Women In Pumps

I was a temp once for the non-profit The Hunger Project. This was an organization that was dedicated to ending hunger around the world through sustainable means (I can't believe I still remember the language they used!) Their solution? Educate women. The theory goes that as long as girls/women are looked at as less than boys/men, hunger and malnutrition will continue to plague our planet.

Why do I bring this up and what does it have to do with my gut? Well, it doesn't really have to do with my gut, but it has to do with trusting one's gut. And it does have to do with the power of women. This week, I want to focus on women, their guts, and how their guts save lives.

PART I: Jaycee Lee Dugard

Last night, I watched Diane Sawyer's interview with Jaycee Lee Dugard, a 31 year old woman who was kidnapped at 11 years old and held captive for over 18 years by a man and his wife. During that time, she was raped by the man and gave birth to two of his children. As horrendous as the events were, the part of the story that shocked and angered me the most was the fact that law enforcement had visited the house on 60 different occasions over the eighteen years and never caught on to what was going on.

See, this man was convicted of raping a woman for eight hours in a storage unit. (He also allegedly raped a 14 year old although the charges were dropped when the victim refused to testify) As part of his parole after only serving a fraction of his sentence, law enforcement made regular visits to his house, and on more than one occasion came in contact with Jaycee and her two young children but did not ask any questions.

According to the report, it wasn't until the man took Jaycee and the young girls with him to a nearby college campus to evangelize that law enforcement stepped in. Two women, both working for campus security, noticed the three young women and sensed something was up. Not knowing the background of the man, they listened to their gut and did a little digging to find that the man was a convicted sex offender. As a result, they called authorities who brought him in for questioning at which time he confessed to the kidnapping.

My question is, why did male law enforcement officers not question who the three girls were in this man's home while two female law enforcement officers, who new nothing of the case, suspected something was up and ended up cracking the case? Do all male law enforcement officers suck? I hope not! But, I do have a theory.

PART II: OPPRESSION

I come from a family where a woman's place is in the kitchen. There's a song that I think Dean Martin sang in the fifties that basically said, "Wives, if you don't look good and have dinner ready for your husband when he gets home, he's going to stray and it will be your fault." Really?!?! That's my family. Growing up, the women in my family always looked fabulous in the kitchen; hair done, cleavage, heels. To this day, many of my aunt's still where pumps while cooking. WORK!!!

The trouble was/is, my aunts didn't/don't have a choice. There has never been a time when my uncles have said "Hey, you ladies sit down. You work so hard always making our lives easier. It's our turn to cook."

Many will say that this is cultural. Some of my aunts may argue that it doesn't bother them. My dad might say it was a different generation. I think it is bigger than that and I think it is why the male law enforcement officers didn't suspect any foul play when they checked in on the convicted sex offender and saw him with three unidentified young girls.

In my work, I facilitate conversations around bias and discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, etc. One of my favorite conversations is around oppression. We look at four kinds of oppression. The first is Ideological Oppression. Take a minute to think about what our society, in general, says about women. What are the stereotypes? Women are emotional, bad at math, bad drivers, only good at jobs that involve education or caregiving, they are weaker. 

Now think about Institutional Oppression. How do our institutions oppress women? Workplace: women make $.77 on the dollar for the same work; Government: they had to fight for the right to vote, the first female appointed to the Supreme Court wasn't until 1981, even though women make up more than 50% of the population, only 17% make up our Congress; Sports: lack of support at the school and professional level. These are only a few examples.

With this in mind, how might a woman be treated because of these ideas and institutional oppressions, in general? They might be marginalized, victimized, thought of as less than, condescended, sexually assaulted, raped, treated as sex objects. This is called interpersonal oppression.

The last oppression is internalized. Because of all of this, women may internalize these oppressions and feel worthless, dumb, less than. The list can go on and on.

You can do this excercise with many different kinds of identities; sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, etc. I am focusing on women because I think the ideological oppression and institutional oppression that exists in our society towards women may have kept the male law enforcement officers deaf to their gut telling them something was up.

In the report with Diane Sawyer, a psychiatrist who worked on Jaycee's case said that a male police officer had come up on Jaycee's kidnapper when he was raping the woman in the storage unit many years before. Instead of arresting him, the man convinced the police officer that the woman tied up, naked and screaming had actually consented. With that, he left the scene. Would a female police officer buy the story that a naked, screaming woman was consenting? I can't believe she would. But my gut says that because of the sexualization of women in our society and the belief by many men that "no" means "yes", the male police officer probably didn't even think twice.

Are all men pigs? No. Are all women victims? No. But I do believe the privilige enjoyed by my uncles in the kitchen is the same privilige that can make them deaf to their gut, especially when it comes to women. As a man, I have made it my mission to make sure that the priviliges I experience because of my gender, race, age, etc. are available to everyone. Is that realistic? Who knows? But my gut says that I have to try.

I hope that all women, especially my aunts, will one day enjoy the privilige of being treated as full equals (while still wearing pumps!). I just hope in that privilege, women don't lose the connection to their gut. Without that connection, we're screwed!