Crying Out Loud
CAUTION: The following contains language that may prove offensive to some; much of it is court testimony and based on actual events but if reading about physical abuse and sex trafficking bothers you then caution is advised.
One hears it all the time, or at least one used to in my childhood days, an exasperated saying of frustration generally coming from a parent and transferred now to me. A simple slip of the Phillips screwdriver and screw that falls into Alice's Wonderland of engines (in the days of actually working on one's own car) or a delicately glued part proving not as strongly-held as expected -- both will lead to that genteel curse of, "Oh for crying out loud." I've never thought of that phrase in my adult life, one of those thousands of phrases that get passed down through the generations and of which many books are written (and soon forgotten...fathom that, as mentioned in the last post, sent into the deep six of the mind). But then came one of the speeches from Emily Doe, an updated version of Jane Doe, anonymous and now left behind in the history books, one of the people or groups slowly disappearing into the background as easily as fog giving way to the rising sun. But here it was, a speech that somehow escaped me and yet left me wondering just what else I had missed or perhaps had chosen to miss. With so much happening in our world, it is easy to turn our attention or backs to just causes screaming out in front of us, voices collectively yelling but often trapped behind soundproof and perhaps one-way mirrored walls, voices and faces as privately frozen and as isolated as a police interrogation.
Emily Doe was admittedly drunk from a party at her Stanford campus, staggering out with someone who then dragged her behind a dumpster and stripped and fondled her unconscious body before being chased off and caught by two men on bicycles passing by, their actions probably preventing her from being fully raped (he had already begun penetrating her by other means causing her "significant [physical injury and bruising] and penetrating trauma" according to the hospital which examined her; she only awakened in the hospital). In the controversial case, Emily's perpetrator was from a wealthy family and his parents had a number of high-end connections, hiring expensive lawyers that worked on degrading Emily and portraying her as a willing participant despite evidence to the contrary from witnesses. Judge Aaron Persky sided with the defendant, talking of the "promising" career ahead of the young man and that there was little reason to enact a heavy punishment, giving him six months instead of the normal 14 years that such a crime otherwise involved. Emily, during the proceedings, asked the judge to allow her to read a prepared statement to her perpetrator and to look directly at him while she did it. Part of what she said was this: You don't know me, but you've been inside me, and that's why we're here today...You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again...Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today...You made me a victim. In newspapers my name was "unconscious intoxicated woman", ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I believed that that was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that this is not all that I am. That I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while you are the All-American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so much at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, my life was put on hold for over a year, waiting to figure out if I was worth something.
If this is all sounding a bit familiar --a rush to "justice" and a passing off of traumatic testimony by a female-- you may be confusing Emily Doe's speech with that of Christine Blasey Ford when testifying against the conservative and now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his much-shortened judicial confirmation hearing. And for those of you not in the U.S, you may be wondering why so many states here are now passing extremely restrictive abortion laws, in some cases making abortion illegal even in cases of rape or incest (the majority of these states are in the South with Alabama leading the pack and putting into law a 99-year mandatory jail sentence for any doctor caught performing an abortion). As one person being interviewed in Alabama told NPR, she was against abortion in general but when it involves a 9-year old, then "that child should have a choice." (and unfortunately, such incestual pregnancies do happen and do so in many races and economic levels) Said the NY Times article on the recent batch of laws being passed: Abortion opponents saw the appointment of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh last year as tipping the balance of the court in their favor, and state legislators were energized to pass more aggressive anti-abortion legislation. “The appointment of Kavanaugh focused legislators across the country on abortion,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. “It focused conservative legislators to pass abortion restrictions that they hope will be challenged and end up before the court, so the court can undermine or overturn abortion rights...It is also focused progressive legislators like those in New York to pass laws that protect abortion rights in their own states,” she added. In January, New York enacted a measure that guarantees a “fundamental right” to abortion in the state.
So how or why is this happening? The polarization of our political parties here is certainly part of the reason, but their attitudes are likely simply reflecting the polarization of our country (and many other countries in the world). And so it comes down to us, the silent bystander with our own views and our own comfort level. Do we do something, perhaps write a check to an organization or attend a protest rally? Do we try to change things, even something as "simple" as a neighbor's or a friend's viewpoint? Do we educate ourselves to learn about what is actually behind a person or a movement? Or do we just turn to a novel or the finale of Game of Thrones and hope that all of this just goes away? Botswana again allowing the killing of elephants for trophies ($45,000)? Yes. The next Antarctic shelf likely to break off being larger than the state of Texas? Yes. Our behaviors likely to send a million species into extinction? Yes. The disappearance of the middle class and, as the New York Review of Books put it, "one party remained a coalition while the other long ago became a reactionary movement, backed by a minority of Americans and dedicated to plutocracy and racial demagogy that has imposed its will on the nation." Yes. Christine Blasey Ford? Emily Doe? Who are they?
