By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

You’d think a survivor of an abusive relationship would lend one of the most empathic of ears to women incarcerated for charges related to domestic violence. Women who committed crimes because their abusers forced them to. Women who, without the resources to buy a get-out-of-jail-free card, were caught up when the men who terrorized them broke the law. Women who ultimately erupted in one excruciating moment of self-preservation, one violent demand for freedom, and killed their abusers. Yes, you’d think someone who came close, but managed to avoid that final step, would be exquisitely understanding.

But I’m not. Or, to cut myself some slack, I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all understanding. I once condemned women who failed to protect their children from abusive partners. I had conveniently forgotten how grateful I was that I’d had no offspring with my abuser, how uncertain I was of what I might have done had I borne a baby into a violent family, how terrified I was that I might have taught a child how to submit, how to disappear into the background, how to cry silently, how to duck.

I, however, had gotten away, rescued by a woman who didn’t even know me — “I know what’s going on. Come home with me,” she said. Despite her generous gift of freedom, though, I grew stingy with those who had none, who were paralyzed by the fear of the next assault, who could do no more than cower among smaller victims. Instead of generosity, I offered criticism — perhaps to distance myself from the woman I once was, to deny I had ever been a victim “like that,” to refuse to acknowledge we are one.

Then in 1988, I looked into the disfigured face of Hedda Nussbaum, read the evidence of her 12 years of horrifying abuse and degradation, listened to the testimony of her sitting on the bathroom floor with the dying child her partner had beaten, and I realized what an unconscionable act it was to blame her. To blame a brutalized victim for failing to behave like a good girl, like a good mother — as though no fist had ever silenced her, no fear had ever paralyzed her, no foot had ever kicked her, no words had ever cut her, no weapon had ever shattered her.

Then in 2011, I watched a new documentary called Sin By Silence, the story of the creation of Convicted Women Against Abuse — an organization formed inside the California Institute for Women to help educate the system about domestic violence (click here to find screenings). And I read a new book, Razor Wire Women, edited by Jodie Michelle Lawston and Ashley E. Lucas, a collection of stories, essays, poetry and art by abused, incarcerated women and those concerned for them. And then I knew at once that even though I was free, I was only one kind stranger away from the other side of the wire. There or in my grave.

And in that knowledge grows empathy.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Warning: Adult content

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a designation first recognized in 1989. And it is still relevant. Despite the 1994 passage of the Violence Against Women Act. Despite the growing understanding that battering one’s partner is a crime, not spousal privilege. Despite the vast number of people who think they don’t know anyone who has been harmed by an intimate partner.

Because they are wrong. National Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) is still relevant because at least one in four women in the United States — LBTQ or straight — will be assaulted some time in her life.

Name four women you know. One of them likely was, is being, or will be punched, kicked, strangled, burned, stabbed, raped — physically harmed by an intimate.

That’s startling, isn’t it. That’s why this month is a welcome opportunity to focus on raising awareness of the ongoing severity of the problem and on educating people to help prevent domestic violence.

And how did The Koala welcome the month? Tabloid owner George Lee Liddle III, of San Diego, released the latest issue of The Koala at Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM), bearing the message that rape, violence, racism, homophobia, sodomy of minors and forced pornography are laughable entertainment.

Liddle and the students he manages at the three San Diego County public universities where The Koala is distributed call the tabloid satire, but their content makes clear that the publisher, writers and editors of The Koala don’t know satire from scripture. What they are doing is not funny; it fails as satire; it has no redeeming features. What they are doing is purveying violence, prejudice and hate. These predominantly white heterosexual men use these forms of violence to attract attention to The Koala and then giggle at the fear and outrage, the humiliation and damage that it causes. And they elicit these reactions from their victims with such content as the following (with The Koala‘s errors intact):

Top Five Phrases Never Heard at CSUSM 4. I’ve never been raped before

Women secretly want to be raped

Why do Mexicans classify themselves as people? THEY ARE A FUCKING SWARM OF BROWN SHIT.

Dear koala, Does drugging and raping my roommate make me gay?

Top Ten Advantages To Dating An Underage Girl: 4. They don’t know yet that ass to mouth isn’t acceptable; 6. If you knock her teeth out, they grow back

Top Five Signs Your Girlfriend is Dead: 2. She stopped struggling under the rope

… [W]hen you’re done appeasing our each and every obnoxious and whimsical demand, we’re still gonna fuck the old broad sweeping the stairs.

I couldn’t tell if the fishy smell was escaping fromt the fridge or if all these beautiful azian women had some of the stankiest pussys ever

To black guys: make your cocks smaller please.

To all the fat bitches out there: Suck a fart out of my ass, choke on it and die.

Dilcie, go to the top of the parking structure and jump…

And, in the recent CSUSM issue, Liddle published an image of a female student leader who was running for Homecoming King, Photoshopped into a pornographic scene, with the following headline and copy:

Please ask and do tell … and take pictures

Remember those fantasies of Homecoming you had back in high school? Imagining what it would be like to have a “lezzed-out” homecoming court. Wishing that the Jock who won the title of King were actually an exotic and stunning babe that could scissor the shit out of the queen?

