We’re so excited to announce that Circle of 6, the free anti-violence app  is launching TODAY, March 20^th!

Dating violence and sexual assault are widespread problems among young women, with nearly 1 in 5 reporting assault while in college. With only two taps, Circle of 6 connects users threatened with possible sexual assault and abuse to a network of trusted friends, using GPS technology, anti-violence online resources, and a commitment to support each other: “I won’t let violence happen in my circle.”

We are thrilled by the great press we’ve received so far from: Cosmopolitan, MTV Act, The Christian Science Monitor, The NY Daily News, Cult of Mac and more!

We’re incredibly proud of this all volunteer, 100% DIY, feminist project! Our team includes me, Nancy Schwartzman, Deb Levine of ISIS-Inc., Thomas Cabus our designer and Christine Corbett-Moran, our developer. Check out our anti-violence resources, Circle of 6 video, and iPhone download at circleof6app.com.

Please help us spread the word! On Twitter, use the hashtag #C6, or use one of these pre-written tweets:

Prevent sexual violence with @circleof6app, the free, award-winning app from @thelinecampaign & @ISISorg #c6 www.circleof6app.com

Apps Against #Abuse contest winner @Circleof6app has launched! Pledge to never let violence happen in yr circle: www.circleof6app.com #C6

.@VP Biden says @Circleof6app is “a new line of defense against violence” for young people. Get it free at www.circleof6app.com #c6 #fem2

On a date that just won’t end with someone who’s giving you the creeps? Use @Circleof6app to get out safely: www.circleof6app.com #C6 #fem2

Never get separated from your friends on a night out: @Circleof6app uses GPS 2 help u find each other & stay safe. www.circleof6app.com #C6

.@Circleof6app puts your friends at your fingertips, helping you stay close & prevent violence b4 it happens circleof6app.com #C6

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

Today’s Badass is Joseph Samalin.  Joseph is the Training & Technical Assistance Coordinator at the organization Men Can Stop Rape, where he has been working since 2009. He has an MA from Columbia University in Contemporary Japanese Feminism, and he has been working in community organizing and the struggle to end gender-based violence since his time at Columbia.

So let’s hear what he had to say!

What sparked your interest in feminism? And how did you become interested in the topic of rape and rape prevention?

I was raised by my parents with general ideas about social justice and equality. But I didn’t really start to think about and discover feminism until, when I was a high school student, it was disclosed to me that there was actually a lot of different types of violence perpetrated within my extended family, including physical abuse, sexual assault and child sexual abuse, something I hadn’t known about before then. I now know, having done work on these issues for over a decade, that this is unfortunately the reality for the majority of families in this country and others. But at the time I really didn’t know exactly what to do with the information.

It is actually the way a lot of guys like me (straight, white, cisgendered, lower-middle class guys) start to become aware of issues of gender-based violence (GBV), through someone they know being directly affected by it, if not witnessing or experiencing it ourselves.

It was at a Take Back The Night rally I attended as an undergraduate student at SUNY New Paltz, listening to hundreds of women share story after story of violence and abuse, that it really struck me how ridiculously and unforgivably prevalent domestic violence and sexual violence really are. I joined the campus women’s group as their token male member, and at that time saw feminism as something important for me as a man to do to help protect women. Since then my view has grown and shifted, and I see that the work of feminism, the work of Men Can Stop Rape, is as essential for the health and well-being of men, as it is for men to be visible allies to women and girls in all communities.

While I have done work with youth around relationship abuse, facilitated batterer’s groups, done anti-stalking work and more, I have focused on sexual violence and the overlap with other forms of GBV. Part of this comes from the prevalence of sexual violence and anti-sexual violence programming in college, which is where my initial awareness of GBV began, but it also comes from having spent about 4 years living in Japan and studying rape culture in Japan as a graduate student.

How did you get connected with MCSR? What is your role there and what would you say you hope to achieve through your work?

I first came into contact with MCSR as a graduate student at Columbia University. A friend and I had inherited leadership of Columbia Men Against Violence, a student men’s group on campus, and were trying to figure out how to make it successful, mostly making it up as we went along. We discovered an upcoming training in DC advertised online by a non-profit with an intriguing name (Men Can Stop Rape!) and immediately signed up for it. The training was intense and powerful, and for the first time I was introduced to both the ideas of primary prevention of GBV and that men could and were dedicating their lives, their careers, to this issue. It was a critical moment for me. I finished up my grad degree and then immediately went out in NYC and got myself a job doing dating violence work with teens. Six years and a few jobs later I was hired full time as MCSR’s Coordinator of Training and Technical Assistance.

My job at MCSR is to work with communities across the country to develop the skills and support they need to create sustainable, long-term programs engaging men and boys in primary prevention, addressing the root causes of GBV as it exists and presents in that given community. We work with and provide programming to non-profit organizations, middle schools, high schools and universities, the military and law enforcement, religious and faith based organizations, local and federal government agencies and more. Our programming consists of tailoring a combination of trainings, presentations, lectures, workshops, curricula and program design, and more – all geared to help the community begin or enhance sustainable efforts to engage men and boys as allies to women and girls.

