A few years ago I watched Pariah with CFC members, but now that I think about it Pariah is not the first film to discuss youth “escaping to college.”  Boyz in the Hood is probably the first one I remember seeing back in the day.  But I’m not sure if the academy has been moved by the messages in these films to prepare faculty and staff to provide appropriate support.  I teach in college classrooms for many reasons, but the most important reason is because it allows me to be in the right place when students may need support beyond what the academy provides.   However, after more than a decade of teaching it seems that our colleges and universities are simply not prepared to handle many of the major concerns students are holding when they finally get to college.

Every semester there is a story that gives me pause and sometimes I lose an entire evening processing, crying, and trying to figure out appropriate guidance.  Oftentimes, what I consider appropriate is not readily available or accessible for students on campus.  While there is often counseling and student health centers many of the students I’ve advised reject it either due to prior or recent experiences with counselors because they do not feel a connection.  Having had counseling at three major points in my life: to deal with high school trauma, miscarriage, and being a new parent with a partner, I can truly say that only one counselor, Kesi Miller, helped me to heal and move forward.

Awesome, just not what I am trained to do. I prescribe readings and reiki.

I remember studying psychology at Spelman College in the 1990’s and asserting that I wanted to do art therapy, dance therapy, and music therapy and getting laughed out of my professors’ offices.  Now after having taught at The Ohio State University, Emory University, Clark Atlanta University, and Spelman College, I can truly say that some of the work students, particularly women, may need is not necessarily “head work,” i.e. working through their stories which can re-traumatize, but I believe they need “body work” to help release some of the built up tension, pain, anger, fear and to work on reconnecting with their bodies.

Text and words can only do so much when I barely have words for some of the pain and suffering students share with me.   I’m talking about students here, but there are grown women who experienced trauma in their childhood that was never  addressed, merely suppressed and continues to haunt.  I don’t want this for my students.  So for now I am collecting resources for wellness and affirming doing “bodywork.”

Crunktastic, rboylorn, moyazb, and other CF’s have talked about the importance of self-care and sharing “care” resources.  For my dissertation I studied Sapphire’s Push, particularly the character Clareece “Precious” Jones.  I found four core themes for starting the healing process while still young: a social safety net (a safe place to live and get healthy and be a mom), literacy (ability to read and write with agency ), literature (hearing stories like your own and learning about survival in private), and having a crew (Each One Teach One classmates who know and celebrate you as you are).  As I journey through this process of wanting young adults to start healing while they are still young I think another important part to consider is bodywork such as guided meditation, reiki, massages, and outdoor physical activities.  Here is my list of care resources:

My good friend Lorraine McCall is a certified reiki master in Atlanta, and she offers affordable reiki and readings at the Reiki House.

The extraordinary dancer/instructor Dr. Veta Goler leads guided meditations and retreats at Spelman College.

Giwayen Mata offers African dance and drum classes at Dance 411 every Sunday.

The HEALing Community Center offers affordable health CARE giving patients what they need in the moment and for the long-term.

The Outdoor Activity Center offers regular hikes and service-learning activities in nature preserves and urban forests situated in Black communities in Southwest Atlanta less than 5 miles from the Atlanta University Center.

This is simply a start, but I’m writing this for my colleagues who are wondering what their role is and determining how to best move forward.   Please add resources because it is time we start doing more.

On March 26^th, 2013 in Sapele, the Delta State of Nigeria, Pastor Henry Enuta was physically stripped and humiliated in public because he is an intersex person.  According to news reports, he was almost killed by a lynch mob before being taken into custody by police.  Most of the headlines covering this story grossly refer to Mr. Enuta as a “hermaphrodite” because he has genitals that are characteristically male and female.  To sensationalize this story and humiliate Mr. Enuta even more, media outlets have published pictures of him bare chested and with torn clothes, holding onto his dignity while passers-by capture pictures of him with their mobile phones.

When I saw this story, I was horrified at how Mr. Enuta’s humanity was reduced to a mockery simply because his body did not conform to narrow standards of what a man’s body should be.  For him to be forcibly stripped with no one to offer him clothes or rescue was atrocious.  I was doubly astounded at how members of his community sought to kill him for the mere fact that he was different and considered some kind of freak. Nevertheless, given that this incident has taken place in Nigeria, I want to be very aware of my position as an African American queer intersex man living in the United States.  People with intersex conditions living in the United States are just as vulnerable as intersex people living abroad.  The medicalized and state sanctioned violence that impacts intersex people living in the United States is a pervasive, isolating, and silencing kind of violence that recreates stigma and shame.

In speaking out against this act, my goal is not to impose a critical, patronizing gaze on how people in Nigeria should respond to queerness or difference.  Considering how the United States and Europe have responded to legislation that seeks to punish, kill, and “reform” queer people in Uganda, for example, I find myself both wanting to fight for the sovereignty of Black African nations and also asking those same nations to uphold the humanity and dignity of their queer and sexually differentiated citizens.  Those of us committed to the upholding the dignity and respect of intersex people around the world must be willing to do the hard work of both checking our biases and privileges while also continuing to advocate for justice wherever injustice occurs.

