Why Mac McClelland's Piece About PTSD, Violent Sex, and Haiti Shouldn't Offend You

[Editor's Note: This post was written by Cindy Kok, IMOW's summer programs and exhibitions volunteer.]

Last week, reporter Mac McClelland wrote a piece for GOOD magazine about how violent sex helped her recover from post-traumatic stress disorder. McClelland describes how seeing the panic of a recovering rape victim in Haiti, compounded with years of witnessing other people’s trauma, triggered her own mental breakdown (after she found her usual coping methods unhelpful). When she returned to San Francisco, she was diagnosed with PTSD and recounts spending months “sobbing and heaving” at the slightest provocation.

Mac McClelland via Good Magazine

While still in Haiti, McClelland remembers constantly having “rape nightmares” and “daymares” and, when she returned to the states, “wincing when [she] thought about sex.” McClelland says that violent sex “wasn't a matter of recreation” for her but rather a way to recover and deal with “violence [she] controlled [rather] than the abominable nonconsensual things” she witnessed. With her “counterphobic approach,” as her therapist calls it, she eventually did begin to get well.

McClelland’s article has elicited a gamut of reactions from encouragement to empathy to revulsion. However, some took issue not with her self-prescribed method of recovery but rather with her portrayal of Haiti. In particular, a group of female journalists wrote an open letter on Jezebel condemning McClelland’s “sensationalist and irresponsible” use of Haiti as a backdrop. They accuse her of contributing to the “continual marginalization” of women in Haiti, where the threat of rape for them is “tragically high.”

Given the highly personal nature of McClelland’s story, it hardly seems fair for the letter writers to pit their own experiences of a safe and peaceful Haiti to the “ugly chaos” she experienced. As writer Roxane Gay, whose family is from Haiti, confirms with her mother, the guns and the disorder McClelland writes about are accurate. McClelland’s story may be accused of being one-sided, but as an example of a personal piece and not objective reporting, showing only one side—her side—is entirely reasonable.

McClelland breaks from the unspoken norm of silence for female journalists. Her unapologetic piece highlights the complexity of issues in Haiti and of sexuality in general. The reactions to her writing, however, may just encourage reporters, and all women, to maintain their silence on personal experiences of sexual violence.


I’m Gonna Need You to Fight Me on This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD: Good Magazine
Female Journalists and Researchers Respond to Haiti PTSD Article: Jezebel
On Journalistic Malpractice, Mac McClelland and Haiti: Ansel Herz
Still With the Scarlet Letters: Roxane Gay

Haiti: One Year Later

On January 12, 2010, one year ago today, Haiti's main city of Port-au-Prince was the epicenter of a massive earthquake that left millions of already poverty-stricken Haitians homeless and living in tent cities. Her Blueprint reported on Haiti throughout the past year with stories of hope from Human Rights Watch; reports of displacement and tuberculosis from public health expert and the United Nations Special Deputy Envoy to Haiti Paul Farmer; cited the publications created to voice the taboo: sexual violence against women mounting in the tent cities; then, finally the start of a cholera epidemic that according to the Huffington Post's Cholera in Haiti: A Look from the Trenches remains present. Pictured here are a mother and child being cared for by a female health worker in June 2010. As I write this, I wonder if they are alive. If so, their chances of still being displaced within a tent city are almost certain.

In a press release, Joia Mukherjee, Chief Medical Officer at Partners In Health, an organization leading the post-quake recovery that Paul Farmer founded, shared that current conditions remain rather "grim."

