J: What changed?
A: Emily finally just said something openly at a college-radio press conference in the Northampton/Amherst area. I think they asked her about being gay and she said yes. I just remember a feeling of relief came over me that was huge. Then we realized that our publicist was turning down gay magazines without us knowing.
J: You mean, once you came out, you realized that there had been more of a strategy to dampen your gay profile?
A: Not really a strategy, but it was happening. I would talk to writers at gay publications and they would be like, “Yeah, no one returned our calls.” We were being steered away from that constantly. I realized that if we wanted to be out and not be lying in some indirect way, we would have to express that to the label and to our publicist, to say, “We want to do these interviews. It’s a community we want to be a part of and it’s an audience that’s important to us.” We had to be very demonstrative about it. It’s funny, because now publicists are so desperate to get to any community. They’ll say an artist is gay if they have to. [Laughs.]
J: Let’s talk a little about your evolving relationship with gender. Back when we were dating, we were boarding a plane once and the security guard called you “sir” and you said, “Ma’am!” or, “I’m a woman!” I remember feeling personally destabilized by the exchange, because I really liked that your vibe was very masculine. Yet when there was actual confusion, I felt bad for you: “Oh no! The whole point is that it’s supposed to be clear that she’s a hot butch woman!” I felt like the worst thing one can possibly do to someone is not grasp his or her gender.
I feel very differently now. I meet people who are trans and make occasional mistakes about chosen pronouns and the like, but I feel like I now am at least conversant. You told me more recently, though, that now you wouldn’t feel bad if someone mistook your gender. You would only feel bad for the other person, because they would feel bad.
A: I feel like if someone calls me “sir,” they’re picking up on who I am, which is, you know, probably more than half male. I probably fall more there. I don’t want to lose my 25 percent female, but it is probably only 25 percent.
J: I really do know what you mean, despite your lady parts.
A: Now, I feel pretty comfortable. I think my only struggle is some days waking up in the wrong body and being depressed about it for a few days, but then I get over it, because it’s not so much the wrong body that I would change it. It’s kind of mostly the wrong body, but it’s not enough to give it up. When I met you, I was starting to understand my gender. I began to see myself as masculine in a bigger way than I ever had. It was like a door opening, and then it was hanging out with the Butchies and their community and looking at other communities where there was sort of a feminine and masculine dichotomy in a queer relationship that was really obvious—stylistically or attitude-wise. And then understanding that I felt comfortable in that system, where I like to be with someone who’s very femme. Then I had to understand that there are a lot of people who feel differently about that, too. It’s funny how, with a movement so young, we have to learn definitions and articulate things and have a vocabulary just to move to the next place, but we do. It is the generations after me that are so much better at it.
J: Yes, the young ones. That’s who I’m learning from, too! Some people who are concerned about the rise of trans feminism or just transgenderism in general fear that it serves a misogynist purpose and an anti-gay purpose, too. What do you think about that?
A: I understand what people say about that. Just take the “trans” out, and talk about the part of queer where you feel comfortable in this structure that’s almost sort of hetero, because it’s a femme/masculine structure. That really probably rose out of the working class, in the very early days of female couples’ having to have a way to pass. This is like a structure that passed, in a way. When I understood butch-femme scenes in Seattle or San Francisco or North Carolina, I could see that they were tipping their hat to that era in tattoos—the star on the wrist or the other working-class tattoos—that may have taken it to a different level. They weren’t trying to pass in the straight world—feminine or masculine was their aesthetic and their sexuality and how they understand their own kind of hotness. I think it’s important to acknowledge the danger of buying into something that’s part of the heterosexual world, that has misogyny in it, when you still have to be who you are.
With the trans issue, I understand why people may think there’s a tendency towards misogyny or some misogyny mixed in there with trans men—something going on in there about women being seen as less. I know my own struggle with my own body so well. And it’s not all misogyny, and it’s not all because society told me that women are less or women can’t achieve as much, or that I grew up with rock ’n’ roll and all my idols were men, so that’s what I was taught you have to be to make it. That is some of what is going on in my head all the time, but when you feel at odds with your body, it is so much bigger than that political stuff. It’s everything you are; it’s your core, the way you walk in the world, and when you see someone who’s transitioned, who is suddenly who they are, it’s very powerful.
J: I used to be very anti–plastic surgery, the way you can be when you’re twenty-two and have no need for it. But it also just struck me as this sad example of women being taught that they need to do something dangerous in order to remedy how inadequate they are. Then a friend of mine struggled for years to accept the fact that she was entirely flat-chested—not like she has small boobs, but completely flatchested. Finally, she got breast implants. Now, she looks in the mirror and she sees who she thinks she is. Whereas she used to see kind of a kid—maybe a boy, she wasn’t sure—she now sees a woman. She didn’t relate internally, in her psyche, to what she was seeing.
