Just The Other Morning *trigger warning*

I caught the woman’s eye as the hand grazed under her breast. I turned away, feeling ashamed at not giving her modesty—but when I glanced back she was still looking at me. I felt indignant on her behalf and when it showed on my face her hard eyes flickered and her clenched jaw nodded ever so slightly. An acknowledgment of her internal fury. It was maybe two seconds, but that tiny connection has stayed with me ever since. I slid my boots on and when I turned around she was gone.

San Francisco International Airport has two full body scanners in the Terminal 1 security line I used. Scanners that they seem to delight in using.

I had heard the comments regarding the rock and hard place of American airport security. But it wasn’t until I was standing in line, removing my sweater on request, exposing parts of my body I would prefer not to, that I really understood it. Nonchalant Facebook updates of new TSA “boyfriends” had lulled me into complacency. But standing on the cold floor, half naked with the possibility of being groped by a woman that I did not know nor trust simply because she has similar genitals as mine, brought it all home with a bang.

It is too much. We are not safer. This is the Animal Farm. As I prepared to walk through the X-Ray my mind blurred much the same way it does when men on the street start following me. A sort of shocked panic that I can never expect nor anticipate. 

I breathed a sigh of relief as the guard waved me on. But as I was collecting my things I saw the woman behind me was not so lucky.

Every woman I know, every single one has lived through somebody touching her inappropriately, against her will, when she did not want them to. Whether it was in her dorm when she was too afraid to say no, by the overly-affectionate choir teacher, her uncle, her classmates or her boss. We all know that feeling. The one of intrusion and skin-crawling revulsion.

You can look at these pat-downs/nudie pics as one more heap on that pile. Won’t kill us, right? It will only stay with you for a while. That cupping of your crotch, that grazing of your nipple. It’s just another thing to smile through. Don’t you dare acknowledge that it is truly damaging, lest you look hysterical and weak. Don’t over react. After all, neverminding that plenty of us were abused sexually by women, it’s just a woman doing it. Surely a strangers hand prodding your mons pubis in a glass room in front of everybody shouldn’t leave any lasting emotional scars. 

This, mind you, is not even accounting for the amount of young men molested by other men who have found no other choice but to bury that shit so deep inside them, so much as a complaint at being fondled may feel like a confession of victimization. Just laugh it off, just swallow it. You’ll be fine. 

I cannot imagine flying in the US again, and for some time, I will have that privilege. But thanks to the countries inability to get their railway act together, for millions, there is no other choice. To get to meetings, to see their lovers, to go to school and to be with family. They must take that trip.

Ink has been spilled on this issue, and I do not have the answers to sate. I just have a feeling. One of deep injustice, of real sorrow and of genuine disgust. I have the remnants of a single moment shared, with a woman in great distress, who had to submit to a strangers wandering hands as the world, casually, strode on by.

Arab Activism: Brought to you by a White Man

According to Elizabeth Dickinson over at Foreign Policy and referenced as one of the top stories on the Huffington Post, one Julian Assange practically ousted the President of Tunisia himself. Oh sure, there was that whole self-immolation thing that started it. There are the myriad of fathers, sons, brothers, daughters, husbands and mothers risking, and loosing, their lives for a change in government. But we can’t bask in the revolution of a Muslim Arab nation for too long. No. Better to credit that white guy. Via Huff Po:

A cable released by WikiLeaks called Tunisia a “police state” and criticized Ben Ali for being out of touch with the people. This has fueled references to the current protests as a “WikiLeaks Revolution.”

Right. Because the college graduate forced to sell fruit and vegetables illegally until the government stopped him from even doing that was probably all over those fucking Wikileak cables. Gee, it wasn’t until it was uncovered that Tunisia was a “police state” that any well educated Tunisian lawyers had even fathomed it. Corruption? Here? Surely you jest! Never mind the blocked internet sites. Never mind having the same ‘President’ voted in with 80-99% of the vote every single time. Or the obvious censorship and dissapearing of fellow citizens. Why, until those cables everybody was just going about happily, minding their own business.

