mewmew foucault

ourcatastrophe:

quixotess:

[…]

I absolutely 100% support women asking “Why should I have to guard my drink? Why should I have to be scared of walking home at night? Why should I accept this?”

I have a couple of questions though, more about the original image, directed toward no one in particular. And anyone feel free to tell me I’ve totally lost the plot.

First, do you think there is a place for accurate information about predatory behavior? We’ve probably all seen that garbage column about “don’t wear a ponytail” and “you’re most likely to be raped in a parking garage,” and those aren’t anything but harmful. But like for example because of some school presentations and some prominently placed books in the middle school library I could tell you at a fairly young age some strategies that internet predators are likely to employ. Now that I’m older I could tell you even more such strategies, and I could also tell you some details about how they rationalize it to themselves.

Similarly, The Gift of Fear, while flawed, has also been helpful to me for identifying predatory strategies and escalation warning signs. Is there something that inherently normalizes rape culture in teaching people how predators behave and the most effective way to handle a stalker?

(One of the ways these kinds of conversations most often fail is in their failure to accurately describe what rape culture(s) look(s) like. Even feminists who are clear on the relative unlikelihood of being attacked by the “stranger in the bushes” vs. your own home will not mention the doctors, police, soldiers, and guards who are also the faces of rape culture. That’s one common way “advice to potential victims” fails.)

I also want to ask if you can teach people not to rape? How often in the history of rape has rape just been a result of a misunderstanding or the undereducation of the rapist? Versus how often has it been a deliberate act committed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing, who has probably done it before, and who is likely to go on to do it again? How would you teach someone like that not to rape? Do you believe that a predator can become a non-predator? Some of them? How long will that take? Who is willing to do that work for that long; i.e., who is willing to teach people not to rape?

Does this make any sense at all? I guess I’ve been confused by “teach people not to rape” for a while because to my understanding you usually have to wrest away the power to rape (either by changing social/bystander norms or by removing a particular predator from their potential victims) and you cannot in either case “teach” people not to rape, you have to force people not to rape.

What I do think should be taught is how rape happens and why and how we as survivors, as bystanders and as people have historically and can today work to end it, both on a micro level of individual interactions and on a macro level requiring such things as prison abolition. I do think people should be taught how to name and resist various manifestations of rape culture(s). None of that really falls under the heading “Don’t rape” though.

yeah, I am pretty much on the same page I think. 

recently I was talking about this with a friend who’s in training to volunteer at a women’s crisis and general information phone line.  part of their training is general information about rape culture and myths around sexual assault from a local sexual assault crisis centre.  one of the women in the training group got really mad learning about the high rates of sexual assault in everywhere and asked what she could do to protect her children from this kind of abuse.  The trainers explained that as a matter of policy they didn’t ever really talk about that side of the equation, that they preferred to focus on changing the behaviour of perpetrators.  I was kind of floored by their distance from the messy complicated reality of this woman’s life, any life. 

like, this is all well and good as a party line. obviously there is a strategic decision being made here to do whatever it takes to move public discourses away from victim-blaming.  and I basically support that decision.  but we need to differentiate between the message we want to emphasise and the conversations we are allowed to have.  the fact is that there are some things that you can do or learn to protect people you love or yourself from sexual violence; stuff like bystander intervention tactics, spotting predatory behaviour, etc.  they are not accessible to all people under all circumstances, they are not remotely infallible, and not doing them does not mean you are responsible for violence perpetrated upon you.  but they exist, and if someone acknowledges that ultimate responsibility lies with perpetrators but still wants to do what they can to protect themselves then I don’t see what it achieves to fob them off and keep them ignorant.  what are people supposed to do in the interim between now and the end of sexual violence in the feminist utopia, you know?  I think it’s a valid question. 

(Source: uselessperfection)

3xosc:

The first day in a long time that gender issues have brought me to tears

<3 i love you, friend; and it’s hard and i’m sorry beyond words; and i’m so glad i get to see your beautiful face soon

there is a big difference between “making space for others” and “lazy rationalisation of your unwillingness to engage”.

ourcatastrophe:

[…] being more concerned with not fucking up than with doing good is about your personal purity, not about the effect you have on the world, and very few people have the resources to maintain this illusion of purity for themselves.  I hear so many rationalisations for staying within your comfort zone under the guise of “solidarity” and I have to say that they all strike me as utterly self-indulgent and self-deceiving.   push yourself or don’t, but don’t try and recast your every action or inaction as anti-oppressive. 

