Men’s Violence Against Women

This is a tremendous article which I found at
http://www.apa.org/divisions/div51/div51/01.htm

It is written by a man named Christopher Kilmartin, who is a psychologist specializing in gender-based violence. It puts things together in a way that not only makes sense to the most neanderthalic of minds, but is one of the clearest summaries I've ever read describing the problem and the solution for violence against women.

Here is a link to his bio http://www.umw.edu/mrg/default.php?fid=187

I urge you to read this article and pass it on. Be an advocate for progress and part of the solution!
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Men’s Violence Against Women
Christopher Kilmartin, Bulletin Editor

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and too often we see domestic violence and rape defined as “women’s issues.” Since men do the vast majority of the damage, I think it’s a men’s issue. I’ll begin with a story, not a very happy one, to set the tone.

A little while back, The Washington Post ran a story about a Northern VA country club that held an event called the “Vodka challenge.” It was a men-only event, a standard country club golf tournament. What made it newsworthy was the mode of celebration in the men’s locker room. The day before the tournament, one of the club managers purchased an ice sculpture of a nude woman, sitting down with her legs spread. The vodka was served in the locker room from a fountain stream that came out from between her legs.

When some of the women members found out about this ice sculpture, they were outraged. Most of the men seemed puzzled by this reaction. After all, this was a sculpture, not a real woman, and it was in the men’s locker room, where none of the women would even see it. Quite predictably, there were a lot of statements about angry feminists who have no sense of humor, and the overly rigid atmosphere of political correctness. After all, any one with an open mind would see this as harmless. I think it’s good to have an open mind, but it’s not good to have a mind so open that your brain falls out.

What does this vodka challenge story have to do with violence against women? There was nothing in the story to suggest that any of these men had ever beaten their wives. But, although I’m sure they didn’t realize it, every one of them made it just a little more possible for any one of them to commit an act of violence against a woman.
In order for violence to occur, several things have to be present. First, there has to be a lack of identification with the victim. Second, there has to be a perception of the situation as one that calls for violence. Third, there has to be a decision to act violently, and fourth, there has to be a means of doing harm to the other person.

All-male social groups that are disrespectful towards women provide the first part of this formula: a willingness to view women as being different from and less valued than men. Symbolically, the ice sculpture provided an atmosphere that says women are here for men’s pleasure, and we will bond around our shared masculinity in this place where we don’t have to deal with women as human beings. Seeing them as lower status others allows us to justify mistreating them in many ways, including violence. There is an attitudinal undercurrent of women as enemies, in spite of the fact that most of these men were married to and raising children with the enemy.

Unfortunately, this vodka challenge was most likely not some isolated incident of insensitivity. In fact, country clubs have a history of the exclusion and disrespect of women, from men-only eating areas and tee times to the outright banning of women members. Many clubs also have a history of excluding Jews and people of color. The controversy over the exclusion of women from Augusta National is a case in point – Martha Burk has been called every bad name in the book just because she has pointed out the bigotry of this incredibly wealthy group of men and suggested that we all do something to ensure that they don’t become wealthier from the Master’s tournament.

I am only using country clubs as an example of all-male enclaves that implicitly and subtly condone violence against women. Other institutions, like many fraternities and corporations, also have these histories. And, of course, all-male social groups do not have to be organized and institutional to provide this violence-condoning atmosphere. We can find informal men’s groups in workplaces, college dorms, athletic teams, and corner bars, telling demeaning jokes about women, calling them by animal names or the names of their genitals, and these men rarely confront each other for fear of being attacked or ostracized. There is an unconscious, implicit conspiracy in many men’s groups to keep women in their place. What better way to do it than by causing them to feel perpetually fearful of being physically attacked?.
Men’s violence is the single most serious health problem for women in the United States. It causes more harm than accidents, muggings, and cancer combined. For women aged 15-44, an estimated 50% of emergency room visits are the result of violence at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends, ex-husbands, or ex-boyfriends. Every year male partners or ex-partners murder more than 1000 women – that’s about 3 per day. It happens so often that people don’t even pay attention to it. When a stranger murders someone, the story is on the front page of the metro section. If it’s an intimate, it’s at the bottom of page 4. A stranger rape always makes the papers; an acquaintance rape never does unless the rapist is somebody famous. The two most frequent crimes against women are largely invisible to the media. We expect it so much that we don’t even notice it.

