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Badass Activist Friday Presents: David Zhou and Vivian Lu

9.2.11 | 1 Comment »

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, I spoke with David Zhou and Vivia Lu, who are the founders of Microaggressions, a user-generated Tumblr blog that let’s people talk about their experiences with microaggressions.

Let’s talk about Microaggressions. Can you describe how the site works and what it does?

David:
Currently, Microaggressions is an interactive submissions-based project. Each post includes a short contextualization and the psychological impact on the person. We have a handful of editors who help us select and edit each post to provide a collage of events that depict the volume of daily disempowerment endured over time by people who identify with oppressed social identities.

Ultimately, we are trying to show connections between daily personal experience and larger, systemic and institutional injustices in society. We are also trying to show intersectional experience between various social identities, particularly race, socioeconomic class, gender, sexuality, religion, body issues. At the same time, the project is not about showing how ignorant people can be in an effort to demonize them. It’s really about showing how their actions can create and enforce unsafe spaces that have larger social effects. We are hoping to publish a parallel blog that provides in-depth long-form analysis of the issues at stake.

How did you get the idea to start Microaggressions? Was there a
particular event that sparked the idea, or was it more of a gradual process?

Vivian:
David and I ranted to each other during an otherwise lethargic class about microaggressive experiences from our lives. Eventually we started a meticulous record of microaggressions that have happened or are happening to us. This was somewhat in response to an incident on campus at the time where a student government party running for office had plastered campus with flyers reading, “Two Asian Girls at the same time,” which really upset some of our friends who saw that it evoked pornographic fetishization of Asian women and lesbians, while others completely denied that it was inappropriate in any way. (We’ve written about this experience, and will post an essay soon on the site about it.)

This was our middle ground and answer of sorts, where we wanted to show that some of our friends’ anger was coming from a lifetime of similar microaggressions that relate to larger histories and systemic injustice. We began with incidents that we remembered from our own lives where gender, race (we are both Asian American), class, and sexuality hierarchies were enforced by people around us, beginning with elementary school teachers, family, and peers. Originally entitled “Notes on Everyday Life,” this document eventually became the first posts of our blog when we decided to share it online and ask our peers for their experiences. While we had the idea during college, we brought the idea to life several months later when we had time to look for the online platforms and services that could facilitate our project. Once we had it up, we emailed about 40 friends, and the site took off from there with the help of social networks.

What has it been like being the founders of such a relatively well-known project? Have you made any connections with other activists, and with contributors to your site?

David:
It’s been really exciting and challenging. We get questions, feedback, requests, and critiques every day that expand our thinking about allied and intersectional activism. It’s also been wonderful to meet other folks doing similar work and talking about how we can collaborate. We’ve involved people we’ve only met online into the project – for comment moderation and the upcoming site redesign, for example.

We’d like to take some of the project offline – into print media and conferences – in order to engage audiences who might not be connected to the social justice blogosphere. We really appreciate when people reach out to us!

Have there been any contributions that particularly touched you?

Vivian:
The fact that people submit and spend their time contributing to the project with experiences from settings as mundane as work and intimate as family is really touching to me. David and I would have long fizzled out if we were just posting our own experiences. Most recently, I really appreciated that we recently were contacted by a concerned individual to create a separate trans* tag, and have since received a lot of trans microaggressive experiences to post.

We have a little number on all of our posts that count how many times people have reblogged/liked it, and while the numbers vary drastically from post to post, I really appreciate the ones that don’t get liked/reblogged as much. They’re usually a much more subtle or “everyday” submission, and less particularly shocking/immediately WTF bloggable, which really represents the bulk of microaggressions that really wear people down in their day to day lives.

What experiences have you yourself had with such microaggressions, and how do you deal with them when they come up?

Vivian:
In a way, our upbringings were primed with experiences that have opened our eyes to these invisible oppressive actions.

I grew up in Colorado and began thinking critically about race, gender, class, religion, and sexuality mostly when I moved to NYC for college. I was initially shocked at the visibility of racial segregation of NYC neighborhoods – even simply taking the 7 train to Queens and slowly watching all the white people get off. I was also initially shocked at street harassment I received that was intensely racialized and gendered. This opened the door for me to question a lot more about the ways in which social identities impact individual lives. It was a heartbreaking and devastating process, where I re-learned American history not taught in public grade schools and re-remembered my own childhood experiences and realized the different ways in which social identities I hold affected how people treated me and my family. Because so many of these microaggressions had happened so long ago, the only way to record and recognize them was for me to write them down. For microaggressions now, it depends on the safety and comfortability of the situation, as many of our submitters explain. Most of the time, I don’t call microaggressions out. Sometimes, I’m so bored and numb from unoriginality (Where are you really from? / That’s an interesting major for you.) that I give up.