In our rapidly changing times this dream has now become a reality. Thanks to the courageous and open-minded women who are running to be the Queen of King [student’s name redacted], we can all look forward to a Royal Fisting. The question remains, which princess will become the lucky Queen?

This is the product Liddle publishes and promotes on public university campuses, a product funded by commercial advertisers — and supported as a sanctioned student organization at University of California San Diego (UCSD).

And this is, statistics being what they are, what the 1,500 female students at CSUSM, the 3,675 at UCSD, and the 4,350 at SDSU who have been, are, or will be victims of domestic violence are subjected to each time The Koala is distributed.

Outrageous, eh? Are you outraged enough to do something about it?

Many of us at CSUSM are, and we are planning some actions that will protect First Amendment rights while attempting to protect students, faculty and staff from The Koala’s hate.

If you’d like to join us, visit www.CallOutTheKoala.com and subscribe to receive our updates or click the Call Out The Koala Facebook page Like button.

In the meantime, call The Koala advertisers and encourage them to stop funding hate. If you live in the same legislative district as UCSD, call your state legislators and ask them to help UCSD find a way to stop lending public support to a hate tabloid passing as a student organization.

Whatever you do…

Do something. In the face of hatred, apathy will be interpreted as acceptance — by the perpetrators, the public and, worse, the victims. Decent people must take action; if we don’t, hate persists.

—   Southern Poverty Law Center

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at East County Magazine and  San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I vaguely recall the first time someone asked me what it means to be a feminist. I was still a kid, freshly baptized in the blaze of radical feminism. Or so it seemed, as our consciousness-raising group met in Anita’s living room. She was into her middle years, a professional woman returned to college, and the group was a school project. Its existence in our small town was a damn miracle for us and a disturbing mystery for the men, who didn’t understand why a gaggle of gals would get together for no better purpose than to talk — just talk — to each other! — what the hell? — and we weren’t too sure ourselves, at first, although their reactions were reason enough, and enlightenment shortly followed.

Ensconced in pastoral adornment — brocade throw pillows, hand-tatted antimacassars, ceramic tchotchkes — we spoke of goddesses and orgasms, of Shulamith Firestone and her Dialectic of Sex. We gasped and caressed the images of female genitalia in Our Bodies, Ourselves. We dreamt of Feminist Revolution amid fiery Redstockings. And we strode boldly forth to spread the good word of equality of the sexes.

That’s when one of the boys on the farm asked me about feminism (yes, there literally was a dairy farm, with a lot of eager boys on it). But the acrid sarcasm in his inflection neutralized the need for a serious response, along with his chances. Were it not for my oh-so proper upbringing — the gendered training that turns Southern females into well-coiffed boot scrapers and males, into manure-crusted boots — I’d have asked him what it means to be a teeny sexist turd.

Of course, I didn’t. As one of the elite white males who has claimed the exclusive U.S. leadership mantle said years later, “Wouldn’t be prudent”[1] — no matter that belittling my passions annoyed me. But, alas, back then I still clasped the remnants of ladylikeness as a virgin bride clutches the coverlet to her chin on her wedding night.

Hmmm, that image might be a tad sexist. Blame it on the South, the South and the more generic sublimation of female anger. We were not allowed to be angry; it would interfere with our being gracious, accommodating, acquiescent — boot scrapers.

But I changed — with the seasons, with the years, with the geography — and by the 1990s I took to slinging the Oxford English Dictionary definition of feminism at California’s political candidates, who proudly proclaimed their befuddled disaffection for the moniker by answering “No” to the question “Are you a feminist?” and “Yes” to the question “Do you support granting women the same rights as men?”

“Ahem, sir,” I’d say, “that is feminism.” And the hapless hucksters would stumble over their reassurances that they both advocated for women’s equality and abjured feminism.

Go figure.

Now, thirty-five years removed from my feminist birthing, I am asked yet again what it means to be a feminist, a feminist in an anti-feminist culture, a culture as far removed from the feminism of the 1960s and 70s as we were then from the suffragists of the previous century’s turning. But there is a difference. This time, the query is posed without sarcasm. It comes from a women’s studies professor, a smart woman with wild hair and more books than her institution deems seemly. She’s been plunked into a new office with shelves enough for half her books. When I saw this, I couldn’t help but imagine the architect wondering how many words women really need to pack into their pretty little heads. Idiot.

Do I seem angry? I’m not supposed to be. But after thirty-five years of surveilling our patriarchal system, I am.

Or no, I’m not angry. I’m thinking, thinking of that classic Southern aphorism — that horses sweat, gentlemen perspire and ladies glow. I recall telling Mother, once, that I was sweating like a stuck pig. I don’t recall that she laughed, but I hope she would laugh at my suggestion now — that ladies clench their sphincters and remain silent, women become understandably yet politely angry, and feminists get mad. Because I am mad. I am a mad feminist. And I get mad better than most. Because mad is a tool for change. Silent acquiescence and clenched sphincters, polite anger, they are not tools for change — not at the turn of the century, not in the 60s and 70s, and not today.

What does it mean to be a feminist today, a mad feminist? I think it means a lot of things, some I’m still learning.

