In
terms of this particular controversy, I am sure there are plenty of men
in the blogosphere, and the Internet more generally, who would be
horrified over the actions Skirt! took and the means its
representatives employed. And there are also certainly women who would
think I am making a mountain out of a molehill and enough already with
the feminist mommy stuff (though I suspect they don't read this blog).
In more general terms, it is because I feel so strongly that it is important to resist gender
stereotypes that I chose "The Man" as a useful phrase to indicate a
subset of the human species, the subset that believes deeply in
hierarchies of power based on money and ruthlessness and the silencing
of dissenting opinion -- a subset, I might add, that is not exclusively
populated by males. Historically, resisting "The Man" (with capital
letters, like a title) has not meant belittling all men, but rather
resisting people who exploit positions of power...people who have
traditionally been male, as masculinity was long a prerequisite for
socio-political power in this country.
That is changing. Slowly.
But I still think that there are a lot of ways in which the authority
to speak, the right to assert the value of one's labor, the right to
make choices about how publicly (or not) to live one's life are not
granted fully equally to women. The recent ubiquitous discussions about
whether or not mommy blogging is exploiting children is just one
example. In everything from a scathing set of commentary on a
not-so-nice article in Canada's Globe and Mail,
to a somewhat snarky interview with Dooce on the Today Show, to a whole
series of high- and low-profile blog responses to the accusations that
women who blog are pimping their children to make a buck, the Internet
has been ablaze lately with conversations about whether women have the
moral right to write about their children online. I could write reams
on this issue, but I will restrain myself to the following observations:
*
When autobiographies first gained real popularity in the Victorian
period, there was tremendous controversy over whether it was
un-gentlemanly (women, of course, would not have dared enter such an
indiscreet public forum as to "tell all" about their private lives) to
reveal one's personal life in public. Male autobiographers resolved
this issue by focusing largely on their career and personal
development, and leaving domestic life out of the picture.
*
When women started publishing autobiographies later in the 19th
century, they tended to focus either exclusively on their domestic
lives (as appropriate subject matter for women) or solely on their
professional lives (if they were someone like Florence Nightingale,
say), so that there was no untoward intermixing of personal and public
personae.
* Although it's been 150 years or so since then, there
is apparently still a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of many
people's stomachs when they consider that one's personal life and one's
professional life might, in fact, overlap.
Blogging is new
terrain. Making money from blogging, even newer. It is normal, I think,
for people to question and challenge what is new, normal to resent
those who took the risk first and saw a big payoff, normal to rethink
things that might have been done without due consideration for the
consequences. But I feel that there is a certain level of vitriol that
is sometimes aimed at women and that men in similar circumstances do
not always suffer. Not a critical soul I've encountered,
in this controversy I've followed, has mentioned Daddy Bloggers. And
while they are certainly a much smaller number, there are plenty of
them whose sites contain kid photos and potty training stories -- and who run ads and make a buck in the process.
Dads who blog seem to get props for being involved in their kids lives
("look at that awesome story about a dad-and-me activity!") while moms
who blog are being slammed all over the Internet for being exploitive
when they should just be spending time with their kids already.
I'm
not saying everyone slams moms who blog. I'm certainly not saying all
the critics of those moms are male (a giant proportion of them are
women, in fact). I'm not saying I don't like Dad blogs. (In fact, shout
out to Jim at BusyDad and Jeremy at Discovering Dad for being awesome dad bloggers!) What I am saying
is that it is still all too common to take women to task for putting
themselves in a public spotlight or for not being "appropriately"
domestic (where appropriate = some impossible June Cleaver ideal,
which, by the way, was staged in a TV studio).
While
there are certainly many issues to weigh and many things to consider
carefully before choosing to post pictures and potty training stories
of one's child online, lumping all mothers who blog into the category
of "exploitative women who care more about buying new shoes than about
their own offspring" is as irresponsible and ridiculous as it would be
of me to say "all men wish Sk*rt would just go away and are annoyed
that the rebranding as Kirtsy might make those uppity women even more
successful."
