I had no idea about any of this until a friend and colleague of mine wrote this very needed piece on the media’s (non) reaction to the mounting evidence around “Bradley” Manning’s transgendered identity.

In the mainstream media coverage, Private Manning is described as a gay male with a gender identity disorder and an alterego named Breanna. In alternative media–outlets that revere Private Manning as an international hero and whistleblower–she is referenced with male pronouns, as popular figures such as Glenn Greenwald proclaim that “he” deserves a medal and Michael Moore writes a series of blogs about “his” courage and frequently proclaims that “he” is responsible for instigating the global uprising against corruption, the kyriarchy and all subsequent uprisings.

Still, as Emily Manuel wonders in her article, why are we so reluctant to embrace a transgendered hero? Would Breanna Manning deserve a medal as well? Why has the media–in the mainstream, alternative, and even activism-oriented press not embraced or even entertained the idea of “free Breanna Manning”? What does it say about our media that it is easier to keep transsexuality hidden, reverting to the time honored image of the heroic man rather than accept and welcome new images of a hero?

There are plenty of reasons and alleged justifications–as B. Manning is in prison, potentially for life the sad reality of the current political climate is that her gender identity may be held against her. However, let us set aside the legal proceedings and simply look at the media–the beat, the intersections, the surrounding conversation, and who it is holding this conversation. In the realm of national security, the sad truth is that it is largely men.

My theory–which is not intentioned to be sexist, man-blaming, or negative against anything besides the system that privileges men and institutionalizes sexism and gender injustice–is the following. Men–the Michael Moores and Glenn Greenwalds quoted in our media and their predominantly male audiences (who can most closely relate to their male perspectives)–want to see themselves in “Bradley” Manning. In solidarity, admiration, and support many progressive, liberal men embrace Bradley Manning as the hero and are reluctant to sift through issues of gender identity–simply because these do not concern them. This further institutionalizes national security as a “male” issue–unintentionally making modern day national heroes conform to a male mold, and ignoring the political implications of intersectional identities.

Perhaps it is time to change this. Perhaps it is time to make traditionally separate journalistic beats like “national security” and “gender justice” intersect, challenge our media and ultimately work through these ideas to make a more just world–where a hero is defined by an action and isn’t referred to as a man when she asks to be referred to as a woman–and that this request isn’t too much for journalists to handle.

Free Breanna Manning.

In the meantime, yesterday was the TedxWomen Conference in both L.A. and N.Y. A bunch of fantastic speakers participated, and you should check out the videos of the talks!

One talk you should definitely take a peek at is that of fellow documentary filmmaker, technology enthusiast and all around inspiring woman, Tiffany Shlain. Check it out:

You can read more about her, and find other talks, here.

And you can find her on Twitter as @TiffanyShlain.

I am excited to announce that my new film, xoxosms will be premiering at the 22^nd annual New Orleans Film Festival on Sunday October 16^th. If you will be at the festival, it will be opening for the documentary (A)Sexual at 2:20 PM at the Theaters Canal Palace, 333 Canal Street in New Orleans.

If you can’t make the festival, the film will be streaming online all weekend, starting October 14th – 17th at www.xoxosmsfilm.org

xoxosms follows the story of Gus and Jiyun, two star crossed lovers in a digital age who meet, connect, and maintain their relationship predominantly over the Internet. It raises the questions of intimacy and love, and whether or not this is possible—or in some instances better—over a digital connection.

I’d love to hear from you! Is there such a thing as “digital intimacy”? Can online love work in real life? What is a connection? Check out our newly designed website, watch the film and let us know what you think on Twitter, @xoxosms—don’t forget to hashtag #xoxosms. Spread the word with our Facebook invite.

Thanks, and hope to see you at the theater or on twitter using #xoxosms!

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, we spoke with Akiba Solomon. Akiba is an author, editor and freelance journalist. Aside from her regular column at Colorlines.com, she has also written for a variety of publications, such as Glamour and Redbook.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you view your position at Colorlines? Who would you like to reach and what would you like them to take away from your posts? Have you experienced any support or resistance for the subjects you tackle in a way that surprised you?

I’m the gender columnist at Colorlines.com, which means I cover news, culture, health and politics relevant to the intersection between race and gender. It’s a very broad beat, and I tend to feel overwhelmed if I consciously target any reader. So I concentrate on writing with sensitivity, clarity and accuracy and hope people understand my points and intention. I want people who read my work to come away with enough information to formulate their own opinion. If they agree and feel validated, that’s a bonus for me. But if they disagree that’s fine, too.

