Gender and Genocide

     On Sunday I attended a panel discussion at Brooklyn Museum entitled “Gender and Genocide,” moderated by Gloria Steinem. Despite being a fan of her work for years, it was the first time I’d heard her speak, or seen her in person. To do so in such a potent yet intimate capacity was a genuine privilege.
     The panel focused on the sexual assault of Jewish woman during the Holocaust, stories that, while hideous, have gone a long time untold. 
     There are a variety of reasons behind this lack of visibility, all equally disturbing: first, legal stipulations by the Third Reich forbid Nazi officers and soldiers from engaging in sexual relations with Jewish women, an injunction that failed to prevent them from perpetrating abuse, but succeeded in precluding documentation of the assaults; second, the rapes occurred in such close proximity to the outright murder of prisoners, male and female alike, that they found themselves all too often overshadowed; and third, the hideously counter-intuitive phenomenon of victim-blaming prevented many women from coming forward to discuss their experiences.
     Two of the panel’s more impassioned presenters, Drs. Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel, co-edited a book entitled Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, the recent publication of which helped to prompt the panel. The editors’ expressed goal was to make certain that the victims’ stories were preserved, expanding the declaration to “Never forget the Holocaust” to include the remembrance of victims of assault.
     To its enormous credit, the panel didn’t limit itself to the Nazi genocide, but addressed present-day atrocities as well. In the Q & A session that followed the panel, one of the women from the audience approached the microphone, introduced herself first as “an American Jew,” then declared, her words moving in their succinctness, “The best way to remember the Holocaust is to be cognizant of the world we live in.”
     Embodying that very approach, the panel included Maman Jeanne Kasongo L. Ngondo, President and Founder of the Shalupe Foundation, whose extraordinary work in her native Congo has addressed the needs of countless women, and this in the world’s most lethal present-day war-zone. Maman Jeane’s exacting, first-hand testimony countered what I find to be a palpably disturbing trend: the tendency of public discourse to assign to the Nazi genocide a status so unparalleled that subsequent mass-murders are robbed of their seriousness. By some estimates, over six million people have died in the Congo since the wars began in 1997, matching, if not exceeding, the famous figure of Jews killed in the Holocaust. I was beyond grateful that a member of the panel could speak on their behalf.
     As for Gloria herself, acquaintances of mine who know her personally have spoken again and again of her humility, and her conduct on the panel confirmed it. Her opening speech, while powerful, was only three or four minutes long, and for the vast majority of the discussion she remained a respectful listener, functioning in her official capacity of moderator, and speaking only when it was necessary to guide the conversation along.
     Given the timeless preponderance of the ego, it was a breath of fresh air, to say the least.

Petition for the termination of an Argentinian journalist

     Please join me in calling for the immediate termination of Juan Terranova, a prominent Argentinian journalist who threatened the director of Hollaback Buenos Aires with rape.
     To anyone who might be unfamiliar, Hollaback is an international organization devoted to ending street harassment. It allows victims of harassment to take photos of their harassers and submit them to an online library, thereby eroding the anonymity that allows harassers to operate from a place of perceived impunity. Hollaback has already lead to the arrest of at least one individual, who made the mistake of exposing himself to a woman on a subway and thinking he could get away with it.  Many more victories are certain to follow.
     If Mr. Terranova's rape threat seems more destructive than the perpetration of street harassment, it is largely because rape has a more identifiable impact. While I have no intention whatsoever of downplaying the attrocity of rape, it is crucial to note that sexual assault would be inherently less possible without the culture of violence in which such acts are encouraged, and in the creation of this culture, harassment plays an indispensable role.  Like the overarching mindset to which it gives rise, harassment requires a dehumanization and objectification of women, accompanied by alienation. Through wolf whistles, gestures, and lewd exclamations, women are made to feel as if they don't belong on the streets of the very cities they inhabit. With their identities reduced, in the eyes of their aggressors, to walking targets of verbal abuse, the physical abuse of these women is but a natural extension of the dynamic.
    In a world where these destructive cultures have been categorically dismantled, in which the perpetrators of violence are the overwhelming exception and not the rule, a rapist would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.
    I therefore ask you to sign the following petition, simultaneously supporting Hollaback and silencing an individual whose transgression cannot and should not go unpunished.
 

