In a recent article on her blog Sex Geek, Andrea Zanin reminds readers that rape jokes are never funny. Her post is particularly directed to the BDSM community where she has witnessed the use and defense of rape jokes during her work teaching about queer sexuality, polyamory and BDSM/leather for over a decade.
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.
For today’s interview, I talked to badass activist Clarisse Thorn. Clarisse writes at her own blog, ClarisseThorn.com, about feminism, BDSM/kink and non-monogamy, among other topics. She has blogged for Time Out Chicago, is a regular contributor to Feministe, and has recently started editing the Sex + Relationship section at Role/Reboot. She’s also done a bunch of other awesome stuff, but I’ll let her tell you herself! Without further ado, here’s Clarisse!
I’ve been working here at the Line for some time now, but I’ve really only recently been struck hard by the fact that, well, The Line Campaign is important. With every screening we do, and every person we touch, we open the floor to new voices, opinions and increments of effort towards winning the fight. And when I say ‘the fight’ I don’t just mean an end to violence against women, but ending preconceptions about sex, desire and relationships – because things just aren’t that simple. This is is a forum to complicate, a channel to different points of view.
A few weeks ago, I read about the Long Island murders, and it was written that someone said – ‘when a reporter asked, ‘What can sex workers do to prevent violence?’ I said, ‘Well, maybe people could not kill us.” I cried because she told a story about a feeling that I felt too. I realised then that I joined The Line as an intern last year not just because I wanted to share my story, but because I wanted to help others tell theirs. When Latoya Peterson in her interview talked about bringing feminism to different, other worlds, it rang true for me, but this certainly wasn’t the case for others. That kind of difference is what makes this place unique – Nancy’s commitment to storytelling rings true and has been the reason such a diversity of voices have an opportunity to contribute to better understanding how and why we should care about these issues – whether reproductive justice, street harassment or sexual assault. That’s what this blog is for, a space where each person’s words, however arranged, matter. It’s important that it continue.
I’ve learned so much and had so much fun as managing editor of the WIYL blog over the past couple of months! Unfortunately, as I move on to graduate school, and begin pursuing other projects in community building in the literary arts, I’ll have a limited amount of time – and have had to make the sad decision to leave my post here.
And so, we’re looking for our next managing editor – someone invested in listening to stories and making sure they get them out there for others to read! We’re looking for you to become a leader in this community, to rally passion, relate it to our message, and foster always, more conversation in social media.
Responsibilities will include:
- managing a team of bloggers and creating their schedule
- finding news stories and relevant events to suggest to bloggers for coverage
- working to ensure a steady flow of content, on schedule
- editing and copyediting posts before publication
- researching news sources and ensuring you stay on top of current events
- keeping everyone excited and ‘on message’
Qualifications:
- enthusiasm, patience and creativity
- familiarity with wordpress and social media (twitter, facebook, myspace, tumblr)
- an open mind to all kinds of stories, opinions and experiences
- ability to juggle multiple tasks under deadline
- ability to communicate clearly and effectively, both verbally and in writing
- ability to work independently and with minimal supervision
- comfortable working on outreach to guest bloggers
- passionate, dedicated, and hoping to have fun
I can’t recommend working with our team enough, because stories are important, and I believe that if we keep telling them relentlessly, we’re sure to be heard.
If you’re interested, please contact Nancy and me at thelinemovie [at] gmail [dot] com, with ATTN: Trisha Low in the subject line. Provide us with a sense of your experience, your background, and why you want to help. No official requirements insisted upon apart from strong organisational ability and desire to stay current and keep delivering great content. This position provides a small stipend, but is rewarding and provides opportunities to work with activists, artists and youth. Managing editor can be located anywhere and work is estimated to be 5-7 hours a week.
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 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.
A constant frustration I have within sexuality studies is the lack of concrete substance it has in the classroom. I have taken classes such in topics such as queer performance, which dance around issues of pornography for example, without ever looking at these materials in fear of being too explicit. I think the most important thing to keep in mind here is, the study of sexuality involves sex. Proponents of sex positivity, and educators should not be silenced or censored when they are trying to discuss issues of sexuality no matter what their techniques may be as long as everyone involved is aware of the nature of the demonstrations.
