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Posts from May 2011

Sluts of the world, unite and take over

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Remember the Slut Walk in Toronto? When during a talk on how to be safe from sexual attack, a police officer informed a bunch of students to “avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized,” and that got them kind of angry, so they took to the streets waving signs?

It continues and spreads:

Fast forward three months from Sanguinetti’s unfortunate remarks, and a movement that was born in riposte to his loose talk has now gone international. “SlutWalking” is attracting thousands of people to take to the streets to put an end to what they believe is a culture in which it is considered acceptable to blame the victim.  Some 2,351 people have signed up via Facebook to attend a SlutWalk through Boston on Saturday, when they will chant “Yes means yes, no means no,” and “Hey hey, ho ho, patriarchy has to go.”  Further SlutWalks are planned in the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.  And that’s before you get to Argentina, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the UK.  Had it been under any other circumstance, Sanguinetti might have been quite proud of his global impact. In the circumstances, facing internal discipline by the Toronto police, he has grovelled profusely.  “I am embarrassed by the comment I made and it shall not be repeated,” he said.  But there is no holding back the SlutWalkers now. Word spread like wildfire through Facebook and Twitter, and anger about the comments began to coalesce around the idea of taking to the streets in protest. The SlutWalk was born. The first march was held in Toronto itself last month. Organisers had expected about 100 people to turn out, and were astonished when almost 3,000 people did so.  The participants, both female and male, carried placards saying “Met a slut today? Don’t assault her,” “Sluts pay taxes” and “We’re here, we’re sluts, get used to it.”  Another sign at the rally read: “It was Christmas Day. I was 14 and raped in a stairwell wearing snowshoes and layers. Did I deserve it too?”  Some women attended the protest wearing jeans and T-shirts, while others took the mission of reclaiming the word “slut” – one of the stated objectives of the movement – more literally and turned out in overtly provocative fishnets and stilettos. But they were all united by the same belief: that rape is about the rapist, not his victim.     

Generally speaking, I reject the word “slut.” Rarely is it used without a tone of condemnation for someone because of her (inevitably a “her”) presumed sexual practices, and I think that provided someone’s sexual practices are consensual and occur with adults, condemning her for them makes you an asshole. That, in addition to the suggestion that dressing a certain way means that women are “asking for it” or at least share some part of the responsibility if they are raped, is what’s wrong with telling women not to dress like sluts.

I don’t think that advice on how to avoid rape is inherently more about blaming the victim than advice on how to be safe in any other way, but the kind of advice offered obviously matters. Given that the vast majority of college students who are raped know their attacker, it seems that suggestions like these on how to avoid acquaintance rape would be most appropriate:

Trust your “gut” feelings. If you start to feel uncomfortable or unsafe in a situation, listen to your feelings and act on them. Get yourself out of the situation as soon as possible.  Don’t be afraid to ask for help or “make a scene” if you feel threatened. If you are being pressured or forced into sexual activity against your will, let the other person know how you feel and get out of the situation, even if it’s awkward and even if you embarrass the other person or hurt his feelings.  Be especially careful in situations involving the use of drugs or alcohol. Drugs and alcohol can make you less aware of danger signs and less able to communicate clearly. Be especially aware when you are in a new situation or with people that you don’t know well. You need to be able to make good decisions to protect yourself from sexual assault.  Go to parties or clubs with friends you can trust and agree to “look out” for one another. At parties where there is drinking or drugs, appoint a “designated sober person,” one friend who won’t drink and who will look out for the others in the group by regularly checking on them. Leave parties with people you know. Don’t leave alone or with someone you don’t know very well.

None of those blames the victim. Each is infinitely more useful than telling someone to avoid dressing “like a slut”– whatever that means.  Never in my life has the clothing I’ve put on to go out at night been more important in terms of safety than the very obvious factors of a) who I’m going out with, b) how much I’m drinking and what, c) how I’m getting home, etc. What I’m wearing or, for that matter, how many people I’ve slept with has generally been beside the point.