David attended a private high school in NYC of extreme class privilege, where he witnessed a lot of blatant oppressions along race, gender and class. Growing up in those environments caused us to meet in student organizing circles during college, where we saw even more microaggressive actions by the nature of our work.

What do you both do aside from running Microaggressions? What are some other projects you are working on?

David:
Besides the blog, there’s a lot that we’d like to do with the project. Right now, we’re in the middle of a site redesign that will eventually enable us to launch a parallel blog on the site with in-depth analysis of systemic injustice through personal memoirs/creative writing, essays, and artwork. The redesign will also allow us to integrate better search options and technical features. In addition to the redesign, we are also working on releasing print materials for education about various issues related to microaggressions, for which we’ve gotten many requests. These materials can hopefully be used in classrooms, workplace trainings, diversity workshops, etc. to provide an engaging, interactive way to teach issues of privilege and power.

As for ourselves personally, we aren’t “full-time activists or organizers.” Vivian spent this last year working as family shelter staff at a NYC domestic violence organization, and I taught in Korea. We are both starting graduate school this year – Vivian in sociocultural anthropology and I in computational biology.

While we’re not professional organizers, we believe that our politics are full-time. Anyone can be part of this project if they have experiences to share and the time to listen and reflect.

 

Thanks for taking the time to share your answers with us!

Know your line in the bedroom and on the street

4.27.11 | 1 Comment »

street-harassment

Just a week ago I was walking home from a yoga class, sweaty and wearing a sweatshirt over my yoga pants. I thought nothing of the middle-aged man walking toward me until he looked me up and down and simply said “Nice.” I looked around. It was unmistakably directed at me. And I didn’t know what to do or say. As he walked past me I gave him a quizzical and then angry look. But should I yell? Curse him out? And call more attention to myself? As soon as I decided to turn the corner and just walk home, the shame and embarrassment flooded me. Should I be walking around in tight yoga pants? Did I open myself up to that? How can some man on the street feel such ownership over my body as to issue a passing grade on it?

I’ve been working against a culture of harassment against women that blames them for the harassment for years and years. But it was easy to zoom right past all of these things I knew logically and feel that shame blossom deep inside my psyche. The first thought right after “How dare he” was “Maybe I shouldn’t wear these clothes.” And it made me realize that while I may know where my line is when I’m alone with a man, I may not know what it is when I’m walking down the street.

Rape culture doesn’t end when you leave your bedroom and head outside – that’s where it may in fact start. Street harassment is one of those things that women are expected to simply cope with. We all have stories. This was one of my more subtle ones. Worse ones involve the men I caught masturbating while staring at my body on two separate occasions, the man who grabbed my ass hard as he walked behind me in a crowded department store, the litany of comments that followed me as I walked alone to the subway on Friday nights. Over at the ACLU’s blog, Robyn Shepard shares her own story of being smacked on the ass in public – and doing something about it. She writes that she ran after the perpetrator, confronted him, and called the cops on him. They didn’t end up finding him for the arrest, but it’s heartening to hear that law enforcement took her seriously. While we clearly haven’t gotten past blaming rape victims for their assaults, we have barely begun to address the victim blaming in street harassment. To the point that I do it to myself.

In her blog post, Shepard makes a crucial point: “Sexual assault doesn’t always necessarily mean something as horrible as rape.” In fact, it can be the smaller, subtler acts that are the most culturally pernicious. Over at Hollaback, they state: “Street harassment is one of the most pervasive forms of gender-based violence and one of the least legislated against… [I[t is rarely reported, and it’s culturally accepted as ‘the price you pay’ for being a woman or for being gay… Sexual harassment is a gateway crime that creates a cultural environment that makes gender-based violence OK.” And they’re doing something about it. By using crowd-sourced data and creating a space to share stories, they’re working to make this problem visible enough to mobilize against.

One is a stepping-stone to another. When men feel they can yell whatever they want about a woman’s body and get away with it, that they can touch her body in public and get away with it, why wouldn’t they think they can go further? Any form of gender- or sexual orientation-based harassment or assault is unacceptable, be it on the sidewalk or between the sheets.

