HISTORY + VIDEO: Yaa Asantewaa > Biography Of Yaa Asantewaa

Yaa Asantewaa Biography

| January 12, 2011

 

 

Yaa Asantewaa was the queen mother of the Edweso tribe of the Asante (Ashanti) in what is modern Ghana. At the time, the Gold Coast (west-central Africa) was under the British protectorate. The British supported their campaigns against the Asante with taxes levied upon the local population. In addition, they took over the state-owned gold mines thus removing considerable income from the Asante government. Missionary schools were also established and the missionaries began interfering in local affairs.

When the Asante began rebelling against the British rule, the British attempted to put down the unrests. Furthermore, the British governor, Lord Hodgson, demanded that the Asante turn over to them the Golden Stool, i.e. the throne and a symbol of Asante independence. Capt. C. H. Armitage was sent out to force the people to tell him where the Golden Stool was hidden and to bring it back. After going from village to village with no success, Armitage found at the village of Bare only the children who said their parents had gone hunting. In response, Armitage ordered the children to be beaten. When their parents came out of hiding to defend the children, he had them bound and beaten, too.

This brutality was the instigation for the Yaa Asantewaa War for Independence which began on March 28, 1900. Yaa Asantewaa mobilized the Asante troops and for three months laid siege to the British mission at the fort of Kumasi. The British had to bring in several thousand troops and artillery to break the siege. Also, in retaliation, the British troops plundered the villages, killed much of the population, confiscated their lands and left the remaining population dependent upon the British for survival. They also captured Queen Yaa Asantewaa whom they exiled along with her close companions to the Seychelle Islands off Africa’s east coast, while most of the captured chiefs became prisoners-of-war. Yaa Asantewaa remained in exile until her death twenty years later.

 

PUB: Call for Submissions for Warscapes: An Online Magazine of Literature, Art and Politics (worldwide) > Writers Afrika

Call for Submissions for Warscapes:

An Online Magazine of

Literature, Art and Politics

(worldwide)


Warscapes is an independent online magazine that provides a lens into current conflicts across the world. Warscapes publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, interviews, book and film reviews, photo-essays and retrospectives of war literature from the past fifty years. It is being read in 170 countries! Apart from showcasing great writing from war-torn areas, the magazine is a tool for understanding complex political crises in various regions and serves as an alternative to compromised representations of those issues.

We are actively calling for submissions in all areas. Film and book reviewers would be particularly welcome. Please write to submissions@warscapes.com

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries/ submissions: submissions@warscapes.com

Website: http://www.warscapes.com

 

 

PUB: Call for Submissions: Sargasso Issue—”Agency and Intervention in Caribbean Contexts” « Repeating Islands

Call for Submissions:

Sargasso Issue—

"Agency and Intervention

in Caribbean Contexts"

SARGASSO, a peer-reviewed journal of Caribbean literature, language, and culture, published at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras, seeks submissions for the upcoming issue: “Agency and Intervention in Caribbean Contexts.” The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2012.

Description: The Sargasso team is looking for scholarship that addresses the varied ways that agency and/or intervention has been engaged, configured, and/or problematized within Caribbean societies, traditions, and cultures. Of special interest is scholarship that dialogues with ideas in the fields of literature, linguistics, performance/drama, ethnomusicology, anthropology, social sciences, and postcolonial studies; they strongly encourage work that is interdisciplinary in nature.

This issue of Sargasso will feature contributions that either rethink or creatively explore the issues of agency and/or intervention in Caribbean contexts. Current postcolonial theorists and scholars frequently foreground the interventionist possibilities of their work on contemporary inequities and material needs by demonstrating how subaltern or subjugated communities attain and exercise agency. The editors of this issue seek essays that engage these progressive notions of agency and intervention in Caribbean communities, as well as essays that explore problematic descriptions of agency or intervention. Also welcome are essays on Caribbean performance/drama, visual arts, oral/aural, or music, in particular those that consider the formulation of modes of agency or cultural/political intervention.

Themes that might be addressed include, but are not limited to: innovative approaches to agency and intervention; technology and agency and humanistic inquiry; political agency and social movements in Caribbean cultures; postcolonial interventions in Caribbean Studies; problematizing, interrogating or questioning postcolonial interventions; literary agency and/or voice in Caribbean cultures; subaltern agency and development, corruption, or democracy; language and agency/discursive approaches to agency; drama/performance/activism as cultural intervention; gender/sexuality and agency; humanitarian or military intervention; police intervention/criminalization; and violence and agency/intervention.

Essays should be 4,000-6,000 words and double-spaced, in English, Spanish, French, or Papiamentu. Abstracts of 120 words or less should be sent with essays along with biographies of 50 words or less. B & W photos, illustrations, and graphics that accompany essays are encouraged. Interviews, short fiction, and poetry related to the topic will also be considered for publication. Book reviews and review essays of recent scholarship on the Caribbean are also welcome; they should be approximately 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, respectively. For style guidelines visit the Sargasso website.

Manuscripts are due by September 15, 2012, and should be sent to sargassojournal@gmail.com and sargasso.agency.intervention@gmail.com. Contributors will be contacted about the status of their contribution by October 31, 2012.

For more information visit: http://humanidades.uprrp.edu/ingles/pubs/sargasso.htm

 

PUB: Poetry Institute of Canada - Poetry and Fiction Contest

Established 1993

P.O. Box 44169 - RPO Gorge •Victoria, British Columbia V9A 7K1

Phone (250) 519-0446 • Fax: (250) 519-0029


Our nineteenth year of uniting writers and poets

Proudly Canadian

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENT

NEW (ALL AGES)

POETRY CONTEST CASH PRIZES

Closing date July 31, 2012

The Poetry Institute of Canada announces its nineteenth annual open poetry contest, for Fall 2012. Following its successful 2011 contest, it will again award cash and other prizes to poets.

Any poet, previously published or not, may enter this contest and be a winner. The contest is open to all poets of any age. Any subject or style of poetry or prose poetry is acceptable and there is no entry fee. New and unpublished poets are encouraged to send in their work.

The poem should be original and consist of 24 lines or less. As well as the opportunity to win a cash prize, the best poems received will be published in a beautiful hard cover Anthology of Verse.

To enter, please send one original poem only to: Open Ages Poetry Contest (W)

P.O. Box 44169 - RPO Gorge Victoria, BC V9A 7K1.

Or e-mail to: poetryinstitute@shaw.ca
Name, age, and address should be included on the same page as the poem. Typed or neatly written poems please. Entries should be postmarked no later than July 31, 2012.

 

NEW (ADULT)

SHORT STORY CONTEST CASH PRIZES

Closing date July 31, 2012 ...

Short Stories Essays Anecdotes (Fiction or non-fiction) Entrant must be over 18yrs

You can win cash prizes and have your writing published.

Send us an account of your recollections, memories, grass roots experiences or amusing incidents.

Writing is limited to 850 words.

As well as the opportunity to win a cash prize, the best pieces of creative writing will be published, in a top quality Anthology. This volume will showcase the best work received.

Any writer previously published or not, may enter this contest and be a winner. New and unpublished writers are encouraged to send in their work. Any subject or style is acceptable and there is no entry fee.

The work must be original and typed or neatly hand written. Name, age, and address must be included on the front page of the work (one entry per person). Work should be no longer than 850 words on 8 1/2” x 11” paper and postmarked no later than July 31, 2012. Authors will be contacted by letter. Send your entry to:

Adult Short Story Contest (W) P.O. Box 44169 - RPO Gorge

Victoria, BC, V9A 7K1
or e-mail to:
poetryinstitute@shaw.ca 

 

>VIA: http://www.poetryinstitute.shawbiz.ca/htdocs/forms/contest%20rules%202012.pdf

INTERVIEW: Millie Jackson > Songwriter Interviews

Millie Jackson

 

"Let white folks cross over to me."