A: It’s real. Maybe in a hundred years, we’ll live in a world where bodies aren’t so representational of who we are inside. But, we’re not there, and you don’t have to live your life as a martyr to that. You do the things that you need to do to feel comfortable with yourself, but at the same time, you work on acceptance, too. Those are two things that can happen at once.
J: Here’s a question that’s not about gender: Are you glad you took the major-label route? I know you’ve always had ambivalence.
A: Yes, I’m glad.
J: Why?
A: They gave us a lot of opportunities. At the time, major labels were still really into developing artists. We were given so many resources—financially, to work in great studios, to work with other artists who were really cool. It’s so different now that the concept of what a major label was back then is just foreign to people now. There were a lot of evils associated with it, but they developed bands, and they had a trajectory and long-term plan for you. I probably regret the last few years of it. It was kind of like a bad relationship, where we just didn’t get out soon enough.
J: In what way?
A: We were getting more and more political; simultaneously, the label just kind of gave up on us because we weren’t having hits. They were funneling us into all these radio things for a community that didn’t relate to us anymore. Meanwhile, we couldn’t tap into a more indie, radical community because we were part of this major-label machinery that does things one dinosaur-ish way.
J: Do you feel like all the independent records you made helped you cycle back around to being part of a radical feminist, separatist community that you originally avoided?
A: Yes, a feminist, queer, separatist community surrounded me when I began doing independent records as Amy Ray. Starting in 2001, I was playing with the Butchies and meeting Le Tigre and Kathleen Hanna and learning so much more about Riot Grrrl. These things were happening on my periphery, but I hadn’t been able to connect with them. At the same time, Michigan [Womyn’s Music Festival] was getting more radicalized—[punk band] Tribe 8 had played there. It definitely introduced me more to that. The aesthetic of these younger radical feminists was punk, rather than the hippie aesthetic of
my youth.
The people I know from doing independent stuff have really been an incredible resource for Indigo Girls. Just so many opportunities and musicians we’ve met and spaces we’ve played and other activism opportunities we’ve had have come from that seed. I feel like it’s been invaluable to me and Emily, giving us energy and keeping us on point and interested in what we’re doing. The world has changed, but so has the breadth of women’s music—and it’s now so clearly where I want to be.
—Interviewed on February 24, 2011
TAKE BACK THE NIGHT. AGAIN.
It might have been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison or the University of Delaware or even Miami University, which is, oddly, in Oxford, Ohio. I was very likely surrounded by young students, men and women, carrying hand-lettered signs and sheets decorated with women symbols. I was most certainly verklempt, as I always am at Take Back the Night marches—emotional to be among the vibrant crowd, to see how many people care about the safety of women, humbled to be among so many who have been raped, incested, or molested. But I also felt a nagging sense of déjà vu, a Groundhog Day kind of dread that this particular Take Back the Night was just like the one I went to in 1989 at my own college. I couldn’t help but wonder, with increasing sadness, will Skuli and Magnus also be attending Take Back the Nights at their future colleges? Will women ever feel like the night is ours?
I acknowledge that we’ve made progress. In fact, by the time the first Take Back the Night march was held in San Francisco in 1978, feminists had already made several major contributions to eradicating sexual assault. Authors such as Susan Brownmiller made rape visible, revealing its long history and rescuing it from the realm of a bad date that was somehow your fault. She, and others, placed sexual assault where it rightly belongs—within the domain of crime. For the first time, women used the word rape to describe nonconsensual sex when the aggressor was a husband, a date, or a friend. They connected rape to the systematic oppression of women under patriarchy. Brownmiller famously wrote: “From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” (italics hers).5
Brownmiller’s indicting statement reflects feminism’s second major contribution. The creators of the women’s liberation movement attempted to untangle rape from the dizzying array of other factors surrounding it—alcohol, outfits, past experiences, reputations—and distill it to its essence. They created maxims such as “rape is about power, not sex” and “no means no.”
One of the most important things I learned as I came into my own as a feminist is that no matter how profound and groundbreaking the insight, strategies must evolve in order to push the feminist agenda further. Younger people might build on what came before—as Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti did with their anti-rape anthology Yes Means Yes—or they might have to get rid of it altogether. Doing Take Back the Night year after year is fine as a tradition and a celebration but is a sideline, perhaps, to actually deepening our understanding of and ability to eradicate rape. Take Back the Night doesn’t function as it once did. If our objective is to reduce the number of rapes to zero, to move beyond analysis and protest and into actions, what might they be?
One solution is to break the original silences that swirl around women’s bodies. Peter Vincent D’Angelo (a.k.a. Vinnie Angel) grew up in the 1970s. His family was Italian/Irish, traditional (stay-at-home mom, professor dad), and all boys. His mom presumably menstruated, but he didn’t really know, because she never made an effort to explain it to them. Meanwhile, TV and magazine ads overtly sold women and men on the idea of silence. As such, Vinnie learned that a successful period to a girl or woman is one in which no one knows she’s having it. In order to be polite and support girls in their quest to have invisible, mysterious periods, he never let on that he knew his high school and college girlfriends were on the rag.
