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From Playground Teasing to Domestic Violence: How we are Taught to Ignore Violence

I recently read a great post titled You Didn’t Thank Me for Punching You in the Face on the blog Views from the Couch. It centered around the societal notion that elementary school age boys pick on and sometimes violently assault girls because they secretly have a crush on them and cannot find any better way to express that than through violence.

Why do we tell girls that it is okay for boys to hit, tease, pinch, and generally torment them because “oh, that just means he likes you”? Why do we allow such behavior from boys, which no doubt fosters some sort of ingrained notion that it is okay to treat women poorly? It is no wonder that our society has such a problem with domestic violence when from such an early age with our own children; we are teaching boys that it is okay to hit girls if they “like” them and we are teaching girls that they should put up with the disrespect and abuse because it is actually a compliment.

We need to start changing the way we as a society respond to playground violence. If we are going to make the transition from a society ruled by misogyny and machismo to a society where violence of all sorts is not tolerated, especially violence within relationships. We need to stop ingraining systemic violence within our own young children.

Of course, this isn’t the only place in society where we reward (or at least, do not criticize) men’s violence against women. Just look at last Sunday’s Grammy awards, where Chris Brown, who hasn’t appeared at the Grammys since he assaulted his then-girlfriend Rihanna three years ago, not only performed, but was also awarded  best R&B album for this past year. While there was a significant backlash against his appearance on Twitter, his response at the Staples Center where the Grammys physically took place was warm. The executive director of the Grammys, in response to criticism, was quoted in the Washington Post: “I think people deserve a second chance, you know. If you’ll note, he has not been on the Grammys for the past few years, and it may have taken us a while to kind of get over the fact that we were the victim of what happened.” Personally, I think there is a very big difference between getting a second chance and only being sentenced to five years probation and being recognized and awarded as a musician. The Grammys, just like all of us, need to think about the messages we are sending to young people in our society over what is and what is not acceptable when it comes to domestic violence.

Meg Bossong: Badass Activist Friday

It’s Friday, and we all know what that means! Interviews with your favorite badass feminists and activists. Whether social media queens and kings, creative artists, sex educators, or just kick-ass personalities, these people harness righteous anger, instigate movements and inspire cultural change. We’re here to honor them and their work, but more importantly, to highlight how we can all get up, plug in, and Just Start Doing.

Today’s Badass is Meg Bossong. Meg is the Community Mobilization Project Manager at the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC), a center that offers one-on-one counseling, legal help and a 24-hour hotline for survivors of sexual assault, as well as their families and communities. Meg has a BA in Political Science and an MS in Law and Social Policy, and she has been working at BARCC since 2007.

Let’s hear what she had to say to us!

How did you get started at BARCC? What is your background, and what brought you to this work?

It’s probably easier to talk about how I ended up doing sexual violence work first, and the reason for that is that I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who were themselves activists and public servants in various ways, and who encouraged my activism and social conscience from a very young age. I got to college knowing I was interested in social justice issues around gender, sexual and reproductive health, and race, and college was where I was first exposed to sexual violence as a social justice problem (as opposed to just a personal safety concern). And truly, sexual violence prevention is at the intersection of all of those issues and many others.

I worked on sexual assault response projects all through college, where I was a political science major studying social movements and their role in political change, but I ended up graduating at a bit of a loss for how to actually get involved in the non-profit sector. (Actually, mentorship of young non-profit professionals, especially women, is one of my side interests, and something I think is really critical for us to take on.) I spent a couple of years in a job that taught me great skills but that I ultimately knew I wouldn’t stay in, and quit to go get my Master’s degree in Law and Public Policy.

It was truly my intention to be a full-time student, but I went to conference on domestic and sexual violence and the law at Northeastern University’s law school, where I met Stephanie DeCandia, an attorney who is BARCC’s Manager of System Advocacy and Policy Development at a networking session, and found out about a job opening coordinating the education and outreach volunteer program, and I’ve been at BARCC now for about 4.5 years.

Your specific job description is Community Mobilization Project Manager. What does this entail? How do you reach out to people? What have you found to be the best way to approach people?

At this point, that role has two major components. One is that I manage the “Community Change” program, which consists of myself, our education and outreach coordinator (who runs the education volunteer program and coordinates all of our speaking engagements and trainings) and our immigrant outreach and curriculum coordinator (who both develops a lot of our training programs, and works with organizations serving various immigrant communities in Boston). Basically, the focus is on our community-facing work, so working with media and some social media (I do the tweeting for @barcc), thinking strategically about our outreach goals and community partnerships, and that sort of thing.

The other component is that I’m the project manager on a multi-year prevention grant. We were very lucky to get a 5-year grant to design community-based prevention programming in some specific communities in the West Suburban area. It’s been interesting because they’re communities who are very well-resourced in terms of intervention services—that is, “after care” services—for survivors, but that didn’t have much in the way of primary prevention programming focused on stopping assaults before they occurred. So we’re about 2 years into that grant, and starting to move forward with two very different projects in two adjacent, but very different, towns.

One of the real luxuries of having that long-term funding is that the first year or so was spent just on evaluating the type and quality of our relationships in those towns, and then building additional relationships with people who were interested or who we learned over time were really on the same page about safety and prevention programming and that we could work well with.

