10 August 10
Glorifying Domestic Violence, or Showing Domestic Violence in a New Light
This is the video with Eminem and Rhianna for the song “Love the Way It Burns” which demonstrates domestic violence. I’d avoided listening to the song for weeks. I have a love/hate relationship with Eminem. I enjoy a lot of his music, but then I hate some of it so much that it makes my stomach turn. I had read so many other blog posts about how other feminists online thought that this song and the video glorified Domestic Violence (DV). As someone who spent a good portion of my junior high years living attached to a DV shelter while my mother worked for it (after leaving an abusive relationship herself), I have a view on DV that hasn’t sat right with so much of what I’ve read, studied, learned about DV over the years.
I chalked up a lot of it class issues. Since so much of what I’ve read has been written by academics, I just assumed that because we’d been poor at the time, that’s why our experiences were different. I started reading the previously mentioned blog posts about how Eminem was taking advantage of Rhianna’s name and publicized abuse to make money, to glorify violent relationships, to further victimize women who are already being victimized. And it took me a while to have the courage to listen to the song or watch the video.
Then a few days ago when I saw it on Flip Flopping Joy, I figured I’d avoided it long enough and should probably watch it. And if you’ve read blog posts or articles or essays or editorials vilifying the video, I highly encourage you to read bfp’s words and to read the words of her commenters.
After reading her post, I felt that my conflicted feelings were safe in that space, I felt safe enough to comment on her site, whereas I didn’t and don’t feel safe commenting on the site of feminists who have complained about the song and video.
And then I read this post, guest-written, over at Pigtail Pals and as I read the words of Melissa D., I began to realize how I felt about this video. And how I am still conflicted, but hopeful after coming to this realization.
I think the vast majority of the people in a relationship that resembles the one we see about in this video, that we hear described in the song, DO NOT consider themselves in an abusive relationship. Whereas the number of people who have studied domestic violence, escaped an abusive relationship, watched a loved one suffer in an abusive relationship will see the abuse immediately and react to that with fury. Abuse should cause a fury reaction. And I think this is how the vast majority of the feminist blog-osphere is reacting, and I’m okay with that reaction, because I agree that abuse is wrong.
But I don’t think this song and this video glorifies abuse. Not entirely at least. Here’s what we know about Rhianna’s abusive relationship with Chris Brown. They had an argument. He says she slapped him. Whether you wanted to or not, you likely saw the images of Rhianna’s bruised and bloody face after he hit her. She didn’t leave him at first. And then she did.
It took the realization that, as a role model, her decisions could influence other victims of domestic abuse to return to their abusers to finally persuade her to stay away from Brown, she told Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America” Thursday.
Those are the bare and simplified facts. And you know what? I bet Rhianna and Chris didn’t think they were in an abusive relationship. I bet their relationship mirrored that of the couple in the video. I bet it just seemed scary, intense, passionate, overwhelming, heart-breaking, needy, and at times violent. But I don’t think Rhianna ever felt like a victim of domestic violence until after the publicity around the incident that caused her to finally leave him. I doubt it was the first time he’d hit her. And I doubt it was the first time she’d slapped him. But that doesn’t keep it from being abusive, nor does it keep it from being wrong, nor does it keep it from causing widespread fury that the abuse occurred.
But, her leaving Chris and her talking about it publicly was probably watched by a lot of people who never watch Domestic Violence PSA’s or Lifetime movies about abuse, or read about patriarchal underlying causes. I bet there are a lot of women who saw Rhianna leave Chris and were rooting her on. And I bet, and I hope that many of those women who rooted Rhianna on for leaving Chris watch this video, hear this song, and see their relationship mirrored in this video and recognize that passion for the abuse that it is.
I see that recognition in the commenters at Flip Flopping Joy and I see that pattern in the words of Melissa D. And, as I think about it, I see and have seen this pattern in other relationships I’ve known about. Most of which involved couples who were very middle-class, who came from “good” backgrounds. I think of the friend who said she wished her boyfriend WOULD hit her, cause then she could justify leaving him. But because he only broke things when he was angry, she found herself continuing to go back to him, even though he threatened to hit her regularly. I think of the couple where he cheated and she ignored it until she couldn’t and then she attacked him and he took it and it created a pattern where he would abuse her trust, abuse her emotionally, abuse her mentally until she would blow up and attack him physically. And you know what both of these women said when we talked about this? “If it wasn’t for how amazing things are when we make up, I might be tempted to leave.”
