Marita Bonner

Heard of her?  You probably haven't.  I hadn't, until I went to Bunker Hill Community College in 2016 and wrote a compare/contrast essay for her and Arthur Miller.  She wasn't assigned or discussed in class, nor did the assignment specify comparing/contrasting with a black writer.  That was my idea; the teacher for the class hadn't heard of her.  I researched until I finally read about her.  She won the contest with Mr. Miller in my essay.

Over 3 semesters at Bunker Hill, I was harassed in class by a total of 7 male students.  Only one of them was white.  In one situation, one of the students forgot his calculator for the midterm exam.  I lent him my calculator when he needed it during the exam and I got a 97.  That was before he ganged up on me with 2 other students; none of those 3 were white.

I never did anything to any of those guys.

In 6 years of homelessness since 2011, there was one instance in which I was in serious, immediate danger in a homeless shelter.  I woke up in the middle of the night because a homeless man was in the process of sitting down on my bed.  Without a doubt, the next thing he was going to do was put his hand over my mouth and rape me.  I jumped up and started yelling, and that's why I was not raped that night.  He was black.  I hadn't done anything to him, either.

That was at the Harvard Homeless Shelter, which is managed by Harvard students.  They had allowed this incident to occur.  They were remarkably unconcerned toward me, which at the time I chalked up to their youth, and now I'm not sure.

In my opinion, what's happening to Amy Cooper is mass, misogynist hysteria, encouraged by the media.  What she did was not a crime.  She did not deserve to be fired.  She does not deserve to be vulnerable to 40 million people and counting because Christian Cooper wanted to make her leash her dog.  She does not deserve to have her past reported, creating what is now a permanent, public record which is going to show up on Google searches of her name.  She does not deserve to be investigated by a human rights commission.

Where were the human rights commissions before COVID-19 hit the half-million people in the United States who are homeless?  The homeless population is disproportionately nonwhite; where are the human rights commissions for that, in New York City, of all places?  Where has the media been?  The media has been watching me and other homeless women in the bathroom; that's where the media has been.  Where has Congress been?  Congress has been ignoring voyeurism and involuntary pornography, and has also ignored my reports of systemic problems with the homeless support system.  Homelessness is not just the result of the lack of affordable housing, and Tweeting about the need for more affordable housing, while not a bad thing to do, is not going to end homelessness.

That otherwise rational people are accepting and encouraging the accusation that Ms. Cooper is guilty of attempted murder is hysteria.  White women do not deserve to bear the brunt of black misogyny or of white guilt about racism.

This situation is going to make white women justifiably afraid to call the police when they really are in danger from nonwhite men, and it's going to make all women more vulnerable to being harassed.  I don't think that most of the media has a problem with that, to be honest.  I also don't think that it's a coincidence that this incident has blown up in the midst of the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party and most of the media in response to Ms. Reade's allegations against Vice President Biden.

How many more women am I going to have to personally defend?  Not only is that not my job, I'm losing, and so are they.