We’ve learned a couple of really important lessons, both in these communities and in our other work, which is that relationships really, really matter, and that we have to be a true community partner if we want other people to invest in the issue of sexual violence the way we want them to. So, practically speaking, that’s meant going to a lot of meetings and events that weren’t necessarily right in our wheelhouse because it was important to the community and to the people we have relationships with.

For example, I wanted to work with the school system in one community, so I joined the School Health Advisory Committee for that district. I went to a lot of meetings about school nutrition, the bake sale policy, and head injury protocols, because it’s totally unreasonable to expect to just show up out of the blue one day and say, “Hi, I’m Meg, and you don’t know me, but it’s really rape that’s the most important thing here, so could we talk about that instead?” The idea of meeting people where they’re at doesn’t just mean, “…so you can talk them into seeing things your way.” It’s about understanding what’s important to other people, and where your shared values really are. One of the difficult things, though, is that most organizations’ funding and most individuals’ jobs aren’t structured to give them the amount of time and latitude to do that.

Vancouver tried a relatively rare approach to rape-prevention last year, by targeting the potential rapists, rather than the potential victims. Unsurprisingly, that approach yielded real results. The focus on perpetrators rather than victims for prevention of rape is one that activists in this area, such as yourself, have been advocating for years but that is continually avoided. What do you think it will take to really turn around the way we rape prevention is put into effect? Do you think Vancouver will act as an example in this?

Well, if you think about it, it’s a complete paradigm shift for us, culturally, to focus on the people whose behavior is abusive or aggressive. But it certainly can be done, and it has to be done, because nothing else will truly prevent sexual violence in the sense of, stopping individuals from offending.

One of the other really critical pieces to this approach is not just about focusing on individuals who are sexually abusive, but in fact, on the people around them. What we understand from a lot of the research is that most adults who sexually abuse are not doing it “accidentally”, which is to say, making an honest mistake as to whether or not they have consent, and in fact they do a lot of evaluating of their social group and environment to see if their boundary-crossing behaviors will be validated, or at least ignored. We need to do just as much work with those individuals’ friends, family, colleagues, and communities about how to intervene in those situations.

There are two examples that we reference to illustrate that this kind of change can be done, and has been done in most people’s lifetimes. One is around smoking (at least here in Massachusetts, and in some other parts of the U.S.) Rather than saying either, “Smoking is an individual choice that everyone makes for themselves” or “When you smoke, it’s bad for you as an individual in these ways…”, the thing that really shifted public policy and attitudes around smoking in public places was a change to, “Your smoking is harming other people’s health, and we will help you quit, but in the meantime, you can’t smoke in this restaurant (or office, or wherever) and cause harm to other people.”

The other is around drunk driving. The message used to be, “Well, stay off the roads during holidays and events, because there are drunk drivers out there, and drive defensively to avoid them.” We’ve completely switched that to, “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” And not just friends, but strangers. The idea that a bartender could take someone’s keys from them would have been unheard of 20 years ago, but we’re at a point now where the City of Boston is considering empowering valets at city restaurants to be able refuse to return cars to people who are clearly intoxicated. That’s an amazing cultural shift!

In terms of Vancouver, I will say, and I mean this as an absolute compliment to them: I don’t know if it’s entirely the poster campaign that’s responsible for this.  The messaging is really important, but the Deputy Chief also talks about the fact that those community norms messages were supported by better training for police officers and more effective investigation and enforcement. So, at the same time as the city was sending an important message about what behaviors are not acceptable (sexually assaulting people incapacitated by alcohol), they’re backing that up with effective enforcement and low tolerance for sexual violence.

BARCC developed a bystander training program for bar staff, and then rolled it out in partnership with other community agencies, like the police department. (You can read more about that here and download the curriculum for free here.)

The vast majority of the efforts to prevent rape and sexual assault focus on the potential victims. Just a few months ago, another campaign that focused on women was released and sparked some controversy in its focus on telling women not to drink as a means of preventing rape (The folks of feministing.com talked about it here.) Why do you think this is so pervasive? It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how rape happens – why do you think the public idea of rape remains so divergent from the way rape actually happens?

Well, I have two theories. One is a little more militant and conceptual and the other is a little more empathic and concrete.

The more theoretical piece is about intersecting oppressions and privilege: for a very long time, some groups of people in society have gotten used to feeling entitled to and controlling the bodies and behaviors of other people. That has been around gender, but it’s also around race, age, disability or ability, immigration status, socioeconomic status, religion, and often many of those things in combination. We become comfortable with and attached to that privilege, and it’s not easy to give it up. This is what really critical discussions about rape culture happen around, and at the same time, it also becomes a very difficult conversation to have on a practical level, especially with folks whose worldview might be very different.

So, on a more concrete level, I think this victim-focused idea persists because it gives us this illusion of control. It allows us to say, “Well, if I can pinpoint whatever this victim did that they shouldn’t have done (or didn’t do that they ought to have), then I will always (or never) do that thing, and I will teach my loved ones the same thing, and then we’ll be safe.”

The thing that allows me to feel safe walking through the world and good about most people in it is that I absolutely believe that we can work together as communities and as people in interpersonal relationships to clamp down on the sexually abusive behavior of some individuals we know, and promote norms of health and safety.  But unless you’ve already made that paradigm shift, if you just take in for a second the reality of sexual violence is that you (or someone you care about) is most likely to be sexually abused or assaulted by someone you also know (and perhaps care about), and that that person was intentional in their behavior? That’s a pretty terrifying lightbulb moment. I can see why people reject it.