Where do you see the role of men in effecting change in our culture? Most of the efforts to combat rape are focused on instructing women on how to stay safe, placing the onus on the potential victim, rather than the potential perpetrator. Why do you think it is that we, as a culture, are so reluctant to go to the source of the problem?

At MCSR, we are fully committed to seeing men and boys as agents of cultural change, and work to help communities see men as potential allies to women, as opposed to potential perpetrators of violence. One of our key roles is to challenge the societal notion that addressing domestic violence and sexual assault are entirely the responsibility of women, which is the societal and cultural norm.

All too often the ‘job’ of addressing rape is placed solely on the shoulders of women, and is usually focused only on risk reduction, which is all too often framed as prevention. That is extremely problematic. Framing risk reduction education of women as prevention, saying that it is a woman’s job to prevent rape, is the same as saying it is her fault if she gets raped, because ‘she didn’t do her job in staying safe’. Victim blaming like this is one of the key reasons why rape remains the least reported violent crime in the US, and is a huge barrier to eradicating sexual violence. There are also some huge flaws with how we teach risk reduction, such as the huge focus on ‘stranger danger’ when the majority of sexual assault is committed by someone the victim knows, and the flawed notion that how you dress is a factor in being assaulted or not.

The question of why our culture has been so reluctant to change this view (though we feel it is slowly changing) is a huge one. For our work, we put a lot of emphasis on questions of gender socialization, obviously focusing primarily on masculinity and the question of what society says it means to be a man. This question is at the core of all of our programming. Our approach begins with examining what we refer to as the ‘dominant story’ of masculinity in society -  that men are supposed to be tough, in control, strong, non-emotional, know how to navigate violence, have lots of sex – but only with women, etc. This allows us to address masculinity as a factor in individual men’s choices to commit violence, to stay silent about it when we see it, and also to not speak out or seek help when we as men are victims or survivors. It allows us to address both the damage that the dominant story of masculinity can do to us as men and to those around us, as well as the privileges we receive from playing into that dominant story. We then work to create space in for the ‘counterstories’ of masculinity – those men who have decided for themselves what kind of men they want to be, and how to use their strength to build communities free from men’s violence.

As socialized beings, both men and women (and especially men) have to unlearn and then re-build our ideas about gender and then act accordingly. This is slow and hard work! But we’re slowly seeing change – person by person, community by community.

The organization’s most recent project is the Where Do You Stand campaign. Who is it targeted at, and what message do you hope to send with it?

Where Do You Stand is MCSR’s comprehensive “bystander intervention” campaign – designed to help and encourage the men who often stand by and stay silent when violence takes place.  Most men aren’t violent perpetrators but the majority of us, don’t intervene, partly because we don’t know how to. This campaign tries to address that. While targeted primarily at college aged men, it has been used in a variety of communities nationally. The campaign combines social marketing (posters, billboards, postcards, and more), a full day training, and a curriculum for peer education. All of this aims to allow men and women in a community to help young men to be able to recognize the full range violence – from subtle to extreme forms of violence – around us, and to intervene in safe and effective ways to interrupt it. The campaign was designed using both MCSR’s vast experience engaging young men around violence prevention, and research speaking to how masculinity plays a role in men intervening in a given situation or not, as well as how we as men intervene when we do.

Have you seen any positive examples recently of men stepping up to speak out about rape culture? Where did you find it and what did it look like?

All the time! I actually make a living where I work to create those examples, and feel truly blessed to do so. Recent examples include: some of our high school Men of Strength (MOST) Club members from DC and Baltimore travelling to the United Nations to participate in the Commission on the Status of Women Girl-Boy dialogue, New York University’s Men of Strength partnering with Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity and Omega Phi Beta Sorority to hold a campus forum on men’s roles in preventing domestic violence, a MOST club member holding a teacher accountable for homophobic language used in a classroom, and the young men we work with participating in events and programs for the upcoming International Anti-Street Harassment Week in multiple cities.

Unfortunately, while the tide is turning, and more men and boys than ever are receiving messages about respecting women and preventing violence, we obviously have not reached a tipping point quite yet. We see more and more examples like these everyday in our work at MCSR and in the world around us, and yet still they are outnumbered by examples of gender-based violence all around us – from street harassment of women and girls, to domestic violence in our homes and on our streets, to the homophobic language and bullying in our schools, and more. Our mission at Men Can Stop Rape is to help reach that tipping point as soon as we can.

For more information on Men Can Stop Rape, please check out their website, or contact Director of Training and Technical Assistance Joseph Vess: Jvess at mencanstoprape dot org.

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

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

Let’s hear what she had to say to us!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(We asked brand new blogger Marina to talk about what she thought was the most important topic in 2011, and why. Here’s what she had to say!)

