Lisa Hickey believes that the “presumption of male guilt” is equally damaging to both men and women.
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One day, when I was 22 years old, I was walking to the bus station from work, deep woods to the left of me, a fairly busy road to the right. I see a guy up ahead coming towards me, slightly older than me, muscular, wild hair and wild eyes. He might have been high. He’s looking straight at me as we approach each other, I keep my eyes on the sidewalk til he passes.
A moment after we pass he spins around, grabs my arm – hard – and starts walking with me. He doesn’t relinquish the hold on my arm. “Give me twenty dollars,” he says. When I say I don’t have twenty he stops us, glares at me, and says “Would you rather I rape you?”
And my first thought was, “Oh, no, not again.”
I’ve written before how my first sexual relationships weren’t exactly stellar. I was sexually abused by my father. Became a blackout alcoholic soon after swigging a bottle of Tango (vodka and something suspiciously close to orange Kool-Aid) at age 14. Spent most of college so drunk that…well you can read it here. But certainly having guys have sex with you while passed out counts as rape. Nor was it the first time a guy had asked me if I wanted to be raped. The first time that exact question was put to me was in a pick-up truck driving down Mass. Ave in Cambridge MA, just outside of Central Square. I had to take off my seatbelt, decline the invitation, and hop out at a red light in one fell swoop.
♦◊♦
So here I am, being asked that same question again. I look at the woods. I look at the street next to me. I calculate whether I can wrestle free of the guy’s hold on my arm, jump in front of a car, have the car stop before it hits me. I decide to go for plan B, and negotiate instead.
“Look, I have $10. I can give you $5. I need $5 for the bus ride home.” I take the money out of my jeans pocket with my free hand. A five and five ones.
“I’ll take eight,” the guy says, and much to my surprise, he does, actually leaving me with enough money for the bus fare. He pushes me to the ground and dashes off. No cars that drive by even slow down.
♦◊♦
I believe I am qualified to talk about what it’s like to be a female victim of sexual abuse. Not just once, but many times, over the course of more than a decade. With more guys than I actually remember. I guess you could call that “rape culture.”
And so, Hugo Schwyzer writes an article on that very thing today “In Rape Culture, All Men Are Guilty Until Proven Innocent.” I should be overjoyed. Hugo is saying that it is ok that I presume men are guilty until proven innocent. He is asking men to step up, understand why women are afraid, hold each other accountable. I should be glad.
Instead, I am sick to my stomach.
♦◊♦
I am a big believer that we should be talking about this stuff. A lot. I work closely with Hugo. We sometimes agree, sometimes disagree. As publisher, I often let posts get published even if I don’t agree with every word. That’s what we’re about at The Good Men Project. Multiple points of view around provocative, often polarizing topics. Rape certainly fits in that category.
So when we decided to create an editorial section on “The Presumption of Male Guilt”, with 15 different really great contributors, Hugo wrote the above article, I wrote from my point of view on “When Women Fear Men” and Tom Matlack wrote “Being a Dude is a Good Thing.”
And then all hell broke loose. In the comments, on Facebook, on Twitter — three different perspectives and somehow all three of us were talking about it “wrong”.
♦◊♦
Look, I get the passionate rants in the comments section. I enjoy them. But I do have a confession to make: I don’t always know how to talk about this stuff.
Multiple rapes? Sexual abuse? A victim who desperately doesn’t want to see herself as a victim? A small part of a larger discussion on manhood? A way to have very human conversations about things that are really, really difficult to talk about? Am I sometimes afraid to talk about all those things? Check and check and check and check.
But there’s one thing I want to make clear in this whole discussion of “The Presumption of Male Guilt” – the one insight I’ve had that I feel really strongly about. The one I tried to talk about in my article, but maybe wasn’t clear enough. The one I’d like to repeat.
Presuming guilt in males is not good for males and it is not good for females.
1) On a micro level, take the example I started this post with. A guy threatened to rape me. The only thing I could have done to prevent that from happening would have been to not walk out of my house that morning. Being more suspicious, more guarded, more afraid, would have done nothing to change the situation.
2) For most of my life, I have been afraid of men. In fact, terrified. Yes, you can say that I had every right to be. That does nothing to change the fact that being afraid of men sucked.