Badass-Activist Friday presents HOLLY KEARL of stopstreetharassment.com

2.25.11 | 4 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.

So without further ado…

Here’s anti-street harassment expert Holly Kearl .

2-12-11 HollaBack Baltimore Party

Holly is the program manager at the women’s equity nonprofit the American Association of University Women. She is also the founder of the website stopstreetharassment.com and author of the book Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women. She regularly gives talks and writes articles about street harassment and recently founded the First Annual Anti-Street Harassment Day, on March 20, the First Day of Spring.

Let’s start off by defining street harassment – What is it and why should we care? How many people are affected? Who is affected and who’s doing the harassing?

Street harassment is sexual harassment that happens between strangers in public places. Most women everywhere in the world have experienced street harassment, commonly in the form of whistling, kissing noises, vulgar gestures, leering, unsolicited comments about your appearance, sexist or sexually explicit comments, demands for sex, blocking your path, following, masturbation or flashing, groping, and purposely rubbing up against someone in a sexual way. Street harassment can escalate to rape. In some cases, it’s escalated to murder.

There aren’t enough studies on the prevalence of street harassment, but the studies that exist show it impacts anywhere from 80 to 100 percent of women. I conducted informal online survey of 811 women from 23 countries and 45 US states and found that 99 percent reported experiencing forms of street harassment.

Gender-based sexual harassment in public spaces is largely perpetrated by men against women. While some women on occasion may harass men in public, gender inequality means that the power dynamics at play, frequency of the harassment, and the underlying threat of rape is rarely comparable. For these reasons, I primarily focus my work on men harassing women, though I certainly don’t believe anyone should have to face unwanted attention from strangers in public. While public harassment motivated by racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or classism— types of deplorable harassment which men can be the target of and sometimes women perpetrate—is recognized as socially unacceptable behavior, men’s harassment of women motivated by gender and sexism is not. Instead it is portrayed as complimentary, a joke, “only” a trivial annoyance, or women’s fault because of what they were wearing or the time of day they were in public. One of my goals is to change the social acceptability of gender-based street harassment. Despite what the larger society thinks, this kind of harassment has a very real impact on women’s lives by reducing their sense of safety and comfort in public and thus influencing them to limit their time in public.

How did you get started in street harassment research and education? Was there a specific experience – personal, academic or professional – that confirmed your passion for this work?

While researching a master’s thesis topic I read about a new website called HollaBackNYC that encouraged women to share their stories about street harassment online. I had never heard the term street harassment before, but I immediately recognized it from my own life. In public places, men I do not know have honked and whistled at me, made sexually explicit comments, followed me, and one man even grabbed me sexually when I was on the street. In college, I experienced this type of harassment daily. I rarely talked about it and hadn’t made the connection that it was a form of gender violence

When I wrote my thesis, I found almost no books on the topic, so, a year after I turned it in, at the suggestion of my parents, I decided to start writing a book to help fill that gap. Each time I receive stories from women for my blog or when a woman shares her story in person, they reconfirm my passion for this work. Often it is their first time talking about street harassment, sharing their stories, and finding validation for being upset about what happened, and they remind me why this work is necessary. And each time I face harassment or one of my friends or family members does, it reminds me on a very personal level why this work matters and is important

As a street harassment expert, have you had any experiences or discussions or learned something that really surprised you about this subject?

Last month I came across a report on the website of the U.S. Department of Transportation that talked about how as early as 1909 people were advocating for women-only cars on the new transit system in New York City because of men harassing and soliciting women. I suspected that harassment on public transportation was nothing new, but it still surprised me. More than 100 years later, men harassing women on the New York City subway system is still a huge issue and that is why anti-harassment PSAs launched in 2008. But clearly we need to do more.

What are the consequences of street harassment, immediate or long term, on both a personal level and a broader community level?

The consequences of street harassment are actually quite serious. The more often a woman experiences harassment, or the scarier her experiences, the more likely it is she will take preventative actions like avoiding going near the place it occurred, avoiding being out alone at night, altering what she wears, and generally distrusting men that approach her. On the extreme end, I found that some women move neighborhoods because of harassers (almost 20 percent in my survey) and change jobs because of harassers along the commute (almost 10 percent of the women in my survey). Street harassment results in women limiting their time in public spaces and limiting their access to the resources there. Scholar Cynthia Grant Bowman calls this the “informal ghettoization of women” to the home. Women will never achieve gender equality with men as long as harassment keeps them from having that equal access to public places.