But despite this hope, I still feel conflicted. I still believe that low self-esteem for all children (not just girls, because I firmly believe that boys and men who bully women suffer from very low self-esteem) makes abuse more common, especially abuse within romantic relationships. And I fear that the young men who idolize Eminem, who feel that he speaks for them and speaks to them, will see this video and feel their relationship style, their anger, their rage is justified. So while I don’t think this video or song glorifies Domestic Violence, nor glorifies abusive relationships, and while I hope that young women will see themselves reflected in Rhianna, I fear that young men will see themselves reflected in Eminem and cheer while continuing these patterns.
06 July 10
Teen Violence More Common Than Pregnancy
Teenage girls are more likely to suffer from dating violence than to become pregnant or be injured in a traffic accident.
This is something that I long suspected to be true, long suspected as in it seemed more common when I was a teenager than the media reported. I heard story after story about teenage pregnancy and how sex education wasn’t working, and how birth control availability was the problem, and how things were really better in the ’50s and we needed to go back to those days. (Of course, I didn’t hear about The Girls That Went Away until college or after and we don’t hear much about this side-effect of the shaming of pregnant women that took place before the 70s.)
But one thing the article mentions, and is something to keep in mind for most places, but reporting is controlled at a county level, not a state level. And counties vary on what they report about and how they react to domestic violence. Very few counties have domestic violence agencies within them, and counties that are more “old skool” are less likely to provide orders of protection or report domestic violence. I’m sure things have changed considerably since the mid-80’s when I was last involved with a DV agency.
And the other thing to consider is that this report only cases where dating violence got so bad that it required an order of protection, and pregnancies that didn’t result in miscarriage. I’m sure both of those numbers would affect the report results. And from what I knew in high school, the vast majority of girls who were “abused” by their boyfriends didn’t call it that, the same way that I think most women who are abused don’t call it that. They would say that their boyfriend was “really passionate when he was angry”, or that he “often did things he regretted”, or that he “just had a horrible temper sometimes.”
But it’s interesting. And it’s another sign that the pro-life movement is really just anti-abortion rights, and not pro-life, or they’d be concerned about what was happening to these children. Because even though teenagers get in relationships that turn violent, they’re still legally children and should receive all the protections that the law provides them.
04 May 10
Sewing the dominant paradigm
There are many different types of feminists. Eco-feminists, womanists, trans-feminists, latina-feminists, academic-feminists, and so many more. There are just as many types of crafters. Knitters, sewers, quilters, beaders, etc. I don’t think this statement would be disagreed on by anyone who is a feminist or a crafter.
There are a number of different ways that feminists express their feminist ideals. There are feminists like Gloria Steinem who make a career out of writing books, being a professional speaker/fundraiser. There are feminists like Gloria Feldt who now also write books but who worked their way up through one or various non-profit organizations to lead them. There are feminists like Nancy Pelosi who use a feminist platform to get them elected to highly influential political positions. There are feminists like Sonia Sotomayor who work diligently to get appointed to highly influential judicial positions. There are feminists like Meg Whitman who get hired to turn a smallish company named eBay with 30 employees into a multi-million-dollar corporation with worldwide influence. There are many, many more women like them.
These are all women who deserve to be acknowledged for their success, for the effect they have had on the world at large, and for the trailblazing they’ve done to make it easier for other women to follow in their footsteps. I support them all and recognize how small that list above really is. But I recognize how if we focus on these women, then we end up ignoring the women like Samhita Mukhopadhyay who edit websites that are unable to support themselves, their other editors, and all of their writers with the advertising they receive, but who have exponential effects among their peer-groups and are recognized by feminism at large for continuing to push for things like economic independence and reproductive rights. And it also doesn’t take into account women like Marianne Schnall who run websites like Feminist.com while supporting themselves by writing about celebrities and running an environmental directory of eco-friendly products and services like EcoMail.com. But even though she doesn’t have a necessarily feminist income-stream, few feminists would criticize her as hurting feminism, or hindering economic independence and reproductive rights of other women. They, we, recognize that she is using her skills and her tools to further the abilities of individual women to support themselves as well as assisting feminists as a group.
