Ways Not To Strike Up A Conversation With A Woman
Dear Men-Who-Want-To-Talk-To-Women-But-Don’t-Know-How,
You’re interested in having a conversation with a woman, or at least that’s the impression I get from the way you yell and holler at me. (For the sake of this post, let’s pretend that I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt; let’s pretend that you’re not just catcalling and hollering as an act of aggression intended to establish your dominance over the women you’re harassing.) If you are in fact interested in having a conversation with a heretofore unknown woman without making her feel like a sex object rather than a human being with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, here are some tips on what not to do.
DO NOT:
Come up to a woman and say, “I’ll give you a ride for free, because you’re Asian.” [Man in question is a limo driver] When she says, “No, thanks, I’ll take the bus,” and walks away, follow her down the street and harass her with supposedly flattering comments about her hair, her dress, her ethnicity and repeated requests to get into your vehicle.
WHY NOT: It makes you annoying, because you didn’t leave her alone when she expressed disinterest. It makes you a disgusting, racist fetishist, because you’ve explicitly said that you’re interested on account of her race, and presumably whatever assumptions you’re making about it. It makes you creepy, because you won’t leave her alone and physically followed her. It makes you even creepier and potentially dangerous, because you won’t leave her alone and are intent on getting her into a vehicle that you are in control of.
Open with comments on the woman’s race or appearance, such as, “Hi, are you Chinese?” or, “Hi, gorgeous.”
WHY NOT: It implies that you are a creepy, racist Asian fetishist. It implies that all you see about her is her race. It reduces her down to her race, and there’s a probability of 1 that she’s heard the question before and is tired of complete strangers playing 20 Questions with her race and identity. Furthermore, even flattering comments about her appearance are problematic, because they’re nearly always implicitly sexist and support the assumptions that women are supposed to be decorative and attractive, and that they’re doing it for the observers, not for themselves. Their appearance is not for your evaluation.
Mutter, “Hey, sweetheart!” under your breath as you’re walking past a woman on the sidewalk.
WHY NOT: If you actually want to talk to her, muttering at her while you walk past and away is a bad strategy. It says, “I’m not really interested in talking to you, I just feel entitled to comment on you/your body in passing, as if you were an animal at the 4-H fair.” It also says, “I’m commenting on you–not to you, but on you–with no prior interaction, so the only thing I have to consider is your appearance, and I’m judging it, as if your appearance is for my sake, not yours.”
Call, “Hi,” at a woman in front of you as she’s walking through a subway station. Call, “Hi,” again after she ignores you. Call, “Can you hear me?” after she ignores you again.
WHY NOT: Calling at random people in the crowd is not a winning technique. Would you stop in the middle of your commute for some random person yelling at you, whom you’d never met before, who couldn’t be arsed to say, “Excuse me,” or come up to you or even enter your field of vision? Expecting her to stop, turn around, locate you, and engage in conversation with you after you’ve tried to call her to heel like an off-leash dog is sheer entitlement: a feeling of entitlement to her time and to her attention. It’s flat out rude, as well as stupid.
If you do want to have a conversation with a female stranger–I said, “have a conversation,” mind, not, “chat her up and hit on her”–and don’t want to come off as a sexist creep, here are some suggestions:
DO make sure you’re not bothering her. If she’s using her phone; listening to music; reading a book; looking at the bus map; or otherwise engaged, don’t interrupt her. Would you want to be interrupted by a complete stranger? No, not everyone minds it, but it’s better to err on the side of not being an ass. Bear in mind that some of these things are defensive techniques that some women have adopted specifically to keep asses away–”If I look busy/have headphones in/am buried in a book, maybe he’ll leave me the fuck alone.”
DO pay attention to her reactions. If she answers with monosyllabic words, keeps her attention focused on her book, doesn’t try to carry any of the conversation, or pointedly tells you that she’s married and waiting for her spouse (whether or not she’s got a ring on), politely end with something like, “It was nice to meet you,” or, “have a nice day,” and leave off.
