Explainers everywhere are working overtime to preserve patriarchal values. One popular strategy that continues to crop up states that, “rape is different from other crimes because it’s a ‘he said/she said’ situation.” This faulty line of reasoning reveals three things: an assumption that in disputes between men and women, men must be given the benefit of the doubt; an assumption that all rapists are men and all victims women; and glaring ignorance about how the U.S. justice system actually operates.

The justice system runs on testimonial evidence, which is exactly what “he said/she said” is. What makes a “he said/she said situation” different from any other dispute between witnesses? In a word: Nothing.

Whether it’s a small claims case between neighbors over dog poop, or a death penalty case of murder in the first degree, witnesses will give testimony, and each side’s testimony will usually oppose the other side’s testimony. If everyone agreed, there would be no reason to be in court to begin with.

Inevitably, some of these disputed cases will pit “he said” testimony against “she said” testimony. We hear the “he said/she said situation” line exclusively in sexual assault cases because men have been accustomed through history to the benefit of the doubt (if not outright commendation) in heterosexual rape cases.

Cases are decided every day based solely on witness testimony. The “lack of corroborating evidence” for testimony — cited by Senator Susan Collins and others during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings as a potential violation of Kavanaugh’s rights — doesn’t mean a denial of due process, the fair procedures that the  all citizens are entitled to, nor does it void a presumption of innocence.

To be clear, testimony by a competent witness is sufficient evidence on its own.

The legal definition of “competent” has evolved over the last one hundred fifty years to mean, simply, being able to perceive and communicate what happened. The “he said/she said” line is likely a holdover from when certain groups of people were classified as incompetent witnesses by virtue of their status. In ancient Athens, for example, women were excluded from courts entirely. And in the 21st century, Jewish law in Orthodox and Conservative communities still holds that women are not competent witnesses in most cases.

To be clear, testimony by a competent witness is sufficient evidence on its own.
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Excluding people of color from testifying was a common practice in the States, and it was legal until passage in 1868 of the 14th Amendment. Why? As one court held, it was because of “their crude and monstrous superstitions, which rendered them incapable of feeling or appreciating the obligation of an oath, as felt and appreciated in a Christian community; and it was not, therefore, deemed safe to receive them as witnesses, even against one another.”

Under similar rationale, atheists of any color were also deemed incompetent to testify, beginning  in the States during colonial times and extending in many jurisdictions through the mid-nineteenth century. Denying people the right to testify, or questioning the credibility of a particular demographic, has always been a way for courts to strengthen social hierarchies like institutional racism and sexism.

The 'he said/she said' line is likely a holdover from when certain groups of people were classified as incompetent witnesses by virtue of their status.
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While women and people of color are now, legally, competent to testify, barriers against them persist. Leigh Gilmore, author of Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives and a distinguished visiting professor at Wellesley College, writes that sexual and racial violence are seen by some as “belonging to a separate ordered of judgment.” Moreover, gender and race stereotypes are “sticky judgments,” so ubiquitous that we can’t see them, so prevalent that they seem “neutral.”

When asked to share some thoughts about how doubting women’s testimony creates a benefit for men in the justice system, she says,  

“[G]ender bias makes doubting women feel rational and virtuous rather than unjust. ‘He said’ carries more weight than what ‘she said’ because women’s testimony is demeaned and discredited in ways that men’s testimony isn’t. . . .We have vividly seen with the #MeToo movement the effects of this bias: the lack of transparent and fair processes for women to report sexual violence, the blaming of victims for bringing forward accusations of sexual assault both “too soon” and risking men’s reputations and also “too late,” which disregards all the mechanisms for silencing and shaming victims.”

In this view, witnesses from the dominant group get the benefit of the doubt. Even though it’s a legal truism that “most facts are proved by testimony,” and that even in cases where physical evidence exists, “the human recital — viva voce — is often crucial to the establishment of its authenticity or significance,” testimony from members of marginalized groups in the States and elsewhere has often been cast as unreliable, or simply excluded from consideration.

As a former trial attorney, I’ve seen how the he said/she said dynamic is replicated in cases involving parties from opposite ends of a hierarchy. It could be “white cop says/black kid says,” or “boss says/employee says,” or “priest says/choirboy says,” or “corporate polluter says/environmental group says.” In any case, the member of the dominant class gets the benefit of the doubt. Dr. Gilmore connects this bullshit phenomenon to the “reasonable man” standard in U.S. law:

Take the legal fiction of the ‘reasonable man’ whose motives and actions juries are instructed to consider as the standard for deciding, for example, cases of self-defense. When women claim self-defense in cases where they kill a man, often a violent intimate partner whom they know is intent upon inflicting violence on them — an act that meets the self-defense standard — juries often fail to apply self-defense accurately because they doubt women were justified in using force to defend themselves for two reasons: the assumption that the woman overreacted or that the man’s life, to be blunt, is worth more. We see this in rape cases in lenient sentencing for men like Brock Turner whose father was outraged that his son would be punished for raping an unconscious woman, an act he described as ‘a steep price to pay for twenty minutes of action.’

