Wikipedia’s Women Problem by James Gleick | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

There is consternation at Wikipedia over the discovery that hundreds of novelists who happen to be female were being systematically removed from the category “American novelists” and assigned to the category “American women novelists.” Amanda Filipacchi, whom I will call an American novelist despite her having been born in Paris, set off a furor with an opinion piece on theNew York Times website last week. Browsing on Wikipedia, she had suddenly noticed that women were vanishing from “American novelists”—starting, it seemed, in alphabetical order. In the A’s and the B’s, the list was now almost exclusively male:

I did more investigating and found other familiar names that had been switched from the ‘American Novelists’ to the ‘American Women Novelists’ category: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ayn Rand, Ann Beattie, Djuna Barnes, Emily Barton, Jennifer Belle, Aimee Bender, Amy Bloom, Judy Blume, Alice Adams, Louisa May Alcott, V. C. Andrews, Mary Higgins Clark—and, upsetting to me: myself.

The word that came to mind—and the Times used it for the headline—was sexism.

And who could disagree? Joyce Carol Oates expressed her view on Twitter: “Wikipedia bias an accurate reflection of universal bias. All (male) writers are writers; a (woman) writer is a woman writer.” Elaine Showalter tweeted in response that this was not what she’d had in mind in titling a book A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers: “Wikipedia is cutting down on American writers category by taking women out of it! A new step backwards.”

At Wikipedia, all hell broke loose. (Let’s pause here to flag the phrase, “at Wikipedia.” Wikipedia is a notional place only. It is not situated in a sleek California corporate campus, like Google in Mountain View or Apple in Cupertino, but instead distributed across cyberspace.)

These kinds of debates are usually bruited and argued on Wikipedia’s “Talk” pages, which are set aside for discussion by editors. After the Filipacchi article, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s cofounder, created a new entry on his personal Talk page under the bold-face heading, “WTF?” Wales does not give orders or directly cause things to happen. He is more of a noninterventionist god. He is often referred to simply as Founder (capital F) or Jimbo. Anyway, he wrote:

My first instinct is that surely these stories are wrong in some important way. Can someone update me on where I can read the community conversation about this? Did it happen? How did it happen?

Heated argument broke out on a page set aside for discussion of changes to Wikipedia categories. Categories are a big deal. They are an important way to group articles; some people use them to navigate or browse. Categories provide structure for a web of knowledge—not a tree, because a category can have multiple parents, as well as multiple children. Wikipedia lists 4,325 Container categories, from “Accordionists by nationality” to “Zoos in the United States.” There are Disambiguation categories, Eponymous categories—named, for example, after railway lines like Norway’s Flåm Line, or after robots (there are two: Optimus Prime and R2-D2)—and at least 11,000 Hidden categories, meant for administration and therefore invisible to readers. A typical hidden category is “Wikipedia:Categories for discussion,” containing thousands of pages of logged discussions about the suitabilities of various categories. Meta enough for you? Some categories under discussion now are Avenues, Omniscience, and “Equestrian commanders of vexillationes.”

It’s fair to say that Wikipedia has spent far more time considering the philosophical ramifications of categorization than Aristotle and Kant ever did.

On Wednesday a formal proposal appeared for discussion: “Propose merging Category:American women novelists to Category:American novelists.” Nominator’s rationale: “As per gender neutrality guidelines, gender-specific categories are not appropriate where gender is not specifically related to the topic. This subcategory also creates the unfortunate side effect that Category:American novelists contains only male novelists.” Many users quickly posted comments agreeing. One user “struck out” two of these votes, on the ground that they appeared to have been submitted by “sock puppets”—new identities created by an existing user for purposes of deception—or at least by people who had created new Wikipedia accounts specifically for the purpose. Yet another user objected to the striking out of the votes:

These are people who have bothered to get involved. By pushing them out of this conversation, you are contributing to the continuing inability for newcomers to feel comfortable here. Especially women. Which is of course, the subject of the article being discussed.

Which, of course, it was. Wikipedia is periodically accused of being a boys’ club. “Around 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are men, and it shows,” New Scientistsaid earlier this month. Many Wikipedians agree and would like to do something about it. A large majority of commenters voted “Merge.” Some deployed the terms “ghettoization” and “back of the bus.” Then again, a few are voting for ghettoization—or as they say, “Diffuse women but not men,” diffuse being the term for sending members of a parent category out into a subcategory. At least it’s arguable that “women novelists” is a category of cultural and sociological interest. It was noted that Wikipedia features an extensive article on Women’s Writing in English, as part of Wikiproject Gender Studies and Wikiproject Women’s History.

“We should not let the media impose their view of political correctness on Wikipedia,” wrote Petri Krohn, who identifies himself as a Finnish “writer and Internet commentator.” He added—I think with a straight face—“We might also add some generic warning on American people category pages that they mainly contain white males and one should look into the subcategories.”⁠

To ask Jimbo’s question: how did this happen? It turns out that a single editor brought on the crisis: a thirty-two-year-old student of history named John Pack Lambert, enrolled at Wayne State University and living in the Detroit suburbs. He’s a seven-year veteran of Wikipedia and something of an obsessive when it comes to categories. He creates a lot of them. Last year he briefly created Category:American people of African-American descent. Then he raised hackles by recreating the defunct category American “actresses,” a word that others felt belongs in the same dustbin as “poetess.”

On April 1 Lambert started working alphabetically through all American novelists and moving the women into Category:American women novelists instead. First he did Patricia Aakhus, at 5:44 PM. Two minutes later, Hailey Abbott. Then Megan Abbott—pausing also to add her to Category:University of Michigan alumni. Then Diana Abu-Jaber, Alice Adams, Lorraine Adams, Renata Adler…. He did English women novelists, too; also Australian, German, and Moroccan. At 8:51, he created a new category, Nigerian women novelists, and put Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie there.

By the end of the day he’d gotten to the D’s: so Daphne du Maurier is now an English woman novelist. Like most people, she falls into multiple categories; she is also a “bisexual writer,” a “British historical novelist,” a “Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire,” an “English person of French descent,” an “English short story writer,” a “writer from London,” and an “LGBT writer from England.” But not (as of this morning) an English novelist.

