Out and Back

The culture of victim-blaming is alive and well

Stepping out from behind my semi-anonymous blogging persona for a moment, I was dismayed (but not altogether surprised) to read a report in one of the local papers about a sexual assault on the Clemson University campus. (My husband is a grad student at Clemson and we live nearby.)

The story reads, in part:

Clemson University police advised students Friday to walk in groups of threes and fours after sunset after a student reported that she was sexually assaulted by two men in a campus parking lot on Perimeter Road early Friday morning.

The student, 18, was exiting her car when one of the men grabbed her from behind and sexually attacked her in Parking lot R-1 about 1:30 a.m., Clemson Police Chief Johnson Link said. She said she was then forced to the ground and attacked by a second man, he said.

She had been waiting in the parking lot for campus escort assistance, Link said. The campus escort is a service offered through the university Police Department that provides an escort for students going across the campus at night.

The student notified Clemson educators several hours later, Link said.

Like a lot of newspapers, the online edition of the Greenville News has a "story chat" feature that allows readers to post their reactions, comments, and thoughts about the various articles, opinion pieces, etc. It makes for entertaining reading a lot of the time, but sometimes the comments that get left are just upsetting. In the case of this article, someone named sillyhunter posted the following (emphases mine):

This story has some questions................Why was this child out in a parking lot this late? Why wait to report a rape later the next morning.....Had enough time to decide if it was a rape or not?? And if she doesn't know about safety in this day and age maybe college is not for her. Sounds like she still needs to be under the watchful eye of a responsible adult. Maybe went to a frat party and had one drink to many and got just a little too loose and had party regrets the next morning??????It's always somebody else's fault never the victim. The difference between a stupid victim and smart person is that one is the victim.

I just about upchucked when I read that comment. I posted my own response (I use the handle "coneydog" when posting to the forums on the Greenville News website) and was heartened to see that someone else posted a response basically telling sillyhunter to shut up.

Yes, dear ones, the culture of victim blaming is alive and well in South Carolina. I guess I'm not surprised, considering how much misogyny still pervades society down here. Any locals who come across this post are probably going to tell me to go the fuck home, Yankee, but I'm not backing down on this one. Rape is an underreported crime, and despite the notoriety of the Duke lacrosse rape case (in which the charges were eventually dropped because the alleged victim kept changing her story and there was no physical evidence linking her to the three players she accused) the number of truly false reports of rape remains quite low. (One reference I found suggested as low as 2% of all reported rapes in the U.S. are false.) And for every rape that is reported, how many go unreported because the victim is ashamed, afraid, or forcibly silenced?

Ladies, it doesn't matter how much you had to drink, what you were wearing, how well you knew the guy, or what you may or may not have done with him in the past. If you didn't want to have sex with him and he went ahead and fucked you anyway, he raped you. It doesn't matter if you fought back or not or if you told him to stop or not, because silence does not equal consent. And to the young woman at Clemson, I hope they catch the pigs that did this to you. For every insensitive creep that calls you "loose" and accuses you of having "party regrets," there are many more of us who care about you and support you without ever having met you. Remember that.

I can't believe I live here

I read the local newspapers online so I can keep up with what's going on at "home."  This evening, while perusing the Anderson Independent Mail, I came across this story:

ANDERSON COUNTY — Two disputes over the proper way to prepare a customer’s meal led to fingers in the face and bodies on the floor at an Anderson County Burger King.

Both incidents needed intervention by Anderson County Sheriff’s deputies at the fast-foot restaurant in the 300 block of S.C. 28 Bypass.

According to the incident reports:

The first 911 call was received at 3:53 p.m. Tuesday.

The second call was received about 40 minutes later.

In the first dispute, two 16-year-old girls, suffering scratches to their necks and faces, threw punches after arguing over the proper way to prepare a chicken sandwich.

No arrests were made.

But minutes later, another employee went to jail.

The second fight, including fingers in the face and two women on the floor, broke out about 4:30 p.m. when one 17-year-old female employee confronted another teenage girl, accusing the 17-year-old of not doing anything to stop the first dispute.

Shamika Smith of Anderson, who reportedly scratched Amanda Green, was charged with assault and battery and taken to the Anderson County Detention Center.

Sigh. Nothing like a girlfight at Burger King making the local paper to make one realize what is really important in life.

