Hello intrepid readers! That is, if you had anything to read. Goddess, it’s been so long since I blogged. I apologize. I’ve been learning a lot about publishing here behind the scenes. It’s very interesting to watch my Spinstress book hatch from the eerie and oddly populated attic of my imagination into a real creature which has had the hands of many talented people upon it.
Now that my book is in the hands of the publishers, my job is more about introducing myself to the readers in the broader Llewellyn community. There’s a thing with writers where we can spend months or years working on a beloved project, polishing every word like a gem. Then, you ask us what the project is about and we shrug and say, “Oh, you know. Things.” So, yay! I’m going to practice on you! Thanks in advance.
Really, it’s not bad. I’ve been working on some blogs, podcast interview questions, short articles for in-house journals, and similar. It’s an exciting and interesting process, as is the process of fitting it into my busy days! But I love writing and so far I love publishing, too. Seeing the galleys and what the book will actually look like has been great. If you love work, I guess it isn’t work anymore. Mostly. But it still requires the budgeting of time.
The chapter headings are so cute! I didn’t help think that up at all but I’ve always been a sucker for a pointy hat.
In addition to book publicity I can announce that SageWoman Magazine is planning to switch my long-standing column on women and animals/nature (Child of Artemis) into a regular column more in keeping with the Spinstress book. Anne Niven, editor of SageWoman and Witches & Pagans, has provided a nice review (“blurb”) of my book for the cover and for the amazon page.
I don’t know what my new column will be titled but I have been working on ideas to give it that Spinstress vibe. It’ll be fun. I’m thinking self-esteem, glamour magick, sexual empowerment, feminism, history and general eccentric weirdness. The usual. But first, I feel like delving a bit more into said vibe for my regular supporters so you can know, at least as much as I do, what on earth I was thinking when I wrote a book on this theme.
Of course, the title “Spinstress” is detailed in the book. I sort of found it unintentionally. Mostly because the old concept of a “spinster” pissed me off sufficiently to make me want to put a ruby-slippered foot well up the ass of that particular stereotype. I think this whole wacky thing started because someone donated an “old maid” card deck to the domestic violence program where I work and I found it in the break room of my office one day. That particular set of cards had…a little accident…shortly thereafter, finding it’s way directly into the trash. Maybe.
Note that she is also on a “wheel,” “bone-shaker,” AKA bicycle. These conveyances came to be strongly associated with female independence in olden days, as a means of transportation that helped ladies get up to all sorts of things. See my previous blog for more info.
Anyhow, the “vintage” images being reprinted and called “whimsical” really boiled my tea. Of all places to leave a game that pokes fun at women who, for whatever reason, are currently or never identifiably attached to a male partner. I’m sure whoever donated it just didn’t even stop to think what the game was about.
But, this very thing is what drew my attention first to the deeply ingrained ideas about women that a game like this reflects. It denigrates women who earn their own money and otherwise assert enough autonomy to be single for some or all of their lives. Even if violence is one of the circumstances they are trying to leave behind, the cultural baggage is insidiously covert and also unrelenting. Commercials, cosmetics, churches, friends, coworkers, relatives…all too often casually reflect the idea that women who are single, at least for “too long,” have something to be ashamed about. I can say from loads of personal and professional experience that it leaves some women more willing to be with an abusive partner rather than face the terrifying specter of living for any length of time with none at all. This fear also sometimes makes women I work with more vulnerable to new predators if they recently did become single. My personal and professional opinion on all this shit is….
Hell, no.
That doesn’t work. Oh, while we’re on the topic of women, I chose to write this book using the spelling “womxyn.” I did so in order to open a door for anyone choosing to identify as such. It is still a book about womxyn and girls but I hoped to bend the binary a little more than is usually done in Neo-pagan/witchcraft books. That’s really all there is to the alternative spelling.
Yes, this set is vintage but they still make duplicate reprints. For “fun.”
The idea of reclaiming a culturally negative term is not new to witches or pagans since both of those terms have been reclaimed from the stereotypes of immorality, human and animal sacrifice, and various other forms of social or moral criminality.
Those of us who practice some magickal tradition, maybe under the umbrella of contemporary Neo-paganism, are very used to reclaiming terms that were once used to denigrate us. “Witch” is a perfect example. That moniker would have gotten you killed through most of western history and will still do so in vast regions of the globe. Yet, it came to be a term representing religious freedom and a return to nature-based religions in around the 1960s. That seems to have been thanks to the popular writing that emerged from England after their anti-witchcraft laws were repealed in the forties.
I actually think this is a beautiful image but…you get it. Margaret Hamilton.
As modern women began looking for religious traditions and beliefs that reflected both female equality and female power, feminism found witchcraft and the goddess during this same era. Witchy foremothers like Shekhinah Mountainwater, Starhawk, and Zsusanna (Z) Budapest built traditions of queer witchcraft, feminist witchcraft, and overtly political witchcraft that reclaimed both girl power and some of the best aspects of that old-time religion.
Many other words have been reclaimed by certain marginalized groups. “Bitch” is another one that I do use (both to celebrate and critique it) periodically in my book. Obviously not all members of any social cohort are all going to feel the same way about anything, including these words. In other words, some Neo-pagans or practitioners of feminist magical traditions dislike the term “witch” just as some modern womxyn find “bitch” disrespectful or offensive. Yet, pushing change onto these types of words does indeed seem to push change on the culture that uses them (often with lots of drama and blow-back along the way). Other words that have been reclaimed in this way by some members of oppressed groups (and definitely not by all) include “queer” (LGBTQ) or the infamous N-word used against African Americans, that still holds such a negative charge that I won’t even put it in print.
This take-back of words that were once tools of oppressors has multiple functions. It helps to remove that verbal weapon from the arsenal of haters. It can often help with the healing of the marginalized folk in question, and it stirs up heat on social discourse around changing old cultural tropes.
Okay, are we there yet? Yes. Here is the word I am reclaiming (or at least re-vamping…oooh, I like that. I’m definitely re-vamping.) in my magickal book. Spinster. I originally got the idea from Mary Daly in “Beyond God the Father.” She mentioned in that book and a couple of her others that “spinster” was actually a term connoting great arcane religious power. The goddesses found in several cultures who would “weave” the world we live in and our own lives were, you guessed it, literal spinsters. Daly alleged that the mythological and magickal power of the spinster archetype for women was another reason that this useful human profession became so culturally reviled. The goddess fates wove the destiny of humankind and the fabric of earth herself. Even amongst we mortals, the spinster was a self-sufficient, skilled, necessary individual with the power to turn raw materials into something we badly need…yeah. That had to go.
So, we’ve covered the bad old images but there are cool ones as well. In this project I take the approach that most of us are single for parts of our lives, if not all of them. This is great as long as we are in our authentic and powerful sense of self. Due to cultural and personal pressures not to be identified as single, we may actually find that we are afraid to relax and enjoy those portions of our lives. Even worse, we may return to a bad relationship or choose another not-great one in order to avoid that distinction. This is a shame because the very thing that can make us better and more successful in our relationships is the self-concept we build at all times, including when we are single.
Swedish screen siren Greta Garbo who never married, playing the infamous WW1 spy Mata Hari
I point this out in the book by showcasing the wonderful things womxyn in history accomplished while they were single. Some for a brief period and some for a lifetime. I discuss the brilliant theology, healing arts and music of Hildegard of Bingen. The humanitarianism and global politics of Mother Theresa. The massive star power of Greta Garbo. The brassy “on my own terms” sexual chemistry of Mae West (who actually hid her marriage for years because she thought being single worked better for her stage persona). The personal and social bravery of transgender artist Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe.
Marlena Dietrich rocking her gender-bending fashion in the 1930s.
This long-winded intro to the contrary, the book itself isn’t a his-story lesson. The chapters include topics that I hope will help womxyn (or the womxyn and girls in the readers lives) to enhance their empowerment along with their power. The book works a craft (spinstress craft) that includes self-esteem, glamor magick (glamoury), sex magick, making up, breaking up, metaphysical self-defense, financial independence, child-rearing, activism, creativity, professional ambition, ancestor magick, divination, and general witchcraft badassery.
Yes, as you can see from topics like sex magick and child rearing, there are men and boys in this book. The object of the material isn’t to “hate men,” as is so often associated with spinsters in the first place. The idea of the materials is to assert personal autonomy both in and out of other types of relationships. And the sex magick chapter is, frankly, hot.
I know I’ve already used this image but Marilyn always deserves a double take.