You presented a side of the Texas gang rape case that was otherwise not talked about very widely. Why do you think the mainstream media mishandled the reporting so badly?

I don’t think all mainstream media did a poor job. The Houston Chronicle’s Cindy Horswell did a hell of a job reporting and writing about this case.

I think overall the problem with the coverage, however, was a lack of depth. If national media outlets didn’t want to devote real resources to this story, they should have left it alone. (I’m thinking of The New York Times here.)

You can’t just drop a straight news reporter into a town as small and interconnected as Cleveland, have him quote a few people who are trying to protect their friends and family members from life sentences and expect to get a story that doesn’t blame the victim. And if an overwhelming number of townspeople truly do blame an 11-year-old child for a gang rape, THAT’S your story.

Your focus can’t be, “How is the town reacting?” It should be, “How was gang rape [aka "running a train'] normalized to the extent that so many boys and men participated in it and recorded themselves doing it?” Or, “Even if the participants believed that what they were doing was consensual and legal, why would it ever be OK for middle school boys and young adult males in their mid-20s to participate in the same sexual activity?” Or, “Why do people keep asking where her mother was – or where the boys’ mothers were? What does that say about how we view male culpability?” Or, “What role did race play in dehumanizing this victim and her attackers?”

I guess what I’m saying is that this wasn’t a straight reporting job but it was treated as such. Unless you devote resources, time and care to a story like this, and you truly search for the story behind the story, it’s too tempting for most reporters to coast on the most basic narrative. In the case of rape, the narrative pivots on the behavior, attire, sexual history, appearance, immediate reaction, recall, race, class and alleged motives of the female victim. In this economy, and with the erosion of even basic journalistic practices, this is going to get worse.

You’ve written quite extensively on the DSK case and advocated for Nafissatou Diallo. Can you summarize the lessons we can learn from this case about the kind of culture that we live in? What makes it especially difficult for survivors, especially women of color, low-income and/or foreign born women to talk about their experiences?

Hmm. This is really difficult to summarize. I would say that if an accuser is female, poor and of color, we live in a culture that will scrutinize her more than the rich white male who has allegedly raped her. This case says that rich, powerful white males are at greater risk of false accusations than poor, powerless women of color are of being raped. If something goes wrong, it’s the woman’s fault, because she’s greedy, a liar, a prostitute or a pawn in a political entrapment plot.

I would say that many, many people think rape is about sexual temptation and desire rather than power and violence. That’s how you get seasoned writers commenting on the appearance of the accuser, and readers posting about how “ugly” she is.

I think low-income women of color, particularly immigrants, are so vulnerable because they often lack of job security, they fear deportation and they know that law enforcement criminalizes them. If you know you’re going to be scrutinized and you already feel confused, ashamed, terrified and humiliated by the rape, why would you bother?

It’s almost safer to stay quiet.

You have voiced some ambivalence about the recent SlutWalk movement. Can you explain your feelings on the movement? Do you have any thoughts on how something like the SlutWalk could be more inclusive and truly intersectional?

I’m happy that so many people have found a way to address sexual assault victim-blaming and assert their personal power. Anything that empowers folks – particularly people who have been victimized in this way – is positive. I don’t condemn the early marches for not being “more inclusive” or “intersectional”. They were organized through social networks. If the organizers don’t have broad, diverse social networks, their march is going to reflect that. That said, this isn’t a movement I would participate in. It doesn’t speak to me. I know from the “n-word” debate that trying to appropriate dehumanizing, dangerous language doesn’t make it less powerful or insulting; just more common.

Do you have any projects you are currently working on that you would like to talk about here? Or is there anything going on in the media/pop culture/the blogosphere that’s on your mind a lot recently?

I have a book I co-edited about Black women and body image called “Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Lips and Other Parts”. It was published right before the huge social networking explosion and has since lapsed from printing. My co-editor and I are working on ways to get this book and message back out there because it’s very relevant. As for the blogosphere: my constant struggle is with information overload. What’s been on my mind is how to sift through the political gamesmanship and the crazy that the presidential election is going to spark. It’s already a big racist mess and it’s going to get worse.

Thank you for your time and your candid answers, Akiba!

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!

