Michael Jackson and His Responsibility in His Death

Hi everyone! My name is Janet. I’m a recovering drug addict and I currently work as a clinician in a detoxification unit of a women‘s treatment center. The news many have been waiting for, and expecting, has been confirmed. Michael Jackson was given a lethal dose of drugs which ultimately led to his untimely death. Like many of you I was and still am greatly saddened by the death of this legend. He had many problems in his life, faced many challenges, and had some serious accusations made against him. Since none of those accusations were proven, I choose not to condemn him for them. One thing that is for sure is that MJ asked for these drugs, and had been taking these drugs and many more for quite a long time.

Was his doctor wrong for giving him all of these drugs? Of course. Should he be charged? Since I decided to go for my degree in Psychology and not continue onto law school like I was considering, I will just say that yes, in my opinion, he should probably be charged with manslaughter, but that is just my opinion and I will leave the decision up to the experts. I will explain the difference between murder and manslaughter, to explain why I think if he is charged the charge should be manslaughter. Murder requires “Malice Aforethought” which means there must be an intent to kill or an intent to cause grievous bodily harm. MJ’s doctor had no intent to either kill Michael or cause him grievous bodily harm. When a person unintentionally causes the death of another due to recklessness or criminal negligence, it is manslaughter. With the definition of manslaughter, could it be considered manslaughter? Of course. At the very least it was reckless of that doctor to give him those meds and at the very most it was criminal negligence since he knew what the consequences could have been. Again, I will let the experts decide on whether he should be charged.

I read something earlier where someone said that the doctor should get the electric chair. My question is where is Michael Jackson’s responsibility in his own death? I feel sad that he overdosed. Just like I feel sad whenever I hear about anyone overdosing. It is a horrible thing to happen to anyone or any family. The problem was not so much MJ’s doctor, although he did play his part, as it was the MJ was a drug addict. Did that make him a bad person? Hell no! But it did make him just like any other addict. An addict is an addict is an addict. And Michael Jackson was just like every single alcoholic and drug addict that I see at work. He was a man with a disease that had gotten out of control. Just like the man or woman on the corner buying a bag of heroin is a person with a disease which has gotten out of control. One thing should be clear…if that doctor had not given MJ those drugs, he would have gotten them or other drugs from another source.

For everyone who wants to hang MJ’s doctor, who again does hold some of the responsibility here, and relieve MJ of any responsibility, what do you think when you see on the news or read in the newspaper that someone bought a bad bag of dope and died of an od? Or that someone did a speedball and their heart could not take it and they died of a heart attack? I would hope that no matter how they died, you are all sad that a human life has ended, but do any of you think something like “well, they knew that they were doing, they rolled the dice and they lost” or something like that? The reason I ask this is because MJ’s death is the same as that addict who od’s because of a bad bag of dope. It was the death of a very sick individual who was not able to fix what was wrong with them. If Michael Jackson were not Michael Jackson but he were that drug addict who died with a needle in his arm after that bad bag of heroin, would people be asking that the drug dealer who sold him that bag of dope be given the electric chair? I am willing to bet a great many people would think nothing of the drug dealer, and would not think he had murdered that person. They would simply put the blame on the person who died.

My wish is that instead of laying all of the blame at the feet of this doctor, society learns from this and starts to take a closer look at addiction. Don’t let Michael Jackson’s death be in vain. Look at those people you love, the ones that you have turned a blind eye to as they go down the spiraling path that is addiction. Try to get them the help that they need, instead of pretending it is not happening or worse yet turning your back on them. Our legal system gives you an option if you have a loved one who is in the throes of addiction. Learn all you can to help them, and if they do not listen, petition the court to have them forced into treatment. Is that guaranteed to work? No, not at all. I see women all the time leave who I know are going to go out and get high. But it is doing something. And for at least a short amount of time you will know they are safe, and just maybe they are learning something about their addiction and where there life is going to end up. Michael Jackson is living proof that the guy on the corner who is all strung out, or the woman that is prostituting herself to pay for drugs, are not the only people susceptible to dying from a drug overdose. Anyone who is an active alcoholic or active drug addict is at risk of dying from their disease. Your wife, husband, brother, sister, mother father, doctor, lawyer, anyone at all. Addiction knows no gender, no race, no social class. Addiction can affect us all.

