Guns don't kill people...

There has been another mass shooting this morning – this time near the Empire State Building.  Some folks think this means we should enact stricter gun control laws, but I’m not so sure guns are the problem. 

According to a survey of inmates in state and federal corrections facilities in 1997, about 80% of incarcerated offenders who had a gun acquired it from family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source.  If criminals are not getting their guns through legal channels, making it harder to purchase a gun legally won’t really do much to solve the problem.

Perhaps we need to look past guns.

In 2006, firearms were used in 68% of all homicides in the United States.  That’s a pretty significant percentage, so I’m not at all downplaying the role played by guns.  But, I think this is a more telling statistic:  Between 1980 and 2008, 90% of all homicides in the United Stated were committed by men. 

Maybe the NRA is right.  Guns don’t kill people. 

But men sure do.

I think it’s time for us to spend less time talking about gun control and more time talking about hegemonic masculinity, the culture of violence, and patriarchy if we want to get to the root of the problem. 

If not, I’m buying guns for all the women in my life this Christmas.

Feast

Here's another poem..............

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Papaw brought home a miniature rocking chair

and sat it in the center of the old oak table

my parents bought for themselves after they got married in ’63. 

Countless turkeys, hams, and hogs’ heads had rested there over the years;

eager elbows commanded by carnivorous mouths

had long ago worn away the varnish along the outer edge. 

Now that rocking chair sat mid-table,

an empty platter awaiting a fresh carcass.

My father, I think, lifted my toddler body up and sat me down,

the wooden blades of the ceiling fan whirring just inches above my head

and 400 collective incandescent watts beaming like heat lamps on the part in my hair. 

Their hungry eyes scanned for the tenderest cut. 

My mother pulled an Old Hickory knife from the wall and carved a flank. 

I tasted foreign to them, like parchment and silverfish, so they spat me out

and put what was left of me in a Ball jar.

“Perhaps she’ll sweeten with age.”

My Rape Poem (explicit)

To continue the theme of my last post, I'd thought I'd share this poem as well.

________________________________

I know why I hate semen.

Because when I was no older than 9,

he watched our cousin fuck me

and then come inside of me. 

I walked around after,

having no idea

what the slimy feeling was

between my legs.

Because he held my head to his dick,

telling me what to do

as he fucked my mouth,

until he came in the back of my throat. 

I spit in the garbage can,

wanting to vomit but feeling too empty

to muster the force.

Because of all the times he bent me over

- in the coal house  

- in the storage crib my father cut trees to build  

- in the chicken coop  

- in the outhouse  

then pulled out of me

to spill himself on gray wood. 

Because when I was 13 and on the phone with a friend,

he pulled my pants down as I sat in a chair,

knowing I wouldn’t let on. 

He fucked me while I listened to the childish ramblings of my friend. 

He came on my belly, stood up, grabbed a towel, and wiped himself off of me -- 

The phone in my hand the entire time,

me barely able to speak.

Because two days before Christmas, when I was 15,

he bent me over the arm of a chair

while I stared at the lights on the tree. 

The condom he was wearing broke. 

I skipped my period and spent the next two months

trying to decide how I’d kill myself if I was pregnant.

Coming Out: My Rape Story

As a lesbian, I know how powerful coming out is – both personally and culturally.  It’s easy for others to make baseless assumptions about groups of people when those people stay hidden out of fear and/or shame. 

Today, I feel compelled to ‘come out’ about rape.

All of this political talk about ‘legitimate’ rape and whether raped women can get pregnant has me thinking about my own history with rape.  Coming out about rape in our culture is vital.  There’s so much victim-blaming, so much rhetoric that treats rape as a myth, as something women fabricate.  Most of the women I know well have their own rape stories – from being raped by family members to being raped by friends of the family to date rape to violent rape by strangers. 

This is my rape story – a story written over nearly a decade of my childhood – a story that continues to be recited in my brain despite the safety brought with time and distance.

