When I was a teenager, I met the person who would become my husband who would later become my wife.

Our first meeting took place in our high school psychology class and we soon became friends, talking a lot on the phone, as teenagers did back then. We dated briefly, but our relationship was short lived.

After some time apart after I went off to college, we reconnected, and after that, it all happened quickly: Our relationship bloomed, we fell in love, and we moved closer to one another to be together. After three years, I was proposed to. I knew this was who I was supposed to marry because we had split up once and gotten back together, unable to be apart.

But when my spouse came out to me as transgender, and later made a gender transition, my world was thrown upside down.

There was a lot that changed, but what I didn’t anticipate were the questions and public scrutiny that would surround my sexuality. I had only ever identified as straight, but by staying in a marriage with a trans woman, this identification was challenged.

According to gay people, I had to identify as a lesbian in order to validate my wife’s gender identity. But according to the court of public opinion on the internet, by doing this, I would single-handedly prove the conservative opinion that gay people can change their sexuality — that being gay is a choice.

Straight people just had questions; they could not wrap their heads around how I could be attracted to the now-feminine body of my wife when I was, for all intents and purposes, only attracted to men.

So what am I, and where do I stand? What does this say about the nature of sexuality? Is this about love, or is sexuality truly fluid and our physical attractions change over time?

Well, I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve been forced to dig deep and make evaluations both of myself and of society as a whole. And as a result of much introspection, I am beginning to look at sexuality as more fluid than people seem to realize it is.

I have a friend who identified her whole life as a lesbian, but fell in love with and married a man. I know a person who, after divorcing her husband, ended up in a relationship with her best female friend. I have multiple friends who left heterosexual marriages when they realized they were gay.

I know other women like myself whose spouses’ transitioned genders, and who stayed post-Gender Confirmation Surgery. I can’t speak to their experiences or sexuality, but I can say that I personally stayed because I loved my husband and I knew I could love my wife as well. My spouse, regardless of gender, makes me laugh, is kind to others, is politically active, shares the same political opinions as me, and has the same geeky loves as I do, including, but certainly not limited to, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Doctor Who. We had a great life together and a beautiful son.

I didn’t want to leave. And so, I stayed.

Physical differences in my wife are becoming more apparent by the day. At first it was the removal of hair, the application of makeup, and the growth of her head hair. Then came the changes of medical transition: the growth of breasts, the development of hips and a waistline, and the softening of her facial features.

Straight people just had questions; they could not wrap their heads around how I could be attracted to the now-feminine body of my wife when I was, for all intents and purposes, only attracted to men.
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Through these changes, I’ve remained attracted to my spouse. I find her new look to be beautiful in the way I have always been able to find other women beautiful, but the attraction is deeper since we have an emotional connection as well. The fact that I love her and care about her deeply translates into physical attraction; our love was always more than skin deep. I joke that I married her so that my children would have her eyes, and that is one part of her physical appearance that has not changed. She still has those beautiful blue eyes, with those gorgeous long eyelashes.

There was a time when I mourned the loss of her more manly features — even her chest hair, which ironically prior to coming out I was not a huge fan of — but that longing is gone.

I don’t understand why or how I still find her sexually attractive; all I can say is that I do. It does not mean I find cis women appealing in the same way, which is why this attraction may stem from the love I had for my wife prior to transition.

Staying with a trans woman means going against what we are taught by society about sexuality and gender. In an ideal world, people would fit nicely into one category: gay, straight, bisexual . . . but they don’t. I learned this the hard way, by being thrust into the world of unknown sexuality.

And now, having explored my sexuality in an entirely new way, I wonder: If people were not put into these boxes — if people truly were able to enjoy what they do and love who they love regardless of gender identity or sexuality — what would the world look like? Would it be a better place? Would everyone be happier?

At the end of the day, all I know is that sexuality is deeply personal and private. I know that I now identify as queer, and that no well-defined box can contain me.

And, really, that’s all anyone needs to know.

Rap has a long history of involvement in protest and social commentary.

Lead image: Copyright Legal Means 2015, artist credit Rashad Jamaal

By Lily Hirsch

In late 2012, the lives of three young black men in Pittsburgh were forever altered. On November 11, Leon Ford, Jr., was stopped by police officers who were looking for a different L. Ford. During the stop, an officer shot Ford five times, leaving him paralyzed. He would never walk again. Four days later, on November 15, police found a video posted online of a rap song written by Ford’s best friend, Jamal Knox, along with another friend, Rashee Beasley. That song, “F* the Police,” led to the arrest of Knox and Beasley — both charged with making “terroristic threats.”

Last month, Pittsburgh attorney Patrick Nightingale offered the Pennsylvania Supreme Court a chance to review Knox’s case, filing a petition for redress, undertaken at the discretion of the court. There are many reasons the court should agree to this review. This astounding case channels the incendiary outrage of our times, generated by police shootings — widely covered and all too common — of unarmed black men. The case also points to real concerns about violence against the police, especially after the killing of officers in Dallas earlier this year, and would in fact allow the Court to clarify legal definitions of threat. There is also, of course, the ongoing issue of rap’s abuse at court.

I recently corresponded with Knox, who is still in jail, and he helped me understand how this all happened and what he hopes might come from it in the future.

Knox was born on the North side of Pittsburgh on March 11, 1994. He grew up in Northview Heights, a housing project, and his interactions with the police started early, mostly due to his father’s short fuse and his mother’s proximity to the explosions. One of his father’s stints in prison gave his mother enough time and space to escape. She moved Jamal and his three siblings to the east side of the city, where they could grow up near cousins and away from the regular domestic violence that had marked their earliest years. But she couldn’t take them away from violence completely.