Janet Lee Smith
New Bedford, MA.
August 25, 2009

A New Direction For This Blog

Hi everyone! I am making some changes with the blog, at least temporarily. I may be making a whole new blog, I am not sure. But for tonight, I want to get my feelings put on "paper". I may not be using the traditional paper and pen method, but this will work. :) One of the reasons I am changing this for now is because with everything I have going on now, I do not have much grey matter left to use on creative writing. I do however, find myself in a situation where I have a lot of feelings that I feel writing them down will help me to deal with them. A few of you may know, if you know me or chat with me, that I am a student, but that I am also taking another training besides my regular school work. Well actually two trainings. One, the H&R Block training is just another class, no big deal. It is the other training that is making me feel a lot of stuff. This training is to be a domestic abuse/sexual assault advocate. Well, that's what it started as. I started doing the training as an Honors project for school. That Honors project has turned into a possible job at the local Battered Women's Shelter for now, then once I graduate in May applying to be a dv/sa counselor. If you know me, you know this is different for me. My plan was to be an attorney. A prosecutor to be exact. I strongly feel that you should always keep an open mind, and situations like this are why. I had my life for the next few years planned out. What schools I was going to go to, what I was going to do after each educational step, and what I was going to do once I passed the bar. Sometimes life has something in store for you that you had never even thought of. That is what happened to me. Now that you know kinda where my life is at, let me get back to what I am going to be putting in this blog, at least for now. I am going to be writing in different ways. Sometimes it will be just journal entries of what I am feeling, but other times like what I will be writing tonight, will be article/essay type entries, where I put my views on different subjects. Usually pertaining to dv or sa. What I am now going to write is a little article/essay type piece where I talk about sa and a disturbing trend in the way sa survivors are treated and looked at by society. So let me begin. :)

Victim Blaming

Have you ever seen the Jodi Foster movie called "The Accused"? If you have, did you realize it is loosely based on a true story? A true story that I am sure anyone reading this who was at an age where they read newspapers or watched news at the time of the incident read about it or saw it on tv, even though you may not remember it. I am sure of this because this story made not only national headlines, but also international headlines. This case was called the "Big Dan's Rape Case". You may not remember hearing anything about it, but I do. I remember because it tore my community apart. Yes, this happened in the city I lived in. I have never seen the movie The Accused, nor do I ever want to see it. But I do know it was very loosely based on this case. This incident occured on March 6th, 1983. It was called the Big Dan's case because that was the name of the bar that the attack occured in. What was a day of celebration, the victims daughter had turned 3 on that day and they had throw a party to celebrate that, turned into a very horrific night for this 21 year old mother of two.

All she wanted was a pack of cigarettes. It was late and none of the stores in the area were open, so she went into a small neighborhood bar to buy some. She had a drink while there and was talking to another woman. Two men asked her to leave with them, she refused and got up to leave. Someone else grabbed her from behind and dragged her to the pool table and threw her on the pool table. What happened next is every woman's nightmare. She was brutally raped. Not by just one man, but by several. While patrons of the bar laughed and cheered these men on. But this was not the only rape she would endure before this was over. She was to find herself raped again by not only the justice system, but also by the city she lived in. The defense portrayed her as a willing participant in group sex. The Portuguese community was outraged when the defendants were found guilty, since a lot of them sided with the rapists. They even went to the lenghts of holding candlelight vigils after both trials ended. (The men were tried in two seperate trials. One in the morning and one in the afternoon) 8,000 people held a march after the second verdicts were in.

The reasons these things happened were because of victim blaming. When a woman is raped we tend to blame the victim. Statements like "She should not have worn that", "She should not have been there alone", She should not have been walking alone at that time" help to blame the victim. Think about those kinds of statements for a moment. Think about the fact that rape is the only crime where the blame is placed on the victim and not the perpetrator. When we find out a coworker was mugged while walking to their car after work, do we blame the victim? Of course not. They were only walking to their car, not asking to be mugged. Well, no woman asks to be raped. Sometimes we make bad choices. Sometimes we walk alone at night, sometimes we may wear clothes that may be revealing, or any other number of things that may put us in some kind of danger. But does that men that we should be the victim of a crime? Lets look again at the person being mugged while leaving work. Even if it is a dark parking garage, with no guards or anyone else around, no one would say they should have not been walking to their car, they were asking to be mugged. Yet if that was a woman walking to her car after work, there would be people who would inevitably say she should not have walked out to their car alone, if she hadn't it would not have happened. VICTIM BLAMING. Two same situations, the only thing different is the crime committed. Yet in one case, no one would even think of blaming the victim, and in the other case the victim would be blamed by some people.

