Today in stuff that upsets me
[Trigger warning for rape and PTSD]
am-:
Articles like this: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD (it’s a long read, but do check it out so as not to take my word for it).
Here’s this journalist, visiting some of the worst conflict areas in the world and coming back home with an understandable case of PTSD. Now, the way she copes with the PTSD is personal and I think its her business (not mine to give an opinion on), but what does bother me immensely in her narrative is that not even once does she mention the fact that she has the luxury of walking away from it and finding tools that work for her and aid in her healing. A 2000+ word personal account of yoga, spas, therapeutic treatments (and yes, fantasies of violent sex, but that’s neither here nor there), while she situates herself as a mere “witness” of the tragedies that afflict the countries she visits.
This is like poverty porn at its worst, with a side of kink to boot.
I was JUST reading this and fucking raging. Yes, the person reporting all this death and misery and squalor and pain and raping and whatever that happens in exotic [insert hue here]space must be affected, she may have PTSD, I’ll take her word for it.
HOWEVER, what about the people who are, you know, living there? And NOT BEING THIRD PARTY OBSERVERS TO VIOLENCE.
Privileged people Making Things About Themselves Only #454323235656
But she was telling a story about herself - not about anyone else. This story was about HER. I’m sure she has plenty of stories from her work and travel that aren’t about her, but that is not what she was writing about in that case. It wasn’t even that she was making out that her own story was more important or more interesting.
Or are privileged people not supposed to have their own stories to tell when they interact with people without privilege?
Sure she was telling a story about *her* — but doesn’t context matter? She witnessed a woman being gang-raped in Haiti and now has PTSD and the whole article is about *her*. We start of with Sybille’s story and then just abrubtly, she’s dropped and all we have is how she recovered from her trauma via rape fantasies and ‘violent’ (consensual) sex. Good for her. I sincerely couldn’t be more glad for her — PTSD and trauma is hard to get over and I’m glad she could work through it. However, as journalists *from* Haiti have reminded her, things happening in Haiti are not about her.
Privileged people — ANYONE ANYWHERE — are entitled to their stories. Had this been a private journal, no one would critique her for using Haiti, for painting it as yet another tragic [insert hue here]-space. But she wrote this at GOOD, in a public space — in a certain specific racialised manner when talking of Haiti, of a person (Sybille) with words she didn’t use — when you do shit, you’re going to get called out on it.
Jill at Feministe argues in But sometimes it is about you:
The piece by Mac was about Mac and her mental state, and how she coped with the trauma she witnessed. That’s very real, and it’s not selfish to recognize that observing horrible events takes a toll. We don’t need to treat female journalists with kid gloves, and there are many legitimate criticisms to be made of Mac’s piece (and of any piece). But suggesting that female journalists are selfish if they exercise self-care? Saying they’re narcissistic for centering their experiences in one story that was not at all advertised as a reported news piece? I can’t get behind that. I can’t see how that’s good for journalism.
In theory I could agree with Jill — on some alternate universe where everyone everywhere is always equal — but in this instance specifically, no, I can’t. To put it very crudely, an American journalist witnessed a Haitian woman’s gang-rape, she tweaked a little info about the woman, about what she said and presented it to us as a tale of recovery. A white woman goes to Haiti, witnesses a gang-rape and then comes away with trauma — but what about the woman who was gang-raped? How many people are even considering *her* position? Did Mac even do a follow-up piece on her? Other Haitian journalists have, in case you were wondering.
Yes, self-care is about you. Do it in any method that is accessible/works for you. But this doesn’t erase the contexts things happen in, it doesn’t make the GOOD article any less racist.
In the name of self-care, many white western feminists have centered themselves — from Seneca Falls, where they “dropped” abolition of slavery when challenged, to the Suffragettes in the early 1900’s who have gone on record to state Indian and other colonised women didn’t need emancipation because we didn’t need freedom, we wouldn’t be able to “handle” emancipation”, when actually white men challenged them to choose between their emanicpation and emancipating colonies, and they needed to emancipate themselves first. Sure historically, that “makes sense” — it’s another case of centering the Self above the Other — but as a feminist today, it baffles me that you could so blatantly profess solidarity and then bail at the first sign of a challenge.
If I’d have a paisa for every time someone has said “but times have changed” I’d be epic bling by now. Times have changed in some ways — sure now we have toasters and “better” plumbing — but you’ve got to be fucking shitting me if you even as much as insinuate that white women = notwhite women globally. There are gaping holes in feminist theory and discourse that ring out with silences of marginalised bodies — this is just another example of such silence and silencing.
Here’s the thing that gets me:
For the past two years I volunteered as a crisis first responder for a local NPO, working with sexual assault survivors. In that time, I saw a great deal of pain, and yes, I had to develop coping skills. One of the things I did not get to do, though, was write or talk, publicly or privately, about those events, even if what I was writing or talking about was mostly about me. And the reason for that was because, before I was ever allowed to go on a call or speak to a client, it was made very clear to me that NOTHING I WAS GOING TO SEE OR HEAR WAS ABOUT ME.
Now sure, my role as a first-responder was a lot different than that of a journalist, and maybe over time Mac McClelland has seen more than I did in my two years as a volunteer (though I saw plenty). My point is this: There are a lot of people who, for one reason or another, observe and have contact with other human beings in times of crisis and suffering, and while that’s never easy, I’ve never once seen a reporter or a social worker or volunteer leverage the personal intimate details of, say, a white middle or upper class USian rape survivor as a bridge to talking about their own PTSD in a major public forum. Because we fucking know better. But go to another country, especially “third world” where awfulness seeps out of the ground, and where the people are different hues and speak in different tongues, and suddenly the rules of common decency and common sense don’t apply anymore.
