The Divine Miss K
A Column by J. Kim

WTO Stands For Women are Terrorized and Oppressed

Now a union member, I proudly attended the AFL-CIO Rally on November 30, which helped shut down the World Trade Organization meetings here in Seattle. The rally, held at an outdoor stadium in the Seattle Center complex in the shadow's of Paul Allen's latest object of civic tyranny, the "Experience Music Project" museum.

Speakers from around the world, including labor leaders from Barbados and South Africa, took the stage with heads of the United Steel Workers, United Auto Workers and the ILWU (the longshoremen had shut down the Port of Seattle that day). Environmentalists, organic farmers, women unionists, all joined the Teamsters in a mass object of solidarity. I felt blissfully locked in an organic Consolidated song. Everyone joined in a notion of brotherhood and sisterhood united for workers' rights, human rights and environmental rights around the world.

As we headed out of the stadium, I rejoiced in the feeling of sisterhood, equality and kinship that I now felt with the steel workers and machinists who surrounded me. I knew that the next day some would surely go back to the usual routine of sexual harassment that strip women of all their identity and make them feel like a fetid pile of flesh. But for today, they looked at women as their sisters, united against CEOs whose salaries climb while they layoff thousands of workers, mutlinational corporations that wipe out small farms and spread pesticides, endangering workers and consumers alike.

As the peaceful protest swept through downtown Seattle beneath the sun and a rainbow, my nihilistic tendencies surrendered to my Marxism. Power of the people and power of labor overcame me. Upon reaching the downtown location where the ministers (whose names have not been fully disclosed to the public) met, the march split off in two directions. I followed one path up to the spot where police with shields and gas masks prevented protesters from entering the street. The police stood their ground patiently and had allowed the march to basically block off major thoroughfares all day. I stood there with the protesters, wanting the same thing, access to the delegates about to decide the fates of our lives.

Then I spotted someone with an NRA pin on his cap. Having had a gun pointed at me by a former boyfriend, I seethed. I found myself incredulous that I stood on the same side of a protest as this person espousing something once used to subdue me. Just before I felt myself about to lose it and tell this person exactly how he should rot in hell, I moved myself away from the front line.

More of the crowd moved towards the human barricade which prevented delegates from entering the meeting and I listened to a man asking us to join in the blockade. I started to move towards there, ready to lay my body down to battle corporate tyranny when I received the slap in the face. A shirtless jackass started running through the crowd yelling "We need female topless protesters."

I could not believe what I was hearing.

For one day, I felt an equal and felt united with men, but in one instant I was reminded that in the eyes of men, I am not an equal, I am not even human. Instead, they see me as nothing more than a set of tits, one to be smacked around, manipulated and exploited. "Fuck you" I said. And fuck you, I thought as I walked away. I was ready to risk bodily injury in this fight, as many brave women and men had. This was how he said thank you to these women who tried to fight as his ally; he makes women his enemy.

So his enemy I became. I walked away, before the tear gas came out less than an hour later, before the police started moving the crowd out of downtown by any means necessary. Before the battle truly began, the protesters lost an ally. None of the men told this jackass to shut up, some even laughed. This jerk was supposedly protesting in the name of workers' rights, apparently he forgot women work too. No doubt he later on went home to listen to Limp Biscuit sing "It's all about the noogie." It's all about shoving my foot through his teeth actually.

I realized that before I can focus on the WTO, I have larger questions of safety. Domestic violence is on the rise internationally. Women in Afghanistan live in fear, but so do women in the United States. We are not safe at a Woodstock concert and we are not safe in our own bedrooms. Today was a sad reminder of my assigned position in society. It's all about my tits apparently. What this jackass lost is a strong and committed ally in a fight that is also mine.

As I watched continuing coverage on the news I felt a great sadness that I let one man destroy my protest for me. I felt relieved I did not endure the tear gas and pepper spray and the ridiculousness of gangs tagging buildings just as dogs piss on hydrants. What he did, however, is remind me of the protests yet to happen. There will come a day when women stage a walkout, a day in which we cease working as field soldiers for a male-dominated capitalistic army. There will come a day when women (even the legalized sex slaves known as wives) stage a sexout, denying men for one day so they can all realize the abuse must end. While men see the WTO as the ultimate corporate fascist tyranny and fear it with their lives, women know tyranny has been with us for much longer, some women even marry it.

War and Remembrance:
Here are gripping scenes from the World Trade Organization Conference in Seattle, as photographed by Pandomag.com's Damien M. Jones

Other Stories by J. Kim:

J. Kim Takes a Look at the JFK Jr. Legacy
JFK Jr. "attempted to spark debates on real issues, but instead, the media clamors for the trivial, the banal and the pedestrian," says J. Kim in The Divine Miss K

Mindless Prejudice, Media Casualties
"Americans, and the American media, are superficial, suppressive, mindless, prejudicial, hateful cowards who are afraid to think. To borrow from Malcolm X, Littleton was a case of the chickens coming home to roost," says J. Kim in The Divine Miss K

Sebadoh: On Race Relations, Deaths in the Family, and Becoming a Real Band
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