I was raped by one of my older brothers beginning when I was only 7 years old until I was nearly 16.  I vividly recall the night he broke my hymen.  I was 7 years old, in the first grade.  He was only 12.  My grandfather had just died.  My grandfather was brought home to my parents’ house for his wake and funeral.  Family and friends were at the house around the clock, so my brother and I were sent across the road to sleep in what had been my grandfather’s house.  I was on the couch under the big picture window, and he was in a roll-away bed in the middle of the room.  I remember crying on the couch out of grief about my grandfather’s passing when my brother told me I could get in bed with him.  I remember him getting out of bed then coming back with a jar of Vaseline that he sat nearby.  I remember the pain between my legs, the blood, my crying, and me begging him to take me back home.  I remember the blood stain on my underwear.  I remember watching my grandfather being lowered in to the ground two days later and my overwhelming desire to crawl in the ground with him.

That rape was only the first of hundreds. 

My brother raped me regularly over the next several years, even after he was older and having sex with his girlfriends.  On a few occasions when I was 8 or 9, he even watched as another male cousin raped me.  When I was in the third grade, I remember resisting him once, and him threatening to try it on one of my friends who sometimes spent the night with me if I didn’t do what he wanted.  He liked to rape me in my parents’ bed when they weren’t home. 

The rapes themselves typically were not physically violent, although he was definitely violent with me at other times.  I feared him, but I had no way to escape him.  I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere or do anything unless he was with me.  Even as I got older, I wasn’t allowed to stay home alone; I could only stay home when he was with me, which almost always included him raping me.  Once, out of desperation, I tried to sneak up on him with a knife, but he saw my shadow.  He took the knife from me, held me down, and told me he would slice my throat open if I ever tried it again.

Once I reached the age of menarche – when I was 12 years old – I experienced an entirely new level of horror.  On a handful of occasions after I began menstruating, I feared my brother had impregnated me through rape.  Take a moment and let that sink in.  Imagine being 13 years old in an extremely religious household.  Imagine that your very own brother has been raping you regularly for the past 6 years and continues to do so.  Imagine then realizing that you didn’t get your period this month.  Can you imagine that terror, that sense of hopelessness?  I still live with those feelings.  I remember being alone in the bathroom – which was about the only place I was allowed to be alone in my house – and pounding my lower abdomen with my fists as hard as I could, hoping that I could dislodge any part of him that might have taken root.  I knew that if I was pregnant, my only escape would be my own death.  I remember sneaking outside of the house in the middle of the night with a knife wondering if I could muster the courage to do it if my period didn’t eventually come.  I would press the knife to the skin on my wrist and forearm – just enough to break the skin – wondering if I could press harder if I had to.

The last time my brother raped me was two days before Christmas when I was almost 16.  At that point, he was nearly 21 and had apparently decided he should wear a condom when he raped me to minimize the risk of pregnancy.  I remember that he bent me over the arm of the sofa and I stared at the Christmas tree while he raped me.  Then I heard him curse because he realized the condom broke.  My period didn’t come in January, and the whole cycle of planning my own suicide started in my head again.  But something was also changing in me.  Despite my inner terror, I was an excellent student, and teachers were starting to seriously talk to me about college.  For the first time in my life, I began to think there might be a way out.  When my period finally returned in February, I decided that I would do my best to lay low and avoid being alone with my brother until I could finish high school and escape to college. 

My brother never raped me again, but I wasn’t able to tough it out to finish high school at home.  About a year later as I began to talk more seriously about going to college, my mother made it clear to me that I would not be allowed to go to college unless my rapist brother went with me.  Her plan was this:  He and I could live together while I went to school.  He could get a job, and I could take care of the house.  I felt completely, utterly, blackest-pit-of-despair hopeless.  I had a breakdown at school the next day, which led me to tell a trusted teacher, who helped me get out of my home and into a safer environment. 