Knox recalls being hit by a stray bullet during an incident in which he was not involved. He says he was “hassled” by officers and learned early to run from the police. It seemed his best recourse. In his letter to me from prison, he wrote: “My resentment became deep because I was hurting and couldn’t understand why.”

Thankfully, Knox found an outlet. In middle school, he discovered poetry — by Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Tupac Shakur. He began to write his own in private. Then a friend helped him see how his hobby might translate into music. “My best friend I met in middle school, he was my first producer,” Knox told the court in 2014. “His name is Leon Ford. He had a studio…he asked me one day, do you want to come record in the studio. I said man, I don’t rap. I don’t rap. I write poetry. He said poetry is rap. I said yeah? He said yeah.”

Introducing The Establishment Online Community!

Ford helped Knox find his musical voice and the two started a group called the “Goon Squad.” Though the group didn’t last long, Knox and Ford would always have a strong bond. Knox admits that his path, unlike Ford’s, eventually involved drugs, but he continued to turn to music as a means to express his feelings — the only way he could do so without violence. When Ford was shot, music was naturally Knox’s response.

Rap has a long history of involvement in protest and social commentary. During the 1980s, rap increasingly included social messages and addressed political themes, such as gang violence, poverty, racism, and police brutality. Rap’s perceived swagger and braggadocio often plays into that — projecting strength often in a powerless situation, giving voice to some who feel voiceless. Violence in rap can then be both part of this protest, documenting lived circumstances, or more metaphorical, as a symbol of power. The negative is flipped and the thug is celebrated as outlaw. When I asked Knox whether “F* the Police” was intended as a protest, he said yes. “It was a statement.”

The trial would imply a connection between the song and Ford’s shooting. But protest and its relationship to rap never came up as an explicit defense.

In March 2013, during the preliminary hearing, the defense did point out that use of the term “fuck the police” has long-standing precedent in rap dating as far back as NWA’s “Fuck tha Police” (1988) and Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” (1992). The musical refrain “F* the Police” then is hardly unique, hardly deserving of such unusual sanction. Today, the line has taken on meaning far greater than any one artist, any one example of the genre. Isolated from any particular work, the phrase has become a chant at Black Lives Matter rallies and protests against police violence. And the phrase, in chant or song, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Ice Cube made that clear this summer, vowing to continue performing his iconic contribution to the genre: “I ain’t gonna change nothing I do,” he said, “because I ain’t do nothing wrong.”

But as the prosecution noted, Knox and Beasley’s song referred to two specific Pittsburgh police officers by name, and also referenced the perpetrator of an infamous 2009 shooting of three Pittsburgh police officers — who has since been sentenced to death. One of the named officers was directly involved in a prior arrest of Knox as well as Ford’s traffic stop. The prosecutor argued, “I mean, there was talk about N.W.A. and other rappers, you know, who have made fuck the police songs, and there’s a whole, you know, fuck the police genre. But it doesn’t appear that any of those songs threatened particular police officers.”

According to Nightingale, who was not then a part of the defense, the prosecution’s argument was founded on “a distinction without a difference in the eyes of the First Amendment. Merely calling out specific officers in a song and making reference to a well-known police shooting only bolsters the hyperbolic nature of the song, and at least in this instance did not create an imminent threat.” But at the time, the prosecution’s strategy worked, stripping the song of its First Amendment protection, and the case was held for trial. The judge seemed to view rap as threatening regardless, mentioning “the culture of violence that is rap music,” with no discussion of the roots of such rhetoric in rap — including commercial demands, boasting, and the symbolic use of violence in rap to project power. While there is truth in rap, the music has never been a literal text.

The non-jury trial took place in November 2013 before the president judge of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. Both Knox and Beasley were officially charged with making “terroristic threats,” specified at court as “communicating a threat, either directly or indirectly, to commit a crime of violence with the intent to terrorize.” The defense largely focused on two points throughout the trial, which lasted several days. First, the defense argued that Knox and Beasley’s alleged conduct simply did not fit the crimes charged. Second, the defense argued that the song was protected by the First Amendment because it did not amount to a “true threat” as defined by the United States Supreme Court. This was not a direct or indirect communication. Not only was the song discovered on Facebook by a Pittsburgh police officer who was monitoring Beasley’s page under an alias, but the police admitted that neither defendant made the song available online. Terrance Hart, a fourteen-year-old boy, had uploaded the song to Youtube, and it was then linked to Beasley’s Facebook page. But the argument was ineffective against the court’s repeated insistence that the intent was not the point. Rather, the case hinged on the police officers’ perception of the song and its supposed threat, a course since rejected by the United States Supreme Court case Elonis v. U.S, which ruled that intent matters, not perception.

Afghanistan’s Rap Scene Is Real, Political, And Growing

But what about the song itself? Attorneys for the defendants ignored many aspects of “F* the Police” which would have given the lie to the idea that it was a terroristic threat. No one called attention to other voices involved in Beasley and Knox’s rap, including a female one, which would have muddied the issue of ownership and therefore liability. No one described a rather somber motif with a descending pitch in the backing track — one that arguably undercuts the song’s bravado as well as any perceived active message of violence. And no one pointed out a change in timbre and emphasis in the final line of the chorus, which signaled to me, when I first heard the song in 2014 while writing an article on the case, the possibility that the crucial phrase “fuck the police” is actually a sample.