Just imagine reactions to someone claiming that a prison term was a “steep price to pay” for a woman who took only twenty minutes to torture a man. Flipping the script on cultural assumptions is one way of highlighting their injustice. Dr. Gilmore expects a backlash.

Gender and race stereotypes are 'sticky judgments,' so ubiquitous that we can’t see them, so prevalent that they seem 'neutral.'
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Bias is woven into all the processes for judging what women and people of color say about their lives; so is the unfair privilege that powerful men receive in all aspects of life. In the leveling of this imbalance, men will likely feel aggrieved by the loss of this unearned and undeserved testimonial credit, as will all of those habituated to thinking that male elites deserve this credit.

Victims of racist and sexual assaults will continue to risk further abuse in police stations, courtrooms, congressional hearings, and the media until we explode all versions of “he said/she said” dynamics. And that means a constant, close examination of how media and justice systems treat women and people of color when they come forward to testify.

“This is just between us, right?” one of my students asked, her voice trailing off as she adjusted her navy blue backpack and got up to leave.

I reassured her that this was a confidential, safe space to share any feelings, experiences, or questions that she may have. “Ok” she replied, looking relieved, her shoulders relaxing, “see you next week.”

As a mental health clinician practicing in a large school setting, students talk to me about many issues, including their gender identity, gender dysphoria (defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify), and sexual orientation. And they talk to me because they trust that I will keep what they share confidential.

There are certain legal exceptions to student/provider confidentiality. If school clinicians suspect a student is being abused or neglected, or if a student expresses suicidal ideation, we must follow a clear intervention plan to protect the student.

However, with the overwhelming majority of issues and experiences that students come to talk about, it is the privacy of the space that prompts them to come and seek support in the first place. It is the understanding that they can speak freely and those words do not go beyond the walls of this office.

But if Republicans in many states get their way, this guarantee of confidentiality will be destroyed.

Ohio Republican Representatives Tom Brinkman and Paul Zeltwanger recently introduced legislation, House Bill 658, which, if passed, would require school therapists and teachers to “out” transgender students to their parents.

HB 658 states, “If a government agent or entity has knowledge that a child under its care or supervision has exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner opposite of the child’s biological sex, the government agent or entity with knowledge of that circumstance shall immediately notify, in writing, each of the child’s parents and the child’s guardian or custodian.” 

The law would also punish therapists with felony charges if they do not comply with outing children.

HB 658 perpetuates the dangerous belief that if we forbid children from receiving therapy, if we scare them with the threat of being outed by a trusted therapist and we impede their ability to gain any validation and gender-affirming support, then their gender identification isn’t real. Then all of this will just go away.

Republicans claim the reason for this proposed bill is a supposed concern for “parents rights.” The belief is that parents should have to consent to any form of treatment, including just speaking to a school therapist, regarding a child’s gender identity or gender dysphoria. 

Yet despite the pretext for this law, the fact remains that parents rights are not being impeded; their rights are still overwhelmingly protected by state law.

State law already requires that parents give consent for a transgender child to begin hormone blockers, take testosterone or estrogen, or have gender reassignment surgery. But now Ohio is trying to infringe on whether or not a student can even talk to a school therapist or teacher about their gender identity, effectively turning school providers into gender informants.

And Ohio isn’t the only state trying to violate transgender student rights. There has been a startling increase in legislation targeting transgender children. In the last three years 44 anti-transgender pieces of legislation have been introduced in various states, with 23 of those targeting transgender children in schools and in playing school sports. 

Ohio is trying to infringe on whether or not a student can even talk to a school therapist or teacher about their gender identity, effectively turning school providers into gender informants.
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These types of legislation are particularly dangerous given that transgender students are already at an increased risk for anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and becoming homeless due to parents kicking them out (after discovering their gender identity). 

A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, led by Sari Reisner and Mathew Mimiaga, research scientists at the Fenway Institute and Harvard University, found that transgender youth are at a higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and self harm than non-transgender adolescents, and that the need for gender-affirming mental health treatment and other support services is essential to their well-being. 

Currently, of the 1.6 million adolescents and young adults who are homeless in America,  40% of them identify as LGBTQ, according to research done at the Williams Institute at UCLA Law. 

In addition, 46% of homeless LGBTQ youth left the home because of their family’s refusal to accept their sexual orientation or gender identity; 43% were kicked out by parents, and 32% reported enduring sexual, emotional, or physical abuse in their family home. 

How many more will be abused or become homeless after they are forcibly outed by their schools?

Jenn Burleton, executive director of the TransActive Gender Center, reports that “Many transgender kids living with unsupportive parents may be able to hold on, emotionally, because of support through school counselors or Gay-Straight Alliances. But in one fell swoop, this bill would eliminate any support system at their schools…their goal is Draconian.”