That in fact, when I stopped being afraid of men, my life changed for the better. Not just a little better, but a thousand times, OMG better. In fact, it was only in retrospect that I could see how disconnected I was from the world before that point. Everything got better after I stopped being afraid of men, stopped presuming guilt, stopped seeing men as sexist, stopped being guarded with them, stopped worrying about them as anything other than people I could connect with – people who had a slightly different but just as valid worldview as I did. Everything. Got. Better.
Thank you to everyone who wrote about this topic, everyone who shared the stories, and everyone who commented.
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photo: aklawstudio / flickr
Is that so?
3. I have no intention of ever having sex with a woman against her will. I am extraordinarily careful in any interaction I have with a woman so that I don’t offend her and I would never assault her. I was raised to treat all people with decency, men and women. So to presume I am guilty just because of my sex or skin color is wrong. You reject my humanity by doing that and you draw a line between me and you and call me your enemy. I’m sorry for what you may go through and if I’m ever… Read more »
I hate rapists!
Why don’t they follow the rules like the rest of us?
I really enjoyed reading this article. As someone who had to work through the trauma of rape by an alumnus of my program, I had to figure out how to be around men again, especially since my program is closely split 50-50 in gender and that my roommate was a male classmate. Avoiding males was not an option, nor is it healthy. My male friends were wonderful and supportive, helping me learn to thrive again through a variety of means: teaching me different meditation techniques, taking me to try yoga, helping me find a self-defense class, training with me for… Read more »
My wife is 50 and still recovering from being raped repeatedly by a step-grandfather from when she was aged seven to twelve. For five years this monster preyed on her. She remembers losing her virginity to him and also having her first orgasm with him at seven. He made her perform fellatio on him regularly. My wife feel like she was murdered; her childhood and innocence were robbed from her. She was not allowed to mature sexually at a normal rate. After a while, she would leave her body and go to a different place while he was abusing her.… Read more »
I am glad she is getting help and hope she continues to do so. There are two things I can say — 1) becoming disassociated, the out of body part of it — can continue in everyday life, and it’s not until your wife feels connected to the universe again that she will truly feel alive. And then…it’s amazing, that joy. It can be overcome. She must. 2) They say “depression is worrying about the past, and anxiety is worrying about the future.” Abuse leads to a cycle of both, because it seems impossible to escape the past and unforeseeable… Read more »
For the zillionth time. Feminists do NOT say “All men are BAD.” Nor is it the fault of women or feminists when the dominant conversation is about how women should be afraid of men because men are animals that can’t control themselves or are “biologically driven” to be violent or lustful or whatever crap is being spewed now. Quit, for God’s sake, blathering on about how wonderful life is when women get their act together and be “nice” to strange men. Tell MEN to talk to other MEN about being the kind of MEN that women DON’T NEED TO BE… Read more »
@Cara, Why put the onus onto men to talk to other men? Why don’t we tell everyone to tell each other to be the kind of men and women that others don’t need to be afraid of? I’ve seen fear in men and women of strangers, since we know nothing about them we simply rely on what we’ve been trained to think which biases our view of who they are. Eg raising women to be afraid of men because a few are rapists easily raises that suspicion of all men, or raising men to assume women are gold diggers, men… Read more »
I completely agree that with the exception of a few radical pockets, feminists in general do not see it as “all men are bad,” and I think the bigger problem is carelessness in language and ‘accidental’ blame. A good example of this is the Slutwalk and the recent incident with the PA Liquor Control Board’s ad where the slogan that came out of the ordeal was “Don’t Get Raped vs Don’t Rape.” The “Don’t Rape” slogan is the same thing men have been told over and over again in regards to date rape. I’ve been to several date rape prevention… Read more »
I agree with Lisa and I believe is true that when you change your mindset from “all men are bad” to “not all men are the same” your life changes for the better. Now that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful and take security measures. If I see someone, man or woman, who under a reasonable standard is behaving in a strange way — following you, spying you, etc. — then we should take measures and protect ourselves because crime do exist. But accusing every single guy walking dows the strees and minding his own business of being a rapist… Read more »
Good article, Lisa. I agree that blanket condemnations are counterproductive as well as unfair. Like telling young girls “strange men are dangerous,” it’s a form of conditioning that hurts an entire demographic of our society in the name of Better Safe than Sorry. But toxic messages like that are never justified, and it’s appalling that they go unchallenged as often as they do.
