It Isn't Really Rape If Your Son Does It

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address warned us about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex".

John F. Kennedy offered this challenge:  "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

And what memorable oratory did Bill Clinton leave for us?   "I did not have sex with that woman!"  Or, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

It seems that Jim Bob Duggar is taking lessons on semantics from our forty-second President.  That is ironic, in a way, because about the only thing he seems to have in common with Clinton is Arkansas roots. 

But it seems that for a self-professed Christian, he's doing everything he can to emulate Bill from Hope's respect for the truth.  Now, I can't fault him for defending his son:  Most parents would do the same for their kids, even after those kids have done the most unspeakable things.  Still, I have a hard time hearing a defense, whoever may make it, of someone who takes advantage of someone else sexually.

He says that when his son Josh molested his sisters, who were adopted, "it was nothing like rape."  Rather, he insists it was "just inappropriate touching over the clothes" while the girls "were sleeping".  According to Duggar the Elder, the girls weren't even aware of what he had done.  In contrast, the police reports state that at least one of the girls woke up during the incident.

Now, almost anyone would agree that touching a child's private areas--whether or not there is clothing or anything else between the toucher's hand and the child's privates--constitutes sexual molestation.  In fact, most people--including most clinicians--would agree that it's molestation if the person, of whatever age, being touched can't or doesn't consent.

And, whatever we might say about the State of Arkansas, it defines sexual molestation  as rape. 

As  a transgender woman and someone who survived childhood sexual molestation and sexual assault as a young adult, I find Jim Bob Duggar's dissembling particularly offensive.  You see, he and his wife have been propagating the lie that all transgenders are pedophiles as part of their campaign against transgender equality.

I wonder how they define "transgender" and "pedophilia".

Not Again: Mrs. Doubtfire

In 1992, I came out.

I'm not talking about my sexual preferences or gender identity.  What I mean is that after coming about as close as I've come (until this past summer) to having a nervous breakdown, I talked for the first time about the sexual molestation I experienced as a child.

I was ready to do so; even more to the point, some people in my life were ready to hear it.  And in American society, more people understood that a kid or a woman who is sexually molested or assaulted did not bring it on him- or her-self.  In fact, I found a pretty fair amount of sympathy from those with whom I discussed my experience.

However, at that time I also felt the submerged bubble of my gender identity rising to the surface of the river of my life.  And I popped it, at least to the degree I could.  

For all that doing so cost me (emotionally, that is), I had good reasons.  You see, most people still believed (and I told myself) that so-called trans women were gay men who wouldn't admit it to themselves. Someone who ended his friendship with me after I began my transition said as much.  

And, to most people who were not in the "spectrum" gay and trans people cared about nothing but sex, and therefore were "asking for it" when they were raped, molested or even murdered.  About two decades earlier, most men (and many women) had similar attitudes about women.

So, while not coming out about my trans identity was not a calculated decision at the time, it probably was best, at least in some ways.  Even from sympathetic people, I might have gotten some really bad advice, and I probably would have ended up in the office of some therapist who still believed that a man molesting a boy was simply a result of repressed homosexuality on one or both sides.  The fact that one of my molesters was a married man who, to my knowledge, never had any liaisons with adult males would not have been considered.

Even more to the point, a lot of people still saw transgenderism as nothing more than a person of one gender wearing the clothes of, and aping the behavior (actually, cariactures) of the other.  This attitude accounts for the wild popularity of a movie that came out that year:  Mrs. Doubtfire.

Now, I don't want to paint all people who laughed at it as transphobes.  I saw it and laughed at Robin Williams' antic comedy, as I do whenever I see him in a comic role.  However, most people--including many critics--actually thought the idea of a man wearing women's clothes was just plain funny or, at best, an example of "gender bending."

Even the premise too many saw as novel was ancient in the time of Greek theatre:  Someone dons a disguise to win, or win back, the person he or she loves.  And the idea of a man putting on a dress and makeup to get a job was treated much more skillfully in Tootsie, not to mention in Richard Wright's acerbic short story A Man Of All Work.

Still, there's no idea so cliched or simply outdated that Hollywood won't try to recycle it.  That's why there's a sequel of Mrs. Doubtfire in the works, with Robin Williams reprising the lead role.

I hope he reconsiders.  After all, I always thought he was thoughtful and informed when it comes to gender, sexual identity and other issues.  Also, I don't think that any remake, no matter how well-done, will be as well-received as the original was.  A lot of people's notions--including my own and those of people in my own life--have changed, thankfully, since then.  Of course, there are still a few who will laugh at the same jokes and sight gags.  Even such people probably wouldn't want to see a remake more than once, or a sequel.  That can't be good for Robin Williams' career--not that it needs a boost.

The End Of Memory: Beyond Forgetting

Yesterday I rode my bike through a part of Brooklyn in which I spent much of my childhood.  I hadn't been there in four years.  The last time I was there, it was an unusually hot for this time of year, but would have been absolutely normal, say, in late July or early August.  The same could have been said for yesterday.


And, yesterday shared another trait with that day four years ago:  There were no shadows, as if the heat had evaporated them--or, perhaps, prevented them from being born in the first place.


Actually, what I just described is also how I remember every summer day--and many in other seasons--in that neighborhood.  Everything seemed burnished into a tablet of a moment would last for days, weeks, months, years, and even entire lifetimes.  It's what I sometimes call the Eternal Present.  


Yesterday I also did something else I did on that day four years ago:  I stopped by the church in which I served as an altar boy and the parish school, diagonally across the street, I attended. Both looked much as they did then and, in fact, as they did in my childhood.  The church seems not to have aged at all:  Although not an unattractive building, it's not an architectural or historic landmark of any sort.  The school, on the other hand, is an even more ordinary structure, and it did look shabbier from the outside than it did four years ago, not to mention the way it looked when I attended it forty years ago.  


One difference, though, between now and the recent or distant past is that I had no compulsion--from others or from within me--to go inside either one.  When I last went to the neighborhood, four years ago, I entered the church for the first time since my days as an altar boy. There, I confronted the "ghost" of the priest who molested me.


So, really, I no longer have any reason to go into that church.  Actually, the neighborhood felt almost as if it were no longer part of my life.  In one sense, it isn't:  I've changed.  And, of course, the neighborhood has changed.  It is because of those changes, in fact, that I was surprised to see the that the school, and even the church,  were still there:  Nearly everyone in that neighborhood is a Hasidic Jew.  In fact, all of the announcements I saw taped to lampposts and the signs on the stores are printed in Hebrew characters.


But even if the neighborhood were still filled with blue-collar Italian- and Irish-Americans and non-Hasidic Jews, as it was during my childhood, it would have felt like a neighborhood that was no longer, and perhaps had never been, mine.  Or, at least, the things I remembered would have been merely the past rather than my specific memories.  And, you might say that I've "moved on" from having confronted the "ghost" of that priest.  He is long dead, and the boy he fondled and whose lips he pressed against him has become the woman whose image on the distant horizon of his life tormented him precisely because she--that is to say, I--was the one who sustained him.  That I did that, and have become whom I've become, may be the only things that no one can take away from me.  And I'm certainly not about to let anyone--much less a ghost--steal them from me.  


That, by the way, is also the reason I have decided not to pursue it legally.  For one thing, those multi-million dollar settlements the media trumpets are only single notes in the cacophony the legal system.  For another, I simply don't want to relive or even recount what happened for lawyers and judges--or, for that matter, any other civil or ecclesiastical authority.  And, finally, I don't know how many years I have left.  I'd prefer not to spend them dealing with the legal system.


I don't know when, or whether, I'll go back.  For now, I hope I won't need to.