I want to point out that I chose my words very carefully there I very intentionally did not say “when a person is murdered by a stranger.” Maybe it’s just because I’m a college professor, but I am an absolute believer in the power of language, and there is some everyday language that smuggles in prejudices against women and contributes to the cultural atmosphere that enables gender-based violence. I have 5 examples.

The first is the one I just pointed out – passive voice – 1000 women are murdered. The victim, not the perpetrator, is the subject of the sentence. When you see this language often enough, the perpetrator becomes a kind of afterthought. Imagine if sportscasters talked like this: “The score was tied when a three-point basket was scored.” “Many dollars were earned.” Wouldn’t everyone ask, “Who did it? Who is responsible?”

Example #2: the use of the term “opposite sex” and the phrase “battle of the sexes”. I challenge you to tell me one way in which the sexes are opposite. Calling men and women opposites is like calling an IBM computer the opposite of an Apple. And “battle of the sexes” implies that men and women are at war. We will never solve this problem until we work together and emphasize our commonalities rather than our differences.

I see research studies reported in the popular press – “a recent study proves what we have suspected all along – that men’s and women’s brains are different.” And what they do is find some infinitesimally small portion of the brain that has some minor difference that accounts for 5% of the variance in a population with wide variability, completely ignoring the fact that men’s and women’s brains both have frontal cortex, amygdalas, thalmuses, hypothalamuses, and on and on. And at the end of the story, the anchorman on the news says, “Well, that explains why I can’t understand my wife at all.” (If you can’t understand your wife, I recommend the much-overlooked method of listening to her).

Example #3, when I tell people I’m a psychologist specializing in gender-based violence, people always ask, when a man is beating his wife, why does she stay with him? That’s question #2; they never ask question #1: Why would a man hit his wife? Men’s violence is considered to be a given, and women’s responses to that violence are seen as choices. This subtly makes women responsible for the violence.

Example #4: self-defense classes for women that are advertised as “rape prevention.” Is it women’s job to prevent rape? Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for women learning self-defense if they want to, but let’s call it what it really is – risk reduction. It is men’s responsibility to prevent rape.

Example #5 comes from the recent scandal over sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy. It turns out that there numerous male cadets who have sexually assaulted female cadets, and the men who run the Academy intimidated survivors into keeping silent about it. The newspaper stories said something like, 54 rapes occurred between male and female cadets. I’m sorry – rapes do not occur between people. Does a bank robbery occur between a robber and a teller? Does vandalism occur between a kid with a can of spray paint and somebody’s property? And here’s another flash of brilliance – in reaction to the scandal, the head of the academy said that the problem was that men and women live in the same residence hall and that men would see women walking down the hall in their bathrobes, and that he was going to now have the men and women living in separate residence halls. So, let’s get this straight: the problem is that men are raping women and so the solution is to get rid of the women?! It’s a new height in victim-blaming. I know I get out of control when I see a woman in a bathrobe. How does that work, physiologically? Prostate exerts pressure on the spinal cord, cutting off oxygen to the brain? And, newspapers reported the Air Force problem as a “sex scandal.” I would submit that the victims were not having sex, and we could also argue that the perpetrators were not either.

When we see gender-based violence, women-hating is just around the corner. Therefore, if we can turn this attitude around, we can go a long way toward solving this problem. And, the people who are in the best position to do so are men -- we have the social status, power, and privilege. We can speak out and affect the attitudes of our fellow men. Just as white people have a special role to play in ending racism, rich people have a special role to play in ending economic inequality, and heterosexuals have a special role to play in ending homophobia, it is vitally important that we, as men of conscience, take seriously our role in ending sexual violence.

