Women En/Counter Violence
Introduction
On July 16, 2024—in the immediate aftermath of the shooting at a Republican political rally that killed one spectator and wounded three other people, including the presidential candidate— editors of Persimmon Tree issued a call for comments from our community on the topic En/Countering Violence, stating in part:
Throughout history and around the globe, women have too often been the victims of violence; but women have also been in the forefront of attempts to end violence. What should we — what can we — as women do today?
We’ve received an overwhelming response — too many to include in this special section of our magazine, though we respect and value all the submissions and the arresting questions they raise.
“Do materialism and greed hold some answers to the imbalance and extremes of behaviors?” asks Julia Griffin of Laxfield, Suffolk, United Kingdom, cogently continuing, “Do what we value and how we live need to change?”
One of our community, Linda F. Piotrowski, writing from Green Valley, Arizona, stated:
I was a poor role model. My daughter and granddaughters witnessed my husband’s verbal abuse. I tried to cover it up when they were present…
In America at this time we are witnessing the blatant violence of men in positions of power passing legislation that abuses women in the worst way possible – taking away our rights to make decisions about our own bodies. It is hard in so few words to convey the many ways violence is being perpetuated against women in the U.S., Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and other places around the world. Men do their best to create fear, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness in us.
I will not cower in fear. I speak up and speak out. I write postcards, letters, and e-mails. I speak to my granddaughters about what is happening. Most importantly, I vote!
In America at this time we are witnessing the blatant violence of men in positions of power passing legislation that abuses women in the worst way possible – taking away our rights to make decisions about our own bodies. It is hard in so few words to convey the many ways violence is being perpetuated against women in the U.S., Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and other places around the world. Men do their best to create fear, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness in us.
I will not cower in fear. I speak up and speak out. I write postcards, letters, and e-mails. I speak to my granddaughters about what is happening. Most importantly, I vote!
“No longer satisfied with small talk at this stage in my life,” writes Gail B. Frank, also of Green Valley, Arizona, “I struggle to maintain hopefulness. Above all I carry on and hold close my deep belief in the goodness of people.”
In a world so troubled by violence, holding close to that belief may seem difficult. But Gail Frank’s faith echoes that of Holocaust victim Anne Frank in an even more bitterly violent time: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
How do we, as creative women, call to the better angels of human nature in a world that seems to be spiraling once again toward disunity, misogyny, and brutality?
Below you will find harrowing examples of brutality, as well as uplifting recommendations for countering violence. While the world continues to change (as we write this, Joe Biden has withdrawn from the US presidential race, placing Vice President Kamala Harris in the center of a potential political maelstrom), we urge all of you to contemplate this question — and to continue this discussion by using the Comment portal at the end of this special section.
Our thanks to all who have answered—and will answer—our call for thoughts on this vital question. As Sharon Brandon of Morrisville, North Carolina, noted in her submission, and as we must all strive to remember: “Evil does prevail when good people do and say nothing.”
Margaret E. Wagner, Editor-in-Chief
with the Editors of Persimmon Tree
From the suite of photographs, Strength in Numbers, by Merry Song
The news seems to get worse every day. Violence has no name, nor corruption, so generalized they have become in this country and internationally. My solace, beyond hugging my husband, isn’t nature but the swimming pool – water aerobics and an ai-chi class. Yesterday, John Lennon’s “Imagine” consoled me during one of our patterns, and I listened really for the first time. “Imagine all the people/Sharing all the world.” This morning, I was reminded of Cat Stevens’ (Yusuf Islam) “Wild World” – “oh baby, baby it’s a wild world, it’s hard to get by just upon a smile.” I had always thought naively that the 1970s song was about a “wide” world, and I relished it. Now I realize it’s about a failed relationship, and a whole lot more. Not violence, but (a woman’s) strength, of moving forward, righting wrongs, trying to make a difference. Over the last several years, I’ve gone to rallies, carried signs, knocked on doors, joined phone banks, sent money to good causes, spoken up and out. I refuse to choose exile, although with dual citizenship I can settle elsewhere. I am struggling to know what more to do.
