The "Southern" in Me

Yes ma'am. No ma'am. Amen. Thank you. Pass the gravy. Stay out of that mud. Fishing. Fried squash. Grits. Magnolia trees. Red dirt. No sir. You're welcome. Praise Jesus.

Manners, religion, food, and the environment that surrounds me has shaped me and formed me into the person I am. From the food I eat to the way I talk, my friends all lovingly refer to me as southern. It's a heritage I'm proud of (although I'm sure my ancestors are more of the simple farmer as opposed to the antebellum). My mama and daddy taught me manners and how to be polite. I know when to say excuse me, thank you, yes ma'am, no ma'am, and how to not chew with my mouth open. I know to hold the door for the elderly and to always treat those older than me with the utmost respect, after all, they've been here longer and probably know more. I've been raised in wooden pews with Dolly Parton dresses my Mama fought me into for years. I've been fishing and I can fry chicken. I know exactly what a Steel Magnolia is and I've been lucky enough to know a few. Yeah, I guess my life is pretty Southern fried.

When I think about the south, I don't think about the sprawling metropolitan area of Atlanta. I don't even consider the smog and dirt and the places where you can't see the stars for the city lights. I think about riding across Taylor's Ridge, with the windows rolled all the way down, and the radio turned way up. I think about sweet tea and my mama's pound cake. I remember the creek at my Mema's where I used to shed my socks and shoes in the summer and find cool relief from the July sun. It's a little bitty place where everybody knows my name, phone number, birthday, and how many times I've sneezed that day. It's not that anybody means anything by it, there's just not much else to do. The south is a rock house on a hill with a pond behind it and a yellow lab stretched out on the front porch, a lab named Purot(like the presidential candidate), a lab my daddy thought was dumb because it ran through screen doors and a lab my mama loved because her kids could ride it like a horse and it loved them anyways. It's stopping when you see a funeral processional and turning down your radio because it's respectful. My south is not being afraid at night when I have to run to Wal Mart. It's having the love of an entire family surround you, even when you've screwed up but good. The south is my great grandmother, with her snow white hair, napping in her chair on the screened in back porch. It's my Mema's potato salad and my Grandma's quilts. It's my Papa's old green Ford and snuff. It's where I'm home.

I'm not naive enough to believe that the south doesn't have it's problems, it's limits, it's issues that should be worked out. I'm wise enough, however, to know that to change some of those things is to change what the South is. Even as it progressively moves forward, it stays where it's at. It's like a good recipe, you don't add extra flour to chocolate chip cookies, it would make them hard. All you can do is add chocolate chips and make them a little sweeter. The south will never rise again and it will never be a perfect place for some. But, it's a quaint little reminder that while some things change, other things always stay the same. And sometimes, that's perfectly alright.

On Rape and Victim Blaming

As a woman in today's society, I've come to accept many things. I've learned that some men will never leave the toilet seat down. Some women will always judge you based on what your hair looks like at any given moment. Some people will tell you that you need to lose ten pounds and other people will tell you that you look great. Regardless, you have to be satisfied with you, and as a woman, look to make sure the toilet seat is down. However, there are certain things in society I refuse to accept. Period.

Let's talk about rape.

It's taboo. I shouldn't say it. How could I want to talk about rape? Oh, there's the word again. Considering 1 in 4 women in college report being sexually assaulted and every two minutes a woman is raped in the United States (http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html), I'd say this is a pretty relevant topic. What frustrates me isn't the fact that rapes happen. I realize that there probably isn't a society in the world in which rape doesn't happen. However, I highly doubt that in most society's there is a twisted sort of support system for rapists and victims are left to deal with the emotional and physical problems created from such an attack with limited or no resources, depending on economic status.

Our society perpetuates many, many myths about rape. How many times have you read a story in the newspaper about how a girl goes out, girl drinks, girl meets boy, girl goes home with boy, and then details get fuzzy and the next morning the girl says she was raped? Many, many times I'm sure. How many times have you thought to yourself well, she got what was coming to her, should have been more responsible? This line of thinking absolutely blows my mind. You mean to tell me that as a woman, I'm not entitled to drink, find a boy that I like, bring him home with me, and then tell him no??? Why shouldn't I be allowed to do just that? With what the media tells us about sexually transmitted diseases and serial killers, shouldn't I be even more entitled to tell him no? So maybe I'm drunk and the word "NO" doesn't physically leave my mouth. Shouldn't the clawing, scratching, clinched thighs, and unreturned kisses be a general sign that I probably do not want to have sex?

