sexism | troublemakingpunk.org

So, I just heard on the radio that authorities are finally looking into sexual assault charges against a Florida college star athlete for an incident that took place last year. Over and over again I’ve seen sexual assault cases against star athletes conveniently swept under the rug. You can bet the teenaged athletes who, at a 2012 party, assaulted a young teen girl in Steubenville, Ohio, have seen it too.

As a man who committed what I consider attempted sexual assault more than once as a teenager, I have watched the events unfolding over the last year and a half in Steubenville with great interest and much sadness. Whether we examine the cultural training and influences for boys like me a half a century ago or for those in the present, media messages and unequal power relationships that promote objectification of women and sexual aggressiveness of men abound. Sexist stereotypes and rape fantasies are reinforced day after day.

The films of my grandparents’ time and the films and television shows of mine promoted rape and sexual assault, too. The heralded 1939 film, Gone With The Wind has a celebrated scene where Scarlett has made her disdain clear to her husband, Rhett. He attacks her, picks her up against her will and takes her upstairs to … what? The next scene we see Scarlett lying in bed, smiling. What does that mean? What’s the lesson drawn? When, fifteen years later, Marlon Brando, in the acclaimed film, On The Waterfront, violently attacks Eva Marie Saint, and the viewer sees that she evidently wanted him to do that, what does it mean? What does a thirteen year old boy learn from that? When three or four decades after that Nicholas Cage does the same to Cher in the award winning, Moonstruck, and she decides she loves him, what in the world is the movie maker telling boys about women, and about how men should behave? So called serious films continue to perpetuate this image of the heroine waiting to be taken by the strong, impetuous hero. The scores of comedy films made over the last ninety years that have implied that it is a good idea to ply women with alcohol to “loosen them up” also continue to provide lessons today.

When most video games marketed to teen boys depict women as either helpless damsels who must be saved, or strong, evil women who must be vanquished, what is the message the boy gets? When thousands of rap songs constantly label women as “b***ches” or “hos”, or as their body parts, who simply are there to please the males, what does the eleven year old boy learn about girls and women? What messages do the girls get about themselves?

We live in a patriarchal, sexist culture where women hold less than 20% of our elected offices on average, less than 5% of CEO positions of our largest corporations, less than a quarter of the top positions in our cultural institutions. Most film directors, most video producers, most advertising executives are men, while single mothers are the largest group of adults in poverty. These conditions help determine whose vision defines our world—what’s valued as important, what’s not.

Over one-third of teen girls report violence from their male partners.Thousands of women each year are raped or battered by guys they know. In one survey it was reported that 23% of women who served in the Iraq/Afghanistan wars were victims of at least one attempted sexual assault by their male comrades. At the same time, the markets for violent pornography and sexual slavery are at all time highs.

This is the environment in which these teen boys committed horrid crimes of violation and degradation against an innocent young woman. This is the environment in which a community of youths and adults supported and tolerated those crimes. It was a similar environment almost a half century ago when my friends and I crossed similar boundaries, and were not held accountable. As bad as it is now, it was worse in some ways then. The voice of women could barely be heard. That was before brave women came together to create rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters, before women rallied to challenge “the problem with no name,” and demanded liberation for women and the right to control their own bodies.

The voices are getting louder, but it is still hard to be heard over the cheers for a game winning touchdown catch or the dissonant noise of one more porn video or Hollywood flick that swallows the landscape.

As I write this and you read this, women in our country are being battered; women in our country are being raped; women and girls in our country are being sexually harassed, and boys are being taught that either it’s okay or it doesn’t matter that much. We’re also not being taught that this is not simply a “violence against women” problem, but something even bigger. We are not being taught that this is an inevitable result of living in a patriarchy. We are not being taught that until we fully challenge the distorted masculinity that comes from living in a dysfunctional patriarchal system, we will never reach the roots of the violence. In the meantime, we do what we can.

As power relationships slowly change, sexist images are challenged, and women’s voices are heard, perhaps we can hope that, even if we haven’t yet stopped the sexist violence, it goes unacknowledged and unpunished a little less often. A small victory, but a critical one.