<3

I WOULD LIKE TO START A SUPPORT GROUP/DISCUSSION GROUP FOR QUEER/TRANS PEOPLE OF COLOR WHO DATE OR HAVE CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH WHITE QUEERS. or generally want to talk about their experiences w/ white queer people?

besttumblr:

tangledupinlace:

feral-femme:

feral-femme:

there are lots of white queer people who i hold very near and dear to my heart. my best friend/platonic life partner, my girlfriend, and many of the queer people who i am closest to are white. my mom is also white and is kind of queer. i think they all identify and work on being anti-racist white people but there are still, obviously, plenty of instances where i feel alienated and/or silenced by the unintentional affects of their whiteness/white privilege. it is not uncommon that i am in a space where everyone is queer and/or trans, and i am the only person of color.  i think right now i have lots of things i need to explore regarding WHITE QUEERS and my experiences with them. i would like to do this with other QTPOC folk. is anyone interested in starting a private facebook group, for starters? does anyone have any recommendations for other ways this group could happen? 

please signal boost! <3

this also should include queer and trans people of color who have white family members, such as queer people of color who were transracially adopted or come from a mixed race family.

signal boosting

signal boosting— this doesn’t apply to me but i think it may apply to some of my followers

Re: Shit (Young, White, Class-privileged, City-based) “Radical Queers” Say to Each Other”

funkyfest:

[…]

I think the the “I’m trans” joke could have been clearer, because if it’s about trendiness and not the self-obsession and avoidance that I want to think that it is about, that’s a lil fucked up. But I think mewmewfoucault is on point with what the joke is most likely referencing. And yo, let’s not pretend that trans men don’t have cultural capital in queer spaces. Holy god, the radical-chicness of rejecting femininity/women is FUCKED UP and BULLSHIT and EVERYWHERE.

[…]

yeah; and i think noting that it’s both femininity and women/womanhood that get rejected / joked about / hated on is important, b/c i’ve definitely seen femme-identified and faggy trans [and cis!] guys pull this same shit, too - it’s not just dudely muscled anarchybros

(Source: fugue-stasis)

Re: Shit (Young, White, Class-privileged, City-based) “Radical Queers” Say to Each Other”

youarenotyou:

fugue-stasis:

[…]

I don’t know. I’m just not thrilled with the way some pretty blatant transphobia seems to have gotten smashed in between a bunch of valid points about transandrocentrism, racism, class privilege, and misogyny. I wish it weren’t being passed around so non-critically by many of the people I follow.

i agree w/ this completely. the repetitive “i’m trans” really bothered me but i thought maybe i was misinterpreting. i have no involvement with ‘radical queers’ and thought maybe i was missing something because it seemed…. too blatantly cissexist. but maybe that’s actually all it was and i should stop questioning my instant reaction to things. my gut response was “are they implying that people are adopting trans identities as a TREND?”

also like, i thought it was bizarre that they mentioned their privileges by name only. they didn’t touch on racism or classism at all. acknowledging yr whiteness does not an anti-racist ally make. when i see a video that says “shit white […] people say” i EXPECT racist comments and they were completely absent…? which seems appropriate in a sad unintentional way.

i also think it’s weird how people are taking something that started out as, basically, ‘oppressive shit privileged people say’ and turned it into something else entirely. like, ironic self congratulatory “see we can laugh at ourselves and how we are all carbon copies of one another” shit. this is an opportunity to explore how harmful dynamics have manifested within so-called radical spaces but people are just making it into a big joke.

the repetition of “i’m trans!” did make me uncomfortable and there’s some chance it was just straight up making some kind of gross butch-flightesque comment - but i also think it might well be referencing how a lot of ‘radical’ trans guys will constantly emphasize their transness in order to better weasel out of being called on their sexism and misogyny

idk, i do think a lot of white rad queer spaces overtly or subtly pressure butch or otherwise gender-variant people who get read as FAAB to not use female pronouns and not publicly identify as women, even if this often happens less with an air of actual hostility and more with a sense of “oh, you can’t really mean that …” or “your gender is too interesting for you to just be cis female!”

and i think they did touch pretty well on rad queer racism/classism a couple of times? most white rad kids are too smart too say many really overtly racist things and are often pretty invested in imagining themselves as ‘poor’ or at least ‘not-really-middle-class-and-too-cool-to-want-to-be’ - and yet still think ‘building community’ means putting a year or so of work into the local food not bombs franchise before moving on to chicago or the bay area or something for a while

i largely agree with youarenotyou’s last paragraph, though