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| Artemesia Gentileschi's Judith Beheading Holofernes shows the decapitation of Holofernes [Judith's rapist], a scene of horrific struggle and blood-letting." Artemesia was a 17th century painter and she, herself, was raped and participated in prosecuting the rapist. |
Excerpt from Rape: The All-American Crime by Susan
Griffin. From Ramparts, Vol. 10, no.
3, September 1971.
I
I have never been free of the fear of rape. From a very early age I,
like most women, have thought of rape as part of my natural environment –
something to be feared and prayed against like fire or lightning. I never asked
why men raped; I simply thought it one of the many mysteries of human nature.
I was, however, curious enough about the violent side of humanity to
read every crime magazine I was able to ferret away from my grandfather. Each
issue featured at least one “sex crime,” with pictures of a victim, usually in
a pearl necklace, and of the ditch or the orchard where her body was found. I
was never certain why the victims were always women, nor what the motives of
the murderer were, but I did guess that the world was not a safe place for
women. I observed that my grandmother was meticulous about locks, and quick to
draw the shades before anyone removed so much as a shoe. I sensed that danger
lurked outside.
At the age of eight, my suspicions were confirmed. My grandmother took me
to the back of the house where the men wouldn’t hear, and told me that strange
men wanted to do harm to little girls. I learned not to walk on dark streets,
not to talk to strangers, or get into strange cars, to lock doors, and to be
modest. She never explained why a man would want to harm a little girl, and I
never asked.
If I thought for a while that my grandmother’s fears were imaginary,
the illusion was brief. That year, on the way home from school, a schoolmate a
few years older than I tried to rape me. Later, in an obscure aisle of the
local library (while I was reading Freddy
the Pig) I turned to discover a man exposing himself. Then, the friendly
man around the corner was arrested for child molesting.
My initiation to sexuality was typical. Every woman has similar stories
to tell – the first man who attacked her may have been a neighbor, a family
friend, an uncle, her doctor, or perhaps her own father. And women who grow up
in New York City always have tales about the subway …
When I was very young, my image of the “sexual offender” was a
nightmarish amalgamation of the bogey man and Captain Hook: he wore a black
cape, and he cackled. As I matured, so did my image of the rapist. Born into
the psychoanalytic age, I tried to “understand” the rapist. Rape, I came to
believe, was only one of many unfortunate evils produced by sexual repression.
Reasoning by tautology, I concluded that any man who would rape a woman must be
out of his mind.
Yet, though the theory that rapists are insane is a popular one, this
belief has no basis in fact. According to Professor Menachem Amir’s study of
646 rape cases in Philadelphia, Patterns
in Forcible Rape, men who rape are not abnormal. Amir writes, “Studies
indicate that sex offenders do not constitute a unique or psychopathological
type; nor are they as a group invariably more disturbed than the control groups
to which they are compared.” Alan Taylor, a parole officer who has worked with
rapists in the prison facilities at San Luis Obispo, California, stated the question
in plainer language, “Those men were the most normal men there. They had a lot
of hang-ups, but they were the same hang-ups as men walking out on the street.”
Another canon in the apologetics of rape is that if it were not for
learned social controls, all men would rape. Rape is held to be natural
behavior, and not to rape must be learned. But in truth rape is not universal
to the human species. Moreover, studies of rape in our culture reveal that far
from being impulsive behavior, most rape is planned. Professor Amir’s study
reveals that in cases of group rape (the “gangbang” of masculine slang), 90
percent of the rapes were planned; in pair rapes, 83 percent of the rapes were
planned; and in single rapes, 58 percent were planned. These figures should
significantly discredit the image of the rapist as a man who is suddenly
overcome by sexual needs society does not allow him to fulfill.
Far from the social control of rape being learned, comparisons with
other cultures lead one to suspect that, in our society, it is rape itself that
is learned. (The fact that rape is against the law should not be considered
proof that rape is not in fact encouraged as part of our culture.)
This culture’s concept of rape as an illegal, but still understandable,
form of behavior is not a universal one. In her study Sex and Temperment, Margaret Mead describes a society that does not
share our views. The Arapesh do not “…have any conception of the male nature
that might make rape understandable to them.” Indeed our interpretation of rape
is a product of our conception of the nature of male sexuality. A common retort
to the question, why don’t women rape men, is the myth that men have greater
sexual needs, that their sexuality is more urgent than women’s. And it is the
nature of human beings to want to live up to what is expected of them.