DO introduce yourself or say, “Excuse me,” or find something relevant to say. For example, I was once holding a sack of pears at the farmers’ market, and a man asked if I’d tried the apples at his stand, and we had a conversation about stall fees at the various markets in SF. It was an interesting topic, and although I’d initially gotten weird vibes from him, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he wanted to have an actual conversation.
Of course, then he ruined it by saying, “Actually, I only wanted to talk to you because you look so pretty.” In other words, he wasn’t actually interested in having a conversation with me about farmers’ markets–he was interested in getting my attention because he thought I had a hot bod, and for some reason, he thought I’d like to know that. Way to make me feel reduced to a sex object.
Actually, that’s been my experience multiple times in the past. For the guys who whine that they can’t have an innocent conversation with women because women will assume that they have ulterior motives, all I have to say is this: stop having ulterior motives. No guy who’s actually been interested in having an innocuous conversation with me has given me the creep vibes. We’ve had innocuous conversations that passed the time on the bus or in a coffee line. The only guys I get the annoying creep vibes from are the ones who inevitably indicate, whether by verbal or physical gesture, that it’s not a friendly conversation they’re after.
Sincerely,
PD
I Write Letters: $700Bn Bailout Proposal
Dear Representative Pelosi,
I am writing regarding the proposed bailout for the financial industry. According to the AP newswire, Congressional Democrats and Republicans have agreed to a $700Bn bailout. While I understand that the financial crisis is pressing and immediate action is necessary to prevent a total collapse of the economy, I am concerned about the terms of the bailout. This is a golden opportunity to win concessions on regulating the financial industry and setting terms that would create a more stable economy with a more equitable distribution of wealth that would benefit everyone overall and not just the top fraction of society. I am concerned that in the haste to throw money at the problem and appear decisive, Democrats will not press as hard as they should to set regulatory oversight and terms on the bailout. In the short run, $700Bn might solve the banks’ immediate problems. However, regulatory oversight and farsighted terms and conditions on the bailout would solve the immediate problems and set the groundwork for preventing future crises.
I support Senator Clinton’s proposals, which serve both the poor citizen facing foreclosure as well as the CEO floating to safety on a golden parachute, and I ask that you do the same.
* Secure toxic mortgage securities and create an entity modeled after the successful Depression-era Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) or the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) created after the Savings and Loan crisis. This would help homeowners keep their homes and avoid foreclosure, and create stability in the market.
* Place a temporary moratorium on the most abusive stock transactions, many of which involve the “short-selling” of stocks. It would provide breathing room for the markets to recover, for investors to make accurate assessments of companies and for regulators to assess what trading practices should be permanently banned.
* Convene an emergency economic summit to show the American people their government is working together. Bringing together leaders in the administration and Congress with lenders, consumer advocates, non profits, financial institutions, and all stakeholders will allow a coordinated response to the crisis.
* Aggressively pursue and encourage mortgage modifications that would encourage lenders to voluntarily work with borrowers to keep them current on payments and in their homes. This measure would protect citizens in the long run by helping them maintain a stable roof over their heads.
* Restore competent federal oversight of the increasingly complicated financial markets. The rapid evolution of the securities and banking industry overwhelmed the current regulatory framework, resulting in a “shadow banking system” that operates outside of oversight and without accountability.
* Require transparency and accountability on executive pay. Senator Clinton has proposed the Corporate Executive Compensation Accountability and Transparency Act to impose new transparency rules on executive pay, end the accounting techniques that hide compensation, and provide shareholders a say in executive compensation packages.
* Ensure the accountability of financial institutions borrowing money from the Federal Reserve’s new lending facilities. Taxpayers deserve to know that the companies they are bailing out are on the road to recovery and aren’t throwing more good money after bad.
$700Bn is a great deal of taxpayer money, approximately as much as the cost of the Iraq war. It behooves you to ensure that it is a wise investment, one that will benefit poor, lower class, middle class, and upper class citizens as much as CEOs, and lay the groundwork for a stable economy that, while not as prone to extraordinary heights, compensates by avoiding extraordinary lows that create crushing debts and weigh most heavily on the poor, lower-, and middle- class citizens.