What do you think are the root causes of street harassment? What aspects of our culture facilitate or condone this behavior?

Some of the root causes for street harassment include societal disrespect for women, the objectification of women, and unhealthy definitions of masculinity that encourage men to harass not only women but also other men, particularly men who do not seem to adhere to traditional definitions of masculinity. The media truly is a prime example of this — from marketers that use women’s bodies to sell products, to industries that value women’s looks more than their brains or talents, to commercials that tell men what “real men” do or don’t do.

I also see a lot of reinforcement of these ideas from generation to generation. From older women or mothers who tell girls that the harassment is a compliment or that they should just learn to avoid it or ignore it, to men who harass women in front of their sons or try to bond with sons or younger brothers over objectifying and harassing women. Over and over, I encounter people who believe street harassment is a compliment and this really reinforces street harassment, silences women who experience it, and give men a free pass to continue to do it.

In my experience, street harassment can be a really scary and dehumanizing experience. It’s also really frustrating because it happens so abruptly and we’re so conditioned to keep to ourselves in public spaces, it’s hard to know how to react safely and effectively at the time harassment occurs. What can victims do to counteract harassment and reclaim power? Can you recommend some strategies for our readers?

At minimum, it’s really important for targets of harassment to recognize that it’s not our faults and that nothing we’ve said or done is causing the harassment. This is a societal problem. Recognizing it’s something most women deal with can inspire, enrage, and empower us to do something about it.

In general, thinking about something you can say or do that challenges the behavior of the harasser in a non-violent, non-aggressive way (no insults or profanity because that is more likely to escalate the situation) works well. Turning what the person said into a joke, simply telling them to stop or back off, asking them how they would feel if a man treated his sister/mother/girlfriend/wife/daughter that way, or announcing to people around you what he just did are all examples of what to say.

Also, if the person works for an identifiable company, report them to their company! I’ve read several success stories from women who have reported construction workers or delivery truck drivers and the harassment stopped. And if you’re on a bus or subway, report the harasser to the driver or transit manager. I’ve also received several success stories where harassers are kicked off the bus or told to leave the subway car.

Are there opportunities for victims to pursue legal action against street harassers, here in the United States or elsewhere around the world? Are there any individuals or organizations working to make this happen?

Yes, often if the harassment is extreme enough that it makes you fear for your safety or fear attack, depending on the state or city laws, you can press charges for public harassment. The limitation is that this usually requires repeated harassment and threatening behavior. Also, since there are often laws against public lewdness, if someone flashes or masturbates on you, you can report it. And if someone gropes you or assaults you, then you can report it under assault charges.

On an international level:

- The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights is working with members of parliament to pass a new anti-sexual harassment law that would include harassment occurring in public spaces.

- In Delhi, India, there is a law that encompasses a lot of street harassment behaviors. Since January, police have been cracking down on harassers (“eve-teasers,” as they call them). During the second week of January, I read that they arrested 26 harassers in one area for “passing lewd remarks at women.” There have been a lot of suicides among young women in Bangladesh because of street harassment. In response, last year the police started actually enforcing a law that encompasses street harassment behavior, and last spring the first harassers were arrested under it.

- Since last spring, the UK Anti-Street Harassment Campaign (ASH) is lobbying politicians to take on the issue of street harassment and pass better laws.

What can our readers do to stop street harassment and prevent it from happening in the first place? What can men do to support efforts to end street harassment?

It’s so important to break the silence on this topic, so just talking about it, sharing stories, and sharing strategies is essential. Talking specifically to young women or young men you know is really important in preventative work: let them know what is or is not acceptable and teach them how they can respond in an empowering way so they do not feel victimized.

In my book and on my website I really break down what we can do into four main categories: educating men, empowering women, raising awareness in our communities, and creating anti-street harassment campaigns.

Men can learn about this issue from the women they care about. Ask a woman what experiences she’s had and how they have impacted her life. Men can be good bystanders when they see harassment occurring, though it’s important to use non-violent, low aggression tactics rather than inadvertently escalating the situation. And, most important but also the most difficult, they can challenge sexist talk and not promote or reinforce harmful gender definitions.

What is unique about your approach to street harassment and how do you work with other organizations to the same ends?