Caster Semenya winning second place in the women’s 800-meter final during the IAAF World Athletics Championship in South Korea in 2011 (Stu Forster / Getty Images)

We have witnessed a hazing similar to Henry Enuta’s experience on an international stage before with Olympic runner, Caster Semenya.  A gold and silver medalist hailing from South Africa, Caster’s glory was shrouded by “genetic testing” to prove whether she was a “man” or a “woman,” since having XY chromosomes as a female athlete would give her an “unfair” advantage.  Although we as a society should have used Ms. Semenya’s experience as an opportunity for education and reflection about gender identity and sexual differentiation in human beings, we instead responded with slander and ignorance toward a young Black South African whose goal was to compete in an international arena.  What does Caster Semenya have to do with Henry Enuta? Simply put, both of their experiences reflect two cases of intersex African people whose reception in the media did nothing but reinforce our perceptions of intersex people as “freaks” and as “other.”  I also bring Caster Semenya into this conversation because this freakish display and exploitation of African bodies is not unlike the colonial exploitation of Sarah Baartman, also known as the “Hottentot Venus,” a Khoi woman from Southern Africa who was toured around Europe as a spectacle because of her “enlarged” labia and “oversized” buttocks. Just as Sarah Baartman did not deserve this violation, neither do Caster Semenya or Henry Enuta deserve to be so unfairly and violently treated. It is critical that those of us fighting for intersex rights speak out against the public humiliation and violence perpetrated against these individuals.

In light of the U.N. Report on Torture in Health Care that includes intersex infants as a vulnerable population, I ask that we as a global community respect and uphold the integrity of intersex people wherever they work, live, play, and worship.  I also ask that we continue to examine how racism and other forms of oppression lend themselves to the way we depict intersex people of color in the media.  Given those requests, I hope that those responsible for the ill treatment of Mr. Enuta are held accountable by their community members and that future coverage of this case respects Mr. Enuta’s dignity and person.  As members of the movement to end violence and stigmatization of intersex people we must continue to stand united against injustice, while also moving forward in creating a world safe for all people.

Credit: Atlanta Blackstar

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the situation with Kimani Gray, but it just doesn’t make sense. I mean, considering the unceasing frequency of U.S. American police brutality, the story is “simple” enough. Ten days ago, sixteen-year-old Kimani, known as KiKi to his loved ones, was out late, returning from a gathering. While out in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, Kimani and his friends were approached by two men, apparently plainclothes undercover police officers with records of brutality and excessive force, who sidled up in an unmarked van. While those close to Kimani claim the youth was simply adjusting his belt or waistband, the police have claimed that Kimani pulled out a .38, which caused the officers to unload eleven rounds of ammunition into his body, killing him there in the street.

Credit: Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

Simple, right? Not even close.

For every Black and Brown person I’ve spoken with, this is so clearly another example of our communities’ ever increasing militarization that not only marks our bodies as inherently deviant and always guilty, but that is also hell bent on killing and/or imprisoning our people with impunity.

Although they are little more than half the population of New York, African Americans and Latinos were subject to almost 90% percent of the incidences of stop-and-frisk in the city in recent years. Stop-and-frisk policies are not only morally unsound, but statistics have clearly shown that they are also expensive and inefficient. The New Yorker reports “As for the effectiveness of stop-and-frisk, since Bloomberg doubled down on the program, in 2002, murder attempts, robberies, and assaults have fallen by less than one per cent. Arrests are made in about six per cent of the stops, and a firearm is found in about one per cent” (Source). Likewise, Vincent Warren notes:

Every first-year graduate student learns that correlation does not prove causality, but the NYPD routinely claims that the city’s falling crime rates are caused in part by their stop-and-frisk practices. There is not a single published study providing evidence for this claim. The truth is that no one knows what has caused the city’s drop in crime, but given the fact that only 6% of stops result in arrest and the vast majority of these are for so-called quality of life violations, it seems improbable, to say the least, that crime rates are going down because of stop and frisk. (Source)

Then again, cost is no object in a police state, right?

Credit: Atlanta Blackstar

Credit: Colorlines

Reading about Kimani’s story, takes me back to my own youth in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where I witnessed police negligence and violence firsthand. While they could never be counted on to come when someone was going upside your head or stealing someone’s car, they for damn sure would show up and show out in other moments, making my already unsafe hood even less safe. I learned to be more afraid of the police than my dopefiend neighbor who bashed my bedroom window open to steal or the pimps that stood just outside the gate of middle school everyday at 3pm. They were treacherous, but I knew how to deal with them. But the police—they were a wild card. They could come into your house, disrespect you, put their hands on you, talk to you any kind of way, and you’d just be standing there contemplating the virtues of taking a cast iron frying pan to their skulls but remembering your duty to your family.  But, for some people, sometimes that cast iron pan would win.

Twenty years ago, something happened with the police that I’ll never forget. I was an eighth grader, walking home from school. A big crowd had gathered to watch two girls, two of my classmates in fact, tussle. These sisters were rolling around and around in the dirt. Look, I wasn’t a fool. I wasn’t really trying to be all up in this altercation, but the crowd was so big that I couldn’t get through or around it. So I watched, shaking my head, knowing that one girl was jealous of another and that some knucklehead dude was at the center of this drama. It wasn’t until they separated that I saw how horrible the fight had been. The sister that initiated the fight had carried a razor blade in her mouth and sliced the other girl on her face and neck. This young sister stumbled past me, her face and neck swollen and bloodied, her white t-shirt splattered with her own blood.

