The murders of Tanisha Jordan and Deanah McCoy in the past few months have sent shock waves through Western North Carolina. These women were killed despite their attempts to improve their lives, despite the fact that they were the mothers of their killer’s children, despite the fact that they sought help, and despite the fact they were loved. Domestic violence specialists and family members are left to puzzle over what else could have been done, and advocates of women have urged early identification and intervention concerning abusive relationships.

Clearly, these steps are necessary and vital, and our community should work to ensure that no woman lives in an abusive situation; however, I feel the problem of violence against women has wide implications and is not limited to those who are in or who know of someone in an abusive relationship. This kind of violence affects every woman in the community. It scares us. My fear bubbles down in the pit of my stomach, festering and spreading, until I am really, really mad.

I haven’t been hit by anyone since my older brother stopped pummeling me in elementary school. I know this area is probably safer than many others, and I often leave my car door unlocked. I believe in the goodness of people, and I certainly don’t hate men. What angers me is the constant, though sometimes almost deniable, fear that lingers in me when I am alone. It controls my actions. It tells me where I can go and when. It makes me want to get in and out of the shower quickly. I wish that I could chalk this up as another one of my neuroses, but I know that other women feel it too.

Just because I haven’t been hit doesn’t mean that I haven’t had reason to fear men. For whatever reason, I have experienced a series of frightening encounters with men since adolescence. When I was in high school, I was stalked for the better part of my senior year by a classmate. Verbal attacks, hang-up phone calls, and other threatening incidents culminated in a police escort to my high school graduation. That was just the beginning. College offered a number of scary episodes with other men, both in the United States and while I was in England for a year, that made me question if I was somehow at fault, somehow provoking these potentially violent situations.

Popular culture and the media don’t help my fears at all. My dreams are filled with scenes from decades of television and movie viewing - from “Twin Peaks” to “Psycho” - in which women are brutally victimized by men. A hundred and fifty years ago, Edgar Allan Poe argued in his “Philosophy of Composition” that there is nothing more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman. And while I love the Thelma and Louise spirit, I know that their strength didn’t save them from rape and that, to escape further violence by men, they killed themselves in the end.

All of this plays into the minds of women everywhere. Because of fear, we don’t have the freedom of movement that men do. I am a runner, and my favorite place to run is in the woods far from cars and noise and other people. Men I know often get up and hit the trails early morning before work or after work just before dark. They don’t worry if their running buddy cancels or if the trails are especially deserted. For women it’s a different story. It scares me to be on the trails without someone else, especially when I’m not able to bring my dogs with me. The usual serenity of my run is interrupted by stressful thoughts about self-protection. I start calculating how and where I would run if someone attacked me.

Out of fear, women walk around in an invisible prison. The bars are inside our psyches. I don't need a jailer to tell me where and when I can and cannot go.

And yet, there is a certain part of me that refuses to be jailed, that refuses to listen to the voice of my mother, the movies, the television shows, the newspapers that warn, “What are you, stupid? Don’t go there by yourself!” Reportedly, Tanisha Jordan was advised to leave her home before her ex-boyfriend came back and murdered her. Though she might have been alive if she had left, I think I understand why she didn’t. It’s a horrible feeling to be on the run and to let fear control your actions. When should women stand up against it? When should women say enough? These are risky questions when lives are at stake.

Ultimately this boils down to an issue of abuse of power - individuals using inequities to get what they want. Historically, men have used financial, social and psychological power to dominate and control women, and when these means of manipulation become ineffective, certain men retreat to the physical level to regain their sense of power. These are the rationales of a 2-year-old: “Give me the toy or I'll punch you.” If Deanah McCoy and Tanisha Jordan had given their killers what they wanted, they wouldn’t have been killed. What is it that men want women to give them? Anything they want? Our love? Our bodies? Sometimes, like spoiled children, I think that men are so used to getting what they want they don’t know how to take no for an answer.

I’m not trying to paint a picture of women as victims; God knows we need to break away from that image. I have taken self-defense classes. I know how to use keys and pens to poke out attackers’ eyes. But how do we really balance the inequities of power between men and women? None of the solutions sound that great. I don’t want to own a gun, nor do I want to be rescued from the face of danger by my own bodyguard, a la Kevin Costner. I want to kick ass like Sigourney Weaver in “Aliens.” I don’t want to have to kick ass like Sigourney Weaver in “Aliens.” I want men to know they can’t always get what they want. I want to stop feeling scared so that I will stop feeling angry.

(Esther Godfrey teaches in the English Department at Western Caroline University. She can be reached at egodfrey@wcu.edu)

 

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The Smoky Mountain News