Father-Daughter Incest that extends into adulthood: Mackenzie Phillips bravely shares a terrible secret about "Papa John" Phillips

[photo of John Phillips with his daughter Mackenzie is from here]

[24 Sept 2009 update: see here for more about how her family has reacted to the news--as she notes, it's in a very typical way in families with incest. Her half sister and member of the all-female band Wilson Phillips with Beach Boy Brian Wilson's two daughters, will be the guest on Friday's Oprah Show, with Mackenzie via satellite. As someone who comes from a family loaded up and torn apart by incest, I'll be watching to see what kind of support Mackenzie gets.]

I welcome you to click here for an article about Mackenzie's story, which is where I found the image above.

I used to watch all the talk shows, or chat shows, in the 1980s that dealt with matters of sexual violence against women (and girls and boys): incest, rape, battery, prostitution, pornography. I kept looking for pieces of my own story, and to understand how people survive it all. I'm not sure I learned anything too useful, as too many of those shows refused to highlight a radical feminist analysis of these crimes against children and women. But at least in the 1980s feminism had something of a voice, a presence, in dominant media. That has been completely replaced by apolitical analysts, who refuse to see male and white supremacy's abuses as such even when they're staring the psychologists and relationship experts in the face.

http://www.oprah.com/media/20090826-tows-mackenzie-rape [there is more of her story there, and more videos from Oprah's talk show]

Oprah Winfrey's last show to air in the U.S., a portion of which is played in a video above, featured child actor, singer, and daughter of the creator of the famed musical group of the 1960s, The Mamas and The Papas. His name is John Phillips but because of the band, he was known just as much as "Papa John". He died in the spring of 2001 at the age of 65. Eight years later the oldest of his many children, daughter Mackenzie, co-star of the 1970s hit TV show "One Day at a Time", has a new book telling of her life's many serious struggles. She was a child in L.A. with a drug using father; she developed a decades long drug habit herself when she was an adolescent; and her father, the one and only Papa John, also raped her when she was nineteen and unconscious. He then continued to sexually violate her over the next ten years. There is a term Mackenzie uses to describe the sexual abuse that happened when she was, in her painfully honest words, old enough to know better. That term is "consensual incest". That term makes me very uncomfortable, but probably not exactly for all the reasons you might think.

From the perspective from which I analyse social reality, I'm not sure the term "consensual incest" has any merit or meaning. Once a man rapes his daughter, so many things happen to a person that what happens later by him cannot, in my mind, be said to be "consensual". For me, it is all abuse--his against her. And I realise that is a contentious position to take. But I take it based partly on my own childhood experience.

_______________________

[added on 24 Sept. 2009] For more discussion of this by Mackenzie Phillips, see this:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

________________________

When I was a prepubescent boy, I was deeply attracted to a man who lived for several years in my family's home. He was at least ten years older than me. He engaged me in some incestuous behavior that confused me. (He was, from my point of view, a part of my family.) And, because he never frightened me in his approach, I longed for more contact, which never happened.

I grew up, and after a family member of mine that he knew well had died, I contacted him to let him know. He was not born in this country and had, years ago, returned to the country of his birth, where he had lived with a U.S.-born woman--his spouse, with whom he had two children. And he was divorced by the time I reconnected with him by phone. Of course he didn't recognise my voice. It had deepened considerably since I was eleven. But he knew my name and the name of my relative who recently died.

Learning of his divorce sent many thoughts through my head, such as: I wonder if he could possibly be gay? (The answer is no.) And, more bizarrely, "I wonder if he'd consider resuming our relationship." I thought about going to visit him, and us picking up where he left off. I was in therapy at the time, and my therapist reminded me it wasn't "a relationship" in any healthy understanding of that term. She reminded me of something I'd said about him in an earlier session: He exploited me, plain and simple. I hated to think that, though. I wanted to believe he was in love with me, because that way there'd be some way for me to stay in denial about being so utterly and callously used by him. (He wasn't in love with me, ever. And even if he were, that wouldn't make this story any less abusive.)