Author J Theophrastus Bartholomew in his book on games you can play in your head by yourself (mentioned in the last post) wrote that before beginning such exercises the reader should decide what he or she wants to be: male or female, good or bad, wanting adventure or treasure, young or old, and on and on. It's a good fantasy and perhaps the most difficult to answer for our lives? Do we want to be a participant or an observer? As we watch the world unfold in the way we do or don't want, we can hear the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, again brought up by the NYB review: ...when the balance of forces was completely different and when, more like today, there was no middle ground, FDR famously rose to the challenge of a fervid Republican right wing not unlike our own. “I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match,” he told the crowd at Madison Square Garden in October 1936. “I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”
Here's a simple test. Black Lives Matter, LBGQT, MeToo, animal rights, immigration, sex trafficking, vaccination, global warming, gun control, nuclear armaments, civil & human rights, pro-choice/life, etc. It can seem overwhelming but how much about any of these movements and more do you feel either interested or knowledgeable about? Any of them? These issues affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives (one report stated that 41% of the people trapped in sex trsafficking in the UK were young males); and yet for most of us they are issues worth little more than swatting off a passing mosquito, bothersome but only occasionally appearing in our lives. In the song by the early Jefferson Airplane (written by the brother-in-law of band-member Grace Slick), it was asked
In the case of Emily Doe, the response was swift, especially after the parents of defendant Brock Turner issued a statement that they felt that the six-month punishment was "a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action." People started a petition that soon gathered 1.3 million signatures and resulted in the removal of Judge Aaron Persky three years later, the first judge to be recalled from California office in 80 years; and California's legislature went on to pass laws than instituted mandatory minimum jail sentences of three years for any assault on an unconscious person, as well as expanding the definition of what constitutes rape. Here was Emily Doe's closing statement (which ran over 7,000 words): And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, "Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining." Although I can’t save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you. Thank you.
Addendum: In the last post there was mention of the restrictive policies placed by Congress on the high prices of prescription drugs; a more-detailed and explanatory report on what's being done (but so far, not succeeding) appeared in a recent issue of AARP and is worth peeking at.
One hears it all the time, or at least one used to in my childhood days, an exasperated saying of frustration generally coming from a parent and transferred now to me. A simple slip of the Phillips screwdriver and screw that falls into Alice's Wonderland of engines (in the days of actually working on one's own car) or a delicately glued part proving not as strongly-held as expected -- both will lead to that genteel curse of, "Oh for crying out loud." I've never thought of that phrase in my adult life, one of those thousands of phrases that get passed down through the generations and of which many books are written (and soon forgotten...fathom that, as mentioned in the last post, sent into the deep six of the mind). But then came one of the speeches from Emily Doe, an updated version of Jane Doe, anonymous and now left behind in the history books, one of the people or groups slowly disappearing into the background as easily as fog giving way to the rising sun. But here it was, a speech that somehow escaped me and yet left me wondering just what else I had missed or perhaps had chosen to miss. With so much happening in our world, it is easy to turn our attention or backs to just causes screaming out in front of us, voices collectively yelling but often trapped behind soundproof and perhaps one-way mirrored walls, voices and faces as privately frozen and as isolated as a police interrogation.
Emily Doe was admittedly drunk from a party at her Stanford campus, staggering out with someone who then dragged her behind a dumpster and stripped and fondled her unconscious body before being chased off and caught by two men on bicycles passing by, their actions probably preventing her from being fully raped (he had already begun penetrating her by other means causing her "significant [physical injury and bruising] and penetrating trauma" according to the hospital which examined her; she only awakened in the hospital). In the controversial case, Emily's perpetrator was from a wealthy family and his parents had a number of high-end connections, hiring expensive lawyers that worked on degrading Emily and portraying her as a willing participant despite evidence to the contrary from witnesses. Judge Aaron Persky sided with the defendant, talking of the "promising" career ahead of the young man and that there was little reason to enact a heavy punishment, giving him six months instead of the normal 14 years that such a crime otherwise involved. Emily, during the proceedings, asked the judge to allow her to read a prepared statement to her perpetrator and to look directly at him while she did it. Part of what she said was this: You don't know me, but you've been inside me, and that's why we're here today...You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again...Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today...You made me a victim. In newspapers my name was "unconscious intoxicated woman", ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I believed that that was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that this is not all that I am. That I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while you are the All-American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so much at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, my life was put on hold for over a year, waiting to figure out if I was worth something.
