A Canary in a Coal Mine

A canary in a coal mine is an old-fashioned phrase, but it succinctly sums up a condition. It’s an announcement of immediate danger. To quote from the dictionary on my desk, comparing something to a canary in a coal mine suggests “some evil or harm which one may encounter.” 

Remember that. Evil or harm.   

I spend many hours imagining the worst that people can do to each other. These days, reality often outpaces my imagination. My novel 48 States conjures up a dystopian future about a megalomaniacal CEO bent on overtaking the federal government. The Council Trilogy, my urban fantasy series, centers on a secret society of supernatural beings working to slow the spread of xenophobia and nationalism worldwide.  

Earlier this fall, I started working on an essay about witches. I’ve always disliked how witches have been portrayed in certain circles as haggard crones who conspire with the devil. To me, the narrative is a metaphor for the hate and suppression creative, outspoken women have faced through the ages. Religious fanatics, drunk on their power, devised the worst kinds of tests to identify a witch—tests that the women were doomed to fail. 

For weeks, I couldn't figure out where that piece was going, and I felt like no one needed another essay about witches as Halloween approached. So, I put it away. But I decided to revisit it after almost sixty days of silence and the outright indifference many have shown about the rape and sexual violence against women in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. The United Nations finally uttered its first public comments about this atrocity. It took 800 women and Sheryl Sandberg standing on their doorstep for their moral compasses to finally recalibrate. 

While it has been difficult to stomach the footdragging by bodies like the United Nations, what is worse is seeing how many people on social media saw justification for these women being hunted down and brutalized. Gang raped and shot in the head. Dragged through the streets and called dogs and whores.

Hamas has refused to return several young women, many of whom are probably being raped repeatedly by the terrorists right now. And it has elicited barely a yawn in some circles. Some people, as I mentioned above, have expressed their euphoric glee at these acts of heinous violence for all the world to see on social media. These people—and you all know who I am talking about—have lost their minds and humanity. What makes it more heartbreaking is that the indifference was shared by stalwart feminists, who have implied that rape may be an acceptable outcome if the women are so-called colonizers. 

Fais Attention! Be Careful. 

No one is safe once you start making exceptions about who is or isn’t allowed to retain their dignity. And this is the impending danger. The signal that more bad things are looming. We are back in the Middle Ages, where religious fanatics torture women, and their apologists are our neighbors. They are next door or across the street. That is the canary in the coal mine. The casual disassociation. The notion that Israeli women deserve to be raped. That the mutilation of their bodies has no significance in comparison to other calamities when, in reality, it all matters. 

The lives of everyone in the hellish cauldron of Israel and Gaza matter. But if we can’t start by acknowledging what happened on Oct. 7, then we’re all doomed. We need to make the canary’s death worth something before the poisonous gasses take us all out.