I spent a lot of years blaming myself for my own victimization, asking myself what I could have and should have done to prevent it all.  Through the years of abuse and rape, nearly every other member of my immediate family became aware of what was happening or had happened.  Once, when I was about 8 years old, our older sister caught my brother raping me.  I remember her taking him to the other room and yelling at him.  I remember it was the first time I had heard the word ‘incest’.    When I was about 9 or 10, I remember being with my father in his pick-up truck and him asking what my brother and I had been doing.  When I told him, he told me he would talk to my brother and make it stop.  He also told me that he wasn’t going to tell my mother, because she would just whoop us both.  My other brother also knew about it, and even admitted that my rapist brother had told him that he also wanted to have sex with our sister and even our mother.  Despite this knowledge, my family sided with my rapist brother time after time over the years, accusing me of lying, making up their own versions of reality.  I suppose it’s easier for them to scapegoat me, to blame the victim, than to accept and examine bigger systemic problems in our family.    

If you know my family of origin and are finding this shocking and unimaginable, I really wish I could tell you that this story isn’t true.  I wish, for my own sake, that none of this ever happened.  But it did, and not talking about it only makes it worse.

For years, I resisted calling what my brother did to me rape.  But it was rape.  This is my rape story.  And I wish I could tell you that my rape story ended staring at the Christmas tree 18 years ago.  But rape stays with you forever.   It haunts you in your waking hours and in your sleep.  I have struggled with depression and anxiety my entire life because of those repeated rapes.  I still, on occasion, have flashbacks that interfere with intimacy in my relationship.  I still have horrible nightmares that my wife tries to wake me from them when she hears me whimpering in my sleep. 

The worst part about having a rape story is that the story never really ends.  And hearing people in positions of power imply that only some rapes are ‘legitimate’ and that women who get pregnant as a result of rape weren’t really raped just adds to the shame, horror, guilt, and hopelessness that so many of us survivors of rape continue to face. 

I am a survivor of rape.  But survival never comes easily.

The 12 Steps of Chick-fil-A.A.

Today I was talking to a friend, and he mentioned how this whole Chick-fil-A thing is so pervasive in the current public dialog.  He mentioned being at an A.A. meeting during the past week and how the first 10 minutes of the meeting was discussion about Chick-fil-A.  My instantaneous response was:  “What?  Did they think it was a Chick-fil-A.A. meeting?”

And then this silly joke of mine got me to thinking.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I think there are plenty of people who love both Chick-fil-A and gays.  How can we expect these homophiles to give up their Chick-fil-A cold-turkey?  In my attempt to help those poor lost souls, I offer help via a new 12 step program (borrowing heavily from the tradition of A.A.):  Chick-fil-A Anonymous.

Is Chick-fil-A.A .for you?

Only you can decide whether you want to give Chick-fil-A.A. a try

We who are in Chick-fil-A.A. came because we finally gave up trying to control our destructive fast food habit.  We still hated to admit that we could never eat Chick-fil-A with a clear conscience again.  We found out that many people suffered from the same feelings of guilt and hopelessness and cognitive dissonance that we did.  We found out that we had these feelings because we had the disease of moral nihilism.  We decided to try and face up to what Chick-fil-A had done to us and our LGBT friends and family.

Here are some of the questions we tried to answer honestly.  If we answered YES to four or more questions, we were in deep trouble with our Chick-fil-A habit.  See how you do. Remember, there is no disgrace in facing up to the fact that you have a problem. 

1)     Have you ever decided to stop eating Chick-fil-A for a week or so, but only lasted for a couple of days?

2)      Do you wish people would mind their own business about your patronage of Chick-fil-A-- stop telling you what to do?

3)      Have you ever switched from one Chick-fil-A location to another in the hope that you wouldn’t run in to anyone you know?

4)      Have you had to have a trio of Chick-n-Minis upon awakening during the past year?

5)      Do you envy people who can go to Chick-fil-A and still look at themselves in the mirror?

6)      Have you had problems connected with your patronage of Chick-fil-A during the past year?

7)      Has your patronage of Chick-fil-A caused trouble at home?

8)      Do you ever try to get "extra" waffle fries at lunch because you do not get enough?

9)      Do you tell yourself you can stop eating Chick-fil-A any time you want to, even though you keep going through the drive-thru when you don't mean to?

10)   Have you ever felt that your life – and the world - would be better if you did not eat at Chick-fil-A?