Rape culture is ever present in our society.  We have created it and sustained it, and it is plastered into our lives repeatedly by the people around us, the media, and our courts. 2011 was no exception to the perpetuation of rape culture as demonstrated by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, the Penn State scandal, and a new  pop-cultural icon.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn had one of the most powerful positions in, arguably, the world.  He was arrested on May 14, 2011 and charged with several first-degree felony counts, notably a criminal sex act, attempted rape and sexual abuse when hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo reported that he had tried to rape her. When novelist Tristane Banon came forward with an accusation of sexual assault it gave Mr. Strauss-Kahn a history of sexual assault. Then, DNA evidence of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s was found on Ms. Diallo’s work clothes, making the case certainly not in his favor. The questions at the beginning of the scandal were ‘how could we let a person like this have such power?’ How could Mr. Strauss-Kahn call rape merely “an error” and “a moral failure he would regret?”

But as the case was further investigated, we forgot those questions because Ms. Diallo seemed less and less credible based on the lies she had told officials. The forensic evidence was ambiguous and Mr. Strauss-Kahn had resigned from his position at the I.M.F. yet maintained his innocence in the face of criminal charges.  Ms. Diallo’s case deteriorated as the “prosecutors no longer believed much of what she had told them about the circumstances or about herself.”

Ms. Diallo’s credibility issues ended the case, and all criminal charges were dismissed from Mr. Strauss-Kahn.  This was not the ending everyone was expecting. Not only does this add to the stigma that women cry rape to attend to a personal agenda, but it allows Mr. Strauss-Kahn a literal ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card because while in “[that] encounter, there was no act of aggression or violence,” he does not state that there was no advancement, nor approval of his actions in the encounter. On the contrary he admits “to having made a pass at her and trying to kiss her.” This can be assault depending on the manner it was done in and received in, and that is determined by the victim, who was denounced.

And of course, the Penn State scandal cannot be left out. It is the worst fear of every person, a trusting figure who has contributed countless hours and monetary donations to create a safe space for foster children, turns out to be a child molester. Jerry Sandusky, former assistant coach of the Pennsylvania State University football team was charged with 40 counts of sex crimes involving eight boys, occurring between 1994 and 2009. This would of course be awful enough on its own, however we then discovered that head coach Joe Paterno had knowledge of Sandusky raping a 10 year old boy on the Penn State premises via graduate assistant Mike McQueary, and Paterno did not report to the police.

The issues at play are numerous: Penn State actively employed a child molester and rapist and when he was found out, the police were not notified. These issues have been discussed in a wide array of media, but I think there are other angles to consider. I completely agree that Paterno, and for that matter McQueary, were in the wrong for not intervening on moral grounds and reporting to the police, and I believe this was handled effectively by the courts, albeit 15 years too late. The nagging thing about the Penn State scandal for me is that if it had been young women that Sandusky was abusing, how it was handled would have been completely different.

The gender, social class and history of the victim often (and quite unfortunately) determines how we treat the case and those involved.  If it is a young woman and she is wearing scandalous clothing, and/or she is drunk at 3 a.m., and/or she is walking alone; she should have known not to wear that dress, drink at all, or walk by herself – she was asking for it. The outcome for a sexual abuse case is far more likely to take on a victim blaming stance if it has one of those variables in it.

For instance the Marquette University freshman who was under the influence of alcohol at a Halloween party in 2010, she was sexually abused by several male athletes in one room. She reported the crime immediately. Her allegations were not alone; two other women accused Marquette athletes of sexual attacks. University officials made a non-specific statement that all the athletes charged were punished for disregarding the student code of conduct however; none of the players were restricted from playing on their sports teams due to the sexual assault charges.  A lawyer for one of the women said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that “Marquette administrators clearly thought the law was that you protect your [athletes] if they’re having a good year.”

While some of this ‘protect the good thing you have going’ mentality may have been evident in the Penn State scandal, there is no victim blaming at all (thankfully.) It is infuriating to me that it takes a huge scandal spanning fifteen years, of a high profile assistant coach of a prominent university team abusing young boys for us to treat the victims like victims and the case surrounding them accordingly.

The media has moved all of these stories along, and while the media can be included as part of the rape culture problem, one movie this year has put out a better message. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was released during the holiday season this year. It is predominately a mystery but has the backdrop of libel and scandal, love, and a girl with a curious history. It is a great story and it is put into film immaculately.

The heroine of the story is Lisbeth, an incredibly smart and resourceful young woman. She is horrifically raped by her caretaker, in a scene that is depicted in a starkly realistic way, causing discomfort for the audience.  This is one of the few cases where rape or violence is not glamorized, as was intended by the author. Steig Larsson was motivated in part to write these novels as “his way of apologizing” to a woman he saw gang raped by his friends and he did not intervene. According to Larsson’s longtime friend Kurdo Baski, “[Larsson] was too young, too insecure. It was inevitable that he would realize afterwards that he could have acted and possibly prevented the rape.” This began Larsson’s real-life commitment to social justice.

