why men are responsible for rape culture, and why it doesn't mean what you think it means.

A few weeks ago, I was part of a discussion regarding rape culture and the responsibilities of all men where rape culture is concerned. Or, more precisely, the fact that all men are responsible for rape culture.

[record screech-stop]

Wait, what?

Yes. All.

You, gentleman, reading this? You are responsible for rape culture, and the way it functions in larger culture, and the direction it travels. 

And not only that: you are more responsible for it, and more powerful within its contexts, than I am. 

While you're chewing on that (or wanting to chew on me for saying it), can I just say things? 

Chances are, if you're reading this, you're my friend, or someone I consider wonderful, or, at least, someone I don't consider a total jackhole. This is probably the only thing I'm ever going to write or say about this, because man, does it bring out the ugly in people. Myself included. It's touchy. No guy in my life wants to be associated with rapists; no woman in my life, whether she's been catcalled on the street or physically assaulted, enjoys talking about it, especially with men who are immediately offended by a big-picture misinterpretation of many key focus-ins, and especially when men feel comfortable schooling women on the takeaways of their own experiences. [For the purposes of this writing, I'm primarily addressing male-on-female rape, although men are certainly victimized and women are perpetrators as well, in fewer numbers.]

I think, in this kind of discussion, there are two key focus-ins. 

1) It is important for men who reject rape culture as wrong to accept responsibility for their place in rape culture by speaking up, speaking out, and rejecting it on the spot because, as rape is a violent crime of power, control, and subjugation, never, at any point in history, has the voice of the subjugated ever mattered to the people who were subjugating them. I am intelligent, articulate, can shape thoughts into lovely things, can craft iron-clad arguments while blowing the walls off yours, if inclined, and although I, unfortunately, have more experience with this subject than I can ever come to terms with: the majority of fully half of the people on this planet will never, ever, ever listen to me, or anyone like me. 

But you, men, the ones who appropriately consider women your asymmetrical equals, who laud them as your peers without a second thought - the half of the people on this earth who won't listen to me, or any other woman, will listen to you. I can scream my experience until I'm purple, and what it's done to me, and what it's doing to the world - but they'll listen to you. 

Let that sink in, please. 

You are responsible. Responsible. Not because you carry blame, but because if you consider me your equal, and you recognize that my voice is not considered equal, you have a responsibility to speak the truth. Which leads into: 

2) "Responsibility" is not synonymous with "blame." To say that all men are responsible for rape culture is not the same as saying that all men are to blame for rape culture, or at fault for, or championing, or cheerleading rapes as they occur. One word can have multiple definitions, and we all know it: responsibility is also defined, from multiple sources, as: 

1) having an obligation to do something, or having control over or care for someone, as part of one's job or role; 2) able to be trusted to do what is right or to do the things that are expected or required; 3) having a capacity for moral decisions and therefore accountable; 4) capable of rational thought or action

Not a single one of these definitions is archaic or obscure. I can't help it, guys, but I get incensed when you prioritize defending your own bruised sense of honor I'm not a rapist not a rapist not all men no no no! over basic reading comprehension; I get furious at the knee-jerk anger, defense, and even, recently, the fact that there are men who will belittle my voice in a discussion of rape culture because my "objectivity is diminished by the fact that I have been raped." Yes, friends, there are people walking around, paying taxes, raising children, operating motor vehicles, and voting in presidents who believe that intimate knowledge of a subject disqualifies you from discussing it. 

Can you see the predicament? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you've been raped, your voice is tainted; if you haven't, but you still speak, you're an angry feminist looking for reasons to be angry; if you expect men to speak out and act out against rape culture, you're calling them rapists. If you say nothing, it will eat you alive. 

And you know one of the worst, most maddening, most saddening things? Some of the most honorable men I know, who peripherally offer me the most hope and healing just by virtue of knowing them and seeing how they relate to the women in their lives, are the ones who get the most incensed when I say that all men are responsible for rape culture. Some of the men who are doing most of the work to eradicate rape culture within their circle of influence are the ones who get most instantly offended at the idea that they're responsible to do the good work they're already doing, simply because someone said it in very direct terms. But they'll never see it like that; they'll never recognize their own unnecessary picking-up-of-offense. Because all their ears heard is that I lumped them in with rapists, or called them a rapist, or some such. And the best they have to offer is to chastise me that not all men are rapists or subjugate women or blah blah blah blah blah as though I'm some kind of lives-in-a-van-down-by-the-river who doesn't already know that. 