Are you working on any exciting projects right now? OR, are there any efforts in rape prevention work recently that you would like to highlight here?

There are a couple of things I’m really excited about and really want to highlight.

One is around conversations I’ve been able to have with Joan Tabachnick (who would be a great candidate for this space, by the way) about bystander approaches to sexual violence prevention. We’ve been looking at ways to look beyond individual bystander skill building to think about organizational and community-level policies that can support bystander interventions, because it’s becoming increasingly clear that some communities and organizations are better than others at encouraging proactive prevention steps, and it would be good to understand concretely what makes them better and how to help others become better.

Another project, BE SAFE, is something Steph Trilling, BARCC’s Youth Outreach Coordinator has worked hard on is actually a collaborative project of a number of organizations working across sexual and mental health, sexual violence, healthy relationships, and substance use, with the goal being to work with youth-serving organizations on how to address these issues in an interconnected way, from the policy and management level down to a youth programming level. It’s exciting to think about working on prevention issues in an integrated, multi-issue way, since that’s the way most people experience their lives.

There’s also some really great work by my colleagues that I want to mention quickly. Melissa Gopnik, BARCC’s managing director, has been working in conjunction with the Enough Abuse campaign for a few years now on a training for early childhood educators, and policy help for administrators of day care and preschools (available here) that would demonstrate a model for responding to sexual behaviors in young children in ways that promote healthy child development and prevent child sexual abuse.
Thank you so much for your time and those wonderful answers!

Reproductive Rights in the Presidential Campaign Crossfire

As the 2012 presidential campaign season drags on, contraception and abortion remain hot topics of debate for conservatives battling out the primaries. While the left remains mostly on the defense (though one can certainly point to the Komen and Planned Parenthood controversy to see how quickly the feminist blogosphere can move into action!), the right continues to aggressively attack women’s rights and control over their own sexual health and freedom.

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney fluctuates as front runner, largely holding his place in the lead. Romney has sustained the longest position as front runner despite challenges from Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum who have all taken the lead at some point during this race which continues to Arizona and Michigan on February 28th.

So where does Romney stand on choice? Like with most issues, Romney’s position has flip-flopped, though he did liken the recent expansion of health care coverage of contraception by Obama to an attack on religion. And as the battle for the nomination by the Republican party continues, Romney’s rhetoric is likely to become more visceral. As explained by The Huffington Post, “In recent days, Romney has sensed a Santorum threat and has sought to prove that he, too, has strong conservative stances on social issues, despite a history of reversing himself on abortion and gay rights.” Women’s reproductive rights and gay rights serve to be excellent kindling with conservatives looking to prove to voters who can be the most staunchly anti-choice and anti-gay.

Perhaps the most violent of the attacks on reproductive freedom, tantamount to rape, are the “personhood” bills in Virginia, Texas and Iowa promoting a trans-vaginal ultrasound of any woman seeking an abortion. As RH Reality Check reports, “While it may be true that the ultrasound bill will not pass in Iowa, these attempts at passing forced ultrasound bills and other anti-women legislation must continue to be called out no matter if the bill will pass or not. And like Texas and Virginia, the Iowa ultrasound bill could lead to forced trans-vaginal ultrasounds.” The consideration of these bills during an election year is no small matter.

The presidential candidates must be made to answer for these bills pushing to roll back reproductive choice, assaulting women’s bodies. Obama’s extension of health care coverage of contraception should be celebrated, but he must also boldly stand for a woman’s right to choose lest women’s reproductive rights become bartering chips in the political bargaining process.

Elisa Kreisinger: Badass Activist Friday

It’s Friday, and we all know what that means! Interviews with your favorite badass feminists and activists. Whether social media queens and kings, creative artists, sex educators, or just kick-ass personalities, these people harness righteous anger, instigate movements and inspire cultural change. We’re here to honor them and their work, but more importantly, to highlight how we can all get up, plug in, and Just Start Doing.

Today’s badass activist is pop-culture pirate Elisa Kreisinger. She remixes pop cultural texts on her own website, reappropriating them for a female/feminist audience. She is also a Media Fellow at the Center for Social Media at American University and works with the Women’s Media Center and conducts workshops.

Let’s hear what she says about her work!

You call yourself a Pop Culture Pirate. What is it that you do, and what do you hope to achieve?

I’m a writer 2.0: I ‘write’ with video with the goal of creating better stories with more complex female characters that don’t revolve around men or babies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I use the word ‘pirate’ based on a Mary Daly’s words of wisdom:

“..It is necessary to Plunder — that is, righteously rip off — gems of knowledge that the patriarchs have stolen from us. Second, we must Smuggle back to other women our Plundered treasures. In order to invert strategies that will be big and bold enough for the next millennium, it is crucial that women share our experiences: the chances we have taken and the choices that have kept us alive. They are my Pirate’s battle cry and wake-up call for women who I want to hear.”

My work is protected under Fair Use.

How does one become a Pop Culture Pirate? When and how did you decide on video remix as a medium for activism?

I wanted more stories about other women that didn’t revolve around men. The only way to do this is was to make the stories myself. Remix allows me to create tangible examples of what these stories might look like without the old ball and chain of the traditional production system. When people don’t like my version, remix culture encourages them to make their own.