His books are now becoming movies and are more popular than ever. The main recurring theme in the series shares the title of the Swedish version of the first book and film: “Men Who Hate Women.” With the success of his writing and the newfound success of the movie I can only hope that readers and viewers see the real message that Larsson is trying to send: that rape is a dehumanizing form of control which renders the victim powerless, and that it is a real problem in our society.

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.

Zanin refutes the assumption that people in the kink community are universally more enlightened and educated to feminism and sex positivity. In addressing the use of rape jokes she draws on five points as to why they are never funny even in the “safety” of the BDSM kink culture including the point that kinky people can be and are sexist and that the BDSM community does no keep anyone safe from rape. Her responses are well researched, and especially informed given her position as a sex educator who promotes and engages in the kink community.

Well aware of the backlash speaking up against the promotion of rape-culture within an already oppressed community will bring, the article also includes responses to some classic dismissals of the topic (to which online conversations are particularly vulnerable) including: “You’re just a humorless feminist.” and “You’re just a man-hating lesbian.” Very tired indeed!

Check out some more of Andrea Zanin’s writing including poly resources, kink resources and information about her workshops.

We are on twitter @Invisible_War and Facebook.com/InvisibleWarMovie. Let us know if you want to be included in our newsletter and I’ll add your name.

The Guardian’s UK edition published an article on rape in the US military last week.

Lucy Broadbent writes,

Rape within the US military has become so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. So great is the issue that a group of veterans are suing the Pentagon to force reform. The lawsuit, which includes three men and 25 women (the suit initially involved 17 plaintiffs but grew to 28) who claim to have been subjected to sexual assaults while serving in the armed forces, blames former defence secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates for a culture of punishment against the women and men who report sex crimes and a failure to prosecute the offenders.

Check out the whole article here. It’s a harrowing read.

Two weeks ago, a young woman at #OccupyWallStreet was raped in her tent. He was out on bail from another rape–and had been accused of assaulting another woman in the park.

Her rape was not the first. Another woman was raped in her tent at #OccupyCleveland–and was accused of being a spy from the government to make #OccupyWallStreet look unsafe. One woman was sexually assaulted and went to the police, only to be promptly dismissed with, “That’s what you get for sleeping away from home.” Needless to say, he did not pursue her assault.

In response to the rape at #OccupyWallStreet–which of course, is the one that is getting any press whatsoever–several women at Occupy Wall Street have united with Code Pink to make a women’s only “safe space” tent–a place where women can sleep without fear or risk of male intrusion and sexual assault.

Although the tent is durable and strong–a militaristic greenish gray, decorated with slogans like “we are strong women” and “strong women occupying wall street,” to me, it is an upsetting symbol of the feminine presence at #OccupyWallStreet. It is a crisis response–something that had to be erected because of the harsh realization that Liberty Plaza, a place that is supposed to be a beautiful symbol of the world that we wish to occupy (a world that is not only free of capitalism and corporate greed, but free of the systems of patriarchy, violence, racism, and discrimination that our current economic system institutionalizes) is not a safe space. Though the well meaning white people in the movement have claimed–and been criticized–for purporting that the movement is free from the race, gender, and class lines that once divided us, it has been made clear that these have not only shaped our pasts, but severely occupy our present.

The reality is, women are raped. This woman was raped, and she wasn’t the first and she will not be the last. The reality is, we are not in a social place where we can occupy a space equally without being preoccupied by concern for our safety.

The tent was erected the week following the rape. Though many people were supportive of the tent, and applauded the women who built it, plenty undermined its significance. In the park, some men grumbled that women claim that sexual assault is rape and overreacted to the situation. On the Internet, many commented articles about the safe space and the sexual assault problem with asinine comments like, “rapists are in the ninety-nine percent too.”

Here is the thing.

#OccupyWallStreet is a movement for economic justice. Unlike an ordinary protest–something where we have a protest permit, signs, and stand with megaphones on a street corner or in a public square for two hours–we have vowed to literally occupy the space until substantial change occurs in our system. There are no permits, as there is no respect for the traditional order that has governed and broken our system. Instead, there is a new system–something that has been built upon consensus, and now–due to the sheer size of the movement–is experiencing its own trials and evolution in political organization. At the root of this new system–no matter what the internal strife in operations–is the desire to model a society based on what we want to live in.

In this society, I don’t want to have to sleep in a tent away from everyone–a glaring symbol of my inequality and vulnerability. I don’t want to be segregated by my gender, because my gender is occupied by a certain set of issues and concerns.

