‘consent’

Why We Need SlutWalk

In January, Toronto Police Constable Michael Sanguinetti spoke at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, sharing a few safety tips with the community. One tip in particular resonated beyond the crowd that day: “I’ve been told I shouldn’t say this,” Sanguinetti said, “however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”

In response, about four thousand people marched on April 3^rd at SlutWalk Toronto, outraged about the harmful myths and stereotypes that perpetuate widespread sexual violence. SlutWalk satellites have quickly spread from Canada to Australia, Chicago, the UK, South Africa, and beyond. SlutWalkers are helping to create a global rally to end sexual assault and challenge rape culture, and we are fed up with the unwillingness of authorities like Sanguinetti to work toward the same ends.

It is fundamentally disturbing that any law enforcement officer would openly advocate policing female sexuality as a means of preventing violence against women. Disturbing, but sadly not surprising. The recent media backlash against SlutWalk provides some insight into how thoroughly victim-blaming attitudes inundate our cultural discussions about sexual violence and confirms the timeliness and absolute necessity of SlutWalk’s mission.

Anti-pornography activist Gail Dines might’ve been the first of many major media contributors to distract from the movement’s goal in order to broadly criticize SlutWalk for using the pejorative word “slut.” Clearly the word is problematic, but who is Gail Porn-Makes-Men-Rape-Says-Me Dines to tell you what you can and can’t find empowering? And shouldn’t she be more worked up about the police constable who called rape victims “sluts” than the handful of SlutWalkers who’re sick of being told that enjoying sex means that they deserve to be raped?

Dines nicely paved the way for Fox News’ Sean Hannity to assure his audience, “I don’t think you can ever blame the victim, ever,” then proceed to blame the victim. There’s this infuriatingly out-of-touch and open display of racist nastiness from Margaret Wente at The Globe and Mail, in which rape is not a problem for anyone anywhere ever – except in South Asian and aboriginal households cuz racial minorities are super rapey. Then of course there’s the endless stream of opinion pieces about how “slut” is not a word worth reclaiming, blah blah. Cool, thanks for the press – ya’ll are still missing the point.

Whether you personally choose to reclaim the word “slut” or not is sort of irrelevant since embracing sluthood is not a prerequisite to protest rape and rape apologism. SlutWalk is an exercise of solidarity: everyone is at risk to sexual violence until our culture gets it shit together, stops teaching that sex is evil, and starts teaching that rape is wrong.

This is an international public and political display of thousands upon thousands of people uniting to end rape. Shut up about how protestors dressed for five seconds and just appreciate how long it’s been since your country has done anything even remotely like this. Or better yet, get out from behind the computer and organize an even better, smarter event to protest violence in your community. I will be there, bright and early. I’m serious, I’ll even carpool with some of my anti-violence allies.

Is the SlutWalk movement perfect? Of course not, but no social movement is. And even now in its infancy, I don’t think anyone honestly believes that SlutWalk is the magic pill that will unfuck our society — hopefully the movement will continue to grow in strategy and diversity. But the media has wasted the better part of a week trying to wedge apart feminists on different sides of the debate and clutching its pearls at the droves of “scantily clad” women taking to the streets, all in an effort to shout over SlutWalk’s more nuanced messages about violence and sexuality.

No one deserves to be raped, ever. Just because someone asks for sex does not mean they “ask for” rape.

When our culture talks about rape prevention, the word “responsibility” recurs constantly but rarely in reference to the person doing the raping. When we engage victim-blaming attitudes, we make it harder for victims of sexual assault to come forward and report a serious violent crime, we become complicit in the unwillingness of authorities like Constable Sanquinetti to help victims and pursue allegations with the gravity they deserve, and we make the world a safer place for rapists.

This is exactly what SlutWalk aims to change.

SlutWalk has placed an international spotlight on an otherwise silent social problem. Thanks to these community organizers, privilege, violence, consent, and sexual autonomy are being openly discussed across many diverse communities. Even if it’s a clumsy discussion, I for one am glad people are having it.

Badass-Activist Friday presents JESSICA SKOLNIK of SlutWalk Chicago!

5.6.11 Miranda | 2 Comments »

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 culture 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.

Feminism is an wide-ranging movement, and we at WIYL feel it’s so important to include activists working to broaden our perspectives and work in negotiating the complexity of intersectional oppressions, making the voices of marginalised groups heard. For this mini-series, we’ll be focusing on men and women who critique the gender hierarchy across all boundaries – cultures, race, age and medium.

So without further ado…

Here’s Jessica Skolnik of SlutWalk Chicago!

Jessica Skolnik is a Chicago activist, community organizer, musician, blogger, zinester, and all-around bad-ass. Together with Jaime Keiles, Jessica is co-organizing SlutWalk Chicago, an international grassroots response to widespread victim-blaming and rape culture, on Saturday, June 4th at the Thompson Center Plaza. Jessica is also an enthusiastic member of the Sexual Health Education to End Rape (SHEER) Collective, a new survivor centered, sex-positive coalition in Chicago, and the resident shredder of synth in the post-punk band Population. Jessica’s spent the last ten years organizing several communities for sexual assault survivors and administering an educational workshop on enthusiastic consent, rape culture and issues of sexual assault within small communities, specifically within punk communities.

What’s your philosophy of anti-violence?

Violence is not just personal but structural. We live in a society that glorifies violence to the point where many of us are inured to it. I see interpersonal violence as often encouraged and exacerbated by a struggle for control and power that stem from structural inequalities (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc). Yes, we need to educate ourselves as to how to deal with specific and personal incidents, but we will not seriously change this society toward nonviolent ends until the entire playing field is leveled.

How did you become involved in anti-violence work and community organizing?

I am a survivor of multiple incidents of sexual assault and relationship violence. Combine that with growing up in DC in the early ‘90s with parents who encouraged my burgeoning interest in the DIY punk scene, and you have a recipe for a young riot grrrl who learned everything she could from the older activists at Positive Force and other activist collectives. I read as much as I could, learned as much as I could, and listened as much as I could.

Eventually I realized that activism would help me heal and allow me to help others. I realized that healing from trauma doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and connecting with other survivors is part of that process. I drew from my academic background in labor history and cultural studies, and I started thinking about how I could use my knowledge of organizing and education to change the dominant culture.

One of the sexual assaults happened when I was barely 13. I brought the incident to my counselor at school who encouraged me to report it to the police. It was one of the most dehumanizing experiences I’ve ever encountered with bureaucracy — and that’s saying something. They questioned me in a way that implied that I was at fault — I didn’t behave like a “good girl,” I wasn’t dressed “correctly,” I was sexually active at a young age and I had “led them on…” It was as far from the myth of the supportive, understanding police from Law and Order: SVU as possible, and there was no follow-up on my report.

After I digested the pain and dealt with the feeling of being violated all over again by people who were supposed to help me, I realized that traditional structures may not be the answer for everyone. I decided that I would spend the rest of my life involved with alternative community organizing by other survivors and active advocates.

I’m really interested in the strategy and skills behind working within subversive counter cultures to create culturally relevant narratives of sexual violence. What strategies do you use in your workshops to help create punk communities free from rape and sexual violence? What are some obstacles to anti-violence work specific to punk culture? Are there specific persistent attitudes or beliefs that have helped to normalize rape within punk communities?