How many more will be abused or become homeless after they are forcibly outed by their schools?
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In many ways HB 658 creates a state-sanctioned witch hunt. Where does it end? The proposed law says that any student who “exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner opposite of the child’s biological sex” must be reported to their parents. 

Are schools now supposed to be spies for any possible non-conforming gender expression? 

“Who is the judge of which gender is allowed to do what? If Jane signs up for shop class, will her parents receive a government letter? If Jordan doesn’t want to play football, do his parents get a letter? What if Alex wants to attend a meeting of the student LGBTQ group–does the school email that to Alex’s parents? Just what stereotypes are they expected to enforce?” states Ohio’s Equality Now in response to this bill.

In addition, forcing clinicians to report non-conforming gender expression or gender dysphoria to parents, even though many of them may react violently, would only cause students further harm and violates our duty to protect children.  

Therapists cannot ethically report a child’s gender expression or dysphoria if it is told to us in confidence, and even more so if we know that child will then be at an increased risk for abuse or being thrown out of their house. 

The repercussions of the proposed Ohio law (and many other pieces of anti-transgender legislation in other states) would be catastrophic for all transgender students—and those who are the most vulnerable will no longer seek out support if they now have to fear being “outed,” which then elevates their risk for depression and self-harm. 

The National Association Of Social Workers (NASW) has condemned HB 658 stating, “We are outraged by the legislation that is so clearly in violation of everything the profession of social work stands for.” The American Counseling Association (ACA) also weighed in on HB 658, stating the bill “negates client rights to confidentiality and attacks the very basis of a key mandate for counselors: to provide counseling to those who need it and have nowhere else to turn.” The risk to students is especially pertinent in Ohio, where abuse of transgender students has already been well documented. 

A recent study found that 64%of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have heard disparaging comments about being LGBTQ from family members and only 23% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have come out to close family members about their sexual orientation. The study also found that 12% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio were sexually assaulted/raped due to their presumed or actual LGBTQ identity, 69%of LGBTQ youth in Ohio are harassed in school, and an alarming 70% of LGBTQ youth in Ohio have received unwanted sexual commentary and inappropriate and lewd jokes in the past year.

While the legal challenges to this law, if it passes, are inevitable, this type of anti-transgender legislation that is exploding around the country, plays into the larger cultural battle of denying transgender students their basic right to exist, to seek support, and to have their own autonomy.

Students will no longer have the ability to come out when they are ready, they will be forced out. And even those who have more support and aren’t at risk for abuse at home will still be forced to come out on someone else’s terms.

Corey Vickman, a 15-year-old transgender student in New York City, shared that “While I have a supportive family and school, coming out can still be terrifying for many transgender students. I can only imagine how devastating it would be to have that option taken away from you, especially by someone you have confided in.”

Even those who have more support and aren’t at risk for abuse at home, will still be forced to come out on someone else’s terms.
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You can’t scare a child into not being transgender or non-binary. No amount of threats, rules, or regulations will keep someone from experiencing dysphoria. School clinicians are there to support students, and requiring them to “out” children, to put students at an increased risk for harm and to betray their trust, violates the core principles of what we do.

And we will do everything we can to stop this dangerous legislation. 

**Names have been changed to protect the identity of minor children**

November 8, 2017 was a big day for Eric Kelley. On that cloudless, crisp day, he was released from New Jersey’s Northern State Prison after 24 years of incarceration. Holding the door open for his first steps of freedom was a pretty, petite woman in a sharp suit holding his belongings in a white, plastic Marshalls bag. Kelley, wearing a brown long-sleeved shirt and jeans, held up his arms in victory. And when the cheers from friends and family subsided, he turned and wrapped her small frame in his tall one.

Vanessa Potkin is the Innocence Project attorney who successfully overturned Kelley’s 1993 murder and robbery conviction, with the help of DNA evidence from a green-and-purple plaid baseball hat. Kelley and Ralph Lee (who was represented and freed by Centurion Ministries) had been found guilty of the murder of 22-year-old Tito Merino in Paterson, New Jersey, based on statements they gave to police after they were asked to go to the city’s detective bureau. Though police had been looking for one suspect in Merino’s murder, the two were interrogated separately, for hours on end, giving contradictory statements. Kelley, who was involved in a car accident and suffers from intellectual problems that make it difficult for him to process information, allegedly confessed during the questioning.

Detectives later admitted to feeding Ralph Lee information supplied to them by interrogating Kelley. There are no notes or recordings from his police interview. Then, in 2010, when DNA testing was more advanced, Vanessa and Centurion Ministries were granted permission to retest the baseball hat, found beside Merino’s body, for DNA evidence. After searching the convicted felon database, they got a match — the DNA belonged to Eric Dixon, who had been convicted of a similar robbery of a store close to Merino’s. Dixon also matched the age and physical description of someone a witness mentioned being in the store at the time of the crime.