John Michael Bailey, a professor at Northwestern University, has recently and unexpectedly gained national medial attention because of a live sex demonstration in his human sexualities class. The lecture was about kinky sex, the female gspot and female ejaculation and included a 10 minute demonstration of Jim Marcus penetrating his fiance Faith Kroll with a “fucksaw,” essentially a power tool with a dildo on the end.
In a statement Bailey explained the circumstance,
I was talking about the female gspot and the phenomenon of female ejaculation, both of which are scientifically controversial.…Earlier that day in my lecture I had talked about the attempts to silence sex research, and how this largely reflected sex negativity, I did not wish, and I do not wish, to surrender to sex negativity and fear.
From this explanation, it is clear that Bailey was not trying to be controversial or playing out a personal fantasy. Bailey understandably finds the silencing of sex research and sexuality to be troubling, so he did not want this to happen within his own classroom. He is sex positive, and as acting an educator practicing what he preaches.
Most importantly, this lecture was entirely optional, held outside of regular class meetings prefaced with warnings about the explicit nature as indicated in an article in Salon. No student was forced to attend, or reprimanded for not doing so. In an interview Bailey also noted that the observers were students older than 18 who were “legally capable of voting, enlisting in the military, and consuming pornography.” In addition, the couple demonstrating volunteered to participate without coercion. After the lecture and demonstration, the class held a discussion about kinky sex and the female orgasm, making the actions academically relevant in the scope of their course.
This event was taken out of context by writers such as John Kass for the Chicago Tribune who brought up issues of Northwestern spending tuition money on this demonstration. He asks, “If this bizarre peep show can be offered up as higher education, then what’s the next “edgy” thing? How do you get any edgier?” The demonstration was not used for shock value or to be edgy, but was legitimately believed by the professor to be an educational tool and therefore use of university funding should support this action.
This leads to some questions of the place of explicit sexuality within academic settings. In a class about human sexuality, how can a real example of this become so controversial?
Tristan Taormino, courtesy of sexartandpolitics.tumblr.com
Recently, Taormino was asked to be the keynote speaker at Oregon State University’s Modern Sex conference, and was later revoked this invitation based on the content of her resume and website. Her impressive resume, which includes lectures at Yale and Columbia, the publication of several books, TV appearances etc. was part of the basis of her “uninvite.” Considering that Taormino is an accomplished author, filmmaker and educator, her silencing by OSU is alarming.
On the matter Taormino said,
“I’m extremely disappointed that OSU has decided to cancel my appearance…I have never misrepresented who I am or what I do. I am proud of all the work I do, including the sex education films and feminist pornography I make,”
Even though Taormino is completely public and unapologetic about her work, OSU deemed her unqualified for their funding after her appearance was booked and her travel arrangements made. (And mind you, without reimbursing her for travel expenses.)
A post on Fleshbot wrote,
“I value her voice and positive message of sexual empowerment and freedom…I’m also quite disturbed by the implication that her affiliation with the adult industry makes her unfit to speak on a public university campus.”
This brings up an important point. Any sex-positive educator or activist has to unfortunately face these challenges, but despite these roadblocks their voices need to be heard. Her censorship is alarming and unacceptable.
The stigma surrounding sexuality, particularly women vocal about sexuality never seems to lose its prevalence, but in pushing boundaries some brave individuals are hopefully changing this. A university setting seems to be a great place to bring up discussions of sex education, sex-positivitiy and sexual diversity, and OSU should be honored to have Taormino speak at their conference, being that she has a strong and prevalent voice on these topics.
6 in the morning, Client, music video
‘much more shy – and basically more human than the media narrative would have you think’.
In a world where sexuality and sex have become a necessary tools not only in the media, but in politics, the news cycle, and discussions of gender equality, it is important to remember that porn does not, as Natasha Vargas-Cooper claims in The Atlantic, have
‘a pervasiveness and influence on the culture at large’
, rather it is a reflection of the traces of colonial and gendered histories that remain a part of our culture today. Indeed, although Vargas-Cooper somewhat acknowledges this dialectic between accepted cultural norms and history, she also sees male sexuality as a ‘dark force streaked with aggression’ in its ‘natural’ state – that sexuality at its core is bestial and so essentially has more detrimental consequences for women than it does for men. For her, sex-positivity and its egalitarian views of sex is simply a ‘utopian pretension’.