The wealthy will always be able to take care of themselves; such is the power of money. Your duty as a Representative is to look after the people who are less protected and ensure that they, too, benefit from a bailout plan that would create a stable economy and restore economic security for everyone, not just the top tier of society. I ask you to support a bailout plan only if it is based on economic analysis that is transparent and available to everyone to examine, and transparency and regulatory oversight. Solving the financial crisis is important, but providing money without setting conditions to address the systemic causes of the crisis will only allow the cycle to recur in the future.
As Speaker of the House, you hold unique power to lead the House Democrats in a strong stand for setting conditions on the bailout. Please do not cave into the Republicans cries of “partisanship!” as if partisanship were a flaw rather than a feature. It is imperative that the Democrats stand firm on this issue and advocate for a solution that would protect the poorest citizens as well as the wealthy.
Sincerely,
Pizza Diavola
SF, CA [zip code]
Sent to Pelosi, Boxer, and Feinstein (with appropriate edits). Feel free to take, copy, and edit.
If you are in California’s 8th District and one of Pelosi’s constituents, you can contact her here via email. If you are not one of her constituents but would like to email her anyway to show broad-based support for a transparent bailout plan with regulatory oversight and conditions that will reform the banking industry, you can contact her here in her capacity as Speaker of the House. The number for her D.C. office is (202) 225-0100.
I don’t pretend to understand all the details of the bailout and everything, but I understand a few things:
- Throwing money at a situation without any strings attached might solve the immediate crisis – or it might not, considering that a lack of regulation was a large factor in what got us here.
- Regardless, the bailout is the immediate issue at hand, but it didn’t happen overnight. In order to prevent this situation from recurring, we need to address the root causes of the situation. Throwing money at the financial services industry without setting conditions for how that money will be used is not going to address the systemic causes of the collapse.
- CEOs will always be able to take care of themselves. That’s the nice thing about being obscenely rich. People that are less well off, people that are being foreclosed on, people that are seeing their savings and investments vanish into thin are, will not, and those are the people that the bailout needs to provide for.
- The financial services industry and the government officials that they’ve bought are desperate. Nail them to the table because now is the prime time to get concessions out of them that will provide for a stable, regulated economy in the long run.
- A stable, well-regulated economy will probably not provide dizzying heights of wealth. However, those dizzying heights have only ever benefited the teeny, tiny percentage of the very wealthiest people, while everyone else suffers from an unregulated economy where they’re not protected. The bailout proposal needs to balance the concern for growing the economy and making sure that the benefits of that growth accrue to everyone, not just the top 0.0001% of society.
Call and write your senators and representatives, as well as Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Biden, and McCain, and tell them that you want a transparent proposal with oversight and conditions that will protect homeowners and non-wealthy citizens and address the systemic causes of the financial crisis as well as the immediate situation.
Bias, Media, and McCain 1
Dear Financial Times,
While your recent headline is a description of Senator McCain’s speech, and therefore might not be representative of your views on his speech and candidacy, it remains misleading:
By headlining your article with “McCain puts faith in sober experience,” you lend credibility to the idea that McCain has experience and that it’s worth something. I’ll grant you that he’s held state office since 1983 and does have experience working in the House and Senate, but to imply that his experience is “sober” and that it’s something that he, or you, or any voter should put “faith” in is highly misleading, primarily because his performance in the past few years consists of rejecting his former principles and stances.
For instance, in February the Senate voted 51-45 to ban waterboarding and torture by the CIA. McCain, despite previously opposing torture, voted against the ban. There are some principles and experience, right there–the experience of caving into the Republican party and abandoning not only personal principles, but the principles of humanity as well as the Geneva Convention and international law, all in one vote. From the NYT,
Senate Republicans generally opposed the bill, but several of them also did not want to cast a vote that could be construed as supporting torture, and so were relying on President Bush to make good on a threat to veto legislation limiting C.I.A. interrogation techniques….