I have brought up "the past" and he has said he doesn't remember much from that time. How convenient for him. When he said that, when he dodged responsibility for his actions, I realised he was fully capable of being an asshole. Of course he wouldn't consider taking responsibility for what happened, he wouldn't apologise, he wouldn't explain what the fuck he was doing to an eleven year old boy who longed for affection and closeness and got what he wanted from me. Nothing terribly "overt" happened between us, on the spectrum of what can happen to children. But any violation is a serious one, and every form of abuse and betrayal does damage. And part of the damage to me was my insistence in thinking of him as someone who loved me.

What I'm relieved about is that this story told on Oprah's show and in Mackenzie Phillips' book, High on Arrival, makes it clear John Phillips actions were always wrong and always an abuse of power. The way Mackenzie speaks of her father is the way many of us speak of those who incested us, who we loved.

My heart goes out to her, and to all survivors of incest and rape, the forms which vary considerably from heinously sadistic and horrifying to the forms that are gentle in approach and appear to be caring, but aren't.

[25 Sept. 2009 addition:]
John Phillips shot up his daughter with heroin and had nonconsensual sex against her while she was unconscious. To those who do not know, can you imagine what either of those things does to a person's sense of self? To their sense of "what's right and what's wrong in the world"? Would you EVER volunteer to find out?

END OF POST.

Humor Time: What did the doctor say?

[you can click on the image to enlarge it to make the text easier to read]

LMWAO!


END OF POST.

A.R.P. POST # 300: what can a woman say to a man when she notices him visually violating her??

[image is from Holla Back NYC's website found here]

This is what they say about themselves and what they do:
Holla Back NYC empowers New Yorkers to Holla Back at street harassers. Whether you're commuting, lunching, partying, dancing, walking, chilling, drinking, or sunning, you have the right to feel safe, confident, and sexy, without being the object of some turd's fantasy. So stop walkin' on and Holla Back: Send us pics of street harassers!
* * *

I got the following question posted as a comment to another thread which can be found here. This is the question:

what can a woman say to a man when she notices him visually violating her??

thanks

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

This is my answer, slightly modified from the one I posted over at that original post, but I strongly encourage women reading this to respond.

I've looked up some stuff, and found this self-serving male supremacist anecdote; for me, this is a really good example of what NOT to do. To see that, go to the website girlsaskguys.com. What the men say there makes me want to puke.

Now, on with my answer which I pray is more appropriate than theirs:

Blogger Julian Real said...

THAT is a GREAT question.

First, I'm sorry you are having to contend with that level of violation from men, and I'm not at all surprised that any woman has to, given the gross ways men treat women all the damn time while thinking they aren't doing anything harmful or wrong, oh, and also while getting SUPPORT and ENCOURAGEMENT from other men to do so!

Second, please visit this website for more support (also linked to below the image): http://hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/. My strongest suggestion would be to contact them and ask for support and advice.

It's such an important question that I'm going to make it into a separate post, but will also offer some answers below.

I'm going with a scenario where you don't know the man at all. I support you handling any situation like this with a clear assessment of you own sense of relative safety. So, for example, if a man is objectifying you and you wish to confront him, do you have a route out/away? Is he blocking your route of escape? He may get hostile. Challenging men's fucked up entitlements often angers men. I would hope he'd just be embarrassed and feel appropriately ashamed. And my support to anyone who challenges men around our violating practices toward women.

Again, I'd visit any of the holla back city websites and seek counsel there.

As you may know all too well, men's practices of ("only") visually violating women fall along quite a spectrum, from being whistled at on a street, to be gawked at, to being stared at and propositioned, to being followed, to being "up-skirted" by a man with a small digital camera or cell phone camera, to being photographed in other ways, without the woman knowing it, to being in a hotel room and being spied on and/or videotaped.

So one question is: "What's the context? Where is this happening?" Because depending on where you are, there might be various resources available to you beyond personally confronting him. (And when I say "confront" I include "simply speaking to him and asking him to stop".