Moreover, there needs to be some incentive for men to be good – if I’m assumed to be a rapist or a potential rapist by a group of people, I’m not going to try to change their minds, I’m going to disengage from them and find someone else to associate with. Same as how I expect a black man would react if I assumed he was a felon and drug addict until proven otherwise, or how a Jew would probably react if I assumed he was a Zionist agent until proven otherwise, or how a woman would react if I… Read more »
Excellent Lisa. You’re very good at covering a lot of unpleasant turf without excess rant or words. Your examples, exemplify and illuminate the terrain very well. I share your sentiment and also have had my share of manhandling and attempted rape- and a home-alone middle of the night encounter with a knife-wielding would be rapist- the kind of terror that can burn the flesh off your face ..and I teach gnarly self defense and it gives me pleasure to show women how to refashion their bodies into heat-seeking missiles and weapons of destruction when all else fails. Should we maintain… Read more »
Presuming guilt in males is not good for males and it is not good for females. What, though, do you mean by “presuming guilt in males”? If you mean women being wary of strange men approaching them because we’ve been told from little-girlhood that strange men are dangerous, sorry, kiddo; that’s not feminists’ fault. It’s certainly not feminists’ fault that women are blamed if they’re raped and blamed if they’re wary (because attempts at self-protection supposedly indicate “paranoia”; ye gods, what a crock). If you mean “calling all men rapists”, well, that doesn’t happen. That’s the MRA’s petulant characterization of… Read more »
That’s a really good insight: If you mean “calling all men rapists”, well, that doesn’t happen. That’s the MRA’s petulant characterization of a very clever, astute attempt to help men understand WHY women don’t automatically trust every strange man. It’s not a real mindset. It’s a lie. In my case, I really was trying to tell the story of myself as an individual, who had a generalized fear of men most of my life. And that generalized fear prevented me from connecting with them as a woman. The “presumption of guilt” came from the title of the whole series we… Read more »
Good point. Women don’t think all men are rapists. However, they are often wary of men because of experience. It’s true that you couldn’t have done anything to prevent that guy from raping you as you walked along the road. However, many women do find from experience that if they are more wary of strangers, they get into less sticky situations. I have never been raped, but I have learned that my formerly friendly behaviour when I was younger resulted in more men threatening me, following, grabbing me, etc. than happened when I tried to avoid them. I don’t think… Read more »
It’s always nice to be someplace else. If you can enrage the guy to the point he charges at you blindly, not noticing you’re standing in front of a brick wall, that’s nice. Dance-moves fakes that deke him into rupturing himself are also good.
Eventually, however….
“4’8″ . Yeah, that would be a problem. One of my so-called students in my one-week course in 1967 was pretty small. I told her–who knows how it went over–that she’d have to let herself be drawn in to get into range.”
My view is that self-defence is as Bruce Lee said: the art of fighting without fighting.
I think the following site is a pretty good pragmatic description of what that means:
http://nononsenseselfdefense.com/
Michelle G. I’m bigger than the average guy by a good bit, both vertical and horizontal. But with the wind gone and the knees not so hot, I can no longer escape trouble nor catch the perp unless he trips. So I have to be able to take care of myself in place. 4’8″ . Yeah, that would be a problem. One of my so-called students in my one-week course in 1967 was pretty small. I told her–who knows how it went over–that she’d have to let herself be drawn in to get into range. I understand that women make… Read more »
Lisa. Wrt taking care not to alarm women: Since it’s only men who have to take care not to alarm women, it’s like talking defensive driving to people who drive and not to people who don’t drive. No point to the latter. I trust you see the application to the war thing. Oh, yeah. Women interested? Snort. I once listed, on Hugo’s blog, a number of women guys would/did admire. Teresa Broadwell, Misty Frasier, Leigh Ann Hester, Rachel Hugo, Rebecca Hodge, Kim Campbell. Everybody thought I was talking about….I dunno, political figures or keyboard artists or something. Best I could… Read more »
