WE NEED LAWYERS TO MODERATE DEBATES, By Louise Annarino,October 8,2012
Yesterday, I discussed the need to identify and challenge bullying behavior in the workplace,at school, and on debate stages. While it may be impossible for human beings to refrain from aggression and dominance, such behavior can be restrained and redirected in positive ways. This is called the process of civilization. While some Americans made treaties and sought peaceful sharing of mother earth with Native Americans as they moved across new frontiers and ancient tribal grounds, others on both sides bullied their way, breaking treaties and attacking each other. When rules are allowed to be easily broken, when little is done to enforce them, when rule-breakers win without censure, nations and civilizations are destroyed.
The core restraints against bullies are rules. Rules must be established and enforced to restrain aggression and dominance. Every mother knows this. Every mother tames her children with rules, redirects their innate desire to dominate their world with rules. As a child matures into civility, she hopes empathy will take over her role as matron of rules. A mother can relax a bit once her child has learned good manners; but only if the child also has developed empathy. Some are incapable of empathy; some so privileged they do not believe rules apply to them. These persons must be compelled to follow rules even more closely in order not to abuse their innate drive to dominate and overpower others. Such persons abuse such power if their aggression is not contained within the rules, nor redirected by their own empathy.
When I was 18 I developed and directed a playground in small town inner-city neighborhood. The neighborhood’s poverty level was similar to my own. While it was predominately African-American, my own was predominately new immigrant. Neither viewed positively by the larger populace of the town. Each difficult to escape. Immigrants could eventually escape with education and very hard work; African-Americans could not escape even with education and very hard work due to red-lining real-estate transactions and discrimination. Each neighborhood had their share of bullies, as I am certain the wealthier white neighborhoods did as well. They must have because I met those bullies in college, in law school, and in the workplace.
It was easy to identify the bullies by their easy but tight smiles, chest-leading swagger and rapid fire delivery of directives and demands. When I questioned them they lied for the joy of misleading me. When I challenged them, they accelerated their verbal barrage against me, for the joy of dominating the conversation. When I held them to the rules, they became louder and more animated, for the joy of undermining my authority. And, they never stopped smiling those tight smiles. To diminish my personal or positional power, they demeaned me in front of others, passed false rumors regarding my character, and claimed my accomplishments as their own. I know bullies intimately.
To keep the other children and myself safe from the bullies, the neighborhood gang stayed nearby and moved in when the bullies became too aggressive. I did two things to address this situation. First, I organized a neighborhood election (parents and neighbors could also vote) for a Playground Congress to make rules, which selected a Playground Supreme Court to decide when rules had been broken and ordered punishment for rule-breakers, which selected a Playground Chief of Police to enforce the rules and punishment, and who selected his Playground Police Patrol. Congress made rules such as no knives, no guns, no matches, no drugs, no fighting, no cursing, no stealing. The Supreme Court selected the lead bully as Chief of Police. The Chief of police picked his adherents as police officers. The bully was now commissioned to abide by and enforce the rules, with assurance the Court would mete out justice. The aggression and need to dominate of our bully was contained within rules and his energies redirected. He was incapable of empathy, but we had a means of civilizing his need to dominate and control others.
Fights were handled following my suggestion. Those whose arguments became either verbally or physically violent were sentenced to “the ring”. While I laced up miscreants’ boxing gloves, the leader of our local gang who agreed to manage the fight (who better able?) read the Queensbury Rules to the combatants. It was his job to keep the fight within the rules and assure no blows caused harm to either combatant. To say this was a novel approach for him is a gross understatement. However, he handled his role with the strong leadership qualities he displayed as a well-respected gang leader. He, like all good leaders, was not a bully. He was calm, reserved, soft-spoken, and saved his smiles for those surprising moments of utter hilarity which frequently erupt in the presence of young children. Watching these kids try to connect a punch wearing boxing gloves they could barely hold up created such fun that their arguments and need to fight quickly dissipated, while we all laughed together.
Looking back, I think I became a lawyer not because I like rules, but because I hate them. I hate the need for them. But I respect what rules,what the RULE OF LAW, can accomplish. It can civilize a nation. It can contain a bully. This is what The 10 Commandments are for Jews, their early rule of law. When Jesus was asked, “Rabbi, what is the greatest commandment?” He answered that there is but ONE commandment, “That you love one another, even as God loves you.” This requires empathy. When empathy fails, when one person just doesn’t “get” the other, only rules can replace empathy and create civility. Maybe we need lawyers to moderate debates.
annarino writes 
IT MUST NOT BE RAPE IF A WOMAN GETS PREGNANT,By Louise Annarino,August 20,2012
It Must Not Be Rape If A Woman Gets Pregnant,By Louise Annarino,August 2o,2012
As I write this I am listening to Tchaikowsky’s Sleeping Beauty Suite via Spotify, thanks to a helpful young nephew who downloaded it to my computer.Little girls love the story of Sleeping Beauty. Even those of us who are feminists to the core dream the most beautiful dream of all, finding our prince. A few of us are lucky enough to have found him. Then there is rape, the stuff of nightmares.
Students moved into residence halls at The Ohio State University this week-end. Some of them will be raped; 1out of 4 is a commonly cited statistic. Another is that 90% knew their rapist; and yet another that 60% of male college students “indicated some likelihood of raping or using force in certain circumstances”(see more at http://www.crisisconnectioninc.org/sexualassault/college_campuses_and_rape.htm).
As a 19 year old student and Resident Advisor or RA at OSU I spent many nights in the University Hospital emergency room comforting such young women; and, sometimes comforting those who were hemorrhaging from a back-alley abortion. Abortions were then illegal. Sleeping Beauties, these young women, who sought to make a dream come true, woke up in a nightmare. Every 21 hours a woman is raped on a college campus.