A lot of the work that I do is raising awareness about street harassment and providing ideas to people for how they can help end it. My website and book are depositories of knowledge on the subject that include resources. I take a comprehensive approach to street harassment in my work, including a historical perspective, exploring the intersections of gender + race, class, sexual orientation, dis/ability, examining that through a global lens, acknowledging that not all women view street harassment the same way, and looking at why some men are street harassers and how definitions of masculinity treat that harassment as socially acceptable behavior. In fact, a lot of what I do is idea sharing. I collect what people have used and done and share those ideas so other can find inspiration for taking on street harassment in their community. One example of this collaborative aspect occurred when I met with Emily May of HollaBack and Oraia Reid of RightRides in 2009 to interview them for my book. I mentioned some of the activism going on internationally, including that Egyptian women were developing a system so people could report harassers via cell phones. Emily and Oraia loved the idea and a year and a half later, the HollaBack iPhone and droid apps were released. I work with other organizations to promote their work and include them as resources for others. I’ve also had the opportunity to collaborate with groups like Girls for Gender Equity, and Men Can Stop Rape for community events on street harassment, and I hope there will be more opportunities for collaboration in the future.

If you’d like to participate in the first ever Anti-Street-Harassment Day, on March 20th, more information here!

hollaback looking for badass bloggers!

1.11.11 | 1 Comment »

Consider blogging for our friends& sisters-in-arms Hollaback!

“Hollaback embodies all that is strong, powerful, and badass about being a woman today, and reflects a global female solidarity that knows no racial, age, or geographical boundaries. As such, we seek three men or women who can represent and illustrate these values in written form.

Selected writers need to be able to commit to blogging a minimum of twice per week about key stories and milestones in the anti-harassment movement in a voice that is bold and street harassment savvy.

Interested candidates should submit a sample piece for publication by February 10, 2011 on a topic that you feel is important, timely, and of interest to Hollaback readers. Accompanying your piece should be a brief description of you, why the anti-harassment movement is important to you, and how you represent a unique voice.

Bloggers will be selected for diversity of voice and quality of writing and can hail from anywhere in the world. To submit your sample piece and accompanying information, please email everything in the body of an email to violet@ihollaback.org.”

How Can We Learn to STOP Harassment in Schools?

12.14.10 | No Comments »


Every girl likes a nice compliment once in a while, but when does it cross the line? What do we do when certain comments become inappropriate or make us feel uncomfortable? At the recent SPARK Summit held at CUNY Hunter College, I attended a workshop called “Hey…Shorty! Taking a Stand Against Sexual Harassment in Schools.” This workshop addressed sexual harassment in and outside of schools, along with some very useful and informative exercises that engaged everyone in the room.

We started by examining what we believed the definition of sexual harassment to be. Everyone was able to add what sexual harassment meant to them onto a large sheet of paper. Some words were “unwanted comments and touching”, “unnecessary”, “nasty”, “cat calls”, and “people commenting on your body, not your brain”. It became obvious that sexual harassment is never positive and is anything that makes another person feel like a sexual object instead of a human sexual being.

We were then each given a different quotation or situation and had to place it, according to our own opinion, under one of two categories: “OK” or “NOT OK”. One statement that we discussed that stood out to me was the command to “Smile.”   (more…)

Keep Speaking Up! (A Note On Reclaiming Public Space)

12.12.10 | No Comments »

creeper2

I’m currently studying abroad in Sweden, and I had planned on returning to WIYL with a lengthy analysis of Swedish and European attitudes on feminism, and how my experiences with both sexual harassment and the opinions on it differed from those in the States; tonight’s events, however, caught me completely off guard, and with few active feminists to whom I can turn here (more on that later), I now look to this strong, empowered community with a consoling nod of empathy and a bit of advice.

A few of my female friends and I went to the student bar tonight, and for the most part, it was your ordinary night out in Sweden: great people, expensive drinks, and questionable house music. At some point, one person in our group noticed an older man who had been leering at her for quite some time. Sure enough, as we moved from tables to booths to the dance floor, he would move as well, always standing alone with his drink, staring at her. Now, I understand that a bar is a social environment, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone checking you out, finding you attractive, striking up a conversation, and either moving forward or moving on. This man chose instead just to stare, to asses, from a distance; as the night continued, she became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of someone using her fun night out, her body and her dancing, as a show, an object, a spectacle. As the offender moved even closer, she finally confronted him about his creepy gaze and uncanny movements that shifted as she attempted to move out of his line of sight. I didn’t hear their conversation, but whatever words were exchanged must have been a denial, an insult, or a threatening come-on, because she immediately grabbed her jacket and purse, and hurriedly marched out of the bar.