I could not believe my own eyes. I had just watched someone get stabbed. I was appalled. I was disgusted. I was worried for my classmate. Would she bleed to death? (She did, in fact, live). She lived a block away from me, but despite her injuries, seemed to be making a defiant walk home. I looked around to see if anyone was there to help. There were mostly other teens like myself, standing there with a mixture of curiosity, disbelief, and horror.

Then, I spotted the police. They had been in the background all along. I mean, they were always there along my route home, apathetic observers that never stopped when drug transactions were made brazenly, out in the open or when twelve-year-old girls were propositioned for sex in broad daylight. But on that day, they really jumped the shark. As I scanned the crowd, looking for an adult to help—my go to adult helper has always been older Black women—I saw the police pointing and laughing at my bloodied classmate. I’m not talking about a nervous giggle or an uncomfortable chuckle, but some of that old bent over, clutching your stomach, and wiping your eyes kind of laughter. Rather than going to the aid of an injured young woman (who was wounded by another injured young woman), these fools were laughing. It was as if we were all slaves in a Roman gladiator’s ring, killing each other for their amusement. The image of their laughter haunts me to this day.

Years later, when I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved in college, I came across this line that has stayed with me, haunting me, ever reminding me of the constant dehumanization Blacks endure under white supremacy. After the novel’s protagonist, Sethe, is abused by the whites that run her plantation, she remembers, “they handled me like I was the cow, no, the goat, back behind the stable because it was too nasty to stay in with the horses.” I felt that way, felt that way for my classmate, on the day I saw her stabbed and no one rushed to help her.

So, when reports allege that Kimani Gray pulled a .38 on the admittedly plainclothes officers, I do not think of black-on-black crime or an out of control urban Black youth population that are menaces to society. I think of a kid who lived in a war zone, a kid who could not only not count on those who vow to protect and serve to do either of those things, but who could also expect the police to be the major perpetrators of state sanctioned terrorism.

Let me be clear. I do not think systemic violence is strategy that is going to liberate our communities. And I do not actually think Kimani had a weapon. However, I would understand why a kid would think he was in danger if two random dudes rolled up on him in a car and jumped out yelling. And I do understand the pain, anger, and frustration the protestors in East Flatbush have been expressing. And I wish that stories like this were not a constant unbroken loop in our communities, continually traumatizing us into silence and submission.

What are your thoughts on the situation surrounding Kimani Gray and his murder?

Credit: WNYC/Stephen Nessen

We’d initially planned to post this the monday after the Oscars but other things were more pressing.

*Trigger Warning for expletives, misogyny, and violent lyrics*

Courtesy of FAAN Mail

In the remix to Future’s Karate Chop, Lil Wayne sings the “very unfortunate” (really, Fader?) lyric that compares sex to the beating of Emmett Till.

Pop a lot of pain pill’

‘bout to put rims on my skateboard wheel’

beat that pussy up like Emmett Till

“I just couldn’t understand how he could compare the gateway to life to the brutality and punishment of death,” said Aricka Gordon Taylor, Spokesperson from the Till Family. We can though. It’s happened before, from Wayne, and friends.

People are mad. Real mad. They’re even talking about it on the radio here in Atlanta, while simultaneously continuing to play the song with Emmett Till bleeped out. Folks are calling for a boycott of Clear Channel and the removal of the song from the airwaves. There’s Twitter activism in motion as well from Dream Hampton to shame LA Reid (who should be shamed, for this and more) because he should know better. Epic, Future’s label not Wayne’s, has apologized saying that this lyric won’t appear on the final version of the song and the Family has written an open letter to Wayne.

We understand why folks are mad and in no way want to diminish this important call to action. One of the things Moya hated about other media activism she’s been involved in is the question, “why you mad about this and why now?” We want to think about these lyrics in the context of calls by feminists of color to interrogate the problems of violent sex metaphors before the name of a slain civil rights icon was invoked. With this in mind, we want to add some thoughts to the growing conversation.

1. We need intergenerational conversations- “beating the pussy up” is a hip hop metaphor for sex that’s not new. We need and have been trying to have a conversation about the violence this metaphor (and others) conjures but folks using it don’t understand themselves to be talking about intimate partner violence when they use it. It is used by men and women to describe sexual prowess, not violence, despite its employment of the violence of “beating”. In reading the framing of the outrage we see elders taking issue with Till being compared to the “anatomy of a woman” and “domestic violence.” That’s not quite what’s happening and we wonder if intergenerational strategies can help alleviate some of these misreadings. Rather than domestic violence, perhaps we can shift our frame to think about sexualized violence and violent sexualities more broadly, which, to be clear, are not always practiced in the context of traditional understandings of intimate partner violence or under duress or coercion.  Patricia Hill-Collins already hipped us to the violence that undergirds many discussions of black sexual prowess in her incisive reading of black colloquial usage of the term “booty” and it dual meaning/invocation as both the spoils of war and conquest (i.e. violence) and as the long standing icon of black women’s sexual desirability.  Too much connection to be coincidental, no?  This framework might allow us to see how violent sexual prowess acted out on the bodies of women of color is a staple of hip hop and popular culture more generally.  The issue is not just the ill-informed invocation of Till’s brutal murder but the normalization of brutality acted on women’s bodies.