The first strategy I use in my workshop model is to systematically debunk myths and narratives specific to punk culture, as well as the ones we’re more familiar with in mainstream culture, and examine how they are all connected. Punk communities are obviously not immune to rape culture, as much as we’d like to think we are.

One of the most pervasive myths about sexual violence in punk communities is that it’s not supposed to happen there, and that myth in and of itself is an enormous obstacle to ending violence. There’s this narrative that just because we’ve created this culture and community where the line between consumer and artist is less demarcated, where we control creativity as much as possible, that we’ve also created a world where oppression doesn’t exist. Anyone who’s spent even a cursory amount of time in the punk scene knows that’s not true. All the -isms and phobias from mainstream culture are still present, they just emerge a little differently – which makes them more difficult to recognize.

One thing that always baffled me is that, inevitably, when you bring up an allegation of sexual assault within the punk community, you’ll get an echo of voices asking why the person making the allegation didn’t call the cops. There’s a long history of punks resisting police brutality and police culture — it speaks volumes to me that the only time you’ll ever find punks trust the word of the police over the word of a fellow community member is when someone makes an allegation of sexual assault.

Nobody wants to believe that a member of a small, close community could perpetrate such a horrible act. There’s an immediate defensiveness that arises because the allegations are so serious. But violence happens at fests, within collectives, between activists and musicians… It’s hard to talk about rape when many of us don’t feel as if we have the right vocabulary for it. Regardless of our cultural participation in it, we still live in a world without adequate training about what consent looks like, what crossing that line looks like, and we need to trust the word of survivors. Yes, false accusations happen, unfortunately, but very rarely. The more we learn about consent and how to talk about it, the more equipped we are to support one another without immediately assuming that a survivor isn’t telling the truth.

How did you end up co-organizing SlutWalk Chicago? What do you have planned for SlutWalk in Chicago, and what do you hope the event will accomplish?

I first read about SlutWalk on Tumblr through various feminist blogs as the Toronto organizers were putting together their event. I was outraged and frustrated by the persistence of this institutional attitude that I’d encountered when I reported to the police in 1992, the attitude that a survivor is responsible for an assault if she or he doesn‘t act in certain socially prescribed ways. I was inspired by all the photos and reportage from the Toronto event, and when Jamie Keiles (my co-organizer) posted on her blog that she was going to take on the challenge of organizing a satellite SlutWalk here in Chicago, I didn’t even think twice about emailing her to offer my organizing help.

We’re planning a really wonderful event here in Chicago — not just a march but a rally with live music, speakers, tabling by some of our ally organizations, and possibly other forms of entertainment. We’re looking into burlesque and comedy at the moment. We want this to be a chance to meet up with likeminded folks similarly interested in dismantling the culture of shame. SlutWalk will be a celebration of the work the sex-positive rape crisis and survivors’ community has done to change that victim-blaming dynamic and a celebration of our future potential as a united movement going forward.

We also have two after-parties planned, as we’d like to keep the momentum going from the event through the day. We’ve organized a patio party for directly after the walk at Zella. My band happens to be playing a show that night with two other great bands, Martial Canterel and Anatomy of Habit, and that’s our official after-after-party. There’s more information on our website as our plans unfold!

Has the reception for SlutWalk Chicago been pretty positive? I’ve heard a lot of anti-violence activists question the use of the pejorative word “slut” for an event that’s supposed to be empowering… How do you respond to that?

I’m actually amazed by how positive most of the feedback has been — I was expecting a few more trolls, to be honest! Maybe they just haven’t come out of the woodwork yet, who knows. I credit the original SlutWalk in Toronto for paving the way and opening a dialogue.

The response from the anti-violence activist community has been roughly what I expected: positive but cautious. I was actually dubious about the use of the word “slut” when I read about the initial event and started organizing this one. At one point in my life, I was very much invested in reclaiming the word for myself, since I had been labeled a slut by others and found that reclaiming my enjoyment of sex was personally enormously healing. But that’s a goal I’ve found less personally profound over the years.

SlutWalk Chicago’s stance is that whether you find it personally empowering to reclaim the word “slut” or not, we stand with you. Using the SlutWalk name doesn’t just ally and align us with the work done by the amazing organizers in Toronto and all of the other satellites around the world, it really gives us a unique opportunity to talk about how sexual double standards and slut-shaming are cornerstones of rape culture and how a sex-positive attitude ties into the dialogue about consent, and I think that is enormously valuable.

What can our readers do to get involved with SlutWalk? And do you have any advice for starry-eyed activists in-the-making?

Email us at slutwalkchicago@gmail.com to get on our volunteers’ mailing list. Ally your organization, business or blog with us! Print out the posters we have available and hang ’em everywhere. Invite your friends and post all over your social media about SlutWalk, connect with us on any number of social networking sites (all linked from our main website). Enter our DIY SlutWalk poster contest! We’re organizing a poster-making session before the walk, details are on our website.

Show up on Saturday, June 4^th at the Thompson Center plaza (100 W. Randolph) for the SlutWalk step-off at noon! And if you are so moved, organize your own SlutWalk satellite in your city!

To activists-in-the-making: whatever cause and perspective you align yourself with, there is an enormous wealth of community resources and a world of movements to connect with, both locally and globally. Before you strike out on your own trying to build a movement from the ground up, check out the work other folks are doing and see how you can get involved or build off of it. Listen and learn, as well as contributing your energy and ideas!

Remember to take care of yourself at every step of the process. Personal healing and growth are as much a part of an activist’s journey as larger community and cultural change. Everything is connected.

The Line Campaign is proud to ally with SlutWalk Chicago. We support SlutWalk’s mission to promote education about sexual assault and to make it known loud and clear that victims of violence are never the ones at fault and no one asks to be raped.

Feminist Porn Awards: Lauren Reports!

5.3.11 Lauren | No Comments »

Note: Some links NSFW

This month, I went to the Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto, a three day event showing and celebrating porn focused on women’s pleasure and visibility for marginalized identities. The events included three nights of screenings, performance, discussion, and lastly an awards ceremony honoring the best in feminist porn this year. In an interview, the founder of the Feminist Porn Awards, Alison Lee said,

“Porn has expanded to include women and marginalized communities, and many people don’t know about the hot and artistic movies that are being made with a feminist sensibility. We are proud to promote these filmmakers, and excited about directing people to their work.”

The awards brought in a huge diverse crowd, and was successful in showing a huge array of films showcasing sexual diversity and sex-positivity.

In it’s 6th year, the events were truly inspiring. The guests were sex-positive, creative and radical folks who strived to revolutionize a largely sexist and transphobic industry. Notable guests and panelists included, feminist pornographer and educator Tristan Taormino, sex educator and filmmaker Jaiya, genderqueer pornstar Jiz Lee and filmmaker Cheryl Dunye.

One of my favorite parts of the events was the inclusion of men in discussions of feminism and responsible media making. Artist and filmmaker Carlos Batts spoke about the importance of making his models feel comfortable and consenting to everything they do in his shoots. Batts also includes varieties of body types in his films, expanding sex-positivity beyond the world of skinny white women. It was so refreshing to see a man in the industry who cared about these issues and is making politically aware ethical smut.