Another reason people use for women being sexually assaulted is the clothes they wear. First of all, a man, or a woman for that matter, should have enough will power not to force themselves on a person because of what they are wearing. But there is something else wrong with that theory. Saying it is because the woman was wearing inappropriate clothing would imply that rape is about sex. When in fact rape is about control and power. The rapist wants to exert power over the victim, the sex act is not the motivation. That is a fact that so many people, especially men have a hard time realizing or comprehending. Since there is a sexual act involved, people automatically think it is about sex. I believe one of the ways we can stop blaming the victim is for society to start realizing the real reasons for rape, not the perceived reasons. It is time to start asking questions like "Why did he have to hurt her like that?", or "What kind of monster would do something like that?" In other words it is time to put the blame where it belongs, on the attacker.

There is more than one type of rape, and victims vary from children to the elderly, and include both women and men. Some victims report the attacks, but the majority don't for a variety of reasons. There are different ways for a person to rape someone, be it by coersion, threats, or things like date rape drugs. There are different ways that women deal with being raped, from simply not saying yes, but not really resisting, just so that they do not have to deal with a worse situation such as a beating or being killed, or just so that they do not have to deal with the thought of being raped and all that implies, to fighting back with everything they have. These are just some of the other topics I will be discussing in what I hope to turn into a series of article/essay type entries involving not only sexual assault but also domestic violence. I hope you will come back and read future entries. It will be nice if I could help just one person who reads this, please feel free to leave comments if you would like. The comments will not appear right away, because I have the blog set up to send all comments to me for approval. But as long as they are respectful comments, I will post them.

Before I leave tonight I want to point out something:

If a woman, or man for that matter says no to you either by word or deed and you continue to have sex with them, (rape has to include penitration. If penitration is not part of the act, it is sexual assault. And this is penitration of any orifice with any object.) it is still rape. Sometimes victims do not forcibly say no or fight back. If they let you know in anyway, even by their actions that they do not want it to happen, it is rape. No ALWAYS means No, no matter how that no is conveyed to you.

And that's it for me for tonight. :)

~Janet~

Being A Lesbian In Today's Society~By Me. :)

We are taking a commercial break from the lives of Alicia, Tami, and Jade to bring you an article written by me. It was originally written in 2005, and has been published in a small Gay and Lesbian magazine in CT. I just re-wrote it a little bit, so this is the updated version. :) But don't worry, we will be returning to our regularly scheduled progam. :) I hope you enjoy this!
(I am copying and pasting this from my MS Word, where it lives on my computer, so I am not sure how it is going to look, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.)

~Janet~

Being A Lesbian In Today’s Society

Being a lesbian today should be easier that it was 22 years ago when I had my first lesbian relationship. I know from books I had read and from older lesbians that I had talked to, that at that time it was easier than it was twenty years before that. So shouldn’t it be even easier now? In some ways, I guess it is easier.

At 16, I lost my first job because I was a lesbian. I was young and did not realize it was something I should keep to myself. Today, everyone at my job knows I am a lesbian. No, I did not start and shout it at the top of my lungs, however, when I talk about about my partner, I never say my “roommate” or any other term that would suggest she is less to me that what she is. I work at a call center for a company that owns several top hotels, and one of our benefits is being able to get rooms at these hotels at a much reduced rate. This is a benefit that is also extended to our families. We have to fill out a paper with the names of our families, and one of the categories of people who are eligible is “spouse/domestic partner”. Well, this is something that would not have been an option twenty years ago. She can also be on my insurance, another option that was not available twenty years ago. So, yes I guess it has become a little easier. We still have a long way to go though.

I live in Massachusetts where it is now legal for gays and lesbians to marry. But there is still a fight ahead. It is waiting to go before the state legislature again. Last time it did so, they voted to leave it the way it is, the next vote will be the last one. If by some chance the vote were to change next time, it would go to the general public of Massachusetts on the ballot. I like to think that this state is very open-minded, and the new law will stand. While it is with great joy that my fiancée and I plan our wedding, the fear is still in the back of my mind that this may be overturned. A lot of the opponents of this law do not realize that most of us want this for far greater reasons than a little piece of paper. Let’s face it, as far as the love that Shanna and I have for each other, that little paper is not going to make it greater. There are much more important reasons for gays and lesbians to want to have a legal marriage. While I am not going to state all those reasons here, I will mention one. If Shanna or I were to get very ill and be in the hospital, the hospital could say to the other, “I’m sorry but only immediate family can go in there”, do you know how just typing that makes me feel? The fact that one of us could be ill and the person who means more to us than anything in the world can not even be by our side? Not to mention the fact that none of Shanna’s family is here, since she moved here from New York so we could be together. She would be in that hospital room all by herself.