So, imagine my surprise, when I read an article on BigThink.com by Lindsay Beyerstein titled “Chickens, Cross-Stitch, Burlesque and Women’s Liberation. She essentially says in this article that there are many women who decide to create a small garden, raise a few chickens, perform in burlesque troupes, or create craft and these women may be feeling better about themselves because of these actions, but these actions are not only not advancing any feminist ideals, they’re keeping women from advancing feminism.
Embracing the feminine and/or the farm isn’t going to unseat male dominance. We can’t allow the subjective psychological work to distract us from more pressing objective issues like equal pay and reproductive rights. That said, objective and subjective liberation are mutually reinforcing. When you feel good about yourself, you’re more likely to insist that other people treat you with the respect you deserve.
And there was a little bit of an exchange on Twitter where a few articles about this topic were mentioned. This December, 2009 article on The New York Times website interviews many women who are trying to support themselves via Etsy.com. And Beyerstein points out that “The subject of this story works >13hrs a day in the domestic equivalent of a piecework sweat shop.” [quote via Twitter] And she’s right. The subject of the article does work far more than a 40-hour work week to support herself. And that isn’t a sustainable lifestyle. However, she ignores mention of Caroline Colom Vasquez of Paloma’s Nest who made $120,000 in 2008 and around $250,000 in 2009 after she hired three employees because she and her husband could no longer manage the business on their own. This doesn’t mean that this woman is going to take over the world, but her business is supporting her family, and employing 3 other people as well. That seems like a pretty feminist action to me. And it seems like it goes against what Beyerstein claims. In this case, Vasquez using her creativity and business sense means she is financially independent and making a reasonable living in the process. Vasquez is benefiting from the work of our feminist fore-mothers who worked to make it possible for us to open a business in our name, navigate local bureacracy so we could open a bank account or a credit card in our own names. Whether Vasquez considers herself a feminist is moot, because she has achieved the great American dream and become a self-supporting entrepreneur.
So I dare Beyerstein any other feminist who makes their living as a feminist spokesperson or writer to say that that the “subjective psychological work” Vasquez and the creative women like her do, distracts them from issues like equal pay or reproductive justice. Not only does this statement assume that if a woman is trying to start, run, or grow a business based on handmade items, she isn’t doing anything else related to feminism, it assumes that she is working incredibly hard in a way that grows patriarchy instead of taking away from the effects of patriarchy.
This is incredibly insulting to the many women who do run their own crafts-related business. It essentially tells them that even though they’ve been running their business successfully for a short time, their economic impact on the world is unimportant. I bet their families would beg to differ that their economic impact doesn’t matter. I bet the families of their employees would beg to differ. I bet the vendors they procure their raw materials from would beg to differ. These women are creating something physical that does have an impact on the market at large.
A pretty significant one, which is why groups like the Craft and Hobby Association are starting to freak out. There are many women creating craft supplies and selling them on Etsy. These independent makers of craft supplies are taking a chunk of income from the companies that stock shelves at Michael’s and HobbyLobby and Wal-Mart. CHA is finally trying to court the independent DIY-style crafter as customers. Kathy Cane-Murillo and Vickie Howell are great examples of this. Cane-Murillo’s glittery line of craft supplies came out last year to quite a bit of online fanfare. She and her husband support their family with their craft and their art. Kathy’s success (over a decade of it, in effect) would make her sort of the crafty version of Gloria Steinem. Howell hosted a DIY Network knitting show, has written or edited dozens of knitting books, has designed a line of yarn, and continues to make her living as a crafter, all while toting her cute infant with her. But yet, we’re expected to believe Beyerstein when she says “women are not going to upset the patriarchy by piling on more labor-intensive chores”. I have a hard time believing that Cane-Murillo or Howell would consider their craft business a “labor-intensive chore”. I have no doubt that some of the tasks they need to complete are “chore-like”, and I have no doubt that they would like to work less and earn more. But I don’t think either one of them would give up their “jobs” as self-supported artists/crafters so they could take a more respectable job as one of the few women employed at an insurance or law office. Neither one of them are rich. But they’re getting by, and the work they do enables them to support themselves while maintaining a quality of life and family that is important to them.