I am also wondering if we're talking about an asshole in a bar kind of situation--where he's likely to have male support for being a prick, a workplace situation (which has its own protocol on what to do), a school context (which also hopefully has its own protocol), or a public space like on a street or in a park or public beach.

I've seen men on beaches with giant telephoto lenses on their cameras, pointed at women lying down resting quite a distance away. I want to kick the camera out of their hands and break it. And if their hand gets broken too, oops!

I stopped going to the beach because I didn't want to deal with the objectification issues, and the likely lawsuits that could follow me doing just that.

Regardless of what you say, if the man is a major jerk, you're likely to get responses like "It's a free world. If you don't want to be looked at, why are you here?" To which I'd say, "It's not a free world for women who wish to be in it without being visually violated by men like you."

I have just come up with a list of possible things to say to a man, and would really like to hear back from you about which feel most doable, which seem like they might work, or, if you try some of them (or anything else) out, to let me know what happened.

I'm concerned about your safety and well-being. Obviously in the situation you're describing, your safety and well-being are already being compromised. But it's not clear how compromised or empowered you are in the abstract.

For example, when I've been objectified by men I feel like my sense of wholeness is being assaulted, and that I am being turned into a thing, which can be scary or creepy or terrifying, depending on what's going on, and how I'm feeling that day. It can be a very triggering experience for me as a sexual assault survivor. (I'm reflecting now on whether I have ever called a man out who was objectifying me... No, but, I have told strangers who ask to touch me not to do so.)

Some people I've spoken with advise against letting a man know you are frightened or uneasy. Some rapist men sadistically "enjoy" knowing they are making a woman uncomfortable or afraid. Obviously this "masking of emotion" is easier said than done. I'm not terribly adept at having a stern or solid demeanor in the face of being visually violated.

And no matter what response you get, know that HIS BEHAVIOR is the issue AND the problem, not you confronting or challenging him to stop it.

So, here's a short list, and I welcome women especially who are reading this to offer their suggestions, or to share stories of successfully getting men to stop violating a woman visually.

"I need to let you know I am not at all comfortable with you staring at me. Please stop it."

or...

"Are you aware you are staring at me? Please stop doing so."

"Excuse me. I didn't come to this place to be visually inspected."

"Sorry to interrupt your objectification session, using my body, but STOP LOOKING AT ME!"

Some non-verbal options:

Just hold up your middle finger.

Turn around, and look back at him in disgust.

Take out your cell phone and, whether or not it has a camera, pretend to, or do, take his photograph, again and again if need be. Send the pic to the appropriate holla back website.

If you're with a female friend, ask her to stare at him angrily with you. Stare him down, with arms crossed in front of you.

Yell at him so everyone around can hear: STOP STARING AT ME, YOU CREEP! (I'd only do this if I were with a friend or three.)

Tell him loudly or sternly, "Keep your fucking eyes to yourself!"

END OF POST.

"Masculine, Feminine, or Human?" by Robert Jensen

by Robert Jensen

In a guest lecture about masculinity to a college class, I ask the students to generate two lists that might help clarify the concept:

For the first, I tell them to imagine themselves as parents whose 12-year-old son asks, “What does it mean to be a man?” The list I write on the board as they respond is not hard to predict: To be a man is to be strong, responsible, loving. Men provide for those around them and care for others. A man weathers tough times and doesn’t give up.

When that list is complete, I ask the women to observe while the men answer a second question: When you are in all-male spaces, such as the locker room or a night out with the guys, what do you say to each other about what it means to be a man? How do you define masculinity when there are no women present?

The students, both men and women, laugh nervously, knowing the second list will be different from the first. The men fumble a bit at first, as it becomes clear that one common way men define masculinity in practice is not through affirmative statements but negative ones — it’s about what a man isn’t, and what a real man isn’t is a woman or gay. In the vernacular: Don’t be a girl, a sissy, a fag. To be a man is to not be too much like a woman or to be gay, which is in large part about being too much like a woman.