An R&B star with a stunning voice, Millie Jackson was close to breaking into the mainstream like her nemesis Tina Turner, but it's probably best that she didn't. Flying just under the radar keeps her out of trouble, like when the PMRC somehow missed her.

She's a rap innovator, setting up songs with compelling interludes and creating what might be the first rap song by a female artist. A songwriter, producer and performer who has remained firmly in control of career, she has no problem speaking her mind - just wait 'til you read her Hip-Hop conspiracy theory.

Caught Up was Millie's triumphant 1974 concept album about cheating, with the first side featuring songs from the perspective of the mistress, and the second side from the wife.

Millie Jackson
Carl Wiser (SF): Do your cheating songs come from personal experience?

Millie Jackson: Well, I've had a few married men in my life, but the songs weren't about them. It just gave me a reflection of what it's like.

SF: Well, all that material you have for the Caught Up album, if it's not personal experience, you must have gotten a good first-hand account.

Millie: Well, if you listen to Caught Up see, first of all, it's like a story. One side of the entire album is about the girl going with the married man. But the second side of the album, I thought the wife should have her say. So it's from the side of the wife and what she thinks about being cheated on. Her confrontation with the girlfriend. You know, "all you're gettin' is my leftovers, digging out of love I done picked over. You oughta leave my man alone, find one of your own." (laughing) When I write a story like that, I like to balance it out so people on both sides can see what's going on. That's why I did the wife and the girlfriend. And when I do my live performances, the women were always my biggest fans, but now I do both. I talk about the women, and then I go and I talk about the men, which the women expect me to do, but then I'll talk about the men and the women, so it can be balanced out that way. Try to keep it on an even keel.

SF: Have you been married?

Millie: Oh, yes! I was married for a whole 8 months.

SF: (laughs) That's it?

Millie: (laughing) Yeah.

SF: When was that?

Millie: 1971. He was a bass player named Victor Davis, and he thought that we were gonna be the next Ike and Tina Turner. He thought he was gonna tell me what to do with my life, and I decided that was not gonna happen. Case closed.

SF: Did that give you some impetus for your songs that followed over the next few years?

Millie: No, he was gone before "Ask me what you want" came out.

SF: Can you tell me how you write songs?

Millie: I always wrote, but they were poems. So you just take poems and have somebody put some music behind it, or you get an idea in your head as to how the melody is, and you hum it and somebody else plays it. And by the time I learned enough about music to do it myself, I found that the music part was boring and it's worth 50% of the song to give it to somebody else to do it and get it over with. (laughs)

SF: So you don't write melodies, just lyrics?

Millie: Well, I have melodies in my head, and I have a piano, but I don't do it enough for it to be interesting to me. It's easier if I hum it to somebody. If it's "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are," then I'll just sing that, and then they can get the chords and we'll be finished with the whole song in half an hour. If I'm sitting here trying to figure out the chords, three weeks later it still ain't finished. (laughs) I could have written four or five more songs.

SF: Where do the words come from?

Millie: From anywhere. From life.

SF: Well, give me an example.

 

Millie: Pick a subject.

SF: Let's say infidelity.

Millie: Infidelity? Oh, boy. You just went down my whole album. In fact, my whole repertoire. Do you decide whether or not you want to talk about a certain part of an infidelity. Is it a man? Is it a woman? Is it both of them? Or do you want to go and start talking about what infidelity calls to life, or how it ruins a relationship, and not pertaining to anybody in particular. But, see, just like that you can write 25 songs on infidelity.

SF: Let's take "A Child of God" for instance. Tell me about writing that song.

Millie: It was Don French's idea. And I just came in and put the lyrics to it. It was easy, it was simple. I'm great with poems.

SF: I don't think that's simple for other people. Because that's a fairly complex thought that you distilled into something that is very meaningful.

Millie: I write a lot of meaningful songs, but nobody ever heard them. (laughs) Because in my case most people would rather only listen to infidelity. But I was talking to somebody yesterday and he says, "You think you could write rock?" I put the phone down and played about 5 songs off of my (1994) Rock N Soul album. He says, "I didn't know you did rock and roll!" Rock and roll is my spirit, really, but nobody cares. Tina Turner came through and forgot about that. In fact, there's a good story behind that.

I recorded "Missing You" And I was all excited about it, it was gonna be my next single, and the guys at Muscle Shoals said, "Boy you got the song out quick! I heard it at a truck stop." And I'm trying to figure out how in the world did they hear my song at a truck stop when it won't be out for two weeks. And of course it was Tina Turner and we had to pull the single and come back with a different one.

SF: You mention Tina Turner. She can write songs if she wants to, but her hits in the '80s were written by other people. Aretha Franklin did the same thing. And it seems like you could have gone that route and become a crossover pop star.

Millie: Well, in America I think in order to be a pop star you've got to have management. And I always managed myself. I was never looking to become that crossover pop star. Let white folks cross over to me. I call myself the poor people's queen. Because once you get to the top there's only one way to go.

When you had all the problems with profanity in the music, nobody mentioned me. The senator's wife never knew I existed. So I didn't have to go to congress. During the time when Jesse Jackson was raising hell about profanity I was being booked by the same agency as the Isley Brothers and they had Fight The Power with "all this bullshit going down," nobody mentioned my name. Nobody knew I was doing it. I didn't have to deal with any of that. And basically that's me. I want to make a living doing what I'm doing, and I bore easily; when I get tired of doing something I go off and do something else. Music is my career, and it's a gig. It's not a 9-to-5, but it's a gig, and I want to survive from doing this. So therefore, I write a lot of songs and I publish them, and I go to work when I feel like it. That's why I never had a manager; I don't need anyone to tell me when to go to work. I know if I want to work or not. In this business I guess it could be semi-eccentric, but I like being able to go shopping for myself. I go to the supermarket and nobody bothers me. I don't have a bodyguard, I like that. I think I live a very decent life. I'm a long way from starving, and I'm still me.

SF: Along this journey, did you ever have somebody try to have you become a different type of singer?

Millie: Of course. In fact, my first album is not my natural voice. They speeded up my voice, it was too low for a woman they thought, so they speeded up all my tracks a half a step, so everything would be higher than I actually sing it in. The first song I recorded that came out in my natural voice was "Hurts So Good." On "Ask Me What You Want," I'm almost one of the Chipmunks. (laughs)

SF: How involved are you in the studio?

Millie: Well, I've been co-producing my albums since Hurts So Good. And Caught Up was the first album that I got credit for co-producing. In fact, Brad Shapiro came to see me because the record company sent him to see one of my shows. I had the idea to do Caught Up, the way one song keeps going into the next song. And he told the record company, "I need her in the studio. I don't know how she does what she does." So I went down to Muscle Shoals to show him how I do what I do, and co-produce the album. And when the album came out, it said, "Album concept by Millie Jackson," and I hit the ceiling. I stood up in the middle of the floor and cussed like a banshee. And finally Roy Rifkin said, "Can we please go to lunch? You gonna be the death of me yet." And Bill Spitowski says, "We'll put on your tombstone, 'Produced by Millie Jackson.'" (laughing)

SF: It sounds like "Hurts So Good" was a turning point where you really took control. Can you tell me how that song came together?

Millie: I didn't write the song. The writer knew me well, and Brad Shapiro picked the song, and to be honest, that ended up in the movie (Cleoptra Jones) because of timing. They needed the songs, and they knew of me, and they put two songs in the movie, only because they were available. The album was supposed to be called something totally different, but since it came out in the movie they called it "Hurts So Good." My whole career is an accident. (laughs) I just believe that if opportunity knocks, open the door.

SF: What's an example of an opportunity that knocked for you?