Now I full admit that not every crafter is, or has the potential to be, a Vasquez or a Cane-Murillo, nor does every crafter have the ability to support themselves modestly. But I think it is unfair to tell them that they are hindering reproductive rights access or equity pay action by spending their time hand-making items. Just like I would never tell the average feminist blogger who makes very little or no money writing feminist analysis of not contributing to a larger feminist fight.
But this is exactly what I think many feminists do when it comes to craft. They see a woman spending her time hand-making items and selling them (or giving them away) and they see this as anti-feminist or non-feminist actions. And this is ultimately what I have a problem with. I firmly believe that spending time creating is inherently a feminist action. Here is why. Every moment that we spend creating something (whether it is a blog post or a sweater) is time that we are not consumers. Every moment that we are not consumers we are fighting the patriarchy. Now there are costs involved with making a sweater. Yarn isn’t free. But (and here is the aspect that I think many feminists are ignorant about) buying yarn CAN be a feminist action, whether the crafter plans on selling the final product or not.
How can purchasing yarn be a feminist action? There are a variety of ways. If a knitter buys yarn from a local yarn store (or LYS in the online crafter vernacular), they’re most likely buying yarn from an independent store that is very likely owned and run and employs women. They could be buying directly from the yarn producer, especially if that yarn producer is someone like Vera Videnovich of Videnovich Farms. She not only fully supports herself with what she makes on her farm, she does so organically and with eco-friendly processes. She grows flowers and vegetation and turns them into dye. She raises sheep, shears them, spins the yarn, and dyes it. She sells her work on Etsy, at farmers’ markets, on her own website, at craft shows, and more. A crafter could even purchase a sweater from a thrift store or yard sale, unravel it, wash it, and turn it back into fresh yarn ready for another project. Recycling and reusing are eco-feminist responses. There are literally hundreds of companies in other countries that take yarn produced by women in cottage industries and sell it to American crafters. Financially supporting women in other countries by supporting their work is feminist, right?
If you look at many of the loans requests on Kiva you’ll see how many are requests so women can purchase things like sewing machines and spinning wheels. Many feminists love this idea of micro-loans. Organizations like CARE have received huge successes offering micro-loans in the countries they work in. Feminists in America tout their success and love saying what a marked effect these women have had on the lives of their families and their communities. Why can’t we get that same level of respect here in the United States? Why can’t American women save their families and their communities with their own feminized hands?
And I fully admit that I take the words of every feminist who criticizes crafters as being un-feminist or engaging in un-feminist activities personally. I care deeply and significantly about feminism and support many feminist organizations. Because I work a full-time day job in a nearby suburb of Chicago, I grew frustrated because I couldn’t attend after work or lunchtime rallies in downtown Chicago. I could easily petition and write letters to my state and US Congress and did so. I took great care in researching judges and water reclamation district applicants to determine who I should vote for. But that didn’t feel like enough.
I realized that I missed making things with my hands. I enjoy the computer-based work I do, but I like seeing tangible results of my work. My job doesn’t give me that outlet, and my feminist actions didn’t give me that outlet. Even when I wrote a particularly scathing or witty feminist-related blog post that got linked by several people, I didn’t feel fulfilled. Perhaps writing something that could appear in print would have helped, but I didn’t think so. I wanted to create with my hands. And I began doing so and I realized how much happier it made me. And then I realized how fortunate I was to have a full-time job that supported me and provided me with spare time to pursue my feminist whims and to craft. Through the confluence of many things I decided to start a small business. And since I had the security of knowing that even if my small business never made a profit (and it honestly has never made a profit) I could keep it up as long as I felt committed to it, I decided to find a way that my need to craft could intersect with my love of feminist organizations.