On the day of his exoneration, Eric Kelley was surrounded by loved ones. While being photographed, they all shouted “freedom!” The newly free man smiled and made silly faces as Potkin joined his family photograph, also sporting a wide grin. He put his arm around her and kissed her head, sticking to her side as he absorbed his new surroundings.

A few days later, Potkin met Kelley again in a shopping mall. The prosecution appealed the vacation of his conviction, but he had been able to post a $20,000 bail while the appeal goes through the courts. They would return on December 11, but Kelley was making the most of his new life. At the mall, Potkin, Melissa Sopher (Vanessa’s paralegal), Kelley, and his daughter were having lunch, waiting for Kelley’s brother to join them. They had about half an hour of free time and were looking for something to do when Potkin and Sopher noticed his nails were unkempt, and took him to get his first manicure.

“His nails were so long and ragged,” Potkin says. “Even though it’s frivolous — I don’t mean to trivialize it, a manicure isn’t going to take away two decades of prison — he came from a place where his needs weren’t met. He was just a number, he was never put first. And his nails looked great.”

“She embodies the spirit of the Innocence Project,” says Barry Scheck, one of the cofounders of the Innocence Project. “Exonerees all love her. She really catches their vitality, and she’s got a terrific sense of humor and a fighting spirit. She gets it.”

Potkin met Scheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992 when she interned with their police brutality practice in New York City. Scheck and Neufeld co-founded the Innocence Project, an organization that helps wrongfully convicted inmates regain their freedom. Since its inception in 1992, the Innocence Project has grown to encompass an 80-person New York staff with organizations in over 60 countries. It has freed over 350 wrongfully convicted individuals as a result of DNA evidence, and has identified 150 alternative perpetrators.

Potkin was born in Chicago but, because of her father’s residency as a doctor, her family quickly relocated to Seattle, where they lived until she was 13. They then moved to West Hollywood, and she now considers herself a California native. In her undergraduate studies at Mills College, a grant allowed her to work with Maxine Waters, the Democratic congresswoman. There, she realized her drive to be a part of policy reform. It was a time of highly publicized police brutality, during the infamous “war on drugs,” and Potkin zeroed in on justice system reform as something that interested her. At the time, though, she wanted to be a politician. A law degree was, she thought, a way to pad her resume. “I saw the prison system as one of the most pressing issues of our time. It wasn’t a war on drugs, it was a war on people of color and poor people.”

Prison Rape Jokes Are The Furthest Thing From Funny
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Just ask Anthony Wright. When he was only 20, the young black man with an infant son found himself arrested for the 1991 rape and murder of an elderly Philadelphia woman. After serving 25 years for the crime he didn’t commit, his retrial jury acquitted him after less than an hour of deliberations. Wright had a solid alibi, police had illegally obtained a questionable confession, and new DNA evidence proved the guilt of another man, Ronnie Byrd.

“Our criminal justice system needs to be revised. There are situations that should not be,” said Grace Greco, a juror in Wright’s retrial. “How many people have been unjustly incarcerated based on false evidence? It is really a problem, especially when you’re poor and you are black and you have no one to vouch for you.”

Potkin’s work with Rep. Waters also exposed her to another force: legendary lawyer Johnnie Cochran. At the time, he was working on the case of Geronimo Pratt, the Black Panther leader on trial for the murder of Caroline Olsen. Cochran lost the case, but Pratt’s conviction was vacated. Cochran would go on to be a co-founder of Cochran, Neufeld and Scheck LLP, the police brutality litigation company that preceded the Innocence Project.

Now, in Potkin’s office — a room the size of a prison cell filled with case files, blown-up newspaper articles recounting her successful exonerations, and photos of her daughter — she proudly houses a photo of her and Rep. Waters from the early ’90s. It sits on a wooden table, framed by a light green piece of construction paper. She shows it off with a beaming smile: “She’s one of my inspirations.”

In 2000, Potkin became the Innocence Project’s first staff attorney after the organization received a grant to hire one lawyer. She planned to stay for a year, but has spent the last 17 years fighting for the unjustly incarcerated. She is a champion of post-conviction DNA litigation, and has represented and exonerated over 25 people. As one of an eight-person group from various disciplines, she helped publish a 2012 report by the National Institute of Justice called “DNA for the Defense Bar” that serves to increase understanding of DNA science and its place in court. Because of her work, efforts to change policy, and research, she is also a nationally recognized expert on both wrongful convictions and innocence proven by DNA evidence.

“Vanessa doesn’t back down to anybody,” chuckles Gina Papera-Ewing, a former paralegal for the Innocence Project. From 2012 to 2015, she worked with Potkin closely. “Inevitably, she will always find her way around any sort of road block.” Papera-Ewing was 20 years old and trying what she wanted to do post-college. “I got to have a mentor who was such a strong woman, and a strong woman attorney. In a male-dominated profession, it can kind of be daunting sometimes. To have her as a mentor really taught me how to be fearless in very specific ways.”