From there, the second list expands to other descriptions: To be a man is to be a player, a guy who can attract women and get sex; someone who doesn’t take shit from people, who can stand down another guy if challenged, who doesn’t let anyone else get in his face. Some of the men say they have other ideas about masculinity but acknowledge that in most all-male spaces it’s difficult to discuss them.

When that process is over, I step back and ask the class to consider the meaning of the two lists. On the first list of the culturally endorsed definitions of masculinity, how many of those traits are unique to men? Are women ever strong? Should women be strong? Can women be just as responsible as men? Should women provide and care for others? I ask the students if anyone wants to make the argument that women are incapable of these things, or less capable than men.

There are no takers.

I point out the obvious: The list of traits that we claim to associate with being a man — the things we would feel comfortable telling a child to strive for — are in fact not distinctive characteristics of men but traits of human beings that we value, what we want all people to be. The list of understandings of masculinity that men routinely impose on each other is quite different. Here, being a man means not being a woman or gay, seeing relationships as fundamentally a contest for control, and viewing sex as the acquisition of pleasure from a woman.

I ask the class: If the positive definitions of masculinity are not really about being a man but simply about being a person, and if the definitions of masculinity within which men routinely operate are negative, why are we holding onto the concept so tightly? Why are we so committed to the notion that there are intellectual, emotional, and moral differences that are inherent, that come as a result of biological sex differences?

From there, I ask them also to think about what a similar exercise around femininity might reveal? How might the patterns be similar or different? If masculinity is a suspect category, it would seem so is femininity.

I have repeated this discussion in several classes over the past year, each time with the same result: Students are uncomfortable. That’s not surprising, given the reflexive way our culture accepts that masculinity and femininity are crucial and coherent categories. People may define the ideal characteristics of masculinity and femininity differently, but most people accept the categories themselves. What if that’s misguided? What if the positive attributes ascribed to “men” are simply positive human characteristics distributed without regard to gender, and the negative ones are the product of toxic patriarchal socialization?

Because the questions flow from their own observations and were not imposed by me, the discomfort is intensified. It’s difficult to shrug this off as just one more irrelevant exercise in abstract theory by a pontificating professor. Whatever the conclusion the students reach, the question is on the table in a way that’s difficult to dismiss.

It’s obvious that there are differences in the male and female human body, most obviously in reproductive organs and hormones. It is possible those differences are significant outside of reproduction, in terms of broader patterns concerning intellectual, emotional, and moral development. But given our limited knowledge about such complex questions, there isn’t much we can say about those differences. In the absence of definitive answers, I prefer to be cautious. After thousands of years of patriarchy in which men have defined themselves as superior to women in most aspects of life, leading to a claim that male dominance is natural and inevitable, we should be skeptical about claims about these allegedly inherent differences between men and women.

Human biology is pretty clear: People are born male or female, with a small percentage born intersexed. But how we should make sense of those differences outside reproduction is not clear. And if we are to make sense of it in a fashion that is consistent with justice — that is, in a feminist context — then we would benefit from a critical evaluation of the categories themselves, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.


Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin
and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center

END OF POST.

So a U.S. Buddhist Jew and a U.S. Palestinian Christian sit down to talk...

[image is from here, where there is a fascinating discussion about Jesus as Jew or Christian, discussed with Swami B. G. Narasingha]

...and some stories are shared between the two.

The most important stories, I believe, are not academic and intellectual. The most important stories are emotional or operate on a variety of levels all at the same time. Some important stories are told between people about their lives, how they've lived, what they've come to value and why. But being men raised in a society that teaches us to "get into it" about various things, in discussion at least and in full-fledged violent argument at worse, two men get all intellectual for a while, skirting around the deeper matters of the heart which lay between them.

