I’ve been getting daily invitations to participate in the One Billion Rising event locally, and I’m also hearing from folks all over the world. Thousands of  global flashmobs all dancing to end violence against women. What could be wrong with that?

I try to picture flashmobs of Native Americans doing a peppy dance number to protest the horrors of genocide, the Indian schools, the ongoing treaty violations. I try to imagine flashmobs of African Americans in choreographed upbeat numbers, bringing awareness to the fact that one out of nine Black males will be imprisoned in their lifetime. I consider the potential effectiveness of Pakistani flashmobs all over Youtube in a dance to protest the drones.

And you know what? I can’t see it. It wouldn’t happen. Because light-hearted, non-ritual dancing to draw attention to oppression actually sends a mixed message. If the drone warfare is that horrific, how could people be having such a good time doing a bouncy dance with sexy moves? If the legacy of the Indian schools has been so devastating, why would all these dancers having such a great time? See what I'm saying?

The medium does become the message. A flashmob about breast cancer awareness might work. A flashmob to rally volunteers for a national disaster might also work. But these are not situations that involve acts of war, of terrorism. These are not situations—dare I say it—that involve an enemy.

Two weeks ago, one of my greatest mentors Julia Penelope died. Julia was a linguist and a lesbian-feminist. She paid a lot of attention to language, and how language shapes perceptions and controls people. She paid attention to what was happening as women were becoming more vocal about violence against us. We were beginning to take back the language. “Date rape,” “marital rape,” “sexual harassment.” These were new terms for behaviors that had been “business as usual.” Suddenly women were naming them and getting laws passed to criminalize them. Incest was being named, and suddenly we were discovering that it was not some obscure crime among the inbred in isolated areas of rural poverty, but actually commonplace across all classes.

Julia noticed that, as women began to take back the language, there was a counter-movement to introduce the “agentless passive” into this discourse.  One went from saying “John beat Mary” to saying that “Mary is a battered woman.”  Rape victims and battered women… victims of domestic violence. The agent is removed. The phrase "domestic violence" is gender neutral, even though the overwhelming majority of the agents are men and the overwhelming majority of victims are women and children. “Violence against women” hides the agents. It’s a thing that happens to women. We must deal with that “thing.” People have become comfortable speaking about the atrocities perpetrated against women, because the agent has been removed. When one speaks of domestic violence or violence against women (now “VAW”) one does not have to defend oneself from charges of men-hating or men-bashing.

I read the site for One Billion Rising. If I were a Martian trying to figure it out, I would conclude that violence against women was some kind of viral infection affecting only women, and that One Billion Rising was a campaign to raise awareness that would further medical research about the virus and possibly help women understand that they were at risk. As a Martian, I would come away from the website with very little understanding of what this epidemic was about. There was not one thing on the site that would lead me to understand that I was reading about the male half of the global population colonizing and massacring the female half. How am I supposed to take seriously a campaign or a movement that contributes so powerfully to obscuring the issue it purports to address?

This “agentless passive” is what I am seeing reified with this joyous flashmob. Women just need to become aware, to rise, and to dance. The short film on their website does a good job depicting men raping, harassing, beating, torturing, and terrorizing women. And then the ground begins to shake… there is an environmental, deus-ex-machina intervention. The women come to their senses and get up off the floor, push the men away (pushing only, careful not to fight back… after all, we don’t want to be as bad as them), and…. Dance!

Actually, it’s not that simple. If the film had not morphed into Disney fantasy, we would see the rising and resisting women slapped down harder and further brutalized for their resistance. We would see that the earth is not coming to our rescue,  that there will be no supernatural intervention, and that the women need weapons and training in martial arts, organizations, underground networks for escape, organizations, political education about our oppression, and organizations.