In addition to fighting for individuals, the Innocence Project seeks to reform the justice system through education, in order to prevent future injustices and wrongful convictions. They focus on incentivized informants (often, prisoners who are given reduced sentences in exchange for incriminating testimony against the accused), inadequate defense, misapplication of forensic science (bite mark science, for example, was heavily relied upon for decades and has since been deemed inadequate), government misconduct, false confessions, and eyewitness misidentification as the main causes of unjust incarcerations. Potkin is also looking to expand the Innocence Project’s case load to include non-DNA cases, where innocence can be proven with other sciences. She recently partnered with a Canadian entomologist (someone who studies bugs) to submit maggot growth and decomposition evidence to prove that the victim was murdered at a time when the accused (and later convicted) was identified to be two hours away.

In addition to fighting for individuals, the Innocence Project seeks to reform the justice system through education.
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In that case, 18-year old Kirstin Blaise Lobato was accused of a violent Nevada murder after a troubled life. She had been abused growing up, and was involved in an assault prior to the murder she was convicted of. The prior assault, though, was an act of self-defense, and Lobato boasted about her ability to escape an attack. That same pride, Potkin says, gave the police ammunition to zero in on her client as the perpetrator. “It was tunnel vision, and they saw no other possibility,” she says. As the Innocence Project’s 200th client, Lobato was released from jail on January 3.

The men and women Potkin has exonerated also remain in contact with their one-time attorney. Barry Gibbs had been framed for the 1986 murder of an African American sex worker in Brooklyn. The killing, it turned out, was tied to retired NYPD detective Louis Eppolito, who was later convicted of eight murders and other charges — he and another detective had plotted and carried out killings on behalf of the Mafia.

Gibbs was released from jail in 2005. The night before he was set to be released, Potkin and a coworker ran frantically through K-Mart searching for clothes and other comforts for their client. After his release, they remained friends, and Potkin gave Gibbs another honor — he was her daughter’s godfather. When Gibbs passed away on March 23, The Innocence Project posted an article recounting Vanessa and Barry’s friendship.

Potkin’s 7-year old daughter also makes frequent appearances in the Innocence Project offices. She knows everyone as friends of her mother’s, and she is given a look into the organization’s dynamic — though the legal profession is largely male-dominated, the Innocence Project’s male to female ratio doesn’t reflect that. Only 24% of the staff is male. In fact, Potkin’s daughter offers an entirely new insight — her cousin, a boy, wants to be a lawyer, and Potkin and her daughter were having a conversation about it. “She turned to me and said: ‘Mom, he can’t be a lawyer, he’s a boy. Only women can be lawyers!’” Potkin recalls. “It was an interesting moment for me.”

The subject of Potkin’s Columbia Law School thesis focussed specifically on guilty pleas. Today, 97% of federal cases are resolved with them — in some cases prosecutors are incentivized to resolve cases without a trial — and an overcrowded docket is relieved. But, many of these pleas are coerced, not truthful, or submitted to avoid trial. “Because sentences are so excessive, prosecutors wield power to coerce guilty pleas,” she says. Essentially, a person’s right to a trial is exchanged for a less chaotic courthouse, and for prosecutor rewards. “If you have a system that would shut down if everyone exercised their constitutional right, you have a problem.”

The Innocence Project still has a lot of work to do. One in four American people have a loved one who is incarcerated, but how many are wrongful convictions? A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesfound that 1 in 25 death row inmates is later proven innocent. According to Time Magazine, 166 people were declared innocent in 2016 — and some of them were convicted as far back as 1964. Nineteen were exonerated after they died. This made for an average of three exonerations per week. At the time of writing, the Innocence Project has 200 on the docket for exoneration, and a staggering 6,000 cases in evaluation.

On December 11, Potkin returned to court in Paterson, New Jersey. It was a hearing to update the courts about Ralph Lee and Eric Kelley’s lives while on bail. Lee’s father and Kelley’s younger brother sat in the back of the five-row room, listening as Potkin petitioned for, and was eventually given, permission for Kelley to leave the state of New Jersey to visit the Innocence Project office in Manhattan (both of their current bail statuses require that they stay in their home state). The judge heard that Kelley has a job as a dishwasher at IHOP and that he is doing well with his freedom.

The hearing concludes with an appeal hearing and another update hearing set for February 2018, and the small crowd files out of the courtroom. They hug and catch up for a few minutes, chatting in a circle about the next steps of the case and about holiday plans. After a few minutes, both Lee’s father and his lawyer leave, but the rest of the group piles into two cars — Kelley’s brother Troy and Ralph Lee into Troy’s Mercedes and everyone else into Potkin’s Prius — and head to lunch in Newark. On the way, Kelley and Potkin, both sitting in the front, talk about families and their children, peppered with legal talk.

Eric Kelley and Ralph Lee walk out of prison after 24 years of wrongful conviction.