And this same culture which expects aggression from the male expects
passivity from the female. Conveniently, the companion myth about the nature of
female sexuality is that all women secretly want to be raped. Lurking beneath
her modest female exterior is a subconscious desire to be ravished. The
following description of a stag movie, written by Brenda Starr in Los Angeles’
underground paper, Everywoman,
typifies this male fantasy. The movie “showed a woman in her underclothes
reading on her bed. She is interrupted by a rapist with a knife. He immediately
wins her over with his charm and they get busy sucking and fucking.” An
advertisement in the Berkeley Barb
reads, “Now as all women know from their daydreams, rape has a lot of
advantages. Best of all it’s so simple. No preparation necessary, no planning
ahead of time, no wondering if you should or shouldn’t; just whang! bang!”
Thanks to Masters and Johnson even the scientific canon recognizes that for the
female, “whang! bang!” can scarcely be described as pleasurable.
Still, the male psyche persists in believing that, protestations and
struggles to the contrary, deep inside her mysterious feminine soul, the female
victim has wished for her own fate. A young woman who was raped by the husband
of a friend said that days after the incident the man returned to her home,
pounded on the door and screamed to her, “Jane, Jane. You loved it. You know
you loved it.”
The theory that women like being raped extends itself by deduction into
the proposition that most or much of rape is provoked by the victim. But this
too is only myth. Though provocation, considered a mitigating factor in a court
of law, may consist of only “a gesture,” according to the Federal Commission on
Crimes of Violence, only 4% of reported rapes involved any precipitative
behavior by the woman.
The notion that rape is enjoyed by the victim is also convenient for
the man who, though he would not commit forcible rape, enjoys the idea of its
existence, as if rape confirms that enormous sexual potency which he secretly
knows to be his own. It is for the pleasure of the armchair rapist that
detailed accounts of violent rapes exist in the media. Indeed, many men appear
to take sexual pleasure from nearly all forms of violence. Whatever the
motivation, male sexuality and violence in our culture seem to be inseparable.
James Bond alternately whips out his revolver and his cock, and though there is
no known connection between the skills of gun-fighting and love-making,
pacifism seems suspiciously effeminate…
In the spectrum of male behavior, rape, the perfect combination of sex
and violence, is the penultimate act. Erotic pleasure cannot be separated from
culture, and in our culture male eroticism is wedded to power. Not only should
a man be taller and stronger than a female in the perfect love-match, but he
must also demonstrate his superior strength in gestures of dominance which are
perceived as amorous. Though the law attempts to make a clear division between
rape and sexual intercourse, in fact the courts find it difficult to
distinguish between a case where the decision to copulate was mutual and one
where a man forced himself upon his partner.
The scenario is even further complicated by the expectation that, not
only does a woman mean “yes” when she says “no,” but that a really decent woman
ought to begin by saying “no,” and then be led down the primrose path to
acquiescence. Ovid, the author of Western Civilization’s most celebrated sex-manual,
makes this expectation perfectly clear:
…and when I beg you to say “yes,”
say “no.” Then let me lie outside your bolted door…So Love grows strong…
That the basic elements of rape are involved in all heterosexual
relationships may explain why men often identify with the offender in this
crime. But to regard the rapist as the victim, a man driven by his inherent
sexual needs to take what will not be given him, reveals a basic ignorance of
sexual politics. For in our culture heterosexual love finds and erotic
expression through male dominance and female submission. A man who derives
pleasure from raping a woman clearly must enjoy force and dominance as much or
more than the simple pleasures of the flesh. Coitus cannot be experienced in
isolation. The weather, the state of the nation, the level of sugar in the
blood – all will affect a man’s ability to achieve orgasm. If a man can achieve
sexual pleasure after terrorizing and humiliating the object of his passion,
and in fact while inflicting pain upon her, one must assume he derives pleasure
directly from terrorizing, humiliating and harming a woman. According to Amir’s
study of forcible rape, on statistical average the man who has been convicted
of rape was found to have a normal sexual personality, tending to be different
from the normal, well-adjusted male only in having a greater tendency to
express violence and rage.
And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average
dominant heterosexual, it may be mainly a quantitative difference. For the
existence of rape as an index to masculinity is not entirely metaphorical.