I particularly liked your project on Sex and the City.  I found SATC  to be a particularly frustrating show because it had so many good starting points and followed through on so few of them. How did you create this project? Did you see the queer moments as you were watching, or did they emerge when you set out to create the remixes?

Thanks for the compliment. I agree with your point that it started so well and then became disappointing. The Queer Carrie Project started as an experiment in remix storytelling. I wanted to see how far I could push the genre and if it would hold together. I have some second thoughts, looking back on the project, there’s things I would’ve done differently but the original intent was to look at how the show appropriated the language of radical feminist politics only to retell old patriarchal fairy tales. I really wanted to know why these women, in all their sexual candor and sexual frank-ness, had to abandoning their post-feminist thinking?  Why is it so easy to use the language of radical feminism but so hard to give up on those patriarchal fantasies? So I attempted to deal with that through remix.

You also conduct workshops and work with children and teens. How do they respond, and what insights have you gained from working with them? Do their perspectives inform your remixes at all?

Remix changes the focus of learning from something that’s individual (like taking notes) into an act of community engagement. Students  are asking questions of each other and helping each other troubleshoot. I’m just really guiding them and making sure that the computers actually turn on, we can get online and YouTube isn’t blocked.

I find that remix is the spoon full of sugar that makes the media literacy and critical thinking theory go down easier.  I’m just wrapping a lesson plan into something they can digest.

Are you working on any new projects right now, or is there anything you’ve felt inspired by recently? OR, can you recommend any shows/movies/series that don’t need any remixing because they already explore feminist/queer potentials?

That’s a really good question; I think every show deserves to be remixed, whether it’s as an homage or a critique of that show. It’s important to remix as a means of talking back to pop culture through a common language. Perhaps most importantly, it’s the important tech skills along the way, especially for women, that matter most. Being able to talk back in a public space like YouTube is quickly becoming the new ‘literacy’ and we need more women there.

Right now I’m working on a Mad (Wo) Men project that will debut at SXSW in March. Each part of that project will be revealed in the weeks leading up to the Mad Men premiere on March 25th. In watching the show over and over, I have to say it’s hard to remix because it is so well done. I have issues with it; who loves something unconditionally? But it’s hard to re-edit as they attempt to explore (or circle around) feminist issues. I look forward to seeing a contemporary show that dives in head first.

Thank you for your time!

A Response to Female Comedians and Rape Humor

(Originally posted here.)

Humor provides us with the opportunity to make social commentary, to connect with others, and to laugh when life sometimes feels too damn serious. But when does humor cross the line from breaking boundaries to reinforcing oppressive ideology? Is the in-group “allowed” to make offensive jokes? Why do and should we accept these jokes at all?

Lately, these questions seem particularly relevant to popular humor about rape and sexual assault. In the New York Times article, “Female Comedians, Breaking the Taste-Taboo Ceiling,” Jason Zinoman writes about famous female comedians, who have traditionally lagged behind male comedians, and often been considered “too aggressive.” Today, lady comedians such as Sarah Silverman, have breached this barrier with rape humor. Many of the audience members unwittingly and self-consciously laugh at these crude jokes, aware that the comedians’ message is troubling. Still, it seems that these lines, when delivered by women, make a killing.

Zinoman’s article leads me to ask a few questions. What does the actual content of their humor suggest? Does it simply push limits, or defy them? Why is this the niche that makes female comedians successful? A few themes run through the wisecracks themselves. Zinoman cites Silverman saying,  “I was raped by a doctor, which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.” While Phoebe Robinson, another young female comedian, teases, “When I watch a movie where there’s a really good-looking rapist, I think about the girl: Why are you complaining?” Silverman and Robinson both reinforce two of the main misconceptions about sexual violence: Myth #1: Rape is sexual, not violent. Sexual violence in all forms is violence. Myth #2: Women/victims of rape want it. In court rooms, relationships, families, and police precincts, people ask victims, why were you wearing that? Why were you drinking? Why were you alone? Such questions place the blame on the survivor, and perpetuate the myth that we provoke rape. Sexual violence is not the survivor’s fault.

However, comedians do more than simply propagate myths. In one performance, Silverman proclaimed that she needed more rape jokes, clearly recognizing their role in her success. “Who’s going to complain about rape jokes? Rape victims?” she asked. “They barely even report rape.” It is true that rape and other forms of sexual violence remain vastly underreported. What Silverman fails to mention are the causes for underreporting. Many survivors live unaware of the resources that are available to them. They may fear telling the police or going through a criminal proceeding, perhaps for their safety, or because they may not be able to remember every detail due to their trauma and fear being undermined. Often, the authorities respond with questions like the ones above, blaming the victim for her assault. Let’s look at the cause for SlutWalks as an obvious example of such victim-blaming. When asked how to promote women’s safety, a Toronto police officer said “Women should avoid dressing like sluts.” Most importantly, Silverman implies that victims of sexual violence are powerless and voiceless, another dangerous myth.

These are the jokes and ideas that make female comedians successful, that prevent women from being considered “too aggressive.” Why? While the argument exists that this humor pushes the envelope and frees women from PC rhetoric, these jokes fully support a victim-blaming understanding of sexual assault. Comedians such as Silverman and Robinson do not challenge men. Instead, they reinforce the oppression of rape survivors, who are primarily women, and basically function as minions of patriarchy. Why does the audience laugh, albeit insecurely? Simply put, we live in a rape culture.  Sexual violence, along with myths and misconceptions about sexual violence permeate our lives. To many who have not removed the veil of rape culture, rape is funny. Perhaps some individuals’ sheepishness comes from an inner knowledge of the unfortunate reality of violence.