In the locker room at the vodka challenge that day, I’m betting that there was at least one man who was uncomfortable with this ice sculpture, just as there is when someone hires a stripper for a bachelor party or makes a woman the butt of a joke. It’s not unlikely that more than one man felt this way. But nobody spoke up because each man feels that he may be the only one, and taking on the collective opinion of the rest of the group can leave him out in the cold. There is tremendous pressure to laugh along with the boys or at least not say anything. It would have taken tremendous courage for a man to stand up and say, even matter-of-factly, “That ice sculpture is really offensive; what could you have been thinking? Why don’t we just get rid of it before we’re all embarassed? We can have just as much fun without it.” And it’s ironic to me that courage is supposed to be a hallmark of masculinity, but there are so many men who find it impossible to display this kind of courage. They would sooner run into a burning building or have a fist fight. Men are also supposed to be independent, but there is tremendous conformity in most all-male peer groups, whether they are adults or younger men.

Social psychologists have known for a long time that one of the biggest barriers to being able to disagree with a group is unanimity. When the group opinion is unanimous and you don’t have an ally, the pressure to conform is tremendous. But if even one person voices a disagreement with the rest of the group, others are much more likely to follow suit. There were probably several uncomfortable men in that locker room that day. If one of them had spoken out, he might have found that there was more support in the room than he had imagined. But somebody has got to go first. Somebody has got to take a risk. Someone has to be the leader. It’s masculine to take a risk, to be a leader; why are so few of us doing it? The research indicates that 75% of college men are uncomfortable when their male peers display these kinds of attitudes. Most men don’t like it; we need to let other men know that we don’t.

Along with changing our attitudes toward women, we’ve also got to change our attitudes toward ourselves. For several years, I have been involved in efforts to fight the alarming prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses. When this problem was first identified in the 1970s, colleges began to provide self-defense training, teach women how to avoid dangerous situations, and provide better lighting and emergency phones across the campus. Obviously, these are very important measures. But, these kinds of strategies constituted the basic extent of campus programming for about twenty years, and all of these measures have one thing in common: they only address potential victims. It is only been the last few years that people have begun to try to do something about the potential perpetrators? Why did it take us so long to come to this obviously important strategy? I think it is the pervasive perception boys will be boys and the only thing we can do is to wait until they commit a crime, and then put them in jail. Some still consider rape an act of male sexuality gone awry, rather than an act of violence. But we know different, just as we know that if a person hits another person over the head with a frying pan, we don’t call that cooking.

If men’s violent behavior is perceived as an unchangeable constant, then violence toward women is a women’s issue, never a men’s issue. “Boys will be boys” not only provides a measure of excuse for violence against women, it is a very disrespectable attitude toward men, as if we are animals, with absolutely no control over ourselves. And again, there’s an irony here. Self-control is another hallmark of traditional masculinity, but aggression and sexuality are considered to be completely out of control -- a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. I want men to have more dignity than that. I saw this book title recently, “All men are jerks until proven otherwise.” It made me sad – and I also realized, how am I ever going to prove what I’m not? Maybe I was a nice guy today, but who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. It’s a sad state of affairs when so many men have behaved so irresponsibly that the rest of us have to carry the burden of understandable suspicion from women.

So, besides becoming more respectful toward women, we have to regain our self-respect. We are human beings who are capable of caring for others. We are not animals who lash out instinctively, poisoned by testosterone. Violence against women is a men’s issue, and men have to take a leadership role in building a more positive male community. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Thanks to those of you who have been doing this work.

Edited by: Christopher Kilmartin, Ph.D.

Religion: Archenemy of Social Evolution?