Though this measure of masculinity seems to be more publically exhibited among
“bad boys” or aging bikers who practice sexual initiation through group rape,
in fact “good boys” engage in the same rites to prove their manhood. In
Stockton, a small town in California which epitomizes silent-majority American,
a bachelor party was given last summer for a young man about to be married. A
woman was hired to dance “topless” for the amusement of the guests. At the high
point of the evening the bridegroom-to-be dragged the woman into a bedroom. No
move was made by any of his companions to stop what was clearly going to be an
attempted rape. Far from it. As the woman described, “I tried to keep him away
– told him of my herpes genitalis, et
cetera, but he couldn’t face the guys if he didn’t screw me.” After the
bridegroom had finished raping the woman and returned with her to the party,
far from chastising him, his friends heckled the woman and covered her with
wine.
It was fortunate for the dancer that the bridegroom’s friends did not
follow him into the bedroom for, though one might suppose that in group rape,
since the victim is outnumbered, less force would be inflicted on her, in fact,
Amir’s studies indicate, “the most excessive degrees of violence occurred in
group rape.” Far from discouraging violence, the presence of other men may in
fact encourage sadism, and even cause the behavior. In an unpublished study of
group rape by Gilbert Geis and Duncan Chappell, the authors refer to a study by
W.H. Blanchard which relates, “The leader of the male group…apparently
precipitated and maintained the activity, despite misgivings, because of a need
to fulfill the role that the other two men had assigned to him. ‘I was scared
when it began to happen,’ he says. ‘I wanted to leave but I didn’t want to say
it to the other guys – you know – that I was scared.’”
Thus it becomes clear that not only does our culture teach men the
rudiments of rape, but society, or more specifically other men, encourage the
practice of it.
II
… According to the male mythology which defines and perpetuates rape,
it is an animal instinct inherent in the male. The story goes that sometime in
our pre-historical past, the male, more hirsute and burly than today’s
counterparts, roamed about an uncivilized landscape until he found a desirable
female. (Oddly enough, this female is not
pictured as more muscular than the modern woman.) Her mate does not bother with
courtship. He simply grabs her by the hair and drags her to the closest cave.
Presumably, one of the major advantages of modern civilization for the female
has been the civilizing of the male. We call it chivalry.
But women do not get chivalry for free. According to the logic of
sexual politics, we too have to civilize our behavior. (Enter chastity. Enter
virginity. Enter monogamy.) For the female, civilized behavior means chastity
before marriage and faithfulness within it. Chivalrous behavior in the male is
supposed to protect that chastity from involuntary defilement. The fly in the
ointment of this otherwise peaceful system is the fallen woman. She does not
behave. And therefore she does not deserve protection. Or, to use another
argument, a major tenet of the same value system: what has once been defiled cannot
again be violated. One begins to suspect that it is the behavior of the fallen
woman, and not that of the male, that civilization aims to control.
The assumption that a woman who does not respect the double standard
deserves whatever she gets (or at the very least “asks for it”) operates in the
courts today. While in some states a man’s previous rape conviction are not
considered admissible evidence, the sexual reputation of the rape victim is
considered a crucial element of the facts upon which the court must decide
innocence or guilt…
According to the double standard, a woman who has had sexual
intercourse out of wedlock cannot be raped. Rape is not only a crime of
aggression against the body; it is a transgression against chastity as defined
by men. When a woman is forced into a sexual relationship, she has, according
to the male ethos, been violated. But she is also defiled if she does not
behave according to the double standard, by maintaining her chastity, or
confining her sexual activities to a monogamous relationship.
One should not assume, however, that a woman can avoid the possibility
of rape simply by behaving. Though myth would have it that mainly “bad girls”
are raped, this theory has no basis in fact. Available statistics would lead
one to believe that a safer course is promiscuity. In a study of rape done in
the District of Columbia, it was found that 82% of the rape victims had a “good
reputation.” Even the Police Inspector’s advice to stay off the streets is
rather useless, for almost half of reported rapes occur in the home of the
victim and are committed by a man she has never before seen. Like
indiscriminate terrorism, rape can happen to any woman, and few women are ever
without this knowledge.
But the courts and the police, both dominated by white males, continue
to suspect the rape victim, sui generis,
of provoking or asking for her own assault. According to Amir’s study, the
police tend to believe that a woman without a good reputation cannot be raped.