Drew Deveaux, who won the “Heartthrob of the Year” award is a Canadian, trans woman who noted her porn performance as a natural extension of her previous activism work. Not seeing herself represented in porn, she found this lack of diversity to be a problem. In an interview she said,

“My motivation for making porn was that I didn’t see many representations of trans-women…I put myself out there as an androgynous, post-op trans-woman. There were virtually no women who were like me in porn, but I knew so many hot, andro, queer trans-women. I was kind of doing it for them.”

Being cautious of the dangers of stereotyping, Drew is making porn to represent herself and her community.

The events really pointed out the importance of promoting feminist media and using it as a powerful tool for changing stereotypes and creating visibility.

For more about the awards check out the Good for Her website.

WIYL Badass-Activist Friday presents: NANCY SCHWARTZMAN (our fearless leader)

4.22.11 Trisha | 1 Comment »

Last night, The Line and Hollaback! celebrated their collaboration with The Right to be Sexy in the Bedroom and on the Street! at the Museum of Sex in New York City. In a fabulous panel that included Emily May of Hollaback! Twanna Hines of Funky Brown Chick, Andrea Plaid of Racialicious, Tara Ellison of Third Wave Foundation and NOLOSE, as well as our own Nancy Schwartzman,

Ladies, we gotta fight for the right to be sexy and know that with our efforts, one day sexual assault and harassment will finally bite the dust. Because we all know when our line has been crossed and by defining this line individually, we can take back control and turn victimisation on its head.

So, today, I thought we would celebrate our Fearless Leader, Nancy Schwartzman herself, who’s been the driving force behind spreading the word about consent and highlighting the importance of discovering our own Lines for ourselves.

Nancy has also just completed her second documentary, XOXOSMS about love and relationships in the technological 21st Century! Check it out.

There is a special student discount for the DVD of Nancy’s documentary, The Line. Buy one and have a screening party. Start a dialogue on your own campus with your peers! Email thelinemovie@gmail.com for more details!

Without further ado, here’s her Inspirational Interview, with The Pixel Project!

I’ve known survivors of date rape and many of them do not confront their rapists, preferring to suffer in silence instead. How did you come to decide that you needed to confront him?

I spent a lot of time talking to survivors about what they lost after an assault, what had changed for them in their lives. The more questions I asked, the more one question rose to the top: Why? Why did this happen? Why did he do it? I knew that he was the only person who could answer that question.

Was there a particular reason that you chose to document this in the form of a film (first and foremost) instead of other media?

I worked briefly in documentary photography and I caught the film bug right at the time when digital cameras got small and affordable. I had produced a friend’s thesis film and thought “hey, I’ll make my own film!” I had no idea what that meant, or what that would entail. I started gathering footage, but then, unrelated to the filmmaking, I was assaulted. So whatever I was exploring on camera stopped mattering, and that was the story I needed to tell through filmmaking.

Tell us about your crew. How did you find them, and what drew you together towards making ‘The Line’?

The Line was a labor of love. In the beginning, it was just me! I had a wonderful friend who helped film my confrontation, found me the best hidden camera and microphone, and supported me emotionally. I brought in a handful of really talented editors into the process to help me make sense of the footage I was gathering, and who gently empowered and helped me tell my story. When I flew to Nevada to interview sex workers about consent, I cast a wide net looking for a cinematographer. It was the first time I hired anyone to shoot for me, and I knew what was most important was the feeling that person gave me in my gut. The person I hired made me feel calm and confident, and later became my husband!

On the Whereisyourline.org website you mentioned that you conduct workshops on activism to confront and transform rape culture, highlighting especially the need to work and prevent burnout. It took you years to produce ‘The Line’ – what was the drive that kept you going during rough times?

The drive that kept me going was hearing the countless stories just like mine. I’d visit college campuses and show a segment of the film to students and they would flood the front of the room following the screening. Every time a film fund would turn me down, essentially saying “your story isn’t important” students would tell me “this story is important, because it is my story.” I was privileged enough to have access to film equipment, so I felt the responsibility to make the film.

In ‘The Line’, you highlighted the difficulty of rape survivors seeking justice through the legal system. What do you think can be done by ordinary men and women who wish to see a change in legal systems when it comes to addressing rape?

Ordinary men and women can express their outrage and get informed. On the peer to peer level, learn the laws, learn the lawmakers who support justice for rape survivors, vote for them. Raise awareness among your friends, call out sexism, point out victim-blaming. For those who work outside the system –educate. Encourage your school to teach violence preventation in school, focus the dialogue around sex education to highlight pleasure and respect. Most men are allies in this work, charge them to learn more, and stop being bystanders, and show them men in the field doing this work.

I am a Malaysian woman and there are a number of things in the film, especially in relation to the understanding of a female body’s sexuality among conservative women in Israel, that I can empathize with – the higher the standards of demure behaviour is, the easier it is for women to fall from the image of the ‘perfect victim’. Do you have any advice for women who may be facing condemnation (directly or indirectly) because they do not comply with the image of the ‘perfect victim’?

There is no perfect victim. Societies that do not hold perpetrators accountable for their behavior will find any way imaginable to blame the victim. If you are demure, you may be too pretty, or from the wrong class, or riding the wrong bus, or outside during the evening. There is no shortage of excuses societies invent to avoid what is unquivocably true: if you were raped, it is because you were unlucky enough to be in the presence of a rapist. No matter what you were wearing, where you were walking, what you did in the past, present or future.

Has ‘The Line’ been screened outside of the United States? If it has, how has response been among audiences of these countries?

The Line has screened in Dakar, Dhaka, Istanbul, Ankara, Toronto, Liberia, Taiwan and Israel. I had a very supportive audience in Israel and a very spirited one in Ankara! We had a lively discussion about women’s rights in a global context. I did not attend the other screenings, but wanted to!

On a similar note, how has audience reaction been like from the different screenings of ‘The Line’ that you’ve attended?

I was nervous to show the film in Turkey, outing myself as both a Jewish and promiscous woman, but the conversation was marvelous, and went on for two hours! Women and men engaging in the debate, not afraid to call out each other’s biases. In Omaha, Nebraska it was so quiet in the room I thought tumbleweed was blowing through. Culturally, midwestnerners don’t discuss these matters, so getting that conversation going was a challenge. Over all the reaction is the same – people have a lot to share, and questions for how to best support survivors. I think the Where is your line? stickers are a great way to make the conversation interactive.

If someone is faced with the need to help someone who has experienced date rape, what advice would you give him or her?

I always tell people to listen and listen without judgment. Even an innocent question like “why did you go home with him?” or “why did you go out so late?” will sound like you are blaming the victim. Listen and get informed. Where are the advocates and help centers in your area? Where is the hospital or victim’s center? What is the hotline number? Let them know what resources are available. Believe them. Don’t tell them they have to do anything – but whatever they want to do, you’ll be right there with them.

This interview initially appeared at The Pixel Project

Sexual violence on campus: Entertaining violence.

4.20.11 Trisha | No Comments »

Columbia Spectator, we applaud you! With campuses being one of the the highest-risk areas for young women in terms of date rape and assault, it is imperative that college media offers female student support by acknowledging incidents of violence and disrespect without victim-blaming.

Sadly, this isn’t often the case – last year, a writer at the Eagle, American University’s newspaper claimed that women too often make false claims of rape and sexual assault due to excessive drinking:

Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.