And so it went. The next day Lambert was briefly sidetracked by a discussion of whether there should be a Category:Jeans enthusiasts (for “celebrities and famous people who are always wearing or frequently spotted wearing jeans”), but then he got back to work and A. L. Kennedy, till then a Scottish novelist, became a Scottish woman novelist. On April 3 he created a category for Greek women screenwriters; so far it has only one member.

The debate that broke out when Filipacchi’s opinion piece appeared is still running, and the issue appears to be more general and pervasive than most had originally thought. Throughout Wikipedia, in all kinds of categories, women and people of nonwhite ethnicities are assigned only to their subcategories. Maya Angelou is in African-American writers, African-American women poets, and American women poets, but not American poets or American writers. Many editors are saying that people need to be “bubbled up” to their parent categories.

Lambert vehemently disputes suggestions that he is motivated by sexism (or racism, as the case may be). He cites principles of Wikipedia categorization: arguing, for example, that huge categories should be broken up and “diffused” because they become useless for navigation. “This whole hullabaloo is really missing the point,” he told me. “The people who are making a big deal about this are not being up-front about what happens if we do not diffuse categories.” Others argued that laypeople are simply misunderstanding the purpose of a big category like American novelists. “It is really a holding ground for people who have yet to be categorized into a more specific sub-cat,” said a user called Obi-Wan Kenobi. “It’s not some sort of club that you have to be a part of.”

The editor who originally created the American women novelists category—a Londoner named Gareth E. Kegg—voted to merge it with American novelists and said that he had hoped the category would be “an inspiration to young women to know how many others have written before.” He was appalled, he said, “that there are less Wikipedia articles on women poets than pornographic actresses, a depressing statistic.”

A user called lmurchie created a new category: American men novelists. Immediately other Wikipedians objected. A distinctive feature of the Wikipedia culture is the development of shorthand for various rhetorical devices. For example, an editor has only to say, “A new user created this unhelpful WP:POINTy category, compounding our problems,” and everyone knows that WP:POINT is a link to a page describing a behavioral guideline, titled “Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.” When one editor argues that it’s unfair to address discrimination only for the American category, another can retort, “Objection: This is the Slippery Slope Fallacy,” with the relevant hyperlink embedded. It’s all very efficient. You can write (and someone did), “It looks sexist, it sounds sexist WP:QUACK.”

For some reason the first two members of Category:American men novelists were Orson Scott Card and P. D. Cacek, who was also categorized in “American science fiction writers” and “American horror writers.” It took about fifteen hours for someone to realize that Cacek, whose full name is Patricia Diana Joy Anne Cacek, didn’t belong. As of this writing, she is back to being an American novelist and an American woman novelist. Ernest Hemingway is now officially an American man novelist—manly indeed. F. Scott Fitzgerald will be relieved to know that he, too, made the cut.

By the end of the week, swimming against the tide, John Pack Lambert was still removing names from American novelists and adding them not just to American women novelists but to Category:African-American novelists, Category:American historical novelists, Category:American surrealist novelists, Category:19th-century American novelists, Category:American Chicano novelists, some of which he’s creating as he goes. This morning, American Chicano novelists contains only one page, Oscar Zeta Acosta. Acosta also belongs to Hispanic and Latino American novelists, American writers of Mexican descent, American politicians of Mexican descent, Writers from California, People from Modesto, California, and People from El Paso, Texas.

People of Wikipedia! You have a problem.

And Amanda Filipacchi? It seems some Wikipedians need to check the policy onshooting the messenger. The article about Filipacchi is undergoing a flurry of editing, not all well-intentioned. Her categories keep changing. Lambert created a new category, American humor novelists, just so he could move her into it.

npr: (via She Works: The Only Woman in the Room : NPR) NPR’s Nina Totenberg on being the only woman in the room: “My first piece of advice is get another woman in the room. And my second is demand respect. You should get it. You don’t have to be a man to get it. You don’t have to be a flirt to get it. Just be yourself and if it’s not working for some reason, just say so.” Photo Courtesy of Nina Totenberg
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npr:

(via She Works: The Only Woman in the Room : NPR)

NPR’s Nina Totenberg on being the only woman in the room:

“My first piece of advice is get another woman in the room. And my second is demand respect. You should get it. You don’t have to be a man to get it. You don’t have to be a flirt to get it. Just be yourself and if it’s not working for some reason, just say so.”

Photo Courtesy of Nina Totenberg

LIFE AFTER STEUBENVILLE

“My life is over. No one is going to want me now.” That is what Ma’lik Richmond, who is sixteen and was found delinquent (the juvenile court equivalent of guilty) in the rape of a sixteen-year-old girl from West Virginia, said at the end of his trial in Steubenville, Ohio. He also cried. Richmond will be held in juvenile detention for at least a year, and perhaps until he is twenty-one; his codefendant, Trent Mays, who is seventeen, will serve an extra year on a charge of distributing child pornography, for taking and sending around a picture of the victim, naked. The reactions to Richmond’s breakdown, and to the conviction itself, have been divided. There has been a loud yelp not only on Twitter and around Steubenville but also, fairly outrageously, in CNN’s first report, about how tragic this is for those teen-age boys. Poppy Harlow’s exchange with Candy Crowley focused almost entirely on how “two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believe their life fell apart.” Harlow mentioned that the charges were serious and that the victim was young, but talked about the prosecution as a sort of injustice against her, too: “The last thing she wanted to do was sit on that stand and testify. She didn’t want to bring these charges. She said it was up to her parents.” There was no note suggesting that the judge’s verdict might have vindicated that decision, or that maybe sixteen-year-old girls in places like Steubenville would be a little safer now.

Worse, one could take away the impression that a nice girl doesn’t press charges, rather than that nice boys do not, as was the case in Steubenville, take a girl who has drunk too much and bring her from party to party, assaulting her in a car on the way, until they end up in a basement where they strip and assault her again, and try to make her perform oral sex—except that she is not conscious enough—and then take photographs of her naked body. They do not text “yep” when asked if they had sex with her, or “I shoulda raped now that everybody thinks I did,” but “she wasn’t awake enough”—as Mays did, raising the question of whether he didn’t think it could be rape if she was passed out—and then text the girl to complain about being taken off the football team and tell her “I’ll just never do anything nice for you again.” Nice—but nice people at a party watching all this can’t let it happen, let alone send around pictures and videos with brutal captions afterward, and then leave their friend to look at them as she frantically wonders what happened to her in the hours she can’t remember. And nice policemen and nice football coaches don’t act like they hope it will just go away until the pressure of bloggers and social media (and the hackers of Anonymous) pushes them to act. And all of these people cannot then carry on as though the one who caused the trouble was the sixteen-year-old girl who was raped—and who, according to testimony in the trial, has been dropped by her friends, ostracized, and put under every sort of pressure—and not the rapists.

