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Katherine is beautiful. She has a small, fine face with a Emmanuel's legs look awkward; Katherine moves her Black and Blue, the billboard showed a woman looking full mouth painted dark red and dramatic brown eyes mouth too much and forgets to look at Emmanuel-but the properly sensual (tumbled hair, pouty mouth) and wearing made larger and more dramatic with thick eye shadow real problem is Katherine's feet. an artfully torn, minimal garment that once may well have Brown, curly hair blows away from her face in a triangular "You must bring the feet forward, Katherine;" the . been a dress. She was also bruised and bound, hanging cloud. Her shoulders look surprisingly broad, perhaps photographer says. "I must see the heel. Aim for his left from her wrists with legs wide apart and crotch resting on because, like her breasts, they're accentuated by the nipple, that's right. Now dig in a little." Katherine the record album cover; the copy read "I'm 'Black and strapless dress she's wearing. The dress, which sells for hesitates-what if she hurts him? For the first time that Blue' from the Rolling Stones and .I love it!" $1100, is made of a clinging, purple, jerseylike material. It afternoon, the .photographer permits himself some exas Others didn't love it. A few days after the billboard went tucks and curves and swaddles close around her body, peration. "C'mon," he pleads, "you're both with Zoli ... up, a spray-painted message appeared on it in large sarong-style. At the top of her thighs, the skirt splits open for the money you make, you guys." He smiles and shakes letters: "This is a crime against women!" Shortly after and flows smoothly away from her long legs. his head. that, a Los Angeles based organization called Woman And then the stylist has an idea. Taking a large cloth Against Violence Against Women (W AVA W) had a meet Katherine sits on a banquette in an earnestly chic Village napkin off a nearby table, she folds it into a thick pad and ing with Atlantic Records to protest the billboard as well as restaurant. Her long arms extend along the top of the arranges it under Emman\,lel's shirt. The problem is magazine and radio campaigns on the same theme (the banquette. On her feet are gold, open-toed evening shoes. solved. Looking relieved, Katherine plants her heels radio ads, .according to WAVA Wcoordinator Julia London, Their four-inch heels rest lightly on Emmanuel's chest. firmly on Emmanuel's chest, more or less in the vicinity of consisted of whipping sounds and a woman's voice saying, Emmanuel is funny-looking, as short as Katherine is tall, his left nipple, and the models resume their pose. "Make me black and blue, I love it"). Atlantic took the with the collapsible, silly-putty face of a French character "More more to him to him don't relax just .push him billboard poster down-a few hours before WAVA W was actor. His eyes twinkle when he talks. At the moment down little bit vicious good good perfect perfect." scheduled to hold a press conference in front of it. The Emmanuel isn't talking. He's lying at Katherine's feet, radio campaign was never aired. dressed in a waiter's costume, straining to hold up a tray The photographer Playboy chose for this shooting is What were the Stones up to? When I interviewed Mick containing a heavy jug of wine and a partially filled glass. Chris von Wangenheim, 35, born in Germany, married to a Jagger during their last American tour, he was surpris His position hurts; although he's flat on his back, for the French-American model named Regine Jeffrey, one son. ingly touchy about the barid's macho image. It wasn't fair sake of the picture he must rise up slightly, using the Von Wangenheim is primarily a fashion photographer, to call their songs macho or sexist, he said, that was their muscles of his shoulders and neck, so that he can look very successful, and he shoots in many styles. He 's done old stuff, 1966, the days of "Under My Thumb" and " Stupid appreciatively at Katherine as she takes the glass of dreamily romantic Revlon ads, for example, and the Girl"- nothing they'd done since then deserved to be wine. funniest picture he ever took, which has been exhibited in criticized for its sexual politics. That was June, 1975. A While the photographer shoots he talks very fast, firing shows, is of a mock-aristocratic couple who look like the year later, the billboard appears, and we're back to square staccato instructions and encouragement at Katherine and duke and duchess of Windsor 30 years ago; they pose one. Emmanuel, creating an air of tension and excitement, stiffly, with prissy arrogant faces, the woman sitting Jagger controls the Stones' image-he oversees every helping them sustain their pos~. "Stay stay that's it that's ~ngerly on the back of a