I’ve got a catalog of toys and tricks, including and expose of similar items going back through human history. I’ve got magick spells and meditations to be done solo or partnered. I’ve got book and website recommendations to find way, way more. Believe me, if you partner with a female-identified type person, you want her to have this book. I assert the following and you can do the research yourself…better relationships and better sex are found with independent and empowered womxyn.
Speaking of the sex magick found in this book, it can be done partnered or solo. Yeah, I said it. Self-partnering. You don’t need a partner for sex. The sooner all sexually active humans realize this, the better our world will be. Even within relationships, I feel people own a certain obligation to see to their own sexual needs (and this can be done without seeking partners outside the relationship if that’s the agreement everyone has). I have certainly seen every flavor of interpersonal carnage when this personal, sexual accountability is not the standard. Yet partly because we’re all frankly prudes when it comes to healthy sexuality, we never ever talk about this. Handing out condoms at social service agencies is great but at least a bunch of us should probably also be handing out stuff like latex lube (since oil ones destroy condoms) and vibrators. Just sayin.
Again referencing my day-job, I am sick to death of womxyn being treated as if our sexuality is some sort of devastating weapon that we as individuals are not competent to wield without oversight. I mean, it’s kind of the oldest story in the book. Who is keeping track of us so we don’t destroy civilization or allow humankind to go extinct?! Are we married soon enough? Long enough? Faithfully enough? Too many kids? Not enough? Do we partner with the right people? Are we “choosing” bad partners over our other female obligations or relationships? Are we destroying the social fabric, god’s laws or sundry other essentials by being either too sexual or not sexual enough? Inquiring minds want to know. Constantly.
Back to sex magick, spinstress style. This book will give you tons of resources to claim the sex life you want while being independent and true to yourself. Whether it’s about birth-control, toys, orientation and lifestyle, kinks and/or commitment can we please own our bodies and really decide how to live in them for effing Aphrodite’s sake?!
In the chapters detailing beauty and glamor (glamour magick), we play with all sorts of rituals and techniques to build our self-esteem. This is not fluff. Claiming your self-esteem is the same as claiming your self. Your power. Without a positive self-concept, you’re liable to have unreliable or unsatisfying magickal results (as well as life events).
The magick in the glam section isn’t all about being femme either. As Dietrich proved, it’s about being proud of yourself and allowing your own personal style glow. A lot of self-concept work, bound up with glamour magick, is to me about defeating personal fears.
Why live (or do magick) like an appliance running on corroded, sketchy batteries when you could plug yourself directly into the source? Positive self-concept is the source. It leads out into everything. It is not extra-credit. It matters.
For Hedy’s amazing story check out the documentary Bombshell: the Hedy Lamarr Story, by PBS.
In the glam chapters of the book I profile several wonderful divas from history including Hedy Lamarr, a classical Hollywood starlet (used as the original model for animated tropes like Snow White and Cat Woman). Far from a spinster (married six times), Hedy provides a great example of a woman who was single when it suited her, and always lived by her own rules.
As her side-hustle Hedy, just messing around, also invented the technology behind wireless, GPS, and blue tooth tech. Calling it radio “frequency hopping” she knew it could be used to interrupt or intercept enemy transmissions. I’m not even kidding a little.
To say she was a genius is an understatement. To say she was gorgeous would be an understatement too. Talk about beauty and brains. She invented many things as a “hobby,” and she donated the plans explaining this idea to the U.S. in order to help us win World War II. As the extra kicker she was an immigrant (Austrian, due to fleeing domestic violence) and yet lost her patent to the technology because of this act of patriotism.
Okay, she wasn’t actually single but, hey, she turned it into such a bankable concept that she pretended to be unmarried for years longer than she was.
I should note that the sections of the book typically reserved for the “mother phase” of the goddess do definitely go into parenting (for Q+ families as well), but hold space for womxyn not raising children due to circumstances including but not limited to personal choice. Alternative aspects to mothering like artistic creativity and social activism are discussed as aspects of the “mothering energy” as well.
The portions of the book dedicated to crone/elder energies deal with ancestor magick, grave-tending, collecting and working with consecrated (graveyard) earth, and many of the more typically witchy endeavors we associate with a book of this type. Also included here, however, are rituals and suggestions for owning our power and expertise in matters of career as well as family and magick.
No idea, honestly.
Okay! So, thanks for warming me up for all this publicity I’m supposed to be working on! I’m always looking to hatch some new ideas.
The actual book drops in July! In the meantime do something magickal. Befriend a wild creature, invent a new technology or work on your burlesque struts. I’ll try to write more soon!
My dad went to seminary late in life, taking on ministry as a second (third?) career. He got his M.Div. at Emory in Atlanta when I was about three through eight years old.
I do remember certain things about childhood in Atlanta. I spent a lot of time in preschool and Bible camp during the days. It was a very integrated environment and I recall being one of the few white girls at my particular preschool, since my father believed very much in making sure I had that type of experience of diversity. It was a value that I’m fortunate he had taken out of the sixties and given in at least some portion to me. My own M.Div. was earned at Vanderbilt in Nashville. As an adult I had another opportunity to really engage in dialogue (especially of a philosophical and theological nature) with a diverse student body. I bumped up against my own white privilege many ways, and acknowledge it to be an active, life-long process.
I remember from childhood in Atlanta that there, MLK Jr. Day is a very, very, very big deal. There and in the South and, I hope, in many other places, it is a holiday where people are encouraged to go out and do some public service as a way to honor his legacy.
Like Gandhi, MLK Jr. understood the connection between our treatment of other animals and our treatment of one another. Intersectionality goes back into the ancient times, and is by no means a remotely new fad.
That brings me to my own act of service. Though this is, unfortunately, not the most divisive or violent or racist period in American history, it is a pretty rocky one. As my own day of service in honor of MLK Jr., I wanted to offer this blog. Obviously (I hope), I am not attempting to speak for African Americans about this topic. I am trying to use what platform I have to push the issue out into our human system, for my readers’ consideration. I’m attaching several resources here. If you only do one thing besides read this blog post, I suggest that it be taking an hour to listen to this workshop on Uprooting White Fragility by Dr. A. Breeze Harper.
If you’ve read more than a couple posts here you also know I am a vegan. I first learned about Dr. Harper’s work because she has been a strong and leading voice about the racism of American food systems and about the intersectionality between human and non-human (animal) rights. Again, I am not the one to lead in this discussion but I strongly recommend Dr. Harper’s book on the topic called Sistah Vegan.
There are at least two big branches in this river of a conversation. One is food systems inequality and “the colonization of diet.” Or, as activists like Karen Washington call it, “food apartheid.” In this discussion our attention is called to the ways cultural diets, often more plant-based and certainly including more healthy and homemade foods, have been destroyed in the creation of junk food “deserts” where especially Native, African, Hispanic folks have very little access to fresh and healthy foods, and are incentivized (if not forced) to eat low value, low cost meals.
I’m not trying to say that no non-white cultures ate animals. We know better. But the removal of cultural, localized diets has deprived folks of the beans, grains, fruits, berries, and veggies that their ancestors lived off of far more than animal products, leading to better health and more balance in the ecosystem. Epidemics of diabetes and heart disease in these communities are exposed as another form of genocide when explored to their logical conclusion. In recent years grassroots activism like that of Dr. Harper has reached many non-white communities, and may be a reason that there are currently more African American and generally non-white vegans in the US than white ones. This, despite the common dismissal of the lifestyle as elitist, and/or an eccentricity of white privilege. A really good cookbook dealing with the decolonization of diet from a Native American perspective is this one, which all we residents of the Americas may find particularly interesting. PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) also puts out free resources about Native American decolonized diet, and food desert activism, etc.
This conversation can be extremely fraught because speaking about food is every bit as heated as talking about other deeply indoctrinated aspects of our lives, like politics and religion. But, the even more tender aspect of this conversation is the contemplation of intersectionality between human rights and non-human (animal) rights. Many of us as women and sometimes men have been shamed, marginalized and bullied in various social settings by being called “cows,” “pigs,” “dogs,” “whales,” “hogs,” “monkeys,” etc. enough times to understand that it can feel like a default attack to be compared in any way to other animals. This applies much more so when you have actually been rounded up, transported, bought and sold or mass-slaughtered like other animals. Yet this is the recent and occasionally ongoing history of African Americans, Jews, Native Americans, any type of refugee immigrants (especially black and brown ones), and more.
“I think there is a connection between … the way we treat animals and the way we treat people who are at the bottom of the hierarchy.”
