-Art history – 500 years of women ignoring men. Good for a bit of a laugh!
-Angelina Jolie, who just starred in Maleficent (which has its own rape metaphor), opened the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. A worthy goal, for sure, and I appreciate that she makes a point to say that rape is about power, not sex. I find the idea of training peacekeepers interesting, though, as peacekeepers and soldiers are often the perpetrators of rape in conflicted areas. I think it’s going to be difficult to change things as long as rape isn’t really prosecuted even in times of peace.
-High profile sex trafficking cases are having a PR nightmare. With Somaly Mam being exposed as a fraud and Chong Kim’s story unraveling, the “not for sale” crew are scrabbling to show themselves as helping women rather than lining their own pockets. Never mind that trafficking actually exists and is horrific enough without making shit up. Why would you base a project on lying about your experience? I suppose if it’s about ego rather than actually helping people, and god knows trafficking isn’t the only charity that’s had these issues. I hope there will be some writing on how these trafficking narratives are used, even with consent, in exploitative fashions, further harming those the projects are meant to help.
-An anonymous post on Black Girl Dangerous underlines issues of abuse, activism, and where personal accountability intersects with “the cause”.
Reflecting back on that night, I now understand this heinous act within the kaleidoscope of his insecurity, anxiety and fear that I would eventually leave him. I realize that our early conversations were exclusively concerned with systemic forms of patriarchy. He was never interested in how his personal actions were misogynistic.
As I’ve had similar experiences, and know several “feminist activists” who are also serial abusers, this is an important topic and one I think that will need to be addressed at more length.
-A report was posted last week on street harassment numbers in America. Surprising no one, it’s a massive fucking problem. 65% of women and 25% of men said they had experienced street harassment, though as usual the numbers may be greater due to how we’re taught to tune it out and what we define as “harassment”. Also not surprising, men were overwhelmingly the harassers, whether the victim was a woman or a man (I don’t know if they identified trans or genderqueer people in this). Additionally people of color and LGBT people were a lot more likely to say they’d been harassed than white or straight people were. I think the fact that PHYSICAL harassment is so widespread is also notable, as we’re so often told catcalling isn’t a big deal because it’s just words.
-“Professionalism” is taken to task by genderqueer person Jacob Tobia, and I think it speaks to an interesting way in which we establish and enforce whiteness, cissexism, and masculinity as norms without really thinking about it. This is where coercion begins to rear its ugly head.
Professionalism is a funny term, because it masquerades as neutral despite being loaded with immense oppression. As a concept, professionalism is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, imperialist and so much more — and yet people act like professionalism is non-political. Bosses across the country constantly tell their employees to ‘act professionally’ without a second thought. Wear a garment that represents your non-Western culture to work? Your boss may tell you it’s unprofessional. Wear your hair in braids or dreadlocks instead of straightened? That’s probably unprofessional too. Wear shoes that are slightly scuffed because you can’t yet afford new ones? People may not think you’re being professional either.
For years, professionalism has been my enemy, because it requires that my gender identity is constantly and unrepentantly erased. In the workplace, the gender binary can be absolute, unfaltering and infallible. If you dare to step out of line, you risk being mistreated by coworkers, losing promotions or even losing your job. And if you are discriminated against for being transgender or genderqueer, you may not even have access to legal recourse, because in many states it is still perfectly legal to discriminate against gender non-conforming employees.
-PS: we have a twitter account and will be using it more! @consentculture
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