It was a difficult book to find time to read -- not the sort of thing you'd choose to read right before bed or first thing in the morning. But difficult topics still need to be addressed, and for many people Michael Scarce's Male on Male Rape: The Hidden Toll of Stigma and Shame covers one of the most difficult. I want to be a voice against sexual violence, and not just that against children (which I've spent more time collecting resources on because of my own experience.) So I took Male on Male Rape out of the library and, as the due date neared, read it. I hope some things have changed since its 1997 publication, but I know many of the issues in it still need to be addressed. (And if I hadn't known, the Abu Ghraib prisoner mistreatment would have made it clear.)

It's hard for a woman to deal with having been raped; it's probably harder for a man because of the stereotypes that exist about men -- that they are all able to defend themselves in any situation; that having been raped would make them less of a man -- in addition to the stereotypes anyone who has been raped encounters -- that they must somehow have wanted, enabled, or deserved it; that they just changed their mind after consensual sex; that it's no big deal for anyone who has had a lot of sex. Some people don't even believe that it's possible for a man to be raped. In fact, in some jurisdictions it technically isn't, because "rape" is legally defined in some U.S. states and other countries as something that happens to a woman. Male-on-male sexual assault is given some other name, such as "aggravated sodomy" or "criminal deviate conduct." Indeed, in some places where male-to-male sex acts are illegal, it may be the man reporting that he has been raped who is accused of a crime for having had sexual contact with another man -- never mind that it was forced on him. (However, Searce points out that repealing laws against same-sex sex in jurisdictions with male-rapist, female-victim-only rape laws can end up removing any laws against same-sex rape.)

In addition to these ridiculous laws, most societies put up further barriers for men who have been raped. Hospitals, law enforcement, counselors, may not know how to deal with the situation. Even things as seemingly inconsequential as what clothes are available in the hospital rape kit to replace those which are taken for evidence can make the rare male victim who reports the crime feel more isolated, because the kit is not likely to include men's clothing. AIDS testing and counseling may assume that all male-male sexual contact was consensual and talk about making good choices, even though having been raped is one of the things likely to make a person want to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Men who have been raped by men might wonder if they have "become" gay because of it (this is a worry seen in sexually abused children also). And there just isn't a lot of information easily available for men in these situations. I've seen it myself in reading books for adult survivors of child sexual abuse; there's a tendency to default to "she" and "her" when talking about the survivor and "he" and "him" for the abuser.

Certain environments, most notoriously prisons but also the military, athletics, fraternities, and even single-sex colleges/boarding schools can allow a scary number of opportunities for male-male rape and still allow talk about it to be squelched. Organizations such as Stop Prisoner Rape try to work against perceptions that people in prison somehow deserve to be raped, that indeed it's a subject for humor (Scarce notes that several movies before the publication date have included "Don't drop the soap" type of jokes). A former president of Stop Prisoner Rape said in a 1993 New York Times editorial that "The fight against rape in our communities is doomed to failure as long as it ignores the network of training grounds for rapists: our prisons, jails, and reform schools." Perhaps this approach might help in making people understand that since rape is not just about sex but about a rapist asserting power and violence, those who learn it as everyday behavior in prison have a distinct possibility of taking that learning outside and continuing with it, even though they are no longer as limited in the people they can have sex with. People who learn about "hazing" that includes sexual assault in any other environment may also include that kind of behavior in the other parts of their lives (and it doesn't have to be penis-in-anus-or-mouth sexual assault; forcing people to strip and similar things still send the message that forcing sexual behavior from others is OK). This idea that events from one setting spread to the world at large is certainly not the only reason that male-male rape is just as wrong as that with any other combination of genders, but it may be an argument that will make the world at large pay more attention.

Men who commit rape on other men do not necessarily consider themselves to be homosexual. And men who are gay are certainly not all rapists. These two things seem to be the hardest for many people to believe. Many arguments against letting gay people into the military or other organizations, and even several murder defenses, have relied on the idea that straight guys are freaked out by the idea of gay men desiring them, even panicked enough to murder the man who was making an advance. (Hey, guys -- would you consider it justified if a woman killed a man, or for that matter a woman, for making an advance at her? Me neither. We women get used to saying "no" to advances in relative calm, and so should men.) And, rather oddly considering the "homosexual panic" defense, a fair number of male rapes of men seem to happen as a result of gay-bashing, an odd sort of "we hate you so much we'll do one of the worst things we can imagine to you, even if it means we will actually be doing the acts we feel disgusted by your doing." Or perhaps "we'll prove we're more manly and powerful than you by treating you this badly, even if (etc.)." Or both. There's no logic to any kind of gay-bashing and particularly not violent kinds.