Our very own Carmen Rios of (con)sensual at AU retaliated swiftly by turning his rhetoric on its head:

Let’s get this straight: any person who heads to a party and drinks five cups of the jungle juice is unable to provide consent. To justify manipulating someone who is inebriated, taking advantage of someone with physical threats, date-rape drugs, and coercion, and/or disregarding someone’s ability to enjoy or consent to sex is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s back and shooting it in the dark.

Walker Harrison, of the Columbia Spectator, on the other hand, has called readerly attention to how violence against women and assault is invisible in popular culture and media because of the cult of celebrity. Unflinchingly, he argues that sexual violence is inexcusable and should be better addressed on campuses – and should never be brushed off.

We at Where Is Your Line commend Harrison and the Columbia Spectator for calling out sexual violence and disrespect as they see it, and insisting on change at the source of the problem. We can only hope media on other campuses will follow in their footsteps.

Harrison’s article below

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Sexual violence on campus: Entertaining violence.

A quick glance at a sports section from this past weekend would most likely reveal headlines on the upcoming NBA playoffs, the threat of an NFL lockout, and the revival of legendary golfer Tiger Woods. The subjects of these articles are all incredible athletes performing at the height of their profession. But another more disturbing, less-acknowledged common denominator for many of these individuals is alleged sexual assault and domestic violence. Yet even the most alarming of these allegations, charges, and convictions tend to be ignored in the larger-than-life world of popular culture.

Two of basketball’s best teams, the Lakers and the Mavericks, will be led by their star players Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd. Bryant was accused of raping a 19-year-old during a rehabilitation trip in 2003. Kidd has been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault and domestic violence with multiple women, including his ex-wife. People afraid that the NFL is facing a lockout next year will fondly remember its last game, Super Bowl XLV between the Packers and the Steelers. Last summer, seven Packers were investigated in a sexual assault case, of which one was charged, while Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has been acccused with not one but two cases of sexual assault in the last 20 months. Lastly, Woods was at the center of a highly publicized case of possible domestic violence between him and his supermodel wife, Elin Nordegren, which elucidated his countless sexual transgressions.

The pattern is also apparent in the equally influential music industry. The top music videos on iTunes feature Chris Brown, who beat then-girlfriend and pop star Rihanna (whose song, ironically named “S&M,” tops Brown’s by four spots in a slight instance of poetic justice). Also on the list is a song by Lil Wayne, whose crew was accused of sexual assault during one of Weezy’s recording sessions just a few weeks ago. Further down the list are the artists Snoop Dogg, who was accused of rape in 2003; Eminem, who was charged with domestic violence and whose songs often allude to physically harming females; and Waka Flocka Flame, who was investigated for sexual assault in 2010.

The point isn’t to shine light upon the rampant cases of sexual assault and domestic violence in our favorite forms of entertainment, but to show how easily and quickly we brush off these charges and allegations. With some backward calculus, we forgive perpetrators because of their hit singles and three-pointers, as if professional feats balanced out criminal tendencies. I myself turned a blind eye to my beloved New York Jets’ sexual harassment case—the victim of which, female reporter Ines Sainz, was later labeled as “asking for it” by Fox sportscaster Brian Baldinger—when they began winning game after game.

And do not think that the prestigious Ivy League is above these occurrences. Pledges from the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon at Yale marched on Old Campus last October, chanting, “No means yes, yes means anal.” Two months later, a Columbia professor was charged with sleeping with his own daughter.

Our inclination to dismiss cases of sexual assault and domestic violence calls for a better, smarter effort when it comes to Columbia and Barnard’s Take Back The Night. The reality is that the members of the community will not understand the gravity of the issue unless it’s brought to them. Marches, speeches, and movie showings are attended by the people—mostly women—who already recognize the prevalence of sexual assault and domestic violence on college campuses. But the people who need to be informed are the potential victims and offenders, who will most likely only consider these initiatives as nuisances.

So, instead, target sexual assault at its source. These incidents often take place during socializing hours, late at night and on the weekends, when alcohol is involved. Thus, the best way to combat sexual assault and domestic violence is to declare a safe, sober weekend. Ask fraternities to postpone parties, or request that local bars hold off on special events. Have students sign up to sacrifice one of their precious weekends and pledge not to consume. The result—quiet Friday and Saturday nights—would pack more potency and remind more students of the issues at stake than noisy marches through campus—because in our fast-paced universe, where the roar of a crowd at a game or a concert drowns out the reality of sexual assault, calm silence might be the ultimate reminder of our better selves.

The author, Walker Harrison, is a Columbia College first-year. This post initially appeared in the Columbia Spectator, and is cross-posted with their permission.

A revolution between the sheets

4.19.11 Miranda | No Comments »

Nan Goldin, Simon and Jessica Kissing in the Pool, Avignon, 2001

To current and future lovers: I do not need to be coerced into having sex.

I know what you’ve been taught your whole life about gender roles and sexuality because I was taught the same lies. Women never want it and men can’t get enough of it, right? So this date is basically a game whereby you play your cards right and hopefully convince me to, well, give it up. And women aren’t supposed to like sex anyway, so why should you care if I get off or even have a good time? Then you win something and I lose something because that’s all sex is, right? A zero-sum game or just an exchange of quantifiable goods, the act of one person conquering another, colonialism between the sheets… right?

Well, I don’t accept that. It’s lazy and hopelessly antiquated – and dangerous. Too many of our cultural narratives surrounding sexuality help to confuse sex with rape, and I see that crystallized in context more and more when I date casually.

Every time a new (usually cis male) partner tells me they’re surprised by how self-assured I am in my sexuality, I am reminded that our culture pretty much sucks at providing us with the tools we need to first recognize and then express what we actually want and enjoy from sex. It’s not enough to assume consent to sex in the absence of opposition: if you don’t actively confirm that your partner is fully comfortable and enjoying every aspect of sex play, you’re doing it wrong.

I recently did something really outrageous, something I’ve never done with a partner before. On a lazy rainy Sunday, we camped out in bed and created “Yes/No/Maybe” lists categorizing our comfort levels with different aspects of sex play. I’m an adventurous kinda girl and I figure that, under the right circumstances, I could potentially be up for trying just about anything – which is obviously very different from saying I’m up for everything all the time. So almost all of the sex acts on my list went under “Maybe,” which gave me and my partner an opportunity to talk about comfort levels for each act and explore fantasies surrounding those acts we’d never tried. We discovered new intimate details about our selves and each other thanks to this amazing conversation about the fluid nature of consent and pleasure.

And readers, let me tell you that it was totally hot.

We have to talk about what makes sex great in order to have great sex. It took me years to find a partner who asked me flat-out, “What turns you off? What turns you on? What gets you off?” Great sex can be as simple as laying it all out at the beginning of a sexual relationship. Until I really thought about it and discussed it with someone who actually wanted to make me feel good, I didn’t realize how critical the basic question of pleasure is to healthy, consensual, great sex.

When we communicate with our partners about consent and pleasure, we create a precedent, and not just between us, also between the people with whom we have sex in the future. When we talk about how to have great sex, we’re talking about how to not rape. If I’m with someone new and the conversation seems more difficult, I always say that this is a learning experience for both of us. And if they don’t agree, they’re just not ready.

Unlearning those lies about what sexuality should mean and what sex is supposed to be can feel impossible. Defining your line and creating your own unique narrative about sex is a process of self-exploration. It takes time, endless patience, mindfulness, constant movement, and speaking truth to power.