In memory of Roger Potter

  Today I’m departing somewhat from the theme of the blog to send my thoughts to Roger Potter, a close friend of my family’s, who passed away Monday after suffering a series of health complications. Roger was quite possibly the kindest human being I’ve ever known in my life, and one who, in my estimation, died a couple of centuries before his time.
    I consider this post only “somewhat” of a thematic departure, in that Roger was also an amazing feminist, though I doubt it was a label he applied to himself. That’s partly because labels and Roger were mutually exclusive, but also because he did not, to my knowledge, ever consciously commit himself to the actual goal of gender equality, and yet if the cause of much of society’s gendered conflict is, as I believe to be the case, the massive populations of men who flounder amidst competing pronouncements of what it means to be male, then Roger was an astoundingly positive influence, simply by virtue of being who he was: a damn good guy.
    I knew him, in part, in his capacity as my first employer, when, right out of high school, I signed on to work as a longshoremen for Alaska’s Southeast Stevedoring. Roger was our dispatcher. Between the hours of five and six a.m., he and I and four other guys would gather at the local dock and wait for the massive cruise ships to roll in, at which point we’d wrangle their back-breaking mooring lines out of the water and around the seagull-stained anchoring posts.
    In both the froth of the job and its breeze-shooting prelude, Roger was a joy to be around. He was a great storyteller, a good listener, and a model boss. Moreover, while the longshoring crew was a great group of guys, such that the following was never an issue, I know without a doubt that he would have expertly extinguished any of that destructive competitiveness that all too often explodes when testosterone and manual labor collide.
    But there’s more that I’m trying to get at with this line of thought, and while the last thing I’d want to do is turn this attempt at an obituary into an obnoxious author’s character study, it was too moving a part of his personality for me to leave out: Roger embodied, in perfect harmony, many of the classic traits of both masculinity and femininity.
    He was a beast at the docks, an absolute powerhouse. Dad, who also had the honor of longshoring with Roger, for a longer time than I did, used to say that when you saw Roger working from a distance, you couldn’t tell if he was hauling in a line or making his bed. Dad meant two things by this: first that Roger made a grueling task look effortless, and second that he performed something outwardly brutal with grace and delicacy.
    Everything Roger did had grace in it. Everything about him was in some way gentle. His lifestyle spanned a profession that one associates with no less hypermasculine a figure than Marlon Brando with a love of hummingbirds and quilting.  At a time when the media had, in spite of the best efforts of my parents, left my impressionable teenage psyche feeling as if feminist traits would flat-out emasculate me, Roger was the perfect role model, showing me that such traits not only coexisted nicely with masculinity, but made you – in short – a better guy all around.
    Roger’s funeral will take place tomorrow. I won’t be able to make the trip home, so I’ll have to attend in spirit. My thoughts go out to you, Roger, and to the longshoring team, who will, as I understand it, arrive at your service wearing their hardhats.
    We know for a fact you’d have wanted it this way. 

Photos from Sunday's rally

Five days down the line Sunday's rally continues to inspire the hell out of me, and this in spite of the pragmatism that I try to instill in myself; pragmatism offering the gentle but crucial reminder that no one rally is enough to effect lasting change. It's not altogether unlike the process by which I try to keep the revolutions in the Middle East from making me light-headed and euphoric. Revolution is just the barest beginning of the destruction of totalitarianism. Like writing the rough draft of a novel (another apt comparison) it's the first stage of a long and rocky process that one must bear constantly in mind to stave off the fluff of idealism.

That said, it was a fantastic rally, and I was fortunate enough to land some compelling photos. Anyone interested can follow the link below:

https://picasaweb.google.com/mbochart/RallyTodayIAmAMuslimToo#

Today, I am a Muslim Too

Keeping with my recent stint of protests and rallies, I attended yesterday a mass gathering at Times Square entitled "Today, I am a Muslim Too." Organized in response to the nationwide trend toward Islamophobia, and in particular toward U.S. Representative Peter King's proposed hearings on the radicalization of Islam, labeled by many as a McCarthy-style witch hunt, the rally aimed to collapse for the span of its duration distinctions between faiths, cultures, and races, and mobilize populations against a common oppressor.

Ironically, the actual rhetoric of the rally, for all of its power, proved less effective in creating a sense of unity than the torrential downpour that erupted twenty minutes in. Umbrellas sprouted by the hundreds, one after the other throughout the tightly-packed crowd, a kaleidoscope of colored fabric embodying the very rainbow effect that the presenters aimed to bestow on their audience. Muslims who'd brought their umbrellas welcomed into their spheres of dryness Jews who'd neglected to do so. Buddhists spread their canopies for bedraggled Christians who stood soaked at their shoulders. When the presenters hit their cheer-marked peaks and the crowds screamed in response, the person cheering next to you was not merely a co-attendee of the rally, but your umbrella-mate, your fellow refugee of cloudbursts joined to you by a four-foot diameter of shelter.

