News

Remember Jacob Wetterling; end male sexual assault discrimination

Posted on by Kat

jacob-wetterling

Jacob Wetterling has been found.

And today, 27 years after he was abducted in October 1989, his family now knows that he was molested and murdered that same night. Their wait for their beloved boy to come home is over.

What isn’t over is discrimination – in criminal and civil cases, in police believing and following up on reports, in whether reports are made in the first place.

I remember the news accounts, the fear and the panic when he was taken. I’ve never forgotten his sweet, smiling face, and all of the good that came for other children after he was abducted.

News of his abduction was printed and broadcast across the country. People knew all kinds of details then – what he was wearing, how he was taken, that police had a person of interest soon after. But Jacob wasn’t found.

Now we hear from news accounts that some police didn’t take incidents of molestation of boys in the area seriously or didn’t follow up on them as they would have had the victims been girls. There are reports that say that some boys weren’t believed, that some were just disregarded. What a terrible double standard.

Unfortunately, that same double standard still exists today, nearly 30 years later. Many people don’t believe men can be raped. Many even think that a stranger groping a man is different, albeit even acceptable, than a stranger groping a woman. Many reports made by men, when men can summon the tremendous courage to report at all, are not believed or not investigated.

While many double standards exist for men and women, this one likely caused more boys to be violated and traumatized, and maybe even somehow failed to prevent the death of Jacob Wetterling.

I long for a world where we all – men and women, black and white, rich and poor, weak and strong – are treated equally.

On another note, there are those who may not understand how the man who murdered Jacob Wetterling will not face charges in his killing. I don’t know his family, but I knew many family members of girls and women taken and murdered by the Green River Killer.

When the time came for him to face the death penalty or to be let out of that and instead face life in prison without the possibility of parole, his attorneys bargained. Some families got remains of their loved ones who had been missing for decades. Some families finally got answers to their questions regarding what had happened to their mothers, daughters, sisters, girlfriends. And those answers were desperately wanted and needed.

I imagine the family of Jacob Wetterling wanted the same. They wanted to know what happened. Was he alive somewhere, somehow, or was he dead? They now know, and they have his remains so they can give him a proper burial.

There is no way to get over something like this for those left behind. But there are things people can do to move forward. And to help the Wetterling family? Jacob’s mother Patty Wetterling posted this statement yesterday on the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center Facebook page:

“The Wetterlings are deeply grieving and are pulling our family together. We will be eager to talk to media as soon as we are able.

Everyone wants to know what they can do to help us.
Say a prayer.
Light a candle.
Be with friends.
Play with your children.
Giggle.
Hold Hands.
Eat ice cream.
Create joy.
Help your neighbor.
That is what will bring me comfort today.”

I would add find a way to help end this double standard that treats male victims of sexual assault differently than women.

Writer’s note: I didn’t name either killer in this post because I want them to receive as little attention as possible today. 

The killing of Qandeel Baloch had nothing to do with honor

Posted on by Kat

Qandeel Baloch/FB

Qandeel Baloch/FB

I had never heard of Qandeel Baloch, a model and Internet celebrity known as Pakistan’s Kim Kardashian, until early this morning, when I read a Wall Street Journal story about her murder.

I haven’t been able to get her off my mind all day.

I was sickened and saddened by the headline in The Wall Street Journal that said she was the victim of an “honor killing.”

The 25-year-old model was allegedly strangled by her brother in her parents’ home because he didn’t like photos and videos she was posting on the Internet. I’ve looked through those photos on her Facebook page today, and I have seen much worse from American celebrities and even young girls, and on television, and in movies and magazines. And while some of her photos and videos were risqué, many more of them are what I would describe as high-fashion.

She had more than 700,000 likes on her official Facebook page and more than 40,000 followers on Twitter.

Horribly, there is a video of her dead body on another FB page about her. Photographers and others surround her body, shouting. And some of the comments on posts on that and her official page are so vulgar, awful and hateful, I can’t believe the administrators at FB have allowed them to stay there.