Ronnie Hess
Madison, Wisconsin
Ronnie Hess
Madison, Wisconsin
One More Reason
I was raised by a man, not that that explains anything, but it explains me. I was a privileged girl who had never experienced real fear, danger, or instability. So, when a fourteen-year-old with a black bandana that hid half his face stopped me as I attempted to escape the fury of violence on campus that included Molotov cocktails at the university [of Puerto Rico], all I could do was ask him: Why would you like to shoot me? He was blocking my escape, near the Science building. He held a shotgun to my chest. I just had a cloth bag for collecting lizards. The point of his shotgun on my chest trembled. My hands were still. Look, you don’t want to do this. Come with me, I know a secret way out of campus, I’ll buy you lunch. That he followed me still surprises me, though maybe it shouldn’t. The boy devoured the cheese pastelillo I bought him from a food cart near the university. I saw his anger-fear ebb as the physical hunger dissipated. On campus, at that same moment, there was a different kind of hunger. We could hear popping shots and sirens; those were also from hunger. The students’ protests were hunger for equality, their desperate attempt to flee spiritual starvation from colonialism, and this patriarchy that kept us spiritually poor.
Amelia Diaz Ettinger
Summerville, Oregon
I was raised by a man, not that that explains anything, but it explains me. I was a privileged girl who had never experienced real fear, danger, or instability. So, when a fourteen-year-old with a black bandana that hid half his face stopped me as I attempted to escape the fury of violence on campus that included Molotov cocktails at the university [of Puerto Rico], all I could do was ask him: Why would you like to shoot me? He was blocking my escape, near the Science building. He held a shotgun to my chest. I just had a cloth bag for collecting lizards. The point of his shotgun on my chest trembled. My hands were still. Look, you don’t want to do this. Come with me, I know a secret way out of campus, I’ll buy you lunch. That he followed me still surprises me, though maybe it shouldn’t. The boy devoured the cheese pastelillo I bought him from a food cart near the university. I saw his anger-fear ebb as the physical hunger dissipated. On campus, at that same moment, there was a different kind of hunger. We could hear popping shots and sirens; those were also from hunger. The students’ protests were hunger for equality, their desperate attempt to flee spiritual starvation from colonialism, and this patriarchy that kept us spiritually poor.
Amelia Diaz Ettinger
Summerville, Oregon
From the suite of photographs, Strength in Numbers, by Merry Song
Dirty Words
Students were protesting on TV as I watched with my husband, Darius, and our two sons. “They’re mostly Jews,” Gabriel said dismissively, the star from his Star of David necklace in his mouth. I wanted to say, don’t you realize how antisemitic this is, I hate that you believe in these slogans, when did Zionism become a dirty word? My husband is Muslim from Iran, I am Jewish with Lebanese heritage. My extended family is in Israel, and my relationship with them is frayed from my sons’ posts on social media. I started to say something, but one of them glared at me. “Israel is a genocidal nation, racist Nazis,” they both yelled. Darius said, “Now is not the time.” On the bookshelf are my father’s pipes. I miss his counsel. I still have his tobacco pouch, which I keep in my vanity, trying not to open it too often as the smell is waning after 14 years. I think, I want to leave, but where would I go? My boys hate me; Darius is conspiratorial, a look of triumph on his face. This is no longer my home.
Anonymous
New York State
Students were protesting on TV as I watched with my husband, Darius, and our two sons. “They’re mostly Jews,” Gabriel said dismissively, the star from his Star of David necklace in his mouth. I wanted to say, don’t you realize how antisemitic this is, I hate that you believe in these slogans, when did Zionism become a dirty word? My husband is Muslim from Iran, I am Jewish with Lebanese heritage. My extended family is in Israel, and my relationship with them is frayed from my sons’ posts on social media. I started to say something, but one of them glared at me. “Israel is a genocidal nation, racist Nazis,” they both yelled. Darius said, “Now is not the time.” On the bookshelf are my father’s pipes. I miss his counsel. I still have his tobacco pouch, which I keep in my vanity, trying not to open it too often as the smell is waning after 14 years. I think, I want to leave, but where would I go? My boys hate me; Darius is conspiratorial, a look of triumph on his face. This is no longer my home.
