Equalizing Social, Sexual and Political Reality

DOMA struck down

The news this morning that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), along with Prop. 8 in California is, indeed, from a men's wellness standpoint, very wonderful and welcome. The law was, as the opinion stated, openly discriminatory toward a very specific group and therefore violated equal protection. Now, the battle moves to overturning all the other provisions of the law, which continue to allow states which don't allow same-sex marriage to ignore the laws of states that do allow it. At this point, it is relatively safe to be a same-sex couple in New England -- most of the states in that part of the nation recognize same-sex marriages -- but it remains quite unsafe to be in a same-sex marriage in most of the rest of the nation, which often have fairly virulent laws that limit the freedoms of LGBTQIA people.

At the same time, though, the 'equal protection' didn't seem to apply, in the minds of a majority of the justices, to voting rights for non-white minorities (decided yesterday). It's like two realities living side-by-side and not affecting each other. Equal protection for same-sex couple but not for the legal freedoms of minority group members. (Though, soon we're going to have to change those terminologies, given that the demographic projections are that by 2040, 'white folks' are going to be a minority in population terms, though they may well maintain, like in the formerly-apartheid South Africa, political majority advantages.)

And then there was the SCOTUS case this week concerning affirmative action at the University of Texas. In a narrow decision, the justices allowed academic admissions programs that are partly focused on racial balance to continue, though with more oversight. What all the challenges to affirmative action continue to ignore is that white people in America have been allowed affirmative action for 400 years; after 20 or so years of affirmative action for non-white minorities, we aren't likely to balance out the damage done by a system that ignores 'white advantages' by simply saying 'that's just the way it is'. It doesn't have to continue being that way, and is frankly unequal protection under the law.

This simply means the 'good fight goes on', not that anyone is surprised by that. I saw an interview with the late Howard Zinn a couple of days ago, and he was talking about how American history is a story of the 99% fighting for their rights in the face of the 1% control -- of money, resources, the law, the police, etc. So, today we can cheer for DOMA going down and feel most uncomfortable with the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act being crushed as well.


NSA Leaks

The other bit of recent news that has struck me as lacking in 'balance' has been the security leaks at the National Security Agency. The focus has been on how Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower who leaked the information about the massive surveillance of the American populace, has broken the law, while ignoring how the NSA itself broke the law in the extent of their surveillance of the citizenry. Even the loose nature of the Patriot Act, which allows for a profound invasion of the civil liberties of Americans in the name of 'protecting their freedom', was routinely violated by the NSA and its subcontractors due to their 'secret interpretation of what the law allowed them' to do.

Through the various programs which were exposed by this leak, the security-survaillance state routinely compromises American freedoms in the defense of those freedoms -- which strikes me a weirdly paradoxical. I was always concerned that after 9/11, when the United States, without provocation, invaded Iraq, we would end up "exporting democracy and importing dictatorship", sort of like the old Pogo cliche of "we have met the enemy and they are us". And this situation seems to support that concern. As many articles on Salon.com have pointed out, the government regularly 'leaks' confidential information to the media in support of their political perspectives, but is aghast and profoundly lacking in 'balance' when a whistle-blower 'leaks' information which makes them look bad. Not a very consistent policy! To say "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" should work both ways: if the government has nothing to hide, why not let the public know the general outlines of what they are doing 'to protect American freedoms'?

The old cliche that "just because you're not paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" has been sort of trumped by this recent news. As one writer pointed out "we are all now persons of interest", whether a citizen is completely innocent or not. As Caroline Kennedy said recently at a book-signing at the St. Louis County Library (in reference to a question about her 1997 book The Right to Privacy) "there is no longer any such thing as privacy in America, it's an illusion". That's sad and quite regrettable.

I just hope that Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado and his liberal colleagues have some impact on reining in these egregious violations of law. We do, indeed, need security from non-state terrorists, but at the price of an abrogation of civil liberties by what Noam Chomsky terms 'state terrorism'? I question whether that is worth it. I value my rights under the U.S. Constitution and the attendant Bill of Rights; having the government violate those rights in their attempt to defend my rights makes me wonder if Big Brother isn't taking this all just a bit too far.


Rape in the U.S. Military

The continuing story and evidence of ongoing rape in the U.S. military, and that, in spite of year after year statements of 'extensive training' and 'zero tolerance' by the top brass, the percentages keep rising, is a sad tale of the patriarchy allowing itself wide latitude while ignoring and even further victimizing vulnerable populations. The Independent Lens film The Invisible War this week on PBS portrayed both female and male military personnel, who were victims of rape, who were, after that sexual violation, then charged with crimes [such as, absurdly, adultery, even when the victims were single and their attackers were married] while their perpetrators were let off 'scot-free' -- and in some cases, those perpetrators were even promoted or honored, but rarely ever charged with a criminal act.

How can our military claim to be going around the world implementing 'democracy' when the personnel in that organization don't have rights? In one of the cases, the court ruling was that "rape is an occupational hazard" of military service. Really?? An occupational hazard? That is an egregious interpretation of the law. At least in civilian life, there is some redress to various levels of court systems; in the military, even if a court finds a perpetrator guilty, his commanding officer can vacate the ruling -- and apparently often does.

The other issue that the Independent Lens film brought up is that 50% of the rapes are of men. That is a statistic which very few of the critics of how the military has handled (or ignored) the issue have paid much attention to. As in many areas of the society, the rape of females is what is emphasized, while the rape of boys and men is either ignored or trivialized. Men who are subjected to sexual rape in prisons are ignored, as though that is 'just part of being a criminal'. (Back in 2006, a man in Texas sued over this issue, noting that while he was incarcerated for a specific crime, part of the imprisonment was not that "you will serve 10 years and be subjected to rape quite a number of times". I'm not sure what ever happened following his suit, but I hope it had some salutary effect on the 'justice system'.) There was a recent article on Salon.com talking about rape of boys in the juvenile justice system, and another article on rape of boys in school gymnastics programs (by other boys of the same age group).

My point isn't to minimize the quite horrific effects of the rape of females, but to note that it's not only females who experience rape. And to once again -- as I have often brought up in my blogs -- note how our culture willingly chooses to ignore the sexual rape and molestation of boys and men, often trivializing that kind of abuse as 'toughening up men', when in fact it is traumatizing and profoundly destructive on an emotional level -- just like it is for females.

Sexual Insecurities

This morning as I was reading articles on various websites, I came across a reference to a British video which challenges cultural notions about masculinity and male sexual insecurities. The film My Penis and Everyone Else's is a mildly humorous, but nonetheless serious documentary about male sexual insecurity about penis size, a subject that many men mention to close friends, but are uncomfortable talking about anywhere else. And yet it is a subject that affects their 'emotional sense' of being 'good enough' in many areas of their lives. As the filmmaker notes "what is important is not what's in your pants, but what's in your head", i.e. a man's perspective about the whole issue.

For years, I assumed the primary synonymous issue for females was breast size. In American culture, women are far more concerned about that issue than are most men, just like men are far more concerned about their penis size than are most women. (I've always argued that most women are far more focused on the size of a man's paycheck than on the size of his sexual organ. If their paycheck is large enough to satisfy women's financial fantasies, everything else 'seems' large -- or large enough -- as well.) Then, recently, I was reading an article on Salon.com about a website devoted to women sending in photos of their genitals and discussing their insecurities around that issue. The Large Labia Project is truly the 'equal concern' place for women to discuss matters that are incredibly similar to male concerns about penis size.

It just goes to show, once again, that sexual insecurity is hardly a gender-specific problem, though the 'nature' of an insecurity may be specific to one sex or the other.