Michelle. In college, I was in the judo club. Judo is a sport, like wrestling, so you have weight classes and put women against women and men agains men. But women who wanted to learn self defense would ask guys to compete or teach them, or scrimmage, or whatever we called informal competition. Then I got into what we caled ju jitsu, to make it sound classy, although the U thought it was “self defense”. In reality, it was scientific dirty fighting. Against guns, knives, two or three assailants. We had a lot of women in that class. The point… Read more »
“The point was not to “compete” but to go for the most vulnerable parts.” Yes that was the point in my classes as well, it was karate actually. I gave up on the classes because I didn’t think it would help me in real life, given the fact that attackers go after weaker people than themselves…lighter weight, smaller. Well at least I gave the classes a go. In most of the exercises, I couldn’t even go for the most vulnerable parts of my opponent (ie. near adam’s apple or groin) because my “reach” in my arms and legs were too… Read more »
Lori Day. Thanks for your reply. Thing is, most guys do this with so little self-concern–it seems like the reasonable thing to do–that even a thanks seems unnecessary. But there are some things that men do and say among each other that women don’t need to hear because it doesn’t concern them. For example, my father and practically every adult male in my life up until college was a WW II vet. They talked endlessly, we boys though on the front porch with neighbors, at the Scout meetings, between teachers , about their experiences. Of the vagaries of sergeants and… Read more »
But why do you see the need Richard, *not* to talk about those things with females? Is it that you think we wouldn’t be interested, or..I don’t know. Lori Day had asked earlier today if the site would be better with *just* guys. Or if guys would feel more comfortable with that situation. So I’m just wondering.
No gentleman would ever think less of a woman who acts in a way to guard herself in his presence. He knows why. I’m a big, hard-looking guy who used to be mistaken for a cop from time to time. Age and a bit of additional weight have ended that. When in an elevatorgate type of situation I take care to seem harmless, or I will take the stairs in a parking ramp if a woman is heading for the elevator, or I will take the long way around if our cars happen to be near each other. Cross the… Read more »
Richard, your comment really touched me. I just turned to my husband and read it to him. He then told me something he’d never told me before…that ever since he was in college in the 70’s, he has been sensitive to this issue for women. He doesn’t necessarily take the stairs or walk out of his way, but he has developed the habit of saying quietly, “Don’t worry, I’m harmless.” He doesn’t feel this suggests all men are rapists or could be. He just never wants a woman to feel anxious about him, and understands why she might, so he… Read more »
I’ve taken several self-defense classes and invariably I’m always paired up with a female. At first I thought this was odd, because it’s highly unlikely that I would be attacked and be raped by a female and was disappointed that these exercises didn’t provide realistic scenarios. The class was male dominated, there was one other female in the class; and when she was absent, I was then paired up with men. One guy was big and gruff as how you described yourself, it was difficult to practice my self-defense moves on him – it was ridiculous actually. He was a… Read more »
“Hugo is saying that it is ok that I presume men are guilty until proven innocent.” Well, I don’t think that’s what he’s saying at all. If he were saying that, he would also be tacitly agreeing WITH Rape Culture. What I get from the piece is that RAPE CULTURE is an atrocity, an anathema to civilised society; that as long as it exists, women CANNOT presume any men they don’t know well to be “safe”; and that MEN need to step up and stop that being the case. What I get is that it’s not OK for ANY of… Read more »
I totally agree with this analysis. Yes, on the outset it seems unfair to men that there is a presumption of male guilt, especially in rape culture. However, to subject females to a culture of rape goes beyond being unfair – it’s inhumanel Girls and women are murdered systematically either from rape or from spouses. This is diametrically worse than men’s feelings of guilt and injustice, so much so I would go as far as to say the existence of rape culture invalidates it. Females have the right to presumption of male guilt so long as rape culture exists. There… Read more »
What is your native country?
