I believe you... But it is still not enough.
A few months ago I was at the Mom 2.0 Summit in Atlanta, Georgia. It was wonderful and I am going back again next year, because... MY TRIBE is there! On the first day of the conference, one of the speakers at the Keynote Expert Sessions was a man called Josh Levs. I'd never heard of him (Canadian blogger-fish out of water and all that), but Josh is kind of a big deal CNN reporter, a father of three and had just filed a complaint against his employer, Time Warner, for denying him 10 weeks of paid parental leave (what new mothers and adopted parents get from Time Warner, but not dads.) Josh was an engaging and passionate speaker and I appreciated that he was addressing the issue of shared parental responsibilities, but what I didn't understand was why this man was getting so much air time (literally) about an issue that women have been talking about and fighting for for years, not to mention one that places the US at the very bottom of the charts in terms of paid parental leave in the developed world.
It felt like, once again, an issue that affects primarily women is not really that big of a deal until it becomes detrimental to a man or a man starts talking about it.
This has been the case time and time again and it is something that I am so very, very tired of.
Case in point. Carla Ciccone wrote a post over a year ago about her VERY BAD DATE with a Canadian radio show host, which, I think we can all admit at this point, was with Jian Ghomeshi. The vitriol and internet hate-storm that was heaped on her after she wrote that post was appalling and I don't even want to revisit any of it (the comments on her post have picked up again given recent developments and are just as awful this time around). And now, after months of investigating and interviewing, Kevin Donovan and Jesse Brown - yes, two men - broke the story via the Toronto Star about Ghomeshi's disturbing and abusive behaviour and more than 10 people have now come forward with similar allegations of violence and abuse at the hands of Jian Ghomeshi. And NOW, it's a problem. Now that it's not just one woman who had at least that little bit of courage to write about her VERY BAD DATE, even though, if you cared to ask around, EVERYBODY KNEW ABOUT HIM! Now it's a big deal and must be dealt with.
Or, look at the new United Nations #HEforSHE campaign. God love her, Emma Watson is a shining beacon for young women everywhere, and I applaud her for stepping up to the plate and literally donning her baby feminist White Coat, but the whole premise of the campaign is that women's voices are simply not enough. That we need the HEs to speak up for the SHEs. That it is not enough for women to be seen and heard and treated as human beings in and of themselves. That we are only valued and validated in this world by virtue of our relationships to and with men as their mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. Now, don't get me wrong, I too want men to speak up for feminism and for gender equality in our world, but not because they have a mom or a sister or a daughter, and not because they feel the need to be a hero and save the world's collective damsels in distress. I want them to do it because we are all in this place together, because one person's life is not more or less valuable than any other simple because we are not the same gender or colour or sexual orientation. I want them to do it because it is the right thing to do.
The internet is full of meme's and videos of men speaking for women. We've got Feminist Ryan Gosling Hey Girl-ing all over the place, we've got speech after speech from Joss Whedon about why he writes strong female characters and then one where he thinks we should get rid of the word Feminism. Harry Styles tweets a picture of himself supporting #heforshe and it gets retweeted over 282,000 times. Aziz Ansari sits across from David Letterman and tells us he is a feminist and we share that shit all over the place and praise all our wonderful male allies for saying all the exact same things women have been saying for eons!
On the other hand. A woman speaks up and makes a video about her experience with catcalling and street harassment and you know what happens? Sure the thing goes viral and has some serious issues that have been dissected elsewhere, but she also gets death and rape threats. Or how about this one. A woman is not the perfect girlfriend and what does her pissed off ex-boyfriend do when things end badly? He writes a 5000 word manifesto outlining why she is a terrible person, tries to ruin her publicly and professionally and rallies the collective troops of #nogirlsallowed land into a thing called Gamergate. If the situation was reversed, she would just be the crazy, vindictive, bitch of an ex-girlfriend who was out for revenge for being jilted and no one would have taken her the teensiest bit seriously. But we have this WHOLE THING now, because one dude got his heart and ego crushed BY A GIRL. Really. Boil it all down and that is what it is.