One--the Jew--is gay: let's call him "Pete"; the Christian is heterosexual: let's call him "James"; both were raised in the U.S. James passes as white quite easily except once when in Ramallah, where he is interrogated for four and a half hours at an airport by Jewish Israeli officials who suspect he's got some ties to "Middle Eastern Islamic terrorists" because he has dreads and is due to fly in the pricier seats of the plane, and his stay in the region lasted all of four days. (James gets the seat in the expensive section of the jet because he works for an airline, and can travel for free, taking whatever seats are available; he always flies "on stand-by". He went for four days because he had to return to go back to work, not because he was transporting some maps and other key papers to terrorists. He was understanding of the needs to do that sort of profiling, but I found it outrageous, what with me living here and all, and not appearing too much like "a terrorist threat" to anyone; four and half hours: they went through ev-er-y-thing of his, and stopped short of a cavity search!)

Only part of James's heritage is West Asian; other parts of his family were apparently from white Western Europe. His Palestinian father was an atheist and he died in a motorcycle accident when James was in his twenties; he had raised James also to be an atheist. When James got into his later teens, before leaving for college, he "found Christ", came home and told his father all about it, and was kicked out of their home immediately and forever. James went homeless for three weeks, then enlisted in the U.S. armed forces, something his father had wanted him to do.

He wants to explain to Pete (whose family came from Eastern and Western Europe), why Judaism and Islam are riskier religions, because they don't lead one to "be reborn in Christ". And being "reborn in Christ" is, apparently THE SUREST ticket to everlasting peace and unconditional love. Unlike most people of most religions (other than Islam) in the U.S., James is very knowledgeable about the Islamic faith. He is less knowledgeable about Judaism but has studied the Old Testament, and he's barely knowledgeable at all about Zen Buddhism. His understanding of Indigenism as it relates to understandings of Spirit and G-d are seemingly non-existent.

Pete goes through an explanation of the differing worldviews between non-mystical Christianity and Zen Buddhism--one dualistic, the other not; one with an understanding of G-d as Being, one with an understanding of G-d as a Being; one working with a primary metaphor of "G-d The Father"; the other working from an occasionally useful metaphor of self as wave on the ocean, with the ocean as "Ultimate Truth" or "The Ground of Being"(or an inseparable G-d);

James argues that the other major religions believe you have to work to please G-d or that G-d has ways for you to live (laws, codes, and customs), but with Christianity, no matter how you've lived your life, on your deathbed, you need only accept "Him" and "His Love" is yours. He agrees, though, that how you live your life before death is still important. James has chosen to do missionary work through two websites, preaching from the cyber-pulpit, as it were. Pete views "Christian missionary work"--on- or off-line--as something akin to behaving as a cultural/spiritual genocidalist, but doesn't share this at this time.

James seems not to be content with Pete's views on G-d as ocean, person as wave. He seems to want Pete, who, btw, has never practiced Judaism but who strongly identifies as Jewish, to come to see the value of becoming Christian, by bringing into the conversation a particular intellectual chess move called "Pascal's Wager".

A third man present, also raised and living in the U.S., who is heterosexual, white, and Christian and is entirely of Western European descent, wonders out loud if the motivation behind Pascal's Wager really all that "Christian". Let's call him Ned. Ned wonders out loud whether, for example, Jesus himself would use such a manipulative conversation tactic to coerce people to seeing the wisdom of becoming Christian, "just in case the Christians are right". Ned suspects not. James and Pete agree.

Under this story are more stories. One of them disturbingly racist-sounding to Pete. James tells him about the websites, and how he uses images of key Black figures (including the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.)--all male--interspersed with white ones to "attract" Blacks to his message--it is important to him to reach across racial lines in his preaching, effectively. Pete wonders, to himself only, "Why would any Black person who is seeking knowledge about Christianity need a white-appearing intermediary to find Jesus?" And he wonders, again to himself, "What IS GOING ON with all these white or white-appearing Christians traveling around to places, via the web or by jet plane, where people of color live to preach about Jesus as "The One True Way"?

Which leads to a deeper story. James tells of his father's lack of love for him, how he believes "unconditional love" can only be known in the presence of Jesus Christ, the Father. Pete responds: "I've had a taste of unconditional love from my grandmother and for me G-d as "a Father" just doesn't work at all. Pete asks James, "Why would G-d have a gender?" James responds that according to some Christian texts, He doesn't. Pete responds, "But you only ever refer to G-d as a male." James concedes the point. But this is where the story gets less intellectual.