la~ge, stuffed d~g. thing from advertising campaigns to stage sets for their it beautiful terrific stay stay no pinky no pinky good .good But the style for which von Wangenheim is known, the tours. And Jagger isn't dumb. He's alert to political and too much mouth look at him look at him stay stay good style Playboy had in mind when they asked him to do their cultural trends, and he's smart about business. When he good." feature on wine drinking, is, like the man says, a little bit . chose the image of the bruised, bound woman to sell Black "Moment," says Emmanuel, and collapses back to the vicious. It's an increasingly popular style, with touches of and Blue, I think he understood its political implications, floor to rest his neck. sadism and bondage, hints of sexual tension and hostility, all right; he was just being hip, picking up on~and, as it Katherine leans over Emmanuel and asks anxiously, the occasional eruption of outright violence. In the past few turned out, making highly visible-a trend that was "Am I hurting you?" Emmanuel assures her she's not, for years it's been turning up all over the place, most already there. The Ohio Players, for example, a popular perhaps the sixth time since the shooting began; it's his frequently and most elegantly in fashion magazines and in black disco group, had already acquired a reputation for neck that's the problem, he says. The shooting, which ends the work of high-fashion photographers, more crudely on their outre cover designs featuring women in chains. up taking three and a half hours, will eventually produce a pop-record album covers and in record advertising. And in 1974, they released Climax, which shows a man two-page spread in Playboy illustrating the pleasures of Last June, a h1,1ge billboard went up over Sunset embracing a woman whose head has been shaved; they drinking wine. A lot of little things go wrong-Katherine's Boulevard. Designed by fashion stylist and photographer . both appear to be naked. As he nuzzles her tenderly, we see hair blows t.oo much so the fan must be adjusted; Ara Gallant to advertise the new Rolling Stones album that she's plunging a knife into his back. . - ' \ At left, the vogue at "Vogue": Helmut Newton started it in 1975 with an ambigllolm shot of a man seizing a woman; later &ba& year, Avedon followed more fiercely.
Above, a dance you can beai to: Ohio Players albums feature a woman first chained, then mnr derous; Nelson Slater's music is harmless, but his covel" art isn't. ~art-=----=-='-----c::=-aare
· To call images like these sexist is to Widerstate the case· tives were asked why they didn't do something about the something more is. happening here than the old advertis~ sexual violence in album covers and ads, they said that, To call images like these ing ploy of woman-as-Sex-object. The women on these contractually, they couldn't interfere with the performers' record albums aren't simply the objects of lust or desire; independence and artistic integrity. Nonsense. In most sexist is to understate they're also the objects-and sometimes the embodi instances-powerful groups like the Stones are an excep the case. These women inent'--Of sexual sadism, hostility, and fear. WA VA W has tion-record companies can and will interfere in such put together a slide show of record-ablum covers and ads matters as album design and promotion-for "marketing ·aren't simply the objects that they've singled out a8 'sexually vidlent. More often reasons." The gratuitous sexual violence is a come-on, an than not, the women portrayed are vamps and bitch invitation to fantasy, fantasies of power, and revenge. goddesses-sleek, severe creatures with long, sharp nails of lust; they're also the The sexually violent sales pitch reached a veritable peak and red mouths. But they're victim-vamps, tamed shrews, literally bound and gagged. of gratuitousness with Richard Avedon's 12-page fashion objects· of sadism and fear. spread in the December 1975 issue of Vogue. Called And no wonder. If they were let loose, they just might do "Together Again!" it features two models-he's curly to men what the Ohio Players' backstabber did, right? haired, a macho pretty boy ; she's tall, strong-boned, Wrong. The lie these images tell is a lie about power. If the myth of the murderous bitch goddess is a product of somewhat tousled-enacting the fairly rigorous adven genuine male fear of women--<>r, more precisely, perhaps, tures of a couple. on holiday "in the extraordinary Fort of female sexuality-it also· serves as a handy excuse for Worth Water Gardens." They frolic around the water keeping women down. To portray women as more powerful gardens, but early on, it's clear there's going to be trouble ; and therefore more dangerous than they actually are on page three they're brooding, on five he thrO\YS a serves