There was a good deal of anger in response to the CNN report, which, again, it fully deserved. A Gawker piece by Mallory Ortberg, for example, made the sensible point that “Their dreams and hopes were not crushed by an impersonal, inexorable legal system; Mays and Richmond raped a girl and have been sentenced accordingly.”

But one can go further. Where is the challenge to the idea that their lives really are “over”? There is something deeply harmful in all of the adults reinforcing the idea that the lives of teen-age boys are destroyed when a girl says what they have done. There is also something incomplete about just replying that they deserved the consequences (as much as they do). For one thing, it can mean asking a sixteen-year-old to be the one to judge the weight of her own trauma. It isn’t trivializing the seriousness of the sentence to say that teen-agers always think, when one door is closed, that everything is over, and that it’s the job of grownups to explain that it isn’t. A different life is not a worthless one. (Absent parents, not incidentally, are a theme of this story.)

There are more important and complicated questions beyond that, both practical and ethical. Telling those teen-agers that there shouldn’t have been consequences might mean another victim, in another town, years in the future. It also affects what sort of men the boys become, and one has to think that Richmond and Mays, too, have an interest in that. Does it destroy a teen-ager’s life to take him off the path of being an adult rapist? Perhaps it is too abstractly (even annoyingly) philosophical to ask what the “better” life is—one in which you have a remote shot at being in the NFL, or one in which you might be a person who treats others decently? Still, the question is worth asking.

It’s also the premise of a juvenile-justice system. Mays and Richmond were tried by a judgewho said, in giving the verdict, “I’m aware this is the first time they have been in trouble with the law. But these are serious offenses. If they were convicted in an adult court of these charges, they would be spending many years in prison.” He recommended that they be put in a youth facility. In CNN’s report, Crowley talked to an “expert” who said that the teen-agers would be “haunted” by being on the sexual-offenders registry for the rest of their lives. That actually depends on a hearing later and how juvenile authorities think they’ve done by the time they’re twenty-one. Those who are agonizing about wasted lives might spend their time on the inadequacy and, in many states, effective abandonment of the juvenile-justice system, and how kids who have done even less than these two are, too often, thrown in with adult offenders and written off. (As Rachel Aviv wrote in The New Yorker last year, “Each year, more than two hundred thousand offenders younger than eighteen are tried as adults.”) But first, they should think about a sixteen-year-old girl walking through a town in West Virginia, wondering if she has any friends in the world.

TV’s New Wave of Women: Smart, Strong, Borderline Insane

By HEATHER HAVRILESKY

Published: March 12, 2013 

At first glance, this looks like a great moment for women on television. Many smart and confident female characters have paraded onto the small screen over the past few years. But I’m bothered by one persistent caveat: that the more astute and capable many of these women are, the more likely it is that they’re also completely nuts.

I don’t mean complicated, difficult, thorny or complex. I mean that these women are portrayed as volcanoes that could blow at any minute. Worse, the very abilities and skills that make them singular and interesting come coupled with some hideous psychic deficiency.

On “Nurse Jackie,” for example, the main character is an excellent R.N. in part because she’s self-medicated into a state of extreme calm. On “The Killing,” Detective Linden, the world-weary, cold-souled cop, is a tenacious investigator in part because she’s obsessive and damaged and a pretty terrible mother. And then there’s “Homeland,” on which Carrie Mathison, the nearly clairvoyant C.I.A. agent, is bipolar, unhinged and has proved, in her pursuit of an undercover terrorist, to be recklessly promiscuous.

These aren’t just complicating characteristics like, say, Don Draper’s narcissism. The suggestion in all of these shows is that a female character’s flaws are inextricably linked to her strengths. Take away this pill problem or that personality disorder, and the exceptional qualities vanish as well. And this is not always viewed as a tragedy — when Carrie undergoes electroconvulsive therapy, we breathe a sigh of relief and draw closer. Look how restful it is for her, enjoying a nice sandwich and sleeping peacefully in her childhood bed.

You’d think the outlook would be sunnier on some of the lighter TV dramas and comedies, which have also lately offered several strong and inspiring (if neurotic) female protagonists, from Annie Edison of “Community” to Leslie Knope of “Parks and Recreation.” Yet here, too, an alarming number of accomplished women are also portrayed as spending most of their waking hours swooning like lovesick tweens — whether it’s Emily on “Emily Owens, M.D.” (a knowledgeable doctor who loses focus whenever her super-dreamy crush enters the room), the title character of “Whitney” (a garrulous photographer who is nonetheless fixated on her looks and her ability to keep attractive romantic rivals away from her man), or Mindy of “The Mindy Project” (a highly paid ob-gyn who’s obsessed with being too old and not pretty enough to land a husband). Even a classical comedic heroine like Liz Lemon on “30 Rock” is frequently reduced to flailing and squirming like an overcaffeinated adolescent. The moral of many of these shows doesn’t seem so far off from that of those fatalistic female-centric magazine features that seem to run every few months; something along the lines of, “You can’t have it all, ladies, and you’ll run yourself ragged if you even try.”

We could take heart that at least women are depicted as being just as reckless and promiscuous and demanding and intense as their male counterparts, if their bad behavior weren’t so often accompanied by a horror soundtrack and dizzying camera angles that encourage us to view them as unhinged. The crazed antics of male characters like Don Draper, Walter White or Dr. Gregory House are reliably treated as bold, fearless and even ultimately heroic (a daring remark saves the big account; a lunatic gesture scares off a murderous thug; an abrasive approach miraculously yields the answer that saves a young girl’s life). Female characters rarely enjoy such romantic spin.

Their flaws are fatal, or at least obviously self-destructive, and they seem designed to invite censure. Time and again, we, the audience, are cast in the role of morally superior observers to these nut jobs. At times we might relate to a flash of anger, a fit of tears, a sudden urge to seduce a stranger in a bar, but we’re constantly being warned that these behaviors aren’t normal. They render these women out of step with the sane world.