Anonymous
New York State
Civilians are nearly 90 percent of wartime casualties; many of those are women and children. Women are the prime victims of domestic violence. Aside from these facts, women are more likely to be below the poverty line, a different but insidious violence, particularly as we are often responsible for our children.
How can we counteract these statistics? We need equal rights and equal pay with men, as well as fair wages and the right to collective bargaining. We need the power to control our own health, including reproductive rights. We need economic sovereignty. Small loans to women for beginning businesses are the most effective loans in relieving poverty.
We are living in the garden of Eden;
Plants and animals surround us in abundance.
I look out my small, urban backyard.
It is one crab apple tree.
I put out nuts and seeds every morning
Feeding finches, pleasing squirrels.
We have enough to share.
It is our choice to
Nurture as women.
Nurture our planet.
Nurture our children.
Grow peace.
Barbara Stanton
Baltimore City, Maryland
How can we counteract these statistics? We need equal rights and equal pay with men, as well as fair wages and the right to collective bargaining. We need the power to control our own health, including reproductive rights. We need economic sovereignty. Small loans to women for beginning businesses are the most effective loans in relieving poverty.
We are living in the garden of Eden;
Plants and animals surround us in abundance.
I look out my small, urban backyard.
It is one crab apple tree.
I put out nuts and seeds every morning
Feeding finches, pleasing squirrels.
We have enough to share.
It is our choice to
Nurture as women.
Nurture our planet.
Nurture our children.
Grow peace.
Barbara Stanton
Baltimore City, Maryland
From the suite of photographs, Strength in Numbers, by Merry Song
Abuse by the KKK, for Civil Rights, Made Me an Activist
Three years prior to the Martin Luther King Selma March and just after the first Freedom Ride, I, a white woman, child of immigrant parents, appeared on an all-Black gospel show, rode in the back of Selma buses with Blacks forced to sit there, sat at the wrong end of lunch counters in the back of luncheonettes where Blacks were made to sit, drank at fountains marked “colored” — in a town where everything, television included, was thoroughly segregated. All hell broke loose. Crosses burned on the lawn of WSLA-TV’s studio. I was arrested at midnight in my boarding house. Whereas Blacks were beaten openly in broad daylight, I was taken to a jail cell and sexually abused by an Assistant Deputy Sheriff, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. In those days the Klan often served many a Deep South town as the law in disguise. Still sexually innocent at twenty, and unaware of the terrible danger I was in, I became an unreported casualty of the Civil Rights Movement.
I returned North in a state of post-traumatic stress. I gave up my dream of being a television broadcaster, and never told anyone of my ordeal, ashamed— as rape victims of my generation usually were. What could I have done to exact justice — knowing the KKK was the law in Selma and I had no good witnesses? The experience turned me into a lifelong activist for civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental justice, documented in Author and Activist: The Daniela Gioseffi Story, screened on campuses and in theaters since 2014. The film has been lauded as inspirational regarding the rights of immigrants, civil rights, women’s rights, and climate justice.
Activism for justice is a way to salvation!
Daniela Gioseffi
Maplewood, New Jersey
I returned North in a state of post-traumatic stress. I gave up my dream of being a television broadcaster, and never told anyone of my ordeal, ashamed— as rape victims of my generation usually were. What could I have done to exact justice — knowing the KKK was the law in Selma and I had no good witnesses? The experience turned me into a lifelong activist for civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental justice, documented in Author and Activist: The Daniela Gioseffi Story, screened on campuses and in theaters since 2014. The film has been lauded as inspirational regarding the rights of immigrants, civil rights, women’s rights, and climate justice.
Activism for justice is a way to salvation!
Daniela Gioseffi
Maplewood, New Jersey
For so long, I’ve pondered how we as a country might overcome our violent founding, our violent assumption of land and the legacy of violence we carry. Americans have revered the gun-toting rugged individualist for most of our history. Only recently, in comparison, have some of us begun to defy that legacy, noting its incredible damage to life, liberty and the pursuit of a peaceful life. It seems fundamental, in my mind, that we need to move from worshipping individualism to cherishing the welfare of the collective. That will require a major turn of the behemoth that is our American culture, and it starts with what we grandmothers show our children and grandchildren. Taking action on behalf of the whole through organizations like Grandmothers Against Gun Violence, and working to support lawmakers who are trying to add rational restrictions to the availability of weapons that can kill multitudes. I’d like to see us show kids the reality of violence in contrast to the ‘playful’ gun violence they experience in video games and film…but I’ve yet to figure out that one.
