Here is some stuff in the news today!
[Content Note: Racism; misogyny] Emi Koyama talks to Sarah Mirk at Bitch about silencing and male feminists.
RIP Elmore Leonard.
Congratulations to New Zealand, whose shiny new same-sex marriage law took effect yesterday!
[CN: Racism] Republican Maine Governor Paul LePage says President Obama hates white people. Which is the part getting a lot of attention, but he reportedly also waxed philosophical about "how Obama could have been the best president ever if he had highlighted his biracial heritage." Which is such a terrific (by which I mean terrible) observation! Our first black president would be THE BEST if only he reminded us constantly that he wasn't totally black! Also? I am pretty sure that the President has mentioned being biracial. I'm just saying.
US Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia advocates mob rule. Basically. We really need to revisit that whole "lifetime appointment" thing, y'all.
Speaking of our totes awesome Supreme Court, the Obama administration is petitioning them to please rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless searches of cell phones, because, according to them, "a cellphone is no different than any other object a suspect might be carrying." Ha ha WHUT. Sure. Welcome to America 2.0, everyone!
Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, who have been partners for 42 years, may get married, now that they can.
The Obamas have a new dog named Sunny, and she is very cute!
In case you were wondering what the perfect way to melt cheese on toast is, science has figured it out for you! OBJECTIVELY.
J.J. Abrams has released a mysterious new teaser trailer for a mysterious new project. The only thing we know for sure is that it's about a dude! (Phew!) I am, as I think is WELL DOCUMENTED, a J.J. Abrams fan, but I have to be honest that he hasn't done anything that has made me VERY EXCITED for a long time, and I'm not getting the feeling that this project will break my Wev Streak, but I hope that I'm wrong!
In The News
Today in Reproductive Rights in the US
[Content Note: Hostility to agency.]
Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress: Women Are Increasingly Being Forced to Cross State Lines to Get an Abortion.
"There are just larger hurdles to tackle in order to be able to gain access," [Diane Silas, the administrator for Hagerstown Reproductive Health Services in Maryland] explained. "As long as there [are clinics], you could make the argument that there is access, but the question is, how Herculean of an effort does one have to put forth in order to gain that access?"There is more, much more, at the link.
Over the past several years, anti-choice lawmakers have attempted to ensure that women must indeed put forth that type of Herculean effort to exercise their reproductive rights. Since 2011, states have enacted record-breaking numbers of new abortion restrictions. The state-level laws are designed to make women drive farther to get to a clinic, require women to make multiple trips to a clinic, force women to pay higher prices for abortion, and ultimately convince women that ending a pregnancy isn't in their best interest.
...Texas recently enacted harsh restrictions on abortion providers that will force 90 percent of the state's clinics to shut down; in response, the Dallas Observer published a tongue-and-cheek "travel guide" for women in the state who may need to go elsewhere to obtain reproductive care. But the outlook is bleak. "When we look at the states surrounding Texas — you know, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana — there are not that many providers in any of them," Elizabeth Nash, the state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, pointed out. Reproductive rights activists actually suspect that Texas women will cross the border into Mexico to obtain abortion-inducing drugs on the black market.
Similar situations are unfolding in other states. ...Abortion access in many red states may now be worse than it was in the 1960s, before the procedure was legalized under Roe v. Wade.
I don't know if I will ever find the words to fully express my feelings about my particular (though hardly unique) trajectory of activism around this issue: Of sending up flags for nearly a decade that Roe was being hollowed out on the state level; of being incessantly berated during the 2008 primary and election by male progressives every time I raised even the most modest concern about President Obama's commitment to defending reproductive rights; of being told, over and over, by men who only care about Roe as a bargaining chip, and not as a fundamental right of women et. al., that if I don't vote for Democrats, I am anti-choice; of pointing to anti-choicers' naked strategy of rendering Roe an empty statute; of begging for men's involvement in the reproductive rights struggle beyond hectoring female activists who question Democratic politicians' interest in Roe beyond its use as a political football; of petitioning the President to use his bully pulpit to condemn a national onslaught in state legislatures against access to abortion; of watching our rights slip away, and knowing that, even now, there are progressive men waiting to wield Roe against me like a weapon at any hint of a suggestion I might use my vote (mine) in some way other than on behalf of a Democratic Party whose national candidates promise to protect Roe while maintaining steadfast silence as it is gutted, because people who will never vote for them anyway will object if they say they word "abortion" aloud.
