Ride the train, they said…

Looking for the light at the end of the tunnel...

I love Facebook sometimes. It might be full of a certain level of crazy, but it’s also full of some inspiration and some fun.

Except…

Except…

Someone shared a piece that a guy wrote. The piece was all about how he traveled across the country using the train for only $213. Awesome deal. So impressed.

I’m not sure he included the cost of his meals in it. And I didn’t see any mention of the lack of showers for those four days.

But most importantly – it was written by a guy.

Wait, hear me out.

This fit right into a thought I had last night. It’s all connected.

See, someone’s car got broken into. The criminal who broke into the car stole some stuff…and a gun.

I began by thinking, geez, what kind of idiot leaves a gun in their car?

Woah, I told myself. I was victim blaming. And I was. But that’s as far as that went. When it came down to it, I blamed the criminal who stole the gun. Yeah, maybe a gun shouldn’t have been in a car, but regardless, the criminal who stole the gun made the choice to break the law, to break into the car, and to steal the item. It was the criminal’s fault.

Following me so far, right?

Okay, but if that had been a woman being raped, how many people would have said, “Yes, it was the criminal’s fault for raping her, but she shouldn’t have been [fill in the blank here].”

It wouldn’t come up in court that the gun was “asking” to be stolen.

It wouldn’t matter in court that the gun “shouldn’t have been there.”

It wouldn’t come up in court that the gun “was too tempting.”

It wouldn’t come up in court that the criminal “couldn’t help himself.”

The quality of locks and the alarm on the car wouldn’t be presented as evidence to mitigate the seriously of the theft.

Have I lost you yet?

I hope not.

Because here’s the connection: if I rode the train the way that guy did, just buying a cheap ticket and sitting and sleeping in a general shared compartment without being in my own sleeper with a lock on the door. If I did that, and if I got sexually assaulted or raped, someone – or a lot of someones – would cry out that it was my fault. Why had I slept on the train? Why wasn’t someone watching over me? Why had I dressed in a way that allowed someone to rape me?

See, I think that I have the right to ride that train in peace. I have the right to take the same trip the guy took. I have the right to do that, and the right to feel safe doing it. But I don’t feel that way, and I’m betting I’m not the only woman out there who would not feel safe. And part of that lack of safety is knowing that, if anything happened, and if it happened to make it to court, I would be put on the stand and questioned. I would be accused. I would be just as guilty simply because I had existed in the same space and time as the criminal.

When it comes to a gun sitting in a car, we don’t blame the owner of the gun or of the car. We blame the criminal. We put the criminal on trial. That’s what we should be doing. Putting the criminal on trial.

What would Jesus do? What would a feminist do?

Image by stockimages via freedigitalphotos.net

Let me tell you two stories.

The first one happened when I was working on my Associate’s degree oh so many years ago.  It was during the height of the WWJD bracelet craze.  Everyone was wearing at least one.  I was sitting in class one day when I heard two people talking.  The first person was telling the second person how much she liked the WWJD bracelet she was wearing.  First person said that she knew that you were supposed to give the bracelet away when someone asked about it, along with telling them all about Jesus, but she had gotten the bracelet from a cute guy, and so she wanted to keep it.  She figured that people who didn’t know what it meant didn’t know that she was supposed to give it to them, so it would be okay.  Her friend – person number two – was agreeing and yeah-ing and hmmm-ing at all the right parts of the story.  And I sat there, rather amused that someone who professed to love Jesus and believe in sharing didn’t have quite the same level of faith as soon as a cute boy became involved.

The second story happened years later.  I was working on my Master’s of Liberal Arts.  I was doing a paper with someone else – a “group” assignment – about Betty Friedan.  While I think NOW is a great organization, and she definitely helped to start it up, she was also pretty whacked out.  She didn’t want to include lesbians in the organization.  She feared that they would try to convert her to lesbianism.  (I don’t know that she needed to worry about that…)  Regardless, it was another case of someone who didn’t quite get the purpose.  Just like the people who refused to give out her special bracelet, Friedan didn’t want to give up her special organization to people she didn’t think she needed to care about.

Why did I bother making you read about those experiences?

Because there was a recent intersection.

A church in Lakewood, Colorado, stopped a woman’s funeral because it was displaying a picture of her with her wife.  The wife she had two children with.  Because, you know, it was a sign she was gay.  And the church couldn’t possibly accept that.

Apparently, the church didn’t get it either.  They, just like the girls in the college classroom, decided that God was okay with them picking and choosing what they did.  They only had to listen to God when it agreed with their own likes.  And, just like Friedan, the church decided that they needed to fear something ‘different.’

As feminists, we need to embrace all other women. We need to share our bracelets with anyone who asks about them.  We need to understand that no one is going to try to ‘convert’ us.  Feminism is about supporting everyone, wanting everyone to be equal.  We need to mourn with her family, and we need to share the story. 

Discrimination is okay when you have money, right?

All About the Benjamins...image by hyena reality via freedigitalphotos.net

Another brouhaha made it into the news when, once again, a sect of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men refused to sit next to women on a flight.  This was not the first time it happened, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. 

The basic story is this: the men didn’t want to take their assigned seats because – gasp – they would be forced to sit next  to women, and their religion tells them that ‘physical contact between men and women is forbidden unless they are first-degree relatives or married to one another.’

I was discussing the issue with a guy, and his response was, “But they offered to pay to swap seats with the women.” 

I tried to point out that it didn’t matter if they offered money – discrimination was discrimination, and while it is nice that they had the money to pay for it, that didn’t make it any less wrong.

He didn’t get it at first, and I pointed out that might because it wasn’t his “group” being treated that way.  So I came up with some other examples…

What if someone decided that they couldn’t sit next to you because you were black?

Because you were disabled?

Because you were American?

Because you were Christian?

Because you were Muslim?

How many of those things would be wrong, even if they offered you money to make it better?

Dividing a plane based on gender seems to be the equivalent of dividing a bus based on color. 

The guy I was talking to got my point after I drew the parallels, but I wish I didn’t have to.  I wish that people would make the parallels on their own, would be able to feel empathy with those who are being discriminated against. 

So just a quick reminder – discrimination is wrong.  It doesn’t matter if you try to couch it in religion or money.