The prohibition of harsh interrogation techniques is part of a wider intelligence authorization bill and would restrict all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the Army Field Manual, which bars the use of physical force.
The House approved the bill in December by a vote of 222 to 199, mostly along party lines. Wednesday’s vote in the Senate was also along party lines. All the “no” votes were cast by Republicans, except for those of Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska. Five Republicans and Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, voted “yes.”
But the White House has long said Mr. Bush will veto the bill, saying it “would prevent the president from taking the lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack in wartime.”
…
Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, has consistently voiced opposition to waterboarding and other methods that critics say is a form torture. But the Republicans, confident of a White House veto, did not mount the challenge. Mr. McCain voted “no” on Wednesday afternoon. (emphasis mine)
In another instance of betraying past principles, McCain once advocated for lobbyist reform. From the Washington Post,
Appearing as a witness on the opening day of a Senate hearing on lobbying reform, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was one of several senators to denounce earmarking, a practice he called “disgraceful.” He outlined one of several proposals to tighten rules and require greater disclosure of lobbying activities. But he told the committee, “We’re not going to fix this system until we fix the earmarks.”
Nowadays, however, he is receiving money from 507 bundlers and 70 lobbyist bundlers. Among their number are representatives of large financial institutions (e.g. JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, UBS, Blackstone, Granite Capital, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns [heh], Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, NYSE Group, Goldman Sachs), health care firms (e.g. Vanguard Health Systems, Blue Cross Blue Shield, AMN Healthcare), energy firms (e.g. Mosbacher Energy, TXU), and assorted large corporations (e.g. Disney, Sony BMG Music, Starwood Hotels, Anheuser-Busch, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Visa, MGM, FedEx). He’s not just taking cash from lobbyists, however; he’s also staffed his campaign with them. From Washington Post,
But when McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington’s lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.
Senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon work for firms that have lobbied for Land O’ Lakes, UST Public Affairs, Dell and Fannie Mae.
More recently, McCain’s campaign declared that warrantless wiretapping by the executive branch is A-OK, no court oversight required. This position might come as a shock, considering that he had previously said,
“There are some areas where the statutes don’t apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.”
From the NYT, his position these days is,
A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.
Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.
In other words, McCain is saying that four more years of the Imperial Executive and unfettered power above the law are what he believes in. Corporations have no need to obey the law and respect the privacy of the little people, individual citizens, and neither does the executive branch.
McCain has repeatedly turned his back on his principles and abandoned the policies he once advocated in order to pander to the Republican party and its supporters, corporate and otherwise. He’s demonstrated experience in casting integrity and convictions aside for the sake of political expediency–and not for the sake of the public good, but for his ambitions. That is not the kind of experience that anyone with an interest in fixing the corruption and devastation wrought by the Bush administration should put faith in, sober or otherwise. So I’d like to suggest some alternate headlines for the article, which more accurately reflect the nature of McCain’s candidacy and are more in keeping with the content of the article:
* McCain Favors Extending Bush’s Aggressive, Imperialist Foreign Policy
While Mr Obama favours engagement with US foes and wants to end the war in Iraq, Mr McCain would seek to increase pressure on Iran, North Korea and Cuba and keep US troops in Iraq indefinitely.
* McCain Remains In Denial About Iraq. Possibly Contemplates Another Marketplace Stroll with Armed Troops and Helicopters As Escorts.
Mr McCain set out his case against the Illinois senator in Tuesday’s speech, portraying him as dangerously inexperienced on foreign policy and dangerously liberal on domestic policy.”He is an impressive man who makes a great first impression,” the Arizona senator conceded, before going on to explain why Americans would reject him once they got to know him better.
“Americans ought to be concerned about the judgment of a presidential candidate who says he’s ready to talk, in person and without conditions, with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang, but hasn’t travelled to Iraq to meet with General [David] Petraeus, and see for himself the progress he threatens to reverse,” Mr McCain said, highlighting the two main foreign policy differences with his rival.
* McCain Puts Blind Faith In U.S. Efforts In Iraq
Mr McCain accuses his opponent of an ideological commitment to “surrender” in Iraq, ignoring evidence that US forces are making progress since last year’s troop surge.