Lunch, at Newark’s Dinosaur BBQ, is a friendly affair as well. Troy Kelley, the jester of the group, teases Potkin about her taste in music, guessing her favorite band is Hall & Oates. She’s typing out the motion to allow Eric Kelley into Manhattan as she surprises Kelley with her list of favorite musicians — Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, and Whitney Houston. They FaceTime Gina Papera-Ewing as the quiet, observant Ralph Lee and outgoing Eric Kelley take turns sharing their stories of freedom. This behavior, Papera-Ewing says, is what makes Potkin stand out as a lawyer — her clients are also her friends. “I see our clients as people first. It shouldn’t be a revolutionary idea,” Potkin says. “Even if our clients had done what they were convicted of, they’re still humans. People make mistakes.”

“She does this work, and it comes from such a pure place,” Papera-Ewing says. “Vanessa is more than an attorney. She becomes like a friend, like family.” Proof lies in her ongoing relationship with Archie Williams, an inmate at Angola Prison. His was one of Potkin’s first cases as an Innocence Project attorney, and one of the reasons she chose to stay on all of those years ago.

“I told him: I won’t leave the Innocence Project until you’re exonerated. And he’s still in jail.”

Around the world, it’s been alarming and frightening to read about the rise in hate crimes and the boost that Donald Trump’s presidential victory has given to white nationalists. Unfortunately, some aspects of Trump’s impending presidency have also triggered a sense of déjà vu.

As a journalist in Singapore, America’s skew toward authoritarianism, particularly Trump’s dismissal of and threat toward press freedom, is starting to hit close to home.

Singapore is often portrayed as a global success story. It’s known as an expat safe haven with a high GDP where the streets are safe, things are efficient, and it’s easy to do business. These outward signs of development and modernity often lead to the impression of a well-functioning, democratic state, but the reality is somewhat different: Under the impressive sheen of the city-state’s achievements, Singapore’s social and political sphere continues to be run with a patriarchal authoritarian streak under the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) — a party that has held on to power for over five decades.

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Under the sheen of achievements, Singapore continues to be run with an authoritarian streak.
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Authoritarianism often conjures up images of societies where people live like automatons within a police state, accompanied by the overt brainwashing and top-down dominion displayed in George Orwell’s 1984. This mental picture makes claims of Trump turning the U.S. into an authoritarian state seem melodramatic and over-exaggerated.

But authoritarianism isn’t just about show trials or disappearing dissidents. It’s about the gradual consolidation of power through the erosion of democratic institutions and processes, the reduction of transparency, and the increase of conflicts of interest. In Singapore, a long list of offenses, including non-violent ones, are deemed “arrestable.” This means that the police can search your home and seize your property without a warrant. You are only required to have access to legal counsel within a “reasonable” time, which means that people, even 15-year-old teenagers, are questioned by the police without being able to have their lawyers with them. With a single party dominating Parliament, bills are passed at a stunning pace, leaving little opportunity and space for contestation.

These cutbacks often don’t have an immediate day-to-day impact on people’s lives, which means that most people don’t see it as a big deal or an urgent problem, but the effects are more insidious than you might think. As power gets more centralized and checks and balances recede, people start to feel like everything is out of their hands.

“What can you do? It’s just like this,” is something you hear a lot from Singaporeans. Your country feels less and less like it belongs to you, and more like a place in which you are allowed to live only as long as you play nice and stay obedient. It’s disempowering, discouraging people from taking action and perpetuating the vicious cycle.

The loss of control creeps up on you on many fronts. One of the most profound and irreversible ways is through assaults, subtle or overt, on press freedom. For all its faults — and journalists will be the first to tell you that there are many — a free press is crucial to a functioning democracy, because it’s how citizens and voters get informed, and how the powerful are scrutinized and held to account.

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As power gets more centralized, people start to feel like everything is out of their hands.
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But that’s not the way Trump sees it. After the off-the-record roasting TV networks received, one source observed to The New Yorker that Trump “truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment . . . He thinks we are supposed to say what he says and that’s it.”

This is how Singapore’s PAP government sees it too. The idea of the press as the Fourth Estate holds little sway here. Instead, the media is seen as part of the country’s “nation-building” exercise, and expected to perform an “educational role” to help Singaporeans understand the government’s policies. This means that principles like freedom of the press and freedom of information have been made subordinate to the interests of the state, as demonstrated by the country’s consistently dismal press freedom rankings.

The environment that Trump and his supporters have threatened to create for the press? We’re living it in Singapore.

What Liberals Don’t Get About Free Speech In The Age Of Trump

When Trump declared that he would “open up” U.S. libel laws (a position that he may have reversed, because he doesn’t want to risk being sued himself), Singapore was already way ahead of him. PAP politicians have a long history of favoring defamation suits when countering both political opponents and media outlets: Local opposition politicians J.B. Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan, as well as international news publications the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review, have all been on the receiving end of the PAP leadership’s litigious bent. Most recently, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong took out a civil defamation suit against local Singaporean blogger Roy Ngerng, winning S$150,000 in aggravated damages that Ngerng will only finish paying off in 2033.