The rape victim is usually submitted to countless questions about her own
sexual mores and behavior by the police investigator. This preoccupation is
partially justified by the legal requirements for prosecution in a rape case.
The rape victim must have been penetrated, and she must have made it clear to
her assailant that she did not want penetration (unless of course she is
unconscious). A refusal to accompany a man to some isolated place to allow him
to touch her does not in the eyes of the court, constitute rape. She must have
said “no” at the crucial genital moment. And the rape victim, to qualify as
such, must also have put up a physical struggle – unless she can prove that to
do so would have been to endanger her life.
But the zealous interest the police frequently exhibit in the physical
details of a rape case is only partially explained by the requirements of the
court. A woman who was raped in Berkeley was asked to tell the story of her
rape four different times “right out in the street,” while her assailant was
escaping. She was then required to submit to a pelvic examination to prove that
penetration had taken place. Later, she was taken to the police station where
she was asked the same questions again: “Were you forced?” “Did he penetrate?” “Are
you sure your life was in danger and you had no other choice?” This woman had
been pulled off the street by a man who held a 10-inch knife at her throat and
forcibly raped her. She was raped at midnight and was not able to return to her
home until five in the morning. Police contacted her twice again in the next
week, once by telephone at two in the morning and once at four in the morning.
In her words, “The rape was probably the least traumatic incident of the whole
evening. If I’m ever raped again…I wouldn’t report it to the police because of
all the degradation…”
If white women are subjected to unnecessary and often hostile
questioning after having been raped, third world women are often not believed
at all. According to the white male ethos (which is not only sexist but
racist), third world women are defined from birth as “impure.” Thus the white
male is provided with a pool of women who are fair game for sexual imperialism.
Third world women frequently do not report rape and for good reason. When blues
singer Billie Holiday was 10 years old, she was taken off to a local house by a
neighbor and raped. Her mother brought the police to rescue her, and she was
taken to the local station crying and bleeding:
When we got there, instead of
treating me and Mom like somebody who called the cops for help, they treated me
like I’d killed somebody…I guess they had me figured for having enticed this
old goat into the whorehouse…All I know for sure is they threw me into a cell…a
fat white matron…saw I was still bleeding, she felt sorry for me and gave me a
couple glasses of milk. But nobody else did anything for me except give me
filthy looks and snicker to themselves.
After a couple of days in a cell
they dragged me into a court. Mr. Dick got sentenced to five years. They
sentenced me to a Catholic institution.
Clearly the white man’s chivalry is aimed only to protect the chastity
of “his” women.
As a final irony, that same system of sexual values from which chivalry
is derived has also provided womankind with an unwritten code of behavior,
called femininity, which makes a feminine woman the perfect victim of sexual
aggression. If being chaste does not ward off the possibility of assault, being
feminine certainly increases the chances that it will succeed. To be submissive
is to defer to masculine strength; is to lack muscular development or any
interest in defending oneself; is to let doors be opened, to have one’s arm
held when crossing the street. To be feminine is to wear shoes which make it
difficult to run; skirts which inhibit one’s stride; underclothes which inhibit
the circulation. Is it not an intriguing observation that those very clothes
which are thought to be flattering to the female and attractive to the male are
those which make it impossible for a woman to defend herself against
aggression?
Each girl as she grows into womanhood is taught fear. Fear is the form
in which the female internalizes both chivalry and the double standard. Since,
biologically speaking, women in fact have the same if not greater potential for
sexual expression as do men, the woman who is taught that she must behave
differently from a man must also learn to distrust her own carnality. She must
deny her own feelings and learn not to act from them. She fears herself. This
is the essence of passivity, and of course, a woman’s passivity is not simply
sexual but functions to cripple her from self-expression in every area of her
life.