Speaking strictly in terms of men: 

If you raise your sons to respect women and consider them equals because it's the right thing to do, you are shouldering responsibility for rape culture, and teaching them to do the same. 

If you raise your sons to reject sexist/sexually violent humor because it is inappropriate, you are shouldering responsibility for rape culture, and teaching them to do the same. 

If you make clear your disapproval at themes of gender unbalance, sexually-violent or degrading humor, etc., you are shouldering responsibility for rape culture, and expecting others around you to do the same.

If you express disapproval at themes which subjugate women intellectually, sexually, or otherwise to men, you are shouldering responsibility for rape culture by making your views known to those around you.

Don't get pissed off at me, or others, when it's pointed out. It doesn't mean what you're quick to assume it means. 

I'm actually thanking you. 

So thank you. Again. 

pedicures, parmesan, and six words amid many

God is talking to me through a pedicure.

Well, no, he's not. Unless he is, and I'm missing it. Unless this bucket of blazing-hot water, and my dipping in my right heel is some kind of metaphor- still too hot; still too painful; too much. ow. geez. Pressing in further each time, holding it present a bit longer each time, wincing. Haha... no. God is not sitting right over there (pointing) next to my orchid, who is bloming hanky-white with six blooms, as though decked out for a quinceañera...

... while this bucket of too-hot water turns gray as I scrub away the death on my feet. My feet, which suffer for my equal-parts trifecta of 1) shoe laziness, in that I have purchased and worn exactly two pairs of shoes in the thirteen months since I returned to Florida, and the majority winner has been the flip-flops; 2) shoe hatred, in which I swear wearing closed shoes makes me breathe crooked (just believe); and 3) shoe anomalies, in which my only functional kitchen shoes appear to be culled each from one foot of a separate culinary-school boyfriend, neither of whom shared a shoe size. Maybe it's not so much breathing crooked as walking crooked?

Anyway. My feet pretty much live outside, and they look like they could swoop out of the sky and snatch my dinner out of a lake. So I'm sitting here scraping them with a metal thing (lips tightening as I ponder exposed blocks parmesan cheese), rubbing with a brush thing, between and on top of and under my toes, patting dry, slathering with a foot mask, even - I scrape off the death and remember the one time in my life when I know that God spoke directly to me. There was one other time in which I absolutely knew that God was speaking to me, as another person - a stranger - said words to me that were too specific, too startling. But it wasn't anything like that one time, when it was just me and God in a big room, and I mused aloud, only half-paying attention to what was coming out of my mouth, and he answered, and, though I'm sure his voice sounds in different ways, in that moment, I learned that his voice infuses presence both inside and out, and I knew what the holiness of God meant as a beckon to everything that I am and not a curse to everything that I knew of myself (so much can be packed into a fraction of a second) -  I don't want that to sound gripey (though, tomorrow, I might); that one time, only one. It was profound. If it's all I ever get, it will be all I need. It is, in large part, why I could never believe that God is not.

What he said to me doesn't matter, at least not for the purposes of a three-o'clock-in-the-morning blog about pedicures. Maybe some other time. They were six words that cemented my life to God. The thing about the worst of my recent experiences is: I've begun to develop a keen sense of the sacred, regarding forcing my experiences into words - part boundary-development, part trying to regain my authentic voice as a writer (not so evident from this ramble-fest). Permission to not box everything into a story; a release of the pressure to perform, I guess, and the realization that I'm one very human and not-always-interesting and sometimes-self-indulgent voice without much power to convey things as deeply as I'd like, especially lately. So maybe I'll share those six words and their context; maybe not.

Either way: in this moment, I remember that moment, and, everything else aside (as much as it can be), I taste a moment of guarded gratitude.

Included in this moment: the fact that I can actually feel the air move across my feet now. Sorry, feet (and everyone who's been exposed to them.)

(at least they don't smell like parm.)

the grays of the flipsides.

As much as I sit here and write about nobly digging my heels and sitting right here and waiting to hear from God.. there is a flipside. 

I mean it all. But I fear what makes sense to my heart. 