I submit that religion as it exists and is embraced throughout the world, presents the biggest threat to society’s evolution. No society can consider itself progressive if at its core there exists a philosophy whose successful implementation and maintenance depends on weakening its people through the use of fear and damnation.
Most of all world religions ask us to buy into a singular foundational truth; the one that lies beneath the belief in the Savior. We are asked to believe that a Savior, a prophet, a teacher, descended upon this earth at one time long ago and spoke to the ‘men in charge’ about how the world is meant to work. When they emerged from their meeting, the result was announced from the highest mountains across the world and to be implemented immediately. It was the Edict of Sexism: the Superior Man and the Inferior Woman. It is the core belief we all must accept before we can move on to fully embrace the message of and belief in ‘Our’ Savior.
The speech heard ‘round the world sounded something like this for the Christians:

“Hear ye, hear ye. On this day, Men, we have been vindicated. Make way and allow us to introduce our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Jesus Christ steps up to the microphone and thanks the audience for their attendance. Clearing his throat, he delivers his world-wide directive in a speech that would change the world forever and someday get him killed.

“Ahem. I have come down from heaven, sent by my otherworldly father through my virgin mother, to tell you that we have decided the world is best run as follows. So, listen up because this is gonna effect everyone!

From now on we will have a patriarchal system with a central alpha-male. This role shall be filled by me until my death. Upon my death and for the foreseeable future, it will be held by a succession of men representing my best interests until I see fit to come back down on to this earth for a second go around and clean up the messes you have made. Furthermore, herewith I present you a list of laws for living right, which are self-explanatory; however if there should exist any questions, speak to the men I’ve placed in charge and they will explain it to you in more depth. I trust in them and their guidance is wisdom as it is in my best interest.

And now, a critical message for the women in the audience; from this point on women must obey, honor, and subjugate themselves in all ways and always to men. You are evil temptresses. I know because I’ve gotten into trouble a number of times with a woman from around these parts whom you may be familiar with; Mary Magdelene. It is clear to me that they are unclean in life and once they’ve given birth it is only worse. In case you were wondering, this is why they are punished during childbirth with immense pain.

They’ve tried for many years now to hold childbirth and their knowledge of the maternity of their child over our heads.” Pounding his fist on the podium for emphasis, Jesus exclaims, “Well no more! We’ve had enough. As such, my father and I have devised a plan through which we can declare our superiority once and for all. Henceforth, you are now authorized to overpower them physically whenever necessary. This should be enough to keep them in their place and limit their movements, so that we can now have the upper-hand and be in possession of the knowledge of the paternity of our children.

Furthermore, since they are able to be dominated so easily in this way, we further feel that this is evidence of their weakness, of their inferiority in thought, action, and mind, and demonstrateable proof of our superiority over them. As such, they shall exist without rights, other than those bestowed upon them by men; who through this proof of their superiority would be better suited to decide what is best for women anyway.”

After a deeply satisfying sigh of relief, Jesus looks over the faces of the crowd preparing himself to inspire the men to fully embrace his teaching. His arms rise up towards the sky and his eyes seem to settle on the faces of every man as he enthusiastically incites rebellion. “Men, after all they’ve taken from us by holding this maternity and childbirth thing over our heads for so long, it is time for a revolution! Draw on your physical dominance to free yourself from the frustration you’ve felt all these years. Use, abuse, and murder them as you see fit. For this is your will, men. It is also the will of God; my father, your father. And I am his messenger.

People of the world if you shall not obey you will be condemned, at a minimum, to a lifetime of being burned alive in the fires of hell; a place you do not know, should not ever know, but should fear deeply as I have witnessed the terror and evil that can be concocted from below. So unless you want to know what this feels like, I strongly advise you to heed my words, follow my rules to work against the evildoers, and to spread the message of God to the people of the world. For woe unto them who on the days of my second coming are not pure of heart and fully embracing my teachings, they shall feel the wrath of God when He lays His vengeance upon them.”