Headlines are important because they’re the visuals that people first see and remember; they’re the first words people read in an article and therefore shape how they perceive the content of the article; and they’re nifty tag lines or summaries that people remember. Knowing that, I find the FT headline “McCain puts faith in sober experience” troubling. It presents a misleading image of McCain as a sober, rational person rather than the hot-tempered jerk he is–the article cited there was also published by the FT, back in April–and presents his experience as something worth a damn. He has all the wrong kinds of experience, in pandering, in working with lobbyists, in abandoning principles, in supporting the abrogation of the separation of powers (and therefore the Constitution and the limits it places on the executive branch), in serving the interests of corporations rather than the people, in ignoring the rule of law, and in voting for evil legislation.
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Financial Times, Andrew Ward, “McCain puts faith in sober experience,” 2008/06/05
NY Times, David Herszenhorn, “Senate Passes Interrogation Ban,” 2008/02/13
Washington Post, William Branigin, “McCain Calls to Reform Pork Barrel Politics,” 2006/01/25
Public Citizen
Washington Post, Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, “The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists,” 2008/02/21
NY Times, Charlie Savage, “Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps,” 2008/06/06
Media: Clinton Sexism Watch
Dear The Economist,
I realize that your “Primary Colour” segment is all about providing sardonic captions to quotes from the campaign trail that are, as far as I can tell, completely unrelated to any significant issues. When I first skimmed it, I was annoyed that the quotes were basically about fluff. When I read
Senator Patrick Leahy has introduced a resolution declaring Mr McCain a natural-born citizen, as is required of presidents. Mr McCain was born on a naval base in Panama. Both Democratic candidates are co-sponsors. The Hill, April 10th
my first reaction was disbelief that Congress was wasting time and attention on this incredibly vital, oh so important procedural non-issue. Frankly, birth location and questions about a candidate’s citizenship proceeding therefrom are the kind of stupid hair splitting I’d expect the Republicans’ attack machine to capitalize on, not the Democrats’. Since McCain is the Republican nominee, he’s safe and there’s no reason that the Senate needs to be wasting time with this crap when it could be focusing on the melting economy or the melting ice caps.
Then I skimmed the rest of the article and saw this caption, which is not okay:
Kill Hill
“She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley…She’s packing a six-shooter.”
Barack Obama mocks Hillary Clinton’s hunting stories. AP, April 13th
I’m not sure how this caption could be remotely amusing. I get that it’s a play off of Kill Bill, but in context of the violently sexist language in the MSM right now regarding Clinton’s campaign, it’s not just a play on words. When people are talking about the macabre Hillary Deathwatch, when there is a long history of violent threats being used to silence women who overstep the narrow roles circumscribed around them by gender norms, it’s important to watch your language and be careful that it doesn’t play into misogynist frames. “Kill Hill” is a play on a movie title, but I initially read it as Kill Hill, with Hillary as the direct object of the verb. There’s more than one way to read the caption and given the context of reality, which is full of staggering amounts of violence against women and girls and which is full of violent threats and actual violence being used to make women shut up, I’m disinclined to persuade myself to look the other way and pass this off as a joke. If it’s a joke made out of ignorance, then the writer ought to rub his or her brain cells together a bit more next time and think. If it’s a joke made while fully aware of the double violent connotations in “Kill Hill” and the long history of violence against women (i.e. history, period), then the writer ought to grow up and grow a conscience. It’s little things such as oh so clever jokes that normalize violence and misogyny by making it acceptable, little doses at a time.
The writer also ought to consider reading Melissa’s post (Shakesville) for an example of being aware of the power of words, social and historical context, and being responsible for one’s speech:
I am reluctant to use violent imagery generally, but extremely averse to using it when discussing women I don’t like. Despite the distinct unlikelihood that anyone would mistake misogyny as my motivation, even a (metaphorical) attack within a culture in which women—particularly strong, opinionated women—have historically been silenced with threatened or actual violence borrows and legitimizes misogynist strategies.
