First of all, the most important thing this week: donate to Karen Stollznow’s legal defense fund. Jason has a timeline of the whole story as it unfolds at his blog, and reading it has really given me an education in how exactly rich powerful dudes shut up the people they abuse. If you want to see Stollznow defeat this ridiculous defamation suit, help contribute to her fund. And by the way, if you don’t want people to write about your abuse of them, try not to abuse them. Eh, Radford?
Moving on, I’m going to briefly mention the various talky things I’m doing this spring and summer. Next weekend, I’ll be at the Skeptech conference in Minneapolis, giving a talk about how technology has influenced the social justice movement (how’s that for a broad topic? Guess who came up with that bullshit?) and also speaking on a panel about moderating online spaces.
Then on May 16 at Women in Secularism 3 in Alexandria, VA, I’ll be on two panels: “Online Activism” and “Intersectionality and Humanism.” If you need any motivation to get to the con before Friday night, there it is.
At some point from July 3-7 in Bloomington, MN, I’ll be on a few panels for CONvergence, but I’m not sure what they’ll be yet. From July 11-13 I’ll be at SSA East in Columbus, OH, talking about microaggressions and making secular groups more inclusive. And if North Texas Secular Con gets rescheduled for late July, I’ll be speaking at that somewhere in Texas. And there’s FtBCon on August 22-24.
I’ll be doing a fundraising campaign sometime within the next month so that I can actually pay for all this (those costs are rarely covered and when they are, they don’t include stuff like food). So look out for that.
Links:
1. Cate explains “white feminism”:
When I talk about “white feminism,” I’m talking about the feminism that misappropriates womanist thinkers like Audre Lorde to declare that keeping white women’s racism in check is “bashing.” I’m talking about the feminism that cheekily denounces “twitter feminism” as useless, without considering that twitter is the main medium through which less economically privileged women (usually women of colour) can put their feminism into practice and gain access to and engage with like-minded women. I’m talking about the feminism that publishes an article advocating for forced sterilization, completely disregarding the way in which forced sterilization was used as a tool of genocide against black and native women. I’m talking about the feminism that thought holding a writer’s retreat at a former slave plantation was a swell idea. I’m talking about the feminism that throws women of color under the bus in the quest for body diversity and acceptance. I’m talking about the feminism that thinks barging into a Maasai community and “breaking barriers” is feminist, disregarding the work that actual Maasai women are doing to help achieve equality on their own terms, and obliviously parading its class privilege along the way. I’m talking about the feminism that insists that “Muslim women need saving” and refuses to acknowledge that cultural differences mean different, culturally specific approaches to feminism and equality. I’m talking about the feminism that thinks not “leaning in” is the only thing standing between women and economic success. I’m talking about the feminism that defends The Onion when it calls a little black girl a “cunt”. I’m talking about the feminism that celebrates Tina Fey, Lily Allen and Lena Dunham, but tears down Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé and Rihanna. I’m talking about the feminism that pats itself on the back, but doesn’t apologize after supporting a known abuser of WoC feminists who confesses to his transgressions. I’m talking about the feminism that did all these things in the space of one year.
2. Scarleteen has this amazing sexual inventory to help you figure out what your boundaries are and share them with someone else. I’ve seen many of these types of lists, but this is my favorite because of the sheer scope of things it includes as part of a conversation about sex and intimacy that others might not: preferred pronouns and identifiers, comments about one’s body, triggers related to bodies and sex, various types of relationship arrangements, and sexual stuff involving phones and the internet.
3. Jay writes about the lie of the word “normal”:
Normal is a lie. It is a toxic lie, one that seeps beneath our skin and turns us against ourselves. Normal is why I grew up hating the color of my skin and the way it marked me out as different from my classmates. Normal is why I wanted to be a boy growing up, because boys got to do all the things I wished I was allowed to do. Normal is why my ex used to silence me every time the topic of my queerness arose in conversation with friends – he was ashamed to be dating someone non-heterosexual, someone perverted. Normal is why many Muslims think I’m too “western” and westerners think it’s weird that I don’t drink alcohol or eat bacon. Normal is the little voice whispering in your ear that whatever you are, whoever you are, you are an outsider and a freak and you will never be good enough.