What if One Billion Rising had been courageous enough to face the reality head-on that violence against women is actually a war situation, an oppression, and that it does indeed involve an enemy who is focused on owning and controlling women and who will not hesitate to use any means to enforce that ownership and control? What if One Billion Rising had involved global flash displays of women practicing and teaching each other self-defense? What if One Billion Rising passed out pepperspray on keychains, urging every woman to carry a weapon everywhere she went?  What if One Billion Rising put the emphasis on the agents of our oppression instead of the victims, with workshops about femicide, the failure of Congress to include women as a category in hate crime bills, the intentional depiction of rape and femicide by Hollywood, and so on?

Well, for starts, there would be an immediate understanding that this is nothing to dance about. There would also be an understanding that it’s going to be a long war that’s going to require strategy and resources, and no more pussy-footing around the fact that we have an enemy who is organized and who owns 99% of the resources in the world… in large part because of our colonization.

I am seeing internet memes of women without shirts with the graphic, “Still not asking for it” and women in tiny dresses with signs that say “How we dress does not mean yes.” Again, I see the work of the agentless passive. I can walk into the lion cage at the zoo and yell, “This does not mean I want to be attacked,” but it’s not going to protect me. Does it mean the lions are unclear about my consent or my legal rights? Well, that’s an odd way to frame a situation involving a predator. Rendering oneself vulnerable to a predator is foolish, not empowering.

Did I say “predator?” Yes, I did. I’ll say it again. Predator. Not all men are predators. Not all predators are predatory all the time. But these billions of women being victimized are being victimized by predators, by men. No amount of dancing is going to change that fact. What the dancing will do is increase the marginalization of those of us who are attempting to use language to put the focus on the agents of our oppression. The dancing is going to continue to frame the issue as one of women’s lack of awareness or so-called masochism. The dancing is going to present a scenario where the men just need to become aware of the harm they are doing.

I’m not dancing on February 14. It feels disrespectful to me and to the hundreds of women in my life who have been raped, harassed, mutilated, terrorized, and murdered by men. By men. If every woman dancing on February 14 was willing to take the actions and use the language that would render her vulnerable to charges of men-hating and men-bashing, that would constitute the foundation of an authentic movement.

Where are the representations of older lesbians in the media?

Three decades of lesbian scholarship have borne witness to our incredible courage and creativity in the face of unremitting misogyny and homophobia. Where are the stories, the representations of our lives and our loves?

Well, imagine my surprise to discover an authentic depiction of a old lesbian couple in an Agatha Christie episode filmed by the BBC in 1985. [Click here for selected lesbianic excerpts from the show.]

Even for a series about a woman detective, "A Murder Is Announced" stands out as unusually woman-centered.  Not only is the entire plot built on a matrix of female bonding: love between sisters, between girlhood friends, between a wife and her husband's secretary, and between lesbians, but, in fact, the lesbian relationship provides the key to solving the mystery. And the original mystery was written in 1950!

The time is immediately after the war, and the place is a fictional little village in England.  Murgatroyd is the fem.  She wears the housedress, does the laundry, and defers to her partner.  Hinchcliffe, affectionately known as "Hinch," is the butch.  She wears the boots, slops the pigs, drives the car, and brags about drinking.  Both women are in their late forties/early fifties. Murgatroyd is a big woman with soft features, maternal and plodding in her process.  Hinch is angular, articulate, acerbic, and animated. The two women have apparently been partners for a long time, and the villagers accept their relationship.

I found myself replaying and fast-forwarding to watch the scenes with the two lesbians, and as I did this, I asked myself why I should be so fascinated with such obviously old-fashioned and stereotypical representations of lesbians at a time when I could download so many more recent lesbian films.

The fact is Hinch and Murgatroyd have something I rarely see anywhere else.  They have a real relationship.  A long-term relationship.  A relationship in a world which is brutally hostile to lesbians and which involves complicated strategies for survival, compromises, divisions of labor, and highly protective coloring. Hinch and Murgatroyd reflect a relationship where, over time, each partner has gained a monopoly over the areas in which she possesses the greater strengths, ceding to her partner the territory to which she holds the lesser claim.  It is a question of economy, not caricature. 