As long as we are imagining idealism, and fearlessly advancing radical ideas, shouldn’t we be discussing a world without sexual violence? It is a necessary temporary fix to have a women’s only “safe space” in Liberty Plaza–but activism, and discussions around rape culture, rape accountability, and sexual violence should continue and be an integral part of a radical liberation movement. Ending the fight against sexual violence with a women’s only safe space effectively bails out rape culture–due to our broken justice system, and our propensity to easy fixes rather than discussions around systemic change, rape and sexual violence is not only ignored, but effectively enabled.

We need the same discussions around systemic roots, accountability, and collective justice surrounding sexual violence that we are building around corporate greed and financial terrorism (not to mention complete and utter disillusionment with our justice system). As long as we are exercising the radical imagination to reclaim our political, economic, and social system from the forces that have constricted and bound us in an eternal cycle of inequality, why claim ourselves a culture without sexual violence and educate and organize around #OccupyRapeCulture?

photographed by Calvin Finley

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.

My interview partner this week is Aishah Shahidah Simmons, documentary filmmaker, writer, lecturer and activist. She’s the producer, writer and director of NO! The Rape Documentary, and she screens her work all around the world. You can follow her and her work at @AfroLez and @InnerLiberation.

Here’s what we talked about:

You’re a filmmaker, writer, lecturer and activist. That’s a lot of hats to wear. Why don’t you start by telling us what your day-to-day works looks like right now?

Yes, it is a lot of hats to wear, which is why I also use cultural worker. That term was taught to me in 1990 by Toni Cade Bambara, who was a Black feminist cultural worker extraordinaire, my teacher, and my Big Sista-friend. Every day is literally a new and different day. However, there are some things that rarely change. I’m a practitioner of vipassana meditation. Part of my practice is to meditatively sit twice a day, every day for an hour at each sitting. I used to be and, at times, I still am very resistant to sitting because I viewed it as a time obstacle to my doing my cultural work. Life experiences, however, consistently show me that sitting is a non-negotiable resource that enables me to do my cultural work. After sitting, I do some form of exercise (walking or swimming are my preferences) and then I’m usually able to begin the external work. I check my email, facebook, and twitter accounts. I also check various blogs and other sites. If I allow it, the aforementioned can very literally consume my entire day and night because it’s non-stop action on the cyber highway.

When I’m not on the road presenting and talking about the issues raised in my cultural work, I juggle between several projects every day: I’m working on an essay for Queering Sexual Violence, a forthcoming anthology edited by Jennifer Patterson. As non-heterosexual people, our sexuality is frequently problematized (oh, that’s why you’re lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender?) both outside and inside of the mainstream anti-sexual violence movement. If we allow it, this type of homophobic, transphobic, and heterosexist thinking and commentary can put us on the defensive or even make us feel ashamed about our sexualities and/or gender identities. As I frequently say, if sexual violence made folks queer, most of the world would be queer. I believe Queering Sexual Violence will be a space where Queer activists/cultural workers/scholars will radically delve into anti-sexual violence prevention, organizing and recovery work without having to defend our right to be who we are. I’m grateful for Jennifer’s courage and vision.

I’m also working on the Foreword for Lisa Factora-Brochures’ forthcoming anthology Dear Sister: An Anthology of Letters and Essays for Survivors of Sexual Violence, Written by Other Survivors and Allies This sacred collection of letters and essays is a powerful offering of love and healing from survivors and allies. This anthology is intentionally meant for post-trauma. Lisa’s powerful vision is a love offering in the form of a healing road map of letters from survivors and allies who already took the journey. I’m really humbled to be a part of this “love-centered” healing anthology.

I’m a member of the Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth Indiegogo fundraising team. Produced and directed by Pratibha Parmar, the prolific and award-winning filmmaker. Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth will be a feature documentary film about the life and times of Alice Walker, a foremost American writer who made history as the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1983 for her ground breaking novel The Color Purple. Pratibha’s films, most especially A Place of Rage, documentary film on African-American women and the civil rights movement featuring Angela Davis and June Jordan have both influenced and inspired me as documentary filmmaker. And, I definitely see my cultural work, especially NO!, as a continuation of the work that Alice Walker and many other Black women cultural workers created in the 70s and 80s. Now, it’s all about the fundraising so that Beauty In Truth will see the light of day in 2012, the 30th anniversary of the release of The Color Purple.

After being on hiatus for over one year, I resumed post-production on Liberation from Within, my forthcoming documentary about the first 10-day vipassana meditation course, held in India, for people of African heritage worldwide. Liberation from Within will explore both how this 2500 year old universal, non-sectarian technique taught by Buddha is being used as a tool for social change; and why African descended people from Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, Zambia, England, United States journeyed to India to learn and practice it together, with people from India, Mongolia, Russia, France, Argentina, and Singapore for 10-days. I’ve experienced vipassana meditation to be one (not the only) way to lead to my own personal liberation. Liberation from Within, will highlight the wide range of ethnically and racially diverse voices who participated in this her/historic gathering. Usually, most especially in the West and if one is not Asian, practicing the teachings of Buddha is viewed as a White experience. Too often, unless rooted in Asian communities, many, definitely not all, of the Western sanghas are overwhelmingly White. Definitely over time and as a result of more and more people of Color are getting established in the practices of the teachings of Buddha, there has been a powerful shift in terms of the diversity within the sanghas, but for many people of Color, it’s still a struggle. Once funds are secured for the post production phase, Liberation from Within will document how vipassana meditation is both libratory and transformative for all people, without exception. I’m most interested in the healing and wellness of not only the community from which I come in this lifetime, but for all communities worldwide. It’s my plan to complete this project in 2012.