Today, we stand with our friends and colleagues from our Haitian sister organization, Zanmi Lasante, and with millions of Haitians in Haiti and abroad to remember that terrible day -- to remember both those who died, and those who suffered and continue to face the painful reality of a Haiti post-January 12, 2010. This is particularly true for over a million internally displaced people living in crowded Port-au-Prince camps. Yet while there should be righteous indignation about the conditions in the camps, we must continue to highlight the plight of the urban and rural poor throughout Haiti whose struggle against poverty and injustice pre-dated the earthquake and has been made immeasurably more difficult by the disaster. The cholera epidemic -- due to lack of access to clean water and sanitation against a backdrop of malnutrition and inadequate health services in much of the country -- is a graphic illustration of the ongoing need. It is easy to understand that optimism would be in short supply. There are, however, glimmers of hope.

Along with the Haitian Ministry of Health and many partner organizations, Partners In Health calls for an international movement of solidarity, similar to the one that brought an end to South Africa's Apartheid. They also call for Haitians to become actors in rebuilding their country alongside the 10,000 NGOs and foreign-government projects so as to create "development of large-scale public infrastructure including health, education, water and sanitation that will reverse the impoverishment of the Haitian people."

One year later vast work remains to be done for those still living in abject poverty and far worse. Glimmers of hope need to be replaced by strategic long-term plans and bold action. Partners In Health one year report on Haiti is available here.

Photo credit: Doctors of the World UK

Haiti Post-Quake: Cholera Outbreak

From The Economist, a Haitian mother and her child's health are in intense need due to the cholera outbreak 40 miles north of Port-au-Prince. Before the outbreak, the safety of women and children, the need for focus on long-term strategies in the tent cities, putting up water points, lights in the latrines, staying goal-oriented in terms of long-term moves versus camp eviction were all gaining higher importance. Yet, as of last week Haiti was again reminded how hard their country's short-term recovery because of cholera alone.

According to the Economist, "The [Cholera] outbreak originated in the Artibonite valley, 60km (40 miles) to the north. By October 27th more than 300 people had died and more than 4,500 cases were confirmed, according to the Haitian Ministry of Health."

However, as per most major news sources the outbreak is one that needs attention and comittment due to the fact Haiti remains a country in heavy and immediate crisis.

Photo credit: The Economist

Haiti Post-Quake: The Past Ten Months and Counting

On January 12, 2010, Haiti was ravaged by a catastrophic 7.0 earthquake that extensively damaged the country's main city of Port-au-Prince. By January 24, over 52 aftershocks were recorded that measured at least 4.5. Ten months ago exactly, on January 20, the New York Times published Aftershocks, by Évelyne Trouillot sharing those first days post-quake.

The family has set up camp in my brother’s house. I live just next door, but it makes us feel better to be all in the same house. My brother, a novelist, is writing his articles; I am writing mine. From time to time a tremor will make us pause and run back outside, just in case, to be safe. I wonder how long we will have to be so cautious, and I long for normalcy.

We sleep; we listen to the radio; we exchange information. Mostly, we have been trying to stay alive and sane since that Tuesday afternoon a week ago when the earthquake changed our lives forever. It doesn’t help that the earth continues to convulse. Just this morning, we felt another tremor, the most violent since the earthquake itself. Let us hope it did not cause more deaths and damage.

In an already impoverished country, the level of displacement due to this cataclysmic environmental disaster escalated to epidemic proportions. With 230,000 deaths at least, 300,000 injured, and 7.8 billion dollars in damages, in August Her Blueprint published Haiti: Displacement, TB, and Progress?, which cited over 1.2 million people were living in tent cities and that safety and health concerns for women and children were fast-becoming a highly relevant issue post-earthquake. Although Évelyne Trouillot's eloquent Aftershocks calls in vain hope for the short-term aftershocks themselves to not bring more death and damage, what kind of long-term aftershocks are the country facing and what kind of strategies are evolving to protect the most vulnerable?

Six Months Post-Quake

Recently, I spoke with Joanne Blakemore who arrived to Port-au-Prince, Haiti on June 12, the quake's six month anniversary. With a background in third-world travel, humanitarian causes, and relief work, Joanne had done Katrina hurricane relief work as well in Mississippi.

