Friday, March 22, 2013

How to Dress for a Rape Trial

When you spend more than a few minutes thinking about what you're going to wear, if you're female, there's something else at work. For those of you that spare yourselves the agony and the glory that is makeup, congratulations. You win. But I will tell you this: you are still, and this is unfortunate for all of us, female. Sorry. This is ruining the great myth of femininity, that we're just born with this great knack of looking like the male (or even female) fantasy at every second of every day, but, I'm gonna go ahead and ruin it for a second. Actually, I'd like to ruin a few myths.

On a foggy morning where I live, I walked to jury duty on a day where the ocean and the sky met in one universal haze of gorgeous grey and moving fog. I abhor the heat, as I suspect secretly that literally everyone on the planet does but attempts some forgery of fraternization/sororitization (ha, sorry, the first one is a word and the second one isn't. How bout that.) with what is commonly associated with getting out of school. But I was in Grade A in Colorado so my ass was in school all summer and through every Christmas/New Years break so I don't recognize these same seasonal patterns.

So I called in to jury duty and it is my pleasure. Because we should actually participate in the society in which we live, is my basic opinion. I will not be dressing like Princess Leia or pretending that I have a crazy undetectable illness or whatever else one can do to beg out of jury duty. The great state where I live barely recognized (did not, at all, in fact) that I had actually been living in an entirely different state for all of 3 years and needed me to assist in rendering justice in a case.

Arriving at 7:30 with enough time to buy a bottle of water, nobody was called for quite a bit. The usual paperwork and Introduction to Sitting In A Box Hearing Boring Stuff from Idiots by Idiots About Idiots For Days On End went on for about an hour. At 10am, the Jury Wrangler announced that this was a longer case. 16 working days, in fact. As I sat and silently said please don't call my name, please don't call my name, please don't - it was called.

In 1998 a woman was robbed. Or, it was attempted robbery. She was then kidnapped, taken behind closed shops near a highly traveled freeway, and raped. And then she was raped. And then she was raped some more. And then, she was impaled, internally, with what I will not even tell you here. And then she was beaten. And then it went on. And then it went on. And then it went on. And then they beat and tortured and tormented and raped her some more.

She was 45.

She had $6 in food stamps that she had borrowed from her roommate.

It was the 4 days after Christmas.

She was discovered by a CalTrans freeway worker.

She had 25 bone fractures.

Her ear had been torn off.

They dragged her to two different locations.

She begged for her life.

She did not live through the night, possibly the event. It is possible they left her to die.

And then what. They went to IHOP? They sent text messages about...what. How does that even work?

What do you wear to sit 4 feet from the monster, one of who even knows how many (5? 3?), who is capable of doing this? Who stood, turned around, and smiled, at the 34 potential jurors? A suit of armor? A backpack full of explosives? A really nasty look?

I'm not talking about what I looked like. Because it doesn't matter. I'm female. I could wear a burqua, I could wear a mini skirt so tiny my hands wouldn't cover it. I could wear an Armani suit. I could wear a hoodie and baggy jeans. Do I need to go on listing how many dress up doll outfits we have to say who we are? Does it matter? Does it matter if I look like a supermodel and wear the highest of heels and the tightest of dresses? Does it matter if I wear a fucking blanket and ten different kinds of head wear and mumble like I'm crazy? Does the same crime still happen? Because if you're not getting by now, the answer is yes. Yes. The same fucking violent, insane, fucking DARK AGES fucking crime still happens.

I'm saying, how you do live as a female when this is still happening to us, in what is purportedly a civilized country, in 20 motherfucking 13?

There were women there. Teachers, maybe. Mothers. Maybe the men felt something. If they did, I sure as shit didn't see it. I know, because I looked.

The rebel in me wanted to wear the shortest skirt, the reddest heels, fake eyelashes, pushup bra, and fishnet motherfucking tights. The student in me caught me evaluating even shaving and knowing that that doesn't make a difference, and wanting to don my nerdiest glasses, pull my hair back to nearly invisible, and wear something that would never get me noticed. The enlightened part of me knows that this is what I already do, every single day, and have, since I was ever noticed as a girl. The warrior in me wanted to reach over that 3' flimsy wooden barrier and do what damage I could before the bailiff even realized what day it was.

You are never, ever, ever safe as a woman. Not even married, not with ten men in the house. No, men do not make you safe. Nothing makes you safe. Not with a gun, that doesn't make you safe. It doesn't. Not if you're 90, as one local serial rapist was fond of grandma aged women several years back. Not being so young you just want to watch tv and eat candy. From the time you are born, until you die, if you are female, you are constantly, every single second, of every single day, at home, at work, walking to your car, going to the grocery store, taking the subway, saying goodbye to your friends, you are a walking fucking crime waiting to happen.


And I am so completely, insufferably fed up with it.

When I left the courthouse, I was hit on 5 times in 3 blocks.

It's enough to make one a violent criminal.

And on May 22, 2013, the jury gave him the death penalty. And it doesn't make one bit of it better.

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