Passivity itself prevents a woman from ever considering her own
potential for self-defense and forces her to look to men for protection. The woman
is taught fear, but this time fear of the other; and yet her only relief from
this fear is to seek out the other. Moreover, the passive woman is taught to
regard herself as impotent, unable to act, unable even to perceive, in no way
self-sufficient, and, finally, as the object and not the subject of human
behavior. It is in this sense that a woman is deprived of the status of a human
being. She is not free to be…
III
If the basic social unit is the family, in which the woman is a
possession of her husband, the super-structure of society is a male hierarchy,
in which men dominate other men (or patriarchal families dominate other
patriarchal families). And it is no small irony that, while the very social
fabric of our male-dominated culture denies women equal access to political,
economic and legal power, the literature, myth and humor of our culture depicts
women not only as the power behind the throne, but the real source of the
oppression of men. The religious version of this fairy tale blames Eve for both
carnality and eating of the tree of knowledge, at the same time making her
gullible to the obvious devices of a serpent. Adam, of course, is merely the
trusting victim of love. Certainly this is a biased story. But no more biased
than the one television audiences receive today from the latest slick
comedians. Through a media which is owned by men, censored by a State dominated
by men, all the evils of this social system which make a man’s life unpleasant
are blamed upon “the wife.” The theory is: were it not for the female who waits
and plots to “trap” the male into marriage, modern man would be able to achieve
Olympian freedom. She is made the scapegoat for a system which is in fact run
by men.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the white racist use of the concept
of white womanhood. The white male’s open rape of black women, coupled with his
overweening concern for the chastity and protection of his wife and daughters,
represents an extreme of sexist and racist hypocrisy. While on the one hand she
was held up as the standard for purity and virtue, on the other the Southern
white woman was never asked if she wanted to be on a pedestal, and in fact any
deviance from the male-defined standards for white womanhood was treated severely.
(It is a powerful commentary on American racism that the historical role of
Blacks as slaves, and thus possessions without power, has robbed black women of
legal and economic protection through marriage. Thus black women in Southern
society and in the ghettoes of the North have long been easy game for white
rapists.) The fear that black men would rape white women was, and is, classic
paranoia. Quoting sexism in the South “The
New South: White Man’s Country,” Frederick Douglass legitimately points out
that, “had the black man wished to rape white women, he had ample opportunity
to do so during the civil war when white women, the wives, sisters, daughters
and mothers of the rebels, were left in the care of Blacks. But yet not a
single act of rape was committed during this time. The Ku Klux Klan, who tarred
and feathered black men and lynched them in the honor of the purity of white
womanhood, also applied tar and feather to a Southern white woman accused of
bigamy, which leads on to suspect that Southern white men were not so much
outraged at the violation of the woman as a person, in the few instances where
rape was actually committed by black men, but at the violation of his property
rights.” in the situation where a black man was found to be having sexual
relations with a white woman, the white woman could exercise skin-privilege,
and claim that she had been raped, in which case the black man was lynched. But
if she did not claim rape, she herself was subject to lynching.
In constructing the myth of white womanhood so as to justify the
lynching and oppression of black men and women, the white male has created a
convenient symbol of his own power which has resulted in black hostility toward
the white “bitch,” accompanied by an unreasonable fear on the part of many
white women of the black rapist. Moreover, it is not surprising that after
being told for two centuries that he wants to rape white women, occasionally a
black man does actually commit that act. But it is crucial to note that the
frequency of this practice is outrageously exaggerated in the white mythos.
Ninety percent of reported rape is intra- not inter-racial.
Indeed, the existence of rape in any form is beneficial to the ruling
class of white males. For rape is a kind of terrorism which severely limits the
freedom of women and makes women dependent on men. Moreover, in the act of
rape, the rage that one man may harbor toward another higher in the male
hierarchy can be deflected toward a female scapegoat. For every man there is
always someone lower on the social scale on whom he can take out his
aggression. And that is any woman alive.
This oppressive attitude towards women finds its institutionalization
in the tradition family. For it is assumed that a man “wears the pants” in his
family – he exercises the option of rule whenever he so chooses. Not that he
makes all the decisions – clearly women make most of the important day-to-day
decisions in a family. But when a conflict of interest arises, it is the man’s
interest which will prevail. His word, in itself, is more powerful. He lords it
over his wife in the same way his boss lords it over him, so that the very
process of exercising his power becomes as important an act as obtaining
whatever it is his power can get for him. This notion of power is key to the
male ego in this culture, for the two acceptable measures masculinity are a man’s
power over women and his power over other men. A man may boast to his friends
that “I have 20 men working for me.” It is also aggrandizement of his ego if he
has the financial power to clothe his wife in furs and jewels. And, if a man
lacks the wherewithal to acquire such power, he can always express his rage
through equally masculine activities – rape and theft. Since male society
defines the female as a possession, it is not surprising that the felony most
often committed together with rape is theft…
Rape is an act of aggression in which the victim is denied her
self-determination. It is an act of violence which, if not actually followed by
beatings or murder, nevertheless always carries with it the threat of death.