So I support the sluts, if they want to call themselves that– though inevitably, their use of the word will legitimize in the minds of many morons the notion that it’s therefore okay for them to use the term un-ironically.  After all, faggots sometimes call each other faggots, don’t they? Har har. And it’s probably folly to imagine that these marches will reduce the incidence of stranger or acquaintance rape. But that’s not really the point, from what I can tell.  The point is to give a great big middle finger to people who think that dressing in a way which creates impressions in someone’s mind about your sexual preferences and activities counts as the equivalent of “fighting words.” That women who dress to reveal their bodies should not be considered to be provoking anything but appreciative looks. Concepts which are still woefully absent in the minds of many people across the world.

The dangers of superstition coupled with despair

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Best to skip this one if you don’t want to be depressed. Reuters reports:

Hundreds of girls raped, murdered in Tanzania for black magic AIDS ‘cure’Hundreds of albinos are thought to have been killed for black magic purposes in Tanzania and albino girls are being raped because of a belief they offer a cure for AIDS, a Canadian rights group said on Thursday. At least 63 albinos, including children, are known to have been killed, mostly in the remote northwest of the country. “We believe there are hundreds and hundreds of killings in Tanzania, but only a small number are being reported to the police,” Peter Ash, founder and director of Under The Same Sun (UTSS), told Reuters. “There is belief that if you have relations with a girl with albinism, you will cure AIDS. So there are many girls with albinism who are being raped in this country because of this belief, which is a false belief.” Around 1.4 million Tanzanians among a population of 40.7 million have the HIV virus that leads to AIDS. Albino hunters kill their victims and harvest their blood, hair, genitals and other body parts for potions that witchdoctors say bring luck in love, life and business. “(It is believed) a person with albinism is a curse. They are from the devil, they are not human, they do not die, they simply disappear,” said Ash. . . The Tanzanian government says it is determined to halt the macabre killings, but has been widely criticized for inaction. 

I wonder if the effort to halt these rapes and killings has included telling people that there are no such things as witches, that black magic doesn’t exist. That medicine is how sick people become well (if becoming well is possible), you can’t cure a disease by attacking someone, and albinos are people just like anyone else.

Even sadder is that this isn’t actually news– the report above is from today, but the slaughter of albinos in Tanzania for black magic purposes has been going on for years.  In 2009 the government instituted a “ban on all traditional healers,” but it doesn’t seem to have stopped the practice.

“Why I can’t celebrate”

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Valarie Kaur, a third generation Sikh American film maker, writes about why she isn’t celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death:

The last time a sudden burst of nationalism rallied us against America’s turbaned and bearded enemy, an epidemic of hate crimes swept the country.  In the yearlong aftermath of 9/11, the FBI reported a 1700 percent increase in anti-Muslim violence. At least 19 people were killed in hate murders. In the last decade, we have seen resurgences of hate violence whenever anti-Muslim rhetoric reaches a fever pitch, as it has since the firestorm around the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” last election season confirmed to politicians that they can use anti-Muslim sentiment to win political points.  In the last few months alone, Congressman Peter King held controversial congressional hearings investigating “radicalization” in the Muslim community, Tea Party protesters yelled “Terrorist!” and “Remember 9/11″ at Muslim families at a fundraiser, legislators proposed a flurry of bills banning sharia in more than a dozen states, and Arizona tried to pass a bill that would remove names of victims killed in post-9/11 hate crimes from its 9/11 memorial. It was only a matter of time before we heard news of violence.  Just a few days before the congressional hearings, two turbaned Sikhs were gunned down in likely hate crimes in Elk Grove, CA.  Another was murdered in Las Vegas.  Today, the news of Osama bin Laden’s killing does not bring an end to the hate; it refuels it.  In a decade-long “war” against terror, each time our government decides that some people are so bad that they must be placed outside the reach of law, our national imagination shrinks.  Human beings, in their fullness and complexity, become one-dimensional enemies.  It’s hard to kill people; it’s easy to kill enemies.  Frightened by Islamic fanaticism, we turned Osama bin Laden from a frail sick human being into a mythic super-criminal who embodied pure evil. So, no wonder people are celebrating his destruction.  We would never celebrate the murder of a person.  But thousands are pouring into the streets to rejoice in the death of evil incarnate. And those who “look like” him — especially Sikh men and boys with turbans and beards who have endured a decade of “hey bin Laden!” on our city streets — are waiting and hoping that Americans might change how they see. Update: Breaking News –  5/2/11 at 1PM PST Fears confirmed.  A Portland mosque was vandalized just hours after President Obama announced that the U.S. had killed bin Laden.  The graffiti reads: OSAMA TODAY, ISLAM TOMORROW. 