to justify the very real power men have over women tantrum. This is followed by more frolicking and some and the violence with which they sometimes exercise it. loving embraces. Then, on the ninth and tenth pages, a ll Every battered wife-and there are millions-must prove hell breaks loose. More precisely, he breaks loose; that is, that she isn't a nag of diabolical skill, every rape he beat-s the shit out of her, in a series of small shots, like a victim-there are millions of them, too-that she isn't a film strip, set into a large photo of the final pWich, all in sexual provocateur. Otherwise, well, she drove him to it. color. The accompanying text comments blithely on her She was asking for it. She deserved it. jumpsuit: "Cool enough to really take the heat, easy Sometimes the effect is campy violence ; often if isn't enough to really move in." · The piece concludes on the camp at all, it's just violent. Stylish, maybe, but frankly following pages·with a layout expressly designed to show sadistic, like the cover for Nelson Slater's record Wild the beating sequence. Only this time, he teases and tickles Angel. The title song refers to a man, but the wild angel on her; laughing, she playfully tries to fend him off. It's the cover is female. Her short, cropped hair is almost sexual horseplay rather than sexual violence. Aren't they invisible; her head is forced back, eyes ·closed, white the same? - shoulders bare and throat exposed. Through her thin, • Well, no , of course, they aren't. A man beating ·.up a bright-red lips is pulled a heavy, black metal chain like a woman bears about the same relation to sexual horseplay bit to break a horse. On the back of the album appears a as rape does to making love. The Avedon spread fails, even on its own potentially sinister dramatic terms. The airy, portrait of Nelson Slater, who has a short beard, a skinny face, and looks ordinary and harmless. outdoor setting, the healthy, banally good-looking models Slater's music is ordinary and.harmless, too, a mix of it's a regular Richard Avedon fashion spread, in fact, onl; unremarkable ballads and faster numbers. His packaging toward the end there's this beating .. . . has nothing to do with his music. The violence, drama, After the Vogue spread was published, Avedon lectured cruelty-all are gratuitous; they're like the bikinied at the International Center for Photography. The spread . models who pose with machinery in industrial trade had caused some controversy (a Vogue spokeswoman, in the process of denying that there was ever anything violent magazines. J!le models arEl ~ com~ ~!\. SOf!Iet.hing. to make . February "Vogue": Von Wangenbeim sells shoes. you look at the machinery. When record company execu- · · Canti. nued· on next page
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A WOMAN HAS THE RIGHT TO LOOK MORE BEAUTIFUL AT A PRICE SHE CAN AFFORD. collection of nndilnted NewtOn sold 1500 copies a week. woman's breast while another throws wine on her (the men · are fighting over the woman); a recent von Wangenheim lzk '~&lrt l1.1'tuE~ a fT917!-,.PTece ding ~ ge shot of a Doberman pinscher biting a woman's leg; a von in the magazine, nevertheless admittect to "abO~t 2
lflUUUCS" etu UC'l' ... V!:fu.c:;-uau u c a.t;C.:.. ·~.·.. ~ ~ u ...::--& • • J.\..Q.:U J. C~~'" .. o;, ~ 1500 cooies a week in America, mostly, according to a spread by photographer Helmut Newton on perfumes booksellers' reports received by the publisher, Jeffrey . WEST SIDE BOUTIQUE called "The Story of Ohhh." This, more than anything, Steinberg, to "women and gays." (How do they know this? CREATIVE JEWELRY launched the , style of fashion photography that writer ~men walk into bookstores and say, "Hi, I'm gay, and I'd 239 West 72nd St. (Between B'way & West End Ave.) Judith Coburn has dubbed "brutality chic." Newton is its like to b~y this book"?) In any case, a lot of people-70:00o Open Mon. through Sat./10:30 AM-7:30PM 1 Tel. 787-5472 undisputed master. "Cold" and "decadent" are the words worldWide so far-have been willing to plunk down $25 one hears most often to describe his work; it's also skillful for the elegant outsize book with the classic spanking shot and frequently witty. Born in Berlin but now living in on the cover, a smooth, bare ass set off by black stockings, · PROCESSING DONE iN OUR OWN LAB ON PREMISES Paris, Newton is· in his fifties; his work has appeared for garter belt, and a hiked-up black lace peignoir. Wicked _J _J years in European fashion magazines, but much of it was· white woman. Her ass saved Stonehill's; the small 0"' thought too excessive for the American market. Exces- struggling publishing house · (whose other books-mostly· "" o . Remember Mom )> sively erotic, that is-it's only in recent years that politics and poetry--don't much resemble this one) is now "' n :> onMayB 0 American fashion magazines have begun to dabble in frank on solid ground. 