If this is the only way for female comedians to achieve success, what do we do about it? They could change their material, and find a different, still edgy approach. But what about the viewers? Would they still find popular female comedians funny without rape humor?  Ideally, our whole society would reject the misconceptions that these jokes breed. We could still use comedy as a release, and as social commentary, but as productive criticism, rather than a mechanism to reinforce oppression.

People might tell me, and other “sensitive feminists” to lighten up. Take a joke. But when the joke, no matter who delivers it, minimizes the violence that affects someone every 2 minutes in the United States, I’m not laughing.

Cunning Minx: Badass Acivist Friday

It’s Friday, and we all know what that means! Interviews with your favorite badass feminists and activists. Whether social media queens and kings, creative artists, sex educators, or just kick-ass personalities, these people harness righteous anger, instigate movements and inspire cultural change. We’re here to honor them and their work, but more importantly, to highlight how we can all get up, plug in, and Just Start Doing.

This week’s badass is Cunning Minx. She is the producer and host of the PolyWeekly podcast, and has been since 2005. There, she talks about non-monogamy as well as kink, providing a valuable resource for the poly-community. The podcast has received much praise, and Minx has been invited to speak at many conferences, including Sex 2.0 and the Heartland Polyamory Conference.

Here is what she had to say to us!

You’ve been doing the PolyWeekly podcast since 2005 now. How did you get started? Has your audience changed at all during that time? Do you see trends in the topics you cover, or are there some staples that always come up again?

I started podcasting on a lark. My boyfriend at the time came to me one weekend, all excited about this audio RSS thing he’d read about in Wired magazine. I shrugged it off as a geek thing. Then, one day, I walked in to a coffee shop to meet him, and he was chatting into a computer mic. He hit a few buttons, and I asked him what he was doing. “I just recorded my podcast and converted to MP3,” he said. “Oh, wait,” I said, “Podcasting is just talking? Like a normal person? I can do THAT!”

Famous last words. Over 300 episodes and many, many hours of wrestling with audio, creating content and wrangling guests and cohosts, I can’t believe I entertained the idea of doing a weekly show so lightly!

The audience has certainly grown over the years. When I began in 2005, iTunes wasn’t yet a podcatcher, so folks had to be pretty geeky to figure out how to aggregate podcast RSS feeds. I remember looking at my stats and being amazed that 200 people I didn’t know were listening to me! Now, of course, we have over 50,000 monthly downloads and a really engaged listener base. I think that’s the thing that has changed the most since the first year—topics come and go, but what has really kept the show going was the active decision to make it a listener-directed show. I chose to cover content I Iike, but the feedback is what determines how often we revisit those topics.

One thing that has changed since the first year was my reluctance to give advice. I didn’t really feel qualified, so I sort of hedged around it. After a few years, though, I kept seeing smart people in real pain with real issues asking for help, so I shared my own experiences and the knowledge I’d gained from them.

How has your personal approach to non-monogamy changed over time? Have you learned any lessons from your listeners or contributors?

One thing I’ve definitely honed over the last six years is my own identity and preferred non-monogamous style—and that those who choose a different style are no less polyamorous than I am. It’s rare that I’ll say “oh, they’re not really poly” when I hear of a person or couple practicing differently from me. The only thing I’m a stickler about is communication and consent—I will rain down bloody hell on you if you do not communicate your desires and activities to all parties involved so they can make informed relationship decisions. But apart from that, I’m pretty tolerant.

Personally, I’m semi-monogamous or poly-friendly. I don’t feel the burning need to have more than one long-term partner, but I like having the option of exploring feelings and relationships when they arise. And while I was blessed with a wonderful period in which I had two long-term boyfriends, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by having only one at the moment.

One thing I’ve learned from my listeners is that the things that we discuss on the show don’t apply exclusively to polyamory; it really all does come down to self-knowledge and honest communication. About half of the Poly Weekly listening audience identifies as monogamous but let us know that they find the show helpful for improving their monogamous relationships with better communication.

How do you feel about representations of non-monogamy in the media, be they fictional representations (such as Dr. Taub and his wife attempting an open marriage on the TV series House), or “real life” (such as Gingrich’s second wife revealing his asking her to open up the marriage)? Are they positive because they bring non-monogamy to the public attention, or negative for overwhelmingly portraying non-monogamy as a way for dealing with cheating within a marriage (and usually a cheating husband, specifically)?

Ah, that’s quite a question. It depends on the representation. We’ve discussed instances of poly in the media such as the polygamy depicted in the show Sister Wives, with mixed responses. The show is positive in that it does show ongoing communication to make the marriages work, but negative in that it shows a religion-based, patriarchal, heterosexual model that isn’t really representative of how a lot of people practice modern polyamory. And, well, if you’d seen my post on Gingrich, you’d know how I feel about that. I think he has sullied the traditional family values of polyamory with his sleazy, half-hearted proposition to his spouse.

[And here is that post on Gingrich!]

What is most essential about mentions of poly in the media is that there are more of them—a lot more—than even just five or six years ago. And the mentions are becoming decreasingly sensationalized and increasingly normalized.