Millie: Well, I never had any training, I did on-the-job training. My whole career started at Palms Caf in Harlem, and it sounds like some Hollywood storybook, but it wasn't. Leslie Young was the band, and we'd go up on Thursday nights and hang, and if anybody wanted to sing, they went and sang. This was in New York, 125th Street. And this girl was singing, I don't know who she was, but I was laughing about how terrible she sounded. And my group that was with me said, "You think you can sing better?" I said, "Sure, anybody could." So they dared me to go on stage - we bet $5 that I wouldn't go on stage and sing. So I went on stage and I sang Ben E. King's "Don't Play It No More." And somebody was having dinner, saw me, called me over to his table, and asked me if I would work at the Crystal Ballroom the next week. He was gonna pay me $15. So I went out and bought $125 dress to wear, bought me a wig, got sharp, went and sang. And somebody saw me there, felt sorry for me 'cause the promoter that booked me made off with the money, including my $15. And he said, "Well, would you like to go to Hoboken, New Jersey with me for 4 weeks?" So I went to Hoboken, New Jersey. And that was the beginning of me singing around New York. I did all of New Jersey and New York, Connecticut, and I did that along with my day job, working for Schrafft's Restaurants on 5th avenue (the first Black waitress) for two or three years. And then I got a chance to go on the road with L.C. Cook (Sam's brother) when Sam Cooke died, and was the opening act for him. I came off the road and took a job at Kimberly Knitwear. That's where I'm still on leave from. They're out of business.

SF: When did you come up with the idea to do the interludes?

Millie: (laughing) Well, I did on-the-job training. I never had any vocal lessons. And I would be singing and people would pay me no mind; they started talking, and I was nervous as all hell. A friend of mine said, "The people came to see you. Just go out and attack them before they attack you." So I would be singing and somebody in the audience would be talking, and I'd just break the band down and attack 'em and start that, "'Scuse me, 'scuse me. Would you like us to have this conversation together?" and the people would end up liking that, and it got to be a part of my show where I would always break the song down and talk to somebody in the audience.

SF: I heard Isaac Hayes say that's how he started doing it: To get the audience's attention.

Millie: No kidding? Isaac and I did a whole album together. I wanted to do the duet album, and it was supposed to originally be Joe Simon, and Joe said No. So I called Isaac, he said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, you know I never sing any harmony or anything." And he said, "Well, that's okay. You just sing your part and I'll get with you." We did all the vocals on the entire album in two days.

 

SF: What about the duet you did with Elton John. How did that happen?

Millie: I was in London and Elton came to the show and approached me about doing it because Tina turned him down.

SF: (laughs) Tina Turner again.

Millie: Yes. So I dislike her for doing "Missing You," but I thank her for not doing the song with Elton. (laughs) That way I got a chance to do it.

SF: That's the song that could have put you on MTV and gotten that crossover going.

Millie: Yeah. Didn't happen. Don't care.

 

In 1999, Sprite ran an ad campaign called "The 5 Deadly Women" which was based on the cult Kung-Fu film The 5 Deadly Venoms. Jackson was featured in the campaign, with starred female Hip-Hop luminaries Roxanne Shanté, Eve, Amil, Mia X, and Angie Martinez as the deadly women.

SF: What did you think when you started hearing rap music?

Millie: I love rap music. In fact, I did an album called I Had To Say It. I didn't know that I had the first female rap record until Coca-Cola investigated and found out I did, and we did the Sprite commercial, the 5 Deadly Women. They told me I had the first female rap record. The album was entitled I Had To Say It, and the song was "I Had To Say It." By then I had gotten over all my nerves, my fright and stuff, so it was no problem with me talking about people then. And the real reason I did it was because I was poking fun at rappers like the Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow. Up until then, I thought that Roxanne Shanté was the first female rapper. She wasn't, but she is one of the 5 Deadly Women.

SF: What did you think of the Sugarhill Gang, Kurtis Blow, those guys in the very early part of it?

Millie: Well, I like the rhythm of it: "It's like a jungle some times, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under." It had that nice little rap feel to it, the groove. The beat was what everybody liked. And when I did "I Had To Say It," I was just sayin' something, 'cause I felt like somebody oughta say it. In fact, I was thinking of what the next album is gonna be, and I had run out of things to talk about, because the record company didn't care what I did as long as I had one of those raps. So we were on the tour bus and I'm going through Jet magazine, and I'm saying, Okay. There's Arthur Ashe - with a white woman. There's the guy that plays Shaft on TV with a white woman. Damn, there's O.J. Simpson - with a white woman. That's my next record. Somebody needs to say this. Why don't I say this? I have to say this. I sat right there and wrote the song before I got to the next gig.

SF: How did you feel as rap music got more complex in the '80s and then into the '90s with the gangsta stuff?

Millie: Well, I disapprove of all the gangsta stuff, because I think it causes too much killing, but at the same time, I also realize that it's the industry itself. The industry doesn't promote hip-hop unless it's gangsta. You have religious rap artists, nobody hears anything about them. And if you got an artist that can rap, and they ain't talking about somebody else, nobody really pushes the record. I truly believe it's part of the conspiracy theory. If you get killed, the record company ends up with all of your publishing and your music. And if you don't get killed, you can always go to jail for shooting somebody else and they can tell you they spent $25 million in your defense. So the record companies end up with all the money. But then the rappers got too slick for them, and they said, "You know, this is dangerous. I think I need to put out some cologne. I need to do a clothing line." (laughs) "I need to have somebody else to do rappin' and let them get shot. In fact, rappin' ain't nothing but acting. I think I'm going into movies." So it semi-backfired on the record company, because all your major artists now, all they do is start rappin' so they can get into movies.

Millie JacksonSF: And they're good at it, aren't they?

Millie: They're very good at it. They're great businessmen. And keep sampling my music, thank you very much.

SF: Are there any musicians out there that you particularly like?

Millie: Well, Gladys Knight is at the top of my list for women, period. She always knows where I'm recording, finds her way in my studio and I have to start the song all over, especially if it's a ballad. In fact, the b-side of "A Child of God" was a better song, and the record company said, "Nah we're gonna release this side because that song people will only say, 'Give me Gladys's new record.' It won't establish you." So, then Gladys started rappin' on "Take The Ribbons From Her Hair," and I'm going, "Okay. Now she's gonna rap? I guess I'll just cuss." (laughs) She's too much of a lady to cuss, I'll fix her.

SF: You talked earlier about how you have a bunch of meaningful songs that you've written. Are those songs that you've recorded and have released?

Millie: Yeah. Nobody knows a thing about them.

SF: Give me a couple of examples of those songs.

Millie: Okay. One song on my Rock N Soul album is called "Killing Me." And it's about alcoholism: "It's Killin' Me Watching You Killin' You." Cause you're an alcoholic, I can't fight back, I can't compete with Jack. I've done all I can do. And it's killin' me watchin' you killin' you. It's about somebody I cared about that drank all the time.

"You Knocked the Love (Right Out of My Heart)," I did that one messin' with Tina. It was about Ike and Tina, and the proceeds for that are supposed to go to battered women. But I didn't call any names. (singing) "You knocked the love right out of my heart, you took my dreams and tore them apart. The day you hit me, you shoulda quit me, 'cause you knocked the love right out of my heart."

I got another song I wrote called "Somebody shoulda heard me holler, somebody shoulda heard me yell. Somebody should heard me call their name, now somebody can just go to hell, because I'm heading down the highway of happiness, on a one-way street to destruction. If I get lost, I don't care. My life is under construction." Somebody shoulda heard me.

SF: What was that song about?

Millie: It's about a teenager running away and nobody there to catch him, to show him the right path. Somebody shoulda heard seen that the things that the child was doing were not just done to be done, but were done for the sake of getting attention.

SF: Millie, you've done cover songs-

Millie: Oh, yeah.

SF: You have a talent for turning these songs on their head. Can you talk about some of the songs you've covered and what you did to them?