To see my friend, a self-identified feminist who is usually the first to rally against these same harassers and occurrences, this disarmed and derailed was entirely upsetting. Her night out was completely ruined by one man who believed he had to right, the privilege, to leer at his pleasure, but unapologetically refused to acknowledge the validity of her protests to what felt like nonconsensual voyeurism to her. As I sat there alone at the bar, I frantically looked around the room for the offender, wanting to confront him about his harassment. I realized then, though, that there was little I could do. My friend has attempted to verbally defuse the situation with little success; a larger, louder effort would only cause a scene, and I realized that my defense, “he was staring at my friend,” sounded inane to those who hadn’t been involved in the situation; yes, we were at a club, but is there any difference between that scenario, and an unknown man following you and watching you on the street, or in any other public space? I became increasingly furious as I realized that we were trapped in a situation in which our comfort zones, our personal space and safety, could easily be invaded, and that any objection to this intrusion could be laughed off, making us feel powerless in controlling situations regarding our bodies and ourselves.

My other friend put it quite succinctly as I was hunting down the harasser: “What are you going to do, punch him?” Very often, in discussions and experiences regarding consent and sexual harassment, we find ourselves backed into a corner, ridiculed and patronized for speaking out against unwanted advances and misogynistic actions and attitudes; it is easy, as we experienced in the bar tonight, to feel voiceless. I wish I had a neat conclusion, a revelation, or a tidy solution to eliminating these instances where a woman is made to feel so uncomfortable in her skin and in her environment that she sees no other option but to leave; I do know, though, that WIYL is an undeniably powerful force in uprooting a male-privileged society and in promoting consent not just within the confines of sex itself, but in all instances regarding one’s sexuality and sense of self. It’s good to be back, ladies; we’ve got a lot of work cut out for us.

Has Airport Security Gone Too Far?

12.8.10 | No Comments »
Cartoon found on tumblr.

Cartoon found on tumblr.

Flying is now even more unpleasant with the new regulations recently announced by the TSA. They have imposed new regulations that include body scanners, nicknamed “Nude-o-scopes” for the invasive, naked pictures they produce. These body scanners have now been installed in almost all of the major airports across the United States. They utilize x-ray technology to look through your clothes, a technology that has been “independently researched” by the government and found to be safe. When imaging experts from the University of California, San Francisco wrote a letter to Obama’s science and technology advisor requesting a government-independent panel to review the machines, their request was denied. The government has significantly downplayed the risk of radiation, especially in the cases of people who are more susceptible, such as pregnant women and young children.

Aside from the disturbing fact that TSA employees all across the country are looking at you naked before you step foot on your plane – it has been compared to a virtual strip search – the scanners also have the capability to store the images they take, although the TSA claims that that is usually not activated. This is a reversal on the claim they made in the summer of 2009 when they said scanned images cannot be stored; this past August it came to light that over thirty-five thousand images of passengers from a checkpoint in Florida had been saved. Oh, and some might masturbate to your pictures.

Aside from the fact that these machines may have unhealthy levels of radiation, and some stranger will see you naked (and maybe save that picture), and the government violates your Fourth Amendment now right before you get on a flight, 4 in 5 Americans support these measures, according to a CBS News poll. If you’re one of the 1 in 5 that doesn’t, don’t worry, you have another option: you can get groped by a TSA agent instead.

(more…)

No Thanks- I’m a Lesbian!

7.23.10 | 1 Comment »

Photo via Álvaro Canivell on flickr.

Today I was browsing facebook at work (don’t tell my boss!) and I saw a status from a girl I went to high school with.  Admittedly, I don’t know her all that well, but as one of the few other out-and-proud people I know to come out of that school, I feel some solidarity with her. Her status was:

niggas get salty as shit when they find out a female is GAY.get over it.if i was straight i wouldnt want your ass anyways. =) have a good day!

I nodded in agreement.  Sure, I’m not entirely sure what it means to get salty, but if has anything to do with men getting hostile when you spurn their advances, I totally get it.  I read through the comments, most of which were other women, both straight and gay, agreeing that men really need to take a hint when they are barking up the wrong tree, whether or not the ‘tree’ in question is queer.  Of course, one guy told her “U bad n niggaz is gon holla get ova it gurl…lol.”  Of course, an attractive woman of ANY sexual orientation really should just “get over it. “  Sexual harassment is just part of a woman’s life, like death and taxes.