And so, to get back to Sk*rt vs. Skirt!, I think it
is still common for women to get the short end of the stick when it
comes to power and litigation and rudeness. That doesn't mean all men
are rude power-mongers, or even that all rude power-mongers are men.
But it does mean that The Man is a thing (not a person) worth resisting
-- whether you yourself are male or female.
I am not sorry for choosing that phrase which, even on carefully rereading my previous post,
I think works in that context to describe accurately what was
happening. (And, by the way, this was a series of events spearheaded by
a magazine started by some women, who in this particular instance
happen to be acting like The Man.) But I am deeply sorry if I caused
offense.
And I hope if you've gotten to the end of these
gazillion words, you understand that my definition of my own feminism
is that I try to instill in my children, and to respond to the world
around me, as if gender is not a fixed construct but a flexible one. As
if our own masculinity and femininity are things we must work
constantly to shape and define. As if we must embrace what feels right
and true for our own gendered selves, and resist what feels imposed
upon us by someone else's standards that--much like someone else's
shoes--just do not fit us. Or, in terms that my Son might understand:
Girls can be pirate captains, and some boys do like pink. And all of them should be smiled upon for making those choices for themselves.
I was eight. I was at a slumber party with my little sister. I'm not sure now why I had been invited, and I do recall being a little mystified even then, as it was a birthday party for my sister's friend, and I didn't really know any other kids there. Something like 6 or 7 little girls around age six were sleeping over, and I felt a little like the den mother as everyone put out sleeping bags, giggled, stretched, laughed, and slowly one by one, dropped off to sleep.
One little girl remained wide awake. Her sleeping bag was close to mine. When the grandfather clock in the hall started its musical chiming of the hour, once everything else had finally quieted down (I have no idea the time; it was very dark by then), she started to cry.
I don't recall her face. Somehow I have the idea that she had shiny dark straight hair, but I don't know why I think that. I remember that she was all shivery, like she was nervous. I remember that I felt so much bigger than she. Not older, necessarily. But I was very tall for my age, and she seemed extremely small and fragile.
I tried to talk to her, figure out why she was crying, but she couldn't, or wouldn't tell me. When the clock stopping its bong - bong - bong she slowly calmed down. Her sobs quieted. She scootched her sleeping bag a little closer to me. The minutes ticked slowly passed.
Out of the darkness came her whisper. Thin. High. A question I have never forgotten. "Have you ever been finger f*cked?"
I had no idea what she was talking about. But it sounded filthy and unpleasant the way she said it. I felt like someone had sucked my breath out of me. I didn't know how to respond. So I merely whispered back, "No."
"I have," she said. "My big brother...his friend..." I cannot recall the verb she used. Whether she said he "showed" her or "did it to" her or "explained it to" her or what. I cannot remember whether she said anything about her brother knowing, or offering her up to his friend, or being completely ignorant. I do not know how old the friend was. Or if "friend" was simply a euphemism for "my big brother." I do not know if whoever this nameless boy was did other things to her too. I will never know these things.
What I do know now, what haunts me to this day although this happened nearly thirty years ago, is that something awful, traumatic, sexually explicitly horrible happened to this little girl one night while a clock was striking somewhere in the background.
And every quarter-hour, all night long at that birthday slumber party, she would start to shiver and shake as that god-forsaken grandfather clock would wind itself up to chime. And by the time the chiming was over, she was a gibbering mess -- sometimes crying, sometimes just staring and shaking.
She was terrified of the clock. I had to do something to make it stop. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I taught her a prayer. And every fifteen minutes, until the grey light of dawn starting coming through the windows, I murmured that prayer with her over and over and over again as the clock started its ominous trek towards bong - bong - bong, so that our voices would cover up the sound as much as possible. I held her hand, and I put my head next to hers on the pillow, and I talked her through that whole night. Somewhere near daybreak, as the room was getting lighter and my eyelids were feeling like lead, she finally fell asleep.