Millie: Well, Brad Shapiro was in Miami, and he worked with Henry Stone (president of TK Records), so therefore he got the songs as soon as they came out. And Bobby Latimore would say, "Can you give me 30 days before you redo my song?" (laughing) And I had told him, Well, you got "Let's Straighten It Out." That's enough, that's your signature, you don't need them other songs.

SF: What are some of your favorite songs to sing?

 

Millie: I'm flighty. I change my mind. Like, right now I do a medley in my live performance. One of my favorite songs is "Leave Me Alone" off of my last album. And that lasts about 20 minutes between talking to the audience and doing the song itself: "Just because I'm alone don't mean I'm lonely. I'm a woman with a goal, and I gotta be free. Why in the hell is solitude such a mystery? Just because I'm alone don't mean I'm lonely. Leave me alone." And I do it because I find that a lot of women my age now feel the same way. You know, can I please be by myself? One of the lines I like in this song is "Don't try to sell me nothing, it gets me excited, don't bring your ass to my house if you haven't been invited. Leave me alone."

SF: What do you think of "Lovin' Arms"?

Millie: It's in the medley still.

SF: But did you like that song when you did it?

Millie: Oh, yeah.

SF: When you were recording in Muscle Shoals, how much direction were you throwing out there?

Millie: The majority of it. They followed me, really. And then Brad musically told them what to do to get what I wanted.

SF: So Brad would have to translate into musician for you?

Millie: Yeah.

SF: How did that work? Imagine I'm a bass player, and you're trying to get me to do it a certain way.

Millie: Well, due to the fact that Brad is a bass player, and the two of us connected so well, most of the time I would be singing the melody, and the bass player would pick up the bass. Now, the guitar player would have to deal with me and where I'm going, and Brad would take the bass player where he needs to go. The keyboard player would listen to me.

SF: This sounds like a really interesting little dynamic.

Millie: Oh, definitely.

SF: So it's not so much words as it is you singing and playing and then just putting the whole thing together?

Millie: Right.

SF: When you did the song "Young Man, Older Woman," which then became your play, was that based on anything in particular?

 

Millie: Yeah. One of the guys that drove the bus for me had a good voice, and I wanted to put him on my next album. But he was young. And I'm going, "What in the world can I sing with this young guy?" I don't want to sound like a pervert. (laughing) So it was a matter of finding the right combination to make the song work. It couldn't be, "I love you and you love me," so it had to be something respectful.

My boss at the radio station (Millie does 3-6 on KKDA in Dallas) asked me a few months ago, "Why don't we do a segment in your show with 'Young Man, Older Woman'?" I said, "'Cause I've done it." And he said, "Yeah, but everybody else is gettin' paid for what you started." I said, "No, they're not." He says, "Haven't you seen the TV show Cougar Town? There's Cougar this and Cougar that," I said, "Yes, I have, but evidently you didn't listen to the words to 'Young Man, Older Woman.' 'Young Man, Older Woman' says 'we're denying feelings and emotions, but still we're falling in love.' That's not a cougar. A cougar is someone just looking for a young man to have sex with, goodnight, and see you tomorrow, maybe if I get hot again." And that's not what "Young Man, Older Woman" is about. "Young Man, Older Woman" is about these two people seeing each other every day and denying they feel it. She's denying that she's feeling something for you, and vice versa. But still they're falling in love.

SF: I see where your boss is going with it, though. You have to admire his entrepreneurial spirit.

Millie: Yes, I understand that. I did it for a day, and I was finished with it. Because that's about all I could say about it after that. And once I've done something, I like to move away. Johnny Taylor told me that in this industry everything changes every ten years. So every ten years I like to be doing something different. I've been doing radio for 11 years now, so I'm a year and a half late.

SF: So you've gotta be looking for something else at this point.

Millie: I'm already in the process of doing a TV pilot. It's called "That Other Jackson." I'm the Jackson that the Jacksons you know don't want to know. And definitely would not admit being related to.I've done a bunch of skits. For example, Bo says, "There are some things even Bo don't know. Millie Jackson is one of 'em." And I'm trying to get Jesse today, he's here in Atlanta, and I sent a cameraman out there to catch him, if he can catch him when he's not speaking at this rally, and he's supposed to say, "Millie Jackson, I pray for her. I don't know if my prayers are being answered, I just keep hope alive." And his son is going to do it for me, and his line, since he's a congressman, is, "Millie Jackson? There ought to be a law." Joe Jackson I've already gotten. He says, "No, she's not one of mine!" Tito is being shot tomorrow, I got Samuel Jackson already.

SF: Ms. Jackson. I have one last thing for you.

Millie: Okay.

SF: Is the "Phuck You Symphony" directed at anybody in particular?

Millie: Nope. I had never said "fuck" on stage before. You notice I couldn't even spell it the right way. It's spelled P-H-U-C-K. Randy Klein was my keyboard player at the time, and I said, "I don't know what this album is going to be. I've said everything on stage I could possibly say I've said everything on record I could possibly say. Everything but fuck." So I said, "That's it. I'm just gonna say fuck. But we've got to do it with class." So we sat down and he said, "Okay, what are the words?" I'm going, "How about 'fuck you'?" He said, "All the words 'fuck you'?" So he went and wrote the music while I sang "fuck you." I laugh about that song. I say that song, those lyrics were so hard to write, it took forever to come up with all those lyrics. (laughing) Oh boy.

We spoke with Ms. Jackson on May 11, 2010. Get more at weirdwreckuds.com.

via songfacts.com

 

POV: The Evolution of a Down Ass Chick « The Crunk Feminist Collective

The Evolution of a

Down Ass Chick


By The Crunk Feminist Collective

31 May

Down Ass Chick:  a woman who is a lady but she can hang with thugs. She will lie for you but still love you. She will die for you but cry for you. Most importantly she will kill for you like she’ll comfort you. She is a ride or die bitch who will do whatever it takes to be by your side. She’ll be your Bonnie if you are her Clyde. Thugs love these bitches and they show this by showering them with stacks of cash, flashy jewels and rides. (Urban Dictionary)

I taught a class on black masculinity during the pre-summer session and the course covered everything from black man stereotypes, and the patriarchal requirements of black masculinity to big black penis myths, homophobia, and hip hop.  One of our most recent classes on romantic relationships between heterosexual black men and women inspired an interesting conversation that stayed for days. Forgive me for a quick (perhaps academic) summary.

Several black women scholars, including Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks, tell us that black love is an act of rebellion.  In a culture that claims black women are unlovable and undesirable, and black men are violent and irredeemable, it is considered “rebellious” when black men and women love each other.  In an article called “Can a Thug (get some) Love? Sex, Romance, and the Definition of a Hip Hop ‘Thug’” Michael Jeffries discusses the ways in which a thug (or hip hop) masculinity makes room for romantic love.  Further compelling (per Michael Eric Dyson) is the fact that patriarchy (and hip hop) forwards a binary way of seeing women as either good or bad; a virgin or a whore; a “good sister” or a “ho,”; a down-ass bitch/chick or, yep, you guessed it…a ho. :/  Black women are situated as either a ride or die chick and wifey (but not a wife) or a disposable chick used for sex and good times.  I wasn’t feeling those options.