0 r eroticism. As its designer Be a Feitler said, with some amusement- a: 0 :X: When "The Story of Ohhh" appeared it caused a stir, and Whit~ ~omen "fit a perfect niche in American snobbery.': : ..u "' not only among Vogue's readers. It was praised and That ts, It made pornography acceptable; it's a stroke book ' I- · criticized in the fashion world, and Joan Kron wrote it up in of sorts, tricked out to look like an art object suitable for ' · "'" New York magazine. What _people talked about was its ~offee-table display. That's part of its hypocrisy, a little 140 FOURTH AVE ~ eroticism (the New York magazine piece was called JOke that everyone from the publisher to Newton himself "':> 842 BROADWAY "' "Copping a Feel at Vogue~') It is erotic, actually, and a admits to (according to the publisher, Newton wanted to 0 little kinky, too-a man and two women in a luxurious, call the book Fleshpots, but his wife's choice of title a: i HOUR SERVICE ON KODACOLOR FILM ~ :X: secluded beach house in southern France; a couple of prevailed; the book is dedicated to her). u .. In by 9 - Ready at 4 A t no extm charge :; large, handsome dogs thrown in for_good measure. Hot There's a deeper hypocl'isy in White Women , however ; 0 FROM OUR OWN LAB ON PREMISES m 0 sun, flimsy clothes, a lot of nuzzling and nibbling. as one critic wrote, it " peddles misogyny whitewashed as >< PRI N TS • ENLARGEMENTS • SLIDE DUPLI C ATES What wasn't talked about was the other element in the fashionable chic." Of course, there-are good pictures in the 14-page sequence besides kink and simple sexiness: sexual book, frequent touches of visual wit. But the final impres \ 'I violence. Subtle, ambiguous, half-suppressed, but it's sion is icy, a sense of hostility beneath the sly ·humor. ' there, skillfully weaving the pictures to a climax. In the Looking through White Women, I was reminded of Leni last photograph, a full-page color shot, the man is seizing Riefenstahl's The Last of the Nuba. Riefenstahl's is a \ Jor the one of the women-by the breast. The man looks very bette~ book; she's a better photographer. But as you look at treasures of tough in this picture, dressed in a black t-shirt and pants, t?e pict~re~ of t~e d?omed tribe whose stoic strength and mot. her earth his head like a bullet, his hand ramming into the woman's fierce vitality R1efenstahl so admired, the life seems to vi, it the unique body; she looks delicate, dressed in a flowing white ctJ:ain out of them. They aren't human, they're the Nuba, evening gown, with bare shoulders and a translucent white Riefenstahl's beautiful, loved objects. The women in collector:s shawl falling forward over his hand. ~ewton's book are objects, too- beautiful, unloved ob- cabinet What's going on here? Passion? Apparently. Cruelty? It Jects. in its new store would seem so. What do their faces say? Hard to tell. He Occasionally Newton's women look lascivious; more looks almost grim; she looks, well, her mouth is open, her often they look half-dead. Remote, passive, heavily listless. at 15'3 e.S7st. eyes half-closed-whether in pleasure or pain, or both, isn't Th: trappings of sadomasochism are there-a nude against clear. If the scene were clear, the picture might not work; an Iron fence, holding a riding crop across her shoulderS- • seas.hells . it might look brutal, even ugly. But Newton has shot it but the effect is more like necrophilia. Half-dressed women Sweater~ • mine.rals purposely out of focus, in best blurry, romantic, evening- languishing in ornately luxurious rooms. Naked women Now Only gown advertisement style. taking "beauty treatments"-more high-powered hoses- • 21.70 ·butterflies Newton professed astonishment over the reaction to in what looks like some mad doctor's updated, chrome Come up to our toft and " Story of Ohhh.'' He ~onsid~red it mild, a dilution of his arid-tile version of a torture chamber. Women tottering take at least 30% oft ·bonsai usual work. It's certainly mild compared to the stuff that's about in exaggerated high-heeled shoes that are them our low warehouse prices • animal sculpture followed in its wake, by Newton and other photographers. selves a kind of bondage. It's claustrophobic, finally; they SPECTRUM IMPORTS INC. •untque. jewelry The Avedon spread; an anonymous photograph advertis- all look trapped, like so many flies in so much expensive ~~2~-;:r.:J.to!~3"t!~~~0023 ing crystal jewelry of a woman in her underwear crawling amber. And we aren't to care for them. They're only 1 JnOh·Sat.lo-,·thur.lo-q open doily 10-$ thurs. 'tW6 1sat . .11-5 -te.l. ('l.l,.)3s-S'-l033 on hands and knees behind a man who's walking away; an "white women,'' after all, chic, pampered parasites. ... - . ·-- ~ ·- - ad for Brown ~ ~f - ~~d_o? _ i~ which one man fQndles a Conti nued on page 23 . ~ - .. -.· - .. - ·-- ...... :;.. .: • :. := .-:- ... - - .. -- --- • ..., •