In my letter to Knox, I asked him whether he had sampled “fuck the police” from one of the numerous other songs that contained the phrase. He confirmed that the last line was indeed a sample — from the rapper Soulja Slim, who died in 2003, his shooting death still a mystery. Neither Beasley nor Knox had even voiced the words “fuck the police” on the track.

But, again, the trial had none of this. The only mention of the music came in fact in pre-trial — “The beat had a nice rhyme.” Otherwise, the lawyers ignored the specifics of the music, as well as the history of rap. They treated the lyrics as a literal text, with no expert testimony about the music — the often contested relationship between the lyrics and the backing track, the traditional role of humor and boasting, the connection between violence and commerce in rap, or the ways in which music conditions the meaning of text generally. The song, in short, was not treated as art. And this mistreatment made greater the potential for prejudice.

Rapper Megz Kelli Says Music Is Inside Of Her

This is typical of the way rap is treated in a courtroom scenario. As Erik Nielson and Michael Render (aka Killer Mike) wrote in USA Today, “No other fictional form — musical, literary or cinematic — is used this way in the courts, a concerning double standard that research suggests is rooted, at least in part, in stereotypes about the people of color primarily associated with rap music, as well as the misconception that hip-hop and the artists behind it are dangerous.” Indeed, according to a recent study, “the mere label of rap is sufficient to induce negative evaluations” at court.

News outlets covered many of these problems in 2014 (for example, an op-ed in the New York Times and my own piece in the Guardian). Since then, the United States Supreme Court had a chance to make right some of these wrongs in Elonis v. U.S, which also involved the issue of rap as threat — in this case, appealing the conviction of a man sentenced to prison for posting violent lyrics on Facebook. But nothing much came from the redress. The conviction was overturned, but with attention to federal threats law, not the issue of rap. “It didn’t clarify much in the long run,” First Amendment scholar Clay Calvert said in a 2015 Time interview. “They totally missed the rap issue.”

In Knox and Beasley’s case, with no real attention to the music, the only discussion of the lyrics came — believe it or not — from the police officers themselves, who were allowed to describe the lyrics at court, interpreting the song as they saw fit. In so doing, they were able to impose violence on the lyrics whether or not it actually existed: “They said they wanted to kill us and that, you know, they knew our schedule and where we worked, and that they know they would attack us. And there was gunfire throughout the video, and … numerous other terms that you would associate with guns, caliber, stuff like that.”

The judge seemed to accept this uninformed analysis, ruling: “It is abundantly clear to me that the conduct of the defendants here is not protected by the First Amendment because it far exceeds what the First Amendment allows.” Knox and Beasley were both found guilty. At sentencing on March 6, 2014, with about a dozen police officers in attendance, Knox spoke on his own behalf. Though he did not explicitly connect “F* the Police” to protest on behalf of Ford, he did mention his friend. He also talked about the diversity of his music, which had achieved some recognition before his arrest: “I mean I have songs about God. I even make songs about my mom. I even make songs about, you know, how to stop violence.”

It was at this hearing that Mikhail Pappas, then a law student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, met Leon Ford. The two began working to ensure Knox appealed his guilty verdict. Pappas first contacted the ACLU, and after the ACLU declined to take the case, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He connected Knox with Nightingale, who is now his lawyer, and established a startup, Legal Means, to raise awareness and resources in support of Knox’s appeal.

Today, Beasley is free, having served his time, but Knox remains behind bars, due to a drug conviction and punishment for “F* the Police.” Nightingale and Pappas remain hopeful that Pennsylvania’s high court will recognize the importance of Knox’s case. Pappas explains, “The issues involved in this case are at the front and center of our collective conscience as a nation and even our presidential debates. It would be difficult to imagine a case of greater social importance.” And, for Pappas, the case is also personal. “I grew up on the East side right around the way from Jamal. I love rap music. For me, it’s like what Killer Mike, whose dad was a police officer in Atlanta, said in his song ‘R.A.P. Music.’ Rap is so much more than music. It’s a source of salvation. Protecting it is what the very First Amendment is all about. For a court to rule that its mere creation is a criminal act is the ultimate double standard.”

While Ford has found his voice as a mentor and social activist, Knox has maintained more modest ambitions. As he explained at sentencing, “I want the Court to look at me as Jamal Knox, a human being.” In his letter to me, he also made it clear that he plans to continue his work with music. Even after all of this, he will not give up on his art: “It’s how I vent,” he said, whether “happy, sad, or angry.” And he will keep his head up no matter what, urged on by the pride he feels in knowing he is not alone. His case, he believes, is about more than himself: it’s about “every person that’s my complexion.” Justice for Knox, then, would have symbolic value, especially today. It’s about maintaining trust in the justice system. It’s about living up to a promise that justice can be blind. But it’s also about Jamal Knox — one person, a human being, who never should have been convicted for a song.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/criminalizing-homelessness-is-a-public-health-crisis-c1a74611898e/ Mon, 30 May 2016 15:10:48 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=8127 Read more]]> By Stacey Mckenna

Susan was found in a city park one chilly October morning, her beloved cattle dog guarding her body. Her death was unexpected. Everybody thought she’d been doing so well. In my office, my phone began buzzing with texts from long-term research participants and mutual friends wondering whether I’d heard the news. I curled my grief inward, a bundle of anger and confusion, scientific objectivity suspended, replaced by indignation. In a country that touts itself as the wealthiest and greatest in the world, how is it that so many live in the streets? How is it that people die there?

Susan was the first person to join my study on methamphetamine use in northern Colorado. She was the first of my research participants-turned-friends to die during its course. We first met in a borrowed office at the local resource center on a surprisingly sweltering spring day. Susan fussed over her dog, Rick, who was always at her side. She wouldn’t settle until he had water and a comfortable place to nap in the cool of the air conditioning.