Late for school

As we drove home from the Motorama this past Saturday, hubby and I decided to poke around some of the back roads and explore some areas that we hadn't seen before.  As we drove along, we spotted a sign for a town called Cateechee.  Anyone with half a brain knows that you don't pass up the chance to check out a town with a name like that, so we turned off and headed on in.  One of the first things we noticed in this sleepy, run-down little town was an old, abandoned school building.  I was so glad I had my camera with me:

I took this shot from the car -- there were No Trespassing signs all over the place and there was an ominous looking man staring at us from his porch across the street, so we didn't linger too long.

I've always wondered why school buildings get abandoned like this.  This seems to be a trend nowadays: old neighborhood schools are abandoned and new schools are built on the fringes of suburbs.  The kids are bused out to the new school, sometimes traveling 30 minutes to an hour each way.  And we wonder why childhood obesity is a problem... back in the day, kids could walk to school, and now they have to sit on their butts on a bus for a couple of hours every day.

Another important piece of this is the fact that a school can serve as the center of its community.  When you take that away, the community becomes unmoored.  Cateechee was a good example of this.  The whole town had this weird, bleak feeling about it.  It was clear that the area was somewhat depressed economically.  (Turns out we were right -- when we got home we did a little googling and found out that Cateechee had once been a mill town.)  The mill -- or what's left of it -- sits down in a valley, covered in kudzu.  We saw it from the car but we didn't know what we were looking at.  As we drove out of the town, my husband commented that the whole area felt rather spooky to him, and I concurred.  Not only have they lost their livelihood, they've lost their school as well.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has some good information on the threat against neighborhood schools.  Check it out here.

We're none too bright around here

A bit of local news....

A second grade Pickens County girl got on the wrong school bus and was dropped off alone at an incorrect location, sparking concern from school officials and the child's angry mother.

"Why would you put my child on the side of the road?" asked the girl's mother, Sheila Williams.

School personnel "are supposed to make sure they get on the right bus," Williams said.

The problem resulted from miscommunication between the bus driver and the school, said Anna Esuary, a Pickens County Schools communications specialist.

Ay carumba.  Read the rest of the story here.  In all fairness, I realize that something like this could happen anywhere, but I guess I'm not too terribly shocked that it happened around here.  South Carolina public schools don't exactly have the best reputation, and I gather from this article that that lousy reputation extends to the school bus drivers, too.  Oh well, at least life remains interesting in our little corner of SC.

But parents might do well to outfit their children with GPS devices if they ride the school buses in Pickens County!

Go home, Yankee

As you can probably tell from the recent tone of some of my posts, South Carolina is starting to wear on me some.  I've already had one "Yankee, go home" experience since moving here -- some nasty lady in a pickup truck decided it would be fun to yell obscenities at me while trying to run me off the road.  I'm assuming she saw the Pennsylvania plate on my car.  (Fortunately, I've got a South Carolina plate now and that appears to have put the kibosh on that kind of garbage.)

All the same, though, I've been noticing a more insidious, passive-aggressive form of discrimination toward non-natives of this beautiful state, and it's starting to make me feel a little paranoid.  In retrospect, I should have known about it, because my mother's family is from "the South" and there's a tendency among them to behave in a similar fashion toward people they perceive as "outsiders."  Here's generally how it works:

1.)  You meet someone at a social event, or perhaps in a professional setting.

2.)  Invariably, said person will ask, in a sugary-sweet tone, "You're not from around here, are you?"  Not wanting to be disingenuous, you reply, "No, I'm from (insert non-Southern state here)."

3.)  The person with whom you are chatting makes polite conversation, asking you all sorts of questions about yourself -- what brought you to the area, what do you do for a living, how many kids (or pets) do you have, what are your hobbies, etc., etc., etc.  Invariably, they work in some kind of snarky, backhanded comment about all the Yankees moving into their region, and then smooth it over with a gushing, "Oh, I know you'll just LOVE it here!"

4.)  Typically, during the course of your conversation, you discover a mutual interest or hobby... say, golf.  Or parchesi.  Whatever.  Your new Southern "friend" says, "You and I should go golfing sometime at my club.  Here's my card.  Give me a call sometime and we can set something up."

5.)  Taking the person at their word, you call within a reasonable amount of time (say, a week or two later) to say how much you enjoyed meeting him/her and that you would love to take him/her up on his/her offer to play golf.  All of a sudden, your new friend has a very hectic schedule.  "I'll have to check my calendar and get back to you."  Guess what?  You never hear from your "friend" again.

The aforementioned scenario actually happened to someone I know who lived in North Carolina for a time.  I've experienced similar situations, only in my case the stakes are higher because they've occurred in the context of looking for a job.

