Tag: rape

Can You Relate top ten

We launched this blog in 2010 and love the conversations it has sparked. Many thanks to all of our followers! We’re going to continue talking about violence and relationships—just moving the conversation to our website and social media channels. Come see what we’re up to at wscadv.org!

Before you go, check out our top ten posts from the past eight years:

  1. Rape prevention tips
  2. Grinding at the homecoming dance
  3. Everybody needs a little knipple
  4. Boys will be boys?
  5. If no isn’t an option, yes has no meaning
  6. Are domestic violence victims codependent?
  7. You may be trying to comfort yourself
  8. Love Like This
  9. What ever happened to human compassion?
  10. We’re here

Stuck

I got stuck in the elevator last week.

stuck in elevatorI got in, pressed 7 and rode up. The doors opened, maybe 4-5 inches, slammed shut, then everything froze.  I pressed every button on the panel, including the alarm. Nothing.

I’ve never been stuck in an elevator before. I know a lot of people say this is their worst nightmare but for me it really wasn’t that bad. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely experienced a little adrenaline rush. I was all by myself so I gave the door one last pound with my fist, sat down on the floor, looked around and thought “Wow, I’m stuck in an elevator.” It really does wake a person up.

(Spoiler alert, I got out.)

All week, I’ve been enjoying the quirkiness of the experience and playing with it. I’ve  been watching various things unfold from that wide-awake stuck-in-an elevator point of view. Like, I’ve been thinking about our national healthcare debacle, the mistrial of Bill Cosby, the happenings at my beloved alma mater The Evergreen State College; all of these as embodiments of the cosmic elevator in which our entire nation seems to be stuck.

How are we ever going to get out?

Today I’m thinking it has to be about everyday conversations where we learn to navigate the world with more finesse and not so much stuck-ness.

Let me give you an example. Yesterday, I watched two people end a heated debate with “let’s just agree to disagree.” Ever said that? Or had it said to you? That expression means so many captive things, including:

  1. My eyes are seeing that your mouth is moving and sound is coming out. But I am too busy in my mind thinking about how to represent and defend my point of view. When I see your mouth stop moving, I’ll tell you all about it.
  2. I am the one with power here (said both parties) and when this godforsaken conversation is over and we agree to disagree, each of us will return to our corners and shore up our power where we have it.
  3. You’re wrong.

Allow me to indulge you in a story someone told me once about “you’re wrong.”

There was a monastery in Thailand where people from the U.S. occasionally went to join the Buddhist monks to study and meditate. A woman traveled there and for several months practiced rigorously, Returning to the U.S., she found herself attracted to an evangelical church and eventually pledged herself to Christ. She vowed to return to Thailand to convert the monks. Her return to the monastery was greeted with great warmth. But as the days went on, they became increasingly confused and then annoyed by her preaching to them as they tried to study. Finally the monks went to the abbot to seek his wisdom about what to do. The abbot listened intently to their account of events, considered for a time, looked at his wide-eyed followers, shrugged and said “She could be right.”

Which is just to say, “agreeing to disagree” is to be loyal to a story that may be right. It may be wrong. Who knows?

Or may not even be the only possibility. What if there were a third, fourth, or  fifth story; one we can’t even imagine because we get too stuck on the only one we know?

Or maybe all the possibilities are not mutually exclusive? What if two things that appear to be at odds, are actually not and can both be true at the same time?

What would happen if we flipped the script and committed to “Let’s agree to work to agree”? Getting unstuck. There are solutions to every problem we have created for ourselves.

Including getting out of an elevator. Half an hour after I rang the alarm, two guys from the Olympia Fire Department pried open the doors and let me out. Ultimately, I’m left with only one question. Is it possible to be stuck in an elevator and be both annoyed and dazzled at the same time?

News you can relate to

Some stories that caught our eye this week:

I had a miscarriage. Fetal burial rules would only amplify my grief. “My son would be turning 20 this month. He was due on December 15, 1996. But in June of 1996, when I was entering the second week of my second trimester, I had a miscarriage — in medical terms, a spontaneous abortion — while preparing to deliver a paper at a prestigious women’s history conference a thousand miles from home.”

The Progress and Pitfalls of Television’s Treatment of Rape “Sexual assault is a human experience. It happens to men, children, elderly women, and it’s all traumatic. So why do screenwriters almost exclusively reserve rape for sexually attractive young women on screen?”

How white supremacist hatred drives acts of violence against powerful women “In the U.S., girls and women are twice as likely to die in school shootings as boys or men. During the past 30 years, 97 percent of the school shooters in the U.S. have been male, with 79 percent of them white. That the media has failed to attach relevance to these clear facts is “identity politics” that few people even notice.”

Flying While Fat presents the voices of fat passengers as they talk about the hatred and stress they encounter upon boarding.

News you can relate to

Some stories that caught our eye this week:

Is My Job Forcing Me To Tell A Happy Story About Rape? “…The pressure comes from our sound-bite society. Domestic violence is complicated, and we often have to make it less complicated if we want to get people interested in our work.”

‘Going Flat’ After Breast Cancer “In promoting the surgery, doctors cite studies that suggest breast reconstruction improves a woman’s quality of life after cancer. But some women say that doctors focus too much on physical appearance, and not enough on the toll prolonged reconstructive procedures take on their bodies and their psyches.”

This Anti–Lean In Pioneer Is Teaching Men How to Behave in the Workplace “I am teaching men to actively work to end patriarchy,” she says. “The point is to eliminate privilege and my approach is, hey, you believe that this is the right thing to do.”

News you can relate to

Some stories that caught our eye this week:

Abortion Is Health Care, So Why Aren’t Crowdfunding Sites Treating It as Such? By naming abortion access as “divisive,” YouCaring offered a flippant dismissal of those in need of important and imperative health care. And to be clear, abortion is health care.

How We Tell Campus Rape Stories After Rolling Stone Reporters must resist looking for a particular kind of story or a particular kind of victim. This is, perhaps, part of the problem with what happened at Rolling Stone. In the very first paragraph of the CJR report, the authors of the report write that Erdely found Jackie when she was “searching for a single, emblematic college rape case.”

The Link Between Oil Pipelines and Sexual Assault Survivor-led art and activism group FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture put together this infographic showing how the construction of oil pipelines—like the one proposed near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation—could contribute to an increased risk of sexual assault for Native women.

sexualassaultonthepipeline

 

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