Similarly, how did you feel about the book Sex at Dawn? It became very popular very quickly, and was received in a largely positive way. Do you think that it can have any lasting effect in the way that monogamy/non-monogamy are viewed?

The value of Christopher Ryan’s Sex at Dawn is that it got many people thinking about non-monogamy in a logical manner. It has tremendous value in that it provided a conversation starter for many people who would never otherwise have considered the biological and anthropological origins of non-monogamy. Plus, bonobos are fun.

What’s your current hot topic? What blog/public figure/news event are you getting really excited/passionate/angry about? Or, feel free to plug any project you are currently working on!

Mostly I’m just really excited about the overwhelming expression of listener support for the show. One thing podcasters never tell you is that we get tired of weekly production. Over the last two years, I’ve nearly shut the show down several times because it just takes so much time and energy. And I wasn’t in a relationship, myself, or even getting lucky, so it was pretty heartbreaking to get on mic every week and spew advice about relationships I didn’t have!  So when a listener suggested the show have a button for monthly repeating donations, I wasn’t sure what would happen. But I’m pleased to report that in the two months since its inception, the Poly Weekly Playmates has 15 monthly donors. And the fact that those people want to hear the content every week has been a huge motivator for me. There is no danger of the show stopping any time soon!

I’ll be speaking on a new topic, How Not to Be a Douche on FetLife, at MomentumCon in March, and I’ve submitted to speak at OpenSF this summer as well. I’m looking forward to both events!

Thanks so much for your time, Minx!

Invisible War

(This is a guest post by Holly Kearl. Holly is an activist and non-profit professional whose work focuses on gender-based violence and street harassment. Find out more about her at her website. It was cross-posted on Ms. Magazine Blog)

On January 22nd, I attended both a screening of The Invisible War at the Sundance Film Festival and a survivor- speak-out afterward. I can’t stop thinking about what I saw and heard.

Prior to seeing the film, I knew about the epidemic of sexual assault in the military. I’d read the alarming statistics. The Department of Defense estimates that during 2010, there were up to 19,000 women raped in the military. Twenty percent of female veterans were raped by their coworkers either when they were recruits or as active duty members.  One percent of men in the military are raped each year.

Not only is rape epidemic in the military, but prosecution is low and retaliation against survivors is high.  For example, of the few reported rapes, only 8 percent are ever prosecuted and only 2 percent end in conviction. Since perpetrators tend to be repeat offenders, the lack of penalty means the vast majority of rapists can continue raping – both their coworkers in their military and members of their community when they are home. This is an outrage.

While I knew these statistics, I didn’t know or connect with the stories of the survivors until yesterday.

Intending to make the military their career, during the film most of the survivors featured sadly shared how they left the military after their assaults. Even though they love the military, every one of them said they would not recommend the military as a career to any other woman until significant structural changes occur to make the military safer.

Each survivor described their feelings of betrayal for being assaulted by their military “brothers,” and how traumatizing it was to face retaliation from the military (some of the women were even put under investigation and charged with adultery because their assailants claimed the rape was consensual and were married men). The frustration of inadequate health care, therapy, and support was another common theme.

One of the survivors is Trina McDonald, a Navy officer, was drugged and raped repeatedly by other officers on a remote base in Alaska. During the survivor speak-out, we were horrified to hear that during her therapy at the Veterans Affairs (VA), she was told to record what happened to her in great detail and then play that every day until she became desensitized to the trauma. She stopped replaying her tape when the “therapy” made her suicidal. She asked members of the Utah VA present at the speak-out to please do what they could to stop that harmful treatment.

Another survivor is Coast Guard recruit Kori Cioca. Her rapist dislocated her jaw and the VA has yet to provide medical coverage to fix it. Instead they proscribed an alarming amount of drugs, which Cioca displays in the documentary. During the speak-out, she described how one insensitive doctor questioned why she was there and then tried to pry her mouth open with his hands, jammed a mirror in her mouth and only stopped when she got up and left; her pleas to not touch her falling on deaf ears.

Witnessing the impact the rapes and assaults had on the survivors’ family members both in the film and at the speak-out was devastating. Many of the women were married to members of the military or had fathers serving. Most of the men left once they found out what happened and to this day and their every-day life is forever changed as they work to help their loved ones recover their health, their dignity, their life. It was their tears that moved me to tears. I am not a survivor of sexual assault but I know too well the same feeling of helplessness of trying to make things better for loved ones who are survivors and who are in so much pain. Not everything was sad, however. There were messages of hope everywhere. The film showed dedicated members of Congress working to create and pass a legislative fix. We saw brave survivors, including Cicoca, and their lawyer Susan Burke sue the Department of Defense for violating their constitutional rights. And even though the district court judge dismissed the case last month, ruling that rape in the military is an occupational hazard for which you cannot sue the government, they are appealing the decision. The love the survivors’ families show them was also a positive force throughout the film.

During the survivor speak-out, more hope emerged. Survivor after survivor said that working with film producer Amy Ziering was better therapy than anything they went through at the VA because she actually let them talk and listened to their stories without cutting them off or dismissing them. One survivor from Salt Lake City who was not in the film but simply heard about the event and decided to attend said that 90 minutes of watching the film did more good for her than had her years of therapy with VA therapists.

The survivors said once they began working on the film, it was heartening to know they weren’t alone in dealing with these issues. They now had a band of people who had gone through it too and with whom they could advocate for a better military. The film was a turning point for many of them and also a way to reclaim their voices. They hoped it could be a turning point for all the survivors who view the film.

