You're Damn Right It's Personal

Ignorance is not benign

Ratfucking 101

At the risk of pissing off everyone I know, I’m going to tell the stories of two men I knew who were falsely accused of rape. It doesn't happen often, and it's a small percentage compared to all the actual rape survivors I know, but false accusations are real.

Story number 1 – A young soldier was stationed far away from her fiancé. She developed a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship in the interim. The friend understood that she was looking for a little action with no commitment. But the fiancé found out about it somehow, so she told him that her lover had date raped her in order to exonerate herself. Oddly enough, although she ended up marrying her fiancé, it didn’t go well.  She had another messy affair and they ended up divorcing.

Story number 2 – A soldier stationed in Hawaii developed an enthusiastically consensual relationship with a woman in his unit. He found out she was married and broke it off. Angry at being jilted, she demanded that he continue the relationship with her or she would accuse him of rape. Terrified, he went to his commanding officer and laid his cards on the table, figuring he’d rather take the rap for adultery (punishable under the UCMJ) than for rape. Fortunately for him, this wasn’t the first time the woman’s behavior had been an issue and he was not charged.

I knew both of these gentlemen for a long time. I served with them, spent time in the field, in the 577, at the range, in the SCIF, sleeping in the same GP-large tent with them. Neither had ever before or has since been accused of any kind of assault or harassment. The women in these situations wanted what they wanted, but weren’t willing to take any responsibility for their actions. They were narcissists, only concerned with their own well-being. Anyone who says only men are like this, that only men are sexually aggressive, devious, or dishonest, are as guilty of sexism as any trash-talking frat boy.

When I point out, in the infamous case of Al Franken and Leeann Tweeden, that character matters, folks are fast to call me a slut shamer and a rape enabler. Which is bullshit. Clearly, a woman of any sort of character can be a victim of assault or rape. I don’t care how many racy photographs she’s posed for. Look at my own blog, for chrissake. But, given the circumstances of the situation, it’s fair to ask, what are her motivations? Is she the kind of person who would lie for personal gain? It appears that she is, and so I wait for more information before making any judgements. If this makes me an anti-feminist rape enabler, then bring it. 

I may not be old enough to remember Watergate, but I’ve read All the Presidents Men and I know what ratfucking is. Tweeden is a regular on Sean Hannity’s show, and Hannity posts this? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a war on, and your foolish idealism will be used against you. 

Me too

The problems with Me Too are numerous. Pressure for women to tell their stories if they aren't ready to do so. Concern that the folks who need to hear our stories aren't going to listen, understand, or heed what we're telling them. I know there are women with much worse trauma than I. But for my own sake, I started a list. Once you start, it's hard to know where to stop. Because there's always so much, and so much more. Things done to us. Things done to those we love. Things we witness. Here's what we need men to understand. It's a constant barrage of aggression, from the day we're born until the day we die. Some of it is subtle. Some of it is brutal. Some of it we don't even recognize until we look backwards through the lens of time. Your mother and your sister and your sweetie and your daughter and every woman you know will suffer this much trauma or more under the social systems that benefit you and that you perpetuate in a million different ways, every day. Me Too is about women nurturing each other. It's also about us throwing down and holding you accountable. It's about our rage and our refusal to accept this status quo. It's our mic drop, gentlemen.

This is my very short list.