Lauren’s post on Post-Partum Sex Positivity reminds us that the implementation of the ideals of sex-positivity are still problematic, and can, at its worst, be discriminatory and non-inclusive. The recent Nicki Blue virginity-cam debate surrounding kink.com’s marketing decision in the recording of her first experience of vaginal penetration only demonstrates how it can be difficult to reconcile sex-positivity with feminism and vice versa. Clark-Flory’s article suggest that the vulnerability we feel about our sexual preferences, even in our most intimate relationships, mean that despite existing in the age of the modern confessional, real life can be harder to negotiate and
‘sex [in porn and the media] really doesn’t change that much’.
Indeed, where it’s easy for complete strangers to read about your lunch preferences on twitter, and hard-core pornography, as is instantly accessible online, what does it mean that we can get off on videos of S/M sex and double penetration, but feel shyness about sharing these desires with our partners? Is sex-positivity, itself, as Vargos-Cooper seems to suggest, our own unattainable sexual fantasy?
When I think about why I first chose to enter the sex industry, one in which sexism and the objectification of women seems to be the most exaggerated and unapologetic, I remember being conscious of the fact that I was a) embodying a fantasy, particularly as an asian woman who looks younger than her age b) exploiting these oppressive forces for my own financial and personal gain. When you’re working hours in platform heels and a corset, sex isn’t a fantasy, it becomes work, reality, just another job. But initially, to someone else, you’re not real. You’re a figment of the deep part of their imagination, whether they want you to smoke cigarettes into their eyes or smack you because you’re a naughty girl. I’ve watched the moment a first-time customer realises that I’m a person, doing a job – and it came when I elaborated on necessary points of consent for a safe experience, even if it was something as simple as safe words. Being a sex worker, and especially an switch in an s/m dungeon points out to the owners of fantasies that reality can work in much a different way.
I refuse to believe sex-positivity is a fantasy because I know when fantasies are enacted in real life, they can deeply affects relationships and the way sexual activities function – for the better. To assume, like Vargas-Cooper that sex is essentially a reinforcement of ‘natural’ tropes of male dominance and female submission is a cop-out. No one said enforcing sex-positivity was easy. No one said it was going to happen in an instant, no, it requires self-reflection, openness, and slow cultural change. And consent is the element that, when inserted, changes everything It can blur the lines between fantasy and reality. It can make one realise that we have a long way to go despite what the media tells us. And it can make for a fulfilling and egalitarian relationship even if we engage in performances of male dominance and female submission. Sexism can exist in our desires because of the societal structures within which we were raised, and the concepts we’ve inevitably internalised – like I’ve said before, it’s how we engage in those activities that make a difference. A consensual relationship is an egalitarian one, even if what you’re enacting appears to perpetuate the age-old stereotype of the ‘brutal male’ and ‘resisting female’.
What Clark-Flory points out in her post is a ‘shyness’ that goes along with guilt from watching porn – I know from my experiences with partners that in this modern age, that guilt can exist because of the feeling that one is exploiting women, or from wanting to completely separate fantasy from reality because the fantasy seems to be oppressive, or too violent, or too ‘weird’ to share with a real-life partner. To me, however, that seems to be progress. Because it brings up the fact that people are holding on to old misconceptions about porn-watching that need to be changed – but they’re aware, and feeling guilty about their attraction to sexist, extreme, or what they would consider non-respectful pornographic tropes. The guilt doesn’t stem from the porn-watching in and of itself, but the sex-positive view that the separation of fantasy and real-life is something that can be detrimental, and in the worse case, border on non-disclosure in a consensual, real life relationship. I’m not saying that people aren’t entitled to watch porn, or that they have to disclose all the details of their porn-watching habits to their partners. But being open about the type of porn you watch and communicating about how you want porn to play into your relationship, whether as something mostly separate from you and your partner’s sexual life, or something that can be played with, is a step in the right direction – both of these can suddenly make your sexual fantasies a part of reality – even if that’s all they are – fantasies.
Sexual shame, is unfortunately, something that all of us struggle with in our culture every day – particularly in a world where we’re trying to move forward in terms of feminism and sex positivity – there’s suddenly much more to worry about. Consent, and open communication is the only way forward – and I’m not saying these things aren’t hard, but they can be done, and we’re on our way. Let’s not ever give up.
Courtesy of scragz, Flickr Creative Commons
Kendra Holliday, a St. Louis based blogger and sex-positive mother, recently revealed her identity on her long time anonymous blog The Beautiful Kind. This personal blog deals with her polyamorous BDSM lifestyle, reviews sex toys and films, and discusses various queer sexualities through stories and advice. She calls it “smut for smart people”. As a result of her “coming out,” she lost her job and is now fighting for custody of her child, as indicated in a recent entry. According to Holliday, the claims for custody of her child all have to do with her sexuality.
