Tested and Failed

My feminist ethics were tested the other day, and I failed miserably.

Dear Woman who was being verbally abused and frightened by her irrational and irate boyfriend,
I was such a douche (and I mean that in the sense of bearing false advertising and being quite useless) and I'm really sorry and I really hope that guy didn't and doesn't hurt you.

Here is my confession:

Last Sunday I was in my house and heard random male screaming out somewhere on my block. I didn't pay it any attention, as Venice seems like the last haven for every homeless mental patient that our society has conveniently forgotten. There are plenty of crazy men screaming at any given time in this city and I have become de-sensitized to it.

My sister was walking over to meet me for our twilight bike ride on the beach so I went outside to wait for her. About 40 feet away, down my sidewalk, there was a couple arguing. The woman was telling the guy to give her her car keys, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs an inch and a half away from her face. He was accusing her of cheating on him. I stepped out into the sidewalk and glared in their direction, just to let them know that I was there. But then I sat back down on my front steps. This couple was a young, good looking couple. They reminded me of multiple past relationships that I have had (x husband included) where this very same scene played out, in almost the exact same way, and also in public. In fact, this scene has not only been played out by me, but by almost every female friend I've ever had, including my sister, who walked up to my steps at that very moment.

I said, "Is this shit the same fucking yelling I've been hearing for the past 20 minutes?"

"Yes," She shook her head, "I've been behind them almost the entire way to your house."

"Do you think I should intervene?" I'm cautious because honestly, I don't want to get shot or stabbed, and intervening in random folks' business is a good way to get hurt.

She pauses. I'm trying to gauge the situation by running scripts of past experiences where a guy has crossed the threshold from verbal abuse to physical. I think that she is too. She answers. "Yes."

Fuck. I walk out onto the sidewalk again and take a long look. The dude is around 20-23, black, wearing a white v-neck and pinkish-orange shorts. The woman has long dark hair, is young too. White, or hispanic/white maybe. Wearing jean shorts and a black tanktop with flip flops. Both of them are gorgeous. They were standing in front of a black Mercedes. Honestly, if the dude was wearing a crisp blue shirt or a white tanktop with some bright color bandanna or laces, I wouldn't say shit.

"Are you okay?" I call to the woman.

"Oh, yes. He's just..." She has that look on her face that I know so well. That embarrassed, -I can't believe this is happening so I'm going to pretend it's not - look. Still, she instinctively walks towards me.

The man turns towards me to follow her, as she is walking towards me. Fiery eyes are now fixed on me and he shouts, "WHY DON'T YOU JUST MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS!?" I was surprised he didn't call me a bitch.

"Well, you've been yelling in front of my house for the last 20 minutes so now you've made it my business. So, why don't you just give her back her fucking car keys!" I wasn't yelling, but I hardened myself up. In the back of my head I thought, Shit, I am waaaay too out of shape to take this guy on.

"HER CAR KEYS!!!????" He was practically jumping up and down. He turned back to her and screamed again. "HEEEEEEEEER CAR??!! SO WHAT!? I DO NOTHING TO CONTRIBUTE?! BITCH!? (there it was.) I AM SO SICK OF YOU TAGGING ONTO A NIGGA'S COAT-TAILS! I HAVE SACRIFICED AND SACRIFICED, AND THIS WHOLE TIME YOU'VE BEEN GOING BEHIND MY BACK!!!"

She responded, " I didn't do anything!"

She looked at me and shook her head in exasperation. "There was this stupid game on the boardwalk..."

"IT WAS A LIE DETECTOR TEST!! AND WHEN YOU SAID YOU NEVER CHEATED ON ME, IT SAID YOU LIED!! YOU LIED!"

"So what?!" she laughed, "It also said that you were gay!"

Both my sister and I burst out laughing. This infuriated him intensely.

"THIS IS CUZ I'M BLACK, HUH!"

My sister says, "um, hello?, I'm black."

"NO YOU'RE NOT!"

My sister and I burst out laughing again. There is no ambiguity about her race.

"AND I HAVE TATTOOS!!"

"So what?" I rolled my eyes. "I have tattoos too. The reason you're scary is because you're screaming and acting crazy!" Why on Earth was I trying to reason with this guy? He is obviously trapped within his own reality. His behavior was unacceptable for my 7 year old, much less an adult. I began to get angry. This guy was going to make me miss my twilight bike ride too. What is the quickest way I could control the situation? These selfish thoughts led me to break my cardinal rule.