Collecting himself once again with a deep breath, Jesus shakes his head briefly, smoothes his wrinkled face and allows a relaxed smile to emerge as he reaches out towards the masses for his concluding remarks. “Oh yes! I nearly forgot. In closing, my father and I are always there for you. We love each of you deeply as you were created in our own image and likeness. As such, don’t try to kill yourself to get out of this either, since that would send us the message that you don’t like the way we look and who we are. That would make my dad and me pretty angry and would be a serious sin against us if that happened. Other than that if you follow all the rules, we’re pretty forgiving guys who have your best interests in mind. If you ever want to talk, just simply look upwards towards the sky and begin talking. We’ll be listening and watching you always. That’s all for now. Have a nice life. Peace be with you.”

Ok, so in short, its payback time for men. One could get the impression that this Savior came simply to vindicate men in the battle of the sexes. I have always found it interesting that we are to look up to a Savior who has created each of us in his own image and likeness, yet we are at the same time to assume that this Savior came to the earth to proclaim the superiority of the male sex and the inferiority of females. How is it that this omniscient being could be in possession of such narrow-minded ideals? In all his omnipotence did the Savior fear women too? Or perhaps it is simpler; this all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful, wise Savior was simply a frustrated guy who became a misogynist; attracted, yet repulsed by women. Forced to suffer through the conflict of wanting women, but hating them for their power, he trudges on somehow in this unfair world spreading only the message of peace. Oh, ok. Now I get it. I almost feel bad and begin to understand. Huh?
Can’t we say of all human beings that we try to destroy or ignore what we fear? What were men left with when they found that not only do women and men both have adequately functioning brains, but women could also bring children into this world and guarantee the maternity of her child? How many women do you know that ever have to question the maternity of their child? This is not so for men and this is a very powerful position that women share in society and men can never attain it. They have little control over it other than to marry and try to dominate in such a way that they can guarantee to the best of their ability that the seed inside is their seed. Isn’t this whole thing really a matter of trust?
But instead of trying to find a way to trust each other, they chose to invent an unearthly Savior, a Man, a God, who descends upon earth and proclaims righteous male dominance over all and tries to ensure its continuance by preaching the critical message; women must obey, honor, and subjugate themselves in all ways to men, they are evil temptresses, they are unclean in life and once they’ve given birth, they are inferior in thought, action, and mind, weak, and without rights, they can be used and abused at a man’s discretion, for men are in short God’s chosen leaders and in essence gods themselves whom women should look up to. Furthermore, to ensure their position, men are authorized, though divine right, to use their physical strength to overpower women to make it clear.
All of this subjugation, destruction, and fist-thumping because you couldn’t find a better way to ensure paternity? My, my, what fear lies beneath. Ya think now might finally be a good time to work on those communication skills a bit more, boys?
You cannot simply destroy women because of the knowledge that they will always take for granted. You cannot expect that trying to ignore, limit, or minimize the depth and richness of their talents and abilities will make them go way just because you’re jealous and physically stronger. No more than the Nazi’s could make the Jews or their ideals disappear forever during WWII. Suppressed people have a fairly strong historical track record of rising up.
The Truth has wings; it always soars above the earth; beyond where you are grounded and fighting. And that is why the truth will always set you free. And that is why after all the persecution and attempted submission of women, many men will stay blood thirsty and insatiably hungry, while women are continuously nourished by the fruits of the tree of knowledge they carried out with them from the Garden of Eden. Even in exile they’ve planted the seeds of knowledge because they know that from them grow the fruits of freedom. This is why the shackles will never bind, and the whips will never mar them, and why even in death they remain freer than most men will ever be in life.
Women don’t need to have a Savior tell them how to make a society blossom and grow, they’ve been doing it all their lives. Men needed to create a Savior who could come upon the earth and prescribe the use of physical strength as a last-stitch effort to save men from being outwitted in a battle of the sexes. Without a Savior telling them what they want to hear and how to get it alternatively through violence and intimidation, they’d be unable to distinguish themselves in positions clearly better suited for women leaders.
Religion, like so many arenas, strives to remain a forum for men to exert their godliness over all. It is not a place which saves us all. It is not a place of equality. It is, simply put, an old-boys-club where signs at the ‘Executive Level Job Board’ read “No Women” and “Women Stay Out”.
We’ve adopted a social framework based on a philosophy whose foundation revolves around a book filled with questionable sources, allegory, and sexually biased ideals and used it to justify the mistreatment, distinction, or elimination of specific groups in order to create and spread a self-righteous value system. Additionally, it mandates conformity for all without equality for over half of the world’s population. Enforcement through fear tactics and domination sanctioned by circular logic pointing back towards ‘The Book,’ as the basis, is no more than a thinly veiled weapon of mass destruction launched in the faces of the members the ideal purports to protect.
And so the world remains violent and torn apart as the fist slams itself down again throughout the world in another demonstration of strength and power. All the while allegedly leading us down the path of freedom. In the meantime, the world still awaits the outcome of yet another war to end all wars.
In the land of the free and the home of the brave, point me towards the history book which contains a female, a homosexual, a non-white, non-WASP (other than JFK) president. Show me a leader of the “free” world who truly understands the separation of church and state when he prays for God to Bless America, our troops, while he restricts the rights of women to their own bodies and invents new ways to establish gender discrimination by refusing to legitimize the relationship of two consensual adults, who happen to be of the same sex, on the basis of the Bible’s teachings. At least for women and homosexuals all of this harkens back to a shameful time in history when we considered Black-Americans as only 3/5 a person and unfit to participate fully in society like the 5/5 human white males could.
I could go on, but what I’m really asking is how far we’ve evolved in a social context since we’ve merged democracy with theocracy and whether now is a good time to learn how to communicate with each other in such a way that the “brave” are those who dare to create a land consisting of the truly equal and free?

