We are instructed at airports to report “any suspicious behavior” and to be on the alert for any suitcase that is left alone. That is terrifying, isn’t it? A suitcase, left in the middle of the airport terminal, or on a seat in a subway car? A woman is taught to be on the alert when she is alone. And for many of us, this is often. We are taught to be suspicious of a man alone, or men in groups. The anxiety is particularly heightened on a secluded street, a park, a bar, a parking garage, a freaking Laundromat. We are taught not to GO OUT in the dark alone. NO place is “safe,” because every place has men in it and every man who is a stranger is a potential threat. And in many ways, for many days and nights, these cultural lessons curtail our activities.
But our activities are not the only things that get “altered.” Two young men recently moved into my apartment development. They sit on their stoop to smoke. Before reading Margaret Miles’ essay and before reflecting on this female condition of terror I didn’t realize how much I alter my behavior when they are outside. It is only through analytical hindsight that I see what I do; how differently I behave when they are there from when they are not there. And the alteration in my behavior is based on two facts; they know where I live and I do not know what kind of men they are. I find that as soon as I turn my car into my parking space I look to see if they are there. When they are not, I am glad. When they are, I walk like a “schoolteacher,” or how I imagine one to walk. The joyous lilt in my stride is gone lest it be interpreted as flirtatious. My walk is purposeful, with determined direction. I do not toss my hair, even if it is in my eyes, lest it be interpreted as provocative invitation. I say a quick “Hello,” but my eyes do not linger upon theirs, lest it be interpreted as interest. I must walk a tightrope between not-too-friendly, and cordial, lest I piss them off and they think me stuck-up and haughty. After all, if they turn out to be harmful, it will be my fault. When my door is closed and locked behind me, I breathe. I understand the risk of the confessional nature of these words; that there are those of you who will yet think I am paranoid. I exaggerate. I am nuts. But I assure you, this anxiety and these behavioral modifications are enacted by women in countless apartment complexes, in countless neighborhoods throughout this country (throughout the world) every day. As I think back to my interactions with female students and former students I cannot list all the reports shared with me of sexual harassment by male employers, of physical violence by building maintenance workers, fathers of childhood friends and boyfriends; of rape, physical brutality and intimidation. Failure to report is based in the same terror; that there will be violent retaliation.
And just in case we forget to fear; just in case we forget that international terrorists may lurk behind every bus stop or subway station or airport terminal, Homeland Security or the media will remind us. All of a sudden, without evidence for the need made known to us, National Security Alert will be elevated to “orange,” and the terror is in front of us again. Just in case we women forget that we live in an insecure and threatening environment, we are reminded. The majority of victims of the top rated cop/forensic/FBI television shows in this country are female. They are raped, mutilated and murdered every night in our living rooms. There is one program entirely devoted to “Special Victims,’ a euphemism for victims of sexual assault. Just in case we forget, we receive emails that contain in graphic detail the latest ploys and tactics of kidnappers and rapists who now lie under our cars, like mechanics performing oil changes. They wait until we approach and grab our legs from beneath. They lie in wait between cars. They stalk in “unmarked” police cars, sirens ever ready to stop a woman driving alone. These emails invariably end with a plea, “Send this to all the women you know and love. It could save their life!” And the message is clear: you need only send this to the WOMEN in your life. Whether these emails contain the stuff of urban legend or not, they perform the cultural service of inducing yet more internal anxiety and fear, if not for yourself than for your mother or daughter or sister. The fear might only present itself on the surface for just that moment, but it has done its job. And then there are the real stories, the ones that are not urban legend, but truth; of young women who are abducted in full daylight in Target parking lots and found days later in shallow graves; of pregnant wives who disappear, also found days or weeks later. The legends, the fear, the terror have their basis in fact. These all contribute to a culture of violence against women that Margaret Miles has called, “foundational in that they are built into the assumptions and institutional structures of American culture.” And they serve to ensure that I remember my vulnerability and so remember, “My place.”
And yet, we deny. We delude ourselves into thinking that these crimes are committed by individual men with abnormal psychological pathologies. We never see the violence as rooted in a systemic, institutionalized, cultural evil grounded in an ideology of national and global misogyny. But we must awaken from our sleep, like Snow White from the poison apple. My future and my daughter’s and the futures of any granddaughters I might have, depend on it.
So the man seized his concubine and put her out to them; and they raped and abused her all night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. As the morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, till it was light. In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he went out to go on his way, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. “Get up.” he said to her, “We are going.” But there was no answer. Then he put her upon the ass and the man set out for his home. When he had entered his house, he took a knife and grasping his concubine he cut her into twelve pieces, limb by limb and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. Judges 19:25-29
And he sent her throughout Israel in outrage, that the men had been so disrespectful to him and to his property. He dismembered this body that had served him and sent the pieces throughout Israel because he had been insulted. Had he loved her, he would have bathed her body in oils and wrapped her in a shroud of linen. Had he loved her, he would have buried her in the tradition of his elders. Had he loved her, he would have wept. Of course, had he loved her, had he even considered her a human being, he would not have handed her over to be gang-raped and murdered.
I do not know how this woman felt as she was betrayed by her master. I do not know how the women of the enemies of Moses felt when they became the spoils of war. I do not know how it felt to be a virgin of Shiloh, abducted and raped as strangers in a strange land. I do not know the terror of the captive woman who mourned the death of mother and father wrought by the hands of her captor who became her rapist. But I do know what it is to be a woman living among a people who consider the treatment of these women to be a part of their glorious and holy inheritance.
So what’s new about terror?
Ask any woman and she’ll tell you-absolutely nothing.
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