Suddenly, my mom appears from around the back of the house. I knew she would eventually hear the yelling, and I was just glad she wasn't coming from inside where she could get her gun. My mom always has a weapon. This time it was a large, pointy spade. When she saw the irate boyfriend her lips curled back against her teeth and she gripped the spade tighter. I grabbed her by the arm and told her it was okay, to get behind me. In the meantime, the guy had gone back to screaming at his girlfriend. Why wouldn't he just stop?

He was going on and on about how he was all alone, how his family is 5000 miles away and he's trying to fulfill his dream...how even though he was in three movies, it just wasn't good enough for a gold digger like her. She kept asking for her car keys, and he kept trying to get her to go into the car with him. She refused and said straight out that she didn't feel safe getting into the car with him. He then screams and punches a tree, then runs to the car and takes off. She tells me that she bought that car before she met him. I remember when my x husband punched out the front windshield of my new Corolla. This guy goes racing up the street, stops about 50 yards away, then hits reverse, screeching the tires the whole way. He double parks it, and then runs out of the car back towards us. I was baffled. I was done.

"I'm done." I said, "Give her the keys right now or I'm calling the cops!" That is my cardinal rule. Calling the cops. Having been sexually assaulted by a cop before, and the general treatment of people of color or the poor by the police brings me no faith in the LAPD. I swore that I would never call the cops on someone unless my life was in danger. He wasn't listening to me. "Fine! I'm calling them right now!"

"911 emergency..."

"yes, I'm at xxx address and there is this guy who is just being really aggressive to his girlfriend and won't give her back her car keys."

"Okay, calm down." What the fuck? I was calm. I walked a few feet away so that I could hear better, as the guy was still screaming at his girlfriend. My goal was to scare him into giving her the keys by calling the cops. However, I didn't think it through because he was imploring her to leave with him because I was calling the cops.

Suddenly, I noticed that both of my neighbors had arrived home and everything started moving really fast. Two roommate bachelors, white guys, mid 30's. Not very likable or unlikeable, but I never really talk to them. I was vaguely aware of what they were doing while simultaneously on the phone with the police operator, who had a condescending tone in her voice already.

"Ma'am, what do you mean, being really aggressive?" there was that tone again.

"I mean, he's not hitting her but he's yelling and screaming in her face."

"What is his race?"

What the fuck? I thought of Oscar Grant. "Um...I don't think that's important, I think you just need to send a car over here now."

"Ma'am! I can't send anyone out until you give me a proper description. Now I need to know his race!"

"No."

She made one of those exasperated breathing noises. She began to say something about a gang of young, male, mexican perps with white T-shirts tagging in the area or something, but my attention was now on one of the neighbors I recently mentioned.

He had money in his hand and he was holding it out and booming in a loud voice, " I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY TO GO AWAY AND TAKE THIS SOMEWHERE ELSE." His tone was also very condescending. He was treating them like hood rats.

"Ma'am! Can you at least tell me what he is wearing?"

"Pink shorts!"

Now both neighbors were yelling. At both of them. The one who looks like James Spader says that he doesn't want this shit in his front yard and they need to get the fuck off.

The tall neighbor with a missing tooth turns to glare at the woman. "THIS IS YOUR FAULT TOO FOR BEING SO PASSIVE AND JUST STANDING THERE! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, HUH?"

He was shaming her, and I guess she probably looked to me for support, but then saw that I was on the phone with the cops. Her boyfriend was not yelling at her anymore, but pleading with her to go. She let him grab her by the hand and lead her back to the black car.

"Well now they're leaving because you took so long with this race bullshit!" I screamed into the telephone before hanging up.

So she left with him. And I let her go. After she had stated earlier that she did not feel safe getting in the car with him she ended up doing it anyway. And I am partially responsible for that. I should have just had her come inside and offered her a ride home. Why didn't I do that?

My mom looked at my sister and I and said, "Who knew that the neighbor was such a passive aggressive asshole?"

My sister looked at me and said, "Why did you call the cops?"

I shrugged, "C'mon, let's go on this bike ride before the police really do get here." I did not want to talk to them, but they never did come. Even though I gave them the address.

Sometimes the Universe sends you a test. To see if you can walk your talk. And sometimes you fail (and by you I mean me).