Thoughts on Time

The past cannot be repeated, except of course in the present.

The future is the only thing up for grabs...but it's always out of reach.

The Bad Children: Serrated Edges Left Behind

What becomes of the children; serrated edges left behind from a knife withdrawn then wiped clean. Our past and present their future. How soon we forget when we have something to regret. Somebody please fix my child say the parents who have tried everything. The authorities comply, gladly hiding your mistakes in mountains of paperwork concealed behind cold steel bars. Here the pariah swallows his first force fed meal of consequence and fully digests its nutritional value while his parents are wrapped in a cozy blanket, comforted by the masses for their loss, and remain free to roam the world.

Fairytales and Nightmares

Rock a by baby, I’ll lull you to sleep.
Close your eyes and don’t make a peep.

Morning will come, but you’ll never see.
The hand that rocks controls your destiny.

Hush little baby, as such you will stay.
It is my voice which commands whether you’ll grow or decay.

Sure you can leave. I’ve no problem with that.
I’ll give you some crumbs to find your way back.

But don’t try to run, there’s nowhere to hide.
Wherever you roam, I’m right by your side.


If you let the bough break, the cradle will fall
And the wolves will consume your heart, soul, and all.

In Exile

I lie awake feeling weak. I followed your path expecting to find myself on it. I made my dreams small and searched for ways to be worthy. I disappeared to give you more room for yourself thinking you would find me there eventually. Your contradictions kept me focused and I learned to hear only the best parts of you and make them into the best parts of me. I chided myself for wrong parts of me and could not see anything wrong with you. You were the ideal I was striving to be more like.

You expected perfection from me so as not to draw attention to your own misgivings. When I needed you most, you picked away at parts of me like a crow feeding on pieces of rotting flesh. You fed on me until your belly was full and kept coming back for more when your hunger ravaged you again.

While lying on the hot desert sand in exile I watched you in your castle from a distance dreaming of the day I could come inside. When you shaded me with a small tree with no leaves I was so grateful for the generosity and compassion you showed me. Kept alive by this small tree and the drive to please you when you needed me, I grew bigger, though the pieces torn from me remained open wounds that impaired my growth and ability to move.