Considering that the NISVS 2010 report from CDC that recently were published shows that men now are just as likely as women to get raped (p 17-19) and that 79.2% of the raped men identifies the perpetrator as a woman (p 24) I find this analysis fascinating. According to this men CANNOT presume that you and all other women are safe and that WOMEN should step up and STOP this. We men HAVE to presume any woman could be a rapist. I’ve been raped by a woman and this would improve my life how? No, Lisa Hickey got the right… Read more »
I condemn rape. Period. Here are a couple key general facts known to everyone: – Females of any age, are at high risk of being murdered after they’re raped; men are the least likely to be murdered by rapists, unless they’re defenseless young boys. – Rape culture centers around dehumanizing females. This is seen everywhere in media. Show me media that does the same to men, and at the same rate of infliction and discrimination as females are subjected to? Show me Encylcopedia Dramatica rape pages for men??? Show us where women rape men on TV and in movies, and… Read more »
According to the U.S. stats below: – 1 in 5 women are raped/targets, that’s 22 million women! – 1 in 71 men are raped “As far as sexual violence, nearly ONE IN FIVE WOMEN — translating to nearly 22 million women in the United States — reported having been raped or the target of an attempted rape during their lifetime, according to the survey. More than half of them, 51%, said they were raped by an intimate partner and nearly 41% by an acquaintance. Of the victims of completed rapes, nearly 80% said they experienced their first rape before the… Read more »
Read the study, I dare you. That same study says 1 in 21 males have been forced to penetrate someone, which is rape. Then read the last 12 months, 1.1% of women had been raped, and 1.1% of men had been forced to penetrate someone. Nearly 1 in 2 women and 1 in 5 men experience sexual violence other than rape, however the study does not include being forced to penetrate as rape so there’s no real way to compare the stats. It’s biased and it’s no wonder many think they’re trying to make male abuse less serious. Of those… Read more »
Lisa, thank you for your piece. You eloquently make the point that’s sorely missing in the conversation. We don’t have to been doomed to perpetually live (as victims) in fear and suspicion of men because we have been abused by them. To reclaim our power as women and expect men to do nothing more than respect and love us is a much more peaceful and powerful place to stand as we live out our lives after abuse. In fact, its amazing the kind of men that show up when we create that space for gender reconciliation.
Very much agree, thank you.
Lori: In fact, because I loved and trusted men so much, and had so little fear, I deliberately ignored good advice that had been specifically given to me and that, had I followed it, I believe I could have prevented attack. I simply never believed anything like that could happen to me, and acted accordingly. And I did set myself up for the attack I received. I did not *deserve* it, but I did put myself in a situation that facilitated it. On a small side note this belief that “it wouldn’t happen to me” is the exact thing that… Read more »
Danny, I actually don’t think we disagree. I was speaking to my own experience, that I think women should be a little guarded, and that I DON’T think this should lead to presumed male guilt. I don’t think there needs to be a double standard, because if a man feels he needs to be guarded in whatever ways he needs to be–as long as this is not presumption of female guilt or woman-hating–that is fine too. In my comment I was reacting to Lisa’s story with my own, and speaking from personal experience, but I was not negating how a… Read more »
If your “precautions” are to distrust every man but be fine with strange women then you are gender profiling and that’s sexist. You are insulting the men around you if that’s what you are doing. Since men are the people most likely to offer you aid should you ever need it, its a counterproductive strategy as well as a sexist one.
If your “precautions” are to distrust every man but be fine with strange women then you are gender profiling and that’s sexist.
That may be but I can understand how a woman could come to take such “precautions”. No matter what walk of life you come from if you are harmed by members of a specific group then its very easy to render all members of that group guilty by association. By race, by religion, by body image, and so on. Its wrong to take such “precautions” based on such things mind you.
I believe that most women have a history that includes being harmed by other women and being helped by men.
I’m curious about what you mean here. In what way would women harm other women…you mean, psychologically? Physically? (I can honestly say that other than my mother who might have smacked me once or twice when I was a kid, I’ve never been physically hurt intentionally by a woman)And then men helped? In what way? I’m actually serious because I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Oh I wasn’t trying to disagree but rereading it I can see where you got that from.
You said earlier that you wanted to skip the statistics battle and get down to addressing the presumption of guilt and I was trying to explain why getting rid of the presumption is going to be very difficult.
So no there is no disagreement just trying to show how ugly the picture is right now. Sorry for coming off antagonistic.
