari by a woman known by the pseudonym “Grace” were the most read articles at The Atlantic, Slate, Salon, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, New York magazine, and pretty much every feminist website from Jezebel to Bustle. Everyone from Whoopi Goldberg to Samantha Bee to Dr. James Hamblin participated in the discussion at some level, myself included.

Do you want to know what I think? I think feminist Jill Filipovic has summed it up best. But I also think it’s far more important to note that not one of these sites picked up National Public Radio’s week-long report on the epidemic of rape and sexual assault against developmentally disabled people, who are seven times more likely to be sexually abused than the general population, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. NPR kicked off the story by calling it “The Sexual Assault Epidemic No One Talks About.” Mainstream feminism proceeded to not talk about it, proving the point fantastically well.

Why has this excellent, in-depth report gone unnoticed while Ansari and Grace could only have garnered more attention if they were running against each other for president? You don’t have to be The Huffington Post to know that readers will pretty much always prefer a story involving a celebrity than a story about ordinary people, social groups and statistics. I knew too well that just putting Ansari’s name in the title of this article would up its chances of survival. Barbara Ehrenreich has been complaining since day two of the #MeToo movement that “there are far too many think pieces about high-level actresses and far too few about the waitress at your local diner.” Readers are also more likely to click on stories involving young adults and/or sex than stories about older people and/or anything bereft of sex. Ginia Bellafante complained this weekend about the endless analyses of Grace’s night with Ansari in contrast to the relative silence about the life and legacy of Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Dr. Mathilde Krim.

Anna North, who covers gender issues at Vox, argued for the relevance of the Ansari story, saying, “I mean, honestly, my first reaction was just sort of recognition. This is a situation that I’ve heard from my friends. This is – the behavior she describes through Ansari is behavior that I’ve heard men confess to in their own lives. So I thought, like, yep, this feels real familiar.” While this does validate discussions about dates like the one Grace had, it also explains the sad truth as to why it managed to bury NPR’s story about a sexual abuse epidemic. It is safe to say the majority of young adults writing and reading stories about social progress do not react to stories about developmentally disabled people with a “Yep, this feels real familiar.” Nor do they encourage each other to.

In my experience, most young adult feminists and social justice activists limit their discussions about developmental disability to stories about volunteering in a special ed class and debates about the word “retarded.” The issue of whether or not to screen for Down Syndrome in utero is an increasingly common discussion among pregnant women and their partners, but the opinions of people with Down Syndrome rarely take center stage in that debate.

Disinterest is not the only factor to blame. Accessibility, the issue most likely to leave disabled people marginalized in mainstream society, is what also leaves them isolated from the places where most social justice activists convene. People with developmental disabilities are the minority least likely to live on college campuses, and they are more likely to be socially integrated in small towns than in metropolitan areas. Few feminist and progressive publications offer versions of their articles in Simple Language. 

But while such barriers help us understand the marginalization of developmentally disabled people, there is little reason why we should accept them. Human rights means everybody. Feminism rightly declares the personal is the political, but this serves as a wall instead of a bridge when the personal experiences shared by the most people dominate the discussion at the expense of others. Empathy is rightly considered the best facilitator of communication in the fight for minority rights, but minorities will suffer when empathy is expected to come instantly, without the effort of learning about experiences other than our own.

There’s no reason why the #MeToo movement can’t talk about the issues exemplified by the Ansari story and the abuse epidemic endured by developmentally disabled people. There is, in fact, plenty of cross-over. During a week when the second Women’s March has pledged to be as inclusive as ever, it would be great to start a discussion asking the women who clicked on the Ansari story why they didn’t react to headlines about the epidemic. In the multiple arguments that #MeToo should teach women to show more agency and take self-defense classes, it would be great to recognize that disabled women are one group for whom self-defense classes are rarely helpful. In the same way social justice activists are helping the long marginalized experiences of LGBTQIA+ people to broaden society’s ideas about sex and gender, they could help the experiences of disabled people to broaden our ideas about what it means to be independent, strong, accomplished and attractive.

Justice will be done when reports like NPR’s about the abuse of developmentally disabled people shock the world and in doing so make it to the The New York Times’ Most Read list. And when the online March for those with disabilities who could not join an outdoor protest actually gets mentioned in the national reports about this weekend’s Women’s March. Until that day, mainstream feminism reveals its empathy to still have its limits.

 

 

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While Facing A Trump Presidency, We Cannot Afford to Let This Slide

13 Nov

Ku Klux Klan(Image by Martin used under CC 2.0 via)
It’s been a good week for anyone who believes white Christian straight men deserve more power than anyone else. Donald Trump was elected to the most powerful office in the world with the support of extremist hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the alt-right, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and the Family Research Council. Many have felt validated by the electoral victory to voice what they really think of minorities. Graffiti found in Durham declared, “Black Lives Don’t Matter And Neither Does Your Votes.” The Southern Poverty Law Center, whose mission is to document and prevent hate crimes, reported over 200 incidents in the first three days after Election Day, mostly at K-12 schools, universities, and businesses. 