But I do know it means seeing people roll their eyes at the mention of consciousness-raising groups, those silly little things that turned on our voices, that aroused our sexuality, that confirmed our personhood.

It means a persistent gendered wage gap that in 2009 paid women a median wage equating to about 80¢ to each $1.00 men earned.[2]

It means fuming as women’s bodies serve as capitalism’s primary tools, our breasts selling beer, our genitalia pitching the latest fashions, our undeveloped hands assembling the endless stream of consumer goods from Third World countries that keep the elite in power around the globe.

It means mourning the loss of Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s trailblazing path to the United State’s lackluster ranking of 70^th of 186 nations in the percentage of females in national legislatures[3] — behind such countries as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

It means gasping as young women succumb to the fallacy that fellatio is not sex and their bodies, themselves are not worthy of respect — their own or their partner’s.

It means flinching as nearly one in every four women in the United States reports experiencing violence at the hands of a current or former intimate partner.[4]

It means wailing as each of more than 500 women per day reports being raped or sexually assaulted.[5]

And still — still! — we blame them for their abuse. Perhaps this is why experts suggest the actual numbers for domestic violence, rape and sexual assault are double or triple what is reported — or more.

It means that the U.S. government has barely begun to collect comparable data for lesbians and bisexual and transgender women.

It means — all of this means — that we need to do something about it, something to declare that this is how it is and that how it is, is not right, is not sane, cannot continue.

And that means we need to be activists for equality all the time, everywhere we go, always insisting on having difficult conversations we might rather avoid, the kind we would have shied from before our do-it-yourself-home-inspection-speculum days, when it was easier to fake an orgasm than to talk about it, to explore what it would take to achieve it, to tell a partner to try this instead of that. It’s not that different from equality. Seriously. Female orgasms and equality require the recognition that they are absent when they shouldn’t be, the desire for them, and the commitment to talk about them for the purpose of obtaining them. Orgasms are just a lot easier.

Equality, equality is a toughy. Which brings me back to the question of what it means to be a feminist today. Although I’m still working on the answer, I’m certain it means I have to be mad. I’ll let you know what else I figure out. And then I’ll call Anita, to thank her.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag, The Progressive Post and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Of the many things I’ve learned since traipsing off with my book bag and lunchbox to return to full-time studenthood, none is quite as dismaying as the persistence of the rape culture that pervades U.S. media and, hence, the daily lives of media consumers.

Rape culture is so pervasive, it seems innocuous to many and is ignored by most, except some in academia and alternative news media — and, of course, those in rape and domestic violence programs. Oh, and in the psyches of the culture’s victims.

Rape culture was first named 35 years ago, when I fancied myself invincible and, hence, dismissed it. But rape culture has continued to provide succor to attitudes that condone rape and violence against women and girls (and, actually, any perceived minority), attitudes that promote the normalcy of rape and violence, that contrive humor from rape and violence, that all too often result in blaming women and girls for their rapes and the violence perpetrated against them.

If you think this particular cultural phenomenon is simply a figment of feminist imagination, take a gander at the article I found in The New York Times March 9 edition, while waiting for my Chemistry for Idiots class.

The article reports that 18 males have been charged in the rape of an 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, Tex. The suspects are 27 years old to middle-school age. Some of them apparently were so enamored of the alleged assault that they taped it and distributed the video, which ultimately led to the charges — and, one would think, makes them difficult to refute.

Yet The New York Times article, by James C. McKinley, Jr., with reporting by Mauricio Guerrero, poses the question: “If the allegations are proved, how could [the neighborhood’s] young men have been drawn into such an act?”

“Drawn” is an odd choice of words for the journalists to have used and for their editor to have approved. Odd, because the word suggests that the suspects did not make the decision to rape the 11-year-old girl, but, rather, were somehow compelled by an external force to rape her.

In essence, The New York Times has suggested that, even if any of the suspects are found guilty, they are not responsible for the 11-year-old girl’s rape.

If not the suspects, who then is responsible?

Well, the article goes on to report that “[r]esidents in the neighborhood … said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.”

The paper does not mention that the vast majority of television shows, advertisements and magazines targeting the victim’s age group — from Hannah Montana to Teen Vogue — encourage such behaviors, representing them as the norm.

Nonetheless, with this deft reporting of unattributed hearsay, the paper has provided the answer: The New York Times has implied it is the victim’s fault.

An 11-year-old girl, using the force of her appearance, her makeup and dress, her choice of companions, “drew” a gang of men and boys into raping her. That’s rape culture.

But it is unacceptable to blame a victim for her or his rape. Blaming the victim is never OK. Ever.

If you find this article dismaying, write to The New York Times ombudsman, Public Editor Arthur S. Brisbane, at public@nytimes.com and let him know. Although he found some fault in the article, he only went so far as to say that it “lacked a critical balancing element.”

In a similar but more insidious vein, I learned in a Women’s Studies class about Comedy Central’s attempt to capture the 16- to 35-year-old male audience by promoting the comedy of Daniel Tosh. Here are a couple excerpts for your edification:

Excerpt 1. My sister’s off the charts. I play practical jokes on her constantly, though. I got her so good a few weeks ago. I replaced her mustard spray with silly string. Anyway, that night she got raped. And she called me the next day going, ‘You son of a bitch. You got me so good.’