In a further assault on press freedom, prominent Trump supporters like Sean Hannity have suggested that press outlets that have been critical should be denied access to the Trump administration, something Trump has enforced before and after the presidential campaign. This, too, is common in Singapore and other authoritarian states, where the powerful seize the prerogative to offer information only to those who might be easier to control. They are able to restrict access to particular events like press conferences — even to those who have media accreditation — and foreign journalists have reported being denied visas to work in the country.

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When Trump declared that he would ‘open up’ U.S. libel laws, Singapore was way ahead of him.
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Off-the-record meetings also appear in the Singapore government’s playbook; confidential meetings with select groups, organizations, and individuals — from civil society, business, academia, and the press — are par for the course, resulting in the government’s ability to claim “public consultation” without having to actually be accountable or public about what the consultation entailed. As Margaret Sullivan observed in The Washington Post, such meetings result in skewed power dynamics where one side is able to control the narrative while the other is bound to silence.

Since November 8, the U.S. has been caught in a messy, confusing transition. Every day that the president-elect makes any move (including a tweet), it comes off as one step forward and two steps back; what will, or won’t, he do after his inauguration? How is he denouncing white supremacists and installing them in his team at the same time? Is he going to expand libel laws or not? What is his position on the “One China” policy? Does he or does he not intend to deport immigrants and implement a registry for Muslims?

With FREE SPEECH Act, Trump Fights Hostile Press, Makes America Great!

There is an argument among journalists to “wait and see,” to report on Trump like they would anything else. Michael Wolff recently argued that the press shouldn’t see Trump as a threat, but as “a story that needs to be told in rather conventional ways.”

“Yes, you do want to be stenographers,” he said. “You’re there to literally convey what someone in power says, and you bring it to people who want to know.”

That’s basically what the Singaporean mainstream media has been doing for years. And we are not better off for it. Instead, what we have is a culture where the government is assured of dominance, not just in the political sphere, but in controlling the narratives and frames that we use to understand the society we live in.

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What we have is a culture where the government is assured of dominance.
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For example, when migrant bus drivers from China staged a strike in 2012, the mainstream media was reluctant to use the word “strike” in their coverage, until the Minister for Manpower denounced the collective action as an “illegal strike,” thus delegitimizing the workers’ action and setting the frame for all subsequent discussion of the issue. The question of whether outlawing strikes is a breach of freedom of assembly and labor rights fell by the wayside — an opportunity to have an honest conversation in the media woefully turned into a series of pronouncements directly from government sources.

Without the media’s necessary role as watchdog, we’ve seen sustained normalization and justification of policies that further erode fundamental rights and freedoms. Earlier this year the Singapore government introduced, and eventually passed, a bill on contempt of court, criminalizing comments about ongoing court cases that might “prejudge” proceedings. The mainstream media, faithfully conveying the information dished out by the law minister, reported it as a good thing for Singapore, a simple consolidation of points of law. It wasn’t until later that civil society groups and actors — myself included — pointed out the implications on free speech and media freedom, but by then it was too late and the bill was passed a mere month after its introduction.

Fair, balanced reporting is important. But that has nothing to do with journalists becoming stenographers, or treating Trump like any other story. We’ve already seen how this strategy has led to the normalization and mainstreaming of extremist, racist rhetoric; just look at the absurdity of CNN hosting a debate on whether Trump should denounce supporters who question whether Jews are people.

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If journalists keep acting as if things are normal, they’ll eventually end up creating a new normal.
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This is how it begins. If journalists keep acting as if things are normal, they’ll eventually end up creating a new normal, in which the erosion of democratic freedoms are obscured.

It’s fair to see Trump as a threat, because he is. He is not a “conventional” president-elect; he is a man who has indicated a fundamental disregard for the First Amendment, for transparency and accountability, and many other democratic values that the rest of the world has long seen America as the embodiment of. This is not a time for stenography; it is a time for scrutiny and tough questions. Journalists — and everyone who cares about democracy — must keep an eye on the processes and institutions on which a democratic society is built.

Take it from someone who operates in an environment where the First Amendment is a faraway aspiration. It’s really going to hurt when it’s gone, and everyone loses.

Let’s imagine this story isn’t about the pill, its about beer. Imagine that every three months you have to pay to see a doctor to get their permission to drink it. Or, maybe you don’t like it — for taste or health risk concerns. But whether you want to drink it or not, you’d be bothered that a person’s own judgment wasn’t enough. You’d be bothered by how hard it was to get.

Welcome to the world of acquiring the pill, with one important difference: The pill ain’t for fun.

While it obviously isn’t for everyone, many people use the pill or other hormonal birth control methods to decide when or if they’ll have children, to prevent being in pain for one week in every four, to control when or if they’ll bleed, and more.