Susan McCabe
Vashon Island, Washington
Susan McCabe
Vashon Island, Washington
From the suite of photographs, Strength in Numbers, by Merry Song
Some Poetic Voices
Poetry counters violence as if casting a spell. As a poet, I think about the abuse and misuse of language that characterizes our political season. If immersion in such misuse of language poisons us, the gift of poetry is that it functions as a curative. With their precise and care-full attentiveness to how words are used and misused in the world, poems are part of our purification system. They distill out the impurities through what the poet H.D. thought of as their linguistic alchemical process. During WWII, in answer to the ornery question of poetry’s use-value—“What good are your scribblings in a time of War?”—H.D. argued for Art’s role writ large over millenia: “the indicated flute or lyre-notes/ on papyrus or parchment // are magic, indelibly stamped / on the atmosphere somewhere // forever.” Poems are not only responsive witness but also vibrational prayer. When spoken, they travel through air. After the horror of October 7th and all that has ensued, I began spontaneously to open my poetry readings with a poem that sought to counter violence sonically, as chants or prayers for peace do, shifting the vibrational frequency of the room’s atmosphere. I ended readings with a poem of love, saying, usually, that only love counters hate. It might seem pat to say so, but consider such a moment a poetic “spark,” as Adrienne Rich envisioned, coming out of deep insight, lived truth, seeking to make—rather than break—connections with others who also go in peace.
Cynthia Hogue, Poetry Editor
Cynthia Hogue, Poetry Editor
No Secret
Secretly, the girl writes poems
on napkins, grocery lists, receipts
on no occasion, any occasion
notes or lines or titles
the girl thinks in poem, speaks
poem, sees poem potential
everywhere — like this:
i
Elderly driver at stoplight confused
by blinking arrows left and right
hounded by a line of braying horns
behind her — poem
ii
Fog that dulls a city street
grays a red tin roof
hides a ragged man
huddled in a doorway — poem
iii
Breaking news:
Famine declared in South Sudan—
Meteor shower over ocean—
Local boy, 13, hangs himself—
poem—poem—poem
Secretly, the girl writes poems
on napkins, grocery lists, receipts
on no occasion, any occasion
notes or lines or titles
the girl thinks in poem, speaks
poem, sees poem potential
everywhere — like this:
i
Elderly driver at stoplight confused
by blinking arrows left and right
hounded by a line of braying horns
behind her — poem
ii
Fog that dulls a city street
grays a red tin roof
hides a ragged man
huddled in a doorway — poem
iii
Breaking news:
Famine declared in South Sudan—
Meteor shower over ocean—
Local boy, 13, hangs himself—
poem—poem—poem
Secretly, the girl grows up
inside her poems.
One day, in a random act of poetry
she tacks a poem to her wooden gate,
leaves one on the seat of the bus,
tapes one to the mirror in the ladies’ room.
Soon after, people begin to speak Poetry,
children play in poems,
some water gardens with poetry,
and trees grow poem leaves.
People reach into poems to spill anger,
find truth, dry tears, sing delights.
No longer a girl, the astonished poet
writes poem after poem in broad daylight,
and bright white pages unfurl behind her
in a burbling wake wherever she walks.
When the secret is out,
everything changes.
Jo Ann Hoffman
Cary, North Carolina
Birthright
after the Hamas attacks on Gaza October 7, 2023
This poem
is not about rockets, beheaded babies, men
with payess curling beneath black hats
davening at The Wall. It is not about
blue and white tin cans, pennies
to plant a tree in Israel. Perhaps it is about
pickle jars lining the fire escape at Bobbe Fanny’s
the precise combination of spices
recipes lost to quarrels in languages
I couldn’t comprehend.
Is it about being called Dirty Jew?
What do they mean by birthright?
A promise from God that this
patch of parched earth would sustain us
through the generations, that these scrolls
would be read each year? What
about the Canaanites? What
price do we pay for their rage?
