Category Archives: parenting

Televising the Language of Sexual Aggression 

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Years ago I believed the cotton-candy fiction that it was enough for incest survivors, child abuse victims, and rape victims to just tell someone your story.

After 8 years of practicing this advice on behalf of the victims of intimate crime, I can say it is not enough.

If you tell your story, you will be marginalized, ostracized, judged.

If you tell your story, little or nothing will happen to your abuser.

If you tell your story, you still might not be able to stop the abuse…

…ostensibly because it is more fiscally and emotionally economical to ignore abuse than to intervene.

Which is why the recent statements made by American celebrities Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher (about oral sex and incest respectively) are all the more transgressive.

In making these comments both men display a complete disregard for the position of  sex crime survivors and perpetuate the connection between anger and rape culture. 

Many of us were denied consent in this process. We did not watch either show but were nonetheless exposed without  consent to the barrage of media with explicit descriptions of comments laced with both anger and intent to shock and offend.

Shock is a function of trauma.  Our minds buffer traumatic events with shock. When we cease to be shocked by what is trauma-inducing, we allow these things to become commonplace, accepted.

Yet it is categorically unacceptable for men  of power and privilege to use their position in front of a national audience to transmit language that is verbally abusive and supportive of rape culture.

I understand that both Colbert and Maher disqualified protective language they would have extended to Clinton or Obama (and their daughters) because anger now fuels their discourse on Trump.

However in the process they have exposed a frat-boy, locker room mentality which not only has no place in intelligent dissent, it automatically signals to the already marginalized and disenfranchised victim of sexual crime-“you are not safe here.”

And that is shocking…or it should be.

Feminism for ordinary stones

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After giving the human mothers ample time to choose

The-would-be-has-been-will-be-stone-mover turned to this sea of

quiet rocks

Paced among them

Raised his arms wide

And spoke words of life over them-

Sing, cry, stomp, holler, embargo, resist, advocate, articulate…raise 

these your newborn voices

for all these

very little girls 

curled without defense-

half-a-billion muted, crucial

Question marks

as each loses

one simple, brutal

Round of rock-paper-scissors

in this place we have marked “private”

then left alone.

Fake news for real girls

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once there was a real girl

who (lucky for her)

Lived in a city with superhero dolphins

So when the humans she lived with began to

Bruise bones beneath skin

Pull out hair

Leave signs of trauma on shared walls

Well.. the

The magic dolphins of San Antonio 

leapt to action!

Circled the child

Nudged her to safety

with their silvery, bottle-shaped snouts 

Clicked and nodded their unequivocal attention to all

The days of her distress

Used their shear numbers to buoy her up

Brought her 

bits of fish and garlands of seaweed

And in an unanimous decision 

Ferried her to their own

blue, cool comparatively safe

Under-water-kingdom

far from the

city where these human mothers had

Failed her

Mike Pence and mysogyny accusations 

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Just the day before the 2016 presidential election I told my friends  I feared that this election was like two toddlers fighting over a single ice cream cone.  The loser was going to fuss.

This has proved true beyond my wildest imagination.  And since 80 percent of the national press was unabashedly on Clinton’s side of the ice cream fight, the tantrum that has ensued has been both instructive and embarrassing–watching grownups with real jobs behave like the stepsisters in Cinderella.

Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, has this been more apparent than in the sly criticism of Mike Pence’s diligent faithfulness to his wife, and as an extension to his family and his community.

I dare to say that given their druthers, Bill and Donald’s family would have benefited from Pence’s honor rules.

So to call a man mysogynistic for honoring his wife seems to be a bellwether of the ice cream tantrum situation–better to call up down and left right than to report real objective news?

It seems that way.

The American public deserves better.  So does Pence.  If more men followed his rules, women in this country would be safer.

And as journalists in places like Russia and Mexico pay with their lives for their autonomy and journalistic integrity, ours have devolved into middle school bullies.

Kicked out, part 3

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If you read either part one or two, you may notice that the kicked off part is not there.