The health risks of beer can be severe, and people are welcome to see a doctor if they are concerned. Likewise, the pill can also have side effects (most medicine does) and people can also see a doctor about that if they choose to.

The strange thing is that people in most “first world” countries are obliged to see a doctor every three months to a year (depending on local regulations), for 35 years or so. Even if they stay on the same pill and have no new symptoms or concerns.

Jen Billock Young told me she spent three years trying to get access to the pill. She said she felt “defeated” at every turn, after she had to wait a year and a half just to get a new patient exam, then was told she had to get a pap smear … and so it went on.

Meanwhile, cigarettes, responsible for more than 480,000 deaths a year in the United States, are easy to buy. Caffeinated drinks taken in excess can cause palpitations, high blood pressure, vomiting, convulsions, and in a few cases death, according to the NHS. But they too are easy to get. Dietary supplements have accounted for over 8,000 people needing treatment in health care facilities. And then there are guns, available just by walking into a shop in many parts of the country.

The point isn’t that things like beer should be regulated or prescribed, but rather that we should question why women aren’t trusted to make decisions about what is best for them, and consumers of beer or cigarettes are?

After putting out a call, many women told me about the ordeals they have had to go through to get the pill.

Billock Young told me she finally got her prescription six months ago. She had been on Wisconsin state insurance, and was required to see a gynecologist before she could get a prescription. The wait for that was 1.5 years. She then had to get a pap smear before they would prescribe the pill, and that took several months more.

“Meanwhile, I tried to go to Planned Parenthood. They refused to give me a prescription because my blood pressure was slightly elevated because I was nervous … They said they could only offer me a shot that I had to come in for every three weeks.”

When Billock Young finally got to see a doctor and get the prescription, she encountered more hurdles. “The state insurance filled the prescription for three months at a time, but I got kicked off (of that). So I bought a marketplace plan … and they’ll only refill it one month at a time.”

Emily Popek said she was “shocked and disappointed” to discover that her insurance company didn’t offer coverage for contraceptives. She said customers had to use a third-party company, and even then there were no providers offered within a 60-mile radius of her home.

For me, there was that time a doctor drew a diagram to show me how the pill would decrease my fertility. I told her that wasn’t true, and even so I didn’t mind, but she persisted in discouraging me. Other doctors have told me it is bad to take it for a long time (also not true), and it’s gotten to the point where I lie to doctors in order to avoid the lectures and the small bits of trauma that come with constantly having to justify my private choices to strangers.

Others told me their stories anonymously through Reddit. One woman described how an “old white doctor” berated her when she was 18, implying she was “young, frivolous, and rash with boys,” and would regret her decisions. He refused to prescribe her the pill, claiming it caused breast cancer.

Another woman also had an “old white man” doctor who refused to write a pill prescription for her, saying young people forget to take the pill. She said she was already taking other daily medications.

Another person told me anonymously in an interview about how she saw an endocrinologist while taking the pill for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) symptoms. “The doctor told me that the pill increases the risk of diabetes and in general isn’t good for women with PCOS. He then looked at me sternly and asked if I was using the pill as a contraceptive as well and I said I wasn’t. He replied ‘good girl’ in a patronizing but sincere tone.”

There were more stories of all the irrelevant and judgmental questions doctors asked — most commonly, the number of previous sexual partners. But doctors rarely ask the few questions that could be useful, about side effects.

Even then, the main concern — blood clotting — has a risk of 12 in 10,000. The risk is the same for pregnant women, but we don’t need permission for that (and shouldn’t, of course). For our beer (alcohol) drinking friends, the odds are higher of getting cancer. A male who drinks two pints of lager a day doubles his risk of esophageal cancer from one in 75 to one in 38.

So why does this matter?

A 2013 U.S. study found that 30% of women who weren’t on the pill would take it if it were available over the counter (and it was still affordable).

Making the pill and other hormonal birth control methods difficult to access denies women, and others with wombs, total control over our lives. It perpetuates inequality, with those who work multiple jobs or who are poorer finding it harder to overcome the time, financial, and psychological obstacles.

Birth control impacts people’s access to education, to work, and to leisure time. A 2013 Guttmacher Institute review of 66 studies found that reliable contraception helps people be better parents. That is, parent(s) who experience unplanned childbirth are more likely to have depression and anxiety. Reliable contraception on the other hand, allows parent(s) to grow as people and have children when they are more prepared and their incomes are higher.

There have been small improvements in access to hormonal birth control. Next year, for example, people in California will be able to pick up one year’s worth of pills at a time. Apps are becoming available for virtual consultations, but the video chats still cost money, the apps are limited to a few states, and in order to receive more than a three-month supply, the patient needs to have recent blood pressure results ready to show during the consultation.

Still, these changes don’t involve more respect for women’s decision-making.

Beer is still easier.

This piece originally appeared on Role Reboot and is republished here with permission.