Angela Davis
The first time I encountered the intersectionality between racism and carnism (eating other animals), it was in the book, “The Dreaded Comparison.” I was most drawn to that book because Alice Walker, one of my fave authors, wrote the introduction and described her own reasons for vegetarianism. Since then I’ve found other resources like Sistah Vegan to be very helpful in becoming more aware of all the different aspects of dietary ethics that I had no clue about when I first became a ovo-lacto vegetarian and then, in 2011, vegan.
I’m not going to go into all the aspects of these issues because the wonderful, awesome, very accessible resources I am linking in are much better than what I could ever do. I am strongly suggesting that consuming some of this information is a very important thing for all of us to consider (food pun intended). Whether we are new to considering the intersectionality, the veganism, or anything in between it’s the job of the privileged to take on information about how to bring balance and equality. This applies to our relationship with the other living beings on the planet as well as other people. There, I want to get this info out quickly so folks have time to look at it on the holiday if they have that time free. If not, it’ll be there for you later!
Resources:
Dr. Harper is a great place to start at the resources already mentioned, her website and/or her first book Sistah Vegan.
The newest issue of VegNews is devoted to black veganism in the US.
A wonderful blogging family who are African American vegans raising a fam and keeping folks up to date on tons of vegan foods and resources are: This Infinite Life. Here’s one YouTube video of theirs, introducing their cookbook, to help you find them on their various channels.
PETA info sheet about civil rights activism and vegetarianism.
There are quite a few “vegan soul food” cookbooks out now, but this is the one I own so I’ll point you over here. I also like that the author Bryant Terry adds music playlists for cooking and eating every dish. It’s called Vegan Soul Kitchen. Bryant Terry also wrote the forward to the “Decolonize your Diet” cookbook I linked up above.
Circles of Compassion is a book of essays that came out of the World Peace Diet collective and deals with racism, heterosexism, sexism, and many other issues interacting with speciesism within intersectionality.
This has certainly been a sobering and scary week. Normally I don’t post about politics. I avoid it because I see value in everyone’s opinions most of the time. The problem is, what is happening now isn’t “normal.” I don’t even feel it is particularly partisan anymore and I will detail the reasons below. Take it or leave it, cause here we go.
This week has caused me to contemplate some aspects of the Trump presidency that I engaged with in 2017 and then sort of set aside during the marathon struggle to survive this whole thing. I am enclosing my 2017 essay (once contemplated as an op ed) as a sort of “blast from the past” about the antics of this guy just within his first year of office. It’s imperfect. Maybe even a tad hyperbolic. I gave up on publishing it previously for those reasons. Yet, as I look at this dangerous time we are navigating now, I do think it’s worth a bit of review. Forgive the imperfections and feel free to use them as a springboard to create something better.
In 2017 I was making a case that as rare and powerful as a US President is, DJ Trump is at his core a plain and simple “batterer.” I know, you’re thinking a president couldn’t be. Yet people with these tendencies are often very smart and successful. The myth of the knuckle-dragging cave guy doesn’t serve us here. Nor do excuses about his sanity, intelligence, age, or anything similar. He got to the highest echelons of power by being very, very competent at the tactics he likes to use.
Batterer is shorthand for someone that uses coercive control up to and including physical assault. It is not all about physicality, however. Economic control can be battery. Psychological abuse and put-downs can be battery. Battery is like a jackhammer on someone else’s soul. Violent. Exhausting. Unrelenting.
Hang in there for my thought experiment and see what you think. Like typical batterers, Trump has included as many others of his type within his close circle of enablers. While the victims of batterers are often painted as “enablers” and “codependent,” I would argue that the true enablers are the crew these folks pack around them in an echo-chamber that reinforces their sense of entitlement. It also includes the bystanders who often unintentionally let a batterer pass day by day. Coworkers, family, friends, police, judges, ministers (Attorneys General, Chiefs of Staff)…basically all of us whenever we drop our guards and fall prey to the batterer’s enchantments. Anyhow, I go into the whole kitchen sink of why I formed this opinion of Trump. Yet, I am blogging it now for a different and rather dire reason.
Police with guns drawn watch as protesters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Now that we have legally elected a new President and Trump is being shown the door, we are well within the hurt locker of the most dangerous time victims of coercive control face. This is the time when we leave them. Show them the door. Get our protective orders, family matters, security systems. When we set limits with them that they just don’t like. About 75% of domestic violence murders occur when victims try to leave. Right now, we are leaving President 45. He and his crew of enablers seem to be ready to do just about anything up to and including murdering capitol police to put us back in our places. As police know, showing up at a DV assault is one of their most dangerous calls.
Though the batterer analogy holds true for many aspects of despotism, it doesn’t travel all the way. It takes a bit more sociological (maybe anthropological) analysis to figure out how “leaders of men” can weaponize other people toward their own coercive-controlling goals. Yet it seems pretty clear that Trump and some of his powerful political colleagues have been able to do just that.
These rioters showed up at the congress carrying pipe bombs, assault rifles and zip ties under their MAGA swag. It doesn’t surprise me that the individual batterer Donald J Trump tried to break back into a house he’d just been asked to leave. What’s very worrying is that, as President, he is able to harness despotism and send in swarms of batterers of every flavor. Some are there just to spit, call names and yell. Some are there to break some shit and try to destroy or steal items of sentimental or fiduciary value. Some are there to assault. Some are there to kill.
Let’s be super clear. This wasn’t about flag waving and rhetoric. It wasn’t even about Republicans versus Democrats, though that was happening too. These seditionist thugs built a gallows on the capitol grounds, chanting “Hang Pence!” They were threatening to hang Republican VP Pence and who knows who else, if they could get hands on them. Functioning pipe bombs, assault rifles, and batches of homemade napalm were recovered on their persons and in their vehicles. Active bombs were planted at the DNC and RNC headquarters with equal malice.
These seditionists wanted to end both political parties and simply party with Trump. Heaven only knows how many would be dead if the capital police hadn’t at least slowed them down. One paid with his life and many more cops were badly beaten with crude weapons like metal pipes. Horrible, right? Yet even after this, the offenders were allowed to leave the crime scene unhindered.
Here, the discomfort our culture has with holding batterers accountable rebounds upon all of us. When robed clergy and disabled protesters were zip-tied, often carried out of that same capitol building for peaceful protests during the Trump era, these guys were escorted from the building with no apparent effort made to so much as glance at or document their IDs. What do they learn from this? Keep going. It didn’t help that Trump released a statement telling them, “We love you. You’re very special,” before all the rioters were even cleared from capitol grounds and the congress members liberated. Before the injured were even fully treated. Perhaps even before capitol cop Brian D. Sicknick was even carried forth to later die of his wounds, allegedly from being beaten with a fire extinguisher. Those who were interviewed by brave reporters near the riot expressed clear intent to do just that. Keep going. “This is only the beginning,” some proudly declared.
This CNN footage (and apparently also Bubba) shows a capitol cop posing for numerous selfies with the seditionists who just broke through barriers, smashed windows and doors, and chased one of his colleagues up several flights of stairs to the chambers of the congress where Secret Service were frantically trying to evacuate politicians including VP Pence and House Speaker Pelosi, the two next in command should the President himself be incapacitated. While I grant this may be a de-escalation technique, it is a stark contrast to tactics used against other types of citizen actions in which NO violence was ever hinted at or actually used.
“Go cool off, buddy.” How many more may pay since these offenders were allowed to leave the scene without even being documented…perhaps free to wander back onto the grounds during an event like the upcoming inauguration? With batterers and bystanders, our mercies and forbearances towards them always have unintended consequences for ourselves and/or others.
As I elaborate below, taking away the entitlement of very entitled people makes them feel like they are being attacked. Like a cornered animal they go on offense under the true assumption that it’s defense. As some of the most dangerous batterers say, Trump and his red hats are clearly telegraphing that, “If I can’t have you American Democracy, no one will.”
Oh, look. The capitol police found their zip ties when it came to subduing and arresting disabled protesters holding a peaceful sit-in about Republicans destroying the Affordable Care Act within these same capitol hallways. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPIIn some cases during that ACA sit-in, police helped protesters back into their wheelchairs before forcibly removing them, but others weren’t treated so kindly…. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)…While rioters with MAGA and Trump swag on are helped gently down the stairs to leave, undocumented and un-detained, AFTER all the violence has just taken place. CNN footage.
As I reviewed this old essay and contemplated posting it, I saw this list of Trump’s offenses against our country and us and was somewhat shocked by how much I had already forgotten. Like survivors of battering abuse, we all may lose sight of the forest for the trees. Just surviving has been hard enough. All the minutia of daily oppression and cruelty just fades away into absence. It’s like reading a four year old protective order and thinking, “Shit. I forgot it was that bad.”
