2016 Is Our Year of Brutality

By Gamal Hennessy

There are only a few days left in the year, and for many of us the end can’t come soon enough. Members of my generation have seen our icons fall in film and music. The wider world is bracing for Brexit, the Trumpocalypse and ongoing bloodbaths in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan. The most sensational brutality of the year might be a recent phenomenon, but the cruelty that has faded from the headlines and mainstream consciousness is embedded in the fabric of ‘Merican culture.  Police brutality and violence against people of color had a prominent place in the public consciousness this year, but not much has changed on the ground.

From Anton Sterling to Jessica Williams to Philando Castile to Korryn Gaines to Tyre King to Terence Crutcher to Taiwon Boyd to Levonia Riggins to Keith Scott to Alfred Olango to Deborah Danner we find a pattern.  The gender, age, and geographic location might have been different for each victim, but the outcome was the same. Our police use our funding to murder us and face little or no consequences for their actions.

And all this occurred under the administration of an arguably progressive, feminist, black president. Do we have any reason to believe police brutality will decrease under Trumpzilla? Is there any chance the motivations of police will change? What is the likelihood that people will stop labelling us as criminal simply because of our race? Our society shares several characteristics with the slave ships of the Middle Passage. Those similarities are likely to deepen once we replace Obama with Trumpzilla.

None of us are fortune tellers. We don’t know what 2017 will bring, but it’s safe to say some of us won’t make it to see 2018. All we can really do is listen, learn, fight, work, create and love the people who are important to us.

Good luck to everyone who reads this. Remember the Moscow Rules.

Have fun.

The Darkest Side of Rejection

White male privilege, a warped sense of entitlement and a persistent rape culture has lead to a teenage boy trying to kill 3 Women "because he's a virgin"

I've argued in earlier posts for the importance of building seductive skills in society (See Love in the Time of Smartphones). There might not be any form of education or intervention we can use to prevent men suffering from autistic spectrum disorder from trying to kill, but the more we can do to reduce the anxiety of sexual frustration the fewer men will be compelled to turn to violence when faced with rejection.

The Crossroads of Privilege

Each person in our society falls into multiple categories defined by class, race, ability, gender, orientation, education and others. As we move through different environments, our multiple forms of "membership" are perceived as positive or negative. This class gets attacked for X but has an easy time doing Y. This race is accepted here but not there. Navigating the different currents can be treacherous, especially when several factors come into play at once. 

A piece in the Huffington Post called Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person looks at the defensiveness certain people have when confronting the concept of white privilege. The author, who has the benefits of race but the challenges of gender and race, points out that white privilege (or male privilege or American privilege or cisgender privilege) isn't a magic wand anyone can use to erase all the other obstacles in their lives. It suggests most of us are dealing with a complex tapestry of issues which are only becoming more intricate as our subgroups grow.

““The concept of intersectionality recognizes that people can be privileged in some ways and definitely not privileged in others. There are many different types of privilege, not just skin-color privilege, that impact the way people can move through the world or are discriminated against. These are all things you are born into, not things you earned, that afford you opportunities that others may not have.””

— Gina Crosley-Corcoran: Author of the Feminist Breeder

I read the piece thinking about both my own complex relationship to the world around me as well as the multiple layers I want to build into my characters. I'm sharing it because if more of us saw each other beyond a singular two dimensional image we can turn our privilege into something positive.

Have fun.
G