American Terrorisms

I remember exactly where I was when the first plane hit the North Tower in Manhattan on September 11, 2001.  I was outside enjoying morning recess with all of the other fourth graders at my small Catholic school in Norwich, Connecticut.  We were confused when recess ended early and teary-eyed teachers corralled us into one classroom with the fifth and sixth graders.  Without saying a word, one of the teachers turned on the room’s small television to a major news network.  I watched without understanding as the second plane crashed into the South Tower.  I tried to find meaning in what I watched, as frantic shots of fearful faces in Manhattan were replaced by calm and collected newscasters.  I watched as one of my classmates broke down into tears, talking about how her brother had an interview scheduled at the World Trade Center that morning.

I remember learning overnight what “Islam” was.  I suddenly knew how to identify countries on a map that I didn’t even know existed: Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia.  I remember learning what the Pentagon was, and why it was targeted.  I remember everyone hanging American flags outside their houses.  I remember hearing about the hate crimes committed against people with brown skin across the country.  Boys talked about joining the military.  Adults talked about going to war.

What it meant to be an “American” seemingly changed overnight.  Over and over again, we were told that we “shouldn’t let the terrorists win.”  We would go to work, we would fly on airplanes, we would ride public transportation, and we would send our children to school.  The terrorists, we were told, were simply jealous of our way of life, of the wealth of capitalism and the peace of living in a free society.  Teachers, peers, and journalists tried to justify the anti-Muslim attitudes as reasonable, given that the attacks, we were told, were entirely religiously motivated.

Of course, no one talked about the role that the United States, along with much of Western Europe, had in creating many of the current problems facing the Middle East.  The complicated ethnic, class, and religious struggles in the region were whitewashed in favor of a more simplistic, politically beneficial narrative: this is Muslims versus Christians.  This is jihad.

Even though I grew up in the Groton-New London metro area with Coast Guard and Navy bases that were deemed potential targets, I never felt unsafe.  I didn’t feel unsafe when I flew on airplanes or when I saw Manhattan for the first time in high school.  I didn’t feel unsafe when I attended college classes with Muslim or Middle Eastern peers, and I didn’t understand why anyone would.  I’ve never thought that jihad was coming to the States, only that, for those nineteen men who hijacked the planes on 9/11, we’d come to be seen as something less than human.  Then again, every white, male, American-born mass murderer sees his victims as something less than human, too.

Was I, at age nine, unsettled to learn that I might have been on a plane with guns before?  Yes.  I don’t think guns should be in any public space, let alone on airplanes.  And ninja stars and steak knives?  Leave that at home.  No one is arguing against these restrictions during flight – just the TSA’s blatant racial and ethnic profiling at airport security that systemically targets Muslims and Middle Easterners as “potential terrorists.”  Exhaustive, invasive, and prejudicially conducted security searches have forced many Muslim travelers to concede their rights and due respect in order to simply make it to their plane on time.

In fact, I didn’t feel truly unsafe until I was nineteen, sitting in my car at 9:30 at night after my shift at a small bookstore.  I was about to turn on my car to go home when a well-groomed man knocked on the driver’s window.  I opened it halfway and as soon as I realized that he was drunk, that he was leaning in to try to hurt me, I sped off without buckling my seatbelt and drove until miles separated me from him.

That was the first time I learned that the public sphere didn’t belong to me as much as it belongs to men, but that I’m supposed to shrug this fear off because there are “greater threats” out there.

Why did Bush create the Department of Homeland Security and pass the Patriot Act and why does the TSA use racial profiling to pull innocent travelers aside for additional “random” screening?  After 9/11, we were told that violence committed by extremists could happen anywhere, anytime.  Even those born and raised in the U.S. could be seduced by its message of hate and greed.  As a result, we had to be ready because anyone can be a terrorist.

In a way, Bush-era politicians and journalists were right.  Anyone can be a terrorist.  Doctors, lawyers, religious and community leaders, sanitation workers, football quarterbacks, fraternity members, and famous actors can all commit rape, participate in Klu Klux Klan meetings, and generally make life a living hell for women, LGTB folks, and black people.