It’s that bad.
And, as we pick our way through the very lethal period of attempting to leave him…to place hard boundaries and real accountability onto a creature used to total entitlement, we have to heighten our survival skills. His acts of violence cannot be brushed off or colluded with. They will get worse. His tactics of abuse must be mitigated by the largest coalition of allies that is possible. Coercive control even against one individual victim is complex and difficult to end.
I am not quite sure how we as a country and even as a globe get ourselves out of this. Batterers are smart and adaptive in equal measure to their greed for power. Worse still is the particular factor of despotism in this case. As one Trump seditionist said to the press, “We’ll be back.”
I doubt that removing him from office will be sufficient at this point. Certainly, doing nothing and making this an argument about partisanship will be worse than doing nothing. In my opinion if we were to apply the lessons of the “normal” individual batterer, they should employ the 25th ammendment and/or impeach immediately. Yesterday. It doesn’t matter how well it works. The point is send the message that our society views his behavior as unacceptable. We’re already way behind the eight ball on this as politicians obfuscate and rioters celebrate their victories. I mean, really, people?! Just banning him from twitter ain’t gonna do it.
Leaning on the experience of domestic abuse survivors, however, I would suggest the following: Look for and lean on allies. Survivors can never be left alone to deal with abuse alone. That’s what batterers are counting on. We need coalition-building, truth-telling, and accountability at least attempted through every tool we have at our disposal. Most definitely including laws written especially for the purpose.
Communicate cautiously. Keep your head on the swivel. Brainstorm safety measures one day at a time, in the face of the offender’s equally-evolving tactics. Resist the urge to try and fix/help/excuse him/them. Even when people you respect tell you to try it. Not right now. Too dangerous. Accountability is not divisive. It’s critical. This is the time for accountability and setting limits. Not as one person. As a collective. Give him/them an inch and he/they will take the nation.
Whew! I think I’m out of steam. Just in case you don’t make it through my essay, I will add a bit of encouragement at this point. Those of us who work closely with survivors know the power and strength of resiliency. There is hope there. Especially when we all band together to do what is good instead of what is evil.
There are tools for our future. There are truth and reconciliation processes (especially important for the racism, nationalism and heterosexism aspects of this crisis), peaceful communication models, and innumerable religious resources from a diverse community of good people who are ready, willing, and able to help one another get through this. As Episcopal Bishop Rev. Michael Curry has said, “Love your neighbor,” and “we the people can perfect this union.” Or, as Republican Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse suggests, go out and shovel your neighbor’s driveway. As he said from the Senate floor immediately after the riot, “America can’t do big things if we hate our neighbors.” We can work to mend divisions even as we assure safety and accountability. They are tandem processes, and any false-choice rhetoric is, I would argue, “enabling” of batterers and also nakedly disingenuous.
As a preacher’s kid and an M.Div. myself, I feel I have to drop a little biblical encouragement. Feel free to replace it with something similar that appeals to you, of course, but this is one of my faves and I hope it helps some of you. Philippians Chapter 4 (NRSV):
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
What follows is my 2017 essay. As you look at what Trump accomplished in just the first year in office, it’s truly a wonder we’ve all lasted this long. Especially those who are more targeted by his enablers and himself due to race, religion, income, gender, sexuality, and innumerable other factors. As we enter this very dangerous period dealing with our coercive controller, let’s pay very close attention, follow our intuition, point out as well as lean upon one another’s strengths, and stick together.
John Minchillo | Credit: AP
Controller in Chief (2017)
I have worked at a domestic violence prevention program for several years. In that time, I have heard a lot of experiences. I have shed a few tears, made a lot of plans, and done a lot of analysis on this form of abuse.
Ever since the election of Donald J. Trump and his band of proxies, whom I think of as “Trumpets,” I’ve watched in horror as the United States has turned into what basically amounts to one big, abusive household.
Think about it. We know when our abuser is in bed, eating fast food and watching TV. We monitor his social media and whatever news sources we trust to gauge his moods. We whisper and cringe when he threatens brute force like mass deportations, government shut-downs, or nuclear war.
Trump and some of the Trumpets do have actual allegations of domestic abuse and sexual assault in their pasts. Yet, we don’t need to drag individual women through a debate on their claims. All we need to do is analyze how the administration uses controlling abuse tactics on all of us.
The Controller in Chief gets what he wants because he wants to be the center of our world, and he is. Love him or loathe him, we obsess over him. We must, to feel safe. We read him. We please him. We try in vain to get ahead of him. Still, we aren’t safe. We cannot control him. He’s the Controller in Chief.
Like all good abusers, ours is especially skilled at playing favorites. Those in his good graces scramble to stay there—all too happy to throw some unfortunate rival under the bus. Our squabbling makes us even easier to control. We’re doing his work for him while he pounds milkshakes and concocts fake news awards.
The Controller in Chief can deftly shed accountability. He is called hapless, incompetent, mentally ill, senile and childish in turns as we all tie ourselves in knots, trying to understand what’s wrong and how on earth we can stop it.
As much as I hate to admit it, I have come to believe that Donald J. Trump rose to his powerful position through extreme competence. He is the reigning champ at leveraging interpersonal control.
This stuff isn’t just about women, but women happen to know a lot about it. Violence against women, like battery and sexual assault, isn’t a “women’s issue.” When I do community education about this type of control (we tend to call it coercive control), I tell folks that the “male privilege” component only applies if it applies. Men are definitely victims, of women and very often of other men. Yet, in the case of Donald Trump, male privilege definitely applies. It appears to be at least in the top three of his favorite types of oppression and predation. Therefore, for the purposes of this essay, I am going to discuss his sexism in the context of domestic violence that is perpetrated male over female. It definitely isn’t the only type of coercive controlling violence the Trumpets employ.
Even violence against an individual woman is more than “violence against women.” The abuse affects her kids, her family, her coworkers, etc. And, yes, violence against women goes beyond gender. It clearly hurts both males and females by robbing the culture of contributions by women and girls. It also robs men and boys of healthy, nurturing relationships or full self-expression. Additionally, sexism is inherently connected to homophobia and transphobia. When it’s only okay to be one gender, then no one can express another identity without oppression and risk.
The silencing, harming or killing of women robs our whole culture of the wisdom they might have shared. We could certainly use some experienced advice about dealing with our Controller in Chief.
Hopefully, with the surge of movements like #MeToo, we will get more of this benefit. In the meantime, I feel compelled as a woman, a survivor, and a professional advocate to share what I’ve learned. I’ll approach this by doing what advocates often do when we first begin talking to an abused woman. We go over some common tactics of interpersonal, coercive control. This is our way of showing individual women that they aren’t alone.
Though abusive partners are all individuals, they behave in some common ways. They believe due to cultural messages and personal experience that controlling tactics of domination are the best way to gain power.
Power is what makes them feel safe. They feel entitled to it. They feel victimized if someone hinders them in seeking it. Understanding and unpacking this helps us to figure out how we can respond. I’m thinking our country can use a little of this analysis right now.
I define these tactics as advocates usually do. Below that, I add some examples we have experienced in the past year living with our Controller in Chief. I include both his own acts and those of his proxies. Thanks to him, they are national and even geopolitical to an extent that, though inherent in a patriarchy, may be unprecedented.
Harass and Threaten: Not taking “no” for an answer. Using manipulation, nagging, threatening behaviors to achieve compliance from others. Using privilege (age, race, gender, income, etc.) to force compliance.
Threats to heap “fire and fury” (bombs, including nuclear ones) on nations.
Threats to remove funding for individuals, communities, or nations that are crucial for basic survival essentials like food, water, electricity, medical care (Sanctuary cities, Palestine, etc.).
Threatening to sue women who allege sexual harassment or assault.
Threatening to deport people.
Threats to sue reporters and authors.
Threats to fire people.
Threats to lock people up.
Demands for what amounts to a “loyalty pledge.”
Innumerable acts to harass the Q+ (LGBT) community, including to ban transgender service people from the military.
Intimidation: Very similar to the concepts of coercion and threat, intimidation tends to add some element of physicality. The abuser uses body language, proximity, etc. to enhance the believability of threats. Intimidation may include breaking objects, stalking, abusing pets, moving as if to strike out and then not doing it, etc.
Using body language, physical proximity, looks/acts/gestures to intimidate opponents at a meeting or debate.
Making and/or distributing videos showing violent assaults (real or staged) at a wrestling match or on the street.
Offering to pay the legal fees for followers who might assault a dissenter or the press at a rally.