“Born to a poor family from the backwaters of Punjab, Ms. Baloch, whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, said she had run away from home to pursue her dream of becoming a star,” a story in The New York Times said. “She took to social media after unsuccessful efforts to enter the mainstream entertainment industry.

“Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has vowed to strengthen laws intended to prevent such killings, but critics say no concrete steps have been taken yet.”

In some cultures, many girls and women are killed when a relative decides she has brought dishonor to her family, and these cultures call their deaths honor killings.

“In most cases, the honor killings take place within the family,” Syeda Sughra Imam, a former senator from Punjab who has pushed for legislation against the practice, told The Times.

“The accused and the complainant are from the same family and they forgive each other,” Imam said in The Times. “No one is ever prosecuted.”

But honor is variously defined as “honesty, fairness, or integrity in one’s beliefs and actions;” “high respect, as for worth, merit, or rank;” and “high public esteem; fame; glory.”

Tell me what is respectful, honest or fair about this young woman’s murder.

“Her videos were not very different from thousands others shared by 20-something social media celebrities around the Internet – she pouted like a kitten into the camera, discussed her various hairstyles and shared cooing confessions from her bedroom about her celebrity crushes,” a CNN story said.

Qandeel considered herself an activist and often talked about fighting for women’s rights to do what they want with their minds and their bodies. She stood up for others who felt the same.

On July 12, she tweeted, “#MalalaDay Why? Because one female can make a difference,” referring to Malala Yousafzai, another Pakistani female and activist, who was 15 when she was shot in the head and neck by the Taliban. She was the youngest person to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which she was awarded in 2014.

You can learn more about Qandeel in this BBC video.

In a post the day before Qandeel was killed, she wrote this on her FB page: “As a women we must stand up for ourselves…As a women we must stand up for each other…As a women we must stand up for justice. I believe I am a modern day feminist. I believe in equality. I need not to choose what type of women should be. I don’t think there is any need to label ourselves just for sake of society. I am just a women with free thoughts free mindset and I LOVE THE WAY I AM.”

Why isn’t this OK, for women to be who they are? Why are we blamed for what we were wearing or where we were when we’ve been raped? And why, in the year 2016, are women still abused, beaten, mutilated and murdered all around the world because, even in the United States, many still see us as second-class citizens or little more than property?

Just a little more than a week before Qandeel’s slaying, on July 6, she posted this: “Love me or hate me both are in my favour. If you love me I Will always be in your heart, if you hate me I’ll always be in ur mind.”

I am deeply sad about her death, and I can’t say how long it will be before she leaves my heart or my mind.

 

Police are supposed to protect, not kill, us

Posted on by Kat

Photo image from Pixabay

Photo from Pixabay

Tell me you don’t feel even slightly panicked when you see red-and-blue flashing lights directed your way.

I know when I see them in my rearview mirror, I feel nervous. Was I speeding? Did I make some mistake? Is something wrong with my vehicle? Am I going to get a ticket? How much money that I don’t have to spare will this cost me?

Don’t you feel at least some of that?

It even takes me a few minutes to calm down when they fly past me, and I realize they didn’t even want me in the first place.

Now, imagine the police not only turn the lights on you, but they start screaming and ordering you around, and you don’t know why, at least at the beginning of the encounter. Police can do whatever they want. They have guns, and they can kill people, often without paying the same price the rest of us would have to pay if we did something similar.

I’m not going to get into race here. I’m trying to make a simpler point. People panic when they encounter police. And people do weird and sometimes what we think are unexplainable things when they panic. Are you completely rational when you panic?

I know a lot of good police officers. A good friend of mine who was a state trooper was even killed in the line of duty, hit by a sleepy tractor-trailer driver on an interstate while he tried to direct traffic around an accident. Officers are human, just like the rest of us. They have troubles and they make mistakes, just like the rest of us. I understand that. But far too many of them are shooting far too many of us these days.

Police are supposed to protect and serve us. But when you see them pulling out handguns and shooting a man in the back as he walks away or as he lies on the ground underneath them, not being any kind of threat at all, you have to wonder what some officers are doing and why.