Certainly it is not possible that organized Arab activism has been on the rise across the Middle East. That it’s getting harder and harder to quell protests or stop news from invading once impenetrable police states. We cannot accept this possibility because this will cast Arabs, the majority of them being Muslims, in the role that Americans simply cannot abide them in: The Freedom Fighter. 

Sure, it was kind of okay with Iran. After all, they’re Persian and they don’t even speak Arabic and we fucking hate Iran’s government here in the US. Because, yeah, the Shah and stuff (I mean Holocaust deniers—what was I thinking?). But can you imagine what could happen in the Arab world if citizenry starts rising up and taking down the bullshit ‘Presidents’ and political leaders? Some of whom are only still in power only because US and European interests in the region keep them firmly rooted. Would Arabs devolve into uncontrolled, seething masses of anarchy?

Or perhaps it is the opposite that truly scares the West? The uncontrolled, powerless Arab is the cornerstone of Hollywood, bigotry, and scapegoaters everywhere. But what if Arabs were able to spark a movement that brought new peace to the region? No doubt growing pains would be dangerous, and tremulous times. But what if Democracy, real Democracy started to flourish within the Middle East. Created by Arab Muslims, Christians and Jews, for Arab Muslim, Christians and Jews. Would the West react well? Or would they spin it into another Brown Folk Gone Wild and demand UN Peace keepers in the region. “Tonight at 10 on ABC: Is the unrest in the Middle East hurting our mission in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

Watch the news very carefully in the coming months regarding Tunisia. Keep a critical eye and make sure you get your news sources from Middle Eastern journalists as well as Western. My guess is that the second Arabs begin to really organize and create, negative or dismissive press will begin. Or should the revolution fail, should the PM simply pull a bait and switch, be very wary about who tells you it is all for the best.

Today it’s Tunisia. But waves are rippling across the Maghreb, Mediterranean and Arab Peninsula. Citizenry is watching with baited breath.  They are praying for the safety of their brothers and sisters in Tunisia and whispering quietly, over thick black coffee, “Could this happen here?”

And it may. But it won’t happen because some Australian guy leaked a non-secret in a clandestine cable. Julian Assange may be a lot of things to a lot of people—but Mohammed Bouazizi is the only name you really need to know.

Into The Night

The sun is setting in the sky and my work here must be done. I gingerly put away all the materials I’ve used and set the alarm on the office. I take the elevator down to the private landing below and slip into the night. Freedom.

The air is fresh and the good citizens of the 7Th Quartier are walking just a little bit slower, talking just a little less hurried. They meander around as if in search for that one great cafe that they went to that one time with their friend while shopping for wedding shoes. I wish I had time to partake. I have to get home.There are dogs to be taken out, there is The Daily Show to catch up on, and if I could just get 20 minutes to watch Jon Stewart talk and eat my spaghetti bolognese very slowly, I’d go to bed happy.

The Réseau Express Régional, otherwise known as the RER station, looms before me. These are trains that take the daily workers to and from their homes outside Paris proper. They stop in the suburbs and carry on further still into the countryside. The RER-E will be what takes me home tonight. The RER-E has a special place in French society.

It is the train of Brown Folk, it is the train of the ghetto, it is the train that will take you to that place where those riots happened, once upon a time.

You step on and 90% of us are Algerians, Lebanese, Ghanaian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Pakistani, Indian and Others. The ethnic French, that is to say, the people that will never be asked, “Where are you from?”, crowd in next to us all. If they are taking the RER-E they are usually well integrated into not-white culture. They don’t shrink, or get scared or get up and move seats when one of us sits down next to them. Something I’ve seen on inter-Paris metros more than once.

The train rattles to life and whines out of the station. One quick stop in Gare du Nord and then it’s out of the city for the night.