Inciting proxies to the use of intimidation (like standing in front of polling stations to intimidate voters who are suspected of supporting opponents).
Emotional abuse: Name calling, outing, gossiping, and other behaviors designed to break down the self-esteem of a victim. By destroying self-esteem, an abuser seeks to destroy the sense in a victim that s/he has a right or a reason to resist. Emotional abuse can also enhance isolation when victims are embarrassed to reach out, or community members believe the gossip and shun them. Emotional abuse might include:
Calling names at people who challenge them, such as Crooked Hillary, Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, Empty Barrel, Pocahontas, Little Rocket Man, Nervous Nancy, Sleepy Jo, and on and on.
Insinuating that a woman opponent is menstruating or otherwise “bleeding,” and that women’s blood or bodily functions are in and of themselves a source of shame.
Insulting the appearance of sexual assault victims, suggesting individuals not be victims because they are allegedly undesirable.
Calling someone’s home or community a “shithole.”
Calling all members of an ethnic group “lazy,” “terrorists,” or “rapists.”
Alleging unprovable crimes or scandals against an opponent to malign their reputation (President Obama wasn’t a US citizen, President Obama illegally wiretapped his opponent, Hillary Clinton exposed state secrets, broke campaign donation rules, etc.).
Saying that prisoners of war and military service people killed in action are “losers.”
Isolation: Restricting access to resources and relationships. People are easier to control when they are kept isolated. This can mean physical isolation, like being locked in a room or being kept in a remote area with no access to transportation or a phone. It is hard to push back against the control tactics of an abuser without any help. Lack of feedback from allies can also leave victims of abuse doubting their own thoughts or their own take on reality in the face of an abuser’s constant lying and denying. Abusers want to be the only voice in their victim’s head. In other words, they want to control the narrative. Isolation might be:
Cutting people off from basic needs after a catastrophic storm (especially when they live on an island).
Manipulating or censoring media to limit communication and distort information.
Building walls.
Banning entry to the country of certain people based on race or religion, even if they’ve been living here and had only been traveling abroad.
Ignoring or disabling infrastructure (roads, bridges, mass transportation).
Minimizing, denying and blaming: “Why don’t you have a sense of humor?” “It didn’t happen that way.” “You’re the one who started it!”
These are core tools that controlling people use to avoid accountability. Theoretically, the abusive person doesn’t need to change because nothing is their fault. Through these skills, they can cultivate their persona of helplessness and haplessness. This is often confused with childishness. When the most in control, they seem “out of control.” Their victims often feel the need to caretake them.
With Trump and the Trumpets, this tactic might include their skill at deflecting attention from their abuse tactics at key moments. It includes lying. Abused women sometimes call this tactical lying a “crazy-making” behavior. The lies can be about such finite and ridiculous things, their victims and concerned bystanders are left scratching their heads. What could the motivation be? The answer is—control. This type of lying is a powerful control tactic. It is an act of domination. The abuser is saying that it doesn’t matter how big or how small the issue is—what he says goes. He literally gets to define reality, like a god. It doesn’t matter what reality is. We all have to wait and listen for his take on it before we can make our plans and proceed. Yet again, the controller, through the use of lying, becomes the thermostat in the room.
The term “gas lighting” comes from this type of coercive control. It stems from a Victorian era play that became an Academy Award nominated film by the same name. In the story, a homicidal gold-digger marries a rich heiress, then slowly seeks to drive her crazy so he’ll have an easy story for her sudden tragic death whenever he finally finds the treasure he thinks she’s got hidden somewhere. In the story, messing with the (gas) lights in their Victorian home and then telling her he didn’t touch them is one of his many creepy tactics. Hence, the name. Nothing is too small or insignificant when you are trying to deny your victim’s reality. In fact, the devil is literally in those details.
MGM Films 1944
Minimizing, denying and blaming could also be called deflecting, obfuscating and misdirecting. Personally, I’m not buying that he’s a “very stable genius.” But, if our Controller in Chief has a superpower, skill with these tactics might be it.
Due to their complexity, I felt the need to break the categories up:
Minimizing: Making light of abusive acts. For instance:
Lying in over 2000 documented cases as of January 2018 about matters large and small.
Saying that sanctions against Russia aren’t necessary.
Saying that legislative protections of the Special Prosecutor are also unnecessary.
Saying Russian interference is overblown or may not have happened at all and could instead have been perpetrated by “some 400-pound guy in a bed.”
Saying women who accuse them of sexual assault or harassment are liars and probably only out for a payday.
Saying the storm Maria in Puerto Rico was nothing compared to Katrina in Louisiana.
Calling the members of racist, sexist hate groups “very fine people” and saying their acts of violence are the fault of “both sides/many sides.”
Update: suggesting that to hold Trump in any way accountable for the actions of his followers who attacked the capitol January 2021 would be needlessly unforgiving and divisive.
Denying: Saying something didn’t happen at all. For instance:
I repeat—lying in over 2000 documented cases as of January 2018 about matters large and small.
Calling any journalism that doesn’t serve their purposes “fake.”
Calling the content of the “Billy Bush” tape mere “locker room talk” (a minimization), but later claiming this documentation was faked (a denial).
Denying statements made both on and off camera, such as calling other countries “shitholes” or expressing a repetitive pattern of kissing women without permission.
Blaming: Shifting responsibility for controlling/abusive acts. For instance:
Saying the previous administration caused any problem that is being manifested now (immigration issues, environmental concerns, infrastructure decay, unemployment, etc.).
Issuing vague memos full of innuendo meant to attack the integrity of federal investigators.
Saying that opponents (Democrats) cause shutdowns, refuse to pay the military, refuse to act on DACA or CHIP, etc.
Calling investigations into his/their own possible criminal acts (like money laundering and obstruction of justice) “Witch Hunts.”
Saying (African) American soldiers killed in the line of duty “knew what they were getting into.”
Saying he/they lost the popular election due to illegal voting (mostly by immigrants). (remember, this was 2017 and being said about the 2016 election!)
Using children: The use of children in the Power and Control Wheel specifically refers to the use of vulnerable members of the family as pawns or, I might say, “hostages.” It typically includes threats to harm children, threats to take sole custody of children, or perpetrating direct abuse of children.
Despite this traditional emphasis on custody and parenting, this tactic can still play out in culture wars and in politics by:
Withholding funds for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Withholding legal protections for those formerly covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Using women’s reproductive rights and as a wedge issue in other pieces of legislation, and as a “dog whistle” to rally sexist Trumpets into their base of support.
Update since this was written: Separating refugee children from their parents at the US Border and interning them and/or moving the children into undisclosed placements all over the US (never even seeking to reunify in over 600 cases as of 2020).
Additionally, sterilizing women in these US internment camps without their understanding or consent.
Deporting US immigrant parents while leaving their US born children behind.
Using male privilege: This isn’t simply about a case where the abuser can say, “I’m a man and you’re a woman.” Use of male privilege can be subtler since we all live in what remains a cultural patriarchy. Yet, in the Trump administration, numerous examples of the good ole’ boy form of sexism abound, including:
Calling women who run for office “nasty.”
Shaming women for bodily processes such as menstruation.
calling women out individually based on age, intelligence or appearance to intimidate them into silence/compliance.
Grabbing, kissing, restraining, assaulting, verbally humiliating women and saying that, “when you’re a celebrity they just let you do it.”
Calling out these women in national media if they resist, threatening to sue them, etc.
Cultivating the culture of male privilege by attacking women’s reproductive autonomy.
Creating a dangerous cultural environment for girls and women by encouraging and protecting other sexual harassers and predators.
Exploiting the voices of women and girls who feel convinced or compelled to support patriarchy.
Saying that men who sexually abuse underage girls “just like them (female sex objects) pure.”
Engaging in the trafficking of girls and women for sex (see J Epstein).
Economic abuse: Controlling someone’s decisions and actions by blocking their access to money and other similar resources. Economic abuse typically includes controlling the victim’s ability to pay for housing, food, medicine, transportation, etc. If the victim wants access to these resources, s/he must comply with the abuser’s wishes. Tactics include:
Threats to remove funding for safety-enhancing programs such as police equipment, traffic lights, etc. in sanctuary cities.
Enacting a tax bill that shifts wealth from poor to rich.
Removing health benefits.
Eroding or de-funding “safety net” entities like rural hospitals, substance abuse, sexual/domestic violence programs, TANF, homeless shelters, immigrant resettlement programs, etc.
Removing consumer protections to serve the interests of banks and other corporations.