This riff was well into a Tosh routine, a point at which, if he had exposed his penis to pee on someone in the front row of his audience, plenty of people would have laughed. A skilled comedian can elicit a laugh from some folks at just about anything.

Including rape.

But there is nothing funny about rape. Rape is never funny. Ever.

Excerpt 2. ‘There’s no excuse for domestic violence.’ It sounds like a challenge. I mean does everything have to be so black and white in this Kindergarten country of ours? ‘There’s no excuse for domestic violence.’ What if you go home from a long day of work, and your wife has drowned two of your kids? She’s about to dunk the third one. Can you run over and pop her then? ‘Unfortunately no; there’s no excuse. You’re gonna have to let her drown that third one.’

Now, Comedy Central is home to such progressive comedy as John Stewart’s The Daily Show, and the juxtaposition of Tosh and Stewart is certainly a contrast — enough to cause whiplash.

But there is nothing funny about domestic violence. Domestic violence is never funny. Ever.

If you find Tosh’s humor dismaying, send Comedy Central President Michele Ganeless an email and let her know: michele.ganeless@mtvn.com or michele.ganeless@comedycentral.com. While you’re at it, copy Steve Albani, head of corporate communications, at steve.albani@comedycentral.com.

And if you find yourself sitting with someone who laughs at a joke about rape or violence against women and girls, consider telling him or her it’s not funny.

I find being an old student is mostly a blast, but watching young people accept hate as humor — hate that targets most of them — that is heartbreaking.

Love,
K-B

Note: The Associated Press has reported multiple instances of Cleveland residents’ clearly blaming the victim here and here.

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

Daniel Tosh image from comedycentral.com. Baby doll image by  needoll {away}/Natasha via a Creative Commons license.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Tornado Warning, a memoir by San Diego County author Elin Stebbins Waldal, will likely prove an effective catalyst for introducing an issue that rarely makes it into polite conversation: domestic violence, in particular teen dating violence.

For that reason alone, the book is a valuable tool for parents of adolescents on the verge of dating. In Tornado Warning, they will learn of Waldal’s gradual and secretive descent into a violent relationship at age 17, her survival, and her eventual campaign to share her experience so that it might help others.

Waldal tells her story in two voices that alternate throughout the book: the resurrected journal entries of a naïve teenage girl and the contemplations of a woman, wife and mother more than two decades later. The journal entries reflect the self-absorption of the teen years and the excruciating loss of a girl’s identity to the ravages of persistent intimate violence. Waldal captures both (maybe a little too much of the former), along with the shame and denial of the victim and the denial of her family members, who managed to be only peripherally aware of a problem, common in extended families that live with domestic violence.

Waldal’s contemporary reflections are written in sometimes lovely prose that reveals the long-lasting effects of abuse and her eventual struggles to use her experience to enlighten her children and others. She writes of the triggers that can return a former victim of violence to the desperate and fearful moments of her past. She writes of recovery, the creation of healthier relationships and, eventually, her need to acknowledge her past and transform it into something positive.

Tornado Warning was launched this month, coinciding with National Teen Dating Violence Prevention and Awareness Month, a national recognition in only its second year in the United States. The relatively new attention to the issue makes the book all the more valuable a resource, because “teen dating violence” has not yet entered the common lexicon. Waldal makes it clear in her memoir and on her website that she believes it should.

Tornado Warning exposes the individual realty of the national statistics of teen dating violence. According to the National Resource Center for Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, one in three female adolescents is a victim of physical, emotional or verbal abuse by a dating partner; females between ages 16 and 24 experience the highest rate of intimate partner violence, almost triple the national average; and violent behavior often begins between the ages of 12 and 18. (For more information, visit http://www.teendvmonth.org/.)

While Waldal’s book is likely to serve the important purpose she has set for it — to educate parents and, ultimately, help other girls and women — the memoir lacks some insight and, hence, the resulting explanation of the more complex dynamics that sustain a violent relationship and that bring it to an end.

There is little discussion of the forces affecting family and friends that stymies intervention by those who care for the victim and suspect — or even know — there is a problem, but do not act fully to protect her. And, most noticeably, Waldal’s description of her departure from the relationship seems vague, without clear understanding of what it took to reclaim her freedom and her life. Yet this is the crux of abusive relationships: why people remain in them and why they leave, when they are able to leave alive.

Tornado Warning is an important memoir, but an unresolved one. What it lacks suggests the author might still be seeking some understanding of her theme. Yet Waldal’s prose is tender and lyrical. Perhaps she will lend it to another effort to further enlighten those she hopes to help.

Note: Help is available at National Dating Abuse Helpline: 866-331-9474.

Crossposted at the North County Times.

Back in November, I wrote about returning to school, a woman of cumulative years in the throes of selecting a college major — along with thousands of teenagers.

It has now been two weeks since the spring semester started at Cal State University San Marcos, and, well, wow. Simply, wow. Dinner-table conversation has certainly been invigorated with the daily diary entries of a mad coed in her prime.