There are few things more empowering than knowing that you own your sexuality, and the journey is truly revolutionary.

Badass-Activist Friday presents: LORI ADELMAN of Feministing and International Women’s Health Coalition

4.15.11 Trisha | 5 Comments »

So without further ado…

Here’s Lori Adelman of Feministing and International Women’s Health Coalition !

Lori Adelman is a writer, blogger, and advocate for global health and rights. She works as an Associate at the International Women’s Health Coalition, where she edits and writes for Akimbo, the IWHC blog, and helps develop and implement communications strategies to influence international policy and build local capacity in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She is also a regular contributor at Feministing.com and TheGrio.com. Prior to joining IWHC, Lori worked in the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, where she lent support to a U.S. tour that raised awareness about the obstruction of access to legal abortion after rape in Mexico. You can find her on Twitter, handle @Lori_Adelman.

We’ve faced many challenges to our reproductive health over the past couple of weeks – and it’s hard to imagine a world wherein women’s rights to their own bodies aren’t challenged. Can you talk a little about your work with IWHC, particularly how you work to progress sexual and reproductive rights more globally? Why is this important?

I feel both consumed with rage about attacks on women’s health and autonomy (which have been getting lots of attention recently but are certainly not new), and ridiculously privileged to be able to work to counter them, in my day job as an advocate and also as a blogger and writer.

The International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) is this amazing organization that I discovered out of college. It works to promote and protect sexual and reproductive rights and health (SRRH), particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. And it does so by employing a unique model of partnership with grassroots organizations who are doing this work all over the world at the local, regional, and international level. So it’s a “coalition” in every sense; a movement, really.

I feel so lucky to be part of this transnational, progressive, feminist organization that practices what it preaches. The work is so important and dear to my heart because of what you mentioned in your question- the opposition we face is strong, unrelenting, and highly organized, so we need to be even moreso. Everybody deserves to live a free, fulfilled, healthy life. I don’t think I would be able to feel that I myself was living a fully self-realized life, as a woman, as a person of color, unless I was working to help others achieve this ideal as their reality.

Cultural relativity is an issue that is difficult to deal with, particularly when trying help achieve rights for women internationally. Can you speak to how you feel about this issue, and if you have any qualms with the way advocacy operates – does it follow a westernised ideal?

This is a great question, and one I spend a lot of time thinking about.

I think it’s really easy for activist spaces to fall in line with and begin to mirror the structure of oppressive systems that exist in the rest of the world. That’s why it’s so important, as activists, as advocates, and as feminists, to work and speak with communities, not for or on behalf of them. IWHC supports local leaders so they can implement what they know works best. Our support helps partners to more effectively distribute and implement their own message, not some westernized version. And at Feministing, we’re constantly working to provide a platform for others to share their own stories, and to be heard. I’m not saying I have all the answers, or that I’ve found a secret way to engage with people that completely eliminates all traces of systematic coercion or discrimination of any kind. Because the history there goes back a long way. But I’m saying that I believe it’s crucial to derive strategy and demand meaningful participation from the communities and people whose health and lives are at stake, and I try my hardest to live and work by that.

Are your personal experiences and identity important to your activism? Can you speak a little more as to how or why?

Absolutely. In its earliest stages, as is the case for many people, my own feminism was very much tied to my local surroundings: my hometown, my friends, my high school.

I went to a big public school, where I was very alone in my feminist beliefs, save for a few close friends of mine. And I’ll never forget, in 9th grade, experiencing my high school’s version of “sex ed” which consisted of, among other things, being asked to consume a bag of Cheeto’s, then gulp up a glassful of water, swoosh it around in my mouth, and spit it back into the glass. As my classmates and I looked at the unappealing orange flecks that had been transferred to the water, we were matter-of-factly told that when you have sex, you are exchanging bodily fluids, and the more partners you have, the more flecks you pick up in your “glass of water”. Though I found myself reeling at the image along with my classmates, a part of me questioned the foundation of the exercise and wondered how such an abstract and shaming image could help give me the tools I needed to navigate my sex life safely and pleasurably.

Since high school, I’ve learned that although of course our experiences at the local level, in our own communities, are our own, they do not exist in a bubble. I am just one small part of an entire global movement of people mobilizing for change around issues related to health, rights, and justice.

Feministing is a wonderful online community where you get to make feminist issues more accessible to internet-savy feminists, particularly youth. Do you think blogging and social networking technology is particularly important to feminism right now, and why?

Feministing, and particularly the writing of Jessica, Vanessa, Courtney, Samhita, Perez, and Ann, had so much to do with my evolution as a writer and activist. So I’m totally honored to be able to write for the site on a regular basis now. And to answer your question, yes, absolutely: blogging and social networking technology is particularly important to feminism right now because of the role it plays in consciousness raising. There was a time when “the problem with no name”- the problem of injustice- was experienced uber-personally, almost shamefully, often alone and in secret or in small groups of women. Now it’s named, discussed publicly, and countered in some of the smartest, funniest, most interesting and most culturally relevant ways imaginable on a daily basis, for all to see. That doesn’t mean these issues are automatically solved, but it’s certainly an important step forward.

The feminist blogosphere can get, like much of the internet, antagonist and unnecessarily personal – the recent slew of feminist commentors criticising Jezebel.com’s editor-ship and the commodification of the ‘feminist’ demographic is interesting. How do you feel about this flip side of feminist blogging? How can we make sure we are participating as respectfully as we can?

I feel wary of this “flip side”. It is off-putting, insular, and counter-productive. I recently wrote a piece called “How to Respectfully Disagree with Naomi Wolf” because I was so upset over how she was being attacked over the whole Assange/Wikileaks fiasco, even though I thoroughly disagreed with her stance. As I mentioned in that piece, I think it can be easy to get carried away as a feminist blogger and get lost in expressing solely rage, indignance, and outrage. Certainly those feelings are valid, especially with some of the things that are going on in today’s world. But as bloggers like Sady Doyle have so eloquently exposed, those aren’t the only things that should drive our activism. Being a contrarian may invite controversy and generate traffic, but is that the ultimate goal? If we truly want to push the agenda forward, we have to hold each other to a higher standard.

How does your work at IWHC inform your work as a blogger? Are there areas where these are incompatible, or where one is at odds with the other?

I blog both for the IWHC blog Akimbo as well as Feministing, and I also write for TheGrio.com, a news site geared towards an African-American audience. They are all drastically different spaces! I love being able to be a part of all three, because blogging for an organization’s blog is completely different than blogging for a large media corporation, which is completely different than blogging as part of a non-hierarchical self-described group of independent activists. Each of these spaces has its place on the internet, and I’m lucky to work with people who support my involvement in each of these spaces.

We at WIYL believe that blogging is the best way to encourage young feminists to get interested in and inspired by activism – do you have any words of advice for them?

Be courageous with your story. I truly believe in the radical, subversive, powerful, and progressive nature of being honest and thoughtful about race, class, identity, and politics in public.

Badass-Activist Friday presents: EMILY HEROY of Gender Across Borders

4.8.11 Trisha | 1 Comment »

So, without further ado…

Here’s Emily Heroy of Gender Across Borders!