Some of the spouses of survivors spoke at the session too, and they said how cathartic it was to be part of the film. One husband of a survivor said, “It’s hard to know where you can make a difference in the world” but that the film showed him how he and his wife can: by speaking out and advocating for changes.

You don’t just have to be a survivor or the loved one of a survivor to make a difference. If you want to do something, please:

• Sign and share a petition asking for structural changes in the military.
• When the film is available, watch it, tell your friends about it, or host a screening party.
•  Send concrete and pragmatic recommendations for changes to the filmmakers.
• Keep up with the Take Action page to find out what else you can do.

It will take all of our voices to ensure that the military does the right thing.

Rape is Rape: Lebanon Edition

(Originally posted here.)

In Lebanon (or at least, in Beirut) the joke is that it is equally likely to see a woman in a mini skirt as it is to see a woman in a hijab.

In Lebanon (or at least, in Beirut), European tourists feel at ease that the Lebanese still speak a post-colonial French, and let Beirut be called the Paris of the Middle East.

In Lebanon (or at least, in Beirut), tourists and Lebanese alike flock to the beaches and the nightclubs, openly drinking alcohol, smoking hookahs, and belly dancing to both popular western and Arabic music, creating a strange moment that many see as cultural influence, and many others see as cultural infiltration.

Still—despite the post-colonial familiarity and acceptability of Lebanese culture—Lebanese women remain in many ways decorative objects, openly ignored, slighted or discriminated against in legislation. In Lebanon, a woman cannot pass on her Lebanese nationality to her children. In Lebanon, a woman is not protected from domestic abuse—because the law does not recognize domestic abuse as a crime. In Lebanon, a woman is not protected from martial rape, because the law explicitly states that a married man is entitled to have his wife sexually whenever he pleases.

In Lebanon, if a man rapes an unmarried woman his crime is absolved so long as he proposes marriage to the victim. If she rejects his proposal, his prison sentence is shortened to six months.

If she is not a virgin—or her hymen happened to be previously broken through a myriad of non-sexual means—this is not even an option, because it her rape cannot be proven and counted as rape.

If she is a perfect victim—which in Lebanon means virginal, religious, and focused on either being or becoming the perfect wife and mother—and if that rape case is even reported, the media obsesses over the ethnic and religious identity of the victim and perpetrator, detracting from the universal, horrific nature of the crime itself. In one instance at the end of last year, a young woman named Myriam Achkar was tragically sexually assaulted and then murdered in a Lebanese suburb of Beirut, and though this was the story—an innocent woman was the unfortunate, undeserving victim of a violent, horrible crime, the story that was conveyed through Lebanese media was different. As Lebanese journalist and feminist collective organizer Nadine Moawad wrote at the time,

That’s what the story is: A young woman, 28, takes a 20-minute walk from her home in the suburbs and gets sexually attacked and murdered by a man. But that’s not the story we’re hearing everywhere. What we’re hearing is: A young, Christian, virgin woman, 28, takes a 20-minute walk from her home to a church to pray, and gets sexually attacked and murdered by a Syrian worker.

As rape is conflated with ethnic and religious identities, a rape myth that only the lower class, non-Lebanese Syrian can rape a virginal, Christian Lebanese woman as she is coming home from praying at the church is perpetuated. If he were a wealthy Christian Lebanese man, and she was at a nightclub in Beirut—or worse, his wife–the crime would still be rape, but the story would not be told.

Lebanese women (and men) are beginning to stand up. Last week, the feminist anti-violence collective Nasawiya organized a march through the streets of Beirut, demanding that marital rape and domestic violence be addressed, and that women receive greater protection in the law.

I care about this deeply—because not only am I female and an anti-rape and sexual violence activist, but I am Lebanese-American. I have never been to Lebanon—but I know what it is like to stand up to Islamophobic and Arabophobic people in both France and the United States, and tell them that I am Lebanese. I know that after an awkward moment, they typically tell me that being Lebanese is “good Arab” and “not really the Arab world” and then there is an awkward sentence about how much they love hummus or how Lebanese women are notoriously beautiful.

I want to tell them that there is no such thing as “Good Arab” and “Bad Arab,” and just because Lebanon is characterized by colonial influence and has lower rates of visitor warnings, doesn’t mean that we/they do not have heinous political problems. I want to tell them that we/they can solve these problems with the just way, not the be all and end all, hideously flawed western way.

I know what it is like when a cab driver asks me where I am from, that he is curious because I am brown like him, and might share a common culture or common language. I know that no matter how much I would like to simply say, “San Francisco” and have my cultural loose ends tie themselves behind me, that with being questionably brown on American soil invites a series of questions on just how brown you happen to be.

I know that when I say, “Part of my mother’s family is Lebanese”—because that’s what seems to make the most sense—the next question is, “You’re mother’s family, are they Christian?”

I know what it is like almost three full generations later to wonder why the hell this even matters—but I know for many Lebanese women (and men) it can matter very much.  I know that three generations later, through the fault of my unquestionably ethnic spice rack, the family recipes that I grew up with as “normal” (but are far too characterized by generous helpings of lamb, bulghar wheat, parsley, and cinnamon to be considered “American”), big eyes, and skin just brown enough to beg the question, “what are you?” that I have a personal, selfish stake in these women’s lives, well-being and daily bull shit—because it is just an accident that I am not one of them.