As a self-proclaimed “good girl” I find it problematic that “good girls” are punished for being good.  While we may be the ones men claim to “want” (in the long run, when they are finally ready to settle down and do right) most of the good sisters I know are situationally single.  The good girl is put in the pocket while the other woman gets the attention, affection, love, sex, children, etc.  What is wrong with that picture?  And the catch is, if good girls grow tired of waiting and become ambivalent about this wait-and-see kind of love, and if they transform themselves to the version of themselves that men will pay attention to, they will no longer be “good” and therefore no longer be desired (in the long run).  Ain’t that some ish?  Patriarchy at its finest…

When I was 17 years old, I aspired to be a down ass chick. I was into pseudo-thugs and pretty boys, or any combination of the two, and (would have) gladly compromised my goals to be “down.”  Here is what a down-ass chick was:  loyal, sexual, willing to lie, die, kill (read: fight), or steal for her ni**a.  She kept her mouth shut and legs slightly open, but only for her dude.  She was supportive and submissive, and essentially self-sacrificing.  She was glamorized in the music and films of the late 90s, early 2000s (and even currently) and she always got the dude—whether he was worthy of being had or not (keep in mind that having the dude included being his “main girl” if he had other girls, or being his faithful chick on the streets if he was locked up).

The promises of the down-ass chick were intoxicating, seemingly liberating, but what did I know?…I couldn’t even vote yet!  It is only now that I can carefully critique a love scenario that makes it nearly impossible for a black woman to measure up.  For example, while hip hop thug masculinity acknowledges that “thugs need love too”—it is a particular kind of love that cannot be accomplished by one woman.  Women have to be conflicted and oxymoronic to be “enuf.”  For example, you need to be good, but willing to participate in criminal activity; you need to have your own, but let him take care of you; you need to be virginal but sexually talented enough to keep him satisfied; you need to be faithful to him, but willing to tolerate his infidelity; you need to be masculine enough to kick it with the fellas, but feminine enough to be sexually desirable; you need to be quick witted, but not more so than him, etc. etc. etc…

When we went around the classroom, quizzing each other on our “downasschickness” (or desire to have a DAC) I willfully and happily opted out.  “Hell nah,” was my reply when it was my turn.  My interpretation of a down ass chick (the ride or die chick who is willing to sacrifice herself, lie to the feds, take a case for a dude, sit idly by why being disrespected and dismissed, tolerant of emotional and physical abuse and infidelity, etc.) is not desirable to my grown woman sensibilities.  The 17 year old in me was saying yes, but the grown-ass, 30+ feminist woman with things to lose said “hell nah.”  When I said I was NOT a down ass chick the black men in the room were visibly disappointed. I don’t think they saw down-ass-chickness as something linked to maturity, education, or knowing better therefore doing different.  For them, the fact that I was cool and cute, and had been unapologietically vocal about my love and advocacy for black men, should have made me automatically down for being down (DAC).  And then I wondered why something I had once embraced was suddenly something I felt I had outgrown.

When I discussed this conversation with a beautiful man friend in NYC, he explained that what a down ass chick is for a 20 year old black man and a 30+ year old black man are utterly different. At <25, (given the limited prospects and opportunities black men have to prove their manhood outside of macho norms, and the misogynistic and womanizing expectations of his peers and culture about owning his masculinity) it makes sense that a dude may be looking for a woman who is all about him, who will meet him at the precinct and courtroom to plead his case, and be willing to wait on him if he is ever incarcerated…but for a 30+ year old man, who has his ish together, a down ass chick is someone who is down for you in other ways, who is not a liability, who brings something (other than just herself) to the table, and can help you build.  Both versions are loyal and have your back, but when you are older you shouldn’t need your girl to lie to the feds or bail you out of jail or take you back when you cheat.  Further, the 30+ DAC is not willing (nor required) to sacrifice herself or her goals for her man.  They are building together!

After that conversation I realized that maybe I am a down-ass chick after all.  I mean, I’m with the grown ass woman version of a down ass chick.  I am down to be a lover, a partner, a friend/homegirl.  I am down to be a woman who calls out all of your beauty but also calls you out on your shit.  A woman who loves, supports, defends, holds, co-creates and motivates.  Yeah, I can be that chick.  I am that chick.  But she is somehow missing from the (mainstream) music… (or is she some desirous version of the independent woman that, though perpetually single, was heralded and serenated through song five years ago?).

What do you think?  Is there an evolution to the down-ass-chick?

 

POV: Why don’t sexual assault victims speak out? I was molested three times—here’s why I never told my family or the police. > Slate Magazine

My Molesters

I was sexually assaulted

three times before I was 20.

Here’s why I never told

my family or the police.

Illustration by Robert Donnelly

 

It could have been much worse. None of the three people who molested me when I was young was a predatory pedophile like Jerry Sandusky. What I went through was brief and sadly common. It’s estimated, though no one knows the actual numbers, that one in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before they reach 18. What happened shook me up at the time, but my experiences weren’t shattering. I didn’t repress the memories—I’ve just never given them much thought. But the trial of Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach, has made me think more deeply about what was done to me and what I did in response.

 

As Dear Prudence, I always urge people to report any sexual abuse. Removing the secrecy takes the shame from the victim and puts the blame on the perpetrator. Exposure is the way to stop repeat offenders. But I never told anyone back then. Even with the benefit of hindsight, considering the world in which these events took place—from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s—and the family in which I lived, I still understand my choice.

 

The first incident was when I was about 9 years old and I was sleeping over at my cousins’ house. I was particularly close to one cousin, a girl my age. She had a brother who was about 14. Somehow he and I ended up lying on the floor alone together, watching TV. He started gently tickling my feet. “Doesn’t that feel good?” he asked. It did. He slowly moved his fingers up my legs, and when he got past my knees I started to become uneasy and told him to stop. He said the “tickling game” felt much better the higher up it went. (I note that Victim 6 in the Sandusky trial testified that the coach’s first approach was to call himself “the tickle monster.”) I tried to take my cousin’s hand off me, but he kept creeping upward, telling me how good it would feel if he went all the way between my legs.

 

By this time I knew something bad was happening and told him no more tickling. But he became more insistent. Holding me down with one hand, he got his other between my legs and pushed my underpants aside. I broke away from his grasp and ran out of the room. I joined my female cousin in her bedroom, and normal life resumed.

 

The idea of putting these deeds into words and telling my parents—or his—seemed worse than what happened. I knew it would make the adults angry and possibly cause a fissure between our families. Maybe he would say I asked him to tickle me and I was lying about the rest. I saw my male cousin many more times during my childhood, but he never tried to touch me again. Eventually our two families drifted apart, and I’ve had no contact with him in years. He did end up being sentenced to three years in prison, but it was for a white-collar crime, not sexual abuse.

 

The next event came when I was 15, a freshman in high school. I was at the house of a friend, “Diane.” We had been doing homework together, and it was time for me to go. It was winter, cold and dark, so her father offered to give me a ride. He was a quiet man, a bit of a nebbish, and on the brief ride we talked innocuously about school. He pulled up just short of the driveway to my home, turned off the engine, then turned to face me. His voice choked with emotion, he started babbling about how men have sexual needs. If a man’s wife won’t have sex, he said, that leaves him angry and frustrated. I knew I should just open the door, but I was so shocked that I froze. Then he lunged at me, a hand on each breast, his face pressed to mine. I pushed him away, got out of the car, and ran into my house.

 

Again, I didn’t say anything. Diane’s dad was the kind of man my father, a former college boxer, had contempt for. I imagined that if I told my father, he wouldn’t call the police but instead would go to Diane’s house and punch her father in the face. That would make things unpleasant in school the following day. A part of me thought her father was pathetic. High school boys were more adept at making passes.

 

For years my memory of that episode stopped at my front door, as if the whole thing were just a brief snippet of video that then goes blank. But of course that wasn’t the end. Diane and I remained friends through high school, and we were at each other’s houses many times. Sandusky’s lawyers have tried to impugn the credibility of the victims by pointing out that their testimony is sometimes more detailed than the accounts they first gave to the grand jury. Victim 7 explained, “Talking about different events and through talking about things in my past, different things have triggered different memories.” I know exactly what he means. Thinking about it this week, I remembered for the first time in years that Diane’s father continued to offer me rides. I always refused unless she came along, as she often did.