And finally, rape is a form of mass terrorism, for the victims of rape are
chosen indiscriminately, but the propagandists for male supremacy broadcast that it is women who cause
rape by being unchaste or in the wrong place at the wrong time – in essence, by
behaving as though they were free.
The threat of rape is used to deny women employment. (In California,
the Berkeley Public Library, until pushed by the Federal Employment Practices
Commission, refused to hire female shelvers because of perverted men in the
stacks.) The fear of rape keeps women off the streets at night. Keeps women at
home. Keeps women passive and modest for fear that they be thought provocative.
It is part of human dignity to be able to defend oneself, and women are
learning. Some women have learned karate; some to shoot guns. And yet we will
not be free until the threat of rape and the atmosphere of violence is ended,
and to end that the nature of male behavior must change.
But rape is not an isolated act that can be rooted out from patriarchy
without ending patriarchy itself. The same men and power structure who
victimize women are engaged in the act of raping Vietnam, raping Black people
and the very earth we live upon. Rape is a classic act of domination where, in
the words of Kate Millett, “the emotions of hatred, contempt, and the desire to
break or violate personality,” take place. This breaking of the personality
characterizes modern life itself. No simple reforms can eliminate rape. As the
symbolic expression of the white male hierarchy, rape is the quintessential act
of our civilization, one which, Valerie Solanis warns, is in danger of “humping
itself to death.”
[1971]
Biography taken from www.susangriffin.com
Susan Griffin is a poet, essayist, playwright and screenwriter. She was
born in Los Angeles California in 1943, in the midst of the Second World War
and the holocaust, and these events had a lasting effect on her thinking. The
time she spent as a child in the High Sierras and along the coast of the
Pacific Ocean also shaped her awareness. As she draws connections between the
destruction of nature, the diminishment of women and racism, and traces the
causes of war to denial in both private and public life, her work moves beyond
the boundaries of form and perception. She is known for her innovative style.
Her groundbreaking book Woman and Nature is an extended prose-poem. A Chorus of
Stones, the Private Life of War, blends history and memoir as does Wrestling
with Angel of Democracy, the Autobiography of an American Citizen her most
recent book (published by Trumpeter books in April, 2008.) This work explores
the state of mind that engenders and sustains democracy.
Both books are part of a larger series of several volumes, comprising
"social autobiography."
A Chorus of Stones, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the
National Book Critics Award, and winner of the BABRA Award in 1992, was also a
NY Times Notable Book of the Year.
Her play Voices, which won an Emmy in 1975 for a local PBS production,
has been performed throughout the world, including a radio production by the
BBC. The Book of the Courtesans, a Catalogue of Their Virtues, was published by
Broadway Books (Random House) in 2001. Woman and Nature, the classic work that inspired eco-feminism, was published
in a new edition by Sierra Club Books in 2000. In 2009 she was awarded a
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.
Named by Utne Reader as one of a hundred important visionaries for the
new millennium, she has been the recipient of an NEA grant, and a one year
Macarthur Grant for Peace and International Cooperation. Her work, translated
into 17 languages, is taught in colleges and universities internationally. She
has published several volumes of poetry. Unremembered Country won the
Commonwealth Club’s Silver Medal for poetry in 1987. In 1998 Copper Canyon
Press published Bending Home, Poems Selected and New 1967-1998, which was a
finalist for the Western States Art Federation Award. Her play Voices won an
Emmy for a local PBS production in 1975. Her more recent play, Thicket,
performed in San Francisco by Ruth Zaporah, was published by The Kenyon Review.
In addition to working as consultant for two other documentary films, she
co-authored the script for the Academy Award nominated film, Berkeley in the
Sixties. She is currently writing a script depicting the life of a courtesan. She has completed Canto, a play in
poetry about the massacres of villagers in Salvador that will be set to music
by the composer and musician Glenn Kotche in 2009, and she is co-editing an anthology
entitled, Transforming Terror: Remembering the Soul of the World, to be
published by UC Press in 2011. She lectures widely in the United States and
abroad, and teaches occasional courses at the California Institute of Integral
Studies and Pacifica Graduate School, as well as privately at her home in
Berkeley.