I am exhausted of this fight, from every direction. I am burned out like a twice-used match. I am tired of being told that this is a game by people whose privilege insulates them from the harm every lost inch yields. I am tired of fighting with people who say that women who live in red states deserve what we get. I am tired of shouting, while my President keeps quiet. I am tired of fearing what will happen to me if I become pregnant. I am so tired.
Filner
[Content Note: Sexual harassment.]
Democratic San Diego Mayor Bob Filner has now been accused of sexual harassment and/or assault by 16 women. And yet he is still refusing to resign.
Embattled San Diego Mayor Bob Filner is expected to be back at work on Tuesday even as efforts to oust him from office seemed to intensify.Filner will be out one way or another eventually, despite his incredible belief that he's still entitled to a mayorship, that all he has to do is apologize and attend a workshop on basic decency and everything will be fine.
A closed-door mediation session between Filner, his representatives, city officials, a retired judge and a few others on Monday ended with no apparent resolution, but San Diego City Councilman Kevin Faulconer said the discussions are ongoing.
...Over the weekend, protesters stood outside City Hall, calling on the mayor to step down.
"There is no excuse for abuse, and there is no excuse for you to stay in power," Attorney Gloria Allred, who also attended the mediation session, told the crowd.
...Filner's office has not responded to multiple CNN requests for comment.
Last month, he acknowledged he "failed to fully respect the women who work for me and with me" and that he was "embarrassed" by his actions. But he also said he will be vindicated by "a full presentation of the facts" and that he would not step down.
This case is emblematic of a dynamic I've been obliged to experience a lot lately, online and off. Men who fuck up and make spaces unsafe for women think some half-assed apology is all it takes to set things right—and, usually, that's all it does take to set things right for them, thanks to the rock-bottom expectations we have of men who harm women.
But even more critical than an apology, even a meaningful one, is taking oneself out of the space one's actions have made unsafe for women. You harm women, you lose your right to be in that space anymore. That is real accountability which centers the feelings and rights of victims of harm, rather than the centering the entitlement of an abuser.
To assert the right to stay is aggressive. It is a continuation of the abuse. It extends and entrenches the lack of safety for all women.
You harm women, you lose your right to be in that space anymore.
You don't own women, and you don't own access to spaces you have made unsafe for us. Get the fuck out.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker trinity91: "What if any piece of jewelry that you own is your favorite?"
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Violence; racism.]
"You can't give people the authority, whether civilian or police officers, the right to just stop somebody because of the color of their skin."—Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, speaking about New York City's "Stop and Frisk" policy on Meet the Press yesterday.
I love that she connected the overtly institutionally-supported "Stop and Frisk" policy to the covertly institutionally-supported vigilantism of men like George Zimmerman. I hate that she had to do it. But I love that she did it.
Breaking Bad Open Thread
"I'll have the whoooooops with a side of oh shit."
[Spoilers are running around in their underpants herein. Content Note for references to violence.]
OMG THIS SHOW!!! It is SO INTENSE!!! WALT IS SO TERRIBLE!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK!!! What is happening?!?!?! What is GOING TO happen?!?!?! I CANNOT CONTAIN ALL MY EMOTIONS ABOUT THIS SHOW INSIDE MY BRAINPAN!!! THEY ARE SPILLING OUT IN EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! !!! !!! !!! AHH!!!
When last we left Walt WHO IS SO TERRIBLE, he was in Hank's garage, and he had warned Hank to tread lightly, which was fucking terrifying for us all, I ASSUME, because Hank is very lovable (HA HA THE DEA AGENT IS THE LOVABLE CHARACTER ON THIS SHOW!) and Walt is the worst, and we all know, better than Hank, of what Walt is really capable.
On the one hand, it's like: GET WALT, HANK! GET HIM! On the other, it's like: Hank, please throw Walt out of your garage, then put Marie and all her purple shirts in your SUV and drive far, far away and hope that Walt's cancer kills him before he murders the fuck out of anyone else, especially you.