Scarce's book provides not only an examination of how male-male rape happens and what its survivors go through but also a list of things that can help reduce it, which can be summarized under the headings of education, providing services for men who have been raped, more research and writing, legal reform, change in popular culture, and increased work toward prevention. He also provides a list of resources for men who have been raped (though given the publication date, it doesn't list which ones have websites, but at least the list could provide the names of organizations to search online for, in case phone numbers have changed since the book's publication). Still, it is a much-needed resource on an often-overlooked subject.

Hell yeah. This is the way you want tragic stories to work out in real life. And yet nothing in Kate Niles' The Basket Maker seems contrived, even though she manages an upbeat ending for Sarah Graves, molested by her father; Trent McIntosh, burned by scalding water in a manhole; Barbara McIntosh, Trent's mother; Maddy Oodegard, widowed when her husband hanged himself in their basement; and Chief Ouray, the unquiet spirit of an Ute chief dead for decades. Sarah, Barbara, Maddy, Ouray, and even the Colorado mountains get to tell their part of the story, but I was never confused by the changes in narrator, and once I got started I didn't want to stop. The different voices in the novel are particularly fascinating -- ancient peaks or elementary school girl, they all sound right and believable. And the ending was somehow satisfying, heartwarming without being sappy -- there was hope even for those who had not deserved it, while the victims seemed on their way to healing.

Wow. It's not easy for transgendered people to live the life and change to the body that matches their mind even now. Reading Christine Jorgensen's autobiography (Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography) makes it clear how much more so it was fifty years ago.

George Jorgensen was born in 1926 in Manhattan and had a quite normal upbringing, but was somewhat unusual from the earliest years -- the incident in which the teacher puts him down in front of his class and his mother for keeping a piece of needlepoint in his desk is the most evident example, but George had enough other characteristics that were considered "feminine" that his older sister Dolly wrote a college thesis on him. (On the other hand, a girl would probably not have been encouraged as much in photography by his parents, who took out a loan to pay for his tuition at the Photography Institute. It's interesting to speculate how Christine's later life would have been different if she'd been female from birth.)

The young adult years are the most fascinating time to read about George's inner life. Modern readers may wonder if he would have considered himself a homosexual man if he'd been born in a more accepting time -- he admits to having been in love with a man on at least two occasions before his transition, but still reacts with revulsion to being propositioned by a homosexual man. However, during his time doing clerical work in the U.S. Army, just after World War II, he noted that "During the months in service, I had seen a few practicing homosexuals, those whom the other men had called 'queer.' I couldn't condemn them, but I also knew that I certainly couldn't become like them. It was a thing deeply alien to my religious attitudes ... furthermore, I had seen enough to know that homosexuality brought with it a social segregation and ostracism that I couldn't add to my own deep feeling of not belonging." And later, "I always wanted the things girls wanted, because somehow I felt they just naturally belonged to me."

The first few doctors George consulted with in the U.S. seemed to think he needed psychiatric help, but his own library research revealed works such as Paul de Kruif's The Male Hormone and other information on the hormonal differences between men and women. Having used the G.I. Bill to start at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant's School, he was able to get hold of estradiol tablets (a form of estrogen) and dose himself with this female hormone to find that "the great feeling of listlessness and fatigue, which often seemed to be with me even after a full night's sleep, had disappeared. I was refreshed and alive...At that point, I believed I had stumbled on the first step toward a solution that would allow me to live the life my heart and mind had told me I was intended to live."

Advice from some more open-minded medical men led George to Denmark, where he had relatives, with the hopes of going to Stockholm, Sweden, where some cases of sex-reassignment surgery were rumored to have been done. As it turned out, Copenhagen, Denmark, also had similar research going on. George became the subject of many tests -- comparing how he felt with and without his estrogen dosage, among others. Dr. Christian Hamburger, in charge of George's situation, "impressed upon me that no irreversible step, such as surgical removal of the male glands, could even be considered until all of the experts involved had thoroughly examined every possible avenue of knowledge." (Perhaps it is the era in which Jorgensen wrote the book, or a wish to gloss over male/female differences, but specifically male or female body parts are almost never named in this book -- just male or female "glands," and other terms that play down the physical differences most people think of as the most obvious determining factor in gender.)