Additionally, what does bleeping out words on the radio do? Particularly when it’s part of a rhyme scheme? The absurdity of radio editing is just more than we can fathom sometimes. You want to protect children from hearing the words “Emmett Till” and “pussy” but not the “beating up” they are used in conjunction with?  Not to mention any other songs that have other violent metaphors that don’t have curse words in them that are perfectly fine for radio play. Can we talk to children as opposed to shielding them from certain words? Why are words bleepable but problematic concepts aren’t under review?

2. Is it because it’s Emmett Till? Perhaps we are bugging but doesn’t it disturb people that sex= “beating the pussy up” in the hip hop landscape already? Like “beating the pussy up” is only offensive insofar as Emmett Till is implicated through Wayne’s simile? In no way are we excusing this lyric but it’s interesting to us that the invocation of Till seems to move people in ways that regular misogynoir does not. Perhaps it’s because folks understand the dangers of the US’ ahistorical forgetting, a result of which is that many younger folks might not even know who Emmett Till is (even MTV had to assume the ignorance of their young audience when they first reported the fiasco). What a shame for those who will first come to know of Till through Wayne’s verse.  Yet, what shame for us all that we are yet again confronted with violence to women bodies and our outrage seems limited only to the context of its description.   We are not surprised by the lyric as it seems to follow the logic of “shock” that we see in verses by Wayne, Odd Future and others. Perhaps this outrage is a way to capitalize on people’s reverence for the freedom struggles of Black people but it makes us incredibly sad that the most women can hope for are comparative politics that attempt to equate our humanity to someone elses for it be understood as valuable. I shouldn’t have to be your sister, mother, cousin, daughter, Emmett Till for you to care when I say your words grate on people’s understanding of me as a person.

3. We don’t like the way people apologize for their critiques of hip hop and hip hop artists. We are conscious of the ways hip hop is denigrated but shouldn’t our work and carefully crafted statements be enough for folks to understand that a critique here is not a wholesale condemnation of the genre? We too find some of Wayne’s lyricism captivating but we shouldn’t have to say that before we say, “Dude, WTF?!” In the radio interview speakers go out of their way to talk about their critiques coming from a place of love and not from a place hate (while simultaneously calling the music poison; y’all should listen to this; there are layers). It reminds us a bit of what we are attempting to do with Feminist Care Packages. But it does make us wonder what do you do when you’ve said it all? When you’ve tried to remind people of your humanity and the humanity of other marginalized people and folks refuse to listen? Are there limits to the strategy of affirming before a critique is levied? Does that help artists hear their audience better?

We recognized that Hip Hop gets singled out for misogyny. But as Seth McFarlane, The Onion, and many others have let us know, white folks can handle that all by themselves.

4. Can we talk about what else is happening in these lyrics? Hip Hop’s love affair with weed isn’t news nor is its relationship to crack as means of commerce. However, the types of drugs referenced are changing – We’ve moved from Mary Jane to Molly, crack to codeine.   Where is the collective concern over these new narratives of addiction and the ways in which they might point to depression, PTSD, apathy, nihilism, etc.? Recreational drug use seems to be replaced with self medicating and binge activities. Moya is looking at some of these questions in her work on nihilism in the music and the ways in which Black mental health concerns are prevalent but go unacknowledged. In Wayne’s latest track, “pussy, money, weed, codeine” are rattled off as equivalent substances, raising more questions about the reduction of women to anatomy and object, consumable goods for self medicated consumption.

What do you think about this moment in music? What questions do you bring to the conversation?

We are always interested in the creative ways that hip hop fa(a)ns engage the music they love. Check out the latest such engagement from our friends at Colored Girls Hustle, with their version of All Gold Everything.

Some spoilers ahead, but mostly I’m  just feeling all my feelings…

Growing up, I had to deal with my mother’s love for Westerns. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen The Outlaw Josie Wales. One of the many joys of expanded basic cable (besides the Cooking Channel, of course) is that I get Encore Westerns. Between that and reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger, I know that when my mama comes to visit she will be thoroughly entertained.

I don’t get her love for the genre. I mean, I get it on one level. I know my mother appreciates a good revenge tale and she likes it when the bad guys grovel at the end. But Westerns? Really? Then again, I unapologetically look forward to watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta and all the iterations of Love and Hip Hop, so who am I to judge? We all hold contradictions, not to mention shamtastic and raggedy entertainment choices.

So, when I saw that Django was coming out during the holidays, I thought this would be something that we could watch together. I mean, I do “enjoy” an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger now and again but I’m not sure that that counts. Django would definitely give us both something to talk about.

I did have some apprehension about watching Django, though. For one, I am not a fan of Tarantino at all. At all. Generally, I find his work contrived, overly self-conscious, and, frankly, boring. Plus, to me he’s like the worst kind of hipster racist, a grown up version of Justin Timberlake desperately trying to affirm his black card at all times, while thoroughly proving himself to be white as hell. The living worst.

But, I was still intrigued by the movie.  As a scholar of African American literature, I’m always interested in how we understand and talk about slavery today.  Besides, I love Kerry Washington with a fiery burning passion and would watch her read the phonebook.  (Too bad she had like five lines in the movie. She did have that lip quiver though. Can’t forget about the lip quiver).

Sex appeal and slavery. Hmm…

I ended up watching the movie and it exceeded my admittedly low expectations. I won’t do a formal review here, largely because I think the film has been discussed elsewhere in brilliant ways and who needs to reinvent the wheel? (On that note, check out discussions of the film by Salamishah Tillet and The Feminist Wire if you haven’t already). What I do want to talk a bit about was my movie going experience.