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1. One-half of all American wo men will be victims of sexual assault or domestic b) Vastly increasing the federal government's shockingly low budget of violence in their lifetimes. This is intolerable. Women must be empowered by a $8.2 7 million to assist states in prevention of domestic violence and femin iza tion of power in the criminal justice system. 0 Agree 0 Disagree protection of battered women. 0 Agree 0 Disagree c) Instituting laws that empower women who are forced to flee domestic 2. Every six minutes a woman is raped in the U.S.- and yet only 1 in 10 rapes violence by maintaining their rights to their homes, their income and is reported to police. Rape victims are often humiliated and accused of complicity custody of their children. 0 Agree 0 Disagree by the justice system that is supposed to protect them. We must demand: a) Law enforcement which encourages the reporting of rape and is more 5• W e need to create a national outrage and demand action to stop violence responsive to the needs of raped women. 0 Agree 0 Disagree against women. I am willing to support FFM to help demand more effective laws b) National standards and special training of law enforcement and and to win a feminization of power in the criminal justice system to fight the rise medical professionals for the examination, treatment and interviewing of violence against women. 0 Agree 0 Disagree of rape survivors. 0 Agree 0 Disagree c) Courtroom procedural rules to protect the dignity and privacy of the If you agree, please indicate below the amount you wish to contribute to help rape surv ivor. 0 Agree 0 Disagree launch our nationw ide STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN CAMPAIGN and the coordinated Feminization of Power Campaign to increase the number of feminists in the criminal justice system. 3 •E ach year, three to four million women are battered by their husbands or partners. Yet, like rape, domestic violence is among the leas t reported of all 0$25 0$35 0 $50 0$100 0$250 0 Other$ ___ crimes . Police are often reluctant "to interfere in domestic disputes." Violent To charge your contribution please check one : __VISA __MasterCard husbands or partners, if arrested, are often charged leniently with misdemeanor Credit card number ______assault. This cycle of violence could be curtailed by: Expires _____ Bank no .____ Signature ______a) Mandatory arrest laws- now successful in 12 states - whenever police are called to stop domestic violence. 0 Agree 0 Disagree Please make your check payable to the Fund for the Feminist Majority and return with your b) Domestic violence being punished exactly like any other violent petitions to FFM, P.O. Box 96042, Washington, D.C. 20077. assault. 0 Agree 0 Disagree 01015668 SA2000 01 4• E ach year, 650,000 women and children are forced to fl ee their homes ANT OINETTE SWANGER because of violent husbands or partners. But overcrowded shelters and safe houses 9935 STRATHMO R are forced to turn away 40%- over 250,000 per year. More than one-half of all DETROIT MI U8227-2716 counties in this country have no programs for battered women. We must demand: a) Ad equate programs to meet the need for shelter for all battered women. 0 Agree 0 Disagree Contribu tions to the Fund for the Feminist Majority are not tax-deductible. ------DONOTD ETACH ------
TO: Jerry Arenberg, President TO: Mary Sue Terry, President National Association of Chiefs of Police National Association of Attorneys General 1000 Connecticut Avenue, NW 444 North Capitol Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20036 Washington, D.C. 20001
Dear Mr. Arenberg: Dear Attorney General Terry: It is a national disgrace that the women of America It is a national disgrace that the women of America must live in constant fear of violent assault in their must live in constant fear of violent assault in their neighborhoods and in their homes. neighborhoods and in their homes. We need tougher laws and more responsive law We need tougher laws and more responsive law enforcement to stop the rising tide of violence against enforcement to stop the rising tide of violence against women. We need more women police officers to make women. We need more women prosecuting attorneys to law enforcement responsive to women. make law enforcement more responsive to women. I urge you to use the power of your office to promote I urge you to use the power of your office to promote the passage of mandatory arrest laws in domestic the passage of mandatory arrest laws in domestic violence and procedures to encourage the reporting of violence and procedures to encourage the reporting of rape. rape.