None of this is surprising to those of us who documented the uptick in celebratory hate crimes in the U.K. after Brexit and who have witnessed Trump do nothing to discourage supporters screaming Nazi slogans at his rallies. His long history in the public eye gives no indication he would start any time soon.  

Trump launched his political career by spreading fear that America’s first black president is not a U.S. citizen. Back in the late 1980s, he injected himself into the notorious case of the Central Park Five, wherein a group of black teens were pressured under duress by investigators to confess to raping and beating a female jogger nearly to death. Trump took out a full-page ad in the Times, calling for New York State to reinstate the death penalty because “THEIR CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!” In 2001, a lone man confessed to the crime and DNA testing proved the likelihood of his guilt to be 6 billion to one. As recently as last month, Trump insisted the Five were still guilty.

Trump has been accused by over a dozen women of sexual harassment and/or assault, and a leaked tape recording caught him bragging about forcing himself on women. Sexual violence prevention groups know that most sexual predators are serial offenders, and therefore the more people accuse someone, the more likely it is that he is guilty. It may be important to acknowledge that in the United States one is innocent until proven guilty. But the Central Park Five know that if you’re a black man in Donald Trump’s world, you may be declared guilty even after you’re proven innocent. Trump throwing a black supporter out of his rally upon assuming he was a “thug” has done nothing to ease worries about the way he likes to govern.

Many Trump voters have been joined by those who didn’t vote at all in calling for national unity now that the election is over. They take offense at any assumption that their political choice was based in such bigotry. The best response to this has come in a post by Michael Rex that’s gone viral:

I believe you when you say you didn’t vote for any of these things. Most of America wasn’t thrilled with the choices we had in this election. But… If you’re tired of being called a bigot, then you need to use the same voice you used on Tuesday and speak out against these things fully and clearly. It’s not enough that you didn’t say them yourself. You need to reassure your friends and family members who feel like they no longer have a seat at the table that you still stand with them, even if your priorities were different on Tuesday. If you aren’t willing to do that, then you have no right to call for unity.

Mark Joseph Stern writes this week at Slate, “I Am A Gay Jew in Trump’s America. And I Fear for My Life.” And rightly so. Not only are hate crimes on the rise in the U.S., but nationalist movements that blame immigrants, minorities and gender equality for their problems are gaining power here and in the U.K., Australia, France, Sweden, Germany and in Eastern Europe. In the countries where democracy is younger than I am, voters are reverting to authoritarians with little interest in the processes and institutions that protect human rights. People of color, religious minorities, women, LGBT citizens and those of us with disabilities know that the concept of universal human rights is younger than many people they know. A few wrong turns and authoritarians could turn all the progress of the past 50 years into a mere moment in human history when the law offered to protect us against violence, harassment, medical abuse, and other existential threats.

Trump hasn’t had a chance to change any laws yet, and the Alternative for Germany is only polling at 20%. But hate groups around the world have been feeling empowered for a while now. Neo-Nazis, Klansmen and any other people willing to beat someone up for the way they were born commit their crimes when they think they can get away with it – when there is a high number of people who aren’t violent but still share their views, combined with a high number of people who don’t care either way about human rights discussions.

A pregnant German woman was recently punched at a train station near a friend’s house for supposedly being a “lousy refugee.” An acquaintance in a wheelchair was told by a stranger on the street, “We should gas your kind.” Perpetrators are less likely to do any of this if they fear not just legal consequences but their friends and families shaming them for such despicable behavior. Which is why it is on all of us to support the watchdog organizations that aim to expose and combat hate crimes, to speak up for those who are being told that their place in the new world order is at the bottom, and to convince the people who don’t care about any of this that they absolutely must summon the bravery to.
 

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What the Stubblefield Rape Case Means for Disability Rights

22 Nov

Words as skin(Image by Maurizio Abbate used under CC license via)

 

When people continue to believe in a method that has repeatedly been proven not to work, what harm can it do? Does it matter that an herbal supplement is ineffective if someone who uses it says it truly makes them feel better? Does it really matter whether or not primates can learn American Sign Language or parrots can learn to read English out loud if it makes animal lovers so happy to believe that they do?

Misinterpreting animal communication can of course be dangerous. In 2007, a Dutch woman who insisted she was bonding with an ape at her local zoo refused to believe the primatologists’ warnings that staring directly into a male gorilla’s eyes and showing one’s teeth—i.e., smiling—triggers aggression. She refused to believe this even after the gorilla broke out of his enclosure and attacked her.

But what if someone assumes a living person is communicating with them? What if they assume said person is confiding their wishes and life choices in them? What if they can do so because we don’t share a common language with the person they claim to be speaking for?

Facilitated Communication, a.k.a. “FC,” is a method developed in the late 20th century to help severely disabled people with little or no speech communicate with others. By supporting their patient’s hand or arm, a trained facilitator could theoretically help the patient type out sentences, thereby “unlocking” intelligence previously obscured. The method was considered a breakthrough for patients with diagnoses ranging from severe autism to severe cerebral palsy. It was touted as a miracle for their loved ones, who understandably wanted nothing more than to be able to hear their thoughts, wants and needs.