Many years later, out of college and working as an artist in New York City, Vinnie decided to make an experimental film in which he asked a bunch of his friends the same vapid twenty questions a reporter had asked Magic Johnson in an old issue of Sporting News magazine. One of the questions was “What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you?” Vinnie filmed a female friend, and when he got to that question, she said, breaking into tears, “I guess when I was gang-raped in high school and when I tried to talk about it, no one believed me.”
Vinnie was flabbergasted. He couldn’t believe he’d known this friend so intimately and for such a long time and yet had never known about this major trauma in her life. He thought of the silencing she must have felt, and his mind skipped to the other ways in which women are told to stay silent and invisible about what happens to them. He wanted to respond to this gross injustice, but he wasn’t sure how to get to the root of something so awful. And then it came to him: He was going to create a tampon case and it was going to be red and black and tough looking (no pink and lavender euphemisms for this scabbard). He—a man—was going to give away ten thousand of these cases and allow this seemingly innocuous canvas tampon case placed in backpacks, pockets, and purses, to inspire spontaneous conversations between women and men about menstruation and the realities of women’s bodies. Fifteen years later, in 2011, more than half a million women around the world use his tampon cases—each case representing a leap, however small, into talking about what happens to women “down there.”
Vinnie’s friend’s experience points to how upside down our approach to rape still is. If you are raped, you descend down a rabbit hole into a parallel world where getting hurt means that you, and probably only you, will be punished. Even the signs and programs meant to address the problem underscore that it’s mainly women’s behavior that we are trying to control. But what if our behavior modification were directed not at victims, but at perpetrators? A subway ad in New York City proclaims: YOU DON’T HAVE TO ACCEPT SEXUAL HARASSMENT. SAY NO! REPORT IT! An enterprising designer could slap a poster over that which says: DON’T ABUSE OR SEXUALLY HARASS ANYONE! IF YOU DO, YOU ARE DISGUSTING AND YOU WILL BE PUNISHED!” In addition to teaching kids about good and bad touches, we could meet sitters at the door and say, “Bedtime is at eight; make sure he uses the bathroom before bed. Am I forgetting anything? Oh, yes, and definitely don’t molest my child.”
Speaking out, a staple of Take Back the Night marches, still has its place—primarily in terms of providing a sense of support and community for people who have been raped, and for creating space to name what has happened to so many. I’ve interviewed dozens of women and a couple of men about their rape stories, and each is uniquely heartbreaking and shattering and provides a crucial sense that rape victims are not alone. Still, these accounts aren’t necessarily useful for prevention.
As I travel to college campuses, I’m struck by how much awkwardness there is around sex, and how alcohol and drugs are used to quell uncomfortable feelings of gracelessness and embarrassment. What’s needed, of course, is honest, direct, and somewhat sober communication among people before the rape occurs. Ben Privot, a 2010 graduate of Drew University, created the Consensual Project, which brings to colleges workshops that make consent understandable and, he hopes, sexy. Privot aligns with younger feminist organizations, such as PAVE (Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment), and groups that focus on male behavior, such as Men Can Stop Rape.
Men are becoming more powerful as anti-rape activists—not just by talking to other men about behavior that might be unsafe for women, but also by telling the truth about their own experiences of rape. David Benzaquen, the political and legislative action coordinator for NARAL Pro-Choice New York, is a survivor of rape—in his case a sexual assault by his girlfriend when he was 18. Men like David who are brave enough to come out about their own sexual assaults provide crucial insight into the psychology of rape—especially why a person who, theoretically, appears strong enough to get away from an attacker can’t.
Femi
nists of all stripes are providing ideas to prevent rape, too. In 2004, musician Oraia Reid was outraged by a surge in sexual assaults targeting women walking home at night in North Brooklyn. She founded RightRides, which uses volunteers (working in groups of two) and Zipcars to provide free rides home for women and LGBTQ individuals. The organization’s tagline is “Getting home safely shouldn’t be a luxury.” In 2005, Emily May founded Hollaback!, “a movement dedicated to ending street harassment” by encouraging would-be victims to record their harasser on their phone and send the recording to the Hollaback! website, thus publicizing what women’s silence often protects.
The other day, my ultra-organized friend Constance looked over my list of ongoing projects to help me prioritize my life. She wrote down each project or job obligation on an index card and then made three piles: immediate, two months from now, and no deadline. She looked at the card listing my rape awareness project called It Was Rape, composed of a film in postproduction, a T-shirt, and resource cards. She paused, then snapped it down authoritatively onto the no-deadline pile. “That one is evergreen,” she said as I protested meekly. “Rape is an ongoing problem that, sadly, will be there when you get to it.”
F 'em! Page 20