This is evident from comparisons with the other characters: the communist student-idealist, the mysterious war widow, the potentially unbalanced refugee, the long-lost school chum, the retired army officer, and the upper class "waster."  All of these characters are charming, shifty, and one-dimensional.  Their heterosexual relationships are blatant plot devices, which even the actors cannot  invest with any authenticity.  Not so Murgatroyd and Hinch, whose behaviors are complex and coded.

For example, when Hitch characterizes Murgatroyd as flighty and unreliable
to the police inspector, it is not only to cast herself in the light of being the responsible partner, but also to shield Murgatroyd from the questions of the police and the eyes of the community.  In this scene, Hinch makes a point of mentioning her fondness for liquor, her war service record, and the fact that she has seen things that would make the inspector's hair curl.  Caught slopping the pigs, she makes a show of her affection for the animals, as if she were indulging herself in a hobby instead of performing a menial task.  When Murgatroyd joins them, Hinch hovers over her -- correcting, mocking, and confusing her.  Editorializing on the inadequacy of Murgatroyd's answers, Hinch successfully deflects the inspector's interest in both of them and redirects it toward the other villagers. Even as she patronizes her partner, she throws a protective arm around her and makes it clear that the inspector will have to deal with her if he intends to badger her lover.

Two later scenes are even more illuminating. Both women are at home in their modest cottage. In both scenes, Hinch is puzzling over the murder they have witnessed. She recruits Murgatroyd's aid in re-enacting the shooting. Overtly, Murgatroyd follows Hinch's orders, anxious to please her mistress. Overtly, Hinch is acting in a high-handed and domineering way. But watching the scenes a second time, a different quality emerges. When Murgatroyd mentions that she remembers hitting her foot against the door, Hinch stops mid-hunch to address her concern for Murgatroyd's failure to see a chiropodist about her corns. Later, Murgatroyd, caught up in the drama of the re-enactment, drops her deferential act, and we see her emerge, if only for a few seconds, as a full partner to her irascible lover.

During the second re-enactment, Murgatroyd realizes the identity of the murderer, but Hinch is distracted by a call to rescue the family dog from the train station. On the way back, Hinch picks up Miss Marple, rescuing her from a downpour. She rakishly suggests that Miss Marple tell the others she is "out on the town." Returning to the cottage, both women discover Murgatroyd's body.  After a thorough check for vital signs, Hinch sets her face with grim determination: "When I find out who did this, I'm going to kill her."

Back at the cottage, Hinch blames herself for Murgatroyd's death, because the re-enactments had been her idea -- "silly games."  Miss Marple, in a very tender scene, gently asks her to focus on the killer's identity.  Later, Miss Marple will make inquiries about how Hinch is doing.  The inspector notes that she seems to have aged ten years.

In the final confrontation scene, Hinch is silent and stony, but as soon as the accusation is made, she rivets her attention on the killer like a bloodhound who has scented her prey.  When the killer is apprehended, she bursts in on the scene, lunging at the murderer with the cry, "I'm going to kill you!"  Restrained by the police, Hinchcliffe finally gives way to her grief. 

Alcoholism, domination, gender roles...  and real life. Real lesbian life. In a story where the detective-heroine is an old woman who speaks plainly about what it is to live on fixed low income at an age when all of one's friends are dead, the lesbian story line is given a dignity and depth not accorded to the other more privileged characters.  Miss Marple and Hinchcliffe share the understanding that beneath the surface of life in a storybook village lie violence and evil. Hinchcliffe, in carving out some corner of joy and safety for herself, had found a partner who seemed untainted by knowledge of that evil, and she had devoted her life to protecting her innocence. Indeed, Murgatroyd's last words were admonishments to the murderer to come in out of the rain. 

There appear to be several links for viewing this episode online.  Click here for one of them.