The day two police officers killed Alton Sterling, a friend of mine posted something about it and said we should ask for investigations into such shootings and for the police to have some real accountability when they fire a gun for any reason. Someone then posted a hateful comment on her post, and added that when someone disobeys police, he or she should die.

I disagree. I get flustered when police ask for my license and registration. And I can’t imagine how much more flustered you would get if you didn’t have one or both after getting pulled over. Or an officer approached you on foot and you were intoxicated or you had previously had some run-in with an officer. Would you be so scared you might not respond to a command immediately? Would you struggle when they shoot a Taser at you or start hitting you? Would you be so afraid you might try to run or drive away?

Just this morning, a man who reportedly was complying with an officer by getting his driver’s license out of his pocket was shot and killed as he sat at the wheel of his car. Philando Castile was the 506th person shot and killed by police so far in 2016, The Washington Post said, citing its database that tracks such shootings. Of those victims, 123 were black, The Post said.

I was not at any of the police-involved shootings that have happened this year. So I admit I don’t know all the facts of any of those cases. But I know that even one person who shouldn’t have died at the hands of police but did is one too many.

 

Please stay inside your car when it’s running

Posted on by Kat

anton yelchin

Like other Star Trek fans, I have been deeply saddened by the death of Anton Yelchin, who played the young Chekov in the rebooted movies.

Yelchin, who was only 27, was killed by his own car when it rolled down the hill of his home and crushed him against a brick mailbox pillar and a wrought iron gate.

I’ve read many stories since his death. There are the issues with recalls of the type of car he owned. Some people are even talking about his death being mysterious and saying that maybe someone was behind it, because otherwise how could he end up like that.

Let me tell you one way something like that can happen. I love my car, and I have always treated my cars like people. Maybe it’s just in my nature, but I tend to anthropomorphize things. (That means I give inanimate objects human characteristics.) I’ve done that since I was a little girl. I truly do think that many things have feelings.

I had a Chevrolet Monte Carlo CL many years ago. At that time, it was the nicest car I had owned. It was a beautiful silver-gray with a landau top. I called her Monte and I babied that car and cared for it like you would a beloved pet.

One day, I drove to a friend’s house. We were in a hurry to see each other, in a hurry to go somewhere. I parked Monte in the driveway, and leapt out in a hurry when I saw my friend on the porch waving to me. I was so excited to see her! She was supposed to be ready to go, so I didn’t shut off the car before I hopped out to run to greet her.

Most of what happened next plays in slow motion in my mind all these years later. I knew that car was in park. I double checked. But to my astonishment, as I headed toward my friend, she yelled and pointed to my beloved car, which was now rolling down the driveway and off to the side where there was a grassy hill. I shrieked and ran for Monte. My safety was not even in my head at that moment. I couldn’t let anything happen to her!

As ran as fast as I could, and bolted down the hill where my car was then rolling. The rest is a bit of a blur, but I ended up between the driver’s side door of my car and a large tree, which crunched into my door and my back. I still have the scar to prove it.

I was wedged there only momentarily before she rolled a little bit farther and I was able to get unstuck, open the door and put her in park. But that could have gone so much worse. Thankfully, I wasn’t killed. However, I did learn a valuable lesson.

Automobiles, although they can be dependable in the mechanical sense, and they can take us to freedom and away from bad things and people, they are also machines and they can malfunction. We humans do, too.

Never, ever get out of a car that is running. Please turn it off every time you have to exit. It doesn’t matter if you just have to close the garage door, you forgot to turn off the light inside the garage, you need to move that shopping cart to pull into that space or you just want to grab the mail. Don’t run into a gas station or a store or back into the house for something you forgot with your vehicle running.

If you have get out of the car, for any reason at all, turn it off. You can restart it in seconds and doing so won’t harm anything. It might even save your life.