I am immersed in a university community unlike anything I experienced in what my new peers would consider the olden days. I’m awash in the contemporary jargon of academia that requires more memory capacity than I can muster; in students who looked askance when I first took a seat among them instead of heading to the front of the class; in professors who pronounce their charges “stupid clay” whom they must mold and professors who are as eager to teach as to learn from their students; in youthful fingers furiously texting under desks, while I rub my arthritic basal joints; in snippets of the fearful braggadocio of lingering adolescence.

My enculturation thus begun, I have already learned all sorts of great stuff — a trove of revelations.

I’ve learned that, despite having avoided deconstructing anything since my days of building and demolishing forts with the kids on my block, deconstruction is now an honored academic device; one, it turns out, I am bound to employ in order to make the grade.

I’ve learned that I am exhibiting an adjustment reaction to post-feminist spread: I fear my ovaries will be gradually crushed by young women who claim their rights but are discomfited by the second-wave feminism that won them, while my aging hips gradually exceed the breadth of those annoying study-top chair-desks.

I’ve learned that school is a hell of a lot more fun than it was when I thought I had to go to college. In those days of yore, professors were just extensions of parents hounding us to brush our teeth before bed. I wasn’t about to do anything any old fart told me to do, when I could traipse off to march for the Equal Rights Amendment or for social justice or for better French fries in the dining hall.

Excerpt, Koala at San Marcos, Winter 2011

And I’ve learned that some students wield their freedom of speech as a weapon, while disdaining the rights of others to speak freely. In contrast to the campus activists of my past, who exercised their right to free speech in order to publicly oppose racism, sexism and homophobia, a vocal minority at Cal State San Marcos (CSUSM), the staff of The Koala, exercise their free speech in order to publish racism, sexism and homophobia — along with rape and abuse scenarios and pedophilia — sheathed in the guise of  humor, or so they describe it.

Their retreat behind humor is reminiscent of my long-ago breakfast with racist Tom Metzger, founder of White Aryan Resistance (WAR), who proclaimed his WAR tabloid’s caricatures of lynched African Americans as humor.

Oh — and here’s a “wow!” — I’ve learned the Koalans do not like to be criticized. In fact, it makes them so uncomfortable that they attempt to intimidate their critics into silence — with obscenities, intended slurs, threats and deception. (They also remove their faces from Facebook pages and hope their parents don’t find out what it is they are actually doing at college.)

The Koala crew launched a wee bit of an online attack in response to my last column on the publication (profanity alert: avert your eyes oh faint of heart). They posted such descriptions of me as an “old wrinkely [sic] homosexual” who doesn’t belong at CSUSM and should depart posthaste, “a dumass,” “a complete retard” and “completly [sic] fucking retarded.” They implied I should be “scared [they] might do something to” my photo, “[l]ike… photoshop it and post it up in an upcoming issue? Too late…”

The folks who posted these comments used pseudonyms, other students’ names without their permission (surely a no-no!), and the paradoxical nickname “Balls,” which lent no credence to the commentary, given that Balls hadn’t the gonads to use his or her real name.

Speaking of which, while the university staff response has ranged from gracious and helpful to passionate and determined to scurrying into the rapid deployment of avoidance tactics, the administration’s response for the news media was unfortunate legal pabulum: “The Koala is not currently a registered student organization at CSUSM and expressed views are solely those of The Koala and its members. While The Koala falls under the first amendment’s freedom of speech, its content does not reflect the core values of CSUSM such as inclusiveness, diversity and respect.” Neither does Mary Had a Little Lamb, and I hope that’s not the best they can do.

Wouldn’t it be dandy if they were to broadcast a message to the university community that said something substantive? It would be even dandier if the administration would muster the chutzpah to, if not condemn the publication for what it is — hate speech, albeit legal — at least address the palpable fear the publication’s content elicits in some students, a fear likely prolonged by the administration’s prolonged silence.

Much more clear and direct than the administration’s response, were the reactions of the publication’s first issue advertisers, who were apparently hoodwinked by the publishers: They have both withdrawn their ads, and one of them wrote, “Cougar Book Rentals will not be advertising in the Koala newspaper in the future, due to the offensive nature of the content. We neither condone nor appreciate the content, nor did we have access to it in advance.”

Ah, the joys of a free market — and free speech — including the snippy little comments that came my way indicating that the loss of some advertisers has tweaked the Koalans a bit, revealing a possible vulnerability and their ignorance of the actual meaning of free speech. They wrote that by encouraging folks to contact the publication’s advertisers, I violated the Koalans’ free speech and “dictate[d] the thoughts of others.”

Alas, they are wrong: Were I able, I would “dictate” some common sense into the Koalans’ predominantly young white male thoughts, but I can’t — and their older editor-in-chief just might be a lost cause, given the years he’s devoted to the various Koalas.

What I will do is continue to pursue their advertisers, because I learned long before arriving at CSUSM that passive avoidance of overt hate is often the death knell of freedom. In this case, the rights of the students targeted by The Koala’s content are at risk: Their right to free speech and to a public education free from discrimination, harassment and retaliation are at risk of being lost to fear and bullying.