As Lebanon moves forward, and Lebanese feminists like the members of Nasawiya begin to stand up, rejecting the decorative role that society has imposed upon them and demanding that anti-violence legislation is written and implemented into the legal and cultural code, I am following half a world away with baited breath and excitement, wishing that I could also close my computer and take to the streets of Beirut. I hope that I finally visit Lebanon soon—and that when I do, I don’t have to take to the streets because Lebanese women are protected by the law and treated as equals, not because of the colonial savior of western influence or infiltration, but because women everywhere, around the world—regardless of race, religious affiliation, or ethnicity—deserve their issues to be addressed and respected in the law.

In Lebanon, the women and men—regardless of ethnicity, class, and religious affiliation—are fighting for this right.

Spotlight on Consent: What IS Consent, anyway?

One of the most important and most tricky issues when it comes to sex is what we mean by consent. The notion of consent is often used to explain the difference between kinky sex and abuse, for example. And it’s almost always part of the conversation when we talk about how to tell sex and rape apart.

When I talk with people about what I think consent means, I usually use a three part definition:

• You have to say yes. Giving consent means that you have actively taken action. Consent is more than not saying “no.”
• You have to be able to say no. If you don’t have the freedom to say no without repercussions, you can’t actually give consent. A gun held to your head, whether literal or metaphorical, means you can’t truly consent.
• You have to understand the consequences of saying yes or no. If you’re too drunk or wasted, if you lack the mental capacity, if you don’t understand what you’re agreeing to, it doesn’t count. [As an aside, I don't know when kids are able to consent. Different jurisdictions peg it at different ages, although I know some 15 year olds who are more able to do it than some 40 year olds. All I know is that kids are usually ready after they think they are and before their parents think they are.]

Although this definition of consent isn’t 100% complete, and it certainly leaves room for ambiguity, debate, and discussion, I’ve always thought that it covered most of the more important issues. At least until I read this article one the Kinsey Institute’s website, discussing the research article Sex without Desire: Characteristics of Occasions of Sexual Compliance in Young Adults’ Committed Relationships. They had 63 18-24-year olds in heterosexual relationships keep a journal of their sexual activity and 17% of the events were rated as “sexually compliant” (which was defined as “willingly engaging in sexual activity that one does not desire”).

Contrary to what some might expect, they didn’t find any gender differences in reports of sexual compliance. But both the men and women they studied said that men were more likely to initiate sexually compliant experiences, which means that guys are initiating sex even when they were complying. I suspect that there are a lot of reasons for that, including thinking they should have sex, or thinking that their girlfriends wanted it, or buying into a performance model of male sexuality.

Sometimes, people complied with sex in order to maintain the relationship, just as we might comply with doing the dishes or running errands. Other reasons included feeling low sexual desire and having past experiences of being pressured. And although it wasn’t among the themes that the researchers identified, I also wonder about one’s self-esteem, history of sexual assault, vocabulary around sexuality, and ability to set boundaries in other aspects of the relationship.

I also wonder about the relationships between sexual compliance and resentment. Doing something that we don’t really want to do in order to please a partner can easily fuel resentment, which is a great way to kill a relationship, and I’d be curious to see research that tracked couples over time to see how their level of sexual compliance influenced their relationship. I’m pretty sure there’s a strong correlation.

I’m glad to see research beginning to explore the nuances of consent. After all, consent doesn’t necessarily imply enthusiasm. And while I’m a fan of the BDSM community’s standard of Safe, Sane, and Consensual (and the more recent version, Risk-Aware Consensual Kink) , there’s clearly more to it than consent. I’ll be curious to see further work in this area.

Jay-Z, the “B-Word” and Double Standards Among Fathers

An article posted  on the music news website NME reported that Jay-Z has vowed to stop using the word ‘bitch’ in his songs. The article reported that he made the vow in a poem he wrote to his newborn daughter, Blue Ivy. Looking at how widely used misogynistic language is within Hip-Hop and Jay-Z’s high profile within the world of Hip-Hop and pop culture, this is huge.

This revelation also brings up some interesting thoughts about how many men think differently about how women should be treated when they think about their own daughters. Many men feel perfectly fine objectifying women’s bodies as sexual objects and using degrading language but protest when their daughters go out wearing revealing clothing. Why is there this double standard, and why does it take the birth of a daughter to make some men realize that women shouldn’t be denigrated in musical lyrics (or anywhere)?

I think a lot of it comes down to a feeling among many men that they have a right to control the sexuality of women. They feel like they have a right to disrespect and objectify women and also feel like they have a right to control the sexuality of their daughters. These two thoughts are linked through the existence of the system of sexual misogyny where men feel entitled to control women’s sexualities.

Sometimes, having a daughter makes men realize for the first time that we live in a society that disrespects women and denies them sexual freedom. What is it about having a daughter that makes men have this epiphany? I think there is a lot of paternalism (literally) when men say that they will stop acting sexist for the sake of their daughter(s). Men should be actively working against sexism and misogyny even if they do not have a daughter, a sister or a mother. While many men may only feel a responsibility to their female relations, we should just respect everyone, regardless of their gender.

It was later reported that Jay-Z’s publicist has denied that Jay-Z ever wrote such a poem and will, as such, continue to denigrate women through his lyrics. I guess that my hope that Jay-Z would be a trendsetter within hip-hop was misplaced.