I've read multiple essays and posts this past week about why women don't speak up more, why they don't report the violence and abuse and assaults that have happened to them. Denise Balkissoon wrote just today in the Globe and Mail that no, we have not reached some kind of "watershed" moment in the face of violence against women. She goes on to say,
I’m not swayed by the newly enlightened, standing with outstretched, protective arms, advising victims of violence that there’s no longer a need to be ashamed or afraid of coming forward. Let me tell you what too many have heard, and will continue to hear, perhaps forever.
I don’t believe you.
I don’t believe you.
I don’t believe you.
And I don't disagree with her at all. I would also add that not only are women overwhelmingly hearing "I don't believe you." over and over again, even in cases with ridiculous amounts of evidence (see: death of raped and bullied Canadian girl who can not be named because of court mandated publication ban), in this world we live in, it's also a case of ....
We don't really care, because YOU DON'T REALLY MATTER. Your voice is not the one we listen to.
You are not a famous media/radio celebrity and will not have your 20+ year career ripped out from under you.
You are not an elite athlete who brings in millions to sports club owners and helps win championships.
You are not a Hollywood Icon whose brilliance can not be tarnished in our minds, because... BRILLIANT!
You are not a beloved TV character we all grew up with and thought of as our collective DAD.
You are not one of BillBoards most successful R&B/Hip Hop artists of the past 25 years.
You are not some promising young man whose life will now be ruined because you got drunk, he raped you, you reported him and now he has to go to jail.
And this is what kills me every time something like this happens. The voices of the women affected are not heard or are silenced. It's as if women's voices are some kind of background noise that people just want to turn down until a man in a nice suit tells you what to think or who to believe.
Until such a time exists when a woman can say, this is what happened to me and the automatic response from the general public isn't, "well, you should have known better" or "what do you have to gain from this?", we aren't making any progress in the plight of violence against and oppression of women. Until we can take a woman's word for it - whatever IT may be, and not have to wait for that word to be validated by a man, we are never going to get any further ahead in making this world a level playing field for all who live on it.
I gotta tell you...
I dream of that time. Every single day and every damn night.
And I have to believe it will come.
I have to.
n~
~~~~~
This is Day 5 of #nablopomo. I am writing a blog post a day for the month of November. So are a lot of other people. You can find them here.
Welcome to my guest house.
Sometimes life is hard.
The news is not good. People are awful to each other. Fear and hate seem to be winning and love and compassion become afterthoughts to feelings being expressed in 140 characters or 1000 word blog posts. There seems to always be a "spin" being put on the information we receive and deciphering this coded language is enough to make even the most hardy of folks weary and tired.
When life is hard, when the world feels like it is going to hell in a hand basket, I tend to curl up in a ball like a southern three-banded armadillo and wait for the "threat" to pass. I shut myself away from everyone and everything until I feel like I can come out and deal with it all again.
But today, I didn't.
Today was an odd day for me.
Today I looked outside of myself and tried to really see others around me and let them see me. Just regular people that I interact with in my day to day life. And yet today, because I opened up my shell a crack to let some of them in, they let me into their lives a bit too. Today was filled with moments with these people. Moments of clarity, of love, of acceptance. Moments when, for just a second, we recognized in each other that same scared little child, that hopeful kid, that barely-holding-it-together adult and said a silent, "I see you. You matter. Right here. Right now." to each other.
In yoga class, my friend Mandy shared this Rumi poem with us:
THE GUEST HOUSE
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
~~~~~
So be hard World.
I can take it.
I will welcome the pain and fear, because beyond that is healing and courage.
Take all you want from my house, so I can make room for new guests, new thoughts, new paths to forge ahead on.
Spin all your news however you think it will matter. I won't let it spin me, or my conscience, or my convictions.
Today I learned that curling up in a ball may protect me for a time, but opening up and letting people in, that is what is going to really change my world.
And maybe,
in some small way,
eventually,
I'll change the the Big Bad World out there too.
Peace,
n~
Feminist Fare Friday: The Justice Edition
There is a theme and perhaps a lesson in today's selection of posts from the femisphere. For some reason, this concept depicted above has always made sense to me when it comes to child-rearing. It has been especially driven home this week in regards to feminism and racism and the concept of true social justice versus the constant 'equality for all' rhetoric. So, go grab your afternoon