bin angry– a rant

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If there’s something that could inspire me to the kind of nationalistic joy that prompts a person to dance in the street waving a flag and chanting “USA! USA!,” I don’t know what it is. But Osama bin Laden’s death it isn’t.  As eloquent as Obama’s address last night was, the phrase “justice has been done” and the ensuing interviews by news anchors with the friends and family of people who died on 9/11 turned my stomach. It’s as though they were being asked to give official approval to everything the U.S. has done in the name of the “war on terror” since that day, now that finally the attack’s ringleader has been located and summarily blown up. Osama bin Laden has become a caricature of ultimate evil– now that he is dead, the ends justify the means and we can celebrate. Justice has, after all, been done.

Aside from the generally repellent idea of dancing in the street because a man– any man– was found and killed, there remain all of the concerns that Radley Balko outlines in a post this morning grimly titled “He won.” America has not become better toward its own citizens or the citizens of the world post 9/11. We have sacrificed liberty for security in spectacular and unnecessary ways. We have displayed the full colors of our fear and willingness to clamp down on the freedom of expression and religion when prompted with an outside threat. In seeking revenge for the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans we have offered up the lives of almost 6,000 soldiers and $1 trillion dollars in order to occupy two countries which did not threaten us, not to mention who knows how many lives of the residents of those countries. None of these revelations about America’s character gets to be wiped from the slate now that bin Laden has been located living in a mansion in Pakistan, shot in the eye and buried at sea somewhere. Congratulations to the soldiers who accomplished it, and it’s good that it happened– though it would have been better to take him alive, so that he could have received a trial and been held accountable for the full extent of his actions. Being handed the kind of death that so many better human beings from so many countries have unjustly received (and which I might guess some currently languishing in Guantanamo would prefer to receive) seems like rather a cop-out. Though I suppose it’s fitting considering that like most residents of Guantanamo, he didn’t get to face his accuser and be confronted with the evidence against him.

So I propose this: let’s be glad bin Laden is dead, but not pretend that his death satisfies some kind of karmic debt to 9/11 survivors. That presumes that bin Laden bears the full responsibility for the deaths of their loved ones and that the suffering they have been experienced can only be assuaged by his own death. It portrays them as simple revenge-seekers. And let’s also not pretend that all or even most of what America has done in response to 9/11 has been about locating the guilty parties and punishing them. New justifications have been invented and accepted until the War on Terror became an everlasting battle between Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia, with everyone’s freedoms scattered by the wayside. You can’t treat bin Laden as an essential kingpin, an Arabic Wicked Witch of the West, and then turn around and say “Killing him was great, but nothing will change.”

Bring the troops home– all of them. Restrict any intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq to humanitarian efforts to repair all of the damage caused.  Make it possible for people to migrate to (heck, even visit) the country without being suspected of being 9/11 terrorists Part 2. Own up to the fact that the U.S. government has approved torture and extradition, and hold responsible parties responsible. Acknowledge for each Guantanamo prisoner the right of habeas corpus, or send them home. And stop using the “we’re at war” excuse to daily invent new ways to deprive American citizens of their dignity and privacy. Make America into the place our popular imagination still celebrates without irony, a land of the free and home of the brave. Do this, and then maybe you’ll catch me waving a flag. I don’t currently own one, but am pretty sure there’s plenty of time to head to the shop.

The “E” word applied to food. No, it doesn’t stand for “educated.” Or “empathetic.”

The “E” word applied to food. No, it doesn’t stand for “educated.” Or “empathetic.” published on No Comments on The “E” word applied to food. No, it doesn’t stand for “educated.” Or “empathetic.”