 

One night her father said he’d drive me home, and Diane said she’d join us, so I said yes. Her father turned to Diane and said she needed to stay home and finish her homework. She protested that she only had a little reading left and wanted to come. He became adamant, which was out of character for him, insisting that she stay home. I had already accepted the ride, so I would have to get out of it somehow if Diane didn’t come. Diane’s mother seemed to sense something was amiss. She said firmly, to her husband’s clear frustration, that Diane was to come along with me. Did she suspect what her husband was up to? Did she know?

 

The last incident was not child abuse, because I was no longer a minor, though I was still a teenager of 18 or 19. Several years earlier, my family had worked for the election of our congressman, Father Robert Drinan, an anti-Vietnam War, pro-choice priest. He was in town for a fundraiser or town meeting, and I went. Afterward he offered me a ride to the subway. (You’d think I would have learned.) He was in his 50s, and as he drove we chatted about college. We got to where he was letting me off, he turned off the engine, and he began jabbering incoherently about men and women. Then he lunged, shoving his tongue in my mouth while running his hands over my breasts and up and down my torso. It seems like the set-up for a joke, a Jewish woman being molested by a Jesuit. As we tussled, I had probably the most naïve thought of my life: “How could this be happening, he’s a priest!”

 

As I shoved him off and opened the car door to get out, I saw I had left a smear of my pink lipstick on his clerical collar. Again, I told no one. It was embarrassing, revolting, and I had no desire to make accusations against a congressman, especially one I admired.

 

Maybe because I grew up in a chaotic household, knowing adults were unpredictable and unreliable, none of these incidents had an innocence-destroying effect. When I spoke to David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, he understood why silence was my instinctive reaction. “Kids have an intuition this might be taken as a big deal by adults, and are not sure they want it to be. It means confronting the adult who did it. For you, it involved your friend. What are you going to get out of it? You escaped, you feel it won’t happen again. You’re not thinking it will happen to someone else. From a cost-benefit analysis, it makes a lot of sense not to disclose.”

 

I’d like to think that we’re now in a different world as far as the reporting of child sexual abuse is concerned. But one of the most shocking things about the Sandusky case, as my colleague Emily Bazelon points out, is that the children who decided not to speak were too often right in suspecting that adults just wouldn’t believe them.

 

Fortunately for me, my perpetrators were neither rapists nor the kinds of hardcore predators who pick children who are too young, or too vulnerable, to escape. Finkelhor told me, “They had what they perceived to be some sexual need and thought there was an opportunity that didn’t have a lot of risks and took advantage.” Maybe my cousin just wanted to explore, though he was old enough to know what he was doing was wrong. But what did Diane’s father and Father Drinan expect would happen? That I would say I wanted to give them what they weren’t getting? I now think they each had an urge rather than a plan, and each was going to satisfy it, no matter the consequences. Not that there were any consequences.

 

But all of the incidents I’ve described were crimes. Because the events took place in Massachusetts, I talked to an attorney there, Carmen Durso, who has brought suits on behalf of many victims of pedophile priests. He said if these incidents happened today each would be a potential case of indecent assault and battery. (The state has harsher penalties if the victim is under age 14.) Because these would be sexual crimes, a conviction would lead to the defendant being put on the sex-offender registry.

 

Durso thought a prosecution of these one-time events would be a long shot, however. He cited a statement by the current district attorney of Suffolk County that, of 1,000 child sex abuse cases reported to their office each year, they only prosecute 200. “It’s likely what you described would be looked upon both then and now as relatively minor in the face of reasonable doubt a jury might have,” Durso said. He added that it’s nonetheless vital to make a complaint. “The likelihood is that the person who has done it will do it again.”

 

I know that speaking up can work. In my role as Dear Prudence, I fielded letters recently from two young women who had disturbing encounters with older men—one with a math tutor, the other with the father of a friend. In each case the men were getting a sexual thrill but also clearly trying to keep within the law. I said the police should be called because sometimes it’s the accumulation of evidence that makes a case. Indeed, in the follow-up letters I got, it turned out that several victims had already reported these men.

 

If my 16-year-old daughter had experienced what I did, of course I would want her to tell me. I would also act. A teenager who tries to molest his cousin should at the very least get intervention. A father who touches the breasts of his daughter’s friend should be reported to the police. But as much as I hate to say it, I’m not so sure I would advise her, if she were a young adult, to report a groping by a powerful man. As we’ve seen too many times, coming forward in a case like that opens a woman up to character evisceration. Father Drinan died in 2007, and I’m aware that I’ll be assailed for besmirching the memory of a distinguished man.

 

Because in each case I was able to push back immediately and end the abuse, these became isolated incidents. I was not traumatized. In some way I was even empowered—I was able to handle these bigger, older males. But now, all these years later, I’m left to wonder about Diane’s father: Did he ever touch anyone else?

 

Read a statement from the family of Father Robert Drinan about Emily Yoffe’s article “My Molesters.”

 

REVIEW: Documentary—The Invisible War: A Film on Rape, Women and Combat (A Review) > The Feminist Wire

The Invisible War:

A Film on Rape,

Women and Combat

(A Review)

June 23, 2012

 

Horrifying . . . devastating . . . infuriating . . . saddening.  These are the emotions I felt as I watched The Invisible War, a new film, written and directed by Kirby Dick, which opened nationally yesterday.  To be sure, The Invisible War isn’t your typical war story.  It’s a gripping docu-film that focuses on the “powerfully emotional stories of rape victims” within the U.S. military, and their “struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice.”  Shining a spotlight on a world largely defined by masculinity, combat, force, sex, and concealment, this film unveils the following:

  • 20% of women are assaulted while in the military

  • Only 8% of the assailants are prosecuted, with only 2% facing conviction

  • 80% of the victims do not report

  • 25% of women do not report rape because the person responsible for receiving the report is oft times also the rapist

  • 1% of men in the military, totaling 20,000, are victims of rape

  • 15% of incoming military recruits acknowledge that they have attempted or committed a rape prior to entering the service

  • 40% of homeless female veterans are victims of rape

  • Of the 3,223 cases that are actually prosecuted, only 175 of the assailants would serve jail time (all numbers are from the film or related press)

  • “The Veterans Administration spends approximately $10,880 on healthcare costs per military sexual assault survivor. Adjusting for inflation, this means that in 2011 alone, the VA spent almost $900 million on sexual assault‐related healthcare expenditures” (press packet).

The Invisible War paints a picture of injustice and sexism, and a culture of sexual violence that has reached epidemic proportions.  However, it does more than offer disheartening and infuriating statistics.  It provides a story, a story about women and men—those who are celebrated as heroes, who receive standing ovations at parades, whose service is lionized and celebrated over and over again—who have been raped while serving in the U.S. military.  Irrespective of yellow ribbons and holidays, it is a story that illuminates rape culture and the ways that victims are multiply victimized within a culture of warfare, camouflage (or cover-up), and sexual violence.

The filmmakers interview roughly 70 survivors of military rape, women and men, who in the face of victimization by their assailants, their military community, and countless others, have decided to fight back.  We learn the stories of women like Kori Cioca who was raped and physically beaten while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard.  We hear how her assailant, who was also her commanding officer, didn’t just rape her, but also broke her jaw during the attack.  And, we learn how Cioca was reminded (over and over again) that her punishment for “lying” would be a court-martial, when attempting to report the assault to those in command.

 

The Invisible War elucidates a culture of rape and victimization as well as the continual cultivation of revictimization, wherein the military instigates an “in-house” society of violence—among comrades.  Some victims were even charged with adultery due to the assailant being married!  Moreover, of the five women from Marine Barracks Washington interviewed in the film, four were investigated and punished after reporting incidences of rape.  They were told to “suck it up,” unfairly disciplined professionally, threatened with prosecution, and demonized publicly.  And perhaps worse of all, they were often forced to face their assailants every step of the way.