But of course Hank is Hank, so he throws Walt out of his garage and then calls Skylar and tells her to meet him at the greyest diner in Albuquerque. Meanwhile, Walt is trying to call Skylar at the same time, and he and Hank have a dueling mobile phone stare-down, which is AWESOME, before Walt literally burns rubber to get to the
Meanwhile, Jesse's brain is broken, and an elderly man with a kind face follows a trail of the cash Jesse was throwing out his car window to a playground where Jesse has ditched his car and his bags full of dirty blood money and is slowly spinning himself on a merry-go-round while his sanity drips out of his ears.
And this scene, set on a playground, is yet another brilliant reminder that Jesse is still a kid. Like how he still calls Walt "Mr. White." And how he awkwardly sat at dinner complimenting the green beans when Walt made him stay for dinner and Skylar quietly seethed and drank a bottle of wine. Jesse is still a kid. He is a kid who has gotten in way over his head, and a kid who has done terrible things, not least of which is murdering Gail, and a kid who pretty much got into this whole thing because he was in desperate need of approval and acceptance and love, and he mistakenly, tragically, thought that Mr. White might be the one to give it to him.
Anyway. Walt, not being able to get a hold of Skylar, runs to Saul Goodman's office, and Saul's lackeys, Kuby and Huell, are dispatched to the storage unit to collect Walt's mountain of cash, but not before they roll around in it a little first. They deliver the cash to Walt in a rental van full of filled barrels, and they exchange THE BEST look when Walt is content with whatever amount is in there, which means they're pretty much millionaires now. Congratulations, Kuby and Huell!
Walt drives the van out to the desert and digs a ginormous hole in the ground and buries the barrels of cash. This is such back-breaking ("Breaking Back") work, I can't believe he didn't hire someone to dig the hole and then just murder that guy, because it's not like Walt gives a shit about anyone anymore.
He is still VERY SMART, though—his problem isn't stupidity; it's always hubris—so he memorizes the coordinates of his money hole from a GPS, then smashes it to bits and buys a lottery ticket with the coordinates. Please let the final scene of this show be Walt winning a massive jackpot as he falls to his knees in a hail of bullets!
Elsewhere in the desert, Lydia demands to be taken to the new meth-making facility, where her high heels sink into the sand and she complains about how dusty it is inside the meth lab buried in the ground. Todd shows up and murders everyone, because he is a murdering machine. What's going to happen with all these bozos?! I bet Jesse will tell someone about Todd killing that kid someday, and then Todd will give up Lydia. And I have about a 2% track record of correctly guessing what will happen on this show, so you can definitely take that to your storage unit and let Kuby and Huell roll around on it!
Meanwhile, at the diner, Skylar sits and listens while Hank talks to her about how Walt is terrible and how he can help her and how she needs to give a statement about how terrible Walt is so he can arrest him. And Skylar says she needs a lawyer ("Better call Saul!") and Hank is all buh? And Skylar is all, "AM I UNDER ARREST?!" and then runs out. SHIT!!!
Also during this conversation over no lunch, Hank informs Skylar that Walt's cancer is back, which she didn't know, because lying to Skylar is one of the many reasons why Walt is terrible. And when "chronically lying to your wife, including about whether you have cancer" doesn't even crack the top ten list of terrible things you do, you are SO TERRIBLE YOU ARE THE WORST.
Hank goes home and tells Marie what's up, and she goes to confront Skylar, and it is just one of the most heartbreaking and intense scenes of the show ever, which is really saying something. Marie tries to assess how long Skylar has known about Walt, and finally asks her, clearly fearing the answer, "Have you known since before Hank was shot?" Skylar's confession is a tearful attempt at an apology, which Marie rejects with a smack. I do not condone violence, but I CANNOT BLAME HER. SHIT!!!
Marie tries to leave with the baby, but Skylar resists, and Hank intervenes, telling Marie to let Skylar keep her child, even though he, LIKE ALL THE REST OF US, definitely want to get that baby the heck out of there. You don't even have to like babies to know that they don't belong around WALTER WHITE.
Back at home, Marie tells Hank he's got to tell his colleagues about Walt, and he says he needs more evidence first, because he knows his career is over the moment he tells them Heisenberg is his brother-in-law, and, in one of my favorite lines ever of the show, he tells her: "When I go in there, I'm bringing proof, not suspicion. I can be the man who caught him...at least." That pause, before the "at least." OMG. You think that sentence is going in one direction—I am getting the credit—but it's really going somewhere else entirely—I have to contribute this. Fuck. This show. SO GOOD.