She wasn’t naturally talkative, but she was candid and kind as she shared her history, her story. She cried as she explained how her husband’s illness was the beginning of their financial downturn. He couldn’t work, and eventually, neither could she. She left her job to care for him and for a while the two made do on social security.

But when Susan’s husband died, just a couple of years before we met, she was faced with more than grief. She lost both his social security income and hers as a caretaker. In her late forties at the time, she struggled to find work. Taking the time to mourn wasn’t an option as she struggled to navigate insufficient safety nets she’d never before needed to use. They had always been fine financially. They’d had dogs and motorcycles, a house, jobs and friends and money to splurge and go out on occasion. They’d had a “normal” life.

Soon, she found herself homeless. Having lost her own house and exhausted friends’ couch-surfing generosity, she was on the streets. Since Rick wasn’t a service dog, shelters weren’t an option, but neither was abandoning her one friend and connection to her old life. As a homeless woman on her own, Susan depended upon Rick’s loyalty, not just as a faithful companion but as a dauntless guardian.

Each night she managed threats that came from all sources, all directions. She was the first to tell me that sometimes she had to walk all night to stay alert and avoid the police or the risk for harm. She was the first to explain the importance and challenge of finding a safe place to rest.

Susan’s story provided my first window into the complex and harrowing realities of homelessness and housing insecurity in the United States. And while her story is individual, it isn’t unique.

On a single night in 2014, the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development’s (HUD) Point-in-Time survey counted nearly 600,000 Americans without shelter. As people struggle with unemployment, the battle for a living wage, and a shortage of affordable housing, the risk continues to grow. Increasingly, too many of us teeter on the brink, just one illness, car repair, or short work-week away from the streets.

Yet most places lack the resources to combat the underlying causes or immediate consequences of homelessness and housing insecurity. The same HUD study shows that 62% of reporting jurisdictions nationwide cannot meet the demand for shelter beds in their communities. In 2014, over 153,000 people had to sleep in the streets or actively seek alternate shelter each night.

Nearly two hundred years ago, America formally abolished its debtors’ prisons, institutions where the poor were incarcerated for failing to make payments. Following this, the notion of some people’s poverty as a social ill slipped into the background until the mid-20th century. Not until the early 1960s did we renew dialogue suggesting that hardship and vast wealth disparities represent a national problem.

Although many scholars and politicians agree that poverty in the U.S. tends to be intergenerational, there remains dissent as to the underlying causes. And while we, as a nation, struggle to get on the same page about the sources of these economic gaps, our communities are once again criminalizing poverty, especially homelessness. According to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, 34% of U.S. cities ban public camping, 57% prohibit it in certain areas, and 43% disallow sleeping in vehicles. Others have policies against sleeping in public, begging, and sharing food with homeless people.

Charles, a tall man with a booming baritone, first found himself on the streets in his early fifties. Previously an entrepreneur, a husband, and a father; he’d never imagined himself homeless. He’d always seen himself as a community member, a leader, never a criminal. But as we settled in on the porch of a local coffee shop, his eyes were bloodshot and squinty from lack of sleep. Clumsy with fatigue, he fiddled with his bag, pulling out his phone to charge at our table’s electrical outlet. He was waiting for a call from two young girls he had met the night before, who he had talked into attending an NA meeting with him later in the day.

“You ended up in jail because of all those camping tickets?” I asked. Charles looked at me solemnly. He was exhausted. He’d been up all night. Since we first met, when he had just lost his home, I had watched him become rundown, emotionally and physically. His girlfriend, Jackie, had been in jail all this time, but he never failed to keep money on her books.

Whatever he brought in panhandling or hustling or working odd jobs went to Jackie. She was his girl, his ol’ lady. And Charles had a traditional view of relationships. No matter what else he did, he had to continue to provide. So he typically spent his days working, earning, and to ensure there was money for her, his nights passed without shelter. This in a city with a camping ban and not enough beds.

“Yeah, I failed to appear,” he explained. “They caught me surviving, literally. The first ticket, the very first ticket, was our very first night outdoors. Less than eight hours from them giving us the sleeping bag. They’re gonna charge me $100 plus for each one of those. A $100 ticket and then there’s court costs and all this other stuff. It turns out to be $275, or sixteen hours of community service or six days in jail.”

“So you took the six days in jail?”

“Yeah, I took the six days in jail,” Charles said. “By default.”

For countless individuals like Charles, it is the crime of being poor that ultimately results in jail time when they are unable to pay their escalating fines. But the criminalization of homelessness has consequences that extend beyond spending a few days in jail. Some scholars and activists suggest that the underlying social intent of so-called “crimes of homelessness” may be to render these individuals invisible rather than reduce the problem itself.

University of Colorado Denver’s Dr. Stephen Koester has spent decades studying drug use and homelessness in Colorado. He observes, based on recent research on Denver’s camping ban, that the city’s police “don’t seem to want to give them [the homeless] tickets. They want to keep them moving, or out of sight.”

In the northern Colorado town of Fort Collins, recent plans to bulldoze a park where many homeless gather throughout the day support Koester’s theory. Los Angeles has tried on five separate occasions since 1997 to remove the “visual blight” of the homeless by removing and destroying their belongings. Though the city has repeatedly lost these cases, officials drafted a new ordinance for 2015 permitting law enforcement officers to promptly confiscate homeless individuals’ unattended property. Under the guise of gentrification, appealing to many for the ensuing influx of hipster-friendly, edgy watering holes, cities push their poor and homeless further toward the margins.