Finally, the first of three operations took place, this one to remove the testicles. (Later, a second operation would be a penectomy, which required greater care because of the necessity to keep the urethra functioning to remove urine; the third operation was the plastic surgery to create a vulva and vagina.) It was after the first operation that George started dressing in female clothes, applied to the U.S. government for a passport with the new gender and the name of Christine Jorgensen, and first wrote to his family in the U.S. about his transition. His family were surprised, naturally, given that this was the first they'd heard of the existance of any sex-change operation, much less their child's desire to have one; but eventually they were accepting. "They still don't understand this, Chris," [Aunt] Augusta said, "but you are their child, and if this will bring you happiness, they're all for it." Would that all parents were so accepting.

During the recovery period from the second operation in December 1952 is when the news broke in America; exactly who among his parents' friends talked to the media was unknown to Christine until much later. But Christine began receiving calls in a Denmark hospital room, asking how she felt, "how tall I was, what my waist, hip, and bust measurements were and whether I slept in pajamas or a nightgown...or what?" The tendencies of the media, then as now, were for the titillating, and Jorgensen notes that "it seems to me now a shocking commentary on the press of our time that I pushed the hydrogen-bomb tests on Eniwetok right off the front pages." Since Christine was in Denmark, the Jorgensen family in America were badgered by the press even more than they normally would have been. Christine's absence, and then her agreement to an exclusive story for one magazine, encouraged the press to print the flimsiest rumors. While the decision to have a series of interviews with one journalist, who was also given information by Christine's doctors, probably did lead to a more accurate, less sensational series in the one publication (American Weekly), its short-term results were that a lot of junk appeared in other venues.

Jorgensen's account of her new fame, the reaction to her return to the U.S., and her realization that being a photographer and filmmaker would probably not work as a career when what people wanted from her was more exposure to her as a woman (and this being the 1950s, that meant making public appearances, eventually as a singer and dancer) occupy the rest of the book, written 15 years after her Denmark operations. Some people believed Jorgensen was a cross-dresser whose operations were fakes; others were far more accepting (and both Christine and her doctors received hundreds of letters from people wanting to go through sex-change operations themselves). Clubs who originally booked her nightclub act changed their mind and refused to have her appear on ground of "immorality" (despite the fact that apparently her act was far cleaner than many nightclub performers'). The City Council of Boston banned her from performing at clubs in the city, and she was blacklisted from entering New York's Stork Club as a patron. And when she was briefly engaged to a man, New York's Marriage License Bureau refused to grant her a license to marry a man, despite an American passport and New York driver's license identifying her as a woman.

The reprint of the book contains some photographs and information in the preface from after the original publication date, but Christine's own story is the most fascinating part. It is a book that would probably be more comprehensible to a person who does not understand the transgendered than someone's more recent experience would be, because it is so grounded in the mainstream culture of the past, familiar to people of conservative social views. But it also provides the history and background for a lot of current transgender/transsexual and even other "genderqueer" culture because Jorgenson's case forced the U.S. to confront the possibilities.

As I start this entry, my brain is singing a song used in Spunk, a stage adaptation of some of Zora Neale Hurston's stories I saw years ago. I only heard the song once, at the one-time-only performance, but the tribute to Zora Neale Hurston at the end of Marita Golden's Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex has put it back in my head.

I'm white. (At least as far as I know -- three of my four grandparents are from the South, after all, which is where most American black people were until around World War II. And Golden does say that as many as 40% of white people in the U.S may have black ancestors they don't know about or don't acknowledge.) And I've read many books about women in society, women's self-image, the influence of the media on what women think they should look like and how they should act -- all by white authors. Most of them mention that black (and Latina) girls grow up with less pressure on them to be rib-countingly thin, and generally I thought "That's cool; at least there are some sub-cultures in this country that don't drive women toward anorexia."

Some of the books did mention that among black Americans, the lightness or darkness of one's skin can be a social issue, determining one's acceptance in some groups. (If the subject got half a page in those books on women in general, it was a lot.) Don't Play in the Sun helped remedy my ignorance. Its title comes from the author's mother calling her indoors as a child with the words, "Come on in the house -- it's too hot to be playing out here. I've told you -- don't play in the sun. You're going to have to get a light-skinned husband for the sake of your children as it is." Words that struck Golden, and words that struck me -- a mother speaking with complete frankness for her child's best interest as she sees it, the way my mother did when she told me I had no common sense. And boy, when such frank words stick in your memory, the urge to prove them wrong lodges just as firmly in your head. I'm not surprised that Golden says she became a great adherent of the "Black is Beautiful" and Black Power movements which coincided with her college years. I am surprised to see her uncover so many examples of color prejudice within not only Golden's generation, but her children's age group. The European standard of beauty remains dominant, which is harsh to the darker-skinned or those with African-looking features. The girls in the tight dresses in the videos on BET are light-skinned blacks if they're not Latina or Asian, and they have longer hair than I do. Successful black men marry lighter-skinned women, but when Golden discussed this with her husband and castigated the men for their choices, he came back with, "The really dark-skinned brother . . . how many dark-skinned women do you think would give him any play?" People still worried about what their kids would look like (a concept foreign to me -- the closest I ever came was idly wondering whose eye color would be dominant). But I know how it is to feel you're not reflected in your world. I know not feeling attractive. I'm not skinny, I'm not blonde, I wear glasses and read all the time. I once wrote an essay called "A Doll Like Me" about the comparative rareness of brown-haired dolls in a world of blonde baby dolls and Barbies. How much harder must it be when it's not just a hair color you're looking to see reflected? In high school, we read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, about a little black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who wants blonde hair and blue eyes -- and feels maybe she wouldn't be abused in her life if she had them. The book didn't make as much impression on me then as Morrison's Beloved, perhaps because Pecola's mental escape method was so different from mine. Maybe it would make a bigger impression now.

