Posts tagged important
TV taught me how to feel Now real life has no appeal
According to SlutWalk’s website, the event is slated to be reproduced in Argentina sometime this year. It’s the country I was born and raised in, among Spanish, Guaraní and Portuguese speakers – and I can assure you that the word “slut” is not used by anyone there. This is not what we need. I do not want white English-speaking Global North women telling Spanish-speaking Global South women to “reclaim” a word that is foreign to our own vocabulary. To do so would be hegemonic, and would illustrate the ways in which Global North “feminists” have become a tool of cultural imperialism. I will be going back home in about a month, and want to do so without feeling the power of white women bearing down on me from 6,000 miles away. We’ve got our own issues to deal with in South America; we do not need to become poster children to try to make you feel better about yours.
http://tothecurb.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/slutwalk-a-stroll-through-white-supremacy/
Thank you to http://malheureuxmarxist.tumblr.com for this wonderful post too
(via dmmca)
YES LAWD! (I need GIFs to illustrate this Alleluia moment right here). I said more or less the same thing about Hollaback being uncritically deployed in Argentina and one of the people involved with the project got pretty upset with me. I am really peeved by hegemonic frameworks being implemented. Moreover, about slut walk, here’s another nugget: in Argentina, 99% of the most mainstream feminism is against sex work. Sex workers are referred to as “putas”. Slut walk has been translated as “La Marcha de las Putas” and the same women who are involved in the organization of slut walks are the ones lobbying for the criminalization of sex work. Coherence, missing it entirely…
(via redlightpolitics)
(via redlightpolitics)
When journalists go to work in a country where they do not understand the language or the culture, they typically make use of the invaluable services of fixer interpreters, whose impact on global public opinion is invariably underestimated. They are the ones who, while remaining largely invisible, offer clear guidance as to how conflicts should be interpreted, as well as which sources should be chosen and which words used.
Myth of Norway’s lost innocence | Presseurop (English)
From the article, well worth revisiting on the first anniversary of the massacre perpetrated by Anders Breivik:
When Norway, which is a country that rarely makes headlines, became the theatre of a global event, the international press adopted the following method: world renowned writers like Jan Kjærstad, Anne Holt and Jostein Gaarder were drafted in to serve as cultural interpreters within the framework of interviews, while Jo Nesbø was invited to write an article which was published in the major newspapers of several continents.[…]
He [Martin Sandbu, a Norwegian economics columnist] continued: “There is a widespread perception, for instance, that Nordic countries are more tolerant of immigrants than others in northern Europe. Yet their governments may simply have been better at camouflaging hostility.” In short, what was destroyed on 22 July, 2011, was perhaps not paradise, but simply a mirror that we had created for ourselves.
Also, eerily appropriate vis a vis my questions regarding media editors as a ruling class earlier today.
(via redlightpolitics)
Consent
I believe I’ve seen a comprehensive description of consent once before. Figured I’d contribute as it’s a subject that bears repeating.
Consent is:
- Non-coercive: If you’re cojoling, threatening or otherwise trying to “convince” someone to engage in a sexual act with you, you are breaking consent. If you asked 16 times and got 15 No’s and 1 Yes, you still did not adequately obtain consent. Also, you’re a weak individual.
- Not fixed: What I mean by this is you shouldn’t take for granted that after asking once for consent that you now have consent forever. It’s not like landing a gig as a Supreme Court judge. You don’t have consent for life. It should be continuously negotiated.
- Dynamic: Related to the above note, consent for one act does not necessitate consent for all acts. Consent is not an EZ Pass. It should be re-addressed constantly for different acts.
- Conscious: Yeah, I want to believe I don’t have to explain this one. Bad enough I had to list it. But ok, yes, an inebriated/asleep/passed out or otherwise not fully coherent person cannot consent. There, you can’t say no one ever told you.
- Unambiguous/Explicit: Assume all of the following to mean “no.” — “Maybe,” “I’m not sure,” “Not yet,” “Kinda,” “Wait a minute,” …I could go on.
- Not contingent upon sexual interest nor sexual arousal: We know. Blue balls are a motherfucker. Still no excuse. Neither your NOR the expressed/implied interest of any potential partners is an invitation to any act. Also, neither your nor the (assumed) arousal of anyone you might want to have sex with is an invitation. Yes, someone might be aroused and still not want to fuck. Crazy times. I know.
- Not compensatory: Yeah, that dinner and a movie were nice. Still not an invitation to fuck. And if you thought it was, you’re a world class asshole.
- Not something that requires a qualifier: No one needs to explain why they are not granting you consent. No is enough.
(via fuckyeahgirlcrush)
The London riots.
Again, events are multifaceted, cultural and racial groups are not monolithic, and many things about a situation can be true at the same time. Reductionism is dangerous. Simplicity is dangerous. There are no easy, one line answers. They don’t exist, because life isn’t like that.
The following ideas do not contradict each other.
1. There are real socio-economic and political reasons for why this riot occurred. Urban violence committed by youth and marginalized people of color does not happen in a vacuum. When you neglect a community for so long, when you treat its residents as criminals-by-default who must then prove themselves to be citizens, when you treat these communities as problem areas to be hemmed in and monitored, instead of nurtured, when tax money goes to law enforcement, not schools and development — this is what happens.
Do NOT believe what the law enforcement or the media has to say about this. The institutions of power have a vested interest in protecting the status quo, which is the continued existence of the police state in poor communities of color in London, and in similar cities across the Western world. The rioters are not individual hooligans taking advantage of a bad situation. This is not an argument for more police control, for taking away social spending, or longer prison sentences.
The official reaction to these riots confirms what activists from these communities have been saying for years; poor kids of color are either a) irrelevant to mainstream society, or if they are finally noticed are b) only seen as criminals. There’s very little opportunity for poor youth to be seen as the nuanced, complicated, diverse beings that they are. That’s intentional. The status quo is reinforced every time minority youth are seen as a terrifying, brainless monolith. That is what the mainstream media is going to try to do to these kids. Do not let them.
2. Its silly to pretend that all of this violence is directed, focused, and political in intent. A powderkeg of repressed anger and energy has exploded, and London is feeling the consequence of that. It doesn’t mean London deserves the violence, or that the rioters are correct in their actions. The rioters are not innocents, fighting back the only way they can against a corrupt police state. They are culpable. Their behavior cannot be excused by their political intentions; political violence cannot be purified or sanctified or reduced into something palatable and easily digestible by an ideology. Political violence is still violence, the same old beast we’ve engaged with for millions of years. Nothing changes that.
You run over me, doesn’t matter how oppressed you are. You still ran over me. I’m still dead. There are a lot of people, innocent people, who are going to lose their lives, their livelihoods, and their homes. People who we know are in danger.
Don’t you dare try to paper over that.
(Source: anedumacationisnomore, via quibbler)