Child Support Update

So, interstate child support collection is anything but adequate. I called Illinois, the state that is garnishing my x's wages. Let me just note that neither I or my x currently live in Illinois. Apparently, their department of family health and services has intercepted the payment. I thought it was California's DPSS but when I called my workers (both calworks and gain) they had absolutely no answers for me. They didn't really know what I was talking about! My calworks worker gave me the number for LA county child support services but it was actually a disconnected number. It was fairly simple for me to go on line and find the number myself. I called and listened to nauseating music on hold for over thirty minutes. Finally, a human being answered, and she had a brain! She looked up my case and informed me that Illinois has not informed California that they were garnishing wages or receiving payments. I told her that I just got off the phone with them and they informed me they were. She told me that she would assign a worker to my case and if I don't hear from that worker, to call back in about a month.

Ummm...Okay? I guess...

I asked if she knew what the deal with CALWORKS is. She says that if I keep my daughter on cash aid (even though my time clock has expired, she still receives $345 in aid, plus food stamps and medical), that I would collect an additional $50 from the child support payments and the rest would "pay back" my welfare. So I would collect $395 per month and it would be called, "aid". And I would have to keep jumping the hoops. Or, I could take my daughter off of aid and collect the child support directly. My question is, if I take us off aid, then will they still claim the back child support? If not, then I would receive $414 per month. If they do, I will only get $345. However, my x could lose his job or go back to getting paid under the table and then this will be a non-issue.

So it's all basically the same amount of money, the problem is what to call it. Right now the money is just sitting in bureaucratic limbo, and I supposed it will stay there for the time being.

The State is Taking my Child's Support.

Do you know what they don’t tell you when you apply for public aid? What they don’t tell you is that if the non-custodial parent ever gets their priorities straight and begins to pay support via the child support order the social workers make you file against him, that the state will take that back child support as repayment of the “welfare” you received? That’s right, you could say they charged all of it to my X. However, the reality is that the person really being charged is my child.

The situation is that my CALWORKs 5 year time-clock has expired. However, my child support is disbursed through them. If I don’t fill out their QR7 or comply with giving them whatever, “proof that I am doing what I said I would do,” then they can sanction me and not give me the $345. of the $414. that is being taken out of my X’s paycheck every month, who has finally decided to stop getting paid under the table in order to avoid child support payments. He owes over $20,000 in back child support to my daughter. The state is claiming every penny of it.

I believe that money belongs to my child. That $70 per month could be put in a trust fund for her to give her a chance at a future. How dare they charge her for needing support when her dad wouldn't give it, and then put me through hoops, stigmatize me and call it “welfare.” They should call it, "child support relief loan," or "Fuck you for reproducing." I wouldn’t complain if they did it to others, but only poor single parents and their children get this special treatment. Farmers don’t have to pay back corn subsidies, and their only raising our nation’s food. Mothers are raising our nation’s future population. Executives wine and dine their clients and then get it written off as tax abatement. Trying to make a capitalistic buck gets more respect than nurturing life. Banks get free bailout money from the government and then lend it back to the government with interest. Saving Corporations is more important than saving lives. Poor mothers and children are treated like parasites (in a system that gives them no other choice) and the state feels they have the right to take our child support because we have the audacity to exist and need help raising children on our own.

Just when I think I have the beast by the horns, I realize that the beast actually has me.

Does anyone know of any resources that I could use to fight this?

Sex Work as a Means of Resistance for Women

Marriage in our society is a patriarchal construction that gives unequal economic power to men and puts women in a position where they are often economically dependent on their husbands, especially after having children. Our society promotes the nuclear family as the cornerstone of our nation, using heterosexual marriage as a means to ascribe gender roles to both men and women. When a woman deviates from these gender roles society punishes her both informally by casting her as a social pariah, and formally by punishing women single head of households by withholding affordable childcare, universal healthcare, and welfare policies that criminalize women of little economic means for being mothers. In some cases, adult, sex work in the United States can be seen as a form of resistance to traditional marriage values and patriarchy. Through this type of work a woman may be able to economically survive without dependence on a husband or the state that serve to control her body and subordinate her spirit. By making prostitution illegal and blocking sex workers from having civil rights, protection and respect, prostitution is made a male dominated, predatory industry that is oppressive to many women, while serving the dominant class at the same time.