In April of 2011, I stumbled upon a surplus of powerful images of beautiful women bearing signs. The signs demanded the naive to see that rape is caused by rapists- not by a perceived sexy appearance, not by how much one has had to drink, not by sexual orientation, not by where one is located or the time of day. The signs demanded abolition of misogyny. The movement moved me.

Tucson is a relatively liberal city in Arizona. Friday, May 13th 2011 at 5pm an estimated 150 women and men gathered in front of the Tucson Police Department for SlutWalk Tucson. I had been anticipating that day from the moment I saw those images. I had promoted the event, the message behind it, begging everyone I knew to attend.  I arrived there late with a group of friends, disappointed due to how I was originally planning to be there alone and early.

We walked just a bit behind. About five minutes into it, I received a phone call from a close friend in New York. She was crying. She told me a story. A girl had been openly raped at a party, and no one did anything about it. My friend was left in shock, utterly disgusted at her city, at a loss of hope when her peers told her “it wasn’t their place to say anything.” Despite what they said, she approached the girl, telling her she felt for her. The girl raged at her and pushed her. Was it that no one wanted to do anything about it? Did they not know what to do about it?

My friend did not know where I was, but as I was walking, it’s was as if I belly-flopped into a hot, steamy reality. I was incredulous, but suddenly I understood exactly what we were all doing here.

This is for us.

We are human and this is us being human.

I was angry. As the phone call ended, I arrived at the main library to find the participants gathering to tell stories over the megaphone. The group was small, and in my state of disbelief, I was sickened with my city for the event not being larger. It made no sense to me not to be here. I gathered myself and stood at the front with strangers, watching them cheer, marveling at their bravery as they told their stories.

This is for us.

We are human and this is us being human.To say we would ever ask to be raped is completely illogical! Awful! What are our morals anymore? This was for us. We must gather ourselves. Now we know where we stand, and now we figure out how to expand. SlutWalk Tucson opened us up, and now we can see we must keep moving together.

After SlutWalk Tucson, I attended the follow up meeting. With help from HollaBack! Tucson now has Safe Streets AZ and just recently we began Nightlife Safety Project Tucson. The programs are both very young still, but with no doubt subject to grow. The movement moved Tucson.

Erica Jong’s recent New York Times opinion piece “Is Sex Passé?” argues that her daughter’s generation idealizes monogamy and seeks control over the sexual freedom explored during her mother’s generation.

Dragging young feminists into the debate, Jung continues:

Lust for control fuels our current obsession with the deficit, our rejection of passion, our undoing of women’s rights. How far will we go in destroying women’s equality before a new generation of feminists wakes up? This time we hope those feminists will be of both genders and that men will understand how much equality benefits them.

Kudos for recognizing the need to welcome and incorporate men into the feminist cause. But does a desire for greater sexual control really mean a loss of lust or destruction to women’s equality?

Feminists are currently confronted with a landscape where women are constantly told have sex, enjoy it, but do it on your own terms. Understandably, in a world where girls are constantly taught how to be sexy but rarely sexual, this a confusing prospect. Men are told that no means no, but not given many more words of wisdom in navigating sexuality that isn’t mechanical in nature.

Our generation still enjoys one night stands and sexuality in the way boldly characterized in the pages of Jong’s 1973 novel Fear of Flying. I know plenty of lesbians who have hooked up in bathroom stalls on ladies nights and were quite proud and thrilled by the experience. Shows like “The Real L Word” open up the door to queer sex and sexuality for many who may not have any insight into that world. Katha Pollitt’s explains in her response to Jong’s article in The Nation,

there is really no evidence that young women, of whatever class, educational level or ethnicity, married or single, mothers or not, are less interested in sex than comparable women were in 1973, let alone in the 1950s.

It’s now a common expectation that both partners should be enjoying sex and exploring their own sexuality. Finally LGBT sex is becoming part of the conversation in a measurable way. The right to say yes, no, where and how sexually is among one of the rights most hard fought for by feminists.

And control is the key to communicating these desires. Control isn’t boring, or stale but rather it’s what allows for trust and growth. Control allows both partners to know their lines and to speak them, whatever they may be. For some control is a word used in BDSM play. For some control is discussing which body parts are sexually off limits during a time of physical transition.

Repression of reproductive rights is a terrifying move by those who are greatly opposed to allowing women and their partners control of their own reproductive decisions. Freedoms for women hinge largely on their ability to control and communicate own their choices and actions.