I feel sick to my stomach as I write this. My hands are shaking. And the horrible guilt I have felt about this incident since I reached adulthood, since I have been old enough to know what her traumatized reactions certainly meant, eats at me again. I never told anyone. I should have told someone. I agonize still over that little girl, wondering what ever happened to her, whether she got real help, whether she became an even bigger victim. I don't know her name -- I'd never met her before that night, and I never saw her again after that. She has disappeared into time, and I will never know.
In retrospect, I see that she was telling me because I was "older" and seemed safe, and because I happened still to be awake. I also of course realize that if I had no clear idea what she was experiencing, then there was no way for me at that age to know how dire it was that I tell someone what she had told me. It is only in retrospect that I feel that it was my obligation, as the receiver of this information, not just to help her get through that night but to help her get to some much bigger help. But that retrospective guilt exists, I am sure, because although I could not articulate it at the age of eight, I KNEW. I knew there was something enormously wrong. I knew this was not a garden-variety nightmare. I knew this child was terrified. I could feel her trauma. I could sense her deep need for someone to listen to her and help her cope.
Yet because I did not know what name to give what was wrong, I said nothing at all. It would have seemed absurd to come home from a party on a sunny morning and explain that so-and-so had lain awake all night because she was afraid of the clock. Absurd not because one couldn't actually be afraid of a clock but because I somehow knew that her terror over the clock wasn't really about the clock. But it is only adult me who can so clearly see how her terror was tied to the question that made my mouth feel all dry and foreign and dirty. Child me set aside that brief conversation in the crisis of trying to help her stop panicking over the clock.
And so I feel complicit in her abuse through my silence. I failed her.
I do not write this so that you will reply in the comments that it was not my fault. I know I did what I was capable of at the time. I deeply regret, and will all my life, that I was not capable of more. That I did not know WHOM to tell. Or HOW. But I realize that an eight-year-old could not reasonably have been expected to resolve this situation.
I write this, instead, because I think it is so incredibly important to trust the instincts of children. To listen carefully to those short, broken sentences squeaked out in a moment of trust. To take seriously, so very seriously, any comments a child makes that might have deeper implications of abuse.
April is National Child Awareness Month, and in light of that, I think it is a good time to stop and think carefully about how we listen to our children. About what it would mean if one of them came home from a party one day with an offhand comment about how "Louis has lots of bruises all the time that he doesn't want people to see." I think I am sharply attuned, because of that night so long ago, to what might be telltale signs. I like to think that if I were to hear something suspicious, I would know how to follow up discretely and carefully, how not to jump to conclusions, but also how not to maintain a fatal silence.
But I wonder: how will I teach my children this? I want to be very careful about what I do and don't tell them, very deliberate about instilling appropriate caution without fostering unreasonable fear. But I also want them to know that if a friend tells them something about how someone is hurting them, it's not just okay to tell me. It's imperative. That doing so is not a breach of trust. That even if it's not completely clear what is happening, it is important to let a grown-up know that "so-and-so is very sad" or "gets sick every day after lunch" or "has bruises" because a grown-up will know how to intervene.
At what age do you start having conversations like this with your children? When do you begin to teach them about inappropriate touching or how to say "NO!" to an adult or how to speak up about a "secret"? How do you talk about this in ways that don't just scare the bejeepers out of them? Because my inclination, like that of most parents, I would bet, is to think, "of course, my child is too young for those conversations."
And then I think of the six-year-old who could not stand to listen to a grandfather clock chime. And I do not know what I will say when the time comes to try to help my children know that they should always tell me not just about what happens to them but about what their friends confide.
Do you know what to say? Have you already said it? Any wisdom you have about how to negotiate this minefield would be deeply appreciated. Because on this particular issue, silence can only lead to more pain.
To comment at the original location of this post, on my blog, follow this link: The Most Difficult Discussion You Never Want to Have
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