I began by making bags that I solely donated to women’s organizations. And then a few people asked me to sell them a copy of a bag I’d donated and because I felt weird taking the money from friends and friends of friends I donated it to organizations I supported emotionally and mentally and politically. And that became the basis for my business. While I would like to make a profit, I’m blessed to not have to. I’m blessed to be able to give about 30% of the proceeds of my business to non-profit organizations. The rest pays to run the business. I’ve never taken money out of Poise.cc for anything that isn’t business or non-profit related. I continue to make bags and donate them and would guess that I give away just as many bags as I sell.
Would I help organizations like the Chicago Abortion Fund if I stopped spending any time crafting and instead spent my time helping them raise funds, write grants, and answer email? Undoubtedly. But at what personal cost? I know myself well enough to know that I would be crushed by every email from a woman that the organization couldn’t help, or they couldn’t help more. I could instead spend my time writing article after article and shopping them around to publications hoping they’d pay me $10 or $25 to print it. But that doesn’t seem more feminist to me.
So, dear feminists who think that craft is un-feminist, anti-feminist, or not feminist enough, stop criticizing something you don’t understand. Learn a little more about the different ways that an entire group of people are feminist before you criticize us and what we do. Even if every crafter isn’t activist-minded, even if they just like pretty soft things, they’re part of a marketplace that has ripple effects into large groups of society. The DIY Craft Movement has pushed the belief that the corporate marketplace does not get to tell us what is fashionable, what is acceptable, what is best for us.
The DIY Craft Movement has pushed the belief that we each get to decide what is fashionable, what is acceptable, what is best for each of us. We don’t need to rely on Corporations in America to create what we need, what we want, what we would like to have. There is a very good chance that we have a neighbor, or a friend, or a friend-of-a-friend who knows someone that can make anything we need to purchase. So my selling a few dozen handmade bags every years isn’t going to have a huge impact on the bottom line of Target. But it does have a small impact on the feminist organizations I’m able to donate money to. It does have a consciousness-raising effect on the women who purchase a bag from me and realize that my bags will last significantly longer than similarly-priced bags they could buy at a chain store. After having more than a dozen suppliers of various materials close their doors because American-based manufacturing is scarce, I know that having Americans buy goods manufactured in America has an effect on more than the DIY Craft Movement community. I’m thrilled by the personal attention I get from suppliers. I’m delighted to see the faces of their employees on their websites. I delight in reading about the family-friendly environments they create. And I love knowing that every order for strapping, or fabric, or interfacing or thread is going to keep another person whose I know, in business.
So hearing that fellow feminists, women whose writing I read and admire, think that I’m wasting my time angers and hurts me. I’m doing neither. I’m supporting my beliefs with my actions. I’m supporting American men and women with my purchases so they can continue to support their families. I’m supporting organizations who are making it possible for more women to create lives where they are able to use their skills to advance their beliefs and goals. I’m not hurting pay equity. I’m sure as hell not hurting reproductive rights. But I am hurting.
Instead of criticizing women like ourselves, how about you include us in discussions about entrepreneurial activities, how about you support our small businesses (even via Etsy) instead of turning to chain-stores and department stores to fill your everyday needs, how about you realize that we are aware of how sexist beliefs affect us. We know that the vast majority of people who receive loans through the Small Business Administration are men instead of women. But we also know that female-owned small businesses are more successful, on average than male-owned small businesses. We also know that the vast majority of small businesses are owned by women. We’re not all women with spare time who like to make things and hope that one day it will magically turn us into self-supporting tycoons. Many of us are women who want financial success of our own choosing, our own doing, but not at the risk of damaging our mental health, physical well-being, or our morals.
Comment [6]
22 April 10
I made it to the SXSW official website
Many, many, many thanks to Hugh Forrest and the multitudes of other people who help make SXSW Interactive a great event every year. And I’m especially grateful to them for posting the condensed version of my 15 minute talk on their main website.
I’ve criticized SXSWi for not being as diverse as it could be in previous years and I’m grateful to have the ability to say that not only do I feel that they have taken the criticism seriously and they’ve made some serious alterations to their policies to make the conference more diverse, but I support the efforts that they’ve made to stress that panels NEED to be inclusive and diverse to the people who have had panels chosen.