"I was in Haiti pre-hurricane season. Commercial enterprise seemed to be functioning. Children seemed not to be starving. But, I thought it made Biloxi, Mississippi [post-Katrina] look like West Chester. The tents these women and children are living in are miniscule. You can’t stand up in them."

Outright distress, post-traumatic stress disorder, and health and safety concerns was the tone coming out of the camps when Ms. Blog broke the story along with AWID of MADRE's report, Our Bodies Are Still Trembling: Haitian Women's Fight Against Rape, and its findings regarding rape in the tent cities.

"Six months after the earthquake in Haiti, we see a continued crisis of safety and security in the displacement camps that has exacerbated the already grave problem of sexual violence. We found that women are being raped at an alarming rate-every day-in camps throughout Port-au-Prince. The Haitian Government, the UN, and others in the international community have failed to adequately address the situation. Women, especially poor women, have been excluded from full participation and leadership in the relief effort."

Enter acknowledgment of one of the biggest challenges of Haiti along with eviction, education, and myriad health concerns: the safety of women and children.

Nine Months Post-Quake

In September, the tent cities were still just as large as ever with around 1 million people displaced, and the weariness of those contained within them were again being expressed by major news outlets as were the overt safety concerns for women and children. On September 19, the New York Times published Haitians Cry in Letters: ‘Please — Do Something!’. The title of the article is culled from a direct quote from Ms. Saint Hilaire, 33, who shared in a letter posted to the boxes put up by the International Organization for Migration, about how she and her children are "stranded in a camp annex without a school, a health clinic, a marketplace or any activity at all."

"Please — do something!" she wrote from Tent J2, Block 7, Sector 3, her new address. "We don’t want to die of hunger and also we want to send our children to school. I give glory to God that I am still alive — but I would like to stay that way!"

Ten Months Post-Quake and Counting

On October 7, 2010, Bloomberg published Haiti Earthquake Camps Expose Women to Sex Violence, which cites that as a country Haiti had significant problems with sexual violence pre-quake, but that post-quake the numbers are staggering. “Living in squalid, overcrowded and spontaneous camps for a prolonged period has aggravated levels of violence and appalling standards of living,” the Refugees International report said. The humanitarian response to the earthquake “appears paralyzed.”

In fact, the title of the Refugees International October 6 report, Haiti: Still Trapped in the Emergency Phase, shares the exact issue at hand: long-term strategies are not taking shape or evolution. The report explains in detail how "enhancing proper leadership, enhancing the security for displaced women, improving camp management, bridging the communication gap, and decentralizing resources to promote recovery" are integral to moving past the emergency phase into effective long-term strategies for the country's recovery.

Photo credit: Ms. Magazine Blog

Haiti: Displacement, TB, and Progress?

Walking into the media center at the 2010 World AIDS Conference was like being barraged. I came out of lectures to have people read my tag as media and then offer a plethora of business cards. Attend our press conference. Highlight us. Be in the know. Do good. OK. I will. The sense of being overwhelmed came from the fact that what everyone presented showed exactly how deep our world's public health crisis already is in terms of HIV/AIDS as well as related diseases, but also how much worse it could become if funding is less than needed due to the economic crisis.

Paul Farmer has worked in wide-ranging capacities for vulnerable communities the entire length of his career. His book Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor was a guide in my travels through South Africa pre- and post-Comrades and during the World Cup 2010. Thus, when I saw his name on a press release in Vienna, I decided to trust his voice about what the worlds’ needs are at a conference concentrating on health and human rights, before they may be fully acknowledged or funded.

HOPE FOR HAITI

"I’m hopeful about Haiti because by just four weeks after the quake, there were already women setting up tables, showing support to each other, offering help. That resilience, that re-emerging of women as caregivers for the sick and elderly, as people who draw communities together—the women’s movement for Haiti is still there. If we can find ways to help the Haitian women rebuild their movement, the movement will be a tremendous power for change." --Liesl Gerntholtz