When Nurse Jackie chokes down pills and cavorts with the pharmacist while her perfectly good husband waits around at home with the kids, we can see clearly where too much sass and independence might lead. When Detective Linden dumps her son in a hotel room for the umpteenth time and then he goes missing, or Dr. Yang’s emotional frigidity on “Grey’s Anatomy” leaves her stranded at the altar, or Nancy Botwin of “Weeds” sleeps with (and eventually marries) a Mexican drug boss, thereby endangering her kids, we’re cued to shake our heads at the woeful choices of these otherwise-impressive women. When Carrie on “Homeland” chugs a tumbler of white wine, then fetches one of her black sequined tops out of the closet, we’re meant to lament her knee-jerk lasciviousness. Her mania is something she needs to be cured of, or freed from — unlike, say, Monk, whose psychological tics are portrayed as the adorable kernel of his genius.

So why should instability in men and women be treated so differently? “If you don’t pull it together, no one will ever love you,” a talking Barbie doll tells Mindy during a fantasy on “The Mindy Project,” reminding us exactly what’s on the line here.

Don’t act crazy, Mindy. Men don’t like crazy.

Some would argue that we’ve come a long way since Desi treated Lucy like a petulant child or June Cleaver smiled beatifically at her plucky spawn. “Mary Tyler Moore,” “Murphy Brown” and “Roseanne” all demonstrated that a smart woman can have a life outside of cooking, cleaning and begging to be put in her husband’s show. They offered us female characters who failed to blend seamlessly with their surroundings — because they were willing to voice their doubts, confess their crushes, seek out sex and openly confront others.

But right around the time “Ally McBeal” hit the air, the attempts to unveil the truth of the female experience started to sail far past the intended mark. The independent woman took on a hysterical edge; she was not only opinionated but also wildly insecure, sexually ravenous or panic-stricken over her waning fertility. Surprising as it was that McBeal was once heralded as a post-feminist hero on the cover of Time in 1998, what’s more surprising is that since then, we haven’t come all that much further, baby.

Sure, there are lots of exceptions, like Tami Taylor, the self-possessed working mom of “Friday Night Lights,” or Hannah Horvath, the outspoken memoirist of “Girls,” or the intelligent women of “Mad Men,” whose struggles and flaws at least parallel those of the men swarming around them. But alongside every coolheaded Peggy Olson, we get hotheaded train-wreck characters like Ivy Lynn of “Smash” — women who, like the ballerinas with lead weights around their ankles in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s short story “Harrison Bergeron,” can show no strength without an accompanying impediment to weigh them down, whether it’s self-destructive urges, tittering self-consciousness or compulsive pill-popping. Where Roseanne and Mary and Murphy matter-of-factly admitted and often even flaunted their flaws, these characters are too ashamed and apologetic (and repeatedly demeaned) to be taken seriously.

“Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience,” Adrienne Rich once wrote. There’s truth in these images of women, from the neurotic ob-gyn fixated on finding Mr. Right to the workaholic C.I.A. agent who feels adrift when she isn’t obsessing about issues of national security 18 hours a day. But why must these characters also be certifiable? Give Mindy a tiny slice of Louis C.K.’s poker-faced smugness. Give Carrie Mathison one-tenth of Jack Bauer’s overconfidence and irreproachability. Where’s the taboo in that?

Women, with their tendency to “ask uncomfortable questions and make uncomfortable connections,” as Rich puts it, are pathologized for the very traits that make them so formidable. Or as Emily Dickinson wrote:

Much Madness is divinest Sense —

To a discerning Eye —

Much Sense — the starkest Madness —

’Tis the Majority

In this, as All, prevail —

Assent — and you are sane —

Demur — you’re straightway dangerous —

And handled with a Chain —

“All smart women are crazy,” I once told an ex-boyfriend in a heated moment, in an attempt to depict his future options as split down the middle between easygoing dimwits and sharp women who were basically just me with different hairstyles. By “crazy,” I only meant “opinionated” and “moody” and “not always as pliant as one might hope.” I was translating my personality into language he might understand — he who used “psycho-chick” as a stand-in for “noncompliant female” and he whose idea of helpful counsel was “You’re too smart for your own good,” “my own good” presumably being some semivegetative state of acceptance which precluded uncomfortable discussions about our relationship.

Over the years, “crazy” became my own reductive shorthand for every complicated, strong-willed woman I met. “Crazy” summed up the good and the bad in me and in all of my friends. Whereas I might have started to recognize that we were no more crazy than anyone else in the world, instead I simply drew a larger and larger circle of crazy around us, lumping together anyone unafraid of confrontation, anyone who openly admitted her weaknesses, anyone who pursued agendas that might be out of step with the dominant cultural noise of the moment. “Crazy” became code for “interesting” and “courageous” and “worth knowing.” I was trying to have a sense of humor about myself and those around me, trying to make room for stubbornness and vulnerability and uncomfortable questions.

But I realize now, after watching these crazy characters parade across my TV screen, that there’s self-hatred in this act of self-subterfuge. “Our future depends on the sanity of each of us,” Rich writes, “and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”

Maybe this era of “crazy” women on TV is an unfortunate way-station on the road from placid compliance to something more complex — something more like real life. Many so-called crazy women are just smart, that’s all. They’re not too smart for their own good, or for ours.

slavicinferno: “I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, “She must have provoked him,” or, “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”-Patrick Stewart
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slavicinferno:

“I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, “She must have provoked him,” or, “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”-Patrick Stewart

(via pointy-earedbastard)

Source: slavicinferno

The Tale of Tina and Amy

 

 

They didn’t just destroy at the Globes — they’re two of the most important comedians working today

By Andy Greenwald on January 17, 2013

 

It was live from Hollywood and it was Sunday night, but Tina Fey and Amy Poehler killed just the same. As cohosts of the 70th Golden Globes, the two were sweet and savage, gracefully power-stripping an already silly event of any sanctimony (quoth Poehler: “You can smell the pills from here!”) without ever losing their smiles or offending any Scientologists in the process. It was a far cry from the preening narcissism of big award-show hosts past and, unfortunately, future. It’s too bad Maggie Smith wasn’t at the Beverly Hilton to collect her trophy; even the fearsome dowager countess could have learned a thing or two about quippy etiquiette from the former “Weekend Update” partners. Even at a swank dinner party like the Globes they’re polite enough to use the correct knife when skewering a guest.