While I don’t know the capacity of Holliday as a parent, claiming she is unfit for parenthood based solely on her sexual exploits, involvement with BDSM and polyamory seems unreasonable and discriminatory. People who are sex-positive are not intrinsically bad parents, and they should not be treated as such. Being open about sexuality and accepting of polyamory or BDSM for example does not indicate you are incapable of having a healthy relationship with your children. Why have parenting and sex positivity become mutually exclusive?
In an interview with Good Vibrations Magazine, sex-positive, educator, activist, director and actor Madison Young discussed maintaining her sex work with her new born daughter on the way. She said,
“I plan to be honest and open with my daughter about sex and my work in the sex industry. I want for my child to know that the work that I do is empowering to many women and that it helps couples and individuals to discover a sense of pleasure, that I’m an educator and an artist, a film maker and gallerist…If you “out” yourself and do so with dignity and educate others around the realities of the work you do then it becomes much less exciting to gossip about than if it is something that you are trying to keep secret.”
Young is entirely optimistic about maintaining her sex-positivity post-parenthood, but this proves to be a challenging task. While Young seems to have the right attitude about sex-positive parenting, unfortunately this doesn’t take into consideration the repercussions of coming out, whether it be as a queer person, sex worker, kinkster or anything else.
So this term “sex-positive” is thrown around a lot, but what are we really talking about? Holliday’s predicament is obviously unfortunate, but this is an indication of a larger issue; the problem seems to lie in the unspoken exclusivity of sex-positivity. While in concept sex-positivity is all-inclusive, there are constantly still boundaries being drawn for who it is acceptable for, and to what capacity. In the case of Holliday, her sex-positivity became problematic when she also had to play the role of mother, but sex still becomes taboo when talking about the elderly, disabled, overweight etc.
Sex positivity should incorporate all people, not just those who we allow to be sexually expressive. (young, attractive, able-bodied, straight, childless folks) As nicely put by Moms in Babeland, a blog run by mothers affiliated with the female owned sex toy boutique Babeland, says, “just because you had a babe, doesn’t mean you can’t be a babe!”
The last time you were harassed on the street, what did you do?
If it happened recently, you may have thought about Hollaback!, the global movement to end street harassment. The epidemic, one that especially affects LGBTQ persons and women around the world, is being challenged by Hollaback!’s chapters in cities across the world. The movement started in New York City and has since been transformed from a blog full of civilian submissions of stories and images of street harassers to a full-frontal campaign against one of the most pervasive forms of violence against women that incorporates mobile technology, the mapping of street harassment on ihollaback.org, efforts to increase dialogue and education in communities about street harassment and why it happens, and the empowerment of people everywhere to take action. The message and role of Hollaback! has remained: don’t just walk on, hollaback! Tell your story and expose your harasser.
What has also remained is you.
When Hollaback! NYC launched and began posting stories from women in New York, it was about you. And when Hollaback! Launched a successful Kickstarter campaign last summer to fund their expansion into a global non-profit organization creating new technologies and working on new strategies, it was you they counted on to show support and take that step toward changing the world with five or ten dollars. When Hollaback! posts stories on the website and tweets people’s experiences tagged with @ihollaback, it’s about you.
And now, with my.ihollaback.org, it’s all about you. The new website allows activists to create personal fundraising pages that feature their fundraising efforts and goals, a letter to potential supporters, and their own personalized URL and images. Hollaback! has been expanding and experiencing great success- including a recent mention in the New York Times and the release of the iPhone and Droid apps to make reporting street harassment faster, easier, and more effective. The more Hollaback! expands, the greater their successes: street harassment is now an issue of discourse in the mainstream media and a focal point for leading feminist blogs and activists. The campaign has created a vision of a world without street harassment, and now that we’ve all seen it, there is no other choice.
So get involved today. Small contributions make big changes, and big contributions make waves. Tell your family and friends with a simple click of a link and post your fundraising page on your Facebook and Twitter so that even your classmates can see that vision. The fundraising campaign (with a goal of 25,000 dollars) ends in under seven days. The time to start talking is NOW!
And when they ask what you’re doing, the answer is simple:
I Hollaback.