While the actual statistics on race and gender motivated violence are highly controversial, we do know that these crimes are alarmingly more common than terrorist acts committed by Muslim extremists in the U.S.  Most women have stories about being harassed on the street – living in D.C., it happens to me nearly every time I leave my apartment.  There is disagreement whether the oft-used statistic on sexual assault – that one in five women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime – is an overstatement.  Perhaps it is closer to one in nine?  One in twelve?  I think this bickering is irrelevant, because even one in a hundred is too many.  On the other hand, the number of Americans killed by terrorists every year is statistically insignificant – a 2012 article posted on The Atlantic states that .003 of victims of all terrorist-related kidnappings were private American citizens.  Yes, .003.

Terrorists use fear, intimidation, and the threat of violence as a weapon, and often are politically motivated.  I carry a key between my pointer and middle finger when I walk by myself at night, I enter “911” into my cell phone when I’m alone on the street with a man just in case I have to act fast.  I never walk at night or in a new neighborhood with headphones on, because I want to be aware if someone is following me.  I never make eye contact with anyone on the metro, because one time I was harassed so severely I had to run down a crowded escalator with a heavy grocery cart to jump on the wrong train just to lose my harasser.  I never leave my apartment windows open at night.  I walk with my head down past groups of men on the street, because I hope to slip by unnoticed.  I never leave my water unattended at a gathering and I don’t consume anything unless I know exactly where it came from.  Like many women, I’ve learned all of these precautions from experience.

Most men would never hurt or harass a woman, but there are many men who do.  We don’t know which category you fall into if we see you on the street.  You could be a perfectly lovely person minding your own business, or you could be some psychopath who is going to abduct, rape, and dismember me.  This is the reality of women, especially those who live in urban areas.  If we haven’t ourselves been violently violated by a man, chances are we have a few friends who have.

Men who rape, harass, assault, belittle, or patronize women and girls are politically motivated: a system of inequality that places men at the top of the hierarchy systemically benefits all men, and while white men receive the most benefits, black and gay men benefit as well, just not as much.  Those who act or speak violently towards women want to actively preserve that system; they want to remind women that they are secondary citizens who are biologically and socially inferior.

We have no problem prohibiting guns on airplanes, because 9/11 taught us that is where Muslim extremists like to use them.  But untold amounts of money in lobbying funds go towards protecting the right for people to have guns in their homes – and to challenge this is political suicide because the terrorists who use guns in the private home are frequently white men, and their victims women.

Domestic terrorism doesn’t simply target women.  While others can speak about this better than I, gendered harassment is also the reality of many in the LGTBQ community.  Our black brothers and sisters report similar fears when being pulled over by the police: this could be a reasonable, nice officer, but he could also be a violent racist who will arrest me for rolling my eyes.  Stories like that of Sandra Bland, unfortunately, are far too common.

In minority communities, a common thread can be found: harassers have terrorized us into silence.  Of course, my own experiences are predicated upon my being a white, straight woman, but the general problem of “violence against women” permeates every culture and ethnic group, although it is experienced differently everywhere.

When we are harassed on the street, we cannot fight back, because if we speak up, you may kill us.  You may have a gun and you may shoot us.  It happens often enough to be ordinary; it certainly happens more often than planes flying into skyscrapers.  We know that background checks for those seeking a gun are often haphazard or nonexistent.  A history of rape, spousal abuse, or other crimes should prohibit one from obtaining a gun – but it does not.

Our behavior is often affected by these fears.  When we watched the United States laugh as Barney Stinson, Neil Patrick Harris’ character on How I Met Your Mother, sought out emotionally vulnerable women in a bar as easy sexual conquests, we learned that we must worry that showing distress or pain could lead to harm.  We learned that men acting like hunters and treating women like prey is comedic, not rape culture.  I sometimes find myself smiling softly and whispering “thanks” to men who harass me on the street, because I’m too scared to do anything else.

Most of all, we are told that it’s our fault.  We’re sluts in short skirts and tight shirts, we’re bitches when we speak our mind, we’re minxes when we want to just be friends with a man and we’re lesbians when we say no, as though that’s somehow supposed to be an insult.

We are prudes if we don’t have sex but we are whores if we do.  If we are uncomfortable or insulted it is because we don’t know how to take a compliment.  The street is our catwalk but if we’re confident about ourselves then we’re a poor imitation of a man.  We may use our breasts to sell hamburgers but not to feed infants.

These are all microterrorisms.  Each of these terrorisms dictates how women should see themselves, their place in the world, and their value to it.  There are real political overtones and ramifications to the choices made by those who perpetuate the patriarchy.  These terrorisms are tacitly supported by a seemingly ambivalent government.  Furthermore, these terrorisms force men to prove that they are not a harasser or a rapist in order to be trusted.  These terrorisms take away the agency of both women and men, and these are the terrorisms that win because we don’t talk about them.