If the aim of criminalization is, in fact, to make the homeless disappear, we must consider its range of consequences. Surely, an abundance of these repercussions are intangible, even philosophical in nature. The haves wield their social power over the bodies of the have nots to avoid feeling uncomfortable over their craft cocktails or upon leaving their lunchtime yoga classes. But scattering the homeless doesn’t just damage disenfranchised bodies in the abstract. It directly and deeply damages social ties and disrupts access to social resources. Several researchers have highlighted the fact that when the homeless are relocated, they often lose access to safety net organizations and resources.

From a human interest perspective, the criminalization of homelessness is clearly bad politics. It dehumanizes people and perpetuates both poverty and suffering. But more specifically, notes Dr. Lee Hoffer of Case Western Reserve University, the promise of punishment forces geographic and social dispersion, and the results of these policies are “detrimental to public health.”

Initiating And Encouraging Drug Use

Fort Collins, Colorado is a medium-sized college town that has been voted one of America’s “most livable” cities several years running. Between college students, growing tech and start-up companies, and booming gentrification projects, affordable housing in the city is increasingly difficult to find. Vacancy rates continue to fall (1.8% in 2015) while housing prices and rental costs rise.

Like other cities along Colorado’s Front Range, Fort Collins has had a camping ban for years. In August 2014 alone, police targeted 54 illegal campsites and issued 32 citations. Those unable to find an approved place to sleep must remain invisible or risk incarceration. Thus, the town’s homeless stay on the move, camp solo and in small groups, and creatively bargain for couch space. These processes can have a peculiar but logical consequence of their own, encouraging and perpetuating drug use, even among people who would like to quit.

Before moving to Fort Collins in the mid-aughts, Dorothy had spent over a decade of her life on the streets. In her early thirties, she lost her children to policies that deemed her an unfit mother due to mental illness and her constant struggle to keep a roof over her family’s head. Though she had dabbled with methamphetamine to work strange hours driving a truck, she used regularly only after becoming homeless. At first, meth was merely a means of networking and negotiating for a place to sleep. By the time we met, nearly two decades later, she described herself as a full-blown addict.

“A lot of my meth use when I first started was, ‘gee, I suddenly became homeless and the way to find a bed to crash on is to get high with people,’” she explained during one of our early meetings. “ ‘Here, I’ll go buy a bag for you. I’ll do the running. I’ll take the chances.’ I’ll come back, I’ll get high. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I fell asleep.’ You know, they gave you a bed and a hot meal. When you’re homeless, it’s how you put your feelers out. It’s how you couch surf.”

For homeless individuals who are already drug-dependent, quitting may be especially difficult. Eddie, a former health professional in his thirties, struggled to quit abusing meth. After losing his job he faced eviction and, eventually, landed on the streets with Boris, his best friend and dog of several years. Like Susan, Charles, and others who find themselves without shelter in cities with camping bans, Eddie sometimes walked all night. But hours of shuffling over concrete and asphalt, icy sidewalks or parched fields tore Boris’ feet apart, a consequence Eddie couldn’t accept. When he was denied entry or long-term stay in treatment and sober living facilities due to their “no dog” policies, Eddie turned to the only people who seemed willing to accept him — former drug using partners.

Like Dorothy, Eddie established credibility with his hosts by his willingness to use, undermining his intentions to quit. But there was also something simpler at play — temptation. By staying with fellow addicts and, specifically, people with whom he had previously used, old patterns quickly reared their heads, and thirty days sober became zero.

For others still, it’s the specific nature of methamphetamine that holds the key for survival. The central nervous system stimulant enables users to stay awake and alert, sometimes for days at a time. By some accounts, it even enhances vigilance. Policies that keep people on the move perpetuate the need to stay on the lookout for law enforcement, to remain ever-ready to get up and go.

Thus, many homeless meth addicts, including several participants in my own research, report using specifically to avoid problems with the police. Charles often camped on his own or with only one or two acquaintances. Not wanting to make the long trek out of city limits to avoid the authorities, he and a partner would sleep in shifts along river banks or under bridges. But he always felt vulnerable: “Some folks, they enjoy the mental torture of being up for days and days and days,” he explains. “And I don’t understand that part. I really don’t. I use the excuse, and generally it’s not an excuse because being out here living in the forest, to me, I’m vulnerable. If I go to sleep, I don’t hear nothing. That means somebody can slip on me, you know?”

The especially cold nights make even alert camping unrealistic and dangerous. And when left with no other options, Susan, Eddie, and others found that meth made the endless walking more bearable.

Aggravating Pre-Existing Mental Health Conditions

In the U.S. today, there are only about fourteen inpatient psychiatric beds for every 100,000 individuals in need. This is less than 5% of the resources available in 1955 and about the same coverage we saw in 1850. Official estimates suggest that between 20 and 50% of homeless individuals in the United States suffer from mental illness.

Given these severely restricted resources, they may represent one of the most drastically underserved segments of the homeless population. Conditions and particular experiences run the gamut but, in my work, I saw a lot of bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, and PTSD.

For many, the consequences of mental health issues are greatly intensified by the circumstances of the street. Similar to addiction, mental illness can render sufferers ineligible for generalized safety nets, including some shelters unequipped to deal with related complications. Outbursts associated with schizophrenia resulted in Charles being temporarily banned from one Fort Collins shelter.

Paradoxically, homeless status can be cause for ineligibility to in-patient psychiatric services. When Dorothy sought in-patient psychiatric and drug abuse treatment, she was ruefully informed that no beds were available for people lacking a permanent address.

