It seems that Mac McClelland, a journalist who wrote this and more for Mother Jones on Haiti, had a breakdown. This is about the breakdown and how she cured it. A writer at Slate had a serious problem with her having felt as she did and dealt with it as she did. Ms. interviewed her. Many comments say she shouldn’t have felt as she did because actual Haitians suffered more.
Edwidge Danticat reports about one problematic aspect of this story, and this letter is another good critique. I am of course interested in anything that has to do with PTSD. But I am fascinated by the comments on all of these stories, moralizing about the fact that McClelland did break down and then did what she could to recover.
People object to McClelland’s going to yoga, sitting in a sauna, and seeing a therapist — activities accessible only to the rich. It costs me $60 a month, including tax, to go to a gym that has yoga classes and two saunas, among other amenities. A standard rate for psychotherapy here is $70 and on my insurance plan you would meet a $250 deductible and then pay $14 per session.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
As a person from a 3rd world country, I can say that there is nothing more insulting than the pity from 1st world people. If you look at the surveys of which people are the happiest, you will see that it isn’t those who have yoga, sauna and psychotherapy. The highest suicide rates, though, are precisely in the countries where yoga and saunas are easily accessible to pretty much everybody.
About Mclelland, I wanted to add that it is quite sad to see that she has to justify her sexual preferences to herself in such a convoluted way. It’s just a poor, disturbed person who is using the Haitians to explain her own sexual preferences to herself and legitimize them as some kind of a social conscience.
That’s what a few of the comments say but it doesn’t sound to me as though she felt she needed justification for having sex in that way.
I really would question the humanity of a person who would tweet the details of someone’s rape, without their permission, while they were traveling with the victim. ‘Problematic’ doesn’t even come close to describing what she did.
Agree with Clarissa re: first world pity. The third world is not a fucking plot device in your personal narrative.
On the question of reactions to witnessing violence — I think McClelland OD’d and shouldn’t have been there. I’m a little less critical than some of her breakdown — she had seen a lot before getting to Haiti.
I deal with prisoner rights and death row advocacy in a state which has more in common with 3d world countries (not 4th world, of course) than do most U.S. states. Everyone I know who has actually witnessed an execution has been traumatized by it. Not that we regret going – the condemned really want to be able to look at a face that doesn’t hate them. But one also feels complicit, and it’s not a pleasant spectacle, and if you’re there it is someone you know dying, so it’s a big deal.
I’ve reacted fairly poorly sometimes to visiting people in the punishment cells at the same prison. Seeing them in the state of nerves they get into in those conditions, seeing the condition they are in, having to evaluate the situation with poor information and figure out what you can and can’t, should and shouldn’t do about it is difficult.
I’ve come home and drank after that. I’ve picked arguments with people because I felt rage and wanted to expel it. I’ve gone to my gym paradise and had it seem unreal, etc. And yes, while we have these reactions, the prisoners are still in jail and they are the ones really suffering.
People with less information and experience often think they know their reactions would be beyond reproach all the time. Others say that doing this work at all means I am Disturbed.
Now in Slate, Debra Dickerson (a Black conservative writer) is defending Mac’s essay. The Root has this interesting commentary: http://www.theroot.com/views/single-minded-haitian-women-and-ptsd?page=0,0
I like Debra Dickerson essay. I think it’s problematic the way McClelland used the Haitian rape victim in her own narrative, for sure. But I wouldn’t be so self-righteous to accuse her of being a narcissistic imperialist because of her personal second essay. I think she has every right to write it (as problematic as it is), and dismissing it in Manichean terms is absurd. And, as Z says, PTSD after witnessing violence is more complicated than most people realize.
Yes, I liked the Dickerson piece too, and usually I enjoy her words but disagree with her positions. Manichean is a good way to describe the reactions of a lot of people to this. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/07/01/mac_mcclelland_haiti_essay_it_s_fearless_not_offensive.html
And, in much of the replies, it’s the people who oppose McClelland the ones who have the “oh, poor third World blacks suffering” position.
I’m just gonna leave this here: http://www.jinamoore.com/2010/09/17/tweet-rape/
@Stringer — I don’t not get the way her personal essay on this sounds like fetish porn, its Heart of Darkness tone, etc., or not understand about the live tweeting.
In her story, I didn’t like the tone of her depiction of the victim. It was not pleasant for me that what appears to have driven her over the edge was the victim’s reaction to seeing the perpetrator again.
But I find very odd the ideas, running up and down the comments threads, that she shouldn’t have broken down, shouldn’t have cured the breakdown in the way she did, shouldn’t have told the story of it.
We’re talking about two different things.
Even shitty human beings get traumatized, and she should do whatever it takes to get over that. Yoga, Pilates, sauteed organic kale, whatever the fuck she wants.
That doesn’t change the fact that she is human scum who met a rape victim and saw an opportunity to make a name for herself. Our Brave Intrepid Reporter Standing At The Edge of Civilization! I hope the only journalistic assignment she can find is working for TMZ, chasing down celebrities at airports trying to get stupid react quotes.
“Our Brave Intrepid Reporter Standing At The Edge of Civilization!” – yes. And yes, my post is about the moralizing of a certain kind of commentary on her piece, not about her. And the piece to which I refer is about her, not about Haiti. And she has a colonialist imagination.
To make a name, you think this was the reason she live tweeted that? I just read it as the total lack of decorum and respect most live tweeters have about everything, and the writer’s confusion of herself with an Egyptian demonstrator and the situation with Katrina and the Macondo disaster. I’m not saying that makes it all right but I do think she was already over stressed and not in a position to do anything worthwhile for Haiti to say the least. Remember that by her second day there she was already having a hard time getting out of bed. This means she needed R & R already, and also some training before going to a situation / reporting assignment like that.