You wrote and directed the documentary NO! The Rape Documentary, which premiered in 2006. Can you tell us something about what prompted you to make this documentary?

Well, hindsight is always 20/20. When the idea for NO! was conceived in the very early 90s, it was in response to the egregious backlash against Desiree Washington, the young Black woman who accused Mike Tyson of raping her in 1991. I was so horrified by the vitriolic response to Ms. Washington’s charges by many Black men and women. There was this notion that she was a traitor to the Black race because she came forward and accused a high profile Black man of raping her. Prior to her charges, Tawana Brawley accused four White men of raping and sodomizing her; and she was viewed as a heroine by many Black men and women for coming forward. The contrast between the two is so very stark. Desiree Washington was castigated, maligned and thrown to the metaphorical wolves by the community from which she comes, while Tawana Brawley was championed and celebrated.

My goal was to make a documentary, which addressed the collective silence in the Black community when Black women are raped by Black men. Initially, it was only going to feature the voices of Black women. I envisioned NO! as a “speak out” piece, which would include present-day testimonies by Black women survivors, spoken word, and dance. Over time however, I realized that it was imperative that I move from enslavement of African people in the United States until present-day. I understood that before I could address intra-racial sexual violence contemporarily, it was critical to examine African-American her/history in this racist and sexist country. Additionally, men can stop heterosexual rape. Based on this, I included the voices of Black men who are working to eradicate gender-based violence in our non-monolithic communities and worldwide. I also incorporated spirituality, specifically Christianity and Islam. So many women may never ever go to a rape crisis center or call a hotline, but they will go to their Ministers and Imams. They look to their churches and mosques as refuges. Based on this I thought it imperative to touch upon the ways in which religions have condoned violence against women; and equally as important how women have used religion to heal from the violence they experienced.

What were your hopes and aspirations for the project, and to what extent do you feel that you have succeeded so far?

In the early days, I told myself, Tamara L. Xavier, a co-producer and the director of choreography of NO!, and others that I am making this documentary because I want to help Black women who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted. It’s quite fascinating to me because I was looking externally and not internally as an incest and rape survivor. Looking back at that time period, I was in the embryonic stages of my own healing from the trauma that I experienced as a child and young woman; and yet, I wanted to help “Black women who’ve been molested or raped…” I share that to say, in my quest to help other Black women, I very literally saved my life…

In the 1990s’, my goal was for NO! to be seen and discussed throughout Black communities in the US. Because of the atrocious universality of rape, I also hoped that other women, who were not of African descent, would view and discuss NO! in their communities as well. However, at the time, I wasn’t sure if that would happen. I never ever in my wildest dreams envisioned that NO! would be subtitled in Spanish, French, and Portuguese; and viewed, discussed, and used as an educational anti-rape tool in countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, Pacific Islands, South America, and the Caribbean. There is something very powerful to have women, and some men, who don’t share the same ethnic/racial/national history as me and whose mother tongue is different than my own say to me, through a translator “NO! is my story.” This speaks to the sobering global reality of rape, the power of cinematic storytelling, and underscores that my 11-year journey, seven of which were full time, to make NO! was not in vain.

I’m extremely elated to share that this week, I shipped 26-copies of NO! to Althea Hart, Project Coordinator of Project STOP NOW!, an important OVW/USDOJ funded-initiative that focuses on the prevention of violent crimes committed against women at UNCF member colleges and universities. This means that NO! will be available on 26 Historically Black College/University campuses in the US. Words can’t adequately convey how much this means to me for so many reasons and in a myriad of ways. I will blog about this in the near future.

While there are some things that didn’t happen, including a national broadcast of NO! on either public or cable television (I’m still disappointed that that never happened!), I would say that in so many ways, I surpassed my original hopes and aspirations.

At the Line Campaign, we talk a lot about enthusiastic consent. Where do you draw your line? How has your personal definition of consent changed over the years?

Hmm. These are complex questions for me. I really draw my line at consent. I believe consent must be the fundamental and non-negotiable foundation between any individuals who are engaged in sexual activity. It’s important to be explicitly clear that consent is not coercion. If there is any doubt whatsoever, or any covert or overt pressure, then it’s not consent. And, there cannot be ANY consent between a child/adolescent/teenager and an adult. At the very least that’s statutory rape.

