What's New About Terror? Part II

In 1985, Elayne Boosler recorded a stand-up comedy routine entitled “Party of One.” I didn’t remember the year (I looked that up), but I remembered her and I remembered the title of the TV special, because I have never forgotten a joke she told that night. Of course, I don’t remember the joke verbatim, but it went something like this. She and her live-in boyfriend were living in New York City. Very late one night, he suggested they go for a walk in Central Park. She asked, “Are you crazy? Don’t you know how dangerous that is?” He said, “Don’t worry. Don’t bring your purse. Leave your wallet and keys here. If you don’t have anything valuable with you, you’ll be safe.” She paused dramatically, looked to her audience as if to her boyfriend and shouted, “But I have a vagina!”

 

Jokes “work” best when there is an element of truth to them. In Elayne Boosler’s Central Park joke there is a truth that the women in the audience understood in a New York second. It is a truth that her boyfriend had not even considered; a truth that probably took the men in the audience longer to “get.”

It is a truth conveyed in Margaret Miles’ statement, already cited in this journal’s pages, that “the threat of assault and rape is enough to make us rearrange our lives, reflecting our constant state of terror.”

 

Margaret Miles did not exaggerate. As I reflected on her statement and her particular choice of the word “terror,” I could not help but find analogy in the atmosphere of rhetoric and control that has gripped this nation (indeed, the world) since September 11, 2001. What the men of this nation have just begun to experience, women have always known; lives characterized by the vulnerability to unexpected assault; lives subtly haunted by terror.

 

It is a difficult analogy to express out loud. I discovered this when I began in my classroom to explore and articulate women’s experience of terror. I was very hesitant to describe this rearrangement of life; the things we will or will not do; the places we will go and not go, and the psychological rearrangement as well. I was hesitant because no one speaks of it. I was hesitant because although I suspected my own interior experiences are common, I did not know that they are. I was hesitant because I feared that the way I experience the world is unusual and unique, and that I would be judged hyper-paranoid, or neurotically anxious and suspicious. And yet, I know that I am not any of these. The experience of terror from the threat of rape and sexual assault does not consume or obsess me. I do not walk around in the world in a heightened state of panic or fear. The suspicion and anxiety surface only when I receive certain signals from the world around me. As I tentatively began to express this experience, slowly the young women in my class began to nod; one by one they each affirmed what I suspected- that we do indeed walk about the world in a constant state of terror, women alone, in a hostile environment. And to echo Nelle Morton’s oft-quoted dynamic, they “heard me into speech.”

 

In the aftermath of 9/11 this country’s government invested manpower and monetary resources in the cause of internal security as never before. The number of casualties was a little less than three thousand. The fatalities were human, but the targets were symbolic; the symbols of American culture, economic and political. Need I supply here the national statistics of domestic and sexual assault against women? According to the FBI, every day 4 women are murdered in this country by partners or spouses. The total number is higher than the number of soldiers killed in Vietnam. In 2005, there were 93,934 reported forcible rapes, not counting those unreported, not counting unsuccessful, attempted rapes and not counting consentual sex with a minor, or statutory rape. One in five women will experience attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Twenty years ago, when Miles wrote her essay, a woman was raped every 6 minutes in this country. Today, rape occurs every 4 minutes. And yet, rape crisis centers and shelters for women and children must beg, borrow, write grants for funding, sell purses at auction and hold fundraisers to stay in business.

 

The behavioral tactics of international terrorists are unpredictable and often arbitrary. There is no discernible, attainable goal. The acts are fueled by hatred and rage and self-righteous rationalization. Rapists are unpredictable, though often their victims are not arbitrary. Most occurrences of domestic and sexual violence against women are committed by someone they know. The goal of rape is not sexual, though its weapon is. Rape is fueled by hatred and rage and self-righteous rationalizing of entitlement.

 

The Department of Homeland Security instills a false sense of security. Airport searches, clearly visible to the public, allow us to feel that diligence is in charge, that the terrorist is being weeded out and identified. We hand over our Bic lighters and shaving creams and hair gels and buy into the illusion that we are “safe.” When in reality, there is no such thing as security against terrorism and we are already its victims, because its purpose is fear. And we as Americans are willing to sacrifice more and more of our civil liberties in the face of that fear. Women and men set up a false sense of security against the potential occurrence of rape. We make ourselves believe that rape happens only to certain types of women, in certain places, at certain times of day. And we think that if we don’t dress “that way,” or go to bars alone at night, or walk in the dark, or in stairwells, or enter elevators that contain only one man, or lock our car doors from the inside, etc., etc., etc., then we will be “safe.” Unfortunately this misconception is a double-edged sword because when a woman does get raped, we jump to the conclusion that it was her fault because after all, she didn’t follow the rules. Women give up liberties and freedom of movement, living captive in a “free” society. And when a two year old baby or 90 year old woman is raped we console ourselves by thinking they are the exceptions.

 

We prepare for travel in an airport, or train station and we are asked, “Have you been in sole possession of your luggage since you left your house this morning?”  Who will say “no?” One knows that the result of answering this question negatively will only bring delays and extended searches. Unfortunately for us, women are always in possession of our vaginas. Much to Elayne Boosler’s chagrin, we cannot remove them and place them on the dresser when we leave the house.

 

We are instructed repeatedly over loud speakers bellowing throughout the terminal, “Do not leave your luggage unattended.” I suppose the fear is that some terrorist will slip something into my bag that will be detonated in the air. The science and technology of terrorism has become more and more advanced; tiny detonators hidden in cell phones, bombs no bigger than a hip purse, plastics that avoid metal detection. Women are instructed not to leave our drinks unattended. Let me say that again- we are instructed not to leave our DRINKS unattended.  The rapist too has concocted new ways to make his task easier. And what he will slip into our drinks has a name; it is called “the rape drug.”