From suicide attempts to physical pain, the film documents several consequences of rape, to include but not limited to rising costs, exacerbated by an “in-house” rape culture.  We see this with Cioca.  The physical pain resulting from her assault is endless.  Because of her broken jaw, Cioca continues to live on a liquid diet, she cannot go outside when it is cold because of pain, and probably most dispiriting, Cioca’s assault remains with her both physically and emotionally.  In fact, she often wakes up screaming.  The dual agony of severe discomfort and traumatic recollection are unceasing.  Unfortunately, this reality has been largely ignored by the VA, which refused to cover all of her medical expenses.

The power of The Invisible War rests with the elevation of the voices and experiences of the soldiers themselves and their families.  The consequences of sexual violence can be felt in the physical and emotional anguish expressed throughout the production.  However, though the film gives voice to victims of rape (and their families) within the military, therefore breaking the silence perpetuated by a complicit media, it misses a critical opportunity to expand the discussion to explore the effects and entwinement of militarism, patriarchy and misogyny in our broader socio-political context.  At times, The Invisible War seems to even downplay how patriarchy and American institutions/ideology(ies) actually sanction and give life to rape culture(s).  In short, in trying to spotlight the injustice facing men and women in the military, and the systematic camouflaging (pun intended) at each level in the chain of command, The Invisible War misses the opportunity to make some pretty significant connections.

A more efficient grasping of sexual violence within the military requires looking at its deployment of gendered language as well as the ways in which women are objectified within and without military culture.  It also demands that we look at “base women,” the relationship between U.S. operations overseas and prostitution, as well as the ways that sexism infects U.S. policies.  In addition, a more critical reading of sexual violence pushes us to explore the treatment of women within the U.S. military, particularly those serving in countries currently occupied by the U.S.

Feminist theorist Cynthia Enloe, in her essay, “Wielding Masculinity inside Abu Ghraib: Making Feminist Sense of an American Military Scandal,” identifies misogyny and sexism as core values of militarism, thus pushing readers to think about their manifestation(s) both inside the U.S. military and without.

It is not as if the potency of ideas about masculinity and femininity had been totally absent from the U.S. military’s thinking. Between 1991 and 2004, there had been a string of military scandals that had compelled even those American senior officials who preferred to look the other way to face sexism straight on. The first stemmed from the September 1991, gathering of American navy aircraft carrier pilots at a Hilton hotel in Las Vegas. Male pilots (all officers), fresh from their victory in the first Gulf War, lined a hotel corridor and physically assaulted every woman who stepped off the elevator. They made the “mistake” of assaulting a woman navy helicopter pilot who was serving as an aide to an admiral. Within months members of Congress and the media were telling the public about “Tailhook” – why it happened and who tried to cover it up (Office of the Inspector General, 2003). Close on the heels of the Navy’s “Tailhook” scandal came the Army’s Aberdeen training base sexual harassment scandal, followed by other revelations of military gay bashing, sexual harassment and rapes by American male military personnel of their American female colleagues (Enloe, 1993; Enloe, 2000).

Enloe makes it clear that sexism, sexual violence, and misogyny are central components to militarism, thus representing the ideological foundation of a militarized culture that is consequentially exhaustively threatening to women and non-gender-conforming others.  She highlights the level of violence in elucidating levels of sexual violence and misogyny surrounding U.S. bases:

Then in September 1995, the rape of a local school-girl by two American male marines and a sailor in Okinawa sparked public demonstrations, new Okinawan women’s organizing and more U.S. Congressional investigations. At the start of the twenty-first century American media began to notice the patterns of international trafficking in Eastern European and Filipina women around American bases in South Korea, prompting official embarrassment in Washington (an embarrassment which had not been demonstrated earlier when American base commanders turned a classic “blind eye” toward a prostitution industry financed by their own male soldiers because it employed “just” local South Korean women). And in 2003, three new American military sexism scandals caught Washington policy-makers’ attention: four American male soldiers returning from combat missions in Afghanistan murdered their female partners at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; a pattern of sexual harassment and rape by male cadets of female cadets – and superiors’ refusal to treat these acts seriously – was revealed at the U.S. Air Force Academy; and testimonies by at least sixty American women soldiers returning from tours of duty in Kuwait and Iraq described how they had been sexually assaulted by their male colleagues there – with, once again, senior officers choosing inaction, advising the American women soldiers to “get over it”(Jargon, 2003; Lutz and Elliston, 2004; The Miles Foundation, 2004; Moffeit and Herder, 2004).

All of this highlights the fact that it’s about time we move the conversation beyond the military itself (while of course maintaing our criticisms), and critically examine the myriad ways that sexual violence manifests itself in barracks, and in countless communities.  This points to another shortcoming of the film: its privileging of whiteness.  While illustrating the fact that sexual violence impacts women across communities, the film ultimately calls attention to the injustices faced by white women.  It would have served the filmmakers well to give voice to the devastating circumstances surrounding the rape and death of LaVena Johnson (and others) whose death was officially ruled a suicide despite these facts:

The 5-foot tall, 100-pound woman had been struck in the face with a blunt instrument, probably a weapon. Her nose had been broken, and her teeth knocked back. There were bruises, teeth marks and scratches on the upper part of her body. Her back and right hand had been doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire. Her genital area was bruised and lacerated, and lye had been poured into her vagina. The debris found on her suggested her body had been dragged. And despite all this mutilation, she was fully clothed when her body was found in the tent, with a blood trail leading to the tent.

As with many of the cases documented within The Invisible War, the Army refused to investigate, thus stonewalling attempts to secure justice.  Had The Invisible War engaged the experiences of women and men of color in the military, and the consequences of sexual violence when race and racism are involved, and had it looked at incidences of rape involving South Korean and Japanese women, its efforts to both summon and spotlight this horrific epidemic would have been much stronger, at minimum pioneering a cinematic discourse around the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and nation.

Yet, The Invisible War does something very significant: it get’s us talking, thus (hopefully) influencing multiple conversations about the injurious intersections and force of sexual violence, sexism, patriarchy, militarism, racism, classism, homophobia, and misogyny within and outside of U.S. military culture.  If nothing else, The Invisible War shows us that the very oxygen that allows for sexual violence to breathe, and society to turn a blind eye…is also wrapped up in those yellow ribbons, each of which must be untied immediately…at minimum to allow us to hear all the tongues violently struggling to speak their own truths, and to see the mountains of pain and injustice starring us right in the face…

 

__________________________

 

Movie Review:

 

The Invisible War 


Shines Light on


Sexual Assault


in the Military

Kirby Dick is our most righteous “outer.” I don’t mean he likes to out gays, although he certainly targeted the more virulent right-wing homophobes in his eye-opening documentary Outrage. I mean that, for Dick, the world is full of dark closets packed not with skeletons but bloodsuckers who’d shrivel if someone would only shine a light in their direction. 

He can’t quite do that in his galvanizing new documentary The Invisible War. The subject is the U.S. armed forces, the villains the alleged sexual predators who operate without restraint or punishment. To name names or venture onto bases for “ambush” interviews would open himself up to libel suits or worse. But he can do the next best thing. He interviews women who’ve emerged from those dark recesses, women who represent the 20 percent of female vets (that’s a low-ball estimate — we might be talking about half a million people) who’ve been sexually assaulted while serving. Using statistics compiled by the U.S. government itself, The Invisible War makes the case that this is not a “problem” but a bona fide plague.