No worries! You seem like a thoughtful guy. Thanks for this comment. We’re good. 🙂
Lisa, this is a boldly courageous article and I thank you for writing it. I know it was very hard to do. You have my complete admiration for triumphing in a world that was not laid out as your oyster from birth. I want to respond to this quote: “The only thing I could have done to prevent that from happening would have been to not walk out of my house that morning. Being more suspicious, more guarded, more afraid, would have done nothing to change the situation.” When I was 22, I was the victim of an attempted rape.… Read more »
It is curious that while someone who was afraid of black people would be called a racist easily enough, someone who is afraid of men is rarely called a sexist (except by me apparently!) although both are prejudices that lead to profiling. Prejudice is a very human affliction. How did you take the beam out of your own eye? I will read your autobiographical article to see if you already answered that question. Typically people who manage to remove prejudice from their lives do so by growing familiar with some member(s) of the hated group. That’s why the gay movement… Read more »
Since you seem so clear on this idea of sexism and “sexist profiling”, perhaps you would want to write a post for us?
“Gender profiling” I Googled it and it’s a term that has been used a long time, but I recently started to use it in connection with women’s reactions to strange men (but not strange women). Maybe six months ago. So I don’t know if that was an original thought or something I picked up somewhere. Vocabulary is important. It seems to strike a fundamental chord with people. Like, “sure I want equality between the sexes but maybe not that much!” Emotions are very personal things to give up. But women’s fear is not limited to an emotion – it has… Read more »
I can see both sides of “elevatorgate”. There’s the problem that you’re stuck inside of a closed in space. Your options are limited. I could see how there would be a twinge of nervousness — but honestly, I’m not sure if not talking to the person would change the outcome. I’m not saying people should throw caution to the wind. In one of my other pieces I advocate knowing how to fix a car so if it does break down, you’re not stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. But I do think understanding the reasons behind the fear, and… Read more »
You don’t have a “right” to talk to strangers in an elevator. Whether they want to talk to you or not is up to them. Why is this so hard to understand? I’m under no obligation to be friendly to you just because you happen to want to talk to me. From this and other posts you’ve made, it strikes me that you seem to have a peculiar feeling of entitlement that women, should (a) view you positively even if you are a stranger and they know nothing about you, and (b) respond in a friendly and positive way to… Read more »
I love observing elevator interaction. I was on one the other day and a woman got on and man from the second she got on the elevator she cornered me to talk until the second I left. And I was doing all the “look at the wall, don’t respond” body language. Really awkward. It’s a weird space, no one really enjoys being enclosed, everyone shuffles into a strange pattern as to not touch. This seems to go for any and all genders. If I make a conversational offer and am rebuffed, I should take that hint. I’ve rarely been in… Read more »
“You don’t have a “right” to talk to strangers in an elevator. Whether they want to talk to you or not is up to them…. (a) view you positively even if you are a stranger and they know nothing about you, and (b) respond in a friendly and positive way to whatever social overture you choose to make. This is just not true of anyone, anywhere. No one “owes” you (or anyone) feelings of positive regard.” True if your talking about one interaction. In other words if I get onto an elevator and try to talk to a particular women… Read more »
The new CDC stats on rape might open their eyes n realize just how many men are victims or females as abusers, it may make women realize that they aren’t all that diff to men and that men don’t walk around invincible to assault. I think if women truly knew the stats on violence, rape, etc that show everyone as a victim it may make them realize that there are many men and women who are scared, afraid to trust members of the opposite sex. Even large and very strong men can be afraid of the opposite sex, these giant… Read more »
So many great things in this comment Jun, thank you! It is sad the way we raise women up to be afraid of men, and I hope to do my part in trying to change it. I am SO glad you met a great woman who erased former prejudices of your own. And this, this is exactly what I was trying to say but you said it so eloquently: “It’s self-preservation, but it also is self-harming because it limits our future interactions, turning us against ourselves and stopping us from moving on from fear.” It’s difficult to erase stereotypes, but… Read more »
The stats won’t make a difference. People don’t talk themselves into irrational behaviour with statistics and they won’t help get them out. What helps beat irrational behaviour is emotional experience (either good or bad can do it). At least that seems to be the way it works from the anecdotal evidence i’ve seen but I have no real research data. I have looked for an article by Lisa Hickey on how she managed to quit being afraid of men, and didn’t find it (but did spend time reading a lot of other good articles by her). I would love to… Read more »
That title is offensive. Prejudice against men hurts men and women equally? Um. No. It hurts men a lot more.
However that sentiment does NOT appear in the main text of the article. A case of sexist editing perhaps?
That was the point of the article.
Beautiful piece, Lisa.