Furthermore, it is difficult to maintain a treatment schedule and adhere to prescribed medications when routines change daily and belongings must be carted around in a backpack. Many psychiatric medications not only demand ingestion on a strict schedule but some must be taken with food while others without.

For individuals rushing to make meal times at charities or hustling all day for cash or a place to crash, meeting these requirements is a challenge. And if that backpack is lost or stolen, as Charles’ was, people who can’t afford a place to sleep can rarely afford to replace expensive psychiatric medications.

But it’s not just the specifics of homelessness that present a problem. Policies that disproportionately target the poor and those without homes cause damages of their own. Having a history of arrest and incarceration limits access to safety net resources, including mental health services.

Not only can time spent in jail prevent individuals from meeting important appointments with mental health professionals, convictions can preclude them from access to supportive services, even outpatient services.

The very real and constant threat of getting caught is a source of stress that can directly damage psychological well-being. Of 441 homeless individuals surveyed, 36% had been arrested, 70% ticketed, and 90% harassed. Even the promise of such encounters with law enforcement presents a risk, especially for people with histories of trauma.

As Nancy Peters of Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL) explains, “There is all this emphasis right now on trauma-informed care.” And that’s fine; it’s important. “But,” she continues, “before we ever get to that, there is this potential for re-traumatization that is inherent in our policies.”

And while policies such as camping bans do nothing to prevent homelessness, they do ensure people stay hidden and on the move, devastating chances for social support. The streets thus become more dangerous, and those camping alone or in small groups become more vulnerable to violence. Homeless women are especially affected by the damage to social safety nets.

While Charles felt vulnerable when camping alone, as a large man, he knew most people, besides law enforcement, would leave him alone. Staying awake and alert all night was generally a sufficient, if still undesirable, precaution. But Susan, a petite woman on her own, was rightfully wary of any encounters. To avoid both law enforcement and intoxicated men, she and Rick often slipped into the auto-locking bathrooms in Old Town just before they closed. The small space provided a safe spot to overnight. But it wasn’t always an option.

Policies that scatter the homeless also undermine a very basic human need: sleep. In No Right to Rest, researchers observed that lack of sleep results in reduced quality of life, negative mental states, and an increase in visits to emergency departments. Bolstered by an abundance of supporting research, Peters will address sleep deprivation as a mental health priority in Denver Homeless Out Loud’s future campaigns.

Public Health In The Community At Large

As the bodies of homeless people are increasingly restricted by criminal legislation, policy undermines public health in the broader community as well. In an effort to keep people from using public bathrooms for personal hygiene, several communities place restrictions on their use. For example, a Denver Homeless Out Loud survey showed that, despite being inhabited by thousands of homeless, Denver has only 25 public restrooms that are accessible to the homeless. None of these are open around the clock, and many lack running water. Grand Junction, a smaller city on Colorado’s Western Slope, locks public bathrooms and shuts off water fountains in certain parks. And day shelters that offer showers often have long lines and lottery systems that interfere with the rest of the day’s survival tasks.

While limiting public restroom access may seem appealing to retailers and even customers, it directly curbs people’s ability to survive in public spaces and negatively impacts community health. Hindering access to basic hygiene services, and even all-important hydration, drives hygiene activities into far less appropriate, unsanitary places. Forcing homeless people to wash, urinate, and defecate in the open not only violates the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, but is also detrimental to community sanitation and public health.

What Now?

Several organizations and communities nationwide are fighting for the reevaluation and dismantling of such troubling policies and pushing for the development of protective legislation. Thirteen cities and states have passed or are considering a “Homeless Bill of Rights.” The Western Regional Advocacy Project continues to advocate for a “Right to Rest Act” in California, Colorado, and Oregon. And some communities have begun to implement innovative programs that not only address the consequences of homelessness but also offer alternatives to its criminalization.

Initiatives such as Housing First have dramatically reduced homelessness; Utah was the first state to adopt the policy and their success has been astonishing. The Houston Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Team works to obtain housing for the chronically homeless. And Philadelphia’s Medical Respite Center assists in the transition of homeless people from hospitals back into their communities. Thanks to these and other programs, we now have a working laboratory from which to learn.

Still, challenging the criminalization of homelessness itself remains essential, not only in improving public health, but as a social responsibility. In recent years, many Americans have openly pushed for the reevaluation of policies and programs that disproportionately harm (or benefit) segments of our population. Yet as a society, we continue to be comfortable blaming and punishing the poor for “their” circumstances and “our” problems, ignoring any hint at social accountability.

As we support efforts to reenergize and “clean up” our urban downtowns, countless communities continue to adopt policies that directly and indirectly punish the homeless. With each camping ban and panhandling prohibition, we recreate the debtors’ prisons banned nearly two centuries ago. And in so doing, we further institutionalize the systematic oppression of the poor.

This article was originally published on STIR Journal. Reprinted with permission.

Despite our tendency to overlook important off-the-field issues, a dozen NFL teams and social media coverage of their decisions made the often invisible priority problems of the league hard to miss during this year’s draft. Most pointed is the difference between how this year’s star prospect, Laremy Tunsil, was received compared with last year’s star Jameis Winston. Video evidence that you smoked some pot one time? Teams are worried you might be a “problem” if they sign you. Be the subject of the highest profile rape accusation in college football history complete with damning evidence and an administration/city law enforcement cover-up? You’re celebrated after going number one, just as anticipated.