Emily Heroy is the Executive Editor and a founder of Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and global feminist blog, created in April 2009 out of her interest in international development work and feminism. In this community, issues of gender, race, sexuality, and class are discussed and critically examined. It embraces people of all backgrounds to come together to voice and progress positive gender relations worldwide. In March 2011, Emily was named one of the top 100 ”most inspiring people delivering for girls and women ” from the NGO Women Deliver.

Gender Across Borders is an acclaimed blog that suggests gender relations can be progressed worldwide through critical inquiry. Admirably, it is particularly aware of its position of privilege as from the dominant, US perspective. Can you talk a little about why you started the blog and why this awareness is especially important?

This blog was started back in April 2009, when there were no feminist blogs dedicated to highlighting international issues. It is extremely important for us, as global feminists, to continually acknowledge privilege in the fight for gender equality. Not only does it not only engage more with international readers, but we don’t want our U.S. readers to be in the dark about the position of power we have.

Gender and sexuality based oppressions are intersectional ones and often locate themselves within other forms of oppressions such as race/ class/ ability. How do you think your work in Global Feminism and broadening western feminist perspectives can help advance discussions about addressing inequality abroad// inform foreign aid campaigns.

Gender and sexuality cannot be discussed without addressing issues of race/class/ability/religion/etc. When it comes down to it, feminists want equality for all. However many movements have failed to address intersectionality. For example, the Feminist movement in the 1970s and even today ignored and continue to ignore black women’s rights—and this implies inequality. That’s why we talk about other issues that feminists face on GAB—racism, classism, ableism, immigrant rights, etc. Without discussing these forms of oppression, we’re putting feminism on a pedestal and saying that all other movements and issues aren’t as important.

Some western feminists seem to think that feminist issues outside of the U.S. aren’t as important local feminist issues. At GAB we’re trying to show that gender issues live “across borders.” For example, my issue of abortion rights in the U.S. may vary in content from a Moroccan woman’s issue of economic power, but we’re both dealing with a similar kind of inequality because of our gender. Solutions to our problems will not be the same, but just like intersectionality, we have to be inclusive in our end goal: equality for all.

Are your personal experiences and identity important to your activism? Can you speak a little more as to how or why?

I am a white upper-class woman from the U.S. My family traveled a lot when I was younger—Egypt, Morocco, Czech Republic, Germany, France, England, Italy, Austria, etc. From that I got a sense of cultural awareness– something that I realize not many Americans have (because of lack of funds) or value. My family is somewhat politically middle-of-the-road but more importantly, fiscally conservative. I think that because of this, I didn’t have a sense of politics until I got to college in 2003.

Once I got to college, after a year or so, I declared my major in Gender and Sexuality studies and declared myself a feminist. I interned at small nonprofits in New York City (where I went to college) where I could work with underprivileged girls. I wanted to combine my interest in international cultures and feminism—so I traveled abroad in the summers between my years in college doing international volunteer work in India, Brazil, Peru, and Thailand—mostly working with women and children. After college, I joined the U.S. Peace Corps in Morocco to further my interest in international development and feminism.

I don’t think I would identify as a “global feminist” had I not had these experiences both abroad and in the U.S. Working with different groups of women and girls, those who are less privileged than I am, put my own experiences into perspective.

How has technology helped with your activism? Considering the use of technology is an economic privilege, to some extent, do you think the online activism that has been lauded as being far-reaching/ global in fact necessary marginalises certain groups? How can we address this?

Technology has helped with my activism—I’m able to connect with other feminists around the globe more easily. I want to also stress that blogging is not activism—it does spark change and can grow into activism, but it is not activism in it and of itself.

I do agree that technology is an economic privilege. While almost everywhere, for the most part, is connected to the internet—it certainly doesn’t mean everyone is able to use the internet. Especially in underdeveloped countries, the majority of people using the internet are men, because after all in these countries, families cannot afford computers at home or internet connectivity. There are internet cafes all around—which are great, don’t get me wrong, but some women in these countries just don’t go out of the house very much. Or many countries have issues with power—power is not reliable and goes off frequently. Or they don’t know how to use a computer.

Some of these problems can be answered with better infrastructure—countries don’t have the money to spend or the politicians to implement developing a more internet-accessible country.

We’ve recently faced many challenges to our right to reproductive justice – but this is a fight that’s remained largely US centric – how do you feel about the dominant perspectives of feminist activists nowadays? Do you feel they are limited?

I think there are a few feminists out there who think that one issue trumps the other. Reproductive justice is currently being attacked from just about everywhere in the U.S.—from Republicans and Democrats, to prolife interest groups to evangelical Christians, which is why it’s the center of the movement here, and I understand that we as feminists must band together to defend our reproductive rights, but there are so many equally important issues and problems at stake in terms of gender equality. As feminists in the U.S., we need to make every issue important and at the forefront of feminism. I feel like we are only limited because of what we limit ourselves—we need to branch out to other people and other groups to let them speak, discuss, and voice their opinions on gender equality.

We at Where Is Your Line are all about sex positive education and consent – and hope to continue disseminating our message internationally. But cultural relativity can be tricky when it comes to issues of sexuality. What are your thoughts?

I agree—cultural relativity can be very tricky in terms of talking about sexuality. I remember back when I was living with Morocco a few years ago, some Peace Corps volunteers had organized a women’s health seminar where they went around to local villages telling them about safe sex. Because of the social conservative culture, all men were asked to leave the room during the seminar and we weren’t allowed to hand out condoms to the women. How do you promote positive sex education without handing out condoms? The least we could do was discuss condoms and tell them how they worked and why they should use them. Not the best sex education, but in this instance, women were very curious about condoms as most of them had never used them or knew what they were. I’d like to think that bringing up the issue of safe sex allowed for some sort of acceptance that condoms were okay, even in a small conservative village in Morocco.

But when it comes down to it, the way you approach sexuality in the U.S. is very different from approaching sexuality in other countries and cultures. Being cognizant of the culture is first and foremost when teaching about positive sex—for example, in Morocco, some women expressed that they didn’t want to have as many kids as their mothers did. We used that to our advantage—in telling them that condoms also prevent pregnancy. But I also think that there are limitations within conservative cultures, and you can’t overstep that boundary.

How can we best continue to raise awareness of a global feminist perspective in this age where information can be too overwhelming and people have more of an eye towards home?

There’s more to global feminism than technology—which, with the internet, makes the dissemination of information very overwhelming. We can truly raise awareness of global feminism with discussions between people, face-to-face. While much of this discussion happens online, it’s important to take this discussion offline—connecting at a local level, and relating how these local feminist issues are similar to the broader feminist movement internationally. How do we expect to achieve gender equality without banding together with women across the globe?

Badass-Activist Friday presents: HEATHER CORINNA, of Scarleteen, and all-around Goddess

3.18.11 Trisha | 1 Comment »

So without further ado…

Here’s Heather Corinna, all around Goddess and Founder and Executive Director of Scarleteen.

Heather Corinna is my personal heroine! She is a queer, feminist activist, writer, photographer, artist, educator and Internet publisher and community organizer. She has been considered a pioneer of both women’s and young adult sexuality online, having brought inclusive, informative, feminist, original, creative and radical sexuality content to the web since 1997. She is the author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College. Currently, she directs CONNECT, a local sex-ed outreach program around Seattle that primarily serves homeless and transient youth. She is also also currently a board member for NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, on the editorial board of the American Journal of Sexuality Education and is a contributing writer and editor for the forthcoming edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Scarleteen is one of the most informative and accessible resources about sex and sexuality and covers a broad range of topics without being condescending – can you tell us a bit about how it got started?