• In first grade, they posed us for school pictures with props – girls with a toy kitchen, boys with a football. I protested but was ordered  to pose with the kitchen. My mom still has that picture. I still hate it.
• In first grade, a boy tickled me in class. I’m very ticklish, so laughed. I was punished for disrupting the class and put in the corner. He received no punishment. I refused to face the corner; I sat glaring at the teacher with my arms crossed.
• In 5^th grade, a boy in my class constantly teased me, begged me to marry him, dropped to his knees in front of my desk. I didn’t know why he did this but I knew his ‘crush’ was fake. I told him to go to hell, loudly. He stopped bothering me.
• In 6^th grade, my dad bought me a red and black lace nightgown. I thought it was very pretty. I didn’t realize until much later how inappropriate it was.
• In 6^th grade, my dad ordered me to ‘change into my PJs’ in front of him when we were home alone. I didn’t understand why that made me so uncomfortable and frightened.
• At the end of 6^th grade, my parents divorced when my older sister told my mom that dad had been sexually abusing her.
• When I was 16, my boyfriend fucked me in the ass without asking. I was so supremely naïve/uneducated I didn’t even know anal sex was a thing. It hurt.
• When I was 17, I worked at the front counter of an ice cream shop in Dallas. I wanted to switch to making the ice cream. The manager told me girls weren’t strong enough to carry the heavy ice cream canisters.
• When I was 20, I was working on a joint exercise with the British military in Germany.  I was standing on a step-ladder updating the map in the situation room when a British army general walked in and started making comments about my ass.
• When I was 21, a gynecologist at the Army medical facility told me I had a ‘cute little uterus’ while performing a pelvic exam.
• When I was 22, a stranger grabbed my crotch while I was walking, with my husband, through the airport in Barcelona.
• When I was 28, I gave birth to my oldest daughter in a Houston hospital. I told the doctor I did not want an episiotomy. He performed one anyway. I took about 6 months for the pain to subside enough that I could have sex without agony.
• When I was about 30, I was working for Stewart Title as an IT project manager. I interviewed for a lateral transfer into a product manager role. I was told by the manager that I wasn’t ‘professional enough’ for the job because I didn’t wear make-up.
• When I was 36, we took our daughter to sign up for baseball. The woman at the sign-up table told her she couldn't play baseball because she was a girl.
• When I was 42, my daughter decided she wanted to homeschool. My husband disagreed. I withdrew her from school anyway, because I knew how toxic the environment was and how bored she was. He got angry that I didn’t abide by his wishes and told me that I had ‘emasculated him.’ I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.
• When I was 45, my cousin divorced his wife and became deeply evangelical. He tried to explain to me that rape and slavery in the old testament was God’s punishment of the ungodly, justly carried out by his chosen people. I blocked him on social media.
• When I was 46, I sat in the chamber of the Texas senate and listened to elected officials blatantly lie and disrespect women, congressional procedure, and medical science in order to take away our constitutional rights.
• When I was 49, I sat in Scholz’s Garden with friends and family and watched in absolute horror as Americans elected a serial sexual predator to the presidency. My daughter cried.
• Two weeks ago, I watched police arrest a neighbor who had screamed for help when her boyfriend beat her. When I protested, the cop got in my face, tried to bully me, threatened me for interfering with his investigation.

You Don't Understand

I Prefer Cats

Conversations with my Cousin - Round 3

This One's For The Dudes....

My Okie Grandma

Bad Tolz

When I was in the army, sergeants attended an NCO academy either before or shortly after the promotion to E-5. It’s a month of rigorous training in the classroom and the field on leadership, military skills, and personnel management/training skills. The 7^th Army NCO Academy had a reputation of being the toughest. When I attended, it was housed in old SS barracks in Bad Tolz. The barracks buildings formed an interconnected square around a large central courtyard. Inside the buildings, there was a stripe of polished black down the center of each hallway. Once, that polished stripe could only be stepped on by the elite SS officers – enlisted men had to sidle down the narrow brown tiled strips on either side of the black. But the NCO academy, run by NCOs, taught by NCOs, attended by enlisted soldiers, has no officers. None of us walked on the black stripe, except to cross on rubber mats like bridges. It wasn’t to honor those old Nazi officers – it was an act of disdain, to refuse to put our feet where they had strutted.

The American Army is extremely diverse. The current Commandant of the 7^th Army NCO Academy is a black man, as was my primary instructor when I was there. In our shared barracks rooms, we polished our boots and exchanged tall tales and blasted hip-hop until the windows shook. We studied the stuff in the back of the drill & ceremony manual and practiced ridiculously complicated marching patterns in the courtyard until our instructors got annoyed and told us to knock it off. We helped each other line up our boots and competed to see who could make their bed the tightest. In the field, we huddled together in our canvas pup tents to stay warm in two feet of alpine snow, and we walked our buddies to the latrine at midnight so they didn’t get lost in the blackness of the woods. When one of us failed a test, we would stay after class to tutor him for the retest. When one of us got hurt, we all pitched in to make sure he could get through the field training and graduate with the class. We flirted and fought and gambled and shared stories and paperback books and boot polish and cigars. 

On graduation day, my husband and my first sergeant came to cheer me on. They had been informed that I was the honor graduate for my class. I didn’t know until it was announced during the ceremony. My husband brought flowers, sat in the auditorium and listened to the man behind him complaining that they gave the top honor to ‘some girl.’ The award was named the General Patton award, and I was given a metal-tipped commemorative swagger stick. I haven’t kept much army memorabilia, but I still have the swagger stick, collecting dust on my bureau. I don’t know why but it amuses me; probably because I can’t imagine having the audacity to actually carry such a thing.

I’ve never been much of a student of military history, but I looked up Patton just now and found this quote of his: “If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.” Thinking about this in the context of my experiences at the Academy – we all came from different places, different backgrounds, brought different skills (and weaknesses) to the task, but with resourcefulness and teamwork we all made it through to the goal. Not one failed. And that is what we carried with us, back to our units and our lives.