Thankfully, I’m too old to succumb to that idiocy. Besides, I’m having too much fun.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at The Progressive Post and  San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

UPDATE: The Koala CSUSM editor-in-chief is not a CSUSM student. See more of the faces of The Koala below.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

The Koala, a tabloid launched last week by some California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) students, has achieved its publishers’ apparent goal: to inflame the university community with hate speech.

“Apparent” because, while The Koala has certainly engendered impassioned responses, the predominantly white males behind the publication have refused to discuss what it is they have wrought — or to identify themselves. At a recent recruitment meeting, they would not give their names and avoided being photographed; they moved the meeting to a private dorm room to exclude critics and news media; and they demanded 30-packs of beer from journalists who requested interviews, which, given their likely ages, smacks of soliciting criminal acts — and challenges their legitimacy as a newspaper, as they describe The Koala.

It is The Koala’s content (downloadable at csusmkoala.com) that most effectively challenges the newspaper claim. Just about every demographic — except straight, white males — is addressed with violent, prurient and/or grotesque language: gays and lesbians, women, rape and pedophilia victims, pediatric cancer and burn patients, African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Muslims. The Koala is a miasma of isms.

The Koala recommends used bikini wax as “lip balm for lesbos,” suggests leaving c-section incisions “open for easier future abortions,” and reports that one advantage of dating a 10-year-old girl is “If you knock her teeth out, they grow back.” It includes statements that glorify and encourage pedophilia, rape of a teaching assistant, domestic violence, date rape and physically assaulting campus police.

Anecdotally, the “reasonable person” test of The Koala’s content suggests that many CSUSM students and staff indeed find much of the content obscene — obscene and hateful. But obscenity remains in the eye of the beholder, and in the United States we can speak freely whether our speech is hateful, loving or indifferent.

More interesting are the test results of The Koala’s two advertisers, cougarbookrentals.com and Miramar Wellness Center — “interesting” because it takes funding to publish any speech.

The textbook-rental service is, according to bookrenter.com Vice President of Marketing Michael Geller (at 650-288-3500), an independent bookstore using bookrenter.com’s open platform, an “entrepreneur” who can “choose to market it any way they want.”

Nonetheless, when read content from The Koala, Geller’s response was, “Oh! Oh god! Okay, that’s enough!” An articulate man — and pragmatic — he disavowed any responsibility for cougarbookrental’s ad and declared that bookrenter.com “would never, ever, ever” advertise in The Koala. He also said, “I’m going to contact the owner of [csusmbookrentals.com] and first make sure he or she is aware of what this is all about.” Then the company will “evaluate whether or not we should attempt to restrict our store partners’ advertising.” Whether or not? Hmmm.

The Miramar Wellness Center (at 858-689-9098), a marijuana dispensary, had a slightly more definitive response. An employee who did not identify herself said the Wellness Center had received “a lot of upset calls, a whole lot” and that the manager would not take any more, but she added, “I heard [the ad] was a mistake and they are trying to get it removed.”

That’s promising, but, in the meantime, what to do about the privileged young men who publish hate with anonymity?

Read The Koala so you can make informed comments about it (available at csusmkoala.com). Although the thing is no joy, condemning something you haven’t read is shallow commentary. And ignorance is not bliss.

Contact The Koala’s advertisers to reinforce the message that their ad dollars are supporting content that encourages pedophilia, racism, misogyny, rape and domestic violence. If a second issue comes out, contact any new advertisers. Eventually The Koala publishers will run out of businesses they can dupe into supporting them, if they haven’t already. Any advertisers left deserve to be boycotted.

State your opinion of The Koala freely and frequently. The right to free speech goes both ways: They have the right to speak and you have the right to criticize what they say — maybe even the responsibility. Hate that goes unchallenged goes on and on and on.

Call or email CSUSM President Karen Haynes’ office (760-750-4040 or pres@csusm.edu) to ask what the administration can do about the content that promotes rape and pedophilia; how they can protect students under age 18 from The Koala’s obscene content; and what they can do about students who appear to be below the drinking age soliciting alcohol on campus.

Identify, if you can, the fellows involved with The Koala, in the photos below. They are accountable for the speech they publish. No one — white, male student or anyone else — has the privilege of anonymous hate masquerading as “lighthearted humor.” If they can say it, they can own it for all the world to see.

Then, find some peace in this thought: What goes on the Internet stays on the Internet, and one day in the next few years The Koala’s publishers will be looking for jobs in competitive marketplaces where respect for diversity, social maturity and the ability to self-edit will be deciding factors for employment. These young men have already round-filed their job applications by exercising a most wonderful right irresponsibly.

Free speech is a messy, exquisite, ugly, glorious and precious free-for-all; comeuppance is delicious.

Love,
K-B

The Koala staff: George Liddle, editor-in-chief of The Koala at CSUSM and a former editor-in-chief of The Koala at UCSD (circa 2002 — probably not a CSUSM student, eh?); and CSUSM students identified to date Aaron Jaffe, Scott Middough, Blake MacKenzie, a Jeff W. and…

Anyone know the other two fellows?

Read more about this topic: The Cowardice of Hate.

Crossposted at the OB Rag and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

There is nothing like a midterm election to reveal our putrid political underbelly. It is a dark, stinky place where paranoia, distrust, disaffection and outright deceit are reduced to hatred in a cauldron fired by fear and boiling over in a miasmic wave of bigotry.