So let's say I'm the woman in this scenario and I do bring a guy home and tell him no or otherwise show him through physical means that I do not want to have sex with him and he forces me to anyways. The next morning (as soon as I can get away) because I'm a big mouth who for a moment believed that justice could be done in a court system, I immediately go to the hospital, report I was raped, don't shower and then I'm subjected to a rape kit. That means I'm poked, prodded, and photographed for the record. Somebody checks under my fingernails to see if I scratched my rapist and then they bring in a police officer to ask me some questions. He asks me questions, for the sake of quick writing, I'll post the conversation in dialogue form:

P.O: Alright, can you tell me what happened?

Me: Well, I'd gone out to this bar with a couple of friends. Just a girls night out, ya know? (Officer nods head) So we're hanging out, we've done a few shots, and this guy comes up to me, starts throwing lines in my ear and stuff. Before I know it we're on the dance floor kissing and it's fine. Finally my girls are about to leave so I say, come on back to my house. My friends dropped us off and we popped open a bottle of wine. I was pretty tired, but he was acting like he was interested in more than dozing off. I went and changed clothes thinking maybe he wouldn't be acting that way when I got back. He started kissing me, which was fine. Then he started touching me through my clothes when I said, I'm not ready for that just yet. He nodded but kept pushing forward. I told him to stop and he laughed. I was holding my legs together and scratching at his chest trying to get him off of me and he wouldn't move. I was kind of drunk too and that made it harder to get him to understand. He just wouldn't stop.

P.O.: How many alcoholic drinks do you think you had last night?

Me: I don't know, 7, 8, no telling really. I didn't black out or anything. It just felt like even though I was fighting it didn't do me any good.

P.O.: Do you think the amount of alcohol in your system could have inhibited your ability to think clearly?

Me: Obviously, alcohol does that. If you're asking me do I think I told him no and let my body say yes, does it really matter. The fact is he had sex with me and I didn't want him to.

P.O.: Ma'am, I'm just trying to get the facts. Calm down.

Me: Sir, a man forced himself upon me and then into me. According to the literature they've given me, I feel pretty powerless over my body and everything else in my life, seeing as how it was all taken from me. Don't you dare tell me to calm down.

Okay, so you get the picture? Now, that's not saying that's a typical reaction to questions by a police officer, however, those are pretty typical questions, according to media reports involving incidents of rape. Even from the beginning of reporting a rape, a victim is questioned and inadvertently blame is placed upon her (the identifying "her" because 9 out of 10 rape victims are female(http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims). If she drank too much, she's asking for it or details are too fuzzy. Now, let's be fair, if anyone, not just a woman, has had so much to drink that details are fuzzy in their mind, chances are, they were in no condition to even consent to sex, much less have sex. It's her fault because she drank too much, wore her skirt too short, was considered promiscuous already. Now tell me, how does ANY of that give someone else the right to strip away a woman's right to say no?

In light of the Steeler's quarterback being accused (again) of rape and seeing the backlash against the girl who proclaimed such a thing, I'd say our society is in a pretty sad state. Now, I cannot say if this guy is guilty or not, but it's a sad day when because a girl has reported a rape she's called a gold digger, fame whore, and a dozen other names. Also, I'd like to point out that in the state of Georgia, if a person is intoxicated beyond the legal limit, they can't consent to sex, period. It's ridiculous that people have given that poor girl such a hard time she had to leave school. They blame her for bringing all of this on their beloved quarterback who has already been accused of rape once. How many other NFL quarterbacks have been accused twice of rape, by 2 completely different girls in 2 different states? But his story is more true than the girl who, to my knowledge, has never been in trouble, never cried foul before, and who's friends reported this guy's bodyguards wouldn't even let them in the door to check on their friend. But, he's a big star making millions so why not believe him over a poor college girl? That's the equivalent of saying O.J. didn't do it.

Now, I'm not even going to go into the politics of rape, why men rape, and all of the other crucial artifacts that go into explaining such a complicated subject. However, I am going to give you one absolute piece of information that, if taken far enough, can change the way we perceive rape victims.

Stop assuming because her skirt was too short, her drink was too full, her words were too explicit, her make up was too much, or her heels were too high that she was asking for it. If it was your wife, would she be "asking for it?" If it was your daughter, would she be asking for it? Your mom, your sister, your best friend, your girlfriend? No one ever asks to be raped. No one ever asks to be a victim, another statistic. We must change this attitude as a society so that our justice system can put away these offenders, rather than releasing them back out onto our streets (Only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail. (http://www.rainn.org/statistics). As long as we perpetuate the myth that women deserve to be raped based on appearance, past transgressions, or any other number of things, our society supports the idea that rape is okay.

Chew on that.