Laremy Tunsil was projected to be the number one draft pick this year — a big deal for a left tackle, as the top slot usually goes to the higher profile, point-scoring positions like quarterback, running back, and wide receiver. Considering only the first 19 picks last year received fully guaranteed contracts, just going first round isn’t enough. To ensure you land a contract that will take care of you and yours beyond your ability to play in a very dangerous, volatile game, you need to go in the first half of the first round.

So when Tunsil’s hacked Twitter account tweeted a video of someone assumed to be him smoking weed through a gas mask bong moments before the draft kicked off Thursday night, all he could do was delete the account and watch as millions of dollars literally went up in smoke. Tunsil eventually went 13th to the Miami Dolphins — not even the top left tackle in the draft, let alone number one overall.

This year, the number one pick is expected to land a contract worth $28.65 million, while number 13 should come in around $12.76 million. Tunsil lost an easy $16 million+ and gained an undeserved label of “problematic player” because he smoked some pot in college. As Ian O’Connor reported for ESPN.com, that seconds-long video of a player inhaling — something, by the way, our president admitted to before we elected him twice — sent teams running for the hills:

‘He was the highest-graded player on our board,’ said Giants general manager Jerry Reese, ‘beyond the guys with issues.’”

“Guys with the issues” — aka, guys who smoke pot? A non-violent act that’s legal in some parts of the country?

I typically ignore the draft hoopla and wait for one of my favorite sports writers to tell me how it went and how my team did, but playwright/“comedy person” Jack Moore’s feed nabbed my attention first:

Reminder: Jameis Winston went first in the NFL draft last year despite RAPE ALLEGATIONS. Laremy Tunsil once smoked weed and no one wants him

@JackPMoore

I had Jameis Winston — who signed a four-year, $23.352 million contract last year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers despite accusations of raping a fellow FSU classmate — automatically suggested for my Fantasy Football team yesterday morning as I was ranking my QBs before our league’s draft. This is what it’s like to be a rape survivor and a football fan: You watch and listen as prominent national public figures comment on what they’d need to believe us. You watch as sexual predators are celebrated every week — both those who are “just” accused and those who have been convicted.

USA Today has an NFL Player Arrests database. I count 10 with sexual assault and/or domestic violence charges from 2015 alone. I count at least eight in 2014, the year before teams were falling all over themselves to sign Winston. And those are just the official arrests — for a set of crimes that are widely under-reported and all too often not taken seriously by law enforcement. NFL players are arrested for domestic violence, rape, battery, sexual assault every year, but league leaders are clutching their pearls over some pot — a substance that’s increasingly (and accurately) seen as less harmful than alcohol. I asked Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation and host of the “Edge of Sports” podcast about the disconnect:

“The NFL has a ‘man code’ baked into its ethos that sees weed as a greater mark against your character than sexual assault. It really is sick. Is it because marijuana is seen as a relaxant, something that makes you lose your edge while sexual assault is associated with the hyper-aggression that makes for good football? I don’t know. But I do know that many NFL GMs [general managers] — most of whom never played the game — could benefit from putting down the coffee and chilling the hell out.”

Moore also made another good point in his Twitter feed:

HOW DARE HE SMOKE MARIJUANA?!” the commentators asked as the young man began the career that would kill him in his 50’s.

@JackPMoore

The chances that Tunsil and his teammates will be prescribed medical marijuana for football-related trauma injuries is pretty damn high. But heaven forbid that’s not the first time they inhale. What does the commissioner have to say about the whole thing? Roger Goodell was true to his never-fails-to-disappoint form:

Roger Goodell to @MikeAndMike on Tunsil situation: “I think it’s all part of what makes the draft so exciting.” https://t.co/W1S1NwgfcU

@ESPNNFL

So, your league’s gross disproportionate handling of its player and prospect histories leading to the loss of millions of dollars and the labeling of a player who has yet to be on an NFL field as one of the “guys with the issues” — which could cost him future millions as well — is just an “exciting” marketing moment?

Classy, Roger.

Goodell’s problematic (to say the least) history on almost every issue imaginable has been well documented by many, including Zirin who called for his resignation last year and has painted the commissioner as both the abuser and the savior in his handling of domestic abuse cases. Suffice it to say, it’s time to revive Ultraviolet’s #GoodellMustGo campaign.

I would love nothing more than to watch Tunsil excel as a player, rack up some records, and make every team that passed on him regret their cowardice. So, even though it means I have to root for the Dolphins from time to time, I’m with O’Connor:

“Here’s hoping that chip inspires Tunsil to become the best player in his draft class. He got screwed Thursday night, as in royally. He didn’t deserve to be humiliated for doing something that a lot of college kids minor in, if not major in, yet in Chicago he handled this ungodly and unscheduled mess like a grown-up.”

The NFL, on the other hand, could stand to be a bit more humiliated for its appalling choice of priorities.

Lead image: flickr/Parker Anderson

Today was the first day I got played.

That means I’m pretty lucky. I’ve been doing this for a few years. I’m usually pretty exacting. And for getting played, it wasn’t much. It was supposed to be a $150 tribute for a half hour of telling a kid in Iowa that he was a loser for living with his mommy and daddy. He wanted to be called a bug. When it came time to pay, he bounced, and I cursed myself for not asking for payment upfront.

Another time, I had a hot tub date with a man who was so neurotic I could barely contain my laughter. I’d not counted the money in front of him as a gesture of trust, and I’d been shorted $50. I shrugged it off, because I’d essentially been paid to just hang out with him in a sauna and watch him fold and re-fold his towel.

There are so many things to internalize about sex work (or, rather, to try not to). Being occasionally played isn’t one of them.

