Take Back the Night!

I just wanted to make a quick comment on Thursday night. We had a critical mass for Take Back the Night (~35),and then a really fantastic speak out that lasted until midnight. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the speak-out, but I did yell my way through the hour and a half long march through campus buildings and spaces, and up Thayer st. It was a powerful event, with students of different genders, and I hope it's as good (or maybe even better!) next year.

My favorite chant of the (very loud) march was one made up by a participant--"8-6-4-2, Brown has rape, too. 1-2-3-4, we won't take it anymore!" Recognizing that sexual assault occurs and that we as individual students have a responsibility to fight the culture of rape is really important. There's a huge tendency to minimize rape, either by ascribing it as being inevitable based on a situation, or as a trivial problem (I'm thinking of the yells down my hall saying that an exam "raped" them). There are two parts that need to be worked on--the culture, and the policies. As far as Brown's messed up policies, I'm a big fan of the SATForce's work on campus, so if this is an issue that you want to take action on, I'm sure they could use them.

Back to the event, there was definitely a certain amount of hostility to the march, particularly in certain areas of campus. People view events about stopping sexual assault as a comment about them specifically, as opposed to the culture in general.

This may not have been the most intelligible post ever made--but the weather is nice, my brain is fried, and the work has to get done. I hope you're all having an amazing reading period! If other people have thoughts on this, feel free to let me know, or comment--there's definitely some interesting and conflicting views about stopping sexual assault.

Body Language

I was at a congressional hearing last week, and at a Degree Day meeting today.  What do these two events have in common?

Gendered body language.

Women tended to look down, slouch, hunch shoulders.  Women smiled, men did not.  Men were loud, women were not and tended to speak in a higher, lighter tone that almost asked people not to argue or criticize.  Men spread out, leaned back and took up space, one politician blatantly falling asleep in his seat.  Women tended to use qualifying statements or precede their presentations with how they didn't actually plan to be speaking and how they weren't qualified.  Men spoke longer than women.  There were no openly trans people there.

Issue 1:  Basic traditional sexism- man-identified people need to tone the assertive confidence down a little, women-identified need to bring it up to a happy medium.  We need to take extra care in how we nurture kids and treat people of different genders, making sure female-identified people get told and shown they are powerful.

Issue 2:  Dissociate our mental framework (expectations, interpretation, etc.) for body language and confidence from people's (assigned?) genders.  Create trans-inclusive space and make legal equality for trans people so more trans people have the resources to be participating in all these things.

Issue 3:  We need to learn how to respect the voices of people with all different personalities and comfort levels in any given situation.

I get frustrated when people quit after Issue 1; it just pisses off lots of man-identified people and makes a lot of women-identified people feel indignant (hey, I'm not weak or under-confident, and good people respect me!) and is generally unproductive.

Mow The Lawn ad for razor

WTF.

Rachel Graves: Menagerie

"There is an inextricable link between the domination and exploitation of women, and the domination and exploitation of animals. Animals and women are objectified in similar ways: from the mass media fantasy images of impossibly proportioned women and happy cartoon cows and chickens, to the animal names and insults directed toward women. Women are called foxes, bitches, birds, lambs – domestic and game animals. If men are compared to animals at all they are wolves, bears, stallions – symbols of strength and power."

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Interesting Women: La Païva.

Esther Lachmann, later Pauline Thérèse Lachmann, later Mme Villoing, later Mme la Marquise de Païva, later Countess Henckel von Donnersmarck, (b. Moscow, 7 May 1819 - d. Neudeck, 21 January 1884) was the most successful of 19th century French courtesans.

[excerpts from the Wiki article]

She returned to Paris, and from there to the spa at Baden, where she met a Portuguese marquis, Albino Francesco de Païva-Araujo. Her first husband had died of consumption, so she was free to marry the marquis on 5 June 1851, acquiring a fortune, a title, and her nickname, La Païva. The day following, Horace de Viel-Castel wrote, she told her husband, "You wanted to sleep with me, and you've done so, by making me your wife. You have given me your name, I acquitted myself last night. I have behaved like an honest woman, I wanted a position, and I've got it, but all you have is a prostitute for a wife. You can't take me anywhere, and you can't introduce me to anyone. We must therefore separate. You go back to Portugal. I shall stay here with your name, and remain a whore." And, indeed, the marquis returned to Portugal, leaving her behind. The marriage was not annulled until 16 August 1871, and the marquis shot himself in 1872.

Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote that one of La Païva's conquests was a banker of whom she demanded twenty banknotes of one thousand francs each - which, she stipulated, he must burn one by one during their lovemaking. The banker decided to substitute counterfeit banknotes. Even so, the sight of their incineration was so unnerving that he could not accomplish his part of the tryst.

She died at their castle in Neudeck on 21 January 1884, aged 64. Her naked body was preserved in a glass tank of alcohol, kept by her husband in an isolated room of the castle. Henckel visited her corpse regularly for a strange sort of contemplation that may be termed thanatophilia. It is said that when Henckel's second wife, Katharina, unexpectedly discovered the body of her predecessor, preserved in all its glory in alcohol, she suffered a mental breakdown.

Real Women Have _______

Via Flickr (a statement by Gabrielle Hennessey)

I hate Dove's "Real Women Have Curves" slogan with a passion. I stuffed my bra in seventh grade because of ideas like that, because of society's undying belief that Breasts = Woman. A few days ago I walked into a store and a fellow shopper didn't hesitate to tell her partner that my body was "gross."

She said this while three or four feet away from me. I assume she wanted me to hear her and feel bad about my alleged eating disorder/unhealthiness/low self esteem, so that I'd go home and cry over some bonbons about my wasted life and listen to Christina Aguilera and discover my inner beauty and suddenly gain thirty pounds so I could be normal like her.

Real women have hearts and blood and bones. They have skin that breaks and nerves that feel the cold. They are made up of carbon and water and constantly renewing cells. They know who they are.

Real women may not have breasts. They may not even have vaginas. They might like girls or boys or a bit of both or neither at all. They may not always consider themselves to be women, or they might have to fight to be called such since no one else believes them.

Find a new slogan, Dove. Thousands of the people you've unwittingly condemned as Not Real Women are waiting.

Enjoy your profits.

Oh, labels. What makes a "woman"? What makes someone "[insert group here]"? What makes someone anything? If breasts don't make a woman, what does? Is it the chromosomes? Is it the genital appearance? Is it the clothes? Is it other people's perception of them as a member of a certain group? Is it a certain grouping of these aforementioned things? Is it an intangible "je ne sais quoi" of "woman-ness"? What does that even MEAN? And why is it necessary to make this distinction?

If we reduce these broad categories (e.g. woman, man, Latin@, homosexual, American, etc) to a list of "traits," no one person will embody all of them. However, devoid of things that describe a label or devoid of things that make UP a definition, categories become meaningless. With no signified, the signifier becomes empty--just surface, with nothing beneath it. We keep using these terms in hopes that they will represent our realities somehow and allow us to communicate with one another, and ourselves.

The problem with all labels is that they ultimately define through exclusion; they purport to build a community based on, yes, shared traits or ideas or WHATEVER, but it always happens at the expense of keeping "something" out. Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not going to ask for the abolition of all labels and categories because I DO find them useful (although inherently flawed). What I'm going to ask for is the fluidity and openness of thought to think outside those categories and constantly question them. What I'm going to ask for is a critical, analytical approach to definitions and life in general--one that will allow for change, multiplicity, and a degree of uncertainty about it all.

Next time you ask yourself "Oh, is that person [insert label here]?," ask YOURSELF why you even need to know. Not because you don't need to know the answer to your original question (maybe you do, maybe you don't, whatever), but because I feel an integral part of understanding the world is understanding (or at least trying to understand) ourselves. Being introspective and looking at our own minds and our own actions in a way that is honest, questioning, and even slightly playful (because taking things seriously 24/7 only leads to nasties like high blood-pressure and a permanently furrowed brow) can tell us a lot about the world and why we perceive it the way we do. Asking yourself why you need to know if the person sitting next to you on the bus is "a girl or a boy" or "Mexican or Asian" will probably (eventually?) show you some of your own preconceptions, and by becoming self-aware, you can finally begin a process of growth and change. You can't break the bars of cages you can't see.