After discussing the disadvantages that the lighter-skinned black person can experience in the U.S., such as exclusion by darker-skinned people for being "too white" and sexual pressure and exploitation because of their perceived "beauty," Golden looks at the situation in other countries. Even in Africa, the Western media have influence -- the idea that women in Nigeria would use chemical creams to bleach their skin boggles the mind. But it goes to show the spread of ideas to places where they are even more ridiculous than where they originated.

The book ends with dark-skinned female role models -- India.Arie, Venus and Serena Williams, and the aforementioned Zora Neale Hurston. I hope that role models like these help everyone accept that beauty, talent, and strength can be found in any place on the range of colors of humanity, and that books like this make people, white, black, or any other tone, think about how they view skin color and features instead of resting blindly on old prejudices.

Recent reading has essentially been variations on the theme of "why are we this way?" where "we" can be individuals or an entire society. How did we become what we are now? All these different takes on different aspects, different problems add up to an interesting look at modern life.

The first book I read was The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler. I am just barely out of that category by some definitions and definitely in it by others: I earn a low enough amount each year to get the United States' tax system's "Earned Income Credit." My income is low enough to get me free antidepressants from Wyeth's "Accesss to Care" program (thank goodness, because otherwise I would have to pay, literally, over four dollars per pill for the anti-depressant pill I take each day). And yet I don't feel poor most of the time, partially because my expenses are comparatively low -- I'm not supporting children, nor a car (car payments, insurance, and gas add up to a pretty big chunk out of a monthly income -- on the other hand, if I drove I could probably earn more) and I have no debt. I know, however, that one major medical problem could sap my savings in a brief time and put me into a deep financial hole. So I know where the people in The Working Poor are coming from. The book goes through a lot of situations that make people who are generally willing and able to do something in their lives have to scramble to live from paycheck to paycheck -- be it the problem of child care sucking up all that they can earn in the jobs they are qualified for, decisions in their pasts coming back to haunt them in the form of convictions, bankruptcies, or lack of education, or things that happened to them beyond their control, such as childhood abuse, and the resulting psychological problems -- this last seems truly overlooked in discussions of poverty I've seen before. It truly makes you aware that simply commanding people to get a job will not fix anything, and should probably be read by anyone before they dare to hold an opinion on welfare systems.

Tom Schachtman's The Inarticulate Society: Eloquence and Culture in America seems unrelated to The Working Poor at first in its discussion of the simplification of language, vocabulary, and the points being put across in words in the modern U.S. However, after its discussion of the changes over the last century in American language complexity, the book goes over American educational systems, popular culture, and politics, arguing that all of these are snowballing -- less literate Americans choose less complex entertainment and require less in-depth summaries of political issues, so politicians and the makers of entertainment dumb things down more, which gives the public, now an audience instead of participants, even less practice in understanding, so people trying to get a message out have to simplify still further, ad infinitum. I've always been a reader who watches comparatively little TV, and so my vocabulary and leisure choices have always stood out -- I feel comfortable in a sub-society with people I'd consider my fellow geeks, and after teaching university courses for several years, I had my own proof of how incapable some students of the American educational system could be of writing coherent papers or doing their own thinking. Thus Schachtman was probably preaching to the choir with me -- but I had never thought specifically about how this affects the political process. I certainly agree that if those seeking to represent the American people would express their own positions in more than sound bites, and if Americans would bother to listen, our country would be much better governed.