That Fey and Poehler managed to be funny and unflappable, whether waterboarding James Cameron in absentia or losing to Lena Dunham from the cozy confines of George Clooney’s lap, should be no surprise. What’s shocking is that no one asked them to do this earlier. The two have been friends for decades and their she said, she said act was honed in stinky vans and stinkier college lounges all across the Midwest before it ever made it to Studio 8H. Since Hillary Clinton’s husband’s final years in the White House, Fey and Poehler, together and apart, have been beamed into our homes weekly, making news andshaping it and gradually redefining what we come to expect from comedy on TV. Their Golden Globe triumph was an overdue celebration of their 10-year march from terrible haircuts to universal acclaim. But it was also an unwelcome reminder that their regularly scheduled appearances on our televisions may soon be coming to an end. 30 Rock goes dark in just two weeks, Parks and Recreation — as low-rated as it is critically praised — faces an uncertain future. “No one plans to do porn, Tina!” was one of Poehler’s best gags on Sunday night. But I can’t help but think no one is planning for a TV landscape without these two on it, either.

It’s a funny thing about television — funnier even than the time Liz Lemon turned into aBatman villain: By giving us such free and unfettered access to great talent it simultaneously flattens and normalizes the experience. The masters of the medium tend to be the ones we notice less and take for granted more, especially those rare and hardy souls we allow to age in front of us — the Lettermans, the Stewarts, the Opraii. Fey and Poehler haven’t sat behind a desk since the SNL days and they remain wonderfully distinct, idiosyncratic performers — Fey a dry, mouthy vermouth to Poehler’s fizzy, physicalized pop. But both women made their bones as improvisors, a comedic tradition that tends to privilege the good of the group over the ambitions of the individual. (A proper Harold is only as good as its weakest member. Anyone who’s sat through a draggy “dinner party” sketch can tell you, a stray Ringo doesn’t make you the Beatles, it makes you the All-Starr Band.) Accordingly, the two have spent so much time making other people look good — everyone from Jimmy Fallon to Rob Lowe has seen his talents and timing improve by proximity — that it’s easy to overlook how much better they’ve made everything around them.

Reach back into the flannel-clad back passages of your mind, if you will, and consider the ’90s. It wasn’t just the anchor desk at “Weekend Update” that was dominated by the heavy-footed punchlines of male comedians, it was TV comedy in general. Thanks to big fish like Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Romano, motivated jokers had a ready-made itinerary that went much further than the Chuckle Factory in Phoenix: It involved honing an act, getting a development deal, and hitting it big. But stand-up is a solitary trade, and TV success didn’t seem to change that much; Seinfeld gave its star untold millions and an airplane hangar full of Porsches, but he never tossed anyone else the keys. In the face of this macho capitalism, Fey and Poehler were like merry Marxists — is it any wonder their Chicago Improv group was called Inside Vladimir? — eschewing ego for good vibes and better jokes. You can see both the generation and gender gaps yawning wide in the duo’s 2004 appearance on The Tonight Show. As the yuks-and-jiving careerist Jay Leno tries to make sense of his guests’ time in the Second City touring company, he asks first about their income — only $100 a show?!? — then assumes their agent was taking his 10 percent off the top of that. “Oh, even back then we had high-poweredagents,” Poehler deadpans. (Leno didn’t help his irrelevance much at the Golden Globes this weekend, where the New York Times quoted him saying “Parks and Recreation is my wife’s favorite show.”)

In the years since leaving SNL, Fey has honed a comic persona straight out of an Atlanticarticle, papercuts and all. But Liz Lemon’s foibles — as she put it in last week’s brilliant-as-ever episode of 30 Rock, “being a woman is the worst” — are the funny flip side to Fey’s own methodical competence. With 30 Rock, she crafted a star vehicle for herself and gave someone else the best part. Instead of burning herself out on an American Idol–style solo, she used her powerfully defined voice in harmony with a second generation of hilarious geniuses — many of whom have recently migrated to bigger, potentially even better things — to radically redefine what a sitcom should and could be. No show has ever offered such high-quality jokes at such an outrageously breakneck pace. Watching an episode of 30 Rock, even now in its final weeks, is like browsing Hermès on rocket-fueled roller skates: There’s too much, too fast! But Fey didn’t just raise the game, she fundamentally changed it: Sitcoms post–30 Rock are like the ATP World Tour post–wooden rackets. More importantly, the speed of Happy Endings or Community isn’t just for show; it’s democratizing and exhilarating. It’s the collaborative, shouty frenzy of a Groundlings show — or an overly caffeinated writers’ room — delivered directly into our living rooms.1

Poehler’s generosity as a performer has been no less groundbreaking. When Parks and Rec debuted, it was intended to be an Office-like vessel for Poehler’s outsize charms. But the factory model was a bad fit: Leslie Knope 1.0 was a flop, a cartoony weirdo who somehow succeeded despite her offputting quirks. This was Sitcom 101 for the typically broad male comedy star, but the cluelessness of the character clashed terribly with the sheer force of Poehler’s personality. Whether playing a sugar-bombed preteen or dropping a hot 16 while nine months pregnant, belly shaking like one of Flavor Flav’s oversize clocks, Poehler’s talent lies not in her fearlessness but in the follow-through. At her best, she’s the living embodiment of improv’s golden rule: to always say yes to whatever is thrown your way. And so Leslie’s script was flipped: Now she succeeded because of her type A obsessiveness; she was transformed into a steamroller of positivity — either climb aboard or get out of her way. The switch saved the show, created a worthy feminist icon, and brought the overall fiction more in line with the reality of its star. While not as involved behind the camera as Fey, Poehler’s role in the founding (and funding) of the Upright Citizens Brigade has filled the airwaves with funny people formed in her image, a generation of jubilant weirdos taught to be sweet without being soft, sharp without being cutting.