And after seeing my video, Hugh emailed me to say that they’ll be including a portion of what I say about making panels diverse in the materials for next year’s conference. Real change CAN happen, but we have to speak up and we have to offer solutions. Not every conference organizer cares about diversity, so all the criticism in the world won’t change that. Many thanks to SXSWi for being willing to continue to find solutions to this problem.
And I’ve got some ideas kicking around for next year. I thank Glenda for having faith in me this year. And I feel like I need to continue to push myself in this direction. Stay tuned.
20 April 10
We know education is important
We know that. We know that having access to knowledge should help you. We know that having the ability to access the information you need can change your life. But not everyone does. And not everyone has the ability to use that information, that knowledge, that education to affect their lives.
Watch this video that purchase a bag to help me make even greater donations to Harpswell Foundation.
07 April 10
My history with feminist media
I bought my first subscription to Ms. Magazine when I was 22. It was $35 and that was almost my entire monthly budget for food. I had three jobs, was going to school full-time, and was maintaining my 3.0 average. My life is lazy now in comparison. But I truly felt like Ms. Magazine was The Magazine that would help me learn all of the things I’d never bothered to learn. Which is truly how I felt. The slightly more suspicious me 16 years later realizes that I wasn’t really given an organized opportunity to miss the things that I felt like I’d not bothered to learn, but that’s beside the point.
I kept that subscription for 3 years even though it felt like a financial hardship it felt important to support the magazine that was documenting and making it possible to find all the information I felt that I needed. When I moved to Chicago and money became tight and I felt bitter, I canceled it for a few years. I renewed in 2000 and felt good about it.
In June of 1996 I lived in Alamogordo, New Mexico for a summer. I shouldn’t have been there. It was a huge mistake to move there, to move to be there with the person who was living there. I was depressed and miserable and so aware that I was in the wrong place that I couldn’t believe I was actually there. And then I wandered into a Border’s or Barnes and Noble (really, is there a difference between them?) and amidst the Cosmopolitan and Redbook magazines was a magazine that was printed on black and white newsprint with a color cover named Bust magazine. I was blown A-way! I read the magazine cover to cover for weeks on end. It saved my sanity. It made me feel less crazy that I was the “crazy chick” in a community of very conservative military folks. What felt like a homework assignment with Ms. came naturally with Bust. And it not only kept my sanity, but it helped me start to piece together knowledge from my women’s studies classes with the information I was gathering from reading Ms. and with the popular culture that was leaking in through all of the edges.
Then in 2001 or 2002, my friend Veronica suggested I pick up this magazine named Bitch. I’d grown bored with Bust, began to feel like it hadn’t aged with me, or that I’d grown old while it remained fresh and full of life and ready to teach younger women how to embrace the term feminist while still remaining their happy lifestyle full of feminist fun and music. And Bitch was like what I missed about college, the intellect and discussion and opportunity to learn, without the pedantic papers and preachy professors. I liked Bitch, but it still seemed so distant. But shortly thereafter I found out about Ms. Musings (also most likely from Veronica) and I became a huge fan. A huge giggly OMG!!1!! Ms. fan. It was great. All the information that didn’t make it into print made it onto the website. I read the site religiously, often hitting refresh several times a day, faster than Christine C. could update.
And then, much too early, Ms. pulled the plug on the blog. I protested by canceling my subscription. And I began to switch over to just reading Feministe.us and I read Feministing a little while later and I read Shakespeare’s Sister and relied on Veronica to keep me up to date. I continue to subscribe to and donate to Bitch magazine and i keep meaning to get a subscription to Bust and Ms. again, just because I can and should. And I adore what their mission is and I support them, but I’m not as much of a giggly fan as I used to be.
And I wondered if it was because I was getting older and maybe just wasn’t prone to being inspired and awed as easily as I was. And I’m sure that is all a part of it. But tonight I had dinner with a woman who has had a career creating feminist cartoons. And at 70+ she is looking to embrace technology to help her keep growing her business and supporting herself. And I love her message and her witty sensibility and her sense of fun and joie de vivre. And at her age, instead of resting on her laurels and lecturing people younger than her about how we don’t know how good we have it, she’s looking to learn and grow and expand.