I decided against seeing Django while I was spending the holidays at home in Fort Lauderdale. I anticipated that my little heart couldn’t take it. I imagined some irreverent scene involving slavery and being in a movie theatre filled the laughter of whites who, in their next breath, wouldn’t hesitate to remind me of how postracial we are and how Tarantino has every right to create art as he pleases and how brilliant he is and on and on and on. I figured I might have a slavery flashback and go Nat Turner up in there and that’s not how I’m trying to go out, folks.

Instead of that unfortunate scenario, Mama and I headed to the movies in Atlanta on a Friday afternoon. Since my mother is a stickler for time we got there early and I did a lot of people watching as the theatre filled to capacity. Our fellow viewers were Black—pretty much everyone as far as I could see—and largely grown. I’d say middle-aged and older. There were couples on dates. Clusters of homegirls and homeboys. Church sisters and ladies who lunch. Not the crowd that generally thinks Reservoir Dogs is awesome, interestingly enough.

I immediately felt at ease. I felt like I was at a family reunion where something dubious was about to happen but that, nevertheless, it was going to be ok because my auntie and my mama were there. Weird, perhaps, but true.

So we all sat there in companionable (semi) silence, watching Tarantino’s comedic spaghetti Western slavery action-comedy, cheering when racist slaveholders came to their timely and explosively bloody ends, sighing in satisfaction when Django finally got his girl, and laughing out loud at the absurdly funny scenes involving shit that is generally not funny at all.

This movie will also extinguish whatever love you have left for Leo. Sorry.

Take for instance a scene involving some night riders (aka the forefathers of the KKK). The group arrives to kill Django and his white companion but before they can get to the lynching, there’s a whole discussion about how their outfits (namely the poorly shaped eyeholes on their white hoods) are getting in the way of their appointed task. It goes without saying that lynching is not funny. I mean, really. But laughter reverberated throughout the theater. Not uncomfortable, tinny laughter that rings hollow and dies quickly in your throat. But genuine “people can be so damn foolish,” “you got to laugh to keep from crying” and “ain’t this some shit?” laughter thundered, yes, thundered throughout the theater. I don’t know that I could have laughed during this moment in another theater, but I laughed heartily on that day.

When the movie was over I asked my mom what she thought about it. She said she loved it. She loved that Django went about avenging people for his wife and that all the bad people got killed, especially Samuel L. Jackson’s old Uncle Ben looking ass. For her, it was the best kind of Western. When we went out to dinner that evening she expressed several times how satisfying it was to watch racists get cut down. I could only agree.

F@#% you, Stephen!

So, what’s my verdict on Django? It’s interesting, frustrating, (at times) funny, violent, limiting, problematic, thought provoking…it’s doing a whole lot. I don’t regret seeing it, but it’s not in my top 10 list either. I think it is inciting interesting discussion, but I’m not naïve enough to think that this will necessarily translate to a bunch of nuanced portrayals of Black folk in slavery. What I do know is that my viewing experience was connected to where I saw the movie as much as it was connected to the film’s content and that, among other things, underscores my general ambivalence about the movie.

Have you seen Django? What are your thoughts on the film?

A few weeks ago, a young Indian woman went to the movies. On her way home she took a bus on which she was raped and brutally assaulted by six men. We don’t know the name of this 23-year-old student.  We do know that  she was tortured so badly that she lost her intestines and needed numerous operations. Six people – including the bus driver – have been arrested. On Friday, December 28 she died.

I don’t know her name. I don’t have an adequate response, but I feel I should say something. Because I was born in the city where she were assaulted. Because so many, too many, experience such violence. Because I spend most of my waking hours thinking about how we can create a world where women are safe. Because she wanted to live.

●●●

This is both about and not about men. Here are some statistical knowables, true across most societies (just take a look at the extant research at both the global and national levels).

• Violence against women and girls occurs primarily at the hands of men and boys.
• Violence against men and boys occurs primarily at the hands of other men and boys.
• Nations, statistically speaking, commit far and away, the most of the world’s violence via war and conflict. This involves military forces comprised largely of men and boys, who are both perpetrators and victims of this violence.

Gender, then, rises up as an undeniably important variable in regards to understanding violence. And though we might not have a shared understanding of this fact, sex and gender are different and there are more genders than two. Further, people who are gender-non-coforming, genderqueer, trans and/or those who complicate the gender binary experience violence at disproportionate rates.

In my work at Men Stopping Violence, our focus is on ending male violence against women. Far and away the most common first response to my explanation of our work goes something like this: “Yes, violence against women is a problem but, don’t women ALSO commit violence?”

Let me answer that question now: Sure, yes. Women are also perpetrators of violence. As are people of all genders, sexes and sexual orientations. But to refocus the question on women’s violence is to obfuscate the real problem. And that problem is violent masculinity. If all the above data has not convinced you yet, please note: According to the National Academy of Sciences, in the US, “Male criminal participation in serious crimes at any age greatly exceeds that of females, regardless of source of data, crime type, level of involvement, or measure of participation.” I say this not to pathologize masculinity as inherently violent, I certainly don’t believe it is. I say this to move us away from wringing in our hands in despair about a seemingly intractable problem (male violence against women) and move us toward naming the fact that this problem is deeply structural, rooted in patriarchy and colonialism.