The biggest laugh on Sunday came when Lena Dunham, in a ham-handed attempt to pay tribute to the accomplished ladies she’d just bested, thanked Fey and Poehler for “getting [her] through middle school.” In response, the fortysomething co-hosts emerged from backstage with drinks in hand, snarkily toasting their faded youth. Dunham intended no slight, but she actually was on to something: Fey and Poehler are indeed the mothers of her style. Thanks to their unshowy toil, network TV comedy is now a female-fronted enterprise, from the adorkable New Girl to the untrustworthy B in Apt. 23, with Anna Faris and Malin Akerman set to join the scrum this fall. (Compare the dynamos that Dunham defeated to their nominated male counterparts. Jim Parsons? Still?)

But it was Dunham’s second acceptance speech that probably should have included the shout-out to Fey and Poehler. When Girls won for Best Comedy Series, it was Dunham herself who claimed the trophy — and with good reason, as she’s not only the star, she’s also the creator, executive producer, writer, and director. She’s telling her own story and has been entrusted with the power and budget to tell it the way she sees fit. It’s a titanic — and, until recently, quite rare — responsibility and one she’s handled with such grace that it’s almost possible to forget the role models who helped make it happen, the ones sipping lowballs in fake mustaches just behind the curtain.

My favorite story about Tina Fey and Amy Poehler comes from a chapter in Fey’s memoir,Bossypants. In it, she describes watching a newly arrived Poehler acting out a lewd bit in front of the cast. A horrified Jimmy Fallon cries out, “Stop that! It’s not cute! I don’t like it!” And Poehler, eyes blazing, replies, “I don’t fucking care if you like it.” The takeaway — in Fey’s words, “Do your thing and don’t care if they like it” — may sound unnaturally harsh, particularly for two women currently being praised for making every gasbag in Hollywood feel, for once, like they were on the right side of the joke. But it’s the necessary — and too often overlooked — steel underneath the sunniness, the backbone lurking justbehind the blerg. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler may be leaving TV — they may even be, as Poehler joked on Sunday, “going home with Jodie Foster” — but with such a generous legacy of goofiness and grit, there’s no question they’re leaving it in much better shape than they found it in.

What Maya Angelou Means When She Says 'Shakespeare Must Be a Black Girl'

[The author of this piece is a professor at Liberty University. Yes, THAT Liberty University. After reading this, I can’t help but reconsider my preconceptions of the academic qualifications of that institution and the people who teach at it.]

“Shakespeare must be a black girl.”

Theories about the true identity of the author known as Shakespeare abound. Among those said by skeptics who might actually be the bard are contemporary playwright Christopher Marlowe; Sir Francis Bacon; the Earl of Oxford; a gay man; or perhaps rather than a single author, a collective including actors and various writers. Dozens more alternative theories have been proffered as alternatives to the traditional attribution of a copious body of work that includes some of the best loved sonnets and dramas in the English language to the man from Stratford-upon-Avon. But a black girl?

That was exactly the suggestion Maya Angelou made during an electrifying lecture held this week at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia. Angelou, a great poet, novelist, and artist in her own right, was speaking metaphorically, of course.

Eighty-four years old and seated on the stage in a wheelchair for most of the address—looking more dignified than most able-bodied folks half her age—Angelou explained how as a young girl who once read (with no claim, necessarily, to understanding) every book in the tiny library in Stamps, Arkansas, she thought that the author of Sonnet 29 must have been a black girl because its solemn words expressed so fiercely what she—an outcast, the victim of racism, destitution, and childhood sexual abuse, crying out alone before a deaf heaven—felt inside:

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

And when Angelou recited them to us, these words sounded indeed like they had sprung forth from her soul.

Of course, what is best known about Angelou, besides her own words, is her silence. As a result of the abuse she experienced as a child, she was mute from the age of 7 to 13, an experience she writes about in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. But she has been anything but silent since then.

In the women’s literature class I’m teaching this semester—in which we are reading Angelou, along with Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Anne Bradstreet, Phyllis Wheatley, Charlotte Bronte, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, and many more female authors—we are emphasizing the distinctive qualities of women’s literature. We are marking what these authors bring to bear on the human condition, the tensions their writing reveals between public and private, personal and political, and the ways in which women’s writing speaks to experiences at variance with those of the male writers in the traditional canon.

But Angelou’s message was that there is more in poetry—and, by extension, all art—that unites than divides us. Not only can a long-dead, uber-white male writer like Shakespeare voice an experience so universal that it speaks truth to power for a poor black girl living in the Jim Crow American South, but that same girl can reflect years later on how the poetry of her beloved Edgar Allen Poe reads “like it was written by LL Cool J.” (And that same girl can get kicked out of a theater for heckling a famous actor when he reads “The Raven” more like a Shakespearean actor than a rapper.)

Angelou’s lecture, like the body of her work, was a testament to the power of art to unite us. It was also a testament to the power of art to save us. That was the theme of Angelou’s talk: “Poetry has kept us alive,” she declared again and again.

By “us,” she sometimes meant her own people, those who were and descended from enslaved Americans who have survived in this country for 400 years. Because of poetry, “We are still here,” she said.

But by “us” she mostly meant all of us. “The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you—black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.” It has been written—and must be read, “so that you know you’ve already been paid for,” she proclaimed like a preacher from the pulpit. She closed her lecture by reading the poem she was invited to write upon the occasion of the 50th anniversary for the United Nations. Then she said, “I wrote it for you.”

Just like a dead white man once wrote a sonnet for her.

Dephanie Jao | Hunting for Asians

There are some things you expect to happen to other people — stuff you hear on the news and you think, “Man, that’s bizarre!”

It’s never supposed to happen to you.

On Sept. 28, when I saw two of my friends walking down Locust Walk, all I was expecting was an hour, perhaps two, when we could casually talk. We shared what was happening in our lives, our classes, our work. We were three Asian graduate students — two international, one American — sharing boring stories about our boring lives.

Then around 9:40 p.m., we found ourselves approached by a group of five people. There were three women and two men — all white. They introduced themselves, explaining that they were part of a Drexel sorority event. Some sort of relay. A scavenger hunt. In order to complete this event, they needed our help. The prize for completion was $300 and they wanted to win.

“We need to hook up with three Asians.”

For a moment the three of us looked blankly at each other. We were shocked, for one. Was this really happening? Had they just casually placed Asians as an item in a scavenger hunt?

“Are you guys drunk?” I asked. No, no, they said, eyes wide. Of course they weren’t drunk.