*
Perhaps I am being too kind. Every week this year I have come up with a new excuse not to visit Angola (the state penitentiary here) and it is because things are already difficult, and I am sort of close to the edge, and the prison situation is so sad / I have so little power to fix it, that I am afraid my reaction may not do me or anyone else a lot of good.
The other thing is that I’ve had nerves related dreams, responses to gender harassment, that were colonialist and racist, me. Example: in N. Peru, being harassed by men all the time, I’d have dreams that could have been straight out of “La Cautiva” … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esteban_Echeverr%C3%ADa … was never too pleased about what that clearly means about my own structure.
I’m conscious enough not to live tweet, and to notice the the retro nature of some reactions I’ve had – like the one referenced above – and not naturalize them. It’s just that, from what I’ve seen of PC white types which is a lot, many of these finger shakers are like her if not moreso, and/or are faking equanimity … so to me her honesty in that piece is sort of a relief.
P.S. She’s in Ohio following the economic destruction of that place, and one could look and see how she frames that.
“Yoga, Pilates, sauteed organic kale, whatever the fuck she wants.” Haha! 🙂
And she has a colonialist imagination.
You just want to me acknowledge this in passing, like it is some sort of a footnote. I can’t. This issue may not be important in your life but it is in mine.
You’ve mentioned at clarissa’s that people at work hitting on you is offensive because you feel exploited and sexualized. How would you feel if I were to reply, ‘Hmm, he has a sexist imagination. Now let’s move on (to more important things)’?
At work? I think the story I told is about being harassed on my street by both johns and police, on the theory that if I’m walking down to the mailbox still in work clothes, and not in a training suit, then I must be hooking. The hypothetical reply you give is in fact what most men say (when they don’t say well, you should feel flattered). How I feel when this reply is given generally – it varies, depending on what kind of power the person giving it has over me or the relevant situation.
Just want to acknowledge in passing, no — I’m taking it as a given instead of reproducing the book on it. At that level, the Mac case is just one more example. I could say a lot about this and many have said a lot about it.
This post’s point was about the idea that the yoga/sauna were the province of the superrich. Global rich, of course. Superrich compared to US reporters, no. Perspective: that she had those things when she got home is probably the least interesting and unusual detail of the whole story.
Where you and I actually disagree is on her motivation for both the live tweeting and the retelling of the victim’s story in the piece in question. Calculated to make a name for herself – well perhaps it really is that simple and cynical and I have a known cynicism deficiency so perhaps I really am just missing it.
But I tend to think motivations and impulses are more complicated than that and I was interested in the piece for reasons in addition to – not more important than, just in addition to – those referenced in what had already been said by many.
Just want to acknowledge in passing, no — I’m taking it as a given instead of reproducing the book on it.
Thanks for clearing this up. I misunderstood you, then. Apologies.
Frankly, I think it should have been clear from the comments and links already there. Mais ça va.
Addenda –
– Here’s a fair piece on it, with more links: http://www.hillmanfoundation.org/blog/journalistic-ethics-tweeting-rape
– People really get caught up in tweeting. I also notice, a *lot,* foreigners doing things that they themselves may get away with, forgetting that these actions will have a serious negative impact, in terms of physical or legal danger, on the non foreigners they’re with. It’s as though the non foreigner were not really there, and as though they couldn’t see things from the p.o.v. of the country they’re in.
– I think people may be a little demanding saying McClelland should have known how to interview a trauma victim. It would be nice of course, but she’s a reporter and not a police/hospital intake person. The real issue with the live tweeting was putting the victim in further danger and this *really* is where common sense should have come in.
[This was actually part 3 of my response to the objection – it comes before the response to the response above.]
Perhaps I see more in the piece than is there but I thought it was an interesting jumping off point to consider questions like:
– What does it take to be ready to be doing the job she was doing? What happens when people walk into a new culture and new crisis just after the BP disaster? How do these reporters do it (I never try to hit the ground running in a new place that way)?
– How do you reliably step aside and just report / just help in whirlwind like that one, when you, too, are freaking out? I don’t think it is easy and I had a lot of thoughts, related to our Katrina situation and the Angola (prison) situation, and also related to colonial/ist representation, about it.
– As I think I said upthread, the question of trauma to the ones who aren’t the main victims or aren’t victims but witnesses. How to address.
– As some others have said, the vivid description of what PTSD feels like. I was interested in that and in the decision to cure it by this catharsis experience. What’s the difference between confronting and reinflicting is something I wonder.
– And, actually, I was interested in the piece because it was NOT judicious – it’s on what her actual reactions and actions were, not what they should have been. It’s not designed to show her in the best possible light.
Perhaps my having had these thoughts as a result of reading the piece means I made the issues articulated in the Danticat letter a footnote, but I don’t think so. Research and writing, you know? Someone or some people have said something already and that means you don’t have to write that article yourself, it has been written, and if you have additional observations, you write another.
I don’t know anything about the live-tweets of K’s trauma, but I just read Mclelland’s essay about her PTSD and thought she was very brave to write it.
I wonder what would happen if all sexual assaults were live tweeted.
“I wonder what would happen if all sexual assaults were live tweeted.”
That’s an intriguing idea. Haiti is has been so much maligned that Haitians are very wary about how they are represented, and this victim’s attackers were at large so she did not want here whereabouts known.
But it’s interesting about rape – it is supposed to be a secret because it is so shameful, and at trial the victim gets maligned. What if just … not? …?
Yes, I certainly don’t think such a thing should have been done without the woman’s permission.
If everyone who had ever been assaulted shared it via some public forum, I think the number of victims would be so great as to substantially undermine the culture of shame we perpetuate.
I think so, too, and I think the idea of “privacy” on these matters serves to protect the perpetrator, not the victim, and to help perpetuate the culture of shame!