I would love to remember and keep
shabbat, to light the candles, make
the gesture, recite the prayer, perform
tashlich. Fast on yom kippur,
say kaddish for my parents.
For this yeshuah I have fought
in grade school bathrooms
at academic conferences.
literary readings
in the streets.
This poem interrogates Birthright
What do pork and shellfish have
to do with anything? Does this poem
require I learn ivrai? yiddish? ladino?
Adorn myself with tallit, wear a sheitel?
And what right have I to judge
Jewish poems written in the English language?
Poems about ein gedi, antisemitism in Australia,
Abraham and Isaac, genocide sites in Ukraine
the poem itself?
Perhaps this poem is about
my mother’s rape, the beating
when she asked for help.
She loved bacon, screamed her pain
in the synagogue. The good women
turned their heads.
With this prayer I mourn.
With my poems I return.
Nancy Shiffrin
Santa Monica, California
after the Hamas attacks on Gaza October 7, 2023
This poem
is not about rockets, beheaded babies, men
with payess curling beneath black hats
davening at The Wall. It is not about
blue and white tin cans, pennies
to plant a tree in Israel. Perhaps it is about
pickle jars lining the fire escape at Bobbe Fanny’s
the precise combination of spices
recipes lost to quarrels in languages
I couldn’t comprehend.
Is it about being called Dirty Jew?
What do they mean by birthright?
A promise from God that this
patch of parched earth would sustain us
through the generations, that these scrolls
would be read each year? What
about the Canaanites? What
price do we pay for their rage?
I would love to remember and keep
shabbat, to light the candles, make
the gesture, recite the prayer, perform
tashlich. Fast on yom kippur,
say kaddish for my parents.
For this yeshuah I have fought
in grade school bathrooms
at academic conferences.
literary readings
in the streets.
This poem interrogates Birthright
What do pork and shellfish have
to do with anything? Does this poem
require I learn ivrai? yiddish? ladino?
Adorn myself with tallit, wear a sheitel?
And what right have I to judge
Jewish poems written in the English language?
Poems about ein gedi, antisemitism in Australia,
Abraham and Isaac, genocide sites in Ukraine
the poem itself?
Perhaps this poem is about
my mother’s rape, the beating
when she asked for help.
She loved bacon, screamed her pain
in the synagogue. The good women
turned their heads.
With this prayer I mourn.
With my poems I return.
Nancy Shiffrin
Santa Monica, California
From the suite of photographs, Strength in Numbers, by Merry Song
In 411 BC Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, a play in which women, fed up with their war-mongering men, successfully withhold sex as a way to end the Peloponnesian War. In March 2003, our local theater (along with stages worldwide), performed Lysistrata in protest against the war in Iraq, raising awareness of women’s potential power to counter violence. I played Myrrhine, the ultimate tease, who blatantly lures then denies her husband sex. Unfortunately, the play is a pipe dream—entertaining but unrealistic.
The only way today’s women can counter any kind of violence in our regressive, patriarchal society is through brainpower: to become leaders locally, regionally, and nationally. We need to collectively support strict gun laws, access to mental health care and social justice reform. We need to reclaim our voices and our bodies. We need to march, campaign, stand up, and speak out. As Lysistrata says, we need to tell “you miserable old greybeards…you endanger our lives and liberties by your mistakes.” We need to outsmart the good old boys and get the work done.
Shirlee Jellum
Lyle, Washington
The only way today’s women can counter any kind of violence in our regressive, patriarchal society is through brainpower: to become leaders locally, regionally, and nationally. We need to collectively support strict gun laws, access to mental health care and social justice reform. We need to reclaim our voices and our bodies. We need to march, campaign, stand up, and speak out. As Lysistrata says, we need to tell “you miserable old greybeards…you endanger our lives and liberties by your mistakes.” We need to outsmart the good old boys and get the work done.