James tells of his father's emotional distance, of the lack of love he got from his father and how important it is for him to have faith in a G-d who is The Father. And he acknowledges, with rare honesty among men, that his faith is shaky and his trust is generally absent that he can just let go and be embraced by Jesus.

Pete asks him "What keeps you from trusting?" And adds, from the religious tradition Pete has most been engaged by, "As I see it, the issue isn't 'allowing yourself to trust enough to fall into Jesus's loving arms'"--using James' G-d language. "The challenge is rather to remember you are always already in his arms."

James contemplates this. James wants to continue to discuss this on a theological level. Pete is filled with sadness about James' childhood, the loss of his father, and how difficult his live has been both before and after that accident. Pete wants to ask James questions about how his father's emotional distance hurt him and shaped him into someone who, of course, would have trouble trusting in the father's presence, in the father's love. But it is time for bed, and they embrace warmly and say goodnight.

James goes upstairs to join his female spouse and their four month old daughter, Ned gets ready for bed downstairs, and Pete leaves for home, feeling grateful for James's sharing and questioning, and also feeling a bit annoyed at having to deal with the whole "Why don't you join us in becoming Christian" thing, which he got from part of his family ever since he was little.

Pete wonders, yet again, "Are all Christians so insecure about their own faith that they need to bolster it by 'spreading the Word'?" He knows the answer to this question is no, because his Christian grandmother, the one who showed him unconditional love, never spoke to him once about Jesus. For her, faith was a private affair and to preach was to pretend you knew The Truth, but The Truth, to her way of thinking, comes from G-d, not people, and so to preach "The Truth" was to be arrogant, to think yourself "G-d". But in practicing unconditional love in her day to day living, she was indeed following her understanding of who Jesus was and what he taught.

END OF POST.

Blood on Our Hands: has yours begun to dry? Check again.

[artwork is from here; my great thanks to the artist who created this:]
Blood On Our Hands
Noah Breuer
Woodblock, 2004
Berkeley, CA
For more information about artist Noah Breuer, please see this website: http://www.noahbreuer.com/index.php?gallery=contract&id=126

To All White Men with Ability, Age, and Class Privileges:

What did you do today, and yesterday, and for the last significant period of time, to stop men's war against women, to stop the global genocides against Indigenous people, to stop white supremacists' war against people of color?

Please, let me know what you are doing, in detail, with your comments here.

I hope there are hundreds of comments to follow... each detailing the many ways white men hold one another accountable to the atrocities we sit back and allow to happen, or actively participate in, institutionally and systemically if not also interpersonally.

END OF POST.

My Top Ten Wishes for the New Year, 5770 (the Jewish New Year, that is)

[image is from here]
My Top Ten wish list for this new year, 5770, is as follows:

1. That white Europeans, U.S. whites, and other white people currently not living in Israel not relocate to Israel.
2. That Jews currently living in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories move out of the region.
3. That the Israeli government get forces out of any Palestinian land they are militarily occupying and stop economic sanctions against Palestinian farmers and families.
4. That the Israeli government stop oppressing Palestinians, stop all racist policies and practices--including against Mizrahic Jews, and stop behaving like a white male supremacist state.
5. That Israeli men stop battering and raping Israeli women, Palestinian women, and any other women.
6. That at any check-point, Palestinian women are not verbally, physically, or sexually assaulted by Jewish guards and officers.
7. That Palestinians secure a safe, stable, sustainable homeland in the Middle East.
8. That Middle Eastern Jews secure a stable, sustainable homeland in the Middle East that in no way requires the oppression or expulsion of Palestinians.
9. That Jews no longer experience any expressions or manifestations of anti-Jewish bigotry and violence.
10. That G-d bring peace to all the descendants of Shem, allowing us to see each another as part of one loving family.

END OF POST.