Silent all these years

Well, that previous post is such a downer. I do wonder, though, if Mia had somehow survived the attack, would she have talked about it? Would she have written a song about it, like Tori Amos had done with "Me and a Gun," and put it on the next Gits album? And what of all the Mias I brought up (like the women of Juarez)? Would they have talked? Or would they be silent all these years?

As both a woman and a feminist, things like that just make me so mad. It's like we can't win no matter what we do. It's hard to talk about things that might make the public uneasy, yet without talking about them, nothing gets done to change them. And what are we supposed to do anyway, go along with it? I think not. In Newark, a fifteen-year-old named Sakia Gunn was stabbed in the chest for telling a man to stop harassing her. No one likes being harassed, so what was she supposed to do? Put up with it? Or risk being killed? And why do we have to change our actions for someone else? Shouldn't it be the offender who should be told not to stab one of us or hurt us?

I just wonder about all of these things. I know I can really be the master of the depressing. I was telling my partner about the New Jersey Four earlier today, and I work at a rape crisis center. And I brought up the Sakia story, which is pretty nasty. Guess I'm what my concentration in my major is--muck raking. (My concentration is 20th century American literature, that includes the really politically charged folks like Upton Sinclair and Ida B. Wells.) One of my feminists says I was born to rake the muck. Well, I guess blogging is just a start. Had Ida B. or Upton been around today, I could totally see them blogging. Then they could make the leap to writing books.

viva mia (explicada)

Last week I was hanging out with one of my friends. Since we both have some similar tastes in music, we were dishing about the new CDs we'd gotten and new bands we were listening to. He proceeded to tell me, "Now I know you like Joan Jett, but have you heard this CD called Evil Stig?" That's what got me to write the previous post, but with further meaning behind it.

Evil Stig is an album put out by a band called The Gits, and it was recorded with Joan Jett on lead vocals. The Gits were a punk band from Seattle with a very feministic message and a uniquely bluesy sound to them. "Evil Stig" is "Gits Live" backwards. To many, The Gits are a forgotten band in music history. They only had 3 albums and didn't last particularly long. However, if you bring up the name of their singer, Mia Zapata, you might get people who are very familiar with her...or should I say familiar with what happened to her? Mia had a really distinctive voice and some strong lyrics, but she never made it to the age of thirty (she was 27). When walking home from a club one night, she was intercepted by a much older and stronger man and brutally beat and raped before he stabbed and mutilated her numerous times to kill her. If you think that's gross, you haven't heard the half of it. The woman who found her body was so shaken up to see this that she required assistance in walking to a phone and calling the police. It took over ten years to find Mia's assassin.

That's a terrible story, and one that is horrifyingly gruesome. I know that it grossed me out to hear it, even though she died before I discovered her band. What just really bothered me is that whenever you hear about that band, the only thing that comes to mind is the murder of the singer. As if her death is the most important thing about her. There's no mention of the feministic activism she partcipated in, or the anti-violence (ick, ironic, isn't it?) work she did. Not to mention the fact that the Gits were unique in introducing the blues to punk.

But then I got to thinking...how many other Mias are there? No, I don't mean other women with her name, but rather other women whose victimization was the only thing people remember about them. How many times do we hear about yet another crime victim whose story is told in TV-titillating detail and splayed out all over the national news and papers? We don't hear much about the person behind the statistic or the back story of the woman in the crime victim's body. Consider the femicides of Juarez, Mexico. Do we hear any of the names of the murdered women? Do we know what they did for a living, or what their lives were like? Most likely not. Think on the thousands of women who are attacked in times of war (and DON'T tell me that that's "normal" in war!) as a ways of destroying an enemy's "morale." Do we hear anything about them? No, unless you count the dehumanizing term "collateral damage."

"viva mia" is inspired by Mia Zapata, but it is actually about the thousands of "Mias" out there. It isn't my best poem but one that needed to be written. I write it for her and the thousands of the other women who never made it home alive. Something needs to be done so all of us can come home alive and home safe. To quote the late great Andrea Dworkin, "Not one of us is free unless all of us are free."

viva mia

Amidst all the rushing
It'd be time well spent.
Oh, I would give anything
To get you home alive again.

We're both young women
And we both know what it's like
To be taught to be brave
And yet fear the night.

We're loud and we're proud
And we make a stand.
Then why must we live
In fear of a man?

They might take it all,
But they can't take your words.
It might've made you human,
But your message is still heard.

Amidst all the rushing
It'd be time well spent.
Oh, I would give anything
To get you home alive again.

Home alive again
Home alive again

Twenty-[FIVE]*

I honestly don't understand groups like "Operation Rescue." I know I'm pro-choice and am all for women being able to decide what to do with themselves and their bodies. But I also completely am aware that some folks don't share my views. And that's fine, they can believe anything they like. It's a free country, isn't it? As long as those views don't infringe on other women's rights, I don't have much of an issue with folks who are pro-life/anti-choice/however you want to phrase it. They don't have to have that procedure if they don't want to, but their views shouldn't infringe on the rights of those who do have it or need to have it.

That said, I really don't get groups like Operation Rescue. Or Army of God for that matter. They're the lovely (note my sarcasm) motley crew who has brought you the support for the premeditated murders and threats made on the lives of OB/GYNs who happen to perform abortions. Even many folks who don't like the procedure do not even condone the actions of these groups. David Gunn was the first of these professionals to be murdered by anti-abortion extremists, even though that procedure was not the only one he performed (he was also a gynecologist and obstetrician for lower-income women). Then after his death, six more OB/GYNs were threatened and then killed. Seventeen more of them (or plain old clinic workers like receptionists, counselors, and the like) have received death threats or attempted murders.

I honestly think that's such a huge hypocrisy. I know not every pro-lifer would do that (in fact, I'm sure most would be disgusted as well), but it strikes me as so hypocritical and disgusting. If someone wants to protect human/unborn life, then what makes it somehow acceptable to kill someone who's already living? That simply doesn't make sense.

*I hate to be a downer, but recently, a college-aged Planned Parenthood employee named Johanna Justin-Jinich was murdered by a stalker who drove across the country to commit this terrible crime. What will it take to make it stop? Guaranteed, her campus police took swift action to catch her assassin, but even one murder/attempted murder is one too many! I don't see how you can "choose life" and then kill a full-grown adult. As a college-aged activist, that strikes a little too close to home for me. My heart goes out to her and her family.