Thanks! The short version of the long story is that it got started when I was running a different website about adult women’s sexuality, and young people started emailing me their questions. I looked for somewhere to refer them to online, but there really wasn’t anything (this was in 1998), so given that I had a background in youth education anyway (I was a classroom teacher at the time), and wanted them to be able to get their questions answered, I just went ahead and started answering them, first building a very small version of the site with some of those questions and answers.

…which brought more questions, and more answers, so it kept just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Big enough that within a few years, I needed to make it my full-time job and let other projects go. While it’s not something I ever actively sought out to do full-time, I’m glad it worked out that way. It’s been a great way for all my skills and talents and the things I care most about to work together in a way that works well for me and also benefits millions of people every year, which is seriously awesome. When I left classroom teaching to work in sexuality, I thought I had to choose between them, and as it turns out, I wound up getting to do both.

How has technology helped with your activism? Are there any downsides?

“Above all else, it’s provided me a very effective, efficient and affordable venue to do what I do internationally and much more accessibly than other media, like print publishing. With sexuality work in particular, online technology affords people an anonymity that is exceptionally helpful: concerns about privacy are one of the biggest barriers for people when it comes to seeking help with sexuality and talking about sexual concerns and issues.”

There are some downsides. For instance, online and related tech is certainly very accessible, but that doesn’t mean that it’s accessible to everyone. For instance, I do some work with street youth here in Seattle and unless they’re in a shelter which allows them online access, those youth don’t have access to the net. Often the people who have no access to the net or the least access are those who also have the least agency and resources when it comes to their sex lives and sexual health, so the folks who probably need the most help of anyone are the people that, working this way, I often cannot provide help for. As well, while many people feel more comfortable talking about sexuality without being face-to-face, there are times when it’s clear someone really could use in-person support, or even just to have their hand held, get a hug, or have someone there to bring them a tissue when they’re upset.

You’re very open about your personal experiences and how they’ve affected your life and feminism – how does this play into your work at Scarleteen/ your activism?

“In a lot of ways, though often not the ways people expect. I didn’t have a terrible sex life in my teens and twenties. I didn’t have horrible outcomes in being sexually active, in being queer, even in being somewhat off the bell curve sexually when it came to where most of my peers were at, but mostly very positive outcomes. On the whole I had really wonderful experiences with my sexuality and with sexual partnership and exploration that helped me get through some of what, for me, was far more challenging and difficult in my life. I stayed very healthy and usually very happy. I had a good time, which sometimes meant a silly-party good time, but other times meant a good time that was very rich and deep. I usually felt great about my sexual self, and in a whole lot of ways, sexuality was a big place of liberation and healing for me.

It’s certainly not the only way to feel liberated or the only place to find healing like that. But sex and sexuality have that capacity, and having it be something that is about liberation and feeling whole rather than something painful, scary, limiting or fragmenting, something that makes you sick or totally derails your life isn’t rocket science. When you have some basics of healthy sexuality down, when you have access to good care and information, and when you’re given venues of support and encouragement in taking care of yourself and others well, and in aiming to be who you uniquely are in sexuality, as in anything else, it’s just not that hard for it to be something wonderful, whether someone chooses to be sexual with others or chooses not to. Of course, so many people — so many people — don’t have those things, aren’t afforded them or are purposefully kept from them.

The biggest influence from my own personal life in this work isn’t about trying to make things different for young people than they were for me, which is what I more often hear colleagues working with young people express, but to try and give them what will usually make it more likely for them to have positive experiences like I did.

At the same time, not everyone around me in my life was so lucky, and some areas of my own life around sexuality, my body and relationships — most certainly having been assaulted and abused — were not positive, and I didn’t get what I needed at all. I didn’t even have, nor was I given, language for what happened to me when I was first assaulted. I didn’t have anyone to talk to or any help in taking care of myself. Some of the time, my own instincts did a good job, while other times, they really really didn’t. So, there are certainly some ways in which my aim is to try and provide what I didn’t have and needed.

Were there times when you felt useless/ unable to help and how did you deal with that frustration?

There still are those times. Sometimes I have them a couple times a week, sometimes I have them a few times in a day. But what I try and do is remind myself that my desire and intention to help, all by itself, makes me anything but useless. The fact that I want to help, all by itself, also always makes me able to help, even at times when I can’t help as much as I’d like or the ways that I think would be more ideal.

So often, when people want help what they want most of all in that is support. We can’t always help someone get out of an abusive relationship, get an abortion when they want one, or even make choices we’re very sure would be better for them, even if we walk them through step-by-step and talk to them every day for years. But what we can always do is to simply be there for them to listen, to share supportive, kind words and do whatever it is that we can, to the best of our ability. And I have to believe that doing whatever my very best is is always enough, because it’s all I’ve ever got and it’d be impossible for me to keep doing what I do every day, every year, if I didn’t believe that.

What do you think is the most difficult thing nowadays in terms of moving ahead with the fight for consent and realistic sexual education?

How incredibly institutionalized nonconsent and sexual ignorance are. Because even when we can change the messaging in one area, there are always more other people and places folks are going to get unhealthy, inaccurate or just plain limited messaging. It’s very hard sometimes to have to recognize that if and when you’re the one voice that’s making things clear like that real consent and real sexual empowerment is possible, you have to know that very often, you’re the minority voice and it’s always challenging and even tiring to try and make what you’re saying weigh more than what someone is hearing at school, from their government, from their church, from their friends, from partners, from parents, on television, in magazines.

At the same time, our minority voice in this has become less of a minority even in just the 13 years I’ve been working in sexuality now, which is a very small period of time. Positive messaging is certainly way more pervasive than it was 30 years ago. The conversation has clearly changed and grown. This kind of change, with such big stuff, is always going to be slow, is always going to be difficult, but it’s also clearly been something that has been improving over time. Sure, there have been some backsteps and backlash, some times we seemed to move forward then move a little back again, but on the whole I think it’s accurate to say that there has been, and there remains, some constant forward momentum and ever-increasing positive change.

Why do you think American media is so obssessed with “hook-up culture”. Do you think this exists currently, or do you think this existed before and has changed over the years?

I know this existed before: I’ve watched it happen now, I watched it ten years ago, I watched it 25 years ago when I was a teenager myself and my parents dealt with it, too. “Hookup culture” is the current term and manifestation of a fixation on sex outside of certain culturally or religiously sanctioned contexts that’s nothing close to exclusive to the current time.

Why? It’s complex and not everyone focused on it always has the same reasons. For some people, it’s about not thinking sex outside marriage is okay. For others, it’s about thinking sex that doesn’t have a clear exchange value — as in, sex is earned or paid for with marriage, with some other kind of commitment, what have you — isn’t okay. For others still, they clearly feel threatened by people feeling freer in sex than they do or have, or than they think anyone should feel. others still are concerned about the way they see or perceive people going about casual sex in terms of health or emotional outcomes. Since “hooking up” — whether you call it that or call it any of the other things it’s been called over the years — is not exclusive to young people, but often more visible and prevalent with young people, some of the reaction to it is a reaction with young sexuality, period. Let’s also be frank, when we’re talking about media, rather than individuals, it’s a very easy way to get people to read or view something, because it’s salacious and provocative. It’s an easy cheat: even if someone is saying something very trite, redundant or totally unoriginal about it, people will tend to look anyway.