In the Berkeley Women’s Law Journal, the definition of sex work is, “…the practice of selling, explicitly and contractually, the private performance of specified acts of a sexual nature ... the sale must involve a contract specifying the items of exchange.... The prostitution contract includes both implicit and explicit agreement regarding access to the body ... of the seller in a private setting.” (Duarte,2003). This narrow definition is used to illustrate the mutual adult consent that is necessary to constitute the sex worker/client relationship. In addition to that definition I find that it would be reckless to omit the fact that socio-economic statuses, country of origin, as well as race/ethnicity affect the delineation between choice and victimization. A woman who is engaging in prostitution because it is her only means of economic survival is not given the option of choice. Women in developing countries, especially those recovering from colonialism and are further plunged into chaos by neo-colonialism, may have little choice when it comes to career choices or means of survival. Global Capitalization has made this much worse, as well as the feminization of poverty that is occurring around the world, regardless of ethnicity. This narrow definition shows sex work to be another form of service work; however, housekeepers, cooks, food servers, nannies, massage therapists, manicurists, etc do not make nearly the same money, nor take nearly the same risks as sex workers. I also cannot speak for male sex workers, as men do not inhabit the same matrix of domination that puts women in a position to be economically dependent on a man within marriage.


Prostitution wasn’t always considered profane to the civilized world. In fact, there is evidence that it was seen as sacred. “Sacred Whore temples flourished in ancient India, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia. The word ‘whore’ was a title, used in much the way our work ‘reverend’ is employed today…Whore-priestesses were revered because they taught ‘a combination of mother –love, tenderness, comfort, mystical enlightenment and sex.’”(Muscio, 90-91). Sacred prostitution was respected and whores were considered very valuable members of society. Later, when patriarchal religions began to govern the people, these sacred temples were plundered, the priestesses murdered and the teachings destroyed. The woman’s body was no more a doorway to enlightenment and self knowledge but instead a dangerous commodity that needed to be controlled. Even today, in 2009, women are stigmatized for exhibiting a sexuality that illustrates agency over their own bodies, as well as stigmatized for not allowing themselves to be sexually objectified in a subordinate position that services the desires of heterosexual men, and reaffirms a construction of masculinity that puts men in the position of controlling women’s bodies.


In the article, Class in America, by Gregory Mantsios, he writes, “People do not choose to be poor or working class; instead, they are limited and confined by the opportunities afforded or denied them by a social and economic system. The class structure in the United States is a function of its economic system: capitalism, a system that is based on private rather than public ownership and control of commercial enterprises.” (Mantsios,193). If this is true that private ownership and control of commercial enterprises is what makes up our system of capitalism, then by preventing women ownership of their own bodies and the ability to use their own bodies as an economic resource and commercial enterprise is indeed denying women participation in capitalism and restricting the entrance of autonomous women into the “American Dream.” It seems when any woman in this country seeks to take agency over her own body, the peanut gallery always deafens us with accusations of immorality that could be likened to, “Burn the witch!”


In the article, Sex and Race, by William Chafe, he writes, “In 1898 Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued in Women and Economics that the root of women’s subjection was their economic dependency on men….In fact, the issue of women not controlling their own money has long been one of the most painful and humiliating indexes of inequality between the sexes…”(Chafe, 664). I would like to reiterate that not allowing women control of their own bodies is equally, if not more, humiliating and painful. Since this society only promotes sex within marriage as normal, women who do not conform to this role are ostracized from society in many ways. As sex workers, women are criminalized and therefore are denied the fundamental right to control their own body or economic autonomy. Furthermore, stigmatizing sex work is also an example of using values and attitudes to reinforce the power of the dominant class by creating moral arguments that serve to distract the rest of us from the real immorality of imperialism and neo-colonialism(Alexander, 3); and thereby causing opposition within the dominated groups. (rcg671). The dominant group also maintains control by defining good and bad sex and women’s roles regarding sex, reproduction, and sexuality. Some women engaging in sex work are opposing and reclaiming those definitions for themselves and therefore defining their own existences and identities while maintaining economic independence from men or the state





Works Cited
Alexander, M. Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2005. Print.
Chafe, William. "Sex and Race: The anthology of social control." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 659-72. Print.
Duarte, Susana (2003). PROSTITUTION POLICY: REVOLUTIONIZING PRACTICE THROUGH A GENDERED PERSPECTIVE by Lenore Kuo. Review of Berkeley Women's Law Journal, 18, 308. retrieved from GenderWatch (GW) database. (Document ID: 507748691).
Frye, Marilyn. "Opression." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 154-58. Print.
Johnson, Allan G. "Patriarchy." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 158-67. Print.
Mantsios, Gregory. "Class In America-2006." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 182-95. Print.
Muscio, Inga. Cunt a declaration of independence. Seattle: Seal, 1998. Print.