The Cry of Tamar

Violence against Women and the Church's Response

Pamela Cooper-White

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780800697341
• eBook ISBN: 9781451424423
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

In this comprehensive, practical, and gripping assessment of various forms of violence against women, Pamela Cooper-White challenges the Christian churches to examine their own responses to the cry of Tamar in our time. She describes specific forms of such violence and outlines appropriate pastoral responses. The second edition of this groundbreaking work is thoroughly updated and examines not only where the church has made progress since 1995 but also where women remain at unchanged or even greater risk of violence.

2

Forms of Violence against Women

3

Sexual Harassment and Stalking

His speech was smoother than butter, yet war was in his heart.

—Ps. 55:21

Dr. Maureen Longworth tells the story of the first time, as a new medical resident, she had to give a complete physical to a male patient. When she began examining his genitals, he said, “Shouldn’t I be doing that to you?” In medical school, male colleagues would make lewd comments in her presence about female cadavers and also suggested that they practice their GYN techniques on her. She would find used condoms and bloody rubber gloves tucked into her personal belongings. She was disgusted and embarrassed, but when she finally told one of her professors, he told her to be a sport and just put up with it as “hazing.” Nothing was done to stop the men’s behavior.^[1]

In an apartment complex in Fairfield, California, thirteen women and their twenty-five children brought a lawsuit in federal district court under Title VIII, the Fair Housing Act, against their landlord, James Skinner.^[2] He would use his master key to enter their apartments while they were sleeping or showering. He grabbed their breasts or genitals in public. Economic abuse was tied to sexual harassment. When women were unable to pay rent, he asked them to make up the payment by posing in lingerie. He went through their mail and withheld welfare checks and threatened to report them for fraud if they received small monetary gifts from family. He also threatened children with eviction and showed them his gun collection. When one of the women changed her locks, he demanded the new key, and local police told her that legally she had to comply or face eviction. Later, he entered her apartment while she slept. She awoke to find him leaning over her in his undershorts with his pants around his knees. She screamed and pushed him out. He threatened, “I’ll get you for this.” She was evicted a month later.

The case eventually settled for an aggregate (including damages, court costs, and attorney fees) of over $1.5 million—at that time, the largest sum ever awarded in the history of the U.S. Fair Housing Act. During the course of their case, Skinner was incarcerated for raping two women at the same apartment complex. With a grant from their attorneys, Leslie Levy and Amy Oppenheimer, the women founded a nonprofit group called WRATH (Women Refusing to Accept Tenant Harassment) to advocate for women who find themselves victims in sexual harassment in housing.^[3]

Katy Lyle was an honor student at a high school in Duluth, Minnesota.^[4] She learned through the grapevine that the walls of the boys’ bathroom were covered with sexually explicit comments about her, as vulgar as “Katy Lyle fucks dogs,” and “Katy Lyle is a dick-sucking, brother-fucking whore.” As time went on, there was a “Katy stall,” which included her phone number. Boys approached her in the halls, saying, “Do me,” and her family received numerous obscene phone calls. Katy and her parents complained sixteen times to the principal, but no action was taken for eighteen months. Her brother finally tried to sandpaper the writing off the bathroom walls, while the school officials took an attitude of “Boys will be boys.” Katy finally filed a charge of sexual harassment with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, claiming that the school’s lack of response created a hostile educational environment, and received a $15,000 settlement for mental anguish and suffering. However, the retaliation went on throughout high school, even following her to college. In November, 1991, “Katy Lyle is a slut” was written in a bathroom stall at the University of Minnesota in Duluth where she was a student. She knew someone who was angry about the cash settlement in high school had written it. After her brother talked to him, threatening new graffiti appeared: “It’s not over yet.”^[5]

Margaret^[6] was pressured by her boss, the head of a large and prestigious advertising agency in New York City, to go out on dates. He talked about the “incredible tension” of working side by side with her while desiring her so much. He finally persuaded her to sleep with him, and a few weeks later gave her an unusually large promotion in responsibility and pay. Later, when she began to feel uncomfortable with the situation and questioned its propriety, he broke off their “relationship” in a rage. Soon afterward, she found herself moved laterally to a job with the same pay but less responsibility and less opportunity for advancement. Then her hours were cut back for “budgetary reasons,” and finally she was laid off. She was the only employee laid off, in spite of her seniority and an excellent work record. When she consulted an attorney at considerable cost, he told her that because she had agreed to go out on the dates and to have sex with him, and because it was her boss and not herself who technically ended the relationship, she did not have a good enough case to press charges on the grounds of sexual harassment.