Shirlee Jellum
Lyle, Washington
I stiffened when I heard my husband’s key turn in the lock. It was late, almost midnight, which meant he stayed until last call and then some. Probably standing outside the pub smoking with his mates, sharing a flask, until the light drizzle turned into rain and they all ducked into the nearest Underground. I knew his boisterous, drunken entry would wake the baby who had finally fallen asleep at my breast. But if I called for him to be quiet that would only make him more surly. I clutched the baby and leaned against the headboard, closing up my kimono. The silky white robe splashed with orange and lilac chrysanthemums that seemed so sexy a few months ago, was now thin protection against his fists.
I write this because I want to thank my friends, my sisters, the ones who saved my life along the way — held my hands and my heart through the depths of sorrow, the unspeakable sadness, the mute and numbing pain. The ones who brought me back when I thought there was no return. The ones who rescued me from the beefy hands of a madman, the hands that threw my baby’s bottle against the wall over my head, milk dripping down, spattering my hair, my breasts. They rescued me.
Now, when another woman asks why, what happened, how did you feel? I want to offer a page of hope to her.
Elaine Elinson
San Francisco, California
I write this because I want to thank my friends, my sisters, the ones who saved my life along the way — held my hands and my heart through the depths of sorrow, the unspeakable sadness, the mute and numbing pain. The ones who brought me back when I thought there was no return. The ones who rescued me from the beefy hands of a madman, the hands that threw my baby’s bottle against the wall over my head, milk dripping down, spattering my hair, my breasts. They rescued me.
Now, when another woman asks why, what happened, how did you feel? I want to offer a page of hope to her.
Elaine Elinson
San Francisco, California
From the suite of photographs, Strength in Numbers, by Merry Song
In the 1990s, I led the U.S. coalition of 75 national organizations that helped bring an end to nuclear test explosions in Nevada, after the Soviet Union halted theirs. No bombs have been exploded in either country since. I did not do this alone. Millions of people worldwide worked to end the nuclear arms race in the 1980s and 1990s. Over 14,000 people trekked to the Nevada desert to protest the tests over two dozen years. Without those efforts and my work, which I did from a place of kindness and love, it is doubtful that nuclear testing would have ended in 1995. I share this experience to say that we women have tremendous power to make positive changes that result in less violence.
I wrote a memoir about my experience – Love Changes Things, Even in the World of Politics – hoping to inspire others. Unfortunately, peacemakers receive little recognition. Many women have spent their lives quietly working for peace and non-violence, including as mothers instilling such values in their children. Recently, a few books and films have recognized the work of women behind the scenes, including on the world stage. It’s important that we share the stories of what women, as well as men, have done and continue to do to promote peace. It’s especially crucial that young people – children, adolescents, and young adults – know about this work.
Caroline Cottom
Greensboro, North Carolina
I wrote a memoir about my experience – Love Changes Things, Even in the World of Politics – hoping to inspire others. Unfortunately, peacemakers receive little recognition. Many women have spent their lives quietly working for peace and non-violence, including as mothers instilling such values in their children. Recently, a few books and films have recognized the work of women behind the scenes, including on the world stage. It’s important that we share the stories of what women, as well as men, have done and continue to do to promote peace. It’s especially crucial that young people – children, adolescents, and young adults – know about this work.
Caroline Cottom
Greensboro, North Carolina
Say Yes
Joyce and I taught self-defense for fifteen years. Our classes were loud and sweaty and very real. Participants’ manicured nails disappeared as fingers curled into fists. Clothing layers were peeled off as the room heated up. Punching and kicking into target pads ignited huge smiles on everyone’s face, regardless of race or age or gender identity.
At Bay Area schools and colleges, community centers and shelters, corporate offices and non-profits, we practiced boundary setting skills and simple physical techniques. In role plays, people said No to invasive bosses and uncles, to hostile spouses and strangers. Folks shared anger and distress and proudly told of ingenious improvised acts of resistance. Sometimes they shed tears.
To close a workshop, we stood in a circle. Step forward with your left foot into a well-balanced stance and then bend your elbows so that both palms face forward. Generate strength by moving from the back hip as you thrust out the heel of your right palm. Picture an attacker and target below the nose or chin. On the count of three, yell NO! as you strike. The NO boomed. Next, we asked people what constrains their safety. They named prejudice, bigotry, the silence of complicity. Strike out against that, we said and the second NO was even louder than the first. Now call out the qualities you nurture in your lives. Acceptance! Respect! Community! Freedom! Picture your vision, we said, and yell Yes as you strike. The YES thundered. It raised goosebumps on my arms and hovered in the air as participants dispersed.
