Feminist Perspective on the G8/G20?

Ripple, like you, my first concern is the actual sexual assaults made on women by police, along with stories of suggestive taunting as women prisoners were being ID'd, threats of what might happen to women who go on being "protestors," and so on. I think most of us believe these stories right away because we live our physical vulnerability -- it all just sounds so probable -- and then some of us have experience.

We need a serious investigation, although I don't know how that's done if most of the charges have been dropped (obviously part of the plan). How does any of these women (if they're willing to testify publicly, which they understandably might not be) get a chance to witness in public? One route I can think of is what the ICRC did with about a dozen people who'd been kept at CIA black sites and tortured -- because they'd had no opportunity to communicate with each other, their repeated descriptions of the same treatment became legally persuasive (not that anyone's doing anything with that yet, but it's possible). It would be great if someone could organize a debriefing project for the women arrested last week -- send out an invitation to women who are willing to give a statement, signed or pseudonymous, and then assemble those into a report. It would be even greater if we could get some institutional support behind such a project that could raise its profile.

And then my own impressionistic reactions to what I've picked up only from a distance: Someone I read somewhere said that the cops were mainly arresting "young women and small men," which is kind of a brutal way to put it, but it has a certain verisimilitude. How can we get that message out, that the cops have a nose for the vulnerable? That that pattern shows up again and again, all those big tough guys armed and in armour but completely ineffective except in massive groups and when they're taking down the helpless.

The macho swagger overkill -- which Blair keeps up in his every public appearance -- just drives me wild, beyond anything I can articulate. I know that's not all men -- as a lover of men I think I have pretty good credentials, but that default setting so many seem to have -- "I can always dominate if I'm challenged too far" -- leaves me chewing nails. Physical aggression disgusts and infuriates me even as it scares me; paternalistic condescension drives me right 'round the bend, and of course that's what we're now getting from most of the civil authorities in suits who are acting as apologists for the police.

I know that a lot of feminists believe we should stop hiding behind our physical vulnerabilities and just make ourselves strong and brave. I semi-wish I could think that way, but I can't -- I'm too old, not strong enough, head not in right place, easily intimidated everywhere but in words. And I don't really see how anyone, woman or man, has a chance against a solid line of robocops except in vast numbers. Words and numbers are the best I can think of.