Meanwhile, Walt collapses on the bathroom floor after arriving home following his mega-dig, and, when he wakes up, he tells Skylar he'll turn himself in if she keeps the hidden money a secret. "Please don't let me have done all this for nothing." But Skylar says he shouldn't turn himself in, and assures him Hank has no evidence, and suggests they just stay quiet. OMG. She is in it to win it with this guy.
In the final scene, Jesse is in an interrogation room with Albuquerque police who are questioning him about the money. Jesse just sits in silence with a thousand-yard stare. Hank shows up and asks if he can have a few minutes with Jesse. The police officers agree to take a smoke break, and the episode ends as Hank enters the room to speak with Jesse. SHIT!!!
This show. THIS SHOW!!!
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by owls.
Recommended Reading:
Jia, Mikki, and Flavia: A Chat with Mikki Kendall and Flavia Dzodan about #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen [Content Note: The interview at this link includes discussion of racism, misogyny, rape culture, harassment.]
Imara: Still Marching for Jobs [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism.]
Helen: No More Gay/Trans Panic Defense? [Content Note: References to violence]
RJ: Tennessee Republican Rejects Young Girl's Request for Help with Her Father's Deportation While Crowd Cheers [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism and anti-immigrant hatred.]
Deb: Death Threats, Death Anxiety, and Dying While Fat [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of fat hatred, medical malfeasance, and racism.]
Rachel: How Many Abortion Complications Are Caused by Stigma, Secrecy and Silence? [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of hostility to agency, abortion stigma, and injury.]
TLC: San Francisco Chronicle Profiles Transgender Students in Front Page Story
GD: The Butler and the Pitfalls of Positivity [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism and violence.]
And finally! Trudy has collected a bunch of her excellent essays on street harassment in one place. She's doing some of the best writing on street harassment right now, so do check out her work when you have the time and the spoons, if you aren't already reading her regularly.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Daily Dose of Cute
Matilda, being matildaish.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
On the Pros and Cons of (In)Visibility in a Life
by Shaker tarian
[Content Note: References to childhood abuse; descriptions of sex that may be NSFW, depending on your workplace.]
We were talking, once, about lovers past and present; and he said, sympathetically, "You like the broken ones, too?" It took a few days to sink in, but I finally caught the epiphany: of course I do, they're the only people with whom I have anything in common.
I was in town for a week, integrating software at a customer's facility, and took him up on the offer of a place to crash. Although we've been dating off and on for the better part of a decade, I'm never entirely confident that I'll be welcome. Not for keeping, that one; you make a space in your life, and sometimes he occupies it. And yet, with the invitation, my control slipped. Not good enough at keeping the expectations out of my mind.
I arrive a little after midnight. Something about walking into his presence always twists my soul; he's easily the most beautiful person I've ever met, male or female, and there's a radiant intensity about him that would make me self-conscious if it didn't overwhelm my senses instead. We talk for several hours while my equilibrium catches up; about the fourth or fifth rephrasing of "I'm not in a very social mood these days," I finally realize that he's directing the statement at me and not at some nebulous hypothetical crowd of people that one might find at four in the morning. All right; I'm an introvert, too, and have a lot of practice at making myself unobtrusive. And I'm supposed to leave for work in a few hours, in any event. I curl up in a corner of the room and sleep.
Two days of rubbing along the edges of someone else's life, working fourteen hours out of twenty-four, and over dinner he gets a phone call. It's his local girlfriend; they've been dating for a couple of months. They chat for a while. She's sort of new to the poly thing, apparently, and would like to meet me. Sensible enough. I ask for the usual synopsis: 26, artist, degree in theater lighting design. Met at game night "at the right time," which apparently means that she slipped through his current hermitage unexpectedly. I'm predisposed to like his otherloves; he's got eclectic but compatible tastes in women, and after all I started dating him after I'd gotten involved with his (now ex-) wife. He laughs, a little; "I think I've been getting too much sex lately." The characteristics of a new relationship, and an apology, of sorts, for the as-yet platonic nature of my visit. I don't know how to reply.
She lives up to expectations; the three of us wind up back in his room, talking (although it's mostly she and I, assembling enough common ground to support these odd triangular relationships). In the way of late-night chats, the conversation ranges, ignoring most of the usual hello-we've-just-met boundaries. A lull; she's interrupted by fingertips brushing the side of her neck. He looks over at me: "I want to give her a vigorous romping before I send her home. I'd like you to watch."