*Non-sequitur* While it’s grotesque that it has taken Roman Polanski 35-years to finally admit that drugging AND raping a 13-year old girl was wrong, I hope ALL of his supporters will reconsider their disgusting (my words) defense of Polanski.

My personal definition of consent has really deepened over the years. While I wasn’t raped as a child, my 10-12 year old body was fondled, touched, and kissed, against my will, as a child, by my grandfather. My introduction to my own sexuality didn’t include consent. Shortly after the molestation began, I told my divorced parents what was happening and very unfortunately, they never took me out of the situation. As a result, and in spite of what I was verbally told by both of my parents about consent being my right, through their inaction, I experientially learned that I didn’t have a right to consent with my sexuality, if it’s a “trusted” family member. I do not share this to demonize my parents. Quite the contrary. I share this because we’re all so very complex human beings. Yes, my grandfather molesting me for 2-years and my parents never taking me out of the environment was torture, to say the absolute very least. At the same time, that is part of the story, and a huge one, which has impacted my life in horrendously profound ways. However, it’s very rarely all bad or all good. It is. I’m not nor will I ever condone what happened to me. It’s too much to go into in this interview but know that I will be writing about all of this and more, in my future book project on the making of NO!

In college, I had very consensual and pleasurable sex with my first boyfriend one year before I was raped, at 19, by an acquaintance in Mexico. Let me tease this out a little further because with all of us there are so many layers to our her/histories. I was raped one night; then the next day, I met a new guy. In my quest to reclaim my body and my voice, I had consensual sex with the new guy I met. There was a time, when I would tell my story of being raped and stop with the rape because I was ashamed that I had consensual sex the day after my rape. I was afraid that people would think I was a “slut,” a “whore,” and/or a “lose” BAD woman. And unfortunately that is what I was called by some (feminist minded, I might add) Black women and men. Also, I was afraid that people wouldn’t believe I was raped because I had consensual sex 18-24 hours after my rape.

Present-day, there is no shame. And the words “slut” and “whore” don’t silence or shame me at all. Yes, I believe I used some poor judgment, but I’m no longer ashamed to tell my story in full detail. I’m willing and open to talk about my judgment, which doesn’t necessarily mean that I could’ve prevented my rape. Most importantly, my actions in 1989 will never again be used as weapon to impact how I think about 19/20-year old Aishah. It took a lot of hardcore work and years for me to get to this place, but I’m here now.

Post the ending of a relationship in June of this year, I’m intentionally and indefinitely (not to be confused with circumstantially) celibate. I’m not wearing my celibacy as a badge of honor or a statement that I’m better or less than folks who aren’t. This is not about purity or reclaiming my 2^nd (very, very long way from that, thank Goddess!) virginity either. In fact, I don’t subscribe to any of those notions because I believe they are entrenched in patriarchy, misogyny, shame, and blame. My celibacy is about how I choose to reclaim my psychic, emotional, mental, physical, and sexual space on my terms.

I share about my being celibate because I believe there are two spectrums where societal norms encourage people to feel shame about their actions (or lack thereof). One is, if you’re a non-monogamous or polyamorous woman. The other is if you’re an intentionally celibate woman. I believe it’s really important that there are safe, sacred, and consensual spaces for all of us to BE in our diverse sexualities. And, yes, I believe celibacy is a part of sexuality. I get tired of how shame is used as a weapon to get people to conform to what is viewed as “normal,” which always depends on who’s the reality definer of the moment. As a Black feminist lesbian, I’m usually outside of most societal definitions of normalcy. However, even within my communities, there are norms of sorts. I’m not interested in conforming to them if they’re not healthy for my psychic, emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, and sexual well-being.

What has been on your mind lately? Any blogs, newsworthy events, pop cultural items or deep thoughts you’d like to share with us? We would be happy to hear!

This past week alone has been so intense. I feel like I’ve been on an emotional roller-coaster. Palestine’s quest for Nationhood, Troy Davis’ murder by the state, the ongoing SlutWalk(s) controversy continues ~ BlackWomen’s BluePrint released their Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk (if you’re not on Facebook, you can read the Open Letter here) and AF3IRM released their AF3IRM RESPONDS TO SLUTWALK: THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IS NOT MONOCHROMATIC statement; and the physical transition of Wangari Maathai.

I’m struggling very hard to find the words to express both my deep pain and sheer outrage about the plight of Palestinian people who have been and are living in an Apartheid State for decades. It’s kind of dated, in this fast paced information highway, however, I firmly believe “Justice for Palestine: A Call to Action from Indigenous and Women of Color Feminists,” is an important read. I also stay on top of Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Democracy NOW!

We must abolish the death penalty state by state until it is no longer existent in the United States. Troy Davis’ legalized murder is really reprehensible. So many organizations and individuals have weighed in on his murder; and the egregious racist flaws of the Criminal (In)justice system in this country. Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness is a must read. Judge Mathis’ video commentary on Davis’ execution, is powerful and really gets to the heart of the matter. Rahiel Tesfamariam, Founder & Editorial Director of Urban Cusp, is behind the vision of Where Do We Go From Here? In Memory of Troy Anthony Davis a powerful collection of 40+ reflections from ministers, leading scholars, activists, artists, journalists, students and parents who came together to create virtual community to explore how do we move from ‘Chaos to Community.’