So to Erica Jong I say: young feminists are awake, thankful for the work that has been done by those before them and building a future with even more feminist freedoms.

Ahhh, the world of advertising: a world where false “ideals” that have long been outgrown by our progressive, intelligent minds are still shamelessly perpetuated; a world where, because brevity and memorability of the message is tantamount, offensive stereotypes serve as shorthand and run rampant; a world where political headway can be usurped and hard-won power can be coopted for marketers’ gain.

Such is the case in a recently released series of advertisements for Summer’s Eve douches entitled “Hail to the V.” Wrapped in a shiny veneer that seems to celebrate the vagina, a body part once so taboo its mere mention would be considered distasteful, a woman might at first find the galvanizing tone of these ads to offer a refreshing perspective. That is, a woman who is less media-literate than we readers of the WIYL blog. We sex-positive feminist-theory-informed critical thinkers know better, don’t we? We know full well that the true intent of these ads is to create and heighten anxiety about the (un)cleanliness of a self-cleaning body part. We know full well that the depictions of warring men and the passive female onlooker propagate absurd stereotypes and reinforce outdated sexist narratives. We know full well that the different versions of the ad produced for African American women and for Latina women are laden with racist assumptions that patronize the various facets of their target market. And we know full well that Summer’s Eve, owned by the C.B. Fleet Company, cares not for women’s triumph over the shame of naming and celebrating our vaginas, but rather for the dollars raked in by sales of a useless and unhealthy product.

But every once in a while, an advertisement breaks the mold. In a mere 30-60 seconds a message can cut through the crap through the use of humor, satire, edginess, and just plain bad-assness. And so, for my first blog post for Where Is Your Line, I’d like to highlight an ad that does just that by depicting a young woman drawing her line : Greatest Condom Commercial Ever

This ad rocks for so many reasons. Okay, so it’s not exactly an ad, but it delivers the same punch and shows the potential impact of thoughtful advertising. Its intent as a public service message is to encourage MTVs audience of teens and young adults to insist on wearing condoms when engaging in intercourse. It strikes me from time to time how strange it is that MTV can get away with speaking frankly about sex (and other taboo subjects) directly to young people in a way that educators are strictly forbidden from. When our institutions of learning are prohibited from keeping up with our media, it’s no wonder young people are confused. For its forthrightness about safe sex, I give this ad a major thumbs up.

And what’s even cooler? The empowered agent in this scenario is the woman! Although a young woman, perhaps college-age if I were to guess from the visual clues, this woman delivers the speech of a lifetime when she tells her potential sex partner no holds barred that his bullshit excuses for not wanting to wear a condom cost him the distinct privilege of getting it on with her! Can you imagine what a fabulous world we would live in if more young women actually exhibited the sex positive sex smart attitude this young woman demonstrates? How many times do I wish I had had the ovaries to give a speech like that?! But nobody was teaching me that skill when I was her age. Not my media, and certainly not my sex education curriculum.

Ahhh, the world of advertising. One mustn’t underestimate its role in creating and reflecting our culture and its values. Call me a wishful thinker, but I wonder if perhaps this short little snippet of a message, packing a punch with its fearless and funny portrayal of a shame-free sexual young woman, could be among the first of many examples of we feminists using culture to change culture. Founder and CEO of Breakthrough Mallika Dutt, who I had the privilege of seeing at the recent Women and Power Retreat at the OMEGA Institute, is the queen of this technique in India. Ignoring naysayers she embarked on an innovative mission to produce music videos for popular consumption that embody anti-domestic-violence messages. For real! And they are amazing. Her music videos, advertisements for the album Mann ke Manjeere: An Album of Women’s Dreams are also stand-alone artistic and social statements, and they have received widespread acclaim. The album even won the 2001 National Screen Award in India for best music video. Speaking the language of the populace, the videos are getting important messages out into the culture to CHANGE the culture by USING the culture’s mass medium.

For the love of Goddess, America, let’s get on board with this concept! It’s about time we harnessed the outlets to which people pay attention, and we have important work to do. It can begin with a funny portrayal of empowered female sexuality, and as Dutt has proven, it can even be effective to bring domestic violence into the public dialogue in a productive and heartfelt way. There will still be ridiculous attempts to usurp messages of female empowerment, like “Hail to the V,” but fortunately, we are smart enough to know the difference between social good and commodification. We can outsmart the media, use the very tools that have been used against us, and we can change our culture.