Goodbye, Perrysburg
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| Commodore Perry |
I'm writing this from the sun porch of my parents' house in Perrysburg, Ohio. It's getting on towards late afternoon, but the sun is still high in the August sky, the sky is clear, the leaves on all the trees are that deep green that you see when they know they only have about a month or so before the light begins to change and the air cools in the evening. The trees have to store up as much energy as they can to get through the long, grey winter ahead.
This sun porch is a familiar spot for me. Most of my visits to this house have been in summer, and here is where we have our breakfast over the morning papers, afternoons on the couch with Tiger baseball on the TV, and dinner in the deepening twilight that lasts in summer until long after sunset and the rhythmic chorus of cicadas, katy-dids, and other denizens of the evening compete with the traffic on the street and the trains on the C&O railroad a few blocks over.
This is not the house I grew up in; Mom and Dad moved here in 1997 after living in northern Michigan for a while, but countless evenings were spent on the back porch of another house down the street where the same sounds filtered over the voice of Ernie Harwell calling the Tigers' games on the crackling AM of WJR 760, the static telling us that somewhere, a thunderstorm was bringing rain and cool air to the cornfields that surround this small town. Lightning bugs danced and glowed down at the bottom of the yard among the yew bushes and rhododendrons, and minty iced tea -- and later, Stroh's beer -- made the evening cooler.
Summer, as you might have guessed, was my favorite time of year here, and even with our three weeks up in Michigan on the shores of Grand Traverse Bay, nothing said summer to me more than those evenings on the porch with the orchestration of light, shadow and sound and the scent of newly-mowed grass and drying alfalfa from the grain elevator across town.
But if things go as planned, this is my last night on this sun porch in Perrysburg. Later this fall my parents will begin a new adventure in a new place far removed from this little town that has been our hometown since 1957. It is all good for them, and all of us -- my three siblings -- are with them every step of the way. They are healthy, happy, and in good spirits as they forge on ahead as they have done with so many adventures in their sixty-five years together. And as I sit here in the peaceful afternoon, watching a hummingbird busily sip from the feeder, I know that letting go and moving on is a good thing. I should know; I've done it more times than I can count, and have the license plates to prove it.
In the many times I've moved and in the many places I've lived, I have never let go of the feeling that this town of Perrysburg will always be my home town. I know the streets and side streets better than any other place I've lived, thanks to the bike rides with my childhood friends Joe and Randy and Deke and Trip and Cynny and Scott and Jim and Tommy and Marvin. I still call the stores on Louisiana Avenue by the names I knew them then: Houck's Drugstore, Mills Hardware, The Sport Shop, Mrs. Piatt's Bakery, Ken's Barber Shop, and Norm's Appliance. That's where we sat at the soda fountain and read Archie comics; that's where we bought paint and nails; that's where Dad bought his duck decoys and shotgun shells; that's where the smell of bread crossed the street and birthday cakes came the way you dreamed they did; that's where a haircut cost a dollar; and that's the place where you lined up between the Norge refrigerators and GE air conditioners to get your driver's license and license plates because Dorothy, the wife of Norm at the appliance store, was the Deputy Registrar for the Ohio DMV. It's where I got my first driver's license in 1968, typed out on a green piece of paper from a battered Smith-Corona. The stores have all changed their names and sell different things -- and Mills is closed, the windows papered over -- but they're still there.
The tennis courts, the swimming pool, the elementary school where I attended kindergarten, the grocery store, the railroad tracks; they're as familiar as old books on the shelf that you take down and thumb through, remembering the stories they told. The sidewalks still have the same cracks in them, the street signs may be new but the names like Hickory, Elm, Front and Second are still where friends and family lived, and the new car in the driveway is the successor to the Country Squire and Pontiac Bonneville that once parked there, the keys in the ignition, the doors unlocked.
I made sure that as I drove around town on the way to do errands with my parents I took notice of the town. It has changed over the last fifty-six years, but not so much that I don't recognize it by the sights, sounds, and sense of place that comes with having something become a part of you over a lifetime. And I made sure that I said goodbye with a smile and a nod to old familiar places, echoes of laughter, memories of sadness and passings, and knowing that while Thomas Wolfe gets all the press for saying you can't go home again, you can visit, even if the place you lived in belongs to someone else and the people you know have moved on.