I don't talk a lot about what I do for a living on the blog because I don't like to blur the line between my work and my personal life.  (That's also why most of you readers don't know my last name, my precise location, or even my husband's name.  I prefer being at least partially anonymous.)  Suffice it to say, however, that I am quite accomplished professionally.  I have been doing what I do for eight years now, and every job I've had has built somehow on the previous one, resulting in a progressive increase in responsibility and recognition.  I'll also say that what I do is somewhat specialized -- it isn't a typical line of work, and I don't know of anyone who has set out on a career path with the idea of doing the kind of work I do.  Heck, I fell into it, myself.  Over time, though, I've realized that it's a perfect fit with my personality, goals, skills, and values.

Needless to say, I've got a kick-ass resume.  My credentials are impressive.  (And I'm not trying to blow my own horn by saying that -- just giving you some context.)  At any rate, over the past five or six months, I have found, applied for, and interviewed for several jobs in this region for which I was unabashedly qualified.

And guess what?  Not a single offer.  The interviews always seemed to go well -- I established a good rapport with the person(s) conducting the interviews, I answered their questions well and asked good questions of them, etc.  I always followed up with a handwritten thank you and conducted myself professionally throughout the process.  But I never get the job -- it either goes to an internal candidate that "surfaced unexpectedly" or to someone with a closer tie to the organization than I seem to have.

WTF?

I know I shouldn't take it personally, but it's hard.  Honestly, I'm starting to feel like I don't belong here because I wasn't born here. Never mind that my mother's family has lived in this region for generations, or that I've been exposed to "Southern culture" since I was a small child.

I've taken some time to carefully review and update my resume, to brush up on my interviewing skills, and to ensure that my references are ironclad, but I don't think the problem is any of those things.  Maybe it's just a run of bad luck -- I hope that's all it is.  I'd like nothing better than to be proven wrong about the way South Carolinians treat outsiders.

I guess the good thing to come out of all this is the fact that my husband and I formulated a plan yesterday: if I don't have a job by the end of his first year in the PhD program (this spring), we're out of here.  He says that he can likely transfer his credits to another program in another part of the country, and he's even willing to put his education on hold if he has to... so that we can move to a place where I can get hired.  I hope it doesn't come to that, but it's nice to know the escape clause is there.

Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers

I was at the local Wal-Mart last night to pick up a few things, and fortunately I managed to miss the thronging hordes of gamers going after their Playstation 3's.  I did observe something that made me a little nuts, though: Wal-Mart shoppers don't seem to be very goal-oriented.  They just wander through the aisles with their carts, stopping to stare for what seems like hours at whatever strikes their fancy.  Me, I like to get in and get out.  It's bad enough that I'm so broke that the only place I can afford to shop for groceries is Wal-Mart, but when I have to wait for five minutes (I timed it) for some broad to get off her cell phone and move her cart away from the olive oil so I can grab a bottle of Bertolli's Extra Virgin, I get more than just a little annoyed.

Guess I shouldn't sweat the small stuff, but damn!

Holy coffee, Batman!

This past Saturday, the hubby and I decided to take a trip over to Pendleton, a small town near us with a charming little downtown.  I'm not kidding about the charm -- it has a village green, for goodness sake.

There's also a coffee shop in downtown Pendleton, and after we finished browsing in the antique and crafty-gifty -type shops that surround the green, we decided to hit up said coffee shop for a quick cup of joe before heading home.  We walked in, and at first glance it seemed like a normal coffee place.  They had a huge menu with all sorts of coffee drinks, wi-fi access, and even a guy in the corner playing guitar and singing.  There was a deli case next to the counter with all manner of baked goodies.  I ordered a skim latte and my husband got a cup of black coffee and a blueberry scone.  We sat down at a table to eat and drink, and that's when I noticed that this wasn't your average coffee place.

There was a rack near the counter that was home to a bunch of reading material.  Now, it isn't uncommon to find a plethora of books, magazines, and newspapers laying around your typical coffeehouse, but this rack was different.  It contained a wide selection of exclusively Christian books -- all manner of insane evangelical propaganda.  There wasn't one non-evangelical book on the rack.  And hanging above the rack was a big ol' cross with Jesus on it.  Needless to say, my evangelophobia kicked in in a big way.