Since May 2011, I’ve been engaged in numerous dialogues and even debates, with a wide range of racially and ethnically diverse women, about SlutWalk. It’s exhausting to say the least. While so very necessary, struggle can be exhausting to say the least. What is very fascinating about this specific struggle is that in spite of the intense dialogues and some times heated debates about SlutWalks, there usually is a foundation of a shared common goal of ending all forms of gender-based violence. It’s really about the paths that we choose to take in doing this work.

Before I share my thoughts, it’s very important to note that in the spring and early summer Morgane Richardson, Creatrix Tiara, Harsha Walia, Andrea Plaid, and Erica Lorriane Williams all of whom are women of Color based in Canada, Australia, and the United States have raised concerns while also supporting the concept.  Their writings, and in the specific case of my sister co-conspirator/friend Andrea, our voice dialogues, have been a lifeline.

This week, @Alicia Fiasco said in one her tweets “It’s the SlutWalk, not the Slut Pride Pride.” I couldn’t agree with her more. Additionally, my sister/comrade/colleague Vickie Sides’ commentary that both the critiques of and the support expressed by a wide range of very diverse Black women signify that it’s a “‘Both/And,’ not ‘Either/Or,’ Period.” deeply resonate with me.

Speaking at SlutWalk Philly was a very empowering experience for me. It marked the second time in my life that I publicly went into all of the details of my molestation and rape. I’m very painfully aware of the egregious, vicious and atrocious history of the word “slut,” which is rooted in the most barbaric forms misogyny/patriarchy/sexism. I know how it has been used and continues to be used as weapons against all, but most especially African, Arab, Berber, Asian, Pacific Islander, Latina, Indigenous, Roma (Gypsy) women, children, gay men, and trans people often without too much recourse in North America, and around the world. The words “slut” and “whore,” or their equivalents in so many languages, have been used and are being used to condone Enslavement, Genocide, Militarism, Human Trafficking, Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, Sexual Assault, Femicide, Domestic Violence, Prostitution on and on an on.

In my own work with screening and discussing NO! both in this country and internationally, I frequently see and hear how those terms are used, even by the those who say they oppose gender-based violence, to shame and blame non-monogamous and polyamorous women, teenage “fast” girls, sex workers, and queer people. Based on this, I’m not going to run from the word “slut” and again, this is not about my reclamation.

Sister/comrade/colleague Stephanie Gilmore really said it best during her SlutWalk Philly speech, when she said “The word “slut” does not have feminist origins or meanings, and it does not belong to me or my people. So when it comes to the label “slut,” take it or leave it. It isn’t mine to give, accept, or reclaim. But I am reclaiming my body, my space, my own sexuality, my NO’s and my YES’s. And perhaps simply doing that makes me a slut. I commit myself to fight with each and every one of you – in this fight against rape and sexual violence, you will never be alone.”

I believe that when it is no longer acceptable to rape, beat, molest, murder, enslave and/or traffick the “sluts” and “whores” (however they are defined and by whomever is defining them) in the world, then and only then will it no longer be acceptable to rape, beat molest, murder, enslave and/or traffick any of us. It is not until the margins of the margins of all societies are centralized that we will be truly liberated and free.

I definitely have critiques of SlutWalks (which is not a monolithic group), most especially as it pertains to representation and participation of people of Color. In North America, the voices and perspectives of women and trans people of Color have been relatively speaking very low. We must move beyond Whiteness being viewed as universal with one or two tokens of Color. It is the height of racism to expect or even want people of Color to feel like it’s their march too if there isn’t representation not only on stage but most importantly in the planning and organizing stages. And, if there isn’t engaged (not tokenized) representation, the statement shouldn’t be “We reached out, but ‘they’ don’t come.” The question is “Why aren’t ‘they’ coming?” And, there should be unanimity about not moving forward with any planning, until there is an answer and a solution to the lack of engaged representation of people of Color. I don’t know, but perhaps if these types of steps were taken months ago, there might not be so much controversy amongst a wide range of people, many of whom have a demonstrated track record of working to end all forms of gender-based violence both across North American and globally.

Finally, I want to say Rest In Power to the Spirit of Wangari Maathai. A founder of the Green Belt Movement, Dr. Maathai was a Kenyan environmentalist and women’s rights activist. A ground breaker and trail blazer in so many areas, she was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. An author of several books, Dr. Maathai was also featured in the documentary film Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. She will be terribly missed by many throughout the world. I am most grateful for her powerful legacy, which, among many things, is a call to action to replenishing the earth.

“‎We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.” ~ Wangari Maathai (April 1, 1940 ~ September 25, 2011)