Those are just some of the many why’s: there are more, and sometimes it’s a combination of more than one reason. But one of the biggest common denominators is one we see as pervasive in address and attitudes about sexuality, period, which is that sexuality is this big, scary thing, bigger than us, and something that needs to be controlled — not just personally, but externally and institutionally — lest it control us. That’s obviously an issue that as people, we’ve all been trying to work out for thousands of years and are still trying to work out.

How do you think we, as young activists and students can best make a difference?

Value your own voices and experiences where they are right now and get them out there, ideally to a larger audience that just the people who you’re working with. I often hear young people who feel that there’s no point in them speaking up and out because older people won’t care or some peers won’t care. However, even for those who won’t care — and whose adultism is their problem and bias — plenty do care, and more to the point, your peers do care and they need to see and hear you to help them feel and be more empowered.

Everyone also needs all of you to speak to where you have been and where you are, rather than trying to speak from a place that isn’t yours, or is a place you’re not at yet, but think you need to be at to have authority or earn respect. Not only do you not need to be anywhere but where you are, giving your own experiences and the you-of-right-now the weight they deserve, and YOU giving them authority is incredibly powerful. Not just for you, but for other people who, by virtue of age, gender, of having been victimized, who are of color, who are in any way oppressed and silenced by someone else. Doing that models that authenticity is more powerful than conformity and that oppression is something we have the capacity to change, even when we’re the ones oppressed, and we do that not by making ourselves people we aren’t and more like those who are oppressing us, but by refusing to be anything other than ourselves.

Badass-Activist Friday presents: DR LOGAN LEVKOFF, Sexologist, Relationship Expert, Author

3.11.11 Trisha | No Comments »

One quick note – if you haven’t checked out Nancy’s new film xoxosms, about digital intimacy and Love 2.0 – you should! Pledge support now!

So without further ado…

Here’s brainy and beautiful Dr. Logan Levkoff, sexuality educator, Sexologist, and author, committed to a future of sex-positive education and healthy relationships.

Dr. Levkoff encourages honest conversation about sexuality and the role it plays in American culture. She makes it clear that sex and sexuality are not “dirty” words; she works to create an environment where people feel comfortable asking (and getting answers to) their most personal questions. Dr Levkoff empowers children, adolescents, and adults to embrace their sexuality and challenge the impractical, and often unhealthy, messages that they are exposed to.

Dr. Levkoff is the author of Third Base Ain’t What it Used to Be: What Your Kids are Learning About Sex Today and How to Teach Them to Become Sexually Healthy Adults (NAL/Penguin, October 2007), which helps parents to understand the role sexuality plays in their children’s lives and empowers parents to become better at-home sexuality educators.

How did you first get involved in sex-education? Did it begin in college, or high school, and how did your personal experiences play into your decision?

I started as a peer hiv and AIDS educator in the 10th grade. My parents enrolled me in our town’s first program. So, technically, my foray into sex education wasn’t of my own doing, but it couldn’t have been a better fit for me. As a fifteen year old who hadsn’t had sex of any kind, it was easy for me to talk about sex and sexuality. When I finally did have “sex” for the first time, I was surprised that it was even easier for me to talk about sex. Instead of feeling insecure about my own decisions, I embraced them. By the time I got to college, though, I found myself and my girlfriends (smart, sophisticated women) making stupid decisions about sex. And I don’t mean not having safer sex. We were all using physical protection, but we weren’t emotionally protected. We were in these one-sided relationships where we weren’t getting pleasure, reciprocation and sex felt like a chore – a means of avoiding an argument rather than an act between mutually respectful partners. It was that fine line between emotional abuse and having a generally shitty partner. It was the that I knew I had a mission. I wanted to help women find their voice – to speak up for their emotional and physical pleasure and protection.

You’ve done a lot of work in accessible media, particularly television. That’s interesting to me considering the consistently poor representations of teen sexuality and fear-mongering about sex – is this part of your strategy to get a sex-positive message out? Can you talk a little bit more about how media is especially important to your work?

There is no question that media messages about sex and sexuality are often inaccurate, biased, or exploitative. But I have found that in my own small way, I try to make a difference in that medium. Yes, media is essential to my work. I am privileged to get the opportunity to be on television so I am committed to getting a sex-positive and sexually healthy message across no matter where I am appearing (and yes, I will play in the lion’s den – I love debating on Fox News. It is a thrill and a pleasure, albeit totally frustrating.) But the media is important for me because it allows me to educate far beyond my classroom. I chose this profession so that I could speak out for issues and people that don’t always have a voice. And because I have a certain set of credentials and I look a certain way (and you can’t see my tattoos on television), I get an opportunity to be in public eye. I’m not saying that it’s right, it’s pretty damn pathetic, but I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge it. That being said, I will always use that privilege to do what’s right. And I will always take one for the team.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about young people and sex? Do you thing the sex panic of the older generation is legitimate? What do you think it stems from?

The biggest? Young people aren’t entitled to sex. Exploring your sexuality (regardless of whether or not you engage in any sex behaviors) is an essential part of adolescence. It’s as if adults have forgotten what that time was line. Sure, sex comes with responsibilities. But if you give teens the tools to make good decisions, they will use those tools.

Do you think there’s a connection between ‘hook-up’ culture and teen domestic/dating violence? How can this be remedied in a sex-positive way?

In my opinion, the sexual double standard and parent’s perpetuation of it (ie. suggesting that boys are only after one thing, omitting girl’s desire from the discussion, encouraging male experimentation but being overprotective of girls, suggesting to boys – again by omission- that they can’t be emotionally connected to someone else) creates an environment where girls believe that someone else “makes” them sexual – that they aren’t innately sexual. From there, it is easy to understand why there are so many unhealthy relationships. Girls are rarely taught to proudly own their decisions about sex, to speak up, or to have a voice regarding their sexuality. (They’ve never been told they even have a sexuality). If we don’t speak up, we don’t get the pleasure or protection we need and we certainly don’t get equality, respect and reciprocation in our relationships.

What are your hopes for Obama’s administration regarding attitudes towards sex-education? Where do you think it will go and what do you think are potential problems?

I am fearful still for the future of sex education. The house’s unconscionable vote to defund planned parenthood is a perfect example of how women’s health, sexuality and respect for all persons is not a priority for our government.

There’s been a lot of talk on our blog about sex-positivity being a mere ‘fantasy’ because of the intersections of sexuality with other oppressions such as race, motherhood etc, and the fact that sex seems so imbued in sexist views of male dominance and female submission. Can you talk a little bit about how you feel sex-positive activism is working, where it’s going and how effective it is?

Sex positivity isn’t a fantasy. For those of us who perpetuate it, it is very very real. That doesn’t mean that it is challenge-free, but nothing worth fighting for is. But we need to keep raising awareness, educating, challenging unequal message, and hopefully our youth will then feel empowered to challenge the beliefs of the generations before them. Look, I’m realistic. The battle isnt’ going to end any time soon. But while I’m here, I’m committed to fighting it.

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Empowering young leaders to end sexual violence.

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