They're still there. And so am I.
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| Our House from 1957 to 1982 |
In The News
Here is some stuff In The News today!
[Content Note: Racism; harassment] New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg says he might feel differently about stop-and-frisk if he had a son who was stopped and frisked. But he doesn't so OH WELL!
[CN: Intimidation] British authorities held Glenn Greenwald's partner for nine hours as he passed through London on his way home to Brazil. He was stopped by officers "and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals."
[CN: Sexual violence; hostility to choice] Julian Assange is not only a dirtbag rapist who reneges on agreements to use condoms during PIV sex; he is also a dirtbag anti-choicer who commends Ron and Rand Paul on their fight against legal abortion. This fucking guy.
[CN: Disablism; misogyny] Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is very likely to be the next governor of Texas, thanked a supporter who called State Senator Wendy Davis an "idiot" and "Retard Barbie." But he doesn't "endorse anyone's offensive language. Stay positive." Okay then!
[CN: Homophobia] Today in a Stopped Clock is Right Twice a Day news, Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will sign legislation "barring licensed therapists from trying to turn gay teenagers straight, making New Jersey the second state to ban so-called conversion therapy, along with California." Good.
[CN: Gendered violence] Oscar Pistorius, who shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp, has been indicted in a South African court on a charge of premeditated murder. It is beyond gross (though entirely unsurprising) how this New York Times article doesn't identify Steenkamp until the third paragraph, and refers to her as "his girlfriend" three times (including the photo caption) before printing her name. Someone please send the New York Times a memo that dehumanizing women contributes to our being murdered by intimate partners.
Do you want to see a neat thing about the colors of the characters' wardrobes on Breaking Bad? (There are some spoilers, so "tread lightly," ha ha.) It is something I am kind of obsessed with (just ask Jessica Luther, to whom I have mentioned Marie's purple no fewer than eleventy million times!), so I think this is THE GREATEST!
This Is Not Accountability; This Is Not Feminism
[Content Note: Racism, misogyny, harassment, bullying, silencing, gaslighting.]
I am writing this follow-up with the explicit consent of Emi Koyama.
Last week, Emi Koyama published her account of being silenced and intimidated by members of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) at the Forging Justice conference, along with a list of demands for meaningful accountability, cosigned by HAVEN organizers and other attendees.
Since then, a couple of things have happened. One: Emi, who left the conference early Saturday morning, found out from the rest of us who were still there that NOMAS had read an apology letter that afternoon. NOMAS had written an apology, ostensibly to her, read it aloud at the conference and posted it on their Facebook page, but never actually sent it to Emi until six days later, after we publicly discussed it on Twitter.
An apology is not a meaningful apology if it is a PR stunt primarily concerned with maintaining reputation rather than being accountable to the harmed person. And if the men of NOMAS expected the women of HAVEN to pass along their apology to Emi, that is neither feminism nor accountability. Meaningful apologies are not delivered second-hand.
Two: After Emi's account was published, someone who is not a member of the NOMAS council linked to it on their Facebook page (on which only members can comment) asking for a response. Although the first response from a council member said: "The list on Shakesville is newly released, and NOMAS is taking the list of demands seriously," the very next comment is from another council member, Barry Goldstein, challenging Emi's account of her lived experience:
So, just to be clear: We have failed to treat members of the NOMAS council with "respect and dignity" because we disagree that there is some additional context which could magically make it okay to silence and intimidate a woman of color who was invited to speak at their conference, then fail to keep their fellow council member under control so that he did not harass another woman of color and then return to the conference to corner Emi, even after having been asked to leave.
In response to Barry's comment, Cristy Cardinal, the conference programming chair for HAVEN, who co-sponsored the conference with NOMAS, replied: "Barry, Emi's account is her lived experience and not up for debate. She has demonstrated a great deal of dignity in the face of profound disrespect. Anything that is left out of her post is on the UpRoot blog, and was my story to tell. No one is jumping to conclusions by listening to Emi's lived experience as a woman of color who was targeted and silenced by NOMAS Council members."
To which Barry replied in three successive comments:
Barry: Gaslighting women isn't "disagreement." Welcome to Feminism 101.
So, just to be perfectly clear, according to NOMAS council member Barry Goldstein, it is we, Emi Koyama and the women who organized in solidarity against the silencing of Emi, who are not treating them, the people who silenced Emi, with respect and dignity. And it is we, the women who protested NOMAS' kyriarchal silencing of a queer woman of color, who are the misogynists, the racists, the homophobes.