Christine Schoefer
Berkeley, California
Joyce and I taught self-defense for fifteen years. Our classes were loud and sweaty and very real. Participants’ manicured nails disappeared as fingers curled into fists. Clothing layers were peeled off as the room heated up. Punching and kicking into target pads ignited huge smiles on everyone’s face, regardless of race or age or gender identity.
At Bay Area schools and colleges, community centers and shelters, corporate offices and non-profits, we practiced boundary setting skills and simple physical techniques. In role plays, people said No to invasive bosses and uncles, to hostile spouses and strangers. Folks shared anger and distress and proudly told of ingenious improvised acts of resistance. Sometimes they shed tears.
To close a workshop, we stood in a circle. Step forward with your left foot into a well-balanced stance and then bend your elbows so that both palms face forward. Generate strength by moving from the back hip as you thrust out the heel of your right palm. Picture an attacker and target below the nose or chin. On the count of three, yell NO! as you strike. The NO boomed. Next, we asked people what constrains their safety. They named prejudice, bigotry, the silence of complicity. Strike out against that, we said and the second NO was even louder than the first. Now call out the qualities you nurture in your lives. Acceptance! Respect! Community! Freedom! Picture your vision, we said, and yell Yes as you strike. The YES thundered. It raised goosebumps on my arms and hovered in the air as participants dispersed.
Christine Schoefer
Berkeley, California
From the suite of photographs, Strength in Numbers, by Merry Song
The Uncounted Count
Begin where I began in the mid-1950s, barely
post-holocaust, TV news showed police
turning firehoses and attack dogs on children.
My two older brothers shot and killed the parents
of a nest-full of fledgling starlings. My sister
held the diaper-wrapped rabbit whose belly
a dog had ripped open; eldest brother demeaned,
shamed her for trying to save it, then took it
and we heard his gunshots. Second-born brother
headed to Vietnam; we all saw the photo
of a napalmed child. No one acknowledged
that a close family friend had molested toddler me.
Mother’s disbelief and warnings. Her protective
stance toward my four brothers. Of course
my only sister and I fell into abusive first marriages.
No way for me to get my own credit card
in 1973, though I worked in a bank, and no
domestic violence hotlines or shelters or
even that phrase. So
seventy years: first enduring, then recovering,
learning, studying, protesting, advocating, supporting,
voting, spreading information. Awakening. Becoming
and creating the change the world needs. I am
one of an uncounted multitude. Tired. Determined.
Invincible.
Jude Rittenhouse
Westerly, Rhode Island
Begin where I began in the mid-1950s, barely
post-holocaust, TV news showed police
turning firehoses and attack dogs on children.
My two older brothers shot and killed the parents
of a nest-full of fledgling starlings. My sister
held the diaper-wrapped rabbit whose belly
a dog had ripped open; eldest brother demeaned,
shamed her for trying to save it, then took it
and we heard his gunshots. Second-born brother
headed to Vietnam; we all saw the photo
of a napalmed child. No one acknowledged
that a close family friend had molested toddler me.
Mother’s disbelief and warnings. Her protective
stance toward my four brothers. Of course
my only sister and I fell into abusive first marriages.
No way for me to get my own credit card
in 1973, though I worked in a bank, and no
domestic violence hotlines or shelters or
even that phrase. So
seventy years: first enduring, then recovering,
learning, studying, protesting, advocating, supporting,
voting, spreading information. Awakening. Becoming
and creating the change the world needs. I am
one of an uncounted multitude. Tired. Determined.
Invincible.
Jude Rittenhouse
Westerly, Rhode Island
At 70, Merry Song looks back at her younger self with fascination. She regularly photographs herself and others as well as the ever changing world around us.
Wearing a pink hat and holding up a sign may be self-gratifying. Instead why not go out there to help someone and make yourself useful. This ultimately will result in a better world for everyone.