I clung to the shade from the small dead tree during the heat and exhaustion in this desert and reached out for it to keep me safe when the storms blew though, but to no avail. I was always left damaged. Unprepared to protect myself. Too weak to move.

Violence Begets Violence: When Do We Become Accountable?

When will we as individuals take accountability for the violence we create at home and around the world?

It is bad enough that as adults diplomacy, decency, and a basic sense of humanity evades many of us while we single-mindedly pursue our goals or silently consent to destruction at the hands of another, but now it seems increasingly common to read daily about children committing heinous crimes; murdering each other, their parents, or other members of the community; raping, robbing, the list goes on. It seems like we are producing a generation of criminals and what’s more, wondering where these children came from.

Filled with unanswered questions and anger we bury our crying eyes in a box of tissues while shaking our fists towards the sky and asking “Why, God, why?” We lift our heads so quickly towards the sky in search of a scapegoat that we miss the fact that the answer is, in great part, earthbound. Last I checked children are socially conditioned through two basic sources; family interactions and society. I seem to remember a biblical passage that goes something like this “violence begets violence.” So, why ask God again for the answers He’s already given us? Growing up, my mom used to say “God helps those who help themselves.” Seems to me that we could give God a breather while we take a moment to retrace our footsteps to find out where we lost our sense of humanity. From that place which exists in all of us we can walk down a different path together. Maybe then we will discover the potential to evolve as a human race.

Though raised Catholic and educated in Catholic grade and high school, I’ve not turned out to be a particularly religious person. Perhaps it is for my disagreeable perception that it offers inherent inequality. For me it probably started with an unsatisfactorily answered question posed to a priest in high school.



“If you say that we are all made in God’s image and likeness then why can’t women be priests and homosexuals be seen as equal by the church?”

My Catholic faith went quickly downhill from there and having found more often than not their pontification over specific issues and groups disheartening over the years, I decided that for me there must be a better way to treat people with respect and dignity if only to start with and spread the basic assumption that we are all different, but equal regardless of our gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or other affiliation. I think that without truly believing in and holding on to that as a foundation for the construction of a civil society, no legislation will ever be created and no war will ever protect us from the impending social suicide.

That said, I am not suggesting that religion has no inherent value. On the contrary, I think that religion can act as one source with the potential to suggest etiquette for a civilized social construct; but when it or any other source takes the next step and sets one race, one gender, one sexual orientation, one religion, or any singular civil liberty above all, it is doomed to tear down the very construct it purports will bind us together. Anyway, it doesn’t appear that the religious affiliation of someone excludes them from criminal or violent behavior. In fact, in many cases currently and historically, that very affiliation is said to be at the core of the fight.

Similarly our government offers us no reprieve. It seems now that we are ruled arbitrarily by a government that doesn’t see a need to produce justifications for its actions, or decides it is better to abolish a system of checks and balances through an act of Congress as a matter of convenience to start a war and detain people. I can’t help but ask our leaders my burning question. How is it that we expect to emerge as leaders in the establishment of a global democratic system when we fail to maintain one in our own country? I’m not really sure anymore that the nay-sayers in this country and in many others are dissenting against democracy so much as hypocrisy.

Faced with such contradiction whereby arbitrary rules are sanctioned and exercised by a group, but condemned for individuals amidst increasing unjustifiable violence, what makes it so inconceivable that we are producing violent children that mimic the examples adults have set forth as guidance for them? The children haven’t stopped listening. We’ve stopped realizing the message we’re sending. They in fact are abiding by the moral code society offers them. It is only afterwards they’re shocked to find out that “in their case it’s punishable.” Is there anything civil or democratic about a society where the law only pertains to some but not to others?

Whether our beliefs are religiously or secularly rooted doesn’t seem to really matter if the overall result pits one human life against another. In the moments that we embrace our differences as justifications for a superiority complex, we fight against ourselves and every life is affected, every liberty reconsidered, and the pursuit of happiness which we’ve been striving towards grinds to a screeching halt while we pick up the pieces in the aftermath. Can’t we do better than this?