Firing individuals for not taking a “loyalty pledge,” sometimes days before they qualify for retirement benefits.
Assault: This could include hitting, pushing, restraining, biting, scratching, burning, sexually assaulting, attacks with weapons. Physical and sexual assault often occur when the other roster of tactics are no longer as effective. Remember that these more easily criminalized, less socially-accepted behaviors hold more risk for the abuser. Most, therefore, know that these tactics should be used sparingly. Actual assaults might be comparable to punctuation marks over the course of a running relationship story. They tend to be used only when they are needed to make it clear to victims that the other tactics should be obeyed. They include:
Attacking opponents or encouraging proxies to do so (update: as in the case of the capitol invasion of 2021).
Physical assault, sexual assault, murder (like mowing down counter-protesters at demonstrations).
Deploying unidentified federal “troops” in unmarked cars to arrest, interrogate, sometimes assault citizens engaged in permitted protests.
Update: Tear-gassing peaceful demonstrators in order to dangle a Bible upside down near a church recently vandalized, allegedly by his own proxies.
Missile strikes.
Military or police action (such as urging police, “Please don’t be too nice” when making arrests).
Grabbing women by the genitals.
Pinning women against walls and kissing them without consent.
Groping women’s bodies without consent.
The first time that survivors come into a domestic violence prevention program and talk about these patterns, they are often overwhelmed to see this reflection of what they thought was just their own isolated reality. You may feel that way, too. It’s also normal to get angry. What are we supposed to do?
Just saying “no, stop” to a controlling abuser doesn’t help much. In fact, it often makes things worse as the abuser feels the need to double down. If we had been really listening to the voices of survivors, our culture would already know this.
Loosening the hold of an abuser takes help. It takes support. It takes a society that not only creates but maintains checks and balances to push back against coercion and violence. Resistance is multi-faceted and it’s not a one-time thing.
Perhaps one thing we can do as a culture is listen to the voices of survivors. This has started with #MeToo and Time’s Up. I think we might listen a little bit differently now that we understand that we are in an abusive relationship too. When you pour poison into a stream, it poisons the whole landscape. Controlling abuse does the same thing to a society. We’re all dealing with the Controller in Chief, whether we voted him into office or not.
Listening to survivors may help us understand that we are experiencing a deliberate assault, that we are not alone, and that there are ways to take back at least some control over our lives. With information and teamwork, we can improve both our own lives and the lives of those depending on us. I realize that this type of power and control analysis is not the only thing we need. I do think it’s an important piece of the puzzle, and that this piece is largely missing.
Tired of watching the morning news to see if it’s a good day or a bad one? Are you feeling crazy—questioning your own reality as you’re inundated with multiple conflicting versions of every single event? Been called lazy lately? A criminal? Nasty?
It’s toxic and exhausting, no doubt. At least, you know you aren’t alone. To survive this dangerous and gaslighting relationship with Trump and the Trumpets, we’re going to need a lot less “hail to the Chief” and a lot more “time’s up.”
*Material about power and control is taken from personal and professional experience, as well as The Power and Control Wheel developed by Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs.
For anonymous, confidential help available 24/7, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY) now.
Greetings, fellow humans! This message will also be posted on the website of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Castine (Maine) in due course, but without gaseous history-wonk effusions and additional snarky commentary. Lucky you! By the time you see this it may be August 18, which is the actual hundred year anniversary of the 19th amendment being ratified. Wondering why the heck that should still matter to you when you’ve got cats to feed and bills to pay (and bills to pay due to feeding the cats)? Keep reading.
When we think about the white dresses and festive banners of suffrage, we know how the story turns out. So far, at least. We may tend to skip ahead toward the end. “Those ladies” went out and held some parades, fundraisers and meetings. Some of them went to jail. We’ve no doubt heard a few of them refused to eat when they were incarcerated.
That sounds rough, we may think. But they won in the end (or in 1920 in the US). Well, white women won. Native American women and many immigrant women remained disenfranchised. Native people got the vote in 1925, but states would use little loopholes and technicalities (and overt violence) to keep them from the polls. We’re familiar with hearing this type of experience for African Americans. Even after women allegedly got the franchise in 1920, black women and men risked their lives and those of their families if they tried to exercise their rights to vote. We’ll talk more about that momentarily.
The pageantry possible when the women organizing it are badasses at sewing!
Skipping ahead through the lessons of history is understandable in our world of blazing-speed and multi-tasking, where we are not only tempted but encouraged to drop any habits or curiosities that do not clearly serve our immediate ends. Yet, as Congressman John Lewis recently reminded us in his powerful memorial op-ed in the New York Times, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. When it comes to disenfranchisement and voter suppression, this may never have been truer than it is in the fall of 2020. As he said:
You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time.
When Woodrow Wilson was elected to office in 1913, women and other minorities who were inclined to activism were ready to hit the street. This president was known to be a racist. He supported and helped to disseminate overtly racist propaganda, like the white nationalist film “Birth of a Nation,” which was based on a novel called, “The Clansman.” Among other things, this film passed on the old tropes that black men would sexually assault white women if they were not rigorously controlled by morally superior (civically franchised) white males. Wilson screened this film at the White House. It was, in fact, the first film ever screened at the White House. One example of a president taking advantage of a new and exciting technology to endorse certain opinions more personal than civic.
Some NOT very fine people having a KKK style celebration of the first film ever screened in the White House by President Woodrow Wilson
Women engaged in activism for their own franchise at that time. Then called suffragettes, hundreds held a protest parade against Wilson in March of 1913. It was held the day before his inauguration and widely compared to the 2016 women’s marches. In 1913, the women on the march were assaulted in the streets to the extent that over a hundred of them had to be hospitalized. The secretary of defense had to deploy federal troops to help quell the violence that rose up against them and allow ambulances to get through the violent crowds to even help them. Later and after a congressional hearing on the matter, the police commissioner of Washington DC was forced out over his decisions not to send sufficient police support for the women’s march.
crowds pressing in on the parade, 1913, stopping the lead float from progressing
When women were jailed for protests back at that time, it was not a low impact experience. Lady Constance Bulwer Lytton recorded in her memoirs what it was like to come up against hostile police. On her first march to Parliament, this was her experience:
The crowd pushed me up against a policeman and I said to him, “I know you are only doing your duty and I am doing mine.” His only answer was to seize me with both his hands round the ribs, squeeze the remaining breath out of my body and, lifting me completely into the air, throw me with all his strength. Thanks to the crowd I did not reach the ground; several of my companions in more isolated parts of the square were thrown repeatedly onto the pavement…. A German lady who was tall, well-built and of considerable strength managed to keep near me. Three times, after each of the “throws,” she came to my hep and warded off the crowd while I leant up against some railings, or against her shoulder to recover my breath. Several times I said to her, “I can’t go on; I simply can’t go on.” She answered, “Wait for a little, you will be all right presently.” At the time and ever since I have felt most inexpressibly grateful to this stranger-friend.
Lady Constance and pal (I’ve noted before that Constance was a dedicated vegetarian also)
This type of treatment was recorded by many women on both sides of the pond. Of course, once Constance and her peers made it to the parliament, many were arrested and incarcerated. The treatment didn’t get any better there. Two of the most notorious prisons where these women activists ended up were the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, U.S. and the Holloway Women’s Prison in London, U.K. (where Constance wound up many times). Once in jail they were deliberately (not surprisingly) treated with optimal lack of dignity. At the worst prisons some were stripped, chained naked to cell doors, and sometimes sexually assaulted. This happened in November of 1917 at Occoquan in VA with such brutality that historians still term it a “night of terror,” with women being stripped and chained to the cells, and one being beaten to the point of a heart attack.
They didn’t do their activism, as the media at the time tried to portray, because they were narcissistic attention-seekers or bored housewives who’d been “allowed” too much time on their hands. They did it because they knew they, their children and grandchildren would never have full rights to safety and freedom (or at least a chance at them) without the massive privileges that came with a ballot.
one of the ambulances at the 1913 parade, completely unable to move until Feds sent the literal cavalry to help
This is not to say that our activist ancestors always got things right. At the same 1913 march where the police let Wilson supporters in town for the inauguration wreak havoc on the women activists, internal strife was doing damage of its own. Black women activists from groups like the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) were being turned away from the march by white organizers. The NACW was formed in 1896 to advocate for the franchise as a way that black women and men could work against inequalities of all kinds (especially lynching, which was rampant at the time the group was founded and was more of a threat than ever with Wilson screening that horrible film and endorsing the clan). The women’s club motto was “lifting as we climb,” and they sought the women’s vote to improve the lives of women as well as men in their communities.