A lot of the film consists of women sitting in chairs telling the kinds of stories that make tears not drop but surge from their eyes —and our blood boil. After a while, their words blur together:

He was my superior …. Drinking buddies … drugged and raped … gonorrhea … pregnant … dislocated my jaw … locked in a hotel room … If I said anything they were going to kill me … “You’re meat on a slab”… He said, “I own all of this”…

The vet whose jaw was dislocated makes call after call (and one long-distance visit) to Veterans Administration, which puts off a decision on her injuries (physical and mental) for a year and a half before saying, essentially, “Not our problem.” Of course, the VA isn’t doing too well on the PR front in general, having just been scolded for neglect of every soldier’s PTSD. The real horror is how commanders respond to complaints of assault and rape.

they lost the rape kit … they investigated me for making false statements … they charged me with adultery and I wasn’t married, he was … they promoted him …

The problem, Dick reports, is that 15 percent of male recruits have had accusations made against them for rape and assault. So they’ve already got issues and here they are in a culture known for pervasive S & M rituals, alpha-male behaviors, and rampant alcohol abuse. Victims tell of being ordered to go out drinking and ordered to do shots — whereupon they were pounced on by their superiors and, after filing complaints, reprimanded for heavy drinking. It’s Kafkaesque.

The clueless civilian Bush appointee (she responds to many of Dick’s questions with blank stares) maintains that the answer is prevention, which here consists of advising women to walk around with buddies and screening films in which men are advised to “WAIT UNTIL SHE’S SOBER.” Her successor, who’s at least in uniform, takes a similar line. Both dismiss the notion that commanders who are in many cases drinking buddies of the accused (or who are the accused) should not have unfettered discretion when it comes to prosecuting accused predators. The message is, “That’s not a factor,” and “We’ll handle it.”

 Late in The Invisible War, a group of victims goes to Congress and hear sympathetic noises from some of its members (Democratic and Republican). They also take their case to a civilian court, which finds against them on the grounds that “rape is an occupational hazard in the military.” I didn’t make that up. Nor did Dick make up any of the statistics that have made his case before he even turns his camera on women violated first by sexual predators and then by their institutional enablers. Given the ongoing revelations about the Catholic Church, New York’s Orthodox Jewish community, and the U.S. military, the best course of action seems to be not to join a club in which the leaders are males who are accountable only to themselves.

“What now?” you think, after a coda reporting that none of the accused rapists of the women (and one man) Dick has interviewed have been imprisoned — and that some have risen in the ranks. The answer comes quickly, in a coda to the coda that might be unprecedented: Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta screened The Invisible War and promptly ordered authority for investigating accusations of sexual assault taken away from commanding officers. After watching the movie, notinvisble.org is where you should go to see the aftershocks in the halls of Congress and the barracks.

 I can hardly wait to see which closet Dick will throw open next.

 

>via: http://www.vulture.com/2012/06/invisible-war-examines-military-sexual-assault...

 

__________________________

 

No one airs America’s dirty laundry on the big screen like director Kirby Dick. In This Film Is Not Yet Rated, he revealed the Motion Picture Association of America’s shady rating system; Twist of Faith uncovered systemic sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. His latest documentary, The Invisible War, took home the esteemed Audience Award at Sundance this year for its startling investigation into the epidemic of rape in the U.S military. Dick recently spoke with Vulture about exposing sexual assault in the armed forces, his obsession with outsiders, and how YouTube stole his signature style. 

In The Invisible War, you were able to draw out very raw testimonies from survivors of military sexual assault. Some were pretty hard to watch. How were you able to get your subjects to open up about such a difficult topic on-camera, especially when many of them were shamed into silence while they were serving?
When Amy [Ziering, producer] and I did this cross-country road trip from New York to Los Angeles over a ten-day period, we saw two to three people a day. I’d shoot and Amy would do the interview. It was a profound experience each time, because these are people that the Amy had spoken to perhaps for an hour on the phone, and we’re walking into their home and they’re telling us about the most traumatic experience of their lives, something that had really destroyed their lives to such an extent that they’re on numerous medications, they can’t work, they have no career, they really have no life. They carry guns wherever they go. And they would tell us these stories that, oftentimes, they hadn’t told the people who were the closest to them. For so long they’d been disbelieved or no one had understood what they’d gone through. For us to come in, authority figures, and say, “We want to tell your story to the world,” it meant a great deal for them.

It was clear that many of these women joined the military because they really wanted to make a difference, and they believed in this idea of “Be all that you can be.” It made sense that you opened the film with that montage of ads about women in the military.
 

The women talked about how those ads were one of the reasons they actually came into the military. Almost all these women had very excellent experiences in boot camp. It was very egalitarian, and it was really kind of a merit-based system, and they were looking forward to spending a career in that environment, which was much less misogynistic than society at large. Then to be disappointed — not only to be assaulted, but to have this whole system that they believe in betray them, was shattering.

What was it like to film at the Pentagon? How did you approach those interviews when some of the people you spoke with had everything to lose by being candid?
We came in very, very well prepared. In many ways, we knew our subject matter better than they did. We certainly had spoken with many, many more survivors than they had. In fact, Major General Mary Kay Hertog, the director of SAPRO [the military’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office], although she’d only been in the position a couple of months, we were still astounded when we asked her on-camera, “Have you ever spoken to one of these survivors?” and she said, "No."

That’s unbelievable.
Yeah, exactly. That’s transformative. You really only understand the situation by talking to these women and men, and I think that is the reason that the film has made such an impact in Washington, and particularly within the Department of Defense and within the military. So many of these higher-ranking officers were aware of this as an issue, but they weren’t aware of the nature of the experience of their soldiers.

Some of the most intense scenes were the ones in which your subjects filmed themselves. What’s the most shocking or surprising footage you’ve gotten when subjects control the camera?
It’s not so much shocking or surprising. I think it’s the level of intimacy that you can’t even get in the most insightful and intimate interview. There’s this quality of someone talking to everyone and no one. I had one subject in one film that I made — she was dying and talking about her experience of dying — and was sort of thanking this imaginary audience for listening, and at the same time saying she felt as she was talking to God in a way. It was called The End. We gave cameras to people who were dying in a hospice program, where people were dying in their homes, and then when they were too ill they passed the camera to their family members to continue the filming. It was extremely intense.

We’re seeing that sort of "everyone and no one" address a lot with YouTube now.
Yes! I’d used it in a film called Chain Camera, which I shot in 1999 and it came out in 2001 at Sundance. This was before YouTube. I always thought this is kind of one of my signature styles, right? I just remember sort of looking at YouTube for the first time and thinking, Well, now everyone is using it.

Like Twist of Faith and This Film Is Not Yet Rated, The Invisible War deals with shame, secrecy, and sexuality. Why do you think you’re drawn to these heavy themes again and again?
I look for stories that have a personal complexity to them as well as a social and political complexity. I find myself in pretty much all my work focusing on people whose experiences are as outsiders, and by focusing on that and their experience, it becomes a critique of some aspect of the mainstream. Even inChain Camera, you’re dealing with these urban high school students, which I always thought is sort of in opposition to the typical American image of the high school experience, which is the suburban white experience. In Twist of Faith,you’re focusing on men who’ve been abused by priests, and they’re still Catholic, but it’s obviously a very strong critique of the Catholic response to this.

Because your films do give such strong social critiques, do you ever find yourself going from being a filmmaker to being an advocate?
I think of myself as both. Within a few months, Invisible War was seen by the very highest levels of the military — certainly Secretary Panetta, and many other people in the administration and in Congress — and it’s made a very significant impact.

So what sort of response have you received from Congress and the Department of Defense?
The Army has been very receptive of the film. We’ve been contacted by people who want to use it in training with hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Did you ever imagine that it would receive this kind of response?
Sort of in our dreams, yeah. But we never imagined that it would be this quick, or this strong. I mean, there’s still a long way for the military to go. Our film argues very strongly that most of the officers in the military are horrified by this, and this is being caused by a small percentage of perpetrators that have been allowed to operate without impunity over and over again. One of the things the military has to do is go after this with the same seriousness and the same will that they fight a war.

>via: http://www.vulture.com/2012/06/kirby-dick-the-invisible-war-interview.html