Signature ______~------Signature ______Name (please prim) ______Name (please print) ______Street Address, ______Street Address, ______City, State, Zip, ______City, State, Zip.______Wednesday, June 24, 1992 •• .Call The Way We Live: 2.22-6610
By RACHEL L. JONES Free Press Staff Writer
Last week, as I stepped from the shower to the news of the latest High land Park murder, my stomach knotted As crimes up. It feels .like some-macabre cotmt down, I thought, like some death knell against women that keeps sounding for women, and nobody seems to be able to stop it. These crimes against us are coming escalate, it's so fast now, so hard on each other's heels. Cotmt them up. hard to escape a Four yotmg girls are dragged off, raped and murdered. siege mentality Nine black women, all "small in stature," are found dead in abandoned buildings in Highland Park. An early-morning jogger is fotmd naked, stabbed to death on a wooded trail. Two women who live and love together are shot dead because the man next door hated "queers" and had the firepower to do something about it. Two wives are murdered after heated arguments with their husbands. And one little girl is snatched from her bed, wearing her nightgown with the teddy bear on the front, and we still don't know what on Earth happened to her. All in the past six months. There's a constant rhythm to these crimes, a drumbeat that's . j numbing. Were they all in the wrong place at the wrong time?. - _ No, they were all women. And when a man needed to vent some horrible rage, he sought a woman. Reading their stories makes me cringe. It makes me avert my eyes when a man I don't know speaks to me or expresses interest. These days, I hesitate before accepting invitations and would never give my number to someone I've just met. Whenever I'm out walking now, I carry my keys See FEAR, Page lOC
ANTHONY RUSSO/Special to the Free Press · I !'S" L •.. ~ ~ ' ' ' t t
10C DETROIT FREE PRESS/WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1992 e • t- :f Continual crimes against women put fear into every woman's life
FEAR, from Rage 1 C who jog at 5 a.m. who get strangled and behavior?" decapitated. So I wound up telling him he was in my hand~, individual ones poking out It's the quiet girl who liked horses smell something out there, something in the ether, it seems, that right, but am still puzzled that he from between fingers, better to deal a and lived around the corner. automatically questioned my mental . ghastly wound if I need some time to It's the woman down the street who I sends a deadly rnessnge to all women. Society reinforces that stability. get awaY: ' went to visit her relative's grave. message through its a titudes towards women, its toothless laws or After all, he knew what had hap I'm hoping more aerobic exercise It's the model mother who worried pened in my building seven months will help me run faster, too. about her husband's medication, lack of response to these crimes. It whispers in our ears, "The rules are before I moved in. The former boy Am I just being a silly, paranoid fought with him to keep him alive. different for you. You can't walk alone . ... You are fair game." friend of a resident walked past securi woman, or what? All I truly know is the It's people who weren't physically ty guards, up to her apartment and fear makes me mad and sad at once. strong enough to fend off an attacker, shot her through the heart. He stuffed Just as I've grown tnily confident as a · people who didn't carry guns and her body in a laundry hamper and woman, hoping for a daughter of my knives in their purses and backpacks, are different for you. You can't walk foundly sick men who, like Leslie Wil I'm not sure anymore. Just as wheeled her down to his waiting trunk. own someday, the world seems no · people who think that if they ask nicely alone. You can't walk with your little liams, just can't fmd a woman to. love, whites will never know what it's like to So yes, I am paranoid. I have to be. place for either of us anymore. and plead enough, or if they just stay sister or live with another woman. You and hate us all because of it. be instantly devalued because of skin You see, I'm a black woman, average in Leslie Williams' young victims are out of the wrong places and are good can't even stay in your house with your I'm even rethinking the whole issue color, a man can never know the height, slight of build. To someone the most haunting. Cynthia Jones people, they'll survive somehow. .kids. of bringing children into this anxious, particular brand of vulnerability a intent on snuffing out a human life, shared my last name; Kami Villanueva People like me. "You are fair game, and other than fearful world. If I had a little daughter woman must develop, instinctively, to that's probably all I am. My hopes and reminded me of how shy and quiet I having a big, strong man with a .38 right now, she'd never leave my sight survive. dreams could be relegated to a shallow was at her age. Reading about th~ No sense of security caliber to protect you around the clock, for more than a