Watching the Federalist Society welcome Brett Kavanaugh while Christine Blasey Ford’s family is hiding out from death threats, I was once again struck by how much depends on refusing to hear women. Survivors are excoriated when they don’t come forward right away, but when she did come forward, a room full of politicians — including some other women — did their best to silence her.
How did Larry Nasser get away with sexually abusing girls for decades? The popular narrative suggests that it ended when the victims “broke their silence.” They were far from silent. They weren’t heard:
It has by the fall of 2018 become commonplace to describe the 499 known victims of Larry Nassar as “breaking their silence,” though in fact they were never, as a group, particularly silent. Over the course of at least 20 years of consistent abuse, women and girls reported to every proximate authority. They told their parents. They told gymnastics coaches, running coaches, softball coaches. They told Michigan State University police and Meridian Township police. They told physicians and psychologists. They told university administrators. They told, repeatedly, USA Gymnastics. They told one another. Athletes were interviewed, reports were written up, charges recommended. The story of Larry Nassar is not a story of silence. The story of Larry Nassar is that of an edifice of trust so resilient, so impermeable to common sense, that it endured for decades against the allegations of so many women.
Similarly, not one but two female track coaches warned the school about Ian David Long. But even after he sexually assaulted one of them, the danger was treated with a shrug. Long went on to shoot 12 people at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California.
Canadian Indigenous women are being ignored — even by an inquiry set up to investigate the epidemic of violence against them.
I don’t know how much louder we’ll have to get.
As always, this diary is a group effort. Thanks to Clio2, officebss, BMScott, thurayya, Crimson Quillfeather, shadowbot1, and the WOW crew for links and discussion. If you haven’t seen it, our own Besame described her harrowing escape from the Camp Fire. She’s safe, along with family members and pets.
Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly from this week.
Reproductive Rights:
The Ohio legislature just passed a bill to ban abortions after 6 weeks— often before women even know they’re pregnant.
Abused for years by her stepfather, Imelda Cortez didn't know she was pregnant, gave birth in a latrine, and is now jailed 20 years for attempted murder. But women in El Salvador are fighting back against a draconian law.
The day after the election, our current administration quietly gutted contraceptive coverage with “religious exemptions” for employers. Corporations don’t have a religion.
New director of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen, warns of a “State of emergency” for women’s health.
Wales offers free abortions to residents of Northern Ireland.
UK funding contraceptive access in the developing world.
43 pregnant women arrested for role in commercial surrogate-parenthood operation (Cambodia), while Australian organizer freed.
Violence and Harassment:
Irish women protest the use of a teen’s “lacy thong” as evidence to acquit the man accused of raping her.
"Honor killing" in Syria: a man summarily executed his own sister -- while making sure to get clear video. As a member of the Free Syrian Army, the culprit may escape punishment altogether.
Even before the war began in 2011, women’s rights groups in Syria estimated that 300 women were killed each year by male relatives, and numbers have escalated during the crisis. Until 2009, killers were allowed to walk free if they justified the act as motivated by honour. The government repealed the law, replacing it with a mere two-year maximum sentence.
A Liberal Democrat peer has been suspended from the House of Lords for almost four years after a committee found he tried to pressure a woman into having sex with him by promising to make her a baroness, threatening repercussions if she refused.
Indonesian teacher jailed for “spreading indecent material” after she documented sexual harassment.
Workplace issues:
Australian men earn 23.1% more than women colleagues.
A small town in Germany gets its first woman Mayor.
In the US, some women — particularly women of color - still lose pregnancies due to workplace conditions.
Education:
Lack of investment in education severely impacts girls in Pakistan.
At Rowman University, the Women’s Cross Country Team was told they were “distracting” the football team by running in sports bras. The women fought back.
World Bank pulls loan to Tanzania over policy of denying education to pregnant girls. Some schools have even imposed compulsory pregnancy tests. (Homophobia is another issue.)
The new rules proposed by Betsy DeVos’s office for dealing with sexual harassment and assault seem designed to make sure that both happen with as little consequence as possible. Among other things, schools would only be required to investigate the most extreme cases (If conduct “limits” but does not “deny” the victim’s chance to get an education, the school can give it a pass.) Students would have to report to very specific individuals in the school administration, and the standard of proof could be higher than the “preponderance of evidence” that’s usual for any civil case.
Good News And Action Items:
National Book Awards: Sigrid Nunez wins the Fiction Prize. The young people’s literature category winner was The Poet X by the poet and author Elizabeth Acevedo. A novel in verse, it tells the story of a young Afro-Latina girl in Harlem who turns to slam poetry to make sense of the world around her.
There is another critical runoff election that has been getting zero attention. Gwen Collins-Greenup, a young Democratic African-American woman, outdid 7 other much better known and well funded candidates to get in the runoff for Louisiana Secretary of State. She did this with $2600. She finally got an ActBlue account. I know she needs funds, and Postcard Patriots has 3000 Louisiana addresses for volunteers to write.