 

We can drown out the hate with love

Posted on by Kat

orlando shooting

The day of the Orlando shooting, mere hours after 49 people lost their lives, a friend of mine posted on her Facebook page, “Someone please tell me how I explain this day to my gay child.”

My reply was immediate and required little thought:

“Just make sure he knows he’s loved, and there is a lot more love in the world than hate. Unfortunately, hate gets more attention.”

It’s hard to focus on the good when the bad is way past what we can understand. It feels wrong to state the obvious, that these mass shootings are getting out of hand.

I don’t know why this phenomenon continues to grow. I don’t understand why anyone would think that because someone’s feelings have been hurt, because someone has broken up with someone, because someone has lost a job, because someone has had a hard life that loading one or more guns and heading to a public place to shoot as many people as possible is any kind of solution to their problems.

I worry that the media publicizing these tragedies as much as they do can encourage people to continue the pattern to get their 15 minutes of fame, so to speak. But having been a member of the media for my career until last year, I know that the media can’t just ignore these events either.

I don’t know that taking guns away from gun owners is the answer. There are millions of people, including myself, who own guns who have never shot anything but targets.

I don’t know that changing politicians is the answer, because none of them on either side of the political aisle has stopped the carnage yet.

I know that blaming entire groups of people or cultures and going after them isn’t the answer. There are good and bad people in every single race, color, gender, religion or creed (or lack of one).

I don’t know what the answer is. And I don’t know that anyone else does either. But here is what I do know.

The negative can be stronger than the positive. Brain studies have shown that it takes seven positive comments to drown out one negative comment. So the negative gets more attention, at least in the beginning. But the negative, the hate, can be drowned out.

And every person can make a difference. One of my favorite parables is about a boy trying to save a bunch of starfish that are lying on a beach where they are drying up and dying. I’ll give you the short version.

The boy is walking along and gently tossing each one of them into the ocean. A man comes up to the boy and asks what he’s doing, and the boy explains that the starfish will die without water and he is saving them.

“But you’re just one boy,” the man says. “Think of all of the other starfish all over the world on other beaches. You can’t save them all. You can’t make a difference.”

The boy thinks for a minute and then picks up another starfish and tosses it into the water.

“I made a big difference to that one,” he says.

My point is that we have to start somewhere, and we can start with ourselves. Make a pact with yourself to make no more disparaging remarks about people who are different from you or who live their lives differently than you live. No more hatred to people because they live or believe or choose something you don’t understand. No more.

Just for today, love others, no matter who they are and no matter their circumstances. It’s easy. Give someone a smile. Hold open a door. Lend a helping hand. Cook a meal. Loan a book. Send a message. Make a phone call. Hug someone. Pat someone on the back. Do a good deed.

Now, do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

One day at a time, one person at a time, we can make the world a better place.

It’s time to stop the hate. Do your part. Drown out the hate with love.

Why do people have to suffer from cancer?

Posted on by Kat

angel-1008362_1920

For months, people have been talking about Joey Feek, the country singer who battled cervical cancer for a year and a half.

This includes people like me, who had never listened to the music of country duo Joey + Rory until recently. According to Rory Feek’s blog, This Life I Live, his 40-year-old wife lost her battle at 2:30 this afternoon. She had been in a deep sleep for days, her morphine dosage upped to help ease her pain.

I’ve been following the couple’s story for a couple of months. I can’t tell you why. Nor do I know why others have been so captured by it. Some people say it’s because of the strength and dignity with which the star has been handling her death. It isn’t wrong that the young mother of a just-turned-2-year-old is getting the attention, but haven’t many thousands, or even millions, of people all around the globe been doing the same thing for untold years?

Is that the key – that Joey’s story is touching the rest of our lives because we have experienced something similar on some level?

Because every time I read something about Joey, I think about my mom’s last days, spent in a hospice bed, surrounded by people who loved her, dying of more than one form of cancer. She faced it with dignity, too. I remember the last conversation we had, while she was in that bed, four days before she died. We remembered many things from the past, we said things we needed to say, but most of all we laughed laughs that needed to be laughed. We also tried to say goodbye, but it is impossible for me to judge how well we did that.