Of course, I’m never content to leave well enough alone.  I commented,

In reference to this comment: “U bad n niggaz is gon holla get ova it gurl…lol”
Geez, D—- [name redacted], don’t you know that as a women, especially a woman of color, your body is communal property for men to ogle at and, if they so desire, possess? Regardless of whether or not you ascribe to their misogynistic, heterosexist worldview. Duh.
Fuck that.  T elling a woman to “get over” sexual harassment, especially harassment rooted so deeply in homophobia, is disgusting. Reacting poorly to the news that a woman is gay is essentially admitting that you view all heterosexual women as potential sexual conquests. Is that REALLY how you feel about 50% of the population?
Good on you, D—-, for calling that bullshit out

And I firmly stand behind what I said.  Is it playing into the kyriarchy to interject my privileged white view of the situation into a conversation among people of color?  Probably.  But the beautiful thing about the kyriarchy is that it doesn’t oppress in a straight line.  It’s impossible to say who comes from a place of more privilege when a white, queer woman challenges a statement made by a black, straight man.  That doesn’t mean this statement didn’t get me into trouble:

@ M  Wow. Not necessarily agreeing with the referenced comment but it would seem like most of the hollering happens before the guy finds out Danielle is gay. You might have picked the wrong example to use for your argument. Thats what her status is implying. If anything dudes trying to get at a girl is a testament to her attractiveness.
What does her being a “woman of color” have to do with anything? Is that your selling point so you can spew your empty rhetoric? People in general ogle and desire and eventually attempt to possess what they find appealing. I dont see that in anyway misogynistic.
With that being said I dont think men should get upset when a female tells you she is gay. Just respect it, brush it off and move on to one of the straight fish in the sea…”

Oh, you’re right.  I’m sorry, it has nothing to do with homophobia.  I forgot, women of all sexual orientations  are property. And so, I replied:

T—, do a little research. Try googling “hottentot venus,” for example. There is centuries of precedent for women of color being eroticized as being “exotic” or exceptionally sexual. Literature of the early 20th century, especially, ingrained in American culture that black women were particularly dangerous in their excessive sexuality.
As for their “hollering” occurring before they know she’s gay — I acknowledge that. I don’t, however, rescind my judgment of that being misogynistic. When a man makes an unwanted sexual remark (and, in this case, won’t apologize, and is instead angry, when he discovers exactly how unwanted it is), he is exerting his social power over the woman. Studies show that EIGHTY PERCENT of women worldwide report feeling afraid or threatened on a regular basis by sexual comments from men.
Harassment isn’t a compliment.
And if it the phrase “women of color” that offends you, I apologize. I meant it only as a less specific term to encompass all non-white women. Think about the hypersexualized stereotypes of Latina women or the excessive use of Asian women in fetish pornography. The bodies of non-white women suffer exceptionally under the male gaze.

But I think T— and I got sidetracked.  I don’t think men like T– will ever come around to the idea that repeated, unwanted advances are sexual harassment and that this behavior is based on the idea that women can be possessed and lack the power to say no.  Or maybe I’m wrong and he CAN be enlightened, but ultimately, that isn’t what we started off arguing.  The issue at hand here was that when a lesbian tells a man she isn’t interested BECAUSE SHE IS GAY, he gets angry.  And that anger is on the same continuum with rage.  The kind of rage that kills women like Sakia Gunn, a fifteen year old queer woman of color who was stabbed to death for rebuffing the advances of a stranger.  The kind of rage that gives me flashbacks to waking up in the hospital when the last thing I remember is being outed to a group of men I didn’t know.

When a woman tells a man, “no thanks, I’m a lesbian,” he has no right to be angry.  He does not own this woman or any other.

‘Hey Baby’ Could Be A Strong Starting Point

7.21.10 | 4 Comments »

Catcalling and street harassment is a popular topic on WIYL, and with good reason; a 2008 study by Holly Kearl revealed that 99% of women have faced unwanted verbal come-ons, some more lewd and violating than others.

I live in a more industrial part of Brooklyn, across from a junkyard (complete with “Beware of Dog” sign) and a block down from a recycling collection center, where workers, mostly 25-50 year old men, sort bottles and cans from surise to sunset. Every day I walk by this operation on the way to the subway, and every day, without fail, I encounter some form of advancements or catcalling. There is something so frustrating and violating about being hit on during your unavoidable walk to work at 9 AM, harassed only because you are a young female walking by yourself. I never leave my apartment anymore without sunglasses and headphones, as to avoid eye contact and be able politely eschew all advances by feigning ignorance of them even happening, coping mechanisms that I am ashamed of having to take as a feminist and strong, empowered woman. “Powerless” is the only word to describe the options presented when harassed on the street; you can either walk by silently, or confront the perpertrator, risking physical escalation and conflict.