 The graffiti scratched into the windows mars my vision of the passing graffiti painted on walls. I focus instead on the scratches themselves. I have to stare at something after all. Staring at humans was out of the question. Where we were headed, the 93rd, people didn’t automatically assume good intent from strangers.
And so we all gaze aimlessly. We find a spot with our eyes and we stick them there. Our stone faces reverting into tombstones. We become monolithic, unmoving, inhuman blocks that just want to keep to ourselves until the next stop. One glance can bring harassment. One glance up and a man is asking me for a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke.”

“Your number then.” I wave him off as if to say that he shouldn’t bother. He moves on. I sigh a relief. All he has to do is follow me off the train. It’s happened before.

I have a friend, Wafa, who doesn’t really accept the place society gives her. She has a certain amount of privilege as her father is a fairly wealthy Français-Moroccan. Even with the money he stays in the 93rd. The 93rd, the neuf-trois as it is colloquially called, creates much trepidation to outsiders. But her father refuses to budge.

Wafa is impeccable in her dress, polite, well read,  and known for making friend’s wherever she goes. From the sales ladies at Gucci to the souvinier hawkers sporting mini-Eiffel Towers, she’s always up for a chat. She will help anybody if they come up and ask her for directions and she is quick to point out unacceptable behavior as such. But even her face turns inward when she takes the RER by herself. When we’re together we are laughing. We’re a group. We’re safe together and will giggle all the way to Gare du Nord. But alone? There are no longer jokes to make. We turn to marble.

The Tram meets up with me at my station. It takes me further into the 93rd and drops me off two minutes from my house. I usually feel safe walking from the station. I just wish they hadn’t opened two bars nearby. In my area, bars aren’t the corner and neighborhood place where you can go and get to know your bartender. The bars here are for the dredges of society who insist on shooting whiskey from 1pm to 6pm. After which they stumbled down my street pissing in corners and I’m supposed to ignore them while I’m walking by and all I want is the spaghetti bolognese so I will pick up my pace.

I tap the code into my gate and enter my apartment grounds. My shoulders fall, my face softens and I can finally relax. My upstairs neighbor is outside. I greet her. She’s a lovely woman. A Jewish widow who invites me up to give her English lessons that often devolve into gossip. The man below me is an old retiered Air France pilot who refuses to tell me scary stories. He’s 85 and has terribly old fashioned notions about worrying the “ladies”. He thinks I’ll never fly again if he tells me such things, he might be right.

I say hello to the Armenian single mother who lives next door, she’s painting her hallway a pale yellow and her front door is wide open. “How’s it getting along?” I ask.
“It’s good, I like the color, do you?”
“It’s very calming.”
“Bouchera wants to see your hallway.” Bouchera is our Moroccan neighbor who just had a child. She heard a rumor that I painted my hallway bright green. That rumor is true. I also painted my living room bright yellow after deciding I wanted my house to resemble Havana avant Castro.

I hear her child, “Amara!” I call, “come give me kisses. What are you waiting for?” The seven year old comes bursting out around her mother. She is all eyelashes and olive skin. “Can I see Elliot?” she asks, kissing me on the cheeks. I let my dog out and the little girl and my hyper puppy jump around together on our floor.
“Okay, good night, see you later!” I finally call as my stomach is growling and it’s time to eat some serious food.

I prepare my dinner, buffer The Daily Show and watch feeling perfectly content. But that night I cannot help but wonder about the other tombstones. What has become of them? Have they come back to nice apartment buildings full of friendly neighbors? Have they returned to the projects crawling with drug dealers? Did they go home to abuse? To a loving husband? To an empty home? To their own dog? Where do these monoliths go when they regain their human form? What tapestry of the city will they fill out? What assumptions have I made based on nothing more than façade. What does it take to break it down to a human level? In a world of stone faces, perhaps there is bravery in cracking up.

Or perhaps to keep our humanity it is imperative we do not think about the toes we will be stepping on. I fall asleep reminded of that old nursery rhyme and slowly the words morph in my mind until the chorus sings: Masses, masses, we all fall down.