The point here is this: violence in general and sexual violence in particular, like all social ills, is best approached with a multi-faceted and intersectional perspective.

●●●

“Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of the individual: it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say someone is “in power” we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name.” –  Hannah Arendt, from On Violence

What is the function of violence?

Resisting essentialist notions about sex and turning to think about gender, there is something in pervasive understandings of masculinity or masculine identity that accepts if not encourages violence.  This begs the questions: Is masculinity itself violent? Is there a way to be a man/masculine without being violent? What causes violence? What sustains it? These are questions that I think about daily and with my colleagues around the country. At MSV we work with many different men who join in this conversation with us. For us, that involves honing in on the problem of men’s violence against women.

Let me be very clear here, because this is the bulk of my point: we fail at answering these questions if we think of violence as merely a symptom of something else. If you listened to the NRA press conference last week in response to the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, you might be lead to believe that the perpetration of violence is some elusive phenomenon, committed by the criminally insane, or at the behest of video games and violent movies. If you watched some of the Indian coverage of the Delhi gang rape story you’d hear lots of speculation that the young men who perpetrated this gruesome act, must have been intoxicated by drugs. I wholeheartedly disagree with this assessment of violence. It’s not merely a tragic happenstance. It is not something only done by those who have ‘lost their right minds.’ Violence is functional.

It is a means of asserting and securing power. When violence targets women in the dark of night it ensures, among many other things, that women stay out of the streets. When violence against trans women goes largely unreported in studies of violence against women, it is tacitly legitimated. When violence against white school children raises a national furor and violence against an innocent black teenager wearing a hoodie doesn’t provoke a national conversation about legislating guns, we can see the fault lines.  When a football player kills his partner and then himself and we find ourselves knowing his name but not hers, we see which victims matter.

Violence is functional and our response to that violence is also functional. Violence is functions by silencing those whom it targets. Let us not forget that most cases of rape and sexual assault go unreported. Let us not forget the stigma that survivors face. In the US only 24% of rape allegations result in arrest, never mind conviction. Whether it is perpetrated by an individual or made invisible by our social, cultural and political institutions, violence has an aim – to remove power and instill fear.

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The numbers can tell us most of what we need to know. But not all. What is lost in the statistical knowables, is the lived reality of women, LGBTQ people and others of us whose stories don’t make it to the headlines. Women’s lives bear out patterns, and patterns tell a story. If we ask intentional questions about trends – we can learn something about our social orchestration. Looking to recent stories, we might learn something about this functionality.

Kasandra Perkins was killed by her partner, a professional athlete, who had threatened to shoot her weeks before he did. No one was able to protect her despite the fact of his threat.

CeCe McDonald, a trans woman, faced violence in the form of a hate crime and for her retaliation was sentenced to serve her time in a men’s prison, denied the right to name a very basic fact of her existence.

Victoria Soto was a school teacher with her students in the classroom one day when she was killed in a massacre by a lone gunman with easy access to assault weapons.

Savita Halappanavar sought refuge from the horror of a wanted pregnancy gone awry at an Irish hospital which (legally) refused to save her life.

And then a few weeks ago a young woman in New Delhi took the bus home one night after watching a movie with a friend and was brutally raped and died, 12 days later, from her wounds.

When something horrific happens, near or far from home, we tend to ask the same questions: Why? How? So, what, then, are the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ in these cases and in inumerable others? There are few actual similarities in these cases, but there are many potential points of convergence: laws that do not protect, credibility that is denied, legislation that is missing, stories that are made invisible. If we are to change things, our belief systems, social structures, and institutional practices must come under the spotlight. And that is because these stories complicate the statistical knowables.

Interpersonal violence usually belies a whole host of social conditions that are hard to qualify and quantify (i.e. privilege, race, poverty, gender, oppression, resistance, wealth, cultural norms, etc.). In this, as in most things, historical context is key. The US has a long history of state sanctioned violence. Consider the genocide of Native and First Nations people, the ever-present legacy of slavery, the internment, without due-process, of those considered a threat, be they Japanese immigrants or detained in Guantanamo via the War on Terror.  These factors complicate our understanding of who perpetrates violence and against whom and why. Knowing the statistics is important. Knowing the stories, unearthing the legacies, speaking aloud the names of the victims and the survivors is just as important.

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Women’s bodies serve as battlegrounds: metaphorically and practically. “Western” feminists look toward the “East” and see beleaguered women facing oppression at the hands of savage (read:black and brown) men. Never mind that staggering and horrific violence happens in the “West.”  Never mind that the US has never taken a stand to ratify the global Convention on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Never mind international conventions, the US is not able to muster the political will to pass the Violence Against Women Act, or gun control legislation. Never mind that we all have remained  unable to effectively address the phenomenon of rape as a tool of war, so as to prevent women’s bodies from serving as the actual sites of war and conflict.

Despite all these facts, in the wake of this story, outrage began seeping out from the US, the UK and Europe (which I am loosely defining as the “West” – the demarcations of and within these places could be a topic of a separate blog post) at the problem of patriarchal “Eastern” cultures. The narrative looks something like this: Those poor women suffering at the hands of those horrible men. We must loudly proclaim our empathy for those people, who either know no better or are unable to live by our enlightened social standards.

This narrative is racist, homophobic, sexist, heteronormative and imperialist.

And to step away from all that politicalese: it is quite simply just wrong.