Rihanna’s new video “Man Down” starts with a bang – literally, as she takes aim through the railings of a train station and her tears, steels herself, and pulls the trigger.

The explanation comes through a flashback to the day before, where a beaming Rihanna takes us through her day of greeting the elderly and drinking out of coconuts with straws…until she refuses a man’s advances at a party and he then rapes her in an alley.

Bang.

To say the least, the internet response to the video has been mixed. While the Parents Television Council calls it excessively violent and is clamoring for a ban, blogs such as the Crunk Feminist Collective are applauding Rihanna for being frank about the severity of sexual assault.

I’ll admit it – when I first heard that Rihanna killed a man in her new music video, I groaned. I remembered writing about her collaboration with Eminem for “Love the Way You Lie,” which I hated for its domestic violence apologetics the more I thought about it (Eminem’s not exactly the poster boy for self-awareness). That video oversimplified a deeply complex issue, and pretended to represent both sides of the conflict while sidelining Rihanna to a single line: “Just gonna stand there and watch me burn, but that’s all right, because I like the way it hurts.” (Sure, Eminem. Real revolutionary idea, there.)

So: I went into watching “Man Down” expecting the worst, but now that I’m sitting here trying to piece together my thoughts…I can’t say I hated it.

As the Crunk Feminist Collective pointed out, the video paints a picture of sexual assault that’s just different enough for the pop culture canon to be significant: Rihanna’s dancing sexily at a party does NOT guarantee sex to the onlookers, nor should it. This seems like it would be a no-brainer, but as we’ve learned time and time again from our pop culture, we apparently can’t say it enough.

And yes, there is violence. But while the shooting, the body, and the sexual assault are disturbing as violent facts, I can’t quite understand why the Parents Television Council has singled  out  “Man Down” over, oh I don’t know, Kanye’s explicitly graphic “Monster” video. The radio silence from PTC over a video literally strewn with dead women’s bodies versus Rihanna’s video is deafening.

Is Kanye a lost cause, or is Rihanna held to a different standard? It’s hard to believe this disproportionate response doesn’t have anything to do with a) woman of color taking matters into her own hands or b) the infamous beating she suffered at the hands of then-boyfriend, now-and-always insufferable Chris Brown which, for better or worse, will be the incident through which many will always view Rihanna.

For my money, it’s both. But at the very least, I’m thrilled that she’s the one directing the conversation this time. She’s steering the discussion of her video towards recognizing the universality of sexual assault, the need to speak up and speak out and, perhaps most importantly, take it seriously.

Now that’s a stance I can stand behind.

Last Saturday, about 2,000 people filled the streets of downtown Chicago for SlutWalk, a global protest movement demanding an end to rape and the pervasive victim-blaming attitudes and policies that help facilitate violence.  It was the very first sweltering hot day of Midwest summer.  We talked excitedly about the power of bringing a public voice to this otherwise silent social problem, and we networked to organize for future events around sexual violence and institutional violence.  The energy and outrage from the crowd was absolutely palpable.  SlutWalk participants could feel that we were starting something much bigger than ourselves.

The symbolic reclaiming of the streets has a long history in liberation activism, and I think it’s an especially poignant act in Chicago, which still holds the coveted title of the most racially and economically segregated city in the United States.  Chicago’s history of systematic institutional violence once inspired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to report from the city’s streets, “I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today.”  At a recent workshop hosted by the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), Jerry Boyle from the National Lawyers Guild aptly described government-sponsored Chicago street politics as “low intensity warfare against marginalized groups,” especially organizers.

SlutWalk reminded Chicagoans: These are our streets, and we have the right to own them. And the message could not be timelier.

On June 1^st, Chicago police officers Paul Clavijo and Juan Vasquez were both indicted on charges of criminal sexual assault and official misconduct for their actions against a 22 year old woman identified as Jane Doe.

While patrolling the 23^rd District around Wrigley Field at 2am on March 30^th, Clavijo and Vasquez saw the extremely intoxicated young woman crying and walking home alone.  They invited her into the marked squad car under pretenses of offering her a ride to her apartment two districts away in the Rogers Park neighborhood.  Jane Doe tried to take the back seat, but Clavijo insisted that he sit on his lap in the front seat, where he sexually assaulted her the first time while Vasquez went into a liquor store.   Clavijo and Vasquez then took Jane Doe to her apartment, where they sexually assaulted her until she pounded her fists on the walls and screamed for help, at which point a neighbor helped her.