A different sort of articulation is covered in Audrey Nelson and Susan Golant's You Don't Say: Navigating Nonverbal Communication Between the Sexes. It is a natural follow-up to well-known books like Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand in that it goes into not the words we communicate with, but the body posture, gestures, tone of voice, placement with respect to others, type of listening and even clothing that can affect one's message as much or more as the words spoken. (The clothing issues are very similar to those raised in John Malloy's The New Dress for Success for Women.) It's not just gender differences, either, as any parent who has shouted "Don't roll your eyes at me!" at their teenager as much as my mother did to me can affirm. Some of these things are comparatively obvious -- men are socialized that big boys don't cry, and their attitude toward visible emotions differs from women's -- and some that don't register consciously, like the difference between men's and women's most common gestures (nodding, for example, tends to mean "I agree" for men, and "I'm listening" for women, a difference that can certainly lead to misunderstandings). Each chapter ends with "Gender Prescriptions" (and not only for one gender, either!) but as many useful tips can be found outside of these summaries. Perhaps teaching people to be aware of these nonverbal messages could ease their ability to communicate a verbal message more effectively.

The body can communicate to others, but it can also store one's own memories sometimes, as explored in Maggie Scarf's Secrets, Lies, Betrayals: The Body/Mind Connection. "Body memories" -- unpleasant flashbacks of physical sensations -- are a familiar topic from the sexual abuse survivor forums I used to spend a lot of time on, and the idea that a physical stimulus can bring back conscious memories (Proust's famous madeline cookie dipped in tea inspiring Remembrance of Things Past, for example) is nothing new. But the idea that body sensations could be used in therapy to get over trauma has not received enough attention, even though tension from an emotional state can cause all kinds of physical results and continues whether or not a person is even consciously aware of their emotions. Scarf focuses on two particular therapy methods, EMDR and psychomotor therapy, neither of which is terribly well known -- but if they can work as well as the cases highlighted in the book, they should be. The case studies, including the author's own life story, keep the book fascinating while exploring the results of both "big-T Trauma" and "little-t trauma" (Scarf's distinction between life-threatening events, such as wars and national disasters, and smaller but no less earthshaking personal events such as finding out about a spouse's infidelity), and the way physical carriage, alertness, and other symptoms are affected by such events. It's yet another area that needs further exploration.

You wouldn't expect a book called Is Your Parent In Good Hands?: Protecting Your Aging Parent from Financial Abuse and Neglect to be so suspenseful that I had trouble putting it down. But it was, and the reason why was that in this book, author Edward J. Carnot tells the story of the longtime housekeeper-turned-caretaker who did everything she could to get money out of Carnot's father, and the older man's refusal to accept that anything was wrong, even when presented with the record of the two or three paychecks a week that the forgetful senior citizen had been signing for her. The difficulty Carnot and his sister had with their father's situation is extremely well expressed and will resonate with everyone who has an older relative whose desire for independence might lead to such difficulties -- despite the fact that my grandfather's preferred style of independence means that he would never accept any outside caregiver for himself or my grandmother, I can certainly see how problems can develop for them.

Carnot uses each event in his own family story to go through some issue that concerns seniors and their families: powers of attorney and other legal setups, mental/emotional health for both the senior and family members, working with officials such as police or social services, working with medical professionals, retirement communities/assisted living facilities/nursing homes (and the differences in those categories), home care, and others. Since Carnot has practiced law for decades, he has professional experience as well as personal in several of these fields. It's both an easy and interesting book to read and a useful overview of things adult children might want to plan for with their elderly parents, particularly as the events-gone-wrong in Carnot's family give a cautionary tale. I got the book from the library, but I am thinking of actually buying a copy for my mother because of our family's concern about my grandparents living by themselves.

There aren't a lot of mystery novels told from the viewpoint of a sock monkey. (Particularly not murder mysteries that stem from bodies being pulled out of New York City waterways by divers.) In fact, most mysteries are a lot more straighforwardly told than Penn Jillette's Sock. And that's why most mysteries are forgettable, quick reads that often disappoint. Since Penn Jillette is better known as half of the magic duo Penn and Teller, perhaps his interesting way of telling the story comes from his experience in misdirecting and adding some flair to his stage actions. But he's a fascinating writer; though Sock was not a difficult read, neither was it one of those zoom-through-in-the-waiting-area kind of mysteries. The sock monkey ("Dickie") provides an unusual view of his owner ("Little Fool"), and his hairdresser friend Tommy, as they try to figure out what happened to get "Little Fool's" ex-girlfriend murdered and tossed into the water, with many digressions into popular culture (there's even a list of songs and such referenced in the book at belm.com/sock, how people relate, and the meaning of life. The end does get a little preachy, I felt, but not preachy in a Christian way -- in fact, what the Fool and Dickie preach is a doctrine of atheism which even puts down agnostics as avoiding the real questions. Despite my own (agnostic) beliefs being put down in that way, I enjoyed the book.