Those days were gut-wrenching, and so have been these days, watching and waiting for Joey to win or lose her battle. These days also have me asking questions.

Why can’t we solve the puzzle and cure cancer? Especially in the United States, where we have people who have millions of dollars, why can’t we get this mission accomplished? Companies spend millions, maybe even billions, of dollars, on testing makeup on animals (which is so wrong), but we could be using that money to find the cure for a disease that is killing in ever-more-increasing numbers.

And why do people have to spend their last days in waste and pain? We allow our animals to go with dignity, but we mostly won’t allow it for our people. Judging by how many people treat animals, I wouldn’t say the majority of people love them more than people, would you?

But we do allow our animals to go when it’s time. And it appears to be peaceful. I have had three German Shepherds who needed to be put to sleep when their illnesses (cancer for each of them, how ironic is that?) became unbearable. And I held each of them while they appeared to fall asleep and then their hearts stopped beating.

I was also holding my mom when she left this world, but those last four days were filled with constant worrying about and monitoring of her pain, and her crying out here and there when the medicine wasn’t working so well. Why, when there is absolutely no hope, can we not do the same thing for people, end their suffering?

I certainly think it could be a slippery slope from OKing death to sanctioning killing. But when we have the capability to do for people what we can do for animals, why the double standard?

If this topic means something to you, please share it with others and/or comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Have gun, will see movie

Posted on by Kat

have gun

I’ve been in love with Ancient Egypt since I was a little kid, so of course I was going to see “Gods of Egypt” this week.

However, what happened in the lobby after the film put a damper on my outright joy about the astonishing special effects and gorgeousness of the movie. My happiness turned to fear the minute I saw the gun.

There I was with a friend one minute, laughing and joking, excitedly talking about the film. The next minute, she got quiet and asked me, “Do you see that guy with the gun?”

I froze. I felt cold all over. And then I began looking to see what she was talking about. About 15 feet away was a man at the concessions counter with a semi-automatic in a holster on his hip. He didn’t look like a cop; he was dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, was older and balding.

My friend and I talked about what we should do. The man seemed to just be getting popcorn. But what if he was dangerous? What if he had come to the theater to kill people? In a week where there have been two mass shootings in our country, and a two-month period where there have been a reported 34 mass shootings in the U.S., that didn’t seem like a stretch to me. And that very thing had happened in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012; a man opened fire in a movie theater and killed 12 people.

“Do you think he’s law enforcement?” my friend asked me in a hushed tone. “That’s a pretty serious-looking gun.”

Indeed it was. I’ll admit it – I was really scared.

“What if he’s crazy?” I answered.

“Think I should ask him why he has it?” I almost asked, and then immediately pictured him pulling it out and shooting me in the chest as soon as I asked why he had the gun.

“Well, if I report him to someone from the theater,” I said out loud, “I would hate for him to be crazy and then I would be responsible for that person getting shot.”

We discussed the man for only a few minutes, but it seemed like forever. My eyes never left the gun at his side.

Finally, my friend’s friend had arrived for the movie they were going to see. We headed for the ticket counter and my good sense finally kicked in, or maybe my curiosity got the best of me. I asked the girl at the counter, “Did you know that man has a firearm?”

She was the one who looked panicked now, and she quickly said, “No,” and radioed for a manager.

I pointed him out and the manager approached him. A minute later, she laughed and headed back toward us. Turns out she knew a man the man with the gun was with, and he was involved with law enforcement.

A family member told me later that it’s the law in this state that you’re allowed to carry a gun in the open as long as it is clearly visible. OK, I guess, but I have some questions.

If that man was law enforcement, why did he need a gun in a movie theater on a Saturday when he was clearly not on duty? Did anyone else see that gun and get scared witless like me? Sure, maybe it would be good to have a person trained in shooting if someone else went off the rails and opened fire, but how are the rest of us supposed to know who is who anymore?

If this topic means something to you, please share it with others and/or comment. I’d love to hear from you.