River Smith is former co-chair of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS), former coordinator of Men Against Violence (a community centered feminist-based batterers program), and author of A Conspiracy To Love: Living A Life of Joy, Generosity, and Power.

And sometimes it’s about class, or gender, or age, or any other classification that causes us to be identified as one of “the others.” President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have been profiled by people all their lives, just as Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis were. That doesn’t mean that there are not also other reasons for the disrespectful behavior directed toward them. It is important, however, to face this profile thing.

So Trayvon Martin was suspended from school at the time that George Zimmerman shot and killed him. Young Trayvon was wearing a hoodie–a symbol to some people of troublemaking. Furthermore, he was guilty of the unpardonable crime of being a young Black male on the street at night. Jordan was sitting in a van with his buds listening to some music, too loud, like most teens. He also had the audacity to give an old white guy some lip or the wrong kind of look.

We don’t know what specific issues made the one young man, walking down the street, talking on his cellphone to his friend, a suspicious character to Mr. Zimmerman. We don’t know exactly what made Jordan Davis seem a threat to Michael Dunn, if that’s what really happened. We don’t know exactly, but we have a pretty good idea.

This reminds me a little of my own misadventures as a teenager on the streets of Cleveland in the 1960’s. Like so many of my friends, I spent my nights walking the streets and hanging on corners for entertainment. Each evening, as I buffed my shoes and combed my hair on the way out the door, as I hit the sidewalk with the baaaadest walk on the block, clicking out a tune with my cleats, I thought about how cool I was, and I thought about meeting up with my boys, and about hooking up with some local “chicks.” I tried very hard not to think about the police.

Unfortunately, from the first time they stopped to check me out, the local patrol boys decided that I was a troublemaker. I wasn’t sure why. Was it because they didn’t like my hair? My spit shined shoes? My so cool walk? Or maybe it was the way I smiled when they jabbed me with their night sticks. It certainly could have been the smile. A judge later told me from the bench that he was locking me up just to wipe that smile off my face. It also could have been that hair. I was suspended at least twenty times by high school administrators who didn’t like it.

To so many people in authority I was seen as a “punk,” “a smart–a– troublemaker,” up to no good. I was somehow considered a dangerous person who was suspected as a cause of any problems that might be happening in the neighborhood. I had to be watched. I had to be hassled. I had to be controlled. The bruises to my ribs, the pain in my stomach, the scratches on my face as I was slammed repeatedly against the police cars, were a message from those in authority. The term wasn’t in use back then, but I was being profiled.

I was in a crazy relationship that, as a teenager, I was too self-absorbed and innocent to know how to change. I was told over and over again that I had a problem with authority, when really it was the other way around. My friends and I didn’t wear the same clothes, didn’t listen to the same music, didn’t talk the way the adults did, and we didn’t respect the same norms of behavior. We were too loud, too reckless; we were different; we were “the other,” and that made us dangerous to the people in authority. That perceived reality gave some police, some school administrators, some judges the justification to treat us without respect, without compassion, without understanding, and without justice. I didn’t know yet how the Black kids from the neighborhood next to ours were judged or treated by the authorities. I just knew they wouldn’t be safe on our streets. The authorities and our gangs would make sure of that. Why? Because they were “the other.” They were stereotyped. They were profiled.

So here we are now, nearly a half century later. The civil rights movement has given us decades to look at discrimination. And I wonder, can we get past our prejudices, our fears, our stereotypes to demand the same respect, same justice for the many young Black men on our streets today, that we would for any of our children. Michael Dunn evidently couldn’t. Neither, it seems, can many conservative commentators or republican lawmakers.

River Smith is a psychologist, eco-feminist community activist, author of A Conspiracy to Love: Living A Life of Joy, Generosity, and Power, and co-author, with Victor L. Lewis and Hugh Vasquez, of Lessons from The Color of Fear: A Teachers Manual.

Steubenville, Rape, and The Long Struggle to Change

Of Course It’s About Race (Cruising unsafe streets: hanging with Trayvon & Jordan)