Eric Schlosser lays down the law in the Washington Post:

At the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual meeting this year, Bob Stallman, the group’s president, lashed out at “self-appointed food elitists” who are “hell-bent on misleading consumers.” His target was the growing movement that calls for sustainable farming practices and questions the basic tenets of large-scale industrial agriculture in America. The “elitist” epithet is a familiar line of attack. In the decade since my book “Fast Food Nation” was published, I’ve been called not only an elitist, but also a socialist, a communist and un-American. In 2009, the documentary “Food, Inc.,” directed by Robby Kenner, was described as “elitist foodie propaganda” by a prominent corporate lobbyist. Nutritionist Marion Nestle has been called a “food fascist,” while an attempt was recently made to cancel a university appearance by Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” who was accused of being an “anti-agricultural” elitist by a wealthy donor.

This name-calling is a form of misdirection, an attempt to evade a serious debate about U.S. agricultural policies. And it gets the elitism charge precisely backward. America’s current system of food production — overly centralized and industrialized, overly controlled by a handful of companies, overly reliant on monocultures, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, government subsidies and fossil fuels — is profoundly undemocratic. It is one more sign of how the few now rule the many. And it’s inflicting tremendous harm on American farmers, workers and consumers. During the past 40 years, our food system has changed more than in the previous 40,000 years. Genetically modified corn and soybeans, cloned animals, McNuggets — none of these technological marvels existed in 1970. The concentrated economic power now prevalent in U.S. agriculture didn’t exist, either. For example, in 1970 the four largest meatpacking companies slaughtered about 21 percent of America’s cattle; today the four largest companies slaughter about 85 percent. The beef industry is more concentrated now than it was in 1906, when Upton Sinclair published “The Jungle” and criticized the unchecked power of the “Beef Trust.” The markets for pork, poultry, grain, farm chemicals and seeds have also become highly concentrated. America’s ranchers and farmers are suffering from this lack of competition for their goods. In 1970, farmers received about 32 cents for every consumer dollar spent on food; today they get about 16 cents. The average farm household now earns about 87 percent of its income from non-farm sources. While small farmers and their families have been forced to take second jobs just to stay on their land, wealthy farmers have received substantial help from the federal government. Between 1995 and 2009, about $250 billion in federal subsidies was given directly to American farmers — and about three-quarters of that money was given to the wealthiest 10 percent. Those are the farmers whom the Farm Bureau represents, the ones attacking “big government” and calling the sustainability movement elitist.

From Joel Salatin’s article in Flavor magazine last year, Rebel with a Cause: Foodie Elitism:

This winter, the Front Range Permaculture Institute invited me to come to Fort Collins, Colorado, and give a speech at a fundraising event. They filled a huge community theater with people, and ticket sales were enough to pay my travel and honorarium—with enough left over to buy 40 CSA shares for poor families in their community. What a wonderfully empowering local effort. (They didn’t wait for a government program.) Perhaps nothing would reduce perceptions of elitism faster than foodies buying CSA shares for impoverished families.  At the risk of sounding uncharitable, I think we need to quit being victims and bring about change ourselves. Don’t complain about being unable to afford high-quality local food when your grocery cart is full of beer, cigarettes, and People magazine. Most people are more connected to the celebrities in People than the food that will become flesh of their flesh and bone of their bones at the next meal. . .  We can all do better. If we can find money for movies, ski trips, and recreational cruises, surely we can find the money to purchase integrity food. The fact is that most of us scrounge together enough pennies to fund the passion of our hearts. If we would cultivate a passion for food like the one we’ve cultivated for clothes, cars, and entertainment, perhaps we would ultimately live healthier, happier lives.  To suggest that advocating for such a change makes me an elitist is to disparage positive decision making and behavior. Indeed, if that’s elitism, I want it. The victim mentality our culture encourages actually induces guilt among people making progress. That’s crazy. We should applaud positive behavior and encourage others to follow suit, not demonize and discourage it. Would it be better to applaud people who buy amalgamated, reconstituted, fumigated, irradiated, genetically modified industrial garbage?  The charge of elitism is both unfair and silly. We foodies are cultural change agents, positive innovators, integrity seekers. So hold your head high and don’t apologize for making noble decisions.