Because a White Guy Said It

Listen,

It does not matter what you say. As a woman, as a woman of color, as a woman of size, as a woman with large breasts or no breasts and a lifetime of experience with bucket loads of passion. It does not fucking matter.*

Because unless there is a white guy backing you up, you are an angry bitch. Uppity, spirited, “that girl”, the femanazi, the super-libber, the PC chick, the conspiracy theorist…

A few months ago I posted something on a forum about how interesting it was that we only bomb brown countries. As Tom Wise suggested, perhaps it’s time we stop talking about how the war was for oil, and instead question why we feel we’d be entitled to that oil in the first fucking place.

Almost immediatly, but just as predictably, I was hit with good old Reverse Racism. The Double R that gets pulled out whenever the privileged hear something they’d rather not. It is the equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and screaming “la, la, la, fucking la” until the other person gives up and walks away.

Even the site administrator called me a racist.

Then, another well known poster there put on a clip of George Carlin ranting on how we only bomb brown countries. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY“>skip to the 2 minute mark if you’re interested in hearing it)

And suddenly, as if God himself had shone through the clouds and crowned me righteous and worthy. The tides turned. All of a sudden everybody could “see the point” I was trying to make. All of a sudden I was no longer the nefarious reverse racist infiltrating white society only to destroy it. I was just sharing the same opinion as George Carlin. I was worth believing.

I decided that day not to post there anymore. At least not with them knowing my ethnicity and gender. But the problem hardly stays online. 

Last night I had dinner with my ex-husband and a mutual male friend who is visiting Paris. Discussing Prop 8 he asks me, “Well but you probably feel more comfortable around gays than straight men, don’t you?”

I say, “of course I do. A majority of my time in a straight club is spent getting away from men grinding up on me as though they own me.” 

Naturally he doubts my story. “It can’t be that bad, though?”. My ex husband, bless his bouncer past, promptly sets him straight. He tells him how I used to go to his club all the time and he had to assist me more than once when men became predatorial on the dance floor.

And as soon as my ex mentions this the man shuts up. It is not enough to take my word for it. Never mind that I’ve been hanging out in my post puberty body for a fair amount of time now. I must be exaggerating because that’s what women do. The worst part? This guy wasn’t even a douche. He is a genuinely nice guy with an amazing girlfriend. But his natural default state is to disbelieve my story.

I just wish my own experiences were enough. That the experiences of fellow women were enough. But we must always come with backers. We must always have a few men nodding along behind us in the crowd. And at the very least if we’re going to be so bold as to bring up racism or sexism in polite company then we better be willing to quote reputable studies that have been widely recognized by the psychological and sociological communities.

If we lack this armor we are just drama. Dramatic or…wait for it…psycho bitches who think everybody is out to rape them or thinks they must be “Like, soooo attractive to be hit on so much and totally, probably, like, thinks like a victim”.

This is so dangerous because I believe it teaches us not to trust our own judgements. Sadly, in this world that can be life or death. When that guy hits on you for the third time at the club we should just get over it. He wasn’t being that creepy. “Oh no, girl, don’t talk to the bouncer about him, that’s just drama. Just have a good time”. I complained anyway but nothing was done.

And hey, when he tries to attack you while leaving the club—which happened to a friend and I in June of this year—the police may ask you why you didn’t complain “more than once” to security. I shit you not. 

Because it is never good enough. It’s always a teachable moment from man to woman. So listen up, child, because that’s exactly what you are. At least until a white man comes to back up your claims. But I don’t have to tell you that. You already know. The trick is for this argument not to be dismissed outright by some dude in a Quicksilver t-shirt because the fact is, he has final say on the veracity of our claims.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfXQJ4BOl5c

It’s not fucking coincidence I can quote that man at length. It’s a motherfucking necessity. And people wonder why I can’t sleep at night…

*I wanted to note that I am fully aware that when men of color talk about racism they are not believed by white society either. This is not a woman’s problem in totality. Sadly, that hardly negates their default reaction of disbelief when, as women, we share our own stories with them.