Due to pressures put to bear by white women from the segregated south, the women’s march organizers colluded with oppression. Now a’days we call that “horizontal hostility,” where minorities put in the position of scrapping for crumbs end up in conflict with each other rather than the ones pulling the strings. Anyway, noted African American suffragist Ida B Wells did manage to march with the white delegation from Illinois as a form of protest, but she was the exception that proved the rule. Similar things were happening in the UK as British women tried to sell ladies from Australia, India, and other “colonies” on sitting in the back seat and waiting for a turn.
NACW CLUB OF BUFFALO, NEW YORK, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
None of these women’s activism was not easy or safe. Mostly, as the activists pointed out, because women couldn’t vote. Without full citizenship, they lacked basic protections. They pointed out what we all too often forget in this day and age, where voting is so much of a privilege that it has become little more than a hassle. They pointed out that those with the franchise make all social decisions about rights and burdens around issues of healthcare, child care, education, abuse, indigency, reproductive choices (or lack thereof), and literal freedom (whether people may be enslaved or held in poor house prisons, or made to work off debts as indentured servants, for example). The first time any women were registered to vote in Massachusetts, for example, was in order to vote on school board committees. After several failed attempts they won this limited franchise in 1879. At this same time in the American South, openly violent white nationalist groups like the KKK and “red shirts” were terrorizing black citizens who dared to take advantage of the waning opportunities that came after the Civil War.
Particularly, white southerners used violence and intimidation to keep black citizens away from voter registration and the polls. It was official in 1896 when the Supreme Court decision Plessy vs. Ferguson gave Southern states room to modify their constitutions and create fully legal segregation. Hence came the era of Jim Crow, with stunts like “guess the number of jellybeans in this jar” in order to register to vote (but only if you’re African American). Activists like young John Lewis were beaten and humiliated for their peaceful sit-ins and marches, culminating in the infamous “Bloody Sunday” where police gassed and beat Lewis and other participants in a march across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama. Particularly infamous was the beating of female activist Amelia Boynton, due to the abject brutality the police unleashed on her. Reminiscent of the personal accounts of Lady Lytton, Amelia later recounted her experiences on Bloody Sunday:
Then they charged. They came from the right. They came from the left. One [of the troopers] shouted: ‘Run!’ I thought, ‘Why should I be running?’ Then an officer on horseback hit me across the back of the shoulders and, for a second time, on the back of the neck. I lost consciousness.
Amelia Boynton about Bloody Sunday in Selma, 1965
Lewis and Boynton holding President Obama’s hands at the 2013 Pettus Bridge commemoration (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson) This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Lewis, Boynton, and their brave peers won a major victory in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. This outlawed discriminatory voting practices like those of the Jim Crow south. Unfortunately, in 2013, the teeth were pulled out of this law. A key formula in the language was removed by a slight Supreme Court majority (5 to 4) that meant states no longer need to seek federal permission to tinker with their voting anti-discrimination laws (a guardrail known as “preclearance”). As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg warned in her typically accurate and acerbic dissent,
“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg 2013
Okay, she’s awesome.
Ever since activists around universal franchise (making sure everyone can vote with equal ease of access) have warned us that states have been up to mischief. Purging the voter rolls of people who haven’t voted recently, moving polling places without notifying citizens, throwing out ballots due to many subtle technicalities, and so on have snowballed over the past seven years. One of the high-profile activists fighting for universal franchise in the news of recent months has been Stacy Abrams. Abrams ran to be Governor of Georgia in 2018. She lost to her opponent, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who happened to be the one setting a lot of rules about voter accessibility and the validity of ballots. Accusations of corruption by Kemp were rife, and not for the first time in his career. Yet whether we agree with those allegations or not, Stacy Abrams’ campaign had a wonderful speech in it that can be applied to the importance of the universal franchise. This speech wasn’t done by Kemp herself. It was done by Oprah!
Oprah harkened back to the times experienced by young John Lewis (and generations of both their ancestors before), when she urged us all to the polls. At a televised “town hall” event in November 2018, she said:
I didn`t take voters voting seriously until around my mid-twenties. Around my mid-twenties, I had the privilege of hearing Reverend Otis Moss Jr. who`s a preacher. You all know him, preacher, preacher in Cleveland, Ohio. And I heard him tell the story of his father, of Otis Moss Sr. who right here in Georgia`s True County got up in the morning and put on his only suit and his best tie and he walked six miles to the voting poll location he was told to go to in LaGrange. And when he got there after walking six miles in his good suit and tie, they said boy, you`re at the wrong place. You need to go over to Mountville. So he walked another six miles to Mountville. And when he got there they said, boy you`re at the wrong place. You need to go to the Rosemont School. And I picture him walking from dawn to dusk in his suit, his feet tired getting to the Rosemont School and they say boy you`re too late. The polls are closed, and he never had a chance to vote. By the time the next election came around, he had died. So when I go to the polls and I cast my ballot, I cast it for a man I never knew. I cast it for Otis Moss Sr. who walked 18 miles one day just for the chance to vote. And when I go into the polls, I cast the vote for my grandmother Hattie Mae Lee who died in 1963 before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and never had a chance to vote. I vote for her. And when I stand in the polls, I do what Maya Angelou says I come as one, but I stand as 10,000, all those who paved the way that we might have the right to vote. And for anybody here who has an ancestor who didn`t have the right to vote and you are choosing not to vote wherever you are in this state in this country, you are dishonoring your family. We are disrespecting and disregarding their legacy, their suffering, and their dreams when you don`t vote. So honor your legacy. Honor your right to citizenship in this which is the greatest country in the world, the greatest country in the world. And the right to vote is like the crown we all get to wear.
I would lovingly urge all of us to honor an ancestor when we take the time and make the effort to make sure we cast a ballot. Base line, all of us who have female ancestors, and I think that’s pretty common, have such ones to honor. Many never saw their own chance, but they endured great suffering and hardship to win that chance for us. They knew what we have all too often forgotten.
A ballot is bread. A ballot is a roof over your head. A ballot is laws to protect you when the police are called, either by you or on you. A ballot is an education for your children and grandchildren (an education equal to those with greater opportunity). A ballot is dignified care for our elders and for yourself in times of illness, disability, and later years. A ballot is your freedom of speech, and freedom of reproductive choice. The rights that our forebears fought for so hard are not cast in iron and impervious to harm. As the Voter Rights Act shows, they can be eroded in a heartbeat and eventually perhaps destroyed completely.
A ballot cast by you is also all of those things cast by you on behalf of your friends and neighbors. Those who fought for the ballot knew all too well what it is worth. Would they ever have dreamed how quickly many of us forgot? What else can we do? Even if we don’t have the time or proclivity toward “activism,” there are things. Now is the time to urge friends and neighbors to apply for absentee ballots. Simple letting your own community know you plan to vote and talking about the positive reasons for this civic decision, makes an impact. If you go to the ballot in person, perhaps take one person in your circle who needs a ride.
Those who fought for the vote knew its value and wouldn’t want us to forget. I’ll let one of them say that in her own words. This is from Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900-1904 and 1915-1920.
“The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guarantee of your liberty. That vote of yours has cost millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. Money to carry on this work has been given usually as a sacrifice, and thousands of women have gone without things they wanted and could have had in order that they might help get the vote for you. Women have suffered agony of soul which you can never comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it! The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Understand what it means and what it can do for your country. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully.”
Carrie Chapman Catt
“Oprah Winfrey Campaigns for Stacey Abrams, TRANSCRIPT: 11/1/2018, All In w Chris Hayes.” MSNBC, NBCUniversal News Group, 1 Nov. 2018, www.msnbc.com/transcripts/all-in/2018-11-01.
“A vampire is a good woman with a bad reputation, or rather a good woman who has had possibilities and wasted them” — Florenz Ziegfeld
The silent movie credited with the “vamp” connection. Really, it was much older.
My vamp(ire) novel, “Revenant: Blood Justice,” is prowling the earth! Check the horror page on this site or my Facebook author page for purchase info and for regular updates on all my different types of work. I’m pretty eclectic, so keep checking and you might find something you like.
To celebrate Revenant, I thought I would post about the vamp in history.
The female vampire as an unnatural, predatory monster was a trope developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She represented the fears of a patriarchal culture (inhabited by both men and women) who believed the “new woman” was a very real threat to the very fiber of virtuous and well-functioning society. This vamp clawed her way into the mass consciousness in the years before all women in the US and UK got the vote. At this key point of culture change, it is no wonder that the women behind it were figuratively (and sometimes literally) equated with monsters.