And yet, billions of dollars are funneled into erecting a police state that bullies its own civilians, that treats citizens like criminals by constructing an enemy that does not actually threaten the day-to-day existence of Americans.  True to form, the United States is more concerned about external, largely existential threats, instead of working to combat the true terrorisms that haunt Americans every day: sexism, racism, police brutality, homophobia, religious intolerance, gun violence, child abuse, poverty, and intimate partner violence.

We have constructed a foreign, amorphous boogeyman so scary that it makes our domestic terrorisms look small and insignificant.  But those domestic terrorisms are not small and they are not insignificant.  Sex work is one of the most deadly jobs in the United States, men are most likely to murder their female partner when she is leaving him.  Men who stand up for women and LGTBQ folks are ridiculed or even attacked.  Black teenagers who make one minor mistake, as teenagers often do, are shot dead by police and their bodies are left in the street.

We construct “others” to try to emphasize what we believe we are not: in the popular American imagination, Muslims are the woman-haters.  Muslim women can’t drive, show an ounce of skin, or even leave the house.  Certainly, there are valid criticisms about the treatment of women in some Islamic nations, and the use of religion as a political tool against women is a real problem in every faith.  However, by posturing Muslim men as beasts who solely seek to control women, blame is once again shifted off the American patriarchal system and the complicity that many men have in preserving it.  It’s as if to say, Hey, at least you don’t live in Saudi Arabia.  Stop complaining about how few movies feature female leads.

So, what do we do from here?  First, we need to change our dialogue when it comes to white, American masculinity and we need to stop seeing Bill Cosby or the Lafayette theater shooting as isolated incidents.  We need to talk about toxic masculinity and range of violent, anti-woman behaviors that it inspires.  It’s part of our culture.  We shouldn’t be having discussions about Ferguson without discussing Officer Darren Wilson’s masculinity or the gender make-up of the force at the time – a number that is seemingly impossible to locate, which is surprising, given the number of articles expressing rightful concern over Ferguson police’s lack of diversity.  Racism, sexism, and extreme poverty do not happen in isolated spheres.  They come together in a multitude of ways and are inextricable from one another.  Mental illness is a legitimate concern, and men who commit mass murders or sexual assaults may have untreated health issues, but we need to stop “scape-goating” misogyny on gun control or mental illness alone.

Second, we need to refocus our energy inward.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with inspecting bags at an airport or reading a think piece about the growing influence of ISIS.  ISIS is a real force of terror and that should not be ignored.  However, its threat to those on American soil should not be overstated, either.  A police state hasn’t made us any safer; in fact, the powerful Black Lives Matter movement has demonstrated that it has left a sizable number of our communities feeling trapped and hated.  We need stricter gun control, but we also need to improve our education system.  We need to be teaching children from day one that our society will try to aggressively gender them, that they will receive messages everywhere they turn telling them that men are superior to women, whites superior to non-whites, and so forth.

There needs to be social ramifications for misogyny.  A sexist joke made in the workplace should be punished, and teenage girls who report harassment from a male classmate should be treated seriously.  We shouldn’t treat victims of car theft better than victims of rape or intimate partner violence.  Real discussions about male entitlement need to happen in schools, homes, and in the media, and parents should be receiving instructions on how to raise non-violent, non-entitled sons.  We need more male feminist allies speaking up when their friends, co-workers, or relatives say something dehumanizing.  Most of all, we need to listen to all women – white women, trans women, gay and bisexual women, old women, low-income women, immigrant women – when they tell their stories about living while female.

When I was in tenth grade, a male classmate told me that he wanted to “impregnate me and give me a non-fatal STD.”  Rightfully disgusted, I went to my Dean of Discipline to report the young man, and she told me that she would have to look into it, but that he was probably joking and I shouldn’t take his comment seriously.  While the issue was being resolved, I dreaded going to class for fear I’d run into him, and I even faked an illness to avoid school for a day.  My hope is that, one day, no more young women have to endure that.

The statistic about the number of Americans kidnapped by terrorists every year comes courtesy of The Atlnatic.  The full article, “Americans Are as Likely to be Killed by Their Own Furniture as by Terrorism,” can be found here.