Great issue! How the personal and the political are one for these articulate victims of violence
I’d like to suggest two ways that violence perpetrated by men may be stemmed: first, we must include in school curricula, starting in elementary school and continuing into secondary school, psychological health class wherein children learn how to deal with their emotions without violence. Address head on how they can manage anger, frustration, jealousy… without striking out at those around them. By the time they reach high school they should be applying what they’ve learned on a global level.
The other suggestion is that we have to keep on electing women to high government offices. This trend, which has been growing, must continue to manifest as most of us can guess the answer to the question: how many wars have been started by women?
I considered writing and submitting a piece to this excellent issue of Persimmon Tree, but other commitments got in the way. Thank you for your efforts here.
If I had submitted something, it would have been one of the poems I have written in the wake of my youngest brother’s suicide, an act of violence against himself that has reverberated through my family of origin (and probably my own children and husband’s lives) ever since. After dealing with Sean’s suicide in 1983, I immediately joined an activist group–Handgun Control, Inc. Eventually, because there were no local opportunities, I let my affiliation slip. After the election of Donald Trump, however, I immediately sought and found another activist group with a local chapter here in Indianapolis with which to work. I have been an active member of Moms Demand Action for Gunsense since that time, even though I would more accurately be described now as a Grandma demanding action. Thanks again for you efforts to raise awareness of violence and women’s efforts to address it.
Thank you for these strong voices and the beautiful poetry.
Reading all these pieces made me cry and made me want to WRITE. Testify!!
Life’s precious moments
Hide in the clamor of
Heartbreak & exhaustion
Sad days
Instructive reminders –
Listen beneath the noise
Bravo!, Persimmon Tree, Bravo!
As a 73 year old married woman, one son, who grew up in the 50’s I know how far women have come in their struggle for equality. And how far we still have to go. the tone of the next group of Wanna-Be rulers trying to get control of this country is something we have to fight with everything we have. I know they would like to take us back to my mother and grandmothers time. Make women possessions with no power to make their own choices. We won’t go there, I won’t go there.
I spent 20 years as a nursing home caregiver. I saw women coming daily to visit husbands who still verbally abused them. I worked with many caregivers who wouldn’t make a move without their partners approval. I spent the last six years I worked as an organizer for nursing home and homecare workers. When I retired I thought I was done with that. No. I know how to fight, I never give up or back down when right is on my side. I will continue to spread kindness and generosity wherever its needed. But I will stand up, be fierce, and fight. Bring it on, it’s going to get ugly.
Thank you Persimmon Tree for honoring women’s voices. I found myself in so many of these writings. I am reminded of the power of women. “When women wake, mountains move.” – Chinese proverb. Tough and durable. Undaunted. Overcoming. When I was recovering from surgery, I knitted p***** hats for the young women OT and PTs helping me. They were going to a “Me, too” demonstration – social justice activism on foot like I had 45 years earlier but could no longer. Sisterhood. That’s us. Even in silence. Even when we don’t know each other’s names, we still know. Words hold power.
The writing of Shirlee Jelum particularly strick a chord in me,
Violence against women goes back so many eons that we can’t even see the beginning. It lives everywhere. In Africa the circumcision of women is still prevalent, a painful, sometimes fatal procedure that rips all pleasure from between a woman’s legs. She may feel pain through life, and she may die from infection or blood loss, but she will never feel pleasure. (This is not a Moslem practice; it is an African tradition.) Women everywhere still feel a physical and emotional victimization. It has got to end. It simply has got to end.
Thanks to all the writers of — – The writing of Shirlee Jelum particularly strick a chord in me,
How can we be but thankful that women shared their stories and ideas for countering and encountering violence. We can all relate on one level or another
for we have all been around men who use their size, money or power to try
to supress who we are.
Thank you, Persimmon Tree, for honoring and sharing the voices of these strong women!
I honor yall
So, many stories of strong women in the face of violence and one that tells my own story. I loved the photos of women wearing their pink hats like the one I still have. And now we will have president who prosecuted abusers, a strong, smart and brave woman who walks forward with us.
ysSuch powerful examples of violence against women in these pieces. Powerful examples of fighting against violence in a myriad of ways. Thank you to all who have done so.
What a moving and inspiring collection of photos, stories and poems
May we all hear the pain in these pages and reorder our thoughts–and our lives–accordingly. Peace.