If this is all sounding a bit familiar --a rush to "justice" and a passing off of traumatic testimony by a female-- you may be confusing Emily Doe's speech with that of Christine Blasey Ford when testifying against the conservative and now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his much-shortened judicial confirmation hearing. And for those of you not in the U.S, you may be wondering why so many states here are now passing extremely restrictive abortion laws, in some cases making abortion illegal even in cases of rape or incest (the majority of these states are in the South with Alabama leading the pack and putting into law a 99-year mandatory jail sentence for any doctor caught performing an abortion). As one person being interviewed in Alabama told NPR, she was against abortion in general but when it involves a 9-year old, then "that child should have a choice." (and unfortunately, such incestual pregnancies do happen and do so in many races and economic levels) Said the NY Times article on the recent batch of laws being passed: Abortion opponents saw the appointment of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh last year as tipping the balance of the court in their favor, and state legislators were energized to pass more aggressive anti-abortion legislation. “The appointment of Kavanaugh focused legislators across the country on abortion,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. “It focused conservative legislators to pass abortion restrictions that they hope will be challenged and end up before the court, so the court can undermine or overturn abortion rights...It is also focused progressive legislators like those in New York to pass laws that protect abortion rights in their own states,” she added. In January, New York enacted a measure that guarantees a “fundamental right” to abortion in the state.
So how or why is this happening? The polarization of our political parties here is certainly part of the reason, but their attitudes are likely simply reflecting the polarization of our country (and many other countries in the world). And so it comes down to us, the silent bystander with our own views and our own comfort level. Do we do something, perhaps write a check to an organization or attend a protest rally? Do we try to change things, even something as "simple" as a neighbor's or a friend's viewpoint? Do we educate ourselves to learn about what is actually behind a person or a movement? Or do we just turn to a novel or the finale of Game of Thrones and hope that all of this just goes away? Botswana again allowing the killing of elephants for trophies ($45,000)? Yes. The next Antarctic shelf likely to break off being larger than the state of Texas? Yes. Our behaviors likely to send a million species into extinction? Yes. The disappearance of the middle class and, as the New York Review of Books put it, "one party remained a coalition while the other long ago became a reactionary movement, backed by a minority of Americans and dedicated to plutocracy and racial demagogy that has imposed its will on the nation." Yes. Christine Blasey Ford? Emily Doe? Who are they?
Author J Theophrastus Bartholomew in his book on games you can play in your head by yourself (mentioned in the last post) wrote that before beginning such exercises the reader should decide what he or she wants to be: male or female, good or bad, wanting adventure or treasure, young or old, and on and on. It's a good fantasy and perhaps the most difficult to answer for our lives? Do we want to be a participant or an observer? As we watch the world unfold in the way we do or don't want, we can hear the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, again brought up by the NYB review: ...when the balance of forces was completely different and when, more like today, there was no middle ground, FDR famously rose to the challenge of a fervid Republican right wing not unlike our own. “I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match,” he told the crowd at Madison Square Garden in October 1936. “I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”
Here's a simple test. Black Lives Matter, LBGQT, MeToo, animal rights, immigration, sex trafficking, vaccination, global warming, gun control, nuclear armaments, civil & human rights, pro-choice/life, etc. It can seem overwhelming but how much about any of these movements and more do you feel either interested or knowledgeable about? Any of them? These issues affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives (one report stated that 41% of the people trapped in sex trsafficking in the UK were young males); and yet for most of us they are issues worth little more than swatting off a passing mosquito, bothersome but only occasionally appearing in our lives. In the song by the early Jefferson Airplane (written by the brother-in-law of band-member Grace Slick), it was asked
In the case of Emily Doe, the response was swift, especially after the parents of defendant Brock Turner issued a statement that they felt that the six-month punishment was "a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action." People started a petition that soon gathered 1.3 million signatures and resulted in the removal of Judge Aaron Persky three years later, the first judge to be recalled from California office in 80 years; and California's legislature went on to pass laws than instituted mandatory minimum jail sentences of three years for any assault on an unconscious person, as well as expanding the definition of what constitutes rape. Here was Emily Doe's closing statement (which ran over 7,000 words): And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, "Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining." Although I can’t save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you. Thank you.
Addendum: In the last post there was mention of the restrictive policies placed by Congress on the high prices of prescription drugs; a more-detailed and explanatory report on what's being done (but so far, not succeeding) appeared in a recent issue of AARP and is worth peeking at.
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