Hence, part 3:

I did not realize that the ropes were separating from the handles on a regular basis until I was riding and two riders-one very good, one pro, hollered at me from the water–I lost my rope!

I was not sure what they were talking about so I let go of my rope and asked them.

They both told me the same thing-they had been riding when suddenly the rope separated from the handle and they were left in the water with only a handle.

Weird.

I then quizzed a group of good riders, the cable operator, the cable manager, and one of the owners about how the cable rope was affixed to the handle.

The answer is-like a Chinese handcuff the rope is threaded through itself.

Which means that threading it right is crucial.

The cable operator told me his safety policy was to let everyone know they should expect to lose the rope.

The owner said the manager sometimes said stuff without thinking it through.

The manager said I was being a troublemaker.

The owner said I brought too much drama and was taking up too much of his employees’ time.

But by the time I had quizzed a dozen people I realized that 80 percent of them had a rope-loss story within the last two weeks.

I realized I might have had one as well…

There are falls and losses in wakeboarding all the time.  These things often happen in isolation.  A rider, even a good one, may not realize that a fall is due to operator neglect or park negligence unless they know that it is happening to other riders, sometimes with alarming regularity.

Within the two weeks following the refunding of my family’s membership the ropes continued to separate from the handles while in use.

I hope that someone remedied the situation eventually.

Kicked off the ranch part 2

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It is a basic tenet of writing lists–of you have a part one you have to have a part 2.

So this is it:  how I went from dragging my kids to the Texas Ski Ranch every day –to-how I was told to leave no matter what.

First, the bikini contest-reminiscent of nothing more than a stock show.  A stock show to sell price inflated Corona?! Treating beautiful young women like commodities?

Then there were the poorly attended juvenile detention peeps.

And last there were falling ropes.  It seemed to be clear that either through operator negligence or rope defect the ropes were separating from the wooden handles–off the dock, in mid-air, on structures riders were falling because their ropes had failed them.

Safety has to be a paramount concern in extreme sports.  When it is not taken seriously, people get hurt.

So that is how I was kicked off the ranch.  But just as interesting as that is the waiver that TSR and Springloaded require participants to sign.

Worth careful perusal.

Revelations in ordinary time

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today it was teeth.

teeth and sunshine

teeth and mountains

teeth and where all the rivers run

teeth and the names of famous men

teeth and meat-eaters

Baby teeth.

Teeth in the mouths of ordinary women…these two, for example–

Quite beautiful, eating midnight food together, their voices lift and carry

Down the corridors 

of night

A wide-awake, lumbering  thing

Moving fast, rushing past

Keeping watch…

with teeth.

Like the confusion about light years

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Just like the confusion over light years-

Unit of time?  Unit of distance?

Grief is more than ordinary synonyms

Loss, sorrow, mourning.

No, grief is a place you go sometimes

Sorta like a cruise or a bus tour, I guess

Or trip to a fancy casino

Only of course all the slot machines are empty and 

You have no stomach for the buffet.

At first you think

This trip will never end

But it starts to let up after

A very long time

Then, just when you thought you were home 

Safe, with your bunny slippers on,

You fish up

Back on that dammed boat, that bankrupt resort

And somehow your inability to escape this

All expenses paid vacation

Makes you weep, weep in the weird soulless light

Of this world of broken pronouns

Standing in for faces in a picture, once so vivid alive

Before the fall…before all the terrible falls

Crash into light years.

Not-so-clingy Mcguffin

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What if losing you

were like nothing so much as

watching a child throw

an erstwhile boomerang

into a once-drowned field?

Even with the approximate knowledge of descent, I pace,

Shift aside the long grace

..shift aside the long grass…with my feet

Look for signs of you-markings like the body of

a coiled snake

Glint of color, perhaps

but you are lost out there

Needle-in-a-hay-field

And I tell them things to tell myself 

You are not a boomerang 

Even a boomerang is not always

a boomerang (when it fails to return across  the field)

Oh darling

Come back to me

in the end.