What happens when women fight back: they go to jail
If you are a female human being, you know all about harassment and threats from men. If you are a female human being who’s ever lived in the city, you know in that in the urban landscape, the threat level from men is so high and so constant that just walking down the street while female is orange-level hazardous. There are no “good” sections in the city if you’re a woman; there are no good neighborhoods as opposed to bad ones. They’re all bad. The gibbering assholes own the streets, and every woman is simply their prey.
All of us have imagined to ourselves how things would play out if the shouted intimidation turned into physical assault (that is, those of us who haven’t already had that experience). “I’d swing my backpack at him. I’d kick him in the nuts. I’d fight!” You think? That’s what some women in Greenwich Village did, and guess what? They were sentenced to jail. Sent to jail for years…for the crime of “assaulting” the asshole who’d assaulted them.
I’m going to quote directly here from the excellent summary of the case by Imani Henry:
The attack
On Aug. 16, 2006, seven young, African-American, lesbian-identified friends were walking in the West Village. The Village is a historic center for lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) communities, and is seen as a safe haven for working-class LGBT youth, especially youth of color.
As they passed the Independent Film Cinema, 29-year-old Dwayne Buckle, an African-American vendor selling DVDs, sexually propositioned one of the women. They rebuffed his advances and kept walking.
“I’ll f— you straight, sweetheart!” Buckle shouted. A video camera from a nearby store shows the women walking away. He followed them, all the while hurling anti-lesbian slurs, grabbing his genitals and making explicitly obscene remarks. The women finally stopped and confronted him. A heated argument ensued. Buckle spat in the face of one of the women and threw his lit cigarette at them, escalating the verbal attack into a physical one.
Buckle is seen on the video grabbing and pulling out large patches of hair from one of the young women. When Buckle ended up on top of one of the women, choking her, Johnson pulled a small steak knife out of her purse. She aimed for his arm to stop him from killing her friend.
The video captures two men finally running over to help the women and beating Buckle. At some point he was stabbed in the abdomen. The women were already walking away across the street by the time the police arrived.
Buckle was hospitalized for five days after surgery for a lacerated liver and stomach. When asked at the hospital, he responded at least twice that men had attacked him.
There was no evidence that Johnson’s kitchen knife was the weapon that penetrated his abdomen, nor was there any blood visible on it. In fact, there was never any forensics testing done on her knife. On the night they were arrested, the police told the women that there would be a search by the New York Police Department for the two men—which to date has not happened.
After almost a year of trial, four of the seven were convicted in April. Johnson was sentenced to 11 years on June 14.
When I lived in the city I walked everywhere, of course, because that’s what you do when you live in the city. If I’d been a millionaire I suppose I could have hired a 24-hour bodyguard and chauffeured limo, but I wasn’t a millionaire. And so I had to actually walk on the sidewalk. The constant constant constant constant stream of intimidation and abuse from men was such that I don’t know how I kept my sanity.
One day I lost it.
I was walking to work in the evening in winter, so it was dark, and I was carrying a pair of tennis shoes. A car full of men started crawling the curb beside me, with the guys keeping up a steady barrage of comments on what exactly they were going to do to me and how, etc. etc. etc. etc. It was a small street, traffic was extremely light, and I was the only pedestrian in view, all of which made their behavior even more threatening. I flipped. I was so sick of being harassed, so sick of the fear, so fed to the teeth with the trauma of walking while female, even a barely discernible female wrapped in a winter coat and a huge scarf and wearing goddamn snow boots — aaggghh, even thinking about it now, years later, I shake with emotion. At any rate, a switch went and I erupted in fury. I hurled myself at the window of the car and started hitting at the men with the pair of tennis shoes I was carrying. I think I was shrieking at them to leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone!!!!!!!!
And so they did. They sped off, fortunately without killing me first.
In the years since then I’ve marveled several times over what a fool I was. I could have been murdered so easily. “There wasn’t a cop anywhere in sight!” I’ve thought to myself. Irony. The thing is, now I realize that I was a lucky a cop wasn’t in sight. I could have gone to jail. For assault.
***
6 Responses to “What happens when women fight back: they go to jail”
-
Margaret says:
Hello Violet – from The Netherlands again. This post is so true. It’s disconcerting how often self-defense is considered a crime – for women that is.
It’s amazing that we can still walk on the streets while female when we know these two things: 1) the police will not protect us and 2) we are not permitted to defend ourselves.
July 9th, 2007 at 1:54 am EST -
Ann Bartow says:
Been there, or at least pretty close to there.
-
Heart says:
Hey, Dr. Violet Socks, Ann and Margaret, you know, I don’t know a woman who hasn’t been there at some point in her life, if she’s lived any length of time. It’s amazing the things we do to keep ourselves safe, or try to, and how high the frustration level can be. Years ago I had a job that required me to do a lot of traveling locally and to work really irregular hours as an independent contractor. When I found myself in downtown Seattle, say, in Pioneer Square, late at night, the only way I felt remotely safe was to walk right down the middle of the street, in downtown Seattle, because I figured that way, if anyone tried anything, I’d be in the headlights of *somebody*.
A while back I spent some time with a second wave feminist, a proud Second Wave radical feminist butch dyke. She told me when she worked in New York City as an attorney, she often rode the subway, and regularly was groped. One day it was the last straw, and when some sucker groped her she took a knife out of her pocket and stabbed him, just before she got off the subway. She told me it felt really really good.
That sounds like a horrible thing to say, and I am completely nonviolent, but I also completely understand the feeling.
Heart
-
Violet says:
Heart! Here you are, and I was just about to go over to your place and tell you I’d had to blog this because your post resonated with me so much.
Margaret, Ann (nice to see both of you again!), Heart — yes, we’ve all been there. And we’re supposed to keep our eyes down and endure, eyes down and endure, never raise a hand to defend ourselves, cause if we do then we’re in the wrong.
How is it that that woman was sentenced to 11 years? How is that possible? Men don’t get 11 years for murder. The average sentence for a man who kills his wife — KILLS HER — is two to six years.
-
Infidel says:
I would have thought Paul Tergeist would have something to say on this subject.
-
ginmar says:
Well, women are lesser beings, of course. What makes you think they get to befoul the holy male with their femaleness?
