As I prepare to teach, as I ride the 1S bus out of the cold, as I read Edwidge Danticat and workshop submissions, as I put away folded clothes today, I think about #BillCosby being accused of rape. This, of course, is far from the first time these accusations have surfaced. And once again, reactions swirl around me, the thick red of raspberry in ice cream. Somebody posted on Facebook an article I didn’t read that I think suggested how difficult it is for people to reconcile the idea that someone theyve loved (though they may know him solely as a persona on TV - and how is that any less a love?) could willfully hurt others and assert his power in the worst ways possible. This is something I can understand: the denial, the refuge in well, we just dont know, the neutral position, and sometimes even the defense of Cosbys (and others) acts, because: love. It’s not something that justifies this behavior. Just something I can understand. And yet, how much harder is this same conflict for those who have been assaulted by father, brother, cousin, uncle, friend, lover, partner, spouse. Because then you must reconcile your love for the person with the willful harm that you know they do you. Moreover, many will tell you, that you could have/should have seen this coming and prevented it. There is no neutral position left. What the adoration of public figures like Cosby At Any Cost, In Any Context, leaves out is what Cosby (and others) know: that it is power that allows them to stay loved, and it is power that allows the abuse of power. In other words, one cannot abuse power if one does not have it. (And as we all know, one can be complicit in its abuse, when does not have power.) When Cosby supporters, along with the mechanisms of patriarchy (in which we are all complicit) allow love/adoration to overshadow the abuse of power, we/they are deciding that we, as humans, as people, cannot hold the two truths of what many survivors of intimate violence know: that love and abuse co-exist, that we are all capable of both. And this, above, all makes me sick.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:17:55 +0000
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