Gross, eh?

Throw in a recession and all its attendant terrors, and what do you get?

“Double, double toil and trouble” from a bunch of — well, to be kind, let’s call them “witches,” and they are dishing misogyny, homophobia, racism, Islamaphobia and your everyday fear mongering, while they await the party that would be king.

And the lowly peasants, what do we do? Do we stand idly by, lackadaisically poking pitchforks at those we’ve been told are monsters? Pretty much, a lot of us do, but let’s take a closer look.

Pick your favorite monster and respond.

Strong women in the political arena? What would you do?

1. Call her a whore for snagging a coveted endorsement.
2. Call her a whore for simply serving in public office with chestal hangings.
3. Push her to the ground and stomp on her head, then demand her apology.
4. Take a swing at her.
5. Admit you’re a misogynistic troglodyte and stay home until you’ve read the entire Domestic Violence Awareness Project website.

Homosexuals claiming equal rights? What would you do?

1. Resort to the abomination theory.
2. Promote the disenchanted gay voting bloc theory, that slow progress will keep gays from the polls, thereby undermining further progress, à la Sharron Angle (see below).
3. Tell straight-and-narrow folks homophobia is A-OK — because Brian Brown says so.
4. Post a Facebook rant, encouraging gay suicides.
5. Admit your sins, beg forgiveness, then lighten up and have a gay old time.

Brown immigrants turning your day gray? What would you do?

1. Run an ad à la Sharron Angle that attempts to disenfranchise Latino voters by discouraging them from voting.
2. Run ads filled with threatening Latino faces and claim they aren’t racist.
3. Tell Latino high school students that you can’t distinguish Latinos, because some of them actually look Asian.
4. Declare undocumented immigrants are rapists.
5. Admit you’re a bigot and stay out of politics.

Deluded into believing all Muslims are terrorists? What would you do?

1. Redefine “Arab” as a slur and sling it at a campaign opponent.
2. Redefine “Muslim” as a slur and sling it at a campaign opponent.
3. Spread your irrational fear by announcing that every time you see someone in Muslim garb it gives you the creepers, even though you know it shouldn’t.
4. Tell your supporters Sharia (Islamic religious law) is creeping into U.S. cities.
5. Remember Timothy McVeigh, read some Tea Party Patriots comments, and admit to the enemy within.

So, how’d you do?

There are, of course, no right answers. But, then, what is the answer?

What do you suppose it is that renders such behaviors acceptable in our political discourse? It’s dismaying to think that our economic woes, September 11, and all the other crises we’ve borne in the last few decades might have turned us into a nation of loathsome, Bubbafied bigots. Have we transformed the welcoming arms of Liberty into xenophobic fists? Home of the brave to home of the bully? Land of the free to land of the terrified? Are our huddled masses yearning to take out their miseries on the lesser fellow?

A friend signed off a recent email with, “Hate fills the air. Best regards–,” and I wonder: Which candidates are best equipped to fill the air with love?

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the OB Rag.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

She sent me a link to the pictures, blithely posted on Facebook. Her closed eye was engorged to the size and tone of a plum, a large, ripe plum big enough to stifle — oh, I don’t know, Rush Limbaugh, perhaps. Surely big enough to indicate serious damage and pain. Indeed, big enough to pucker my motherly derriere up to my earlobes and launch me from Fallbrook to the University of California Santa Cruz, where my precious, bloodied child needed me.

And then she stood before me, teary-eyed, swollen and bruised, waiting for me to fix it.

But what could I do?

Well, try not to cry, for starters. Pull her to the comfort of my maternal bosom. Hold her and tell her it’ll be okay.

“But, when?” she implored. “And what if my eyebrow doesn’t grow back? I hate my life.”

So much for my comforting bosom.

At least we could both take comfort that it was not an abusive fist that battered my kid, but an unkempt road, a road harboring over-sized, bicycle wheel-grabbing gaps between old train tracks and lumpy asphalt.

It’s a road that deserves a good jackhammering, but it’s too low on the Santa Cruz totem pole compared to the need to invest in social awareness campaigns; for instance, the Domestic Violence Awareness Month banners I noticed driving into town. Those puppies were well hoisted, while the dastardly train tracks dumped a near-death experience on my baby.

Well, okay, I exaggerate. And, truth be told, I like the banners. In fact, I love the banners. I pointed them out to my daughter on the way to pick up copious amounts of feel-good food. I asked her if anyone had tried to rescue her from an abusive partner, a black eye being such a common red flag for domestic violence — you know, the old “I walked into the closet door” alert.

But nope. In this enlightened town of progressive academics, gracefully aging hippies, medical marijuana peddlers, tree-loving hemp wearers, locally roasted and cold-brewed coffee vendors, devoted political activists and banana slugs,* no one checked to make sure she wasn’t a victim of abuse. Not a professor, not one feminist studies student, not a single concerned and domestic violence-aware person.

So much for the banners.

Oh, she did get plenty of stares — from students, from kids in the grocery store checkout line, from the equally battered and downtrodden homeless on Pacific Avenue — and her adorable Latin professor kindly asked if she were okay.