And it is we who are standing on the backs of the two white female members of the NOMAS council, who sat in absolute silence while their male colleagues tried to defend their actions.
And it is we who "bash men and women." We are bashers. We are attackers. We are violent.
I don't know if any of the other signers are survivors of gender-based violence, but Emi publicly identifies as a survivor, and I publicly identify as a survivor, and being survivors is centered in our work. The work for which we were invited to be speakers at this conference. The theme of which was "understanding gender-based violence as a social justice issue."
I cannot begin to express how deeply contemptuous I am to be accused of having "attacked" anyone at that conference. I did not "attack" anyone. I did not see any of the other signatories of that letter "attack" anyone. I absolutely refuse to abide the language of violence being used to describe our attempts to hold accountable the people who silenced and intimidated Emi Koyama.
We sat silently through two hours of NOMAS council members talking about how great their organization is, and one council member using his time to mischaracterize and concern troll Emi's work without even having the decency to name her, before we took the mic and asked them for accountability, during a session that was recorded and clearly documents our addressing the council in a way that could not be described as "an attack" by any reasonable measure.
And while I recognize that Barry Goldstein is but one member of the council, none of the other council members have challenged his public comments. Their silence communicates tacit agreement. If they don't agree with his casting us as "bashers" and "attackers," they aren't saying so, which mirrors their failure to engage in bystander intervention at the conference when another of their members, Bob Brannon, cornered both Emi and Lauren Chief Elk.
Further, as Emi observed in comments, Barry Goldstein "is not just some random dude of the street, but he supervises batterer intervention program and trains judges and advocates about domestic violence." This is a man who knows exactly what it means to accuse someone of being an "attacker."
Does the rest of the NOMAS council agree that we, Emi Koyama and the women who stand in solidarity with her, are "attackers" and "bashers" who have failed to treat the members of the NOMAS council "with respect and dignity"? If they do not agree, why have they not said so?
* * *
I cannot speak, and am not speaking, for any of the other signatories on the list of demands. I can speak, and am speaking, only for myself. That does not mean I intend to center myself; Emi's account is the primary document about what happened to her. I am sharing my experience as a support document only.
This experience has further undermined my trust in men. I was asked to a conference centered on the issue of gendered violence, the title of which was "Forging Justice: Creating Safe, Equal, and Accountable Communities," and then I watched as male organizers of that conference created an unsafe, unequal, and unaccountable environment. And even after they made the space unsafe, I stayed in that space and spoke to a room full of people which included men who had broken their agreement to me.
I watched these men allow one of their colleagues harass two women of color. I watched them allow him to try to professionally humiliate one of them. I watched them try to evade accountability. I watched them communicate to other presenters yet to present, including me, that they controlled us and controlled the information we were presenting. I watched them hold up their hands while we were speaking and constantly assert physical dominion over the room and invoke their nonwhite and female members as shields against criticism.
And for trying to hold them accountable for their actions, I am now publicly being accused of being disrespectful. Of attacking.
I am being subjected to all manner of antifeminist bullshit by men who call themselves feminists.
Men wonder why I don't trust men. They tell me that I am broken, that I am hateful, that I am crazy, that there's something wrong with me. But this, right here, is why I don't trust men.
I'm not going to apologize for acknowledging the reality of my world. It is not a "small but vocal group" who undermine my trust. It is virtually every man with whom I interact, including the national council members of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism.
And the men I do trust? They understand that. And they don't require evidence of my trust as collateral for making themselves trustworthy in the first place.
Seen
[Click to embiggen.]
If you don't watch Game of Thrones, it's probably not quite so awesome.
[Note: I mean the picture is care of my friend J, not the graffiti itself. I've no idea who the mastermind behind it is!]
Happy Birthday, Eastsidekate!
True Fact: Black and white portraits are classy, even in icing.
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
Please enjoy a biebillion pieces of caaaaaaake,
And creepy ice cream on your head, toooooo!
Happy Birthday, lady! I love you!
(These are belated birthday wishes, since I was at a conference and then Kate was out of town. Sometimes, you've just got to wait until the moment is right to party like it's 1999.)
Open Thread
This week's open threads have been brought to you by television's robots.