ETA: Maybe I should start a new tag: “My legislators are doing WHAT?”
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The Economist, “Primary Colour,” 2008/04/17
Melissa McEwan, Shakesville, “Take Your Boobs and Go Home Watch,” 2008/03/29
Melissa McEwan, Shakesville, “Clinton the Woman vs. Clinton the Person,” 2008/04/17
Dear Rep. Nancy Pelosi
Following up on my last post, this week’s letter is to Representative Nancy Pelosi, in response to her actions telling Defense Secretary Gates that his bigotry is not ok. You can find out how to reach your own Representative here and your Senator here.
Dear Representative Pelosi,
Today, I read about how you intervened with Defense Sec. Gates to have Representative Baldwin’s partner accompany on her fact-finding trip, as she is entirely entitled to do. Thank you for standing up against the policies of discrimination that deny same-sex couples the legal standing of married couples, and then use the “they’re not married, so they’re not entitled to the benefits we give heterosexual, married couples” excuse to dismiss committed, loving same-sex couples and treat them as inferior because they’re not legally married.
As one of your constituents and a queer person, I am glad to see you stand up for the civil rights of GLBTQ individuals. I hope that in the future, you will continue to do so and that you will actively advocate for the civil rights of all GLBTQ individuals, even ordinary citizens who lack political connections and power. I was extremely disappointed in your actions on the transgendered-exclusionary ENDA bill last fall, which essentially declared transgendered and gender non-conforming individuals expendable and undeserving of civil rights. However, I am encouraged by your actions today and hope that they are a better indicator of your commitment to standing up for the human rights of all people.
Sincerely,
Pizza Diavola
Writing letters is actually a lot easier than I thought it’d be. Blogging about issues translates well into writing letters about them, because I already have the content I need: what the matter is, why it’s important, what I think about it. All I have to do is alter the style so that it better fits a letter than a blog post, alter the tone so that it’s more civil, and slap on a header and a footer, and voila! Letter!
Dear Sharpton & NAACP
NAACP National Headquarters
4805 Mt. Hope Drive
Baltimore MD 21215
National Action Network
Rev. Al Sharpton
106 W. 145th Street
Harlem, New York 10039
To Whom It May Concern,
I recently heard about the NAACP’s involvement with the Dunbar Village rapists’ case. Seeing as how the NAACP’s mission statement is to “Ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination,” I thought for certain that the NAACP was standing up for the victims in the case, who suffered rape, assault, disfigurement, and grievous bodily and mental harm. Advocating for them, providing legal counsel, pressing law enforcement agencies to do their utmost to find the six rapists currently not in custody, and ensuring that the cases of this black woman and her son would not be lost. That injustice would not prevail again in the case of a population that has consistently been disregarded, silenced, and abused.
I was horrified to find out that instead, the NAACP is standing up for the rapists. This is completely unconscionable, particularly given the DNA evidence and confessions, and the magnitude and monstrosity of the rapists’ crimes. By standing up for the rapists, you’re telling every woman of color in this country that we do not matter. Our suffering does not matter. When we’re raped, assaulted, abused, and victimized, even a group supposedly committed to fighting racism and injustice will not be our allies. Instead, you will ignore women and ignore children, because in your eyes, we don’t matter.
With your actions in this case, you do no more than perpetuate the subhuman status of women of color in American society. By standing up for these rapists, you are not fighting racism for a world of equality–you are fighting for a world in which white men and black men are equally patriarchal and can rape with impunity, while everyone else is left cowering in fear, unheard and oppressed. If you were fighting racism, you would have stood up for the victims and would have advanced a case where, for once, sexual violence against a black woman and a black child are being taken seriously rather than dismissed.
I am completely appalled, and furthermore, I will never support or contribute to the NAACP until you renounce your position and demonstrate a commitment to helping all people of color–remembering that people means women and children, and not just men.
Sincerely,
Me.
Feel free to take, copy, expand, make much more eloquent, whatever–just so long as you print and mail to the NAACP and Sharpton.