The first reference to this type of vamp is in the 1897 poem, “The Vampire,” by Rudyard Kipling. Suffice to say, old Rudy had some issues. He never used the word vampire except in the title. But his portrayal of what moderns might think of as a “gold-digger” used the imagery of a soul-sucking, insatiable monster to great effect. One example as he commiserates with similarly victimized men is:
The fool was stripped to his foolish hide
(Even as you and I !)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside
(But it isn’t on record the lady tried) So some of him lived but the most of him died
(Even as you and I !)
Here she is—the uncaring beast (not like a man in intellect or morality) who will suck you dry if you give her an invitation. His readers carried on developing the vampire metaphor. When silent screen siren Theda Bara starred in the film, “A Fool there Was,” based on Rudy’s poem, the full-on vamp was born. Well, perhaps re-born. My current page image is a still photo from publicity for that film. The rapacious vamp will use her man until there is nothing left but brittle bone.
Theda Bara publicity shot.
Kipling’s tale of woe about a woman daring to have a relationship on her own terms became a type of anthem for the insecure patriarchs who were so distressed to see their privilege being gnawed away at by these rapacious jazz-age feminists and their sharp little teeth. By the era of the “flapper” women were going to college, working, gaining access to birth control, making nontraditional sexual choices, and about to get the vote. No wonder the vamp sprang out of the culture’s closet, right then. But, we’ll get to the “out of the closet” part, later. Right now, we’re still on hetero-normative.
There are lots of colorful terms for the young women of the generation in question. Molls, flappers, and vamps are some of the most colorful. While rebellious girls embraced all of these labels to a certain extent, they also had real social consequences – sometimes being used to give them a bad reputation that held these women back from attaining goals in education, work, or even domesticity (being accepted into a “good family”). The vamp was a particularly dangerous archetype to have hung around your neck, in those days.
Jetta Goudal vamping it up
Vamps were meant to be predatory, insatiable women who could not be trusted with men’s virtue, or even their physical health. Certainly, they weren’t wife and mother material. The predatory nature of vamps was two-pronged.
The vamp was a gold-digger and home-wrecker who ruined good men. Conversely, she was an unnatural, deviant type of female, who might prey upon and destroy otherwise innocent and virtuous young girls. In this way, the vamp as a tool of patriarchy was deployed to attack the many feminist leaders who, whether due to actual sexual identity or simple practicality, eschewed traditional marriage and created various sorts of partnerships with one another (other women).
We’ll start with the first one, since she’s the most commonly referenced. This is the hetero-normative vamp, who in modern times is actually admired. In a way, she has been harnessed by our current generational brand of patriarchy. She is sassy, sensuous, and doesn’t mind making herself a sexual object while she’s at it. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, right? This neutralizes her threat. Marilyn Monroe is a slightly retro but still valid version. Also Anna Nicole Smith. Their common, tragic ending suggests that this patriarchy-endorsed version of vamp may not be as enviable as she first appears.
1929: Louise Brooks in The Canary Murder Case.
One prominent example of the vintage vamp that remains to us comes from a 1919 article in a New York magazine called, “The Evening World.” In their March 27 edition, they praise the moral endeavors of a judge in Newark, NJ to combat the monstrous vamp. They report that this magistrate
“…has appealed to the Director of Public Safety for the creation of a ‘Vampire’s Gallery.’ By stern public posting of naughty eyes that will not behave, of hair that is too golden, of cheeks that are too pink, the Magistrate hopes to rid his town of the flirtie girlies and make that part of the world safe for domesticity.”
Personally, I’m trying to picture the wall of shame that local girls were presumably posted to if they looked too attractive to this dink and his friends. Were the pics at the post office next to mug shots of bank robbers and pedophiles? Or were those types of ne’er-do-wells not yet deemed a public safety issue? I’m also wondering if the photos were entirely punitive, or if they actually had a pre-Craigslist vibe. It’s super-creepy, in either case.
This Jersey magistrate (apparently quite a player, given his tons of insight) describes vampires as women who bleach their hair, wear lots of make-up, and go out on dates while using false names.
Not to be outdone, the author of the article doubles down when she (yes, she—remember the patriarchy always exploits the voices of its female adherents) suggests that the judge has only touched upon “the crudest exponent of the ancient art of [female] preying.” Using the queens in a deck of playing cards as a structure, she describes the really dangerous vamps and their vile motivations. Apparently:
The heart vamp works for love
The diamond vamp works for riches
The spade vamp works for success
The club vamp works for revenge
You can see in the illustration to the article that the vamp is a flapper, holding a tiny man the way King Kong held his lady, strewing playing cards in the wake of her serpentine tail.
What say you? These women dared to try and attain their own goals in relation to financial security, professional success, emotional fulfillment and basic self-defense? Witchcraft! Necromancy! Someone get the holy water and stake their uppity asses back into the dirt where they belong!
By referencing the magistrate and making the vamp a “public safety issue,” this article is very clear about the reasons folks comfortable in the patriarchal, base-line culture saw certain women as literally dangerous.
But what about the girl-on-girl vamp? Interestingly, she seems to have reawakened in the hallowed halls of the Academy—no doubt due to extreme patriarchal angst over women achieving educational goals and the advancements that came with them. These women were seen as literally monstrous in large part because they were seeking achievements that were not dependent on domestic deference to a man (father, brother, husband, or son).
Since virtually all female secondary education was held in sex-segregated (all girl) environments, the whole situation left an open invitation to equate their lifestyles directly with what we now call lesbianism. But in that time, they were referencing the most twisted and inauthentic stereotypes of women loving women—framing it as deviance, mental illness, and outright metaphysical evil. But, they weren’t entirely working from fiction. They were also lashing out against a very real phenomenon at work in the feminism of the times. I mean the phenomenon of female partnerships.
Women building lives with other women during the era of suffrage (roughly 1848 to 1928 in the US and UK) is a phenomenon dealt with extensively by author Lillian Faderman. She takes great care to note that there was a broad spectrum of relationship types. Some were totally “safety in numbers,” utilitarian types of partnerships. Some were the emotionally fulfilling “romantic friendships,” or “sisterhoods,” which were not sexual. And some were exactly what we would think of when we reference lesbian relationships today—up to and including a full partnership sharing resources, maybe raising kids, and generally having an emotional and sexual union. But, as with any marginalized group, they “all looked the same” to the mainstream culture and its masters.
Here are a few examples of the literary, lesbian-feminist vamp. One of the most classic examples is the 1915 book, “Regiment of Women,” written by Englishwoman Winifred Ashton under the pen-name of Clemence Dane. Note the militarized language which parallels the militant suffrage movement in Britain during this time.
In “Regiment of Women,” the predatory female teacher at the girls’ school is named Clare Hartill (heart-ill). She chews up and spits out the innocent girls in her charge, in every possible way. The writing is very sexually charged, and the vampirism is on an emotional (if not sexual) level more than a sanguinary one.
Another English novel in a similar vein (pardon, I couldn’t resist) is “White Ladies,” written in 1935 by Francis Brett Young. By this time the Brits had full suffrage, but the social unease is still apparent. Perhaps what women were doing with their newly legislated independence was freaking Francis out.
In this novel, the girls at the school are fed upon on a sanguinary level (their blood is actually consumed) by their evil teacher, Miss Cash. Note the connotation that a “career girl” like Miss Cash (who earns her own money) is necessarily suspect.
Not all the lesbian vampires were teachers. In Dorothy Sayers’ 1927 story, “Unnatural Death,” the villain is a predatory nurse. And not all these ladies are subtle. In Dorothy Baker’s “Trio” (1943), the vampire teacher drugs and imprisons her hapless female students.
You see how this goes. Women stepping out of the domestic, maternal zone are selfish, unnatural, over-sexed, greedy, and literally monsters. Parents have to guard their naive female children, lest they fall under the dreaded feminist thrall.
It seems, however, that all these monster tropes have a sociological arc. What begins as a cautionary tale becomes kind of exciting, and then down-right cool. Then, under the right cultural circumstances, it may swing back toward the cautionary again.
Note how the vampire resurrected as a desirable icon of powerful and charismatic personality. These creatures are often even portrayed as heroes. The LGBTQ vampire, for example, became admirable as a sexual and cultural outsider.
cavorting girl-on-girl vamps from The Vampire Lovers (1970)
In every case, the vamp shows us the ways in which classic horror creatures reflect human struggles and human nature. Like any good horror protagonist, we can only hope to survive by being adaptive learners. Good luck out there!