But no one uttered the most important words, the most hopeful words, the words that can mean the difference between life and death for a battered woman: Did somebody hit you? Because if somebody hit you, it’s not okay. You don’t deserve it. It’s not your fault. It’s a crime. If somebody hit you, let me help you.

These are the words of someone who is truly aware of domestic violence. They were spoken to me one hot summer’s night in a hospital emergency room. They saved my life — and allowed me to eventually have my daughter.

I like these words. In fact, I love these words. I suppose they’d make a lousy patch for the crummy road, but I wonder if maybe they’d make a good banner.

For more information:

If you want to help, use those words whenever you find yourself wondering, and visit your local domestic violence prevention agency or the Family Violence Prevention Fund.

If you are a victim of violence, leave your abuser, go to your local shelter, visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline website or call 800-799-SAFE (7233). Save yourself, Sweetie.

Love,
K-B 760-522-1064 — call me, because being hit once is indeed domestic violence

*The banana slug is the UCSC mascot. No kidding.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Note: This piece is cross-posted at the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

(Photo from the Santa Cruz City Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women.)

A Story by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Through heavy brown air, the sun is hot enough to stew the tar, bubbling from a terminally neglected street. Mingled with impotent wafts of twice-smoked cigarettes and desiccated human excrement, the sizzling urban exhaust sticks in my throat, leaving me gasping for breath. So I pause, as usual, to yearn for the cool mist that hovers just above the waterfalls in the torn cigarette poster taped to the back of the cash register.

Here, each morning, the besotted buy their 99-proof and I, in my tidy little pumps and ambitious suit, buy my unbranded bottle of water. But the falls are only paper, and the stagnant stench of the city invariably jerks my violated senses back to rank reality and the daily rhythm.

“Hola, chica. Seventy-nine cents. ¿Hace calor, eh?”

“Si, Señor, really hot. Muchas gracias. Bye-bye.”

“De nada, Señorita. Hasta mañana.”

Still, the street offers an odd and occasional respite from the snot-green walls of the snake pit I call work, one of the many private hostelries crafted decades ago by Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial cost-cutting and civil rights for the tormented gone awry.

Inside, the howls of the chronically terrified and forgotten echo through the veins of sixty-seven clients, ages twenty-two to a shrunken unknown. Their shrieks bounce off the frames of denuded sofas and urine-sopped cushions littering the hallways. Their fears bind them to horrid things others cannot see. And their lucidity, resurrected with decreasing frequency, is inevitably felled by the ferocious thwacks life deals them.

Once a month, they are lined up for their hallucinations to bounce off the chill steel wall of the visiting Medi-Cal shrink. Their torments dribble into puddles of quivering pleas for help on the institutional-linoleum floor, while he preens over his designer prescription pad and coffee.

Today, the good doctor is too busy flirting with his new answering service operator to approve hospitalizing the suicidal Chinese empress for a medication adjustment. The teeth marks with which she has tattooed her arms are not enough to get his attention; neither are the razor blades we’ve indelicately manhandled from her. Not even my suggestion that he stick his Moroccan leather pad someplace scatological elicits anything more than a snickering invitation to join him for an adult beverage after work and help him perform that enticing activity.

So I take an angry hike for the great outdoors to vent my self-righteous rage.

With my tasteful pumps, I stomp over the bodies of addicts, stoned near to death by failed choices. I storm around the cardboard condominiums filled with humans as hungry and parasite-wracked as their dogs. I fling myself away from it all into a futile rant.

Halfway around the decomposing block I’m stopped by a sweaty, unwashed kid with a knife.

“Whaddaya got, lady?” he snarls, oblivious to my good intentions, my hopeful aspirations.

Confronted by this little shit blocking my path and threatening me with a sharp object, I wish for a split second that I have a gun.

Now, it isn’t as though I would propel society’s paranoia into the chest of a beloved security guard at a museum intent on just saying no to hate. It is nowhere near the realm of the playful five year old who crashes her own birthday party with the disregard of her grandfather’s unsecured .22. And it’s a far cry from the family whose domesticity is discharged with abusive daddy’s death by gunshot.

Nonetheless, if I had a gun, I would aim it right at the kid’s pubescent face, the pimple on his nose for a target. I would pump him full of seething rage at a system that rejects the humanity of the recipients of its stingy offerings. In the stormy flush of utter frustration, I’d splatter his youthful flesh across a cityscape that would simply add his shredded carrion to its endless pit of stinking detritus. I would blow away that scrawny sack of symptoms of poverty, inequity and corruption. Yes, I would do to him what the psycho Med-Cal prick does to my clients.

If I had a gun.

But I don’t.

And I am too busy picking at my fiery ire to respond to the boy’s unseemly overture with appropriate fear. Instead, I hiss at him through gnashing teeth to get the hell out of my way or I’ll hurt him — fuck him up, in fact.

“OK, lady, OK, lady,” he backs away, pocketing his weapon.

I watch him retreat.

Distracted by a neglected adolescent with a rusty, broken steak knife, I head back toward the mayhem of a system that has abandoned its victims to hell, and I wonder, “Hmm, who in her right mind would wear pumps on this street?”

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by John Anderson via a Creative Commons License.)