I’m in a period of burn-out, a real, slow, anger-inducing burn-out (hence my last articles on emotional labor). There’s a reason why many workers take long periods off (if they can afford it) — to try to recuperate, to try to feel some kind of reconnection with the world, after turning slack against it.

I am on a trip right now, far from my city. I considered taking on work here, but I need a break. I need a break. I need a break. If I keep saying it, it will manifest in some way or another. One of my best friends is also here — we’ve rented a place in downtown, and I’m glad to see him. We make it a habit to see one another twice a year, since we live on opposite sides of the country. As such, I’ve never been to his city, and he has never been to mine. But we’ve met in strange places — Atlanta, Boston, New York City, Burlington. Timehop shows me that this time last year, he came to visit me while I was on a retreat somewhere near where he lives.

It shows us in the snow, near a train yard, near an old lumber mill that had been, it seemed, abruptly abandoned. There was a log with a saw still in it, as if the laborer had jumped ship mid-cut. When I think about this picture (so different from the city we’re in now, even though our apartment is still next to a train yard), I think about that novel, Sometimes a Great Notion. The logs rolling down the hill. The danger of being a lumberjack.

The first night here, my friend and I drank two bottles of wine. I almost never drink, and I began to swim through our sentences quickly. My friend and I (let’s call him Colin) have an intimate friendship; we met through a kind of camp. Camp life is not real. Camp life is up late and rising early. Camp life is living outside of your normative day to day. And because camp was our connection, for a few years I felt like a pull-down screen where he could project his manic-pixie-dream-girl fantasies. Colin is married, and has been more or less obscure about his romantic feelings for me. When he got married, I was his best man, and after the wedding, he didn’t speak to me for two months. I fell into a hole, he wrote, when he finally emerged.

When we see each other, we stay up late, rise early. We can be, like Rilke says, alone together, or happy in close-proximity solitude. We love one another deeply.

So, there we were, my first day in this other city, drinking wine and laughing louder and louder to be heard above the loud and violent trains outside. We crawled into our shared bed, and I turned from him to sleep. I felt his hand on my hip, slide up to my breast. And my body went slack, automatically turned, fell into the cracks of here and not here. It took me a moment to remember that this was my friend, not a job. I turned all the way toward him, and placed a hand firmly on his chest, pushed him away, shut it down gently. Bad idea.

But I’ve been in love with you for four years. He’d never explicitly said this until now. I flushed and went cold, my body still far from me, a satellite. I closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

The city I’m in is dark and gray. When planning for this trip, I’d hoped for sun, packed for sun. I brought six pairs of shoes for my seven-day trip, and have only worn my steel-toed boots, my more threadbare clothes. I find myself turning my back to any men — in restaurants, on sidewalks, on the subway. Colin and I haven’t yet talked about Monday night, though today we did have solo days — him, at a soccer bar where he met a girl, me, reading and writing and staring out the window at the trains going by. I haven’t felt much like exploring this city, which I have already been to, though in a different time, during a different season. I am also here, crash landing, and I recognize this. Colin and I have not yet talked about Monday night, but we have planned to meet up tonight for a drink and to talk.

He doesn’t know I’m a whore. He doesn’t know how carefully I maneuver myself to present in the world — how I straddle, 24/7, the lines between what we called the “civilian” world, and that of skin economy. He doesn’t know that his touch was so poorly timed, that my body turned cold against him and that he became, for a moment, another man I turned away from, another man I didn’t want to know.

I recorded myself talking into a voice memo today, a Jane Kenyon poem I love. “Evening at a County Inn.” I played it over and over. Sometimes, I put on headphones and listen to my own recordings as I’m trying to sleep. It seems narcissistic, to love the sound of my own voice. But I have a nice one, cultivated from doing radio and talking to men on the telephone. Its dulcet sounds are soothing. And, I spend so much time in the world voiceless, I think I listen to it to remind myself that I exist.

There is a line that is drawn in dominant/submissive relationships, a line of fantasy and reality. It is generally the dominant’s job to wrap scenes up and help transition them back into reality. I’ve dropped submissives for refusing to come out of the fantasy, for wanting to stay in it. I met a sub last week in a crowded, 24-hour diner at 11 p.m., an old punk rocker who hasn’t worked in 20 years because he makes so much money from royalties and band T-shirts. He told me of clubs in Europe, where subs have gotten lost, have been locked in cages and gagged for so long, their jaws have atrophied.

I am an ambassador of reality and fantasy. I sit in on meetings and report back from two worlds. I contain multitudes. So much of my prowess with this comes from surviving domestic violence, from being able to recognize emotional temperatures and diffuse or infuse. To be able to read desires. To be able to self-protect. So I can truly make my subs believe I own them, and I can truly care for them instinctively, unconsciously. It’s a skill I am grateful for, though it comes from darkness.

But when it comes to transitioning myself, I feel, on this trip to this city that is not mine, that I’ve gotten lost in a caged darkness, a ball gag in my teeth. I worry I don’t know how to navigate my intimate relationships outside of sex work — and I find myself turning cold against those who are warm against me, and expecting tribute from those who do not owe it to me.

I don’t take being played seriously because it is a man in a basement who got 10 minutes of my time for free — an expensive commodity, yes, but ultimately not about me or my body. I take more personally the effects of an inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality that the work has inserted into my body.

Colin and I will talk tonight and we will work it out, there’s no doubt there. I can tell him about feeling like a pull-down screen, and he will understand. He is not a man in a basement who is looking for 10 free minutes of my time. He understands reality, because it is the place we now occupy, outside of camp. And I tell myself these things, record these things, to play back to myself, until I finally, finally, believe that they are true.