Armies of Death

Heralds of the night, the shadows rise up first from the underground having had the breath of hell blown into them. Sweeping over the earth like a swarm of locusts, they ravage life with hellfire. Absorbing death’s energy, they frantically copulate creating new life to replace the old. Obedient, expendable, and plentiful in number, these are the death soldiers of the army of hell.

Weary angles swoop down from the sky once again trying to resist the regime change, but they’ve been slaughtered time and again from the constant battles over the years and without the support of the masses, they’ve decreased in numbers and have grown tired and weak. Their cries have been forcibly diminished by the armies of death in their relentless effort to create a new world order of hollow-souls marching like drones to their death.

The soldiers of death have been cursed to exist on the cusp of life and death. Their faces are drawn and expressionless, while their eyes appear to stare out to a world of memories. Motivated by an insatiable hunger for life, they must kill and channel the energy of the living at their moment of demise to feel life pulsing through them. While for a moment they are revitalized by the life, what follows is the empathetic phase – they are forced to recount their victim’s entire life and feel the pain of their death. They are defined by these two phases of revitalization and empathy and compelled to repeat the cycle endlessly.

There are those who try to hide from him feeling it is their last strategy to avoid capture. The General has come for me. He reaches out his long arm, but keeps his distance. With eyes that pull you in like a vacuum, he fixes his stare on me like looking down the barrel of a shotgun. His long boney fingers are five sharp blades pointing at my chest. Staring intently at me, he makes a claw and thrusts it into my chest. I gasp and my eyes widen as he rotates his talons and sinks in deeper. Pulling back, he holds my heart in his hand. It still beats. Blood drips from my chest and down the length of his arm. My eyes roll back into my head to retreat.

I Want to Be Free

Hey diddle-diddle
caught up in the middle,
the baby found a fiddle,
which she played for me.

She twiddled it a little
until she found riddle,
stuck up in the middle,
she’d repeat to me –

I want to be free. I want to be free.

I stepped back
like a heart attack.
Flat on my back
What’d she say to me?

I want to be free. I want to be free.

Her voice was getting louder.
Started sounding prouder.
Rising from the earth
she surrounded me.

I want to be free. I want to be free.

The earth began to quake.
I began to shake.
Something started to break
inside of me.

A Smoking Gun

A cigarette burns in one hand. Smoke slowly rises. He gestures angrily with the other. A careful balancing act. The ash grows and I watch attentively to see when it will fall. He won’t put it out. A good distraction for me. A timer.

I can smell his breath. I can feel him spitting on my face when he speaks. I watch tonight’s pick-me-up fall to the floor in little scattered droplets. Blinking nervously, I cautiously roll my head downward. They seem to land indiscriminately, but could make a circle if I connect the dots in my mind. I wonder if his strong words could actually ignite a ring fire around me, protecting me from contact.

The ash grows longer now and I know that I have only a few seconds before time runs out and the bomb detonates. It always does. Time seems to slow down, my eyes widen and I watch the ash bow and then break off from the stem. My eyes follow its path as it descends gracefully like an old branch at the end of its life returning to the place from which it took its first breath. It is my last sight of freedom in this moment. A split second after it smashes against the cold hard bedroom floor, now only a fraction of what it once was, I look up and see the rage filling his eyes.

In one fluid motion I watch him swinging one arm high into the air and swiftly plunging it downward towards me. I am cut down like a tree limb that succumbs to the mighty ax. All my breath leaves my chest. I spin like a raging tornado until I lose my footing and the side of my face cracks against the floor. The impact blows the ashes away reducing them into ever smaller pieces of themselves. I blink. My eyelids get heavy. Motionless on the ground, I hear warped voices. They fade into the distance and it darkens. Just before the darkness constricts me with its tight embrace I take a moment to laugh at myself for thinking that I’d be so lucky to be surrounded by a protective ring of fire. With a smile on my face, my eyes snap shut and there is peace.