At first I dismissed
Representative Todd Akin‘s weak statement about rape and conception as more
political cant like that about abortion.
Another statement about women that sidetracked the real issue of
violence in our society. The candidate
had supplied no statistics and yet he gained international attention.
Just a month before,
I looked up the statistics of violence against women in Minnesota, thinking of
a move. I had been told that the crime
rate was better in Minneapolis. In 2009,
Duluth boasted a zero rate of rape while the rate in Minneapolis was about five
times per capita that in New York City.
I lived in South Minneapolis in the 1980s while attending graduate
school and, although many women were from outstate Minnesota (towns or small
cities), we didn’t know how quickly the crime was rising.
According to this
chart, rape and assault increased 20 times in Minnesota from 1960 to 1995.
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| Note: The complete chart also includes statistics for Larceny Theft and Vehicle Theft. |
Candidate Todd Akin
did refer to studies that documented a woman’s physical response to sexual violence. For what reason? To diminish the impact of rape? This, to me, was like heightening the
abortion issue after the birth control pill was available. Control of violence against women is the
issue at hand just as abortion should shadow the control of pregnancies for
women in unstable relationships. The
first issue improved upon, the second issue is not as critical.
Women living in high crime districts talk of crime, discuss it, and they live very differently
from women in safer areas. Many in 1980s
Minneapolis became conservative with men, even reactionary, and not matching
the attitudes about them. Often I
discovered that neighbor women left a relationship for school or a career and
that they were hardly ready to respond to anything hazardous.
The police had less
time for complaints that weren’t life-threatening. Relationship violence could be heard
sometimes in apartment buildings, what probably added an invisible statistic. Violations that would usually deserve a
patrol car were neglected and made women vulnerable to the men they knew and to
men in general. After work one day, I
made a call to the police about a man exposing himself in an alley. The police didn't want to spend time chasing him down because such cases were not deemed as harmful as others. There was so much major crime that the lesser
crimes were a part of the environment.
When I moved to
Duluth, I owned only one pair of shorts.
I didn't show my legs except when wearing skirts, usually below the knee, and now I wonder if women in that high crime area
would dare to wear a scoop-necked blouse.
I would say not often while it is the fashion for many women in
America.
I kept strange hours
and a nightlight on then. My tastes in
literature changed and I didn’t even watch BBC “Mystery” much, my craving for
excitement was so much lowered. I began
watching home improvement and nature shows on PBS. Though I lived in an old building with nice
carpeting and light fixtures, cocaine raids were often going on down the
street. I went from reading Anais Nin to
reading the early works of Virginia Woolf, an author who hardly ever relied on
violence. Her diaries tell how the bombs
during two world wars were dropping on London when she wrote. It was like learning that Doctor Dolittle began in Hugh Lofting's letters to his children while he fought in World War I.
  I read nonfiction,
Jacques Cousteau and other mellowing influences. Many tenants were living within their own
interior current and in apartments decorated for that. I read magic, folklore and children’s literature.
At the same time, re-reading
Shakespeare, I developed an interest in the Roman Empire. The portrayal of violence was fine if it
happened and especially if it was in a distant past. I found graphic violence unsatisfactory. If it didn’t have the sensitivity to feel for
the victim and give the victim pages, it lacked conscience.
My building was
broken into twice. The first time, the
window at the back door was smashed and a woman tenant found the burglar in the
laundry room after which both ran. When
the police came, they said to appalled women in the hallway, “Maybe he was
cold.” I moved. There were nights of vigilance held at
neighborhood parking lots but as I now see from the chart, the improvement is
not great.
I would say that the
threat of violence is enough to lower birth rates. But if Representative Akin took buses in
Minneapolis, he might see many young women with children and without a wedding
ring. The city is a place of
extremes. Some of my experiences were
sublime but when it was bad there, it was very bad. I resented the difficulties of living in a
large city a hundred miles from my birthplace when the work I did wasn’t so
available in smaller cities. And there
were so many advantages there. Recently
I saw that my short collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other
Stories, was ordered into the Hennepin County Library, Minneapolis. That thrilled me, its being the central
downtown library and a place where I spent many hours.
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