The Academy has since moved to Grafenwoehr and continues to train new generations of sergeants. Flint Kaserne in Bad Tolz is no more. There is a Flint bowling alley, and the old SS barracks seem to be public buildings now, housing a tourism office, employment office, the Jugendamt, and a bank. The courtyard where we drilled is green with grass and trees. I wonder if the black stripe still runs down those old hallways, and if the people who work there know the stories of all that happened there.

I am a Texan

My Samurai Life

My feminist manifesto starts and ends here, with my bones and flesh. My body. Me.

I am sculpted by the DNA of my ancestors, every ancient wedding and bedding is here, in my pale skin and my blue eyes. I am the result of generations of princes and peasants, homesteaders and engineers, doing the things people do.

I am sculpted by every experience I’ve had. Every push-up, every mile I’ve run, every hour I’ve spent sitting in conference rooms, classrooms, and offices. My body tells the story of my life, from the tiny smallpox scar on my left arm to the ragged edge of my labia stitched together after childbirth by a clumsy student nurse.

I live in Texas, where the state government routinely attempts to regulate my body as though it were somehow separate from me. But I am my body. If it is not mine, then I am not mine. The most basic construct of humanity, my very concept of self, is considered a political bargaining chip, my body bartered for the votes of the right-wing evangelical by lobbyist-funded politicians. My body sold to prop up the corporate take-over of our government institutions.

The horrifying, opportunistic marriage of religion and government power is built on a foundation of the objectified bodies of women. I long ago stopped believing that the scripture had somehow been co-opted by ill-intentioned power-mongers. Starting with Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib, to be man’s companion and helpmate, the Bible is an intentional and complete evisceration of the power, the sanctity, and the agency of women. Not only is the biblical god male, but woman is removed from god and allowed a relationship with the sacred only through man. The entire Bible is a road-map for the destruction of matriarchy, a tool for the oppression and destruction of the feminine in humanity and in nature.

I can stand in my own space and say “I am an atheist and a feminist, and I reject this world-view entirely.” Which is true and means almost nothing. Every aspect of the judeo-christian society we live in is steeped in intrinsic sexism. Like the Seven Samurai, my existence is defined by fighting. I am never free from the stress and anger of having to battle the society I live in for the right to be me, the right to my own flesh, my own life, my own dreams. I am utterly defined by existing in opposition to the ruling paradigm of my world. Freedom, I imagine, would be some world where I could be me without the fight. But I can’t REALLY imagine it because I’ve never seen such a place, and that’s a problem. Because the anger can start to feel like my friend, it can define me and rule me and I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to have to be that. I don’t want to forget the possibility of something else, something more, something free.

Sometimes when I’m alone, the tears will come and I’ll mourn all the people I’ve never been, all the losses I’ve suffered. But as I get older, I cry less. Not because I hurt less – because I hurt more.

Life in LA

This is the last week of a six week project in LA. Hence, my complete lack of blogging, because it’s been hella crazy. I’m sitting in my ‘luxe business Airbnb’ on a vinyl loveseat that can’t possibly be that uncomfortable but is, eating my snack box from Sprouts because I’m sick of restaurants. This was my first visit to LA, and after six weeks I’ve formed a few opinions.

• Almost everything in LA costs twice as much as in Texas. Hotel rooms, meals, gasoline. On what planet does a burger or a burrito cost $20?
• The weather here really is perfect. Unless you like rain, that is. I have yet to be either hot or cold. It’s weird really.
• They have retail here, and by retail I mean lots of little shops selling really cool stuff. Don’t get me started on the consignment shop down the street. If I wore a size 4 I’d have a new designer wardrobe.
• People here really care about their appearance. I have never seen so many hair salons, nail salons, makeup, massage, threading, facial etc. places crammed together. Really there’s one every block, maybe more.
• In spite of all the great shopping and devotion to beauty, people here look absolutely ordinary. Go figure.
• It’s great being 5 miles from the beach, but beaches are actually really boring unless you have some little people or dogs with you.
• Waiters in LA are very attentive until they’ve brought you your food. Then they forget you exist. I practically have to beg and cry to get them to take my money so that I can leave.
• Drivers in LA always yield politely for pedestrians and bikes, but they are super aggressive to other cars. I’ve never heard so much honking in my life.
• The hills around LA are stunningly beautiful, filled with native plants and birds. Get into the city, and it’s all palm trees and bougainvillea and oddly enough, zero birds. Huh.
• But mostly, what I realize from staying here is that I am really truly not a city girl. I want the smell of trees and rain and dirt. I want squirrels and deer and possums playing in my yard. I want to go for a jog without having to wait for even one stop-light. Nobody here ever looks happy. Maybe really, none of us is a city girl.