One thing I do not understand is the reasoning behind “them” not wanting us to be able to marry. They say if we are allowed to marry, we will ruin the institution of marriage. I say how can we possibly ruin it any more than heterosexual people already have? Take a good look at the divorce rate, they are doing a great job of ruining the sanctity of marriage. I know gay and lesbian couples who have been together at least 15 years, and some more than 25 years. Yet I know straight couples who could not make it past 1 year. Granted, there are a lot of gay or lesbian couples who also do not stay together. But, at least in my community, monogamy among gay and lesbian couples is not a rarity. In fact with the people that I know, whether it be from school, work, or other activities where I get to know people, monogamy seems to be more prevalent among the homosexual community than it is in the heterosexual community.

Our president wants to change the Constitution to make gay marriages illegal. He says he wants to preserve the meaning of marriage. What about preserving the things that our forefathers wanted for the people of this country? They wanted all American’s to be treated equally. Every president should want all American’s to be treated fairly under the laws of the United States. Not President Bush. By changing the Constitution, he would be discriminating against gays and lesbians. He would in effect be saying that we do not deserve the same rights as our heterosexual counterparts. When did this type of thinking become ok? When did the President of the United States become God? No, I do not think this will pass. Not because I am in denial, but because I think the majority of American’s, no matter what their opinion is of homosexuality, do not believe in changing the constitution to discriminate against anyone. Even though I do not think it will pass, I find the fact that it is even an issue quite appalling.

Another issue facing lesbians and gays is whether or not we should raise children. Most of the reasons giving for us not having children are so off base. Let’s take a look at one of them. My favorite is a child should have a mommy and a daddy. First of all, children should have a parent or parents that love them and can care for them. How many children are being raised by either mother’s who do not know who their children’s father are and have a different “father” figure for these children every couple of months, if that long, or by mother’s who knew who their father was, but the father ran off even before the child was born? Let’s face it, in today’s society, just because a child is being raised by a man and a woman does not mean they are being raised in a good or healthy atmosphere. There are a lot of children out there who are being raised by mother’s and father’s who either beat them, spend all their time doing drugs, are in and out of jail, or any number of other situations where the child is being neglected. Is it really better for children to be raised in that type of home? Or in a home where the parent’s happen to be two females or males, but they are loved and cared for? I have a few friends who are raising children in lesbian households, and the kids are well adjusted normal kids. The fact is anyone can make a baby, not anyone can take care of that baby. What should matter is that the children are being cared for properly and are receiving lots of love. Not the gender or sexual orientation of their parents.

Being a lesbian is actually being part of a larger community. The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered community. One thing I don’t understand is the fact that some people in each section of this community still discriminate against other sectors of this community. What I do not understand is how we as lesbians who have to deal with being discriminated against ourselves, can discriminate against others in our community. We need to stand together as a community. Lesbians, gay men, bi-sexual’s and transgendered individuals. Because even though we have come a long way, we still have along way to go, and we are fighting the same fight. The fight for people to look at us as individuals, as the same as them, not just as people who sleep with the same sex. Because let’s face it, we are much more than who we sleep with. We are mother, sisters, aunts, students,writers, lawyers, fast food workers, postal workers, stay at home moms, and a whole lot more. We are a very diverse community, and we come from all walks of life. The only difference between us and heterosexual women is the fact that we love other women. No one has been able to come up with a concrete reason why some women love other women and some men to love other men, but that reason is not simply sex. For myself, I feel more of a connection with women than with men. Women are also more gentle and caring than men, and can meet the emotional needs of a women more than a man can, in my opinion. And for me, meeting my emotional needs is a lot more important than meeting my sexual needs. These opinions of course are mine and not everyone feels the same way.

So, is it easier being a lesbian in today’s society than it was in the past? Yes. It is still not easy, but we do have it better. We just have different problems to deal with. In a way I thank God for those problems. Because it shows just how far we have come. In the fifties and sixties, gay bars got raided and people got arrested for dancing or being close to people of the same sex. Having to fight for marriage means that we do not have to hide our sexuality anymore and pretend to be something we are not. Stonewall is something that I feel more than likely could not happen today, and for that I am grateful. If we keep on fighting for our rights, people in a generation or two may not have to go through what we have, just like we do not have to go through what generations before us went through.

Janet Lee Spooner~2006