Violence is global. It pervades all cultures and communities. Yesterday, in a brilliant conversation, Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association and one of the main organizers of protests against sexual violence in India and Elora Chowdhary, associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, joined Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now to talk about the case and the way it’s being discussed here in the US as well as in India. Chaowdhary says,

So, on the one hand, we see in the Western media some reporters taking this moral high ground and pointing fingers and demonizing Indian culture, as though sexual violence against women is pervasive in only certain parts of the world and that it’s somehow reflective of deeply inherent cultural traditions of that part of the world. Of course, what that obscures is that both rape and domestic violence are pervasive in the United States, and domestic violence being one of the leading causes of injury to women, and exceedingly high numbers of rapes that, in fact, mostly go unreported in the United States. So, I think embedded in these kinds of reporting is a certain colonial mindset, of course, there’s a long history of that. And this kind of mindset that women are the measure of the progress of a society emerges from colonial practices, that these ideas were used to legitimize both colonization and also imperialism.

I don’t say all this to discourage global dialogue. Very much the opposite, in fact. We have much to learn from each other, by sharing our struggles and our victories. Such exchange is key to our success. What we cannot abide however is the reductive and disempowering narrative that allows some folks to offer no local, national or global context. What will not help is an essentialist narrative that paints all (or even most) Indian women as victims and all (or even most) Indian men as perpetrators, by virtue of their culture. We must banish these spectres of our colonial legacy if we aim to build an intersectional, transnational and transformative movement to end violence in our communities.

As I’ve said, violence, here in the US and abroad, is functional. Violence against women, is rooted in colonialism and patriarchy, in their varied and sundry iterations.  We’d do well to keep our eyes on that, and work like hell to dismantle the belief systems, social structures, and institutional practices that support it.

Her name is Kasandra Michelle Perkins.  She was 22 years old, a new mother, and an aspiring teacher.  Her picture shows off a beautiful smile and her friends describe her as selfless, kind, and generous.  She was excited about being a mother to her newborn, Zoey, and was optimistic about her future.  But her future was cut short, her life was taken away, and I think you should know her name.

This tragic story pushes to the forefront an important issue in terms of domestic violence and murder.  When the murderer is famous, attractive, rich, or charming people don’t want to believe that they are guilty.  I don’t pretend to know Jovan Belcher’s heart, motives, or mind set when he fired numerous gunshots into the body of his baby’s mother, and then turned the gun on himself.  I don’t know why his only option, in that moment, felt like a desperate one.  I don’t know what caused him to murder Kasandra, but what I do know is that it was not Kasandra’s fault.  I know that staying out until 1 o’clock in the morning at a concert was not an invitation to die.  I know that it doesn’t matter what she wore that night, or what she may have said, or whether or not she may have been intoxicated, or rolled her eyes at him, or called him out of his name, or talked to another guy in passing, she didn’t deserve to die.  I know Kasandra didn’t start it, or run off at the mouth, or otherwise instigate her murder.  I don’t know what happened in her relationship, or in that room that night/morning, but I do know that there is nothing Kasandra could have said, done, or imagined that would justify what happened to her.

It is ridiculous that I have to write a disclaimer of responsibility, anticipating an assumption of accountablity for the victim, a young woman who had not even began to live her life, a new mother who will not get to see her child’s first Christmas…but there are (or will be) people who, in Jovan Belcher’s defense, will ask aloud (or wonder silently) what she did to set him off.  They will say she had no business going out with a three-month old at home.  They will wonder what she did to make him so mad that he would jeopardize everything he had worked so hard for.  They will speculate about her cheating, or lying, or disrespecting him.  They will assume that somehow she is at least partially to blame for her own demise.  But I posit that there is nothing that she did do, didn’t do, or could have done to justify her tragic, violent and untimely death.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt that Jovan Belcher was a good man, a good athlete, a good friend, a good father, or a generous son, but his desperate act in a moment of rage or confusion made him a murderer, and his pre-death accolades and post-death reputation should not be protected at the expense of the person he killed.  Many articles are focusing on how shocked people are that this happened because he was such a good man, and did not have violent tendencies…but imaging that makes him a martyr is problematic because it makes it seem like Kasandra Perkins must have provoked him.  The insinuation, even mildly, that the victim of a violent act is somehow responsible for what happens to them is reprehensible…but unfortunately not uncommon when the victim is black, brown, nonheterosexual, working-class, non-cissexual, disable bodied, or a woman. (NOTE:  A recent example of this “blame the dead victim” mentality was shown when George Zimmerman’s defense requested access to Trayvon Martin’s social media records, as if a facebook status, re-tweet, or candid photograph of a 17-year-old black boy would somehow prove his culpability in his own killing).

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Do you remember Cherica Adams?  Eight months pregnant, she was gunned down in a drive-by shooting on November 16, 1999, when Rae Carruth, a then wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, conspired to have her killed because he did not want to pay child support (she had refused his insistence that she get an abortion).  With a will to survive and save her child she had the fortitude, with multiple bullet wounds, to call 911, and name Carruth as her murderer.  She gave birth to her son (who was born with cerebral palsy as a result of the shooting), slipped into a coma, and died a month later, 13 years ago this month.  Did you know (remember) her name?