Among others, presenters included Daisy Kahn, Executive Director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, entrepreneur Russell Simmons, and Imam Shamsi Ali of New York's 96th Street Islamic Cultural Center, whom I've met with on several occasions, and who provided me with valuable assistance in the development of my book.

The ongoing revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa helped to provide the rally with both its charged undertone and its sense of immediacy, and if I had any major reservations about the affair, it pertained to the failure of any of the presenters to draw parallels between the world-wide tumult and the active attempts of American conservatives to exacerbate the oppression of women. I can only hope that the matter was at least on the minds of the attendees, affecting, as it does, over half of the nation's people.

N. Jerin Arifa receives award for feminist activism

     I want to give a shout-out to my wife N. Jerin Arifa, who received an award last night from The Women's Democratic Club of New York City for her activist work in the field of feminism and women's rights. With the specific objective of attacking rape and domestic violence at the source,  and disassembling the destructive cultures in which such atrocities are possible, Jerin's efforts have been tireless, constant, and highly contagious. The receipt of such an award is just one of many honors to which she's entitled.
     The honor was bestowed at the 5th Annual Women's Awards, held at Stonewall Inn in Manhattan's West Village. Set against the backdrop of worldwide revolution stretching from Wisconsin to Tehran, the location drew further galvanization from its own place in history: ground zero for the Stonewall Riots and the explosion of the anti-homophobic protests of 1969.
     It was no small coincidence that the gay pride, civil rights, and women's liberation movements all began in such close proximity to one another, yet contemporary discourse all too often partitions them into mutually exclusive boxes, as if an individual can't be a gay rights advocate and a feminist at the same time. Last night's awards made an explicit point of countering that assumption, with multiple presenters and honorees arguing that feminism means equality for all genders - female, male, queer, and so forth, inclusive of whatever identities people hold as their own.
     Proceeds for the event went toward Hollaback!, an organization that performs game-changing work toward the elimination of street harassment.

Featured Musician: Randy Newman

     After Kirk Douglas' filibuster, Randy Newman's acceptance speech for Best Original Song was my own personal highlight of Sunday night's Oscar show, though I'm more than willing to admit that my immense respect for the man and his work likely skewed my perception of the moment. That Newman is now commonly associated either with DreamWorks soundtracks or the imbecile assaults by Family Guy is a point of minor tragedy for me, given that his compositions from the 70s and 80s produced some of America's richest, most exacting social satire.
     Newman's style mixed deadpan, straight-faced delivery with unflinching confrontation of taboo subjects. "Political Science," for a start, is a casual rumination on the merits of destroying the world through nuclear war, a prospect that in 1974, the year of the song's release, rested somewhat prominently on the average listener's mind. "Burn On" sings the praises of the Cuyahoga River, which in 1969 famously caught fire through abject pollution and burned for three days, the song constructing the event as if were some kind of magic, delightful occurrence.  
     Not content merely to address controversy from a distance, Newman's lyrics often inhabit the very disreputable characters that give rise to taboo. The wince-inducing "Sail Away" takes the perspective of an Atlantic slave trader convincing African tribesmen, under flagrantly false pretense, to come to America. "Rednecks," more painful still, explodes from the mouths of self-identified bigots, the song's lyrics throwing to the four winds racist and anti-Semitic slurs, one after the other.
     "Rednecks" serves as the opening track to Good Old Boys, Newman's acclaimed album from 1972. The album is one-half smear campaign on conservative prejudice, the other half a sympathetic homage to the marginalized, blue-collar Caucasian whose own sense of oppression all-too-often gives rise to the very bigotry that the other half of the record attacks.
     "Louisiana 1927," hearkening from the latter category, is my runaway favorite, not only on the album but in the whole of Newman's library. Short, simple, and outrageously beautiful, the song addresses the devastating Mississippi Flood of 1927 that left 700,000 people homeless, and further articulates the Southern paranoia that the North was either somehow responsible for the event or, at best, bluntly unconcerned.
     At the tear-jerking climax of the ballad, "President Coolidge come down in a railroad train," and remarks, with cynical dispassion, and bigotry of his own, "Ain't it a shame/What the river has done/To this poor cracker's land."
     Swap out "Coolidge" for "Bush" and "railroad train" for "big jet plane" and the song serves perfectly as an anthem for Katrina, a case-in-point for Stevie Wonder's remark that any great protest song will always be relevant. 
     For ensnaring the pains of a nation and its people, Randy Newman is a man I'm proud to salute.