It is not only college women, those uppity females who believe they are as smart and as competent as men, and able to compete with them who face sexual assault. Rape crosses all economic and sexual barriers. In a department of Justice Study 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men experienced rape or attempted rape. Yet, a 1992 report from the National Victim Center ( see more at http://www.911rape.org/facts-quotes/statistics )called rape the most underreported violent crime in America; with one in six victims reporting the rape. The 2000 FBI Uniform Crime Report states that a rape occurs in the United States once every 5 minutes.
The young are more likely to be sexually assaulted than adults. In the 1992 study the National Victim Center reported the following breakdown by age of victims:
29.3% were less than 11 years old
32.3% were between 11 and 17
22.2% were between 18 and 24
7.1% were between 25 and 29
6.1% were older than 29
3.0% age was not available
Getting lost in statistics? Each one is a human being just like you,your wife,daughter, mother,sister,niece. Rapists live among us as family, friends, neighbors. Rape is a violent crime not because of the nature of penetration, the level of force used, nor the behavior of a woman prior to the rape. It is because sex is used as a weapon to injure,maim,even kill a woman; body, heart and soul. Rape is meant to denigrate and defile a woman. To show her how worthless she really is. It is not a sexual act but a violent act using sex as the weapon.
While working on a graduate level project at a maximum security men’s prison in Ohio I discovered that most rapes are planned; inmates often described to me how they selected their victims. The reason most women report knowing their rapist is because he sets up potential victims by making innocent and deceptively friendly contact with her hours,days,weeks in advance; often, by simply asking for the time or directions and making conversation. Those women who respond favorably and kindly are selected. Those who ignore or showed distaste for the man’s advances are bypassed as likely to be a “problem”. I was told (women in the helping professions) teachers,nurses and social workers are particularly sought out. Since then, I am most unfriendly to any man I do not know and give a glaring look if asked for directions etc. Not very ladylike; I have no illusions about, nor dreams of being a princess.
I understood rape,finally, despite the hours I had spent with women who had experienced it, when I was nearly gang-raped while walking across the OSU campus in daylight, walking with two female roommates. I had taken several self-defense courses and like many women mistakenly believed I could take-down or escape a rapist, never imagining the possibility of pair or gang-rapes. 85% of rape survivors report they tried unsuccessfully to reason with the man who raped her. 55% of campus gang-rapes are committed by fraternities,40% by sports teams,and 5% by others.(http://www.oneinfourusa.org/statistics.php) In my case it was the intervention by the OSU football squad which saved me. GO BUCKS!
Which brings me to the Teapublican fraternity of men in the House and Senate who show their disdain for women by submitting bills to control them, deprive them of needed health care, and pay them less than men doing the same job. Recently, Representatives Todd Akin (R-MO) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) co-sponsored H.R. 3“No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” which initially included language which changed the definition of rape to forcible rape. Later,public pressure forced the bill’s supporters to remove that unacceptable and narrow definition. Perhaps Mr. Akin meant to say forcible instead of legitimate while defending his extreme anti-choice view because he believes some rapes are legitimate, and/or not all rapes are forcible. Either way the idea of rape held by Mr. Akin, Mr. Ryan and other Teapublicans is misguided. They discuss rape as if it were a sexual act, as if some sex is legitimate and some not; as if some sex is forced and some not. Rape does not illustrate a woman’s willingness or unwillingness to exert her sexuality. It can never be legitimate. It is inherently a use of force meant to denigrate and harm a woman. Rape is a weapon against women.It is a criminal act; and they don’t get it.
His very words over during a recent interview illustrate the Teapublican Akin’s failure to understand the problems women face: “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Why is he talking with doctors about rape? Why is he not talking with criminal experts? Why is he talking about pregnancy resulting from rape? Why is he not talking about the injuries sustained by women resulting from rape? Why? Because he is not interested in rape. He dos not respect a woman’s right to be free of criminal attack when sex is the weapon.He is interested in stopping ALL abortions, even those resulting from rape. Abortion is his raison d’etre. SInce a woman who gets pregnant could not have been raped, there is no need to add an exemption for rape victims in legislation denying funding for abortion. This was no slip of the tongue;this is Teapublican policy espoused by candidates running on the Republican Party tickets across the country.
How would Akin and Ryan decide which rapes are legitimate or forcible, and which are not? If Akin’s scientific analysis is correct, any rape resulting in pregnancy would NOT be a legitimate rape since a legitimate rape “would shut that whole thing down”. If “that whole thing” did not shut down, then the rape must not be legitimate rape. The woman should not be protected nor her abortion/health care needs funded.
I resent having my female reproductive health system described as “that whole thing”. Akin and Ryan talk about God and religion so much one would expect a little more sanctity and appreciation for God’s design of women’s bodies. One would expect them to respectfully learn the truth about sexuality and reproduction. One would expect them to respect women and protect them from criminal violence;not parse such violence against women for political gain.
The Akin-Ryan denigration of women from the floor of congress and their campaign trails is painful and frightening to all women, but especially to those of us who have had to learn to overcome the hatred and disdain of the men who attacked us. Now, presidential candidate Romney selects Rep. Paul Ryan to run as Vice-President. Mr. Akin, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney wound us anew. Of course they frighten us. They are the stuff of nightmares which have never gone away.
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Tagged as 2012 campaign, abortion, feminism, health care, Ohio politics, Paul Ryan, politics, rape survivors, rape.sexual assault, religion, republican leadership, Republican Party, Todd Akin, women, women's health care