Police reporting to the scene found Jane Doe “in a ‘hysterical’ state.”  The victim’s blood alcohol level was .38 by the time she received medical treatment at a hospital hours later.  That’s about five times the legal limit to drive in Illinois and, according to Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, it’s not possible for someone that incapacitated to provide consent for sex.

Several elements surrounding the accusations against these officers reveal some unsettling inferences about the culture of impunity for police violence.  Clavijo and Vasquez were heavily-armed, on-duty, uniformed, and using a marked squad car to pick up a drunk woman in a public space.  That kind of abandon suggests that these law enforcement officers were completely confident that they would get away with their “misconduct.”  In fact, it should not surprise those readers with even a cursory understanding of sexual predators that Officer Paul Clavijo faces a second sexual assault charge for almost identical actions against another woman just twenty days earlier.  These elements tell us a great deal about the lack of oversight and accountability for police violence in Chicago.

This case is deeply disturbing, not least of all for its capacity to completely demolish the cultural conception of police as trustworthy and protective figures.  It’s hard to adequately describe the psychic violence suffered by an entire community when police commit violence.  Our New York readers might know what I’m talking about.  The queer people, trans folks, homeless youth, sex workers, and people of color targeted by police know what I’m talking about.

Results from a 2009 study by the Young Women’s Empowerment Project found that police misconduct accounted for 22% of reported incidents of institutional violence against girls involved in street economies.  At SlutWalk, SWOP’s Crash Crawford reminded attendants what this means for Chicago sex workers:

Predators are often reassured of their impunity by society’s attitudes towards such ‘whores’ and ‘sluts.’ Many a serial-killer has admitted to targeting sex-workers because they felt they were ‘easy targets’; that they ‘wouldn’t be missed.’ […]  Also to be feared is the all-too-common ‘un-sympathetic’ agents of law enforcement; abusers in their own right; often extorting sexual acts at the point of a night-stick, or by threatening arrest. Sadly, it is not unheard of for officers to attack sex-workers overtly, especially those also in the transgender community.

So what happens to police who abuse the citizens they’re paid to protect?

According to a 2007 study by Craig Futterman at the University of Chicago Law School, the odds that a Chicago police officer charged with abusing a civilian will receive any meaningful discipline is only two in a thousand.  In more than 85% of the abuse investigations analyzed, Futterman found that the accused officer was never even interviewed before complaints were dismissed.  Alarmingly, about 75% of officers with multiple charges of abuse never received any disciplinary action of any kind whatsoever.

On Monday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel started the first leg of his “anti-crime” PR project by moving 150 police officers from administrative jobs to beat positions.  Not surprisingly, Rahmbo didn’t say peep about plans to improve oversight while our tax dollars pay police to target minorities in our own streets and homes.  Meanwhile, given this rape case, the actions of Internal Affairs who allegedly threatened Tiawanda Moore for attempting to report a sexual assault by a police officer and the zeal with which our State’s Attorney has pursued felony charges against her, those of us who used to feel safe with cops around might feel differently the next time we see those blue lights flashing.

We are sick of being treated like enemies in a warzone when we walk down the street.  A lot of us are fed up and, in the spirit of SlutWalk, we’ve decided to do something about it.

Jane Doe has filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Chicago and the two police officers who allegedly raped her, charging ten counts of assault and battery, failure to intervene, and conspiracy.  Doe’s attorney told Chicago Public Radio,

The city shares some of the responsibility and some of the blame for not having a good system in place to deter misconduct because of the failure of supervision and discipline.

Chicago advocates and allies agree.  This author is working with a highly energized, passionate group to help organize around police violence.  We want effective, thorough investigations into every allegation, oversight, accountability, and an end to cultural impunity for violence.  We want Chicago to know that a victim of rape is never to blame — especially when the assailant wields a gun, a baton, a tazer, mace, and a badge.

If you experience harassment or abuse at the hands of a law enforcement officer, call the National Sexual Assault Crisis Hotline (1-800-656-HOPE).  You may want to consider filing a complaint against the offending officer with the Independent Police Review Authority, in which case you should contact an attorney immediately.  If you’re not interested in pursuing action through the justice system, contact this author to participate in victim-centered, community-based strategic action and organizing around police violence in Chicago.  And stay tuned for updates as Chicagoans organize!