There are the days like today, when something brings to mind the ideas of two opposite poles, and the way extremes offer their own versions of certainty which could be either so easy, or so excruciating, to swallow, in pursuit of peace: God is punishing you for stepping out of his will, or God is a fart in the breeze and everything is arbitrary. 

It would be almost a relief to stop fighting the hardwiring that tells me God has thrashed me within an inch of my life; I listen, sometimes, to what's whispering in my head, the breath-intimate, hushed litany of sins preserved in a vacuum against my brain: bad choices. bad choices. shouldn't have chosen culinary school. shouldn't have chosen these people, these actions, this path; should have listened harder, waited longer, done it differently, should have known how to choose better. this is what happens. 

And, on the flipside... the blissful comfort of maybe being able to believe that God isn't there. Oh, the bliss. That there isn't someone at the helm, controlling things, and choosing which things he won't control, toward ends that nobody else can know until it doesn't matter anymore. I can't tell you how much my heart aches to be able to believe that God does not watch children starving, or people tortured; that he did not watch my death, because he is not there. Because there are bad people, and there are strong people, and strong people survive what the bad people do to them because they are strong and invested in good. 

Taking God out of the equation simplifies everything to my heart. 

But I will never be able to believe it. Not late at night, when I open my eyes and scan my darkened bedroom for the tenth time before trying to drift off, when my breathing quickens against the rising dread in my middle, when I wonder why I'm still here. 

And so, there are no answers in the gray. 

There is no resolution. No balm in the gray for the contradictory need of the weary, who push so hard against the easy black-and-white answers as we crave the certainty and peace, real or false, that they offer. 

And I know, as surely as I know this couch upon which I sit, that I will scream why at the heavens (occupied or empty) for as long as I live. Not because I have decided to, but because I am thoroughly shattered on the ground of why. It is all I have. 

Speaking of poles. The why thing. I hate the "why" thing. I hate the reality of what it means for me now, the involuntary tightening in the back of my throat at the way it's viewed as either, or simultaneously, huge and trite, depending on who you talk to, or where you are, or what you're whying about. Why did this happen to me: it's like a phase for Christians to push through. A speed bump, a barrier to something: a prelude to anything real or worthwhile; a weakness. The Last Roadblock To Peace. It's not ours to know why. The foundations of my life tremble with violent, uncontrollable fury at that statement, and God knows it. 

If only I could decide that I don't really need to know the whys of my life experiences, I could have peace. 

As if that is ever something I could decide. Ever. 

I fear the momentum that the death of this faith has set for me. 

And so, for now, I sit in these ruins, and wait, because it's the last place I knew of God. 

demolitions, cross-wiring, and new foundations.

It's not an every-time occurrence, but when I get a particularly bad migraine, I have problems with reading and comprehending. The letters are in front of me, and I can recognize that the words are made of familiar shapes, and I know that I should understand them, but, to my migraine-addled brain, they are jumbles of black lines on white backgrounds which. although they evoke vague feelings of recognition, make no sense to me.

_________________

My pastor's family (by the way, my pastor is the wisest person I know, and this entire train of thought is due to recent conversations with him. so there's that.) recently welcomed a new addition: a toddler, adopted from China, named Carter. Carter's family has been sharing their stories of finding Carter, bringing him home, and making him part of their family.

I've been following their story with such interest - not only because Carter's cheeks slay me, and his smile actually makes me tear up, and not only because his parents are wonderfully expressive and deeply-thought people and it's a pleasure to read what they write.

But because of parents, and babies, and attachment, and... grace?

_________________

The death of a faith is agonizing. Any attempts to grasp at the practices or tenets that comforted you before are now deeply painful reminders of what's lost: reminders of the person you were. The agony is circular: you reach out in order to alleviate, or make sense of, your pain, but that which you've always known to reach for has become the source of your pain.

I'm really just too tired to examine it too closely, but it's been almost funny, the way that, in the midst of my acknowledging that the faith I'd always carried is now dead, all the myriad ways that talk of God's grace slips in, more than it ever has, or maybe more than I ever realized. grace. grace. grace. grace. grace. grace. it's a constant hum. It's a melody that I, the musician, don't know. They're words that I, the writer, recognize as made of familiar shapes I've been seeing my whole life, but which make no sense to me.

from Alethea Allen's blog, http://romansfivefive.blogspot.com/

whoa. pump the brakes, kid.