Normal drives people to hate themselves.
4. Chally talks about how patriarchy encourages women to be uncertain of their feelings and opinions, and even of whether or not they “really” experienced boundary violations:
One of the things that gets me the most about patriarchal society is that women are made to be constantly watching out for our own protection, even while we are simultaneously taught to dismiss our opinions, insights, and instincts as wrong or insufficient.
5. Dr. Nerdlove discusses social awkwardness and how it’s used as an excuse by some men as a way to violate boundaries:
The pressure to give someone a second chance – that they were just being awkward and the woman should just relax her boundaries a little – is telling a woman that she doesn’t have a right to establish her limits or to control who she does or doesn’t talk to. It carries the message that the right of a maybe-awkward-maybe-creepy guy to talk to her is more important than her right to feel safe and secure. It means she’s not allowed to trust her instincts and instead should either magically intuit somebody’s intentions or just let the crowd override her decisions.
6. Mitchell explains the usefulness of being selective about who you engage with online:
By the same token, if I had a blog that was all about studying climate change, I would probably block climate change deniers. Blocking a particular climate change denier does, obviously, prevent me from being exposed to their input. However, I wouldn’t consider this a loss for two reasons: first, because their input isn’t new or novel — it isn’t just wrong, it’s redundant — and second, because it is trivially easy to look up the arguments and opinions of client change deniers anyway. If they ever were to come up with a new, interesting idea, it wouldn’t be hard to find.
Blocking those people would mean I had more time and energy to engage with people who have thoughtful, nuanced opinions about the topics under discussion. It absolutely does deprive me of access to those people’s opinions in the same way that not going on a date with that person who pleads “Just give me a chance!” would deprive me of the miniscule chance that they would turn out to be a good match, but ultimately it leaves me with more time to engage with ideas of value.
7. Lucy has a lot of useful advice for screening a therapist.
8. The Belle Jar Blog has a post about those shirts dads wear that have slogans threatening their daughters’ boyfriends:
Rape culture is the normalization and trivialization of rape and sexual assault. It’s a culture in which sexual violence is made to be both invisible and inevitable. It’s a culture that teaches us that male sexual violence is both normal and desirable. It also teaches us that men are not able to control their actions when they are aroused.
And that’s what this shirt is really saying, isn’t it? That a teenage boy will, given the chance, commit some kind of sexual violence against his girlfriend, and that the only solution to that violence is more violence, this time on the part of the father. This shirt assumes that the rape (or attempted rape) of the daughter is inevitable, and the only solution is to remove the boyfriend from the scene. This shirt says that the blame (sidebar – why the need for blame?) for any sex had by the teenage couple will be put squarely on the shoulders of the male partner. Why? Because our culture teaches us that men want sex more than women, that they can’t help being physically aggressive when it comes to sex, and finally that all of these toxic messages are just sexual norms and there’s nothing that we can do to combat them beyond matching violence with violence.
9. Lucia wrote this amazing post about being single:
I have learned, over the years, that my description of my rather persistent singleness is not neutral. The reception and interpretation of my lack of a romantic partner has called up some of the most interesting, misguided, or presumptive statements and unsolicited analyses of my psyche and my behavior. It has suggested to many that I may be too nervous to date, too preoccupied with my career, too picky about prospective partners, too conservative, too liable to pick “bad” matches, too this, too that. Funny how one’s personal life so quickly becomes open season fo armchair psychologists! And while these commentaries and assumptions can be only rather irritating at times, the banter of a nosy relative or well-meaning friend, I have recently noticed how awfully sinister, how awfully narrow-minded and rife with victim-blaming they can be.
What good things have you read/written lately?