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I did not write this piece to offer a commentary on the dangers of hypermasculinity, or to insinuate a direct correlation between athletes and violence (though those are conversations that are worthy of discussion).  I did not write this piece to co-opt a space where fans, friends, and family can mourn their loss and seek comfort for the understandable devastation they must feel.  I did not write this piece to bad-mouth Jovan, or speak ill of the dead (may he and Kasandra rest in peace).  I wrote this piece to adjust the focus away from the famous athlete who “snapped,” and to put it on the true innocent in the case.  I wrote this piece as a clarion call to remember Kasandra by her name and not by her relationship.  I wrote this piece so that we don’t forget that victims may fall into statistics but they have names!  I wrote this piece as a reminder that Kasandra (and Cherica) existed before their relationships with men who did not value their lives.  I wrote this piece as a reminder that when a tragedy like this happens, it is not the perpetrator’s name we should remember, but the victim’s.  And since Kasandra Perkins’ name is not in the headlines (and Cherica Adams’ name was not in the headlines), but is rather hidden somewhere between the facts of the case and the eulogy of a man deemed the tragic, martyred hero, I wrote this piece to call out her name.  I feel like you should know her name.  And Cherica’s name.  And the name of every other victim who gets lost in the shadows of a murderer’s limelight.

In an article by the Kansas City Star, a close friend of Kasandra said, “I don’t want her to get overshadowed by who he was…she deserves recognition, too.”

Indeed she does.  Don’t forget her name!

Please use the comments section to call out the names of any (living or dead) victim/s of a violent crime you want to honor, remember, and/or recognize!

And please…pay attention in your relationships!  Look for signs of danger (see Pearl Cleage’s Mad at Miles: A Blackwoman’s Guide to Truth) and escape if/when you see them.  If someone threatens to kill you, believe them! If someone is emotionally or verbally abusive, leave the relationship.  Love should not hurt, and despite the romanticization of manic love in popular culture, it is not worth dying for.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself at a gun range on the outskirts of Atlanta.  It was supposed to be an outing with friends (somebody found a groupon, so you know how that goes). I thought it might be a chance to address some of my fear of guns so I agreed.  Slowly but surely, everybody got a little too busy to go and I was the last woman standing.  Far be it from me to waist money or a good coupon, so I went.  I didn’t fully realize how frightened I would be until I walked in the door of the range.  For a while I was the only woman and one of two people of color in the building.  It was strange to be standing in a room full of firearms and white men in camouflage hunting caps and biker boots.  That could have been a very different scene at a different time of day, in a different location. I was fully aware that I was out of place and that being out place as a woman and as a person of color is always potentially dangerous.  I remained out of place in the range that day as I jumped every time I heard a gun fire, including my own.   I shot fifty rounds and even though it turns out that I’m pretty good shot, I never felt fully comfortable loading the bullets, holding the gun or pulling the trigger. Yet, a mix of exhilaration, pride and fear left me shaking for at least thirty minutes after I left the range.   Though I wasn’t fully sure how to process it, and I’m still not, I was sure I would be back.

And back I was, this time at an outdoor range in Texas and anything but alone as I went with my mother, her partner and a good family friend who owns the guns we used, and who happens to be white. This trip felt decidedly different from my first experience.  I am sure it was the combination of sunlight, fresh air and not being by myself.  It wasn’t lost on me, however, that though I was not alone this time I was still very much out of place. Two Black women, a Black man and a White man are still an “odd” grouping to many.  It was certainly “odd” to most of the folks at the gun range that day as we got plenty of stares and double takes, some lasting longer than others.  It wasn’t long before I noticed two white men who had taken a particular interest in us.  Staring each time I stepped up to operate the manual launcher as we shot at clay targets and loudly commenting on my shooting and on our family friend’s efforts to assist me, they made their disgust and discomfort at our presence known.  It was a stark reminder of the history/reality of guns, race and place in the South or anywhere for that matter.

For me, both of these experiences at gun ranges in two different major Southern cities brought up issues of race, place and belonging.  There was certainly something powerful in my ability to walk into these ranges, spaces dominated by white masculinity, and be defiantly “out of place.”  Yet, I also felt “out of place” in my own skin as I tried to reconcile my enjoyment of recreational shooting with my own history and politics.  How can I understand my experiences with gun violence on a number of different levels with wielding a gun in the controlled environment of a gun range?  Can I be interested in guns, even recreationally, and still be vehemently anti-violence?  Where do guns figure in my Black feminist politic?  Is there room to think about women, safety and guns in a kind of feminist politics of self-defense?  While going to the gun range was not about self-defense for me, as I write this a local news story is airing about a young Black woman who shot one of two men attempting to break into her home at 11am in broad daylight.  Her father says he is proud of her for defending herself.  He said that he taught her to use the gun for just that purpose and now he will teach her to forgive herself for doing what she had to do.  I’m relieved that she was able to defend herself but I am afraid because she will still have to wait for the final word from a grand jury to decide whether there will be charges. And Black women don’t always have an easy time making claims of self-defense especially not when guns are involved, just ask Marissa Alexander…

Clearly, I’m left with more questions than answers.  On some level, I wish I could say that going to these two ranges has given me a clear position either completely for or against guns but it hasn’t.  What I am sure of is that these two experiences refuse to let me take any position for granted.  They are, however, undoubtedly forcing me to think deeply about my politics, my fears and my history in order to move more fully into an understanding that refuses neat or logical conclusion but bravely tangles with the messiness and nuance that lies at the heart of the personal and the political.