My own experiences, like most women’s, have spanned my adult life. When I worked as a secretary during the summers while I was in graduate school, I was leered at repeatedly by a boss who also said on one occasion, “I like the way the sun shines through your dress!” When I told him, publicly, in front of the rest of the secretarial pool, “Please don’t ever speak to me that way again,” I was not supported by the other “girls.” I was a summer temp. I could leave. They depended on their jobs for a living. For the rest of the summer I was treated as an outsider.

On another occasion, my whole graduate department went to the annual meeting of our academic society because it was being held in our city. There was a dance, and everyone danced with each other. One married professor held me so close that I could feel him getting aroused. I tried in as lighthearted a way as I could to get loose, by saying, “My, you’re dancing awfully close, aren’t you?” He pressed closer and murmured, “What’s wrong with that?”

Another former professor and mentor from my college days ran into me at that same conference. I said hello and talked to him about a paper I was writing on a topic I knew was of interest to him. He called the next week and asked me to come see him in his office and bring him the paper, which I did. He then proposed that he bring it back to me at my apartment to save me the inconvenience of going over there a second time. He could review it with me in more detail in person, he said. He also said that he was sorry if he’d seemed flustered when he saw me at the conference, but he had been “knocked out” by how beautiful I was, and he had “forgotten” what an attractive woman I was. I left feeling confused and mystified by what seemed both an apology and a come-on at the same time. I became increasingly nervous about the upcoming meeting at my apartment and finally called him and asked to meet at a library. He pressed me, and because I was too embarrassed to talk about my discomfort at the sexual aspect of what was happening, I told him my apartment was being fumigated for roaches that week (a pretty common occurrence in my neighborhood)!

In my college violin class, the professor was notorious for touching women’s breasts “accidentally.” We all had experiences of his sliding his hand along our breast as he “adjusted the bow position.” He also brushed up against women’s breasts in the crowded school elevator. Finally, my best friend loudly said to him, her words echoing in the confined space of the elevator, “Mr. S———, do you realize that you just touched my breast?” He blustered and coughed and got out at the next stop. But he didn’t stop doing it—except with us.

I also had an apartment manager who never “did” anything that I could prove, but who leered at me and created a general climate of unease. I began to be afraid because he had a master key to my apartment. Finally, after spending one weekend away, I came back to find a dead bat under my pillow, even though all the windows were shut and locked. (Roaches were commonplace in Boston’s Back Bay, but not bats!) I assumed he had hoped that I would turn to him late at night for help. (I did not—I bagged it and disposed of it under a bush, just in case it really wasn’t dead!) After that, I had a deadbolt installed on the inside of the door, although it was technically against my lease. I soon found another living situation and moved out.

These experiences do not diminish with age. A colleague in ministry drew me aside while I was first writing this book, stood very close to me—in my “personal space”—and said, “I’m intrigued with all the work you’re doing on the issue of clergy sexuality.” Male parishioners have repeatedly pulled me close to them during the greetings of peace or the coffee hour and kissed me uncomfortably on the lips. Another colleague said in front of a senior male colleague that he regretted missing an upcoming meeting that I would be chairing—because of my leadership? Yes, but especially because I was “so cute.” Embarrassed and angry, I wrote him a letter. Fortunately, he wrote back with a gracious apology, and modeled good boundaries of appropriateness thereafter. Another later incident with a different colleague in a different institution (which took place in front of my husband, no less!) and a similar letter from me did not yield as positive a result. That colleague eventually went on to harass another, more vulnerable staffperson directly under his supervision with virtually no consequences in spite of a threatened lawsuit.

I consider my own experiences of sexual harassment to be relatively mild. I have not had condoms shoved into my briefcase or the word whore scrawled on my office door, as did one college professor at Oklahoma State University.^[7] Dr. Glenna Matthews spoke at the conference at Laney College about her experience of harassment while working as the sole professor of social science at Oklahoma State. She said in an interview, “Most of my male colleagues were not hostile or abusive. But I became the lightning rod for every man who did feel that way toward women. Many didn’t have cre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the First Edition (1995)
• Introduction to the Second Edition
• Prologue: The Rape of Tamar
• The Framework of Violence against Women
• Forms of Violence against Women
• The Church's Response
• Appendix: A Litany for Healing
• Conclusion