Good afternoon Disruptors! Have a look at what we’ve been reading this week:
- Missouri pastor is a badass. (The twist comes in around 1:50, if you want to skip ahead)
- “How can I be a feminist and do BDSM? Because I trust women to know their own desires. Because BDSM does not stand apart from the world at large, and if we have to live in this world anyway, we might as well do what welove. Because I love and respect my body, my mind, and my potential as a human being–and all three are going hell yeah, I totally want this.”
- This is possibly an overly-optimistic outlook on changes in the Mormon church, but it’s pretty exciting nonetheless
- Kate Bornstein is a pretty cool person
- The day I taught how not to rape
- For all the women I have loved who were dragged through the mud
- Regarding creepers: How not to be a creeper and article from Captain Awkward on dealing with creepers, particularly when there are some folks defending them.
- Upsetting dynamic in anti-harassement street art
- The Shocking Details of a Mississippi School-to-Prison Pipeline
- Here’s some sexism in superhero merchandise for your Tuesday:
- An eloquent, passionate, if heteronormative, plea to the not-yet-mature enough that starts with “nice guys can still rape someone” and ends with “yes means yes.” This feels like a great piece for the less feminism-conscious to read
- Mamie “Peanut Johnson broke barriers in Negro Leauges
- Immodesty, Sexual Assault, And Other Completely Unrelated Things
- Feminism according to otters
- A great sister article to this month’s shaving post
- An excerpt from the Manhattan Script (trigger warning; rape)
- How not to react to Boston
- speaking of things gently mocking “feminist” stereotypes….
- Why Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” Video Makes Me Uncomfortable… and Kind of Makes Me Angry
- An article about Princeton Apathy in response to the Boston Marathon Bombing, and a whole bunch of comments (including trolls and some triggering language) ripping it apart.
- Lets talk about names
- An upsetting article in the media! A story about at a woman written from the perspective of a man who wasn’t even there. Shocker.
- Watch this when you’re not at work or with headphones. It’s not super inappropriate, but occasionally words like SEX and PLEASURE get scrawled across the screen. It compares sex to musical jamming and it’s seriously the best analogy EVER.
- Inspiring young woman takes on slut-shaming at her West Virginia high school
- Public shaming: Tweets of privilege. (Rigger: racism, hate speech, inciting violence)
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That anti-street harassment poster thing makes me uncomfortable. While I don’t really know about street harassment because it doesn’t happen where I live, the message that poster gives seems kind of off to me. It’s a picture of a haughty woman with a look of contempt on her face. So it’s saying like “you, guy, are beneath me and shouldn’t be talking to me on the street” so I can understand why guys wouldn’t like it.
And furthermore I don’t like this kind of feminism which tries to drive a wedge deeper between men and women. Like saying, women can’t be talked to on the street. Men are creepy and shouldn’t approach women, etc, etc.
Very interesting court argument coming up about whether the US can include “oppose prostitution” as a condition of receiving international aid: http://www.thenation.com/blog/173955/anti-prostitution-pledge-heads-supreme-court#
We don’t just need to hear sexual assault survivor’s stories; we need to listen, too: http://www.thenation.com/blog/173928/sexual-assault-survivors-are-telling-their-stories-are-we-listening
Seems like we keep seeing the same play over and over again when high-school students get slut-shamed: http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-shes-slut-culture.html
Fascinating meditation on when classes collide: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/04/16/when-classes-collide-workers-and-guests-at-high-end-hotels/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving+%28Sociological+Images%3A+Seeing+Is+Believing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Boy scouts lifted their gay ban, uh, sort of, and not enough: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/04/19/boy_scouts_gay_ban_lifted_but_still_homophobic.html
Finally, for those of you in DC, the Meridian Pint lifted its opposition to paid sick leave in response to our activism: http://www.popville.com/2013/04/pop-ed-clarification-accountability-and-a-new-direction-by-john-andrade/
Yay! But for those of you voting, don’t be fooled by Pat Mara’s support for marriage equality. He’s still as awful as other Republicans on many other important issues, such as paid sick leave. And remember to vote!
Chloe, I don’t think that’s the message of those posters. When I go through some parts of my city I get constantly harassed. I don’t mind when men smile at me and say hello. I DO mind when they make specific comments about my body, ask if I have a boyfriend, or tell me to smile like I owe them some form of beauty because I’m a woman. This happens ALL THE TIME. I would never say someone is beneath me and shouldn’t talk me because of their gender. But I DO expect some form of respect in our dialogue. That’s what the posters are saying. To me the women in the posters don’t look contemptuous, they just look tired of being hollered at all the time.
And just because a guy doesn’t like them, that’s not an excuse to deface them and draw penises on pictures of women’s faces. To me, THAT’S dividing, not pictures that say “dude, respect my boundaries”
That sounds very fair. I think I got the wrong end of the stick with the posters because I don’t have any experience of street harassment. I have been told to smile by random old guys from time to time, which is annoying (not that I’m trying to compare that to street harassment in the USA or whatever).