Did you answer YES four or more times? If so, you are probably in trouble.  Why do we say this?  Because tens of people in Chick-fil-A.A. have said so for many days now.  They found out the truth about themselves — and Chick-fil-A -- the hard way.  But again, only you can decide whether you think Chick-fil-A.A. is for you.  Try to keep an open mind on the subject.  If the answer is YES, we will be glad to show you how we stopped going to Chick-fil-A ourselves.   Chick-fil-A.A. does not promise to solve your life's problems.   But we can show you how we are learning to live without Chick-fil-A "one chicken fillet at a time."  

Chick-fil-A Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from Chick-fil-A.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop eating at Chick-fil-A.  There are no dues or fees for Chick-fil-A.A. membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions.

Chick-fil-A.A. is allied with other LGBT friends and family.  Chick-fil-A.A. fully endorses equality.

Our primary purpose is to stay away from Chick-fil-A and re-align our beliefs with our consumption patterns.

The Twelve Steps of Chick-fil-A Anonymous

1)       We admitted we were powerless over our consumption and patronage of Chick-fil-A – that our habit had become undesirable to us.

2)      We came to believe that other fast-food chicken sandwiches could better serve equality.

3)      We made a decision to turn our purchasing power over to the care of gays as we understand them to be deserving of the same rights and respect as all human beings.

4)      We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5)      We admitted to Dan Cathy, to ourselves, and to a gay human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6)      We were entirely ready to remove all defects of character from our economic choices.

7)      We humbly asked Gays to forgive our short-comings.

8)      We made a list of all gay persons we had harmed by spending money at Chick-fil-A, and became willing to donate money to the Human Rights Campaign instead.

9)      We made direct amends to such gays wherever possible, except when to do so would get us glitter-bombed.

10)   We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11)   We sought through purchasing and money management to improve our conscious contact with the free market, spending only on causes that foster equality for all.

12)   Having had an awakening of social awareness and responsibility as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to other gay-friendly Chick-fil-A patrons, and to practice these principles in all our financial affairs.

If you want to give Chick-fil-A.A. a try, we meet every Wednesday at 6 PM at your local Hamburger Mary’s. 

Vaginal Dilators & Lesbian Typology

Vaginal dilators -- or ‘prescription dildos’ as I like to call them -- are often recommended for women who have undergone radiation therapy to the pelvis.  Radiation causes scar tissue and thus impairs the elasticity of the vagina, which in turn can make sex or pelvic exams unnecessarily painful. 

A lesbian associate of mine who has recently gone through radiation for cancer was given a vaginal dilator by her doctor today.  This lesbian associate is a self-identified “stone butch” and had to explain to her physician that her pelvic area is typically a healthcare-only zone.  Given the fact that my lesbian associate must now have frequent pelvic exams, the dilator is an unfortunate but necessary affront to her masculine identity.  In an attempt to comfort my emasculated stone butch associate, I suggested she punch a bear in the face every time she is required to use the dilator.  I also gave her the advice bequeathed to me by my loving wife, “We have holes for a reason.”

For those unfamiliar with lesbian typology, a ‘stone butch’ is, per Wikipedia:

A butch woman or trans man who is superlatively masculine in character and dress, who tops his/her partners sexually (and sometimes emotionally), and who is averse to sexual contact with their genitalia.

Given this definition, you can surely understand my lesbian associate’s dismay at being prescribed a dilator.

This got me thinking:  What kind of lesbian am I?  I am definitely butch/masculine.  I dress in men's clothing and I regularly get called ‘sir’.  But I am definitely not stone butch; I do not exclusively top my partners (emotionally or sexually) and my genitalia is definitely not a healthcare-only zone (unless you factor in my proclivity to have sex with nurses). 

I think I have coined a new typology to best describe my gender/sexuality –

I am a clay butch. 

To help you understand this new type of butch, let’s refer to the definition of the word ‘clay’:

clay

noun

1.      An earthy material that is plastic when wet and hardens when heated

2.      Moist sticky earth

Clay just describes me better.  Clay is far more malleable than stone.  Clay, unlike stone, does not necessarily crumble into pieces after taking a vigorous pounding.  And, clay will do or become whatever you want if you’re skilled enough with your hands.