Eeyore's Wild Life

The past weekend I attended Eeyore’s birthday party. This is an old Austin tradition, sort of a low key hippie party at Pease Park, and one of the few remaining ‘totally free’ events in Austin. It’s marketed as part of that over-hyped Austin weirdness.

But it shouldn’t be weird. It should be normal.

People hanging out in the park together on blankets or hammocks. Strumming guitars or pounding drums. People playing with soap bubbles and hula hoops and hacky-sacks. People spontaneously dancing. People eating and drinking. People wearing creative, colorful, fun clothes. People baring their skin to the breeze on a hot day. People painting and decorating each other. People living with joy.

Photo by Deborah K Coley

A friend of mine snapped this picture of me there. I’ve had more flattering pictures, but I love this one because it’s so much me. Broad shoulders, wild hair blowing in the wind, standing square, laughing.

Several people said I was brave.

Brave for wearing my own skin?

If it is brave for a woman to take off her shirt in a public place, what does that say about our society? Is it brave to show your imperfect body because other people might judge it? Is it brave to show your body because other people might assault it?

The only real danger I faced was sunburn, and for that I have Coppertone.

A woman walked up to me and shyly asked “Is it okay to be topless here?”

“Yes,” I told her. “And not just here, but anywhere. In Texas it is legal.”

She turned towards me, away from the crowd, and pulled off her shirt. Her torso was covered in swirls of purple, blue, and white paint, decoration she had meticulously created. But she needed someone to give her permission to show it. Someone brave. Someone like the woman in this picture, with broad shoulders and wild hair.

I don’t feel brave right now. In a world rushing towards climate catastrophe and authoritarianism, I am terrified of so many things.

But not of myself. 

The Monster Within

I'm not a combat veteran. I've known a few. Every person is different. Every experience is different. But combat reveals to people the worst of humanity, and the worst of themselves. As Dink says in My Dog Skip, "It ain't the dying that's scary boy; it's the killing."

The High Road

Conversations with my cousin 2

Conversations with My Cousin

The new IT director

They Pay You?

"Religious Freedom"

Immigrants Make America Great!

Open Carry - Texas Style

At the Party

The Equine Brain

I'm Getting Old...

My Life at Work

At the end of the rope

I don’t even know where to start. Shit has gotten so incredibly weird that I feel I’m actually just living a very bad 80s spy thriller. And I’m not at all optimistic about that happy ending. I sign petitions and contact my Congress-critters and plan for the next march and try to comfort my completely freaked out mother and then put on lipstick and go to work and design software and act like I’m cool and in control. I come home and jog or take the dogs on really long walks or row on the rowing machine for hours and sort my closets and cabinets. Sometimes, rarely, I break down and sob. Then I remind myself that I am a warrior. I pick up my dumbbells and do some curls, watching my muscles flex. Then I get back to work. It’s the only way I know. It’s the only way I’ve ever known.

Today I went to the barn for the daily grooming and exercise of my little rescue horse, Petra. She has arthritis and can’t be ridden, but she refuses to accept her limitations. Every day when I arrive, she neighs in excitement. A hug. A thorough grooming. Then I lead her to the round pen for a little exercise. Today the wind was gusting and she was full of nervous energy. She ate a few bits of grass, then suddenly dug in her heels, bucked, wheeled, and ran for the fence, stopping suddenly in front of me, thrusting her nose into my hands, looking for carrots, then lifting her head to sniff the wind, spinning, and running another circle. Seeing that it was near feeding time, I clipped her lead rope to her halter and opened the gate. She surged forward, trying to pull free. When I held her back, she gave me the side-eye and started running urgent circles around me on her short lead, snorting with frustration. I let her gallop around me for a few turns then pulled her in, attempting to comfort her with a calm touch, but she turned away from me. We walked to the barn, me holding her back hard, my shoulder in front of hers, pushing into her, pitting my puny strength against her magnificent muscles. Some days it’s like that. 

After I put her in her stall, I always stop at Big Mac’s stall. He’s a big old ugly horse, as gentle as a teddy bear. I put my hands on either side of his massive head and press my face into his. He bows his head and gently nuzzles me. He always does this. He never has an off day, never has a moment of fear or doubt.

Big Mac is a wonderful horse. But it’s quirky, unpredictable, fiery, damaged, slightly dangerous Petra that I love. We understand each other. Even when she infuriates me, I end each visit with a gentle touch and the spoken promise that no one will ever hurt her again, that she is safe forever in my care.

In a world that feels increasingly dangerous, I’m no longer able to make that same promise to my own children. All of my strength is not enough to hold back the tide of fascism and self-destruction that is sweeping our country and our planet. Like Petra, I sniff the wind and rear back against the ropes, muscles trembling with helpless suppressed energy. Someone once beat her for that fiery spirit. They damaged her but they didn’t break her, and they won’t break me either.