After that, things happened fast. Without asking for our permission, the group tried to separate my friends and me from each other. One woman had a camera. There was a flash. During this time we heard reassurances. Shouts. Don’t worry, we need to take pictures as proof, but it doesn’t have to be real. We aren’t going to post this anywhere.

One woman tried to instruct one of my friends to make poses. Put your hands across your chest. Turn this way. Smile. Another woman tried to pull the other friend away, but he resisted.

Suddenly, I found myself alone with somebody’s arm curled painfully around my neck, forcing me to face sideways. It took a second before I realized that the arm belonged to a man and while he forced my head closer to his, he slowly bent his head toward mine, mouth open, ready for a kiss. I could smell the beer on his breath.

That was when I realized. I flung my arms upwards, forcing his arm off me.

“No,” I said. “No, we’re not doing this. No.”

The group tried arguing with us for a bit. The man who had tried to kiss me even tried to grab another passing woman. But in the end, they finally left us alone.

Of all the possible things that could be said about what happened to us, one thing was certain: it should not have happened. Not just the fact that the group approached us, but the whole event itself. It was horribly dehumanizing. All of us felt like we had been treated like animals, like convenient pieces to be picked up as a part of a collection. Asians are not Pokémon to be collected.

Asians are stereotypically perceived to be less likely to fight back when faced with incidents of racism. That still doesn’t make it OK.

Even though what happened may not have been the result of racial hatred, it was still racism. Racism occurs whenever people are viewed as less than full persons because of their race. The group that night did not see us as people or as students — but as items who fit a convenient category on their scavenger hunt: three Asians.

It took us two days to gather enough courage to report the incident to the police.

Thinking back, I wonder: What would have happened if all of us had been international students? Would we have reported the incident?

There were many inconsistencies in the story the group told us that night. For one, why were there men at a sorority event? Which sorority, if there was indeed one, had created the event? Were they even from Drexel? Did they approach anyone else?

The perpetrators will probably never be caught. Though cameras caught parts of what happened, they only caught silhouettes. So where do we go from here? What will the Penn community do in response?

Dephanie Jao is a second-year Graduate School of Education student from Detroit, Mich. Her email address is dephanie.jao@gmail.com.

How Rap Can Help End Rape Culture

Last week on the Tonight Show, President Obama had to point out that “rape is rape” for the second time in three months. This time, Obama was stating the seemingly obvious in response to Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who said he opposed abortions for rape victims because “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” Last time, the impetus was Republican Senate hopeful Todd Akin’s proclamation that, “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

We cannot reduce the ignorance of people like Mourdock and Akin to sound bites or place it in the category of election-season inanity. Their statements are the toxic runoff of our culture’s failure to prevent and address sexual violence in all its forms. The statistics stun: The high estimate of the number of women raped each year in the United States is 1.3 million, 54 percent of rapes are unreported, and a woman’s chance of being raped is one in five. The president’s elementary stance is nice but won’t fix anything on its own; what must change is the culture itself.

Given its well-documented and inexcusable problems with sexism, hip-hop might not seem a wise place to look to start making that change. But that fact actually makes the medium more ripe for reformers. Moreover, as one of the dominant, storytelling-driven art forms consumed and made by young people, rap provides a way for survivors and allies to testify, argue, and change hearts and minds. And as a song released this past week by the promising young rapper Angel Haze proves, rap’s potential as a weapon against rape culture isn’t merely academic.

In recent years, hip-hop controversies have produced some of the most powerful conversations and activism around sexual violence. Last year, Ashley Judd made waves by calling out hip-hop’s “rape culture,” to the dismay of The Roots drummer ?uestlove and others who are tired of one genre of music being blamed for all of society’s ills. More recently, rapper Too $hort caught criticism thanks to shameful comments in a video blog post at XXL Magazine, which included instructions for adolescent boys about how to sexually assault girls under the guise of playfulness. After a tepid apology and mounting pressure from a coalition of black and Latina women called “We are the 44 percent” (44 percent of sexual assault survivors are under 18 years old), Too $hort sat down for a candid interview published by Ebony. He emphasized his previous ignorance, but also seemed genuinely remorseful and shaken, admitting he made a serious and harmful mistake, apologizing, and calling the controversy a “wake-up call.”

Into this battleground enters Angel Haze, the acclaimed Michigan-born 21-year-old, who recently released a brilliant and devastating track about her own story as a rape and abuse survivor, called “Cleaning Out My Closet.” This is not the first rap song that addresses sexual violence against women. Ludacris’s “Runaway Girl” and Eve’s “Love is Blind,” are two of the more commercially successful examples, though there are countless lesser-known songs, like Immortal Technique’s “Dance With the Devil,” that critique rape culture unflinchingly. But Haze’s song is amplified by the current political context, and differentiated by both tone and content.

“Cleaning Out My Closet” is a hurricane. Haze unapologetically and explicitly tells her story, and her jagged delivery makes listeners uncomfortable even as they appreciate her skills and flow. There are no words for the pain Haze endures, but she makes due, bending each phrase with fury and focus. She describes how the damage of abuse bleeds into every area of her life, including her relationships with future lovers, her family, and her personality, body image, and physical health.

The beat used for “Cleaning Out My Closet” is borrowed from an Eminem song with the same name. It’s a subversive move, considering the way Em has depicted and in many respects trivialized violence against women in his music. Haze bravely details the torture she suffered, and importantly, she reveals personal violence as a social phenomenon—everyone knew, but nobody stopped it:

“And then it happened in a home where every fucking one knew/
And they ain’t do shit but fucking blame it on youth/
I’m sorry mom but I really used to blame it on you/
But even you by then wouldn’t know what to do.”

Her tale is personal, but the upshot is wide. In order for rape to be as widespread as it is, it requires more than the actions of attackers. It requires the indifference of countless others, like those held accountable in the Jerry Sandusky case, who bury their heads in the sand as the terrorism continues.

The song ends on a triumphant note, as Haze celebrates her victory over fear and shame, presenting herself as living proof that “there’s a way from the ground,” and thanking the audience for bearing witness to her catharsis.

Angel Haze is proof that hip-hop can be both a warzone and a weapon, especially for young women of color. Hip-hop has long rewarded artists who break the silence, and that may end up being the case again.