Anna Stubblefield is a philosophy professor and disability rights advocate who, until recently, taught seminars about FC at Rutgers University. What she did not teach her students is that FC has been condemned over the past three decades by the American Psychological Association, the American Association of Pediatrics, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, the Federal Trade Commission, and the New York State Department of Health, among others. Double-blind testing generally reveals the facilitator to be subconsciously guiding their patient’s typing, rather than simply supporting it. This year Sweden banned FC in schools nationwide.

Professor Stubblefield adamantly rejects the classification of FC as a pseudoscience. Her mother was a pioneer of the technique. When one of her seminar students asked her in 2009 if it could perhaps help his severely disabled young adult brother—referred to in the press as “D.J.”—she agreed to treat him. A 20-page report in The New York Times Magazine chronicles Stubblefield’s increasingly intimate relationship with her patient, eventually culminating in her announcement in 2011 to his family that she and D.J. were in love. She planned to leave her husband and two children for him. As his legal guardians, D.J.’s family told her she had overstepped her boundaries and requested she leave him alone. When she did not, they eventually filed charges against her. They testified that gradually Stubblefield’s claims to D.J.’s interests and values—typed out in their FC sessions—had begun to sound suspiciously like things she would want him to say. Stubblefield was sentenced last month to 40 years in prison for sexual assault.

Another proponent of FC, Martina Susanne Schweiger, was convicted last year in Queensland, Australia for performing sex acts on a 21-year-old patient whom she believed had reciprocated his love for her via FC.

I’ve written before about widespread prejudices against disabled people and how often it denies us our sexuality. But disabled people also suffer sexual abuse at rates far higher than the general population. Most are taken advantage of by their family members and/or caregivers. Stubblefield and the remaining proponents of FC argue that their critics are ableist for denying D.J.’s capacity for intellect and intimacy. The prosecution argued that Stubblefield is ableist for assuming she knows what D.J. wants.

The desire to be the next Miracle Worker is understandable and so often noble. Who doesn’t want to help those in need? And the lure of the controversial in the pursuit of justice is not uncommon. From Jodie Foster and Liam Neeson in Nell to Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer in I Am Sam to Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle in Reign Over Me, Hollywood is rife with love stories and courtroom dramas about a misunderstood outcast who has finally found the one open-minded hero who understands him, believes in him and then must fight the cold-hearted, close-minded authorities from keeping them apart.

Yet red flags should go up whenever there is a risk that a self-appointed advocate is putting words in someone’s mouth, no matter which side that advocate thinks they are on. Particularly when their patient or client belongs to a highly marginalized minority.

News of this case has elicited many head-shaking responses along the lines of, “Well, they all sound nuts.” One of the jurors told NJ.com, “I was like…‘You’re going to leave your husband and your kids for someone like this?’” Disability rights advocates rightly bristle at the infantilizing of D.J.—not to mention the salacious headlines that seem obsessed with his personal hygiene—while ultimately declaring the case incredibly sad. Yet we rarely use “nuts” or “sad” to describe male teachers convicted of seducing students unable to give consent. We describe them as predators or abusers.

Abusers of course rarely think of themselves as such. Child molesters are often convinced their victims were flirting with them. Few would consider themselves sadistic. Most are simply skilled at rationalizing their behavior to themselves. But regardless of what they believe their intentions are, abusers by definition deny others power in pursuit of their own.

The Stubblefield case and the Schweiger case highlight a very uncomfortable fact for disabled people everywhere: that some of the caregivers and activists working and sometimes fighting on our behalf are doing it to feed a savior complex. And anyone with a savior complex is not truly listening to those they claim to be helping.

Addressing this problem becomes increasingly difficult when we consider how very young the concept of disability rights is over the course of human history. Living in any other era, most of us would have been abandoned by our families in asylums or elsewhere. Ancient Spartans advised throwing us off cliffs after birth. Some modern philosophers, such as Prof. Peter Singer, still advocate infanticide for some. Awareness of all this often makes us feel compelled to be eternally grateful to anyone who offers us any sort of support or help, regardless of whether or not it is truly helpful or respectful of our boundaries.

That we do not yet have the means to access D.J.’s thoughts and desires is indeed tragic. But opposition to FC does not mean we damn severely disabled people to the realm of hopelessness. On the contrary, accepting criticism of FC can only help to improve upon the ways in which researchers develop better practices and technologies. Relying on discredited methods would not have gotten Stephen Hawking his voice. Annie Sullivan prevailed with Helen Keller because she not only relied on rigorously tested methods but also shed her status as Keller’s sole communicator by enrolling her in an interdisciplinary program at the Perkins School. The ability to kill your darlings is an ingredient of innovation.

And any true investment in disabled people and the methods that best assist them must be accompanied by the credo activists began using around the time D.J. was born: Nothing about us without us.

 

 

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