As Kearl said in a Huffington Post article about street harassment:

Street harassment is not a joke about construction workers; it is a problem that touches every woman’s life at some level and prevents women on a whole from achieving equality. More research needs to be conducted to better track its prevalence and to uncover the root causes, and in the meantime, let’s make it illegal. While laws do not solve problems, they can help change social attitudes, deter the undesired behavior, and provide affected persons with options for recourse.

This no-win scenario is the main idea behind the video game Hey Baby, a first-person shooter in which you get to gun down street harassers, and the sleazeballs are replaced with headstones engraved with their catcalls. The game may seem a bit extreme, murdering those who just want to tell you you’re “gorgeous” (my favorite response to which is, “I know I am, thanks for the reminder, ASSHOLE”); the come-ons, however, are sometimes just as extreme, with men approaching you to to inform you that you’re asking to be raped. The game is an intriguing concept in and of itself, but the commentary from male gamers has also proved englightening. Says Kieron Gillen of Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

The game’s rubbish, of course. But the one thing it does well is show how what you may think is an innocuous compliment feels in the context of a woman’s life. You approaching a woman in the street and being what you think is politely flirty is a different thing when, down the street, someone’s suggested that maybe you’d like to suck my dick and you’re a fucking bitch if you don’t.

From her perspective, it’s a culture of harassment she has to either politely deal with or ignore.

From your perspective, you’re just showing how you feel.

That your passing desire means you get to derail a woman’s life whenever you feel like it is the absolute definition of male privilege.

If you’re a man, and you’ve acted like this, the woman you do it to, beneath the polite smile she has to offer, has probably fantasised about you dying.

Seth Sciesel of New York Times pointed out that in the game, the attackers are relentless, and there is no end in sight to the harassment. Our point exactly, Schiesel. Hey Baby has no score, no levelling up, and no end goal. The game is painfully realistic in that way; you are trapped in a situation in which you question wearing your tank top or shorts before leaving the house, where you take an alternate route to avoid facing certain areas you know are rife with street harassers. I’ve found that it is difficult to get men to join in on conversations about consent and sexual harassment, and sexual assault, but perhaps Hey Baby is a good place to start.

Opined Schiesel:

Just as I have never been sexually harassed, I have never accosted a strange woman on the street. After playing Hey Baby, I’m certainly not about to start.

Eliminating Violence, One Creep At A Time

7.14.10 | 3 Comments »

It took a long time to get there (after all, commuting from New Jersey makes anything in New York ten times harder) but I arrived, in sandals and my favorite dress. The Hollaback! launch in Brooklyn on Thursday, July 8 was an intense celebration, with over 100 hearts gathered for the same cause. There was a raffle, iPhone covers for sale- and I was doing my best to push them, thank you very much- and even booze.

Street harassment is described by Hollaback! as “one of the most pervasive forms of violence against women,” and not many people would argue: as the ladies of THE LINE joined me in what we dubbed a “VIP Lounge,” we were able to laugh about a worry we all had getting to Southpaw: would we be harassed on the way? But street harassment isn’t funny, or light. As Emily May said in her speech, those who are street harassed have few options: walk on and feel victimized, or speak up and risk the escalation of violence from verbal to physical. For many people- of all genders and backgrounds- street harassment is a real and worrisome element of our public lives. And, as Hollaback! correctly pinpoints: “if street harassment is okay, then violence against women is okay. And that simply isn’t okay.”

The connection between street harassment and violence against women is obvious: both are tools used to constrict women’s public space and make them feel lesser and endangered in the public sphere, both occur without consent and imply control, danger, and risk of harm, and both are performances of hegemonic gender paradigms that force women to be objectified, judged by their physicality, and publicly shamed out of control of their own environments.

It is very much so worth promoting the action of Hollaback! not only for street harassment, but for violence everywhere. Do not stand by. Do not stay quiet. Do not walk on. Take action and make everyone- including yourself and your loved ones- safer, more comfortable, and more empowered. Hollaback! is capitalizing on one of the most powerful forces, I believe, in history: voices. By collecting stories and showing our might in numbers, in data, in maps, and in attitude, Hollaback! is going to win the fight against street harassment the same way THE LINE aims to fundamentally change the way people think about sex.

Stand up for what you believe in, but most important, always stand up for yourself.

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