In addition to having to drink my coffee with a side of Jesus, I was annoyed to discover that the coffee was indescribably lousy.  Even Starbucks is better than the mud they served at this joint.  It tasted stale and burned and was heavy on the robusta.  (For the uninitiated, most coffees contain some kind of mix of arabica and robusta beans.  Robusta is the lower-quality bean, and it is frequently found in cheap, crappy coffee blends.  Any espresso blend will contain some robusta, too, but it's not supposed to overpower it.)  I could only finish half of my latte, partly due to the horrendous taste and partly due to the fact that I was terrified that some Jesus-freak barista was going to run up and start proselytizing at me.  I was upset by the thought that a portion of the money we spent on our coffee was most likely going to support the purchase of more evangelical reading material.  That's enough to put any girl off her java.

As I waited for my husband to finish his scone, my eyes wandered up to the menu board hanging above the counter.  In addition to the coffee drinks, this place offered a lot of food items, as well, including a "pizza margarita."  I assumed they meant "pizza margherita," which is the pizza that was invented in honor of the Italian princess, but my husband suggested, jokingly, that maybe it was a pizza that came garnished with salt and lime.  In addition to pizza margarita, they offered "chi lattes."  I couldn't decide if they had misspelled the word "chai" or if they were referring to the Chinese word for "life energy" that plays a big role in feng-shui.  Given their selection of reading material, I guessed it was the former and not the latter.

The icing on the Jesus cake, however, was the sign we noticed on the way out.  Apparently on Thursday nights, this coffee shop hosts a prayer meeting and bible study called "Holy Grounds."

As Bart Simpson would say, "Ay Carumba."

Odd... there was so much holiness emanating from that place, and yet I felt like I was in hell.  I know, I'm getting very judgmental here, and the Bible tells us not to judge.  I've always felt, however, that that little maxim cuts both ways.  I don't like feeling like I'm being judged for the fact that I don't consider myself a Christian and don't believe in organized religion.  To me, "freedom of religion" also means "freedom from religion," but I accept the fact that a private business owner pretty much has the right to display and do whatever he or she wants (with few exceptions) within the confines of his or her place of business.  On the other hand, though, I have the right to choose how I spend my money and what businesses I support.  And I won't be going back to this place again.

Driving around for a good cause

Hubby and I took some time yesterday afternoon to accomplish the typically distasteful task of getting our cars registered in South Carolina and acquiring South Carolina driver's licenses.  We were expecting the worst, because in our former home state of Pennsylvania, vehicle registration is at best, an arduous process, and, at worst, a nightmare.  (Sometime I will write about the time we tried to get my car titled and licensed in Pennsylvania.  We had purchased it -- and paid the sales tax on it -- in Missouri, and even though we could present proof that we had already paid the sales tax, the beeyotch that was assisting us refused to accept said proof and was going to make us pay the sales tax twice.  I raised holy hell.  Well, there.  I guess I just told you about it.)

Anyway, the process in South Carolina was a little complicated -- there are lot of documents that you have to gather, and you have to pay property taxes on your vehicle up front -- but if you plan ahead and follow the directions, it goes very smoothly.  Especially nice is the "gatekeeper" at the DMV who checks all of your paperwork before you're allowed to take a number and wait your turn -- that way, the folks who didn't come prepared don't waste the time of the DMV workers and the customers who have their shit together.

The coolest part about the whole thing was the custom license plate we got (see above.)  Proceeds from the sale of these specialty "no more homeless pets" plates benefit a program that provides low-cost spay and neuter services for low-income pet owners, and I get to be an advocate for a great cause every time I get behind the wheel. 

Quiet ramblings

I can't believe how quiet it is around here.  I've gone from living on a busy one-way street in downtown Allentown (where the sirens, stereos, squealing brakes, and whooshing of passing cars punctuated my waking moments) to a quiet apartment complex with mature trees, squirrels, and lots of green space.  The cats love it.  They sit all day in front of the sliding glass door that leads out to our patio, watching the squirrels, birds, and other cats and dogs that live in our little community.  That sliding glass door is their big screen TV... no commercials, and no need to ever change the channel.

In other news, my new Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook is scheduled to ship tomorrow, so I can finally be the itinerant writer I always wanted to be.  I can take my work wherever I go, not to mention my tunes, my favorite games (Sims 2 and Roller Coaster Tycoon for those who were wondering), and my internet access.  I just got a new iPod nano, too, which I am loving.  I have been throwing song after song onto it and the damn thing just will not fill up!  It's like having a credit card with no limit.

Peachy keen

Check this out.  Saw it on I-85 shortly after crossing into South Carolina on Sunday.  I thought I was hallucinating.  It's a giant water tower painted up to look like a peach. 

Or something else.

Yowza.

The trompe l'oeil effect is outrageous.

Toto, we're not in Pennsylvania anymore.