My previous tenets of faith were shaped by disapproval, shame, distance. The face of God, to me, consisted of slight shakes of a head, tightened lips and steps backward at stumbles that I could never talk about with him; it was like I had to keep a distance long enough for him to forget my misdeeds before I came crawling back, because repentance didn't matter, but what did matter was: earn, work, keep, or lose. I've always figured that God had my mother's face - irrational, angry, scary, hurtful, exasperated. But, as it turns out, God has my father's face - the distant one; the one with power; the one who left, leaves, and will leave. The same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

so.. grace?

how is it okay that, after battling more than I'll ever express, I rest, and don't work?

I don't know.

How is the loss of a faith different from separation from God, which we're drilled to believe is the ultimate consequence of sin? to some, the actual reality of what hell itself is?

Don't know.

How is it okay that I don't work my ass off, at all times, in all things, to get to the bottom of every single experience, for the sake of finding the good and making the best and sharing a testimony and blessing other people? 

Don't know. Don't care.

Right now - maybe ever? - my job isn't to know. Speaking of circular. This truth brings me more comfort than I can gather, and more rage than I can accept.

Because for the first time, what I do know is that it's impossible to be that person. It is impossible. Not because I lack, but because I am finite. I don't know the reasons for my experiences, and, if there are reasons - if my experiences are part of a deliberate plan, I'd rather not know the reasons or the plan, or the one who planned it. Because how cruel. Maybe that'll change; maybe not.

What I do know, for the first time, is that that I can't make anything happen here. I can't work my way out of this image I have of myself - this horrid, shameful, flawed, horrible, filthy, absolutely immeasurably lacking excuse for something. And, though I never knew it, I never could make anything happen; maybe my entire faith journey has consisted of me alternately spinning my wheels and hiding my face when I run off-track. I think maybe it has.

Maybe whatever relationship means, in terms of God.. maybe it all starts with attachment. Maybe it's more influenced by our initial, most primal attachments than I never understood. And maybe attachment means, in terms of God.. maybe the problem is that mine is as cross-wired as any adopted child with a history.

maybe all of my horrid, sticky darkness that cripples me in the face of what I aspire to, but imagine I always fall short of, isn't here because of me. 

maybe it's not even real. maybe it's not here at all. 

maybe yours isn't, either. 

maybe my instinct to linger in this empty space - the only time in my life I've known that God will speak - is right.

maybe I'm past the point of rage. Maybe I'm not. Tomorrow's a whole other day. Who knows what the weather will be.

Whatever it is.. for the first time in my life, I'm in no hurry. My faith consists of knowing, to my bones, that God will speak. I know he will. I don't know why my life has been the way it has; I'll never know; I can't imagine ever being on good terms with God over it, ever; there are so many things I'll never understand about God, and I don't imagine they'll ever be reconciled, like neat rows of numbers in a record book. But I'm here, and God is here, and I'll stay here as long as I have to - not in the pain I've always felt I deserved, or the self-pity that creeps in before you know it, or the fears of banishment by a God I've never known.

That's my faith. Brittle. Determined. Not. Budging. 

It's enough.

salt.

i have felt
the way one feels
upon entry to cold water, then
staying too long: the shock,
lung-crushing; the slow-settling
acclimation; the notion
of off-kilter; the quaking sabotage
of a diaphragm swathed in a steady skin,

the death surrounding felt as home:
to sink into the blossoming embrace
of silken salt, the absence
of self-soothing half-heartedness, of shifty talk,
of wars of words; salt
fills my mouth: mineral silence
of its own volition.

grief:
the great do ask, don't tell, 
The Great Luxury, a privileged indulgence
secret and dirty as masturbation, its otherworldliness
too intense as to believe it a singular passage but instead
a tangle of transformation unfit for usual narrative spools; at
a wool patterned of grief (and there is a pattern), I can naught
but cast it sideways and, arms outstretched in this silken salt, consider instead heavenlies burning
desperately, brilliantly, stark lifeless
yellow of need in the vacuum that surrounds

i crave
the whirlwind and motion of need exacerbated
by excess, empty of the ways that matter, blinded by
yellow diamonds in the light. but instead, I practice
the shape of foreign tongues: confessions of crimes
and naivete
and a stillborn faith