The objectification of women and depictions of sexual violence are commonplace in hip-hop, as they are across the landscape of entertainment culture. The vast majority of artists with substantial commercial backing show little public concern for the cancer that is rape culture. But Angel Haze is proof that hip-hop can be both a warzone and a weapon in this fight, especially for young women of color. Despite the sexism they face, engaging rap music is one of the ways these young people come to know themselves and build political consciousness.

Moreover, hip-hop has long rewarded artists who break the silence and speak truth to power, and that may end up being the case again. Groups like Public Enemy started a conversation about police brutality against blacks and Latinos long before data about the racism of “stop and frisk” policies made its way to the public sphere. LGBT hip-hop artists continue to carve out their own spaces and challenge sexism and homophobia, and when those connected to hip-hop communities come out, as Frank Ocean did, it provides fuel for more prominent figures like Common and Kanye West to challenge bigotry. And finally, during this election system, some of the most poignant critiques of our political system have come from rappers like Lupe Fiasco and Killer Mike. In their music and media appearances, these artists ask pointed questions about the usefulness of electoral politics and the two-party system for the urban poor, whose degradation and marginalization remain no matter who is in the White House.

Without warriors like Haze, the baseness and sickness of sexual violence remains muffled, and the conversation proceeds on the deranged terms set by Mourdock, Akin, and others who benefit from the status quo. Survivors’ stories move us away from clarification and apology, towards righteous anger and action, and hip-hop can help.

Domestic violence and indifference doubly harm women

More men are claiming, when police arrive to investigate domestic violence, that they are really the victims. Authorites’ threats of dual arrest may discourage women from calling for help.

By Sandy Banks

October 13, 2012


October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, so it’s fitting that I share a tale that makes me believe that we still — despite decades of tough talk — don’t treat domestic violence as the serious crime it is.

Megan Shamburg worries every day that she’ll become a headline, a statistic, a murder that could have been prevented. The 27-year-old woman has an 8-month-old daughter, a 7-month-old restraining order and a violent ex-boyfriend who’ll be out of a jail in a month.

Shamburg called 911 last March. She said her boyfriend had smacked her while she was holding their baby. When deputies from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lomita station arrived, they told her to wait with the baby outside while they talked with the boyfriend.

He told deputies that he never struck Shamburg, but pushed her away after she hit him. Neither of them had marks or bruises. Deputies considered it a he said, she said, and left without making an arrest.

Shamburg said they gave her two options: Deputies could haul them both to jail — and put their newborn daughter in foster care — while detectives sorted things out. Or she could leave the apartment.

She left, for good, that night. And she got a restraining order the next week that barred her ex from contacting her.

He violated it immediately, Shamburg said. She recorded his calls, saved his texts and documented his threats.

She reached out to his ex-wife and learned he had a rap sheet, with a felony conviction for making death threats and a string of domestic violence arrests. Because he was on probation for those, he was jailed in May for violating Shamburg’s restraining order.

But four months later, he was out and harassing Shamburg again, she said. She notified his parole officer. He went back to jail in September, but with the lightest possible sentence.

“The judge said there were no allegations of abuse in this relationship, so she gave him the low term,” Shamburg said.

There were no allegations because the deputies who came to their home last spring had refused to arrest him.

“I’ve got a 3-inch binder full of restraining orders, court cases, and violations … but no battery report to prove that he’s ever been violent,” Shamburg said.

That’s what launched her on a campaign to force deputies to account for what she considers their indifference to the threat posed by her ex. “They say they can’t arrest him until he does something,” she said. “But that’s too late for me.”

::

I can’t claim to know what happened in Shamburg’s apartment that night in March.

But I think it strains the boundaries of common sense to take the word of a man with a years-long history of abuse, dismiss the account of a frightened woman, then threaten her with arrest.

Sheriff’s Lt. John Wolak is investigating Shamburg’s complaint that deputies were “disrespectful, discourteous, rude, or downright lied” on their report.

Wolak told me he understands that Shamburg is afraid. But he said the case was complicated because, “on that night, the deputies did not determine that a crime had occurred.”

Domestic violence counselors I talked to said Shamburg’s case signals a disturbing trend — a dramatic increase in the number of men who claim, when police arrive, that they are really the victims.

Officers often respond to the dilemma by arresting both parties. From their point of view, that might be a tidy way to resolve the dispute.

But the threat of dual arrests may also discourage women from calling for help.

“We have seen a dramatic increase in women having to defend themselves against charges that they started the fight,” said Adrienne Lamar, associate director of the Jenesse Center, a domestic violence intervention program in South Los Angeles. Police are supposed to be trained to identify the dominant aggressor by history, evidence and patterns of behavior, she said.

Domestic violence, after all, is about controlling your partner not just through violence but through fear.

The “dominant aggressor” may not be the one who started the fight, but the one most able or likely to inflict serious harm.

That may seem gender-neutral on paper, but in real life, it’s not.

Because Shamburg’s 6-feet-4, 270-pound ex-boyfriend will never have to worry — as she did that night — that at any second, someone vastly stronger, someone you’ve trusted and loved, might put hishands around your neck and squeeze until you’re dead.

::

Shamburg’s quest for a paper trail at last paid dividends on Friday, when a deputy district attorney told her that her ex will be charged with misdemeanor battery in connection with the March incident.

It may not lengthen his jail term much, but it helps correct the tilt in a system that sometimes seems weighted against female victims.

Shamburg’s ex-boyfriend’s former wife sent me a note that said it best: “Since we stayed in the relationship as long as we both did, we are judged as crazy before he is judged as dangerous.”

The past seven months have been a learning process for Shamburg.

“Part of this is humiliating,” she blogged to friends last spring. “Who wants to admit that they had a baby with a complete loser who smacked her around when he got angry. not me.. but I did.”

She realizes now that her relationship was abusive in ways she hadn’t acknowledged. “I was controlled, talked down to …. Everything is your fault, always your fault …. if you had only kept your mouth shut, done what you were told, read their mind, parted the seas, walked on water….”

It’s a feeling that women trapped in controlling relationships are bound to recognize.

Shamburg was asked last week by the deputy fielding her latest complaint, what it is exactly that she wants.

She rattled off some basics: Credibility, respectful deputies, an accurate arrest report.

But what she really wants is something that no deputy, judge or restraining order will ever be able to promise:

“I want to be able to leave my house after dark,” she said. “I want to not be scared to put my baby in the car. I want to not wish, every second of every day, that I have eyes in the back of my head.”

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