And that is amazing. That is what floored me. And I think that is what has kept me from becoming a fan girl about these feminist publications that exist now. They’re all smart, they’re all doing great things, they’re all fighting the good fight, but they’re all a little full of themselves and of their message. And I think this may be a simplistic statement. But I think a woman, like the woman I met tonight, is what the current feminist wave—the Y Feminists—is missing. Not the knowledge, but the rootedness, the humility, the awareness that no matter what we know, we all have more to learn. We don’t know it all, and whether it is what came before us or what is coming up on us, we have more to learn and more to give and more to grow.
25 March 10
Anita Borg for Ada Lovelace Day
I’m a day late, but I want to point you to a woman in technology who I found out about recently and who I find inspiring, even though she has passed away. And it helps me make a point that I’d like to point out.
Anita Borg passed away a few years ago, but in 1987 she created an electronic mailing list network for women in tech called Systers (get it? systems + sisters = Systers). It is still going strong, but I’d like to reiterate that in 1987 email existed. Women and men were using email to connect with each other. They were connecting with people they’d never met in person using technology. They were developing relationships that were helping them continue their professional relationships, navigate the female-unfriendly atmosphere of their profession, gain specific technical skills, share trouble-shooting information, and connect with each other as people. Ms. Borg significantly impacted the lives of women who have gone on to mentor tens of thousands of women who are in my generation and the generation under me, just because she figured out that getting women to talk to each other (even though they didn’t know each other) was beneficial.
I’ve read recently in a couple of places about how social networking is a very new field, that social networks have only existed for the last few years. And I disagree with that. Blogs, which started about 10 years ago, were a social network. And before that there were chat rooms, and before that you had electronic mailing lists and UseNet groups and so much more. It may have become mainstream in the last few years to use online tools to form social networks, but they’ve existed for decades and their power shouldn’t be discounted just because you couldn’t get updates via your mobile device. Those relationships were real. Those relationships were part of a social network. It’s just the term social network that is new.
20 March 10
More ways that online tech is fighting sexism
and making people’s lives safer.
Someone had asked where they could find more things online to demonstrate ways that social media and social tech were fighting sexism, making people’s lives safer, utilizing feminist connections, etc.
I didn’t have a good source to give her (and if anyone has a good source that focuses on this, I’d love to know what it is), but I did want to take this opportunity to put up a few other things that I had to cut out of my talk because there simply wasn’t enough time. The time constraint, and not the quality of these items, was what resulted in them being left out.
The first one:
Safe2Pee.org
This site is now in Beta and is much better designed than it was when I first heard about it almost a year ago. Just click on the name of the city and you’ll get a Google map showing you where all of the businesses are that have gender neutral bathrooms.
Now why is this necessary? If you’re a trans person, or even just gender-queer, you may find yourself getting harrassed if you go into what someone perceives as being the wrong bathroom. Having gender-neutral bathrooms means that you don’t have to pick a bathroom that calls out what you think your gender is, while giving someone else the chance to disagree with you. Being able to safely perform the most common of bodily function is a good thing.
But it’s not just a place where you can go to find bathrooms, it’s also got the ability for you to add bathrooms to the map. It’s a fairly simple form that anyone can enter information into. When I first found out about this map, I sent it to a genderqueer friend who had moved out of Chicago and into an area that was less than accepting. I thought it would be a good way for him to explore his surroundings a bit more safely. He thanked me. But once I realized that I could add locations to it, I realized that this was a great way for me, as an ally, to add information to a tool that could be used by my friend and others. This tool doesn’t require me to out myself as an ally or claim anything publicly. So even though I’d like to see every ally state their affiliation loudly and proudly, I understand that not everyone is ready for that confrontation.
Hollaback NYC
If you’re looking for a brief synopsis of who/how Hollaback got created, what achievements they’ve had, and want background as to why an iPhone app would help fight street harassment, then you’ll want to read this article. I touched on this group briefly since I’d figured most people had heard of them and wanted to focus more on ECWR. But I want to point out that a survey done in 2008 showed that 62 percent of women on the subway in NYC had been harrassed. Compare that with the 85% of Egyptian women, and you’ll realize that NYC isn’t that much safer than Egypt, a country where women can’t even hold a judiciary position.
More to come, but here’s a few that I hope you like.
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