minute. And the fear That notion came during a conver grave like untold other nameless wom Urbin sisters made me remember long These days, I feel the ultimate fool you're on your own. When your num clotting in my throat tells me I'd have sation with a former boyfriend, as I en, if I'm not careful and prudent walks I took with my own sisters years for ever thinking something terrible ber's up, it's up. to sit her down for that special mother- talked about a creepy new neighbor always. ago: and violent would never befall me. So "Your story ends when anybody . daughter talk - not about sex, but who'd moved next door to my small I hate thinking like this, but I have You just don't think about rape and far, I've been lucky. But I cringe again stronger than you decides it should." about the violence she would have to studio apartment last year. Well over 6 to. I have to. mutilation and dying at 13 or 14. We thinking of how completely irresponsi What are we supposed to tell young anticipate because of her gender. feet tall and built like ·a defensive And I'm waiting. Waiting for some hopped on our rickety bikes and rode ble, naive or downright foolish I have women about safety? What do we tell I'd tell her to never walk alone, tackle, this man could have snapped me help, some empathy. I'm waiting for off to the park, to slice through the air been. them about their personal space, about never trust a man she doesn't know. over his kriee without blinking. laws to reflect my fears, to give them on the swings or Write our names on Like the tiine I got plastered at a their inalienable right to walk about Maybe I'd even tell her to only sparing He never responded to greetings, credence. I'm waiting for men to orga the walls of the rickety old gazebo. male acquaintance's apartment, and he freely? . ly trust men she does know. I'd proba and seemed to dart from doorways as I nize rallies, to hold press conferences, We'd walk the 15 blocks to the candy offered me his bed. And I accepted. Or I don't mean to downplay violence bly tell her to try to never make a man passed. Mild discomfort became rising to staff hot lines, to get the help they store to blow our allowance on bubble the time I climbed into an unmarked against men; as a black person, I'd be too angry, because some fights just fear; I put a chair under the doorknob ·need instead of erupting in senseless gum and potato chips, stopping in the taxi during a New York rainstorm and downright callous if I did. Recent sta don't seem to end with slammed doors and a plate atop it, hoping the crash violence. To stop beiRg so brutal to nearby field to pick dandelions or play noticed the door handle on my side was tistics showing gunfire as the No. 1 anymore. would alert me to an intruder. Some people less powerful than they are. games. gone. Or the time a shortcut down a cause of death for young black males in times I fell asleep staring at my crude But then I awoke yesterday morn We never thought somebody might And if I had a little boy, how could I deserted alley shaved five minutes Detroit are appalling. Overall, FBI shield him from a warped world that defense system. ing to the news that an east-side man want to harm us. We were only a few from my walk. statistics show that violent crimes rose But when I described my unease, shot his wife and daughter to death miles away from home. Was the world tells him part of being a man means Never again. Now I smell some 355 percent between 1960 and 1990. dominating a woman? my boyfriend said, "You're really para after an argument. I'll be waiting a long so different then? thing out there, something in the We're all vulnerable to crime. Every noid about this. That guy probably time. But now we know it's not just in big ether, it seems, that sends a deadly body, everywhere, is fair game.· doesn't know you exist." I don't want to be afraid of you, scary urban centers- violent, dirty, mes8age to all women. 'Society rein But here's another telling stat. The No feeling of empathy This from a man who loved me, who guys, any of you. I don't want to miss hellish places - that women and girls forces that message through its atti No. 1 cause of on-the-job death for What do our brothers, fathers and claimed my well-being was a top priori out on knowing you, to think any of you are snatched, shoved into backs of tudes towards women, its toothless women is homicide. Homicide. Hus boyfriends think about the violence ty to him. I readied a tart response, capable of violent, destructive behav vans, raped and murdered. Now we laws or lack of response to these bands and boyfriends walking into of weaving through our lives? then hesitated. ior, just because you are men. know it's not just poor black women or crimes. fices and destroying their mates in a Can the men in our lives truly know "Could he be right?" I thought. It's no way to live. But more and prostitutes or foolish young wome!l It whisPers in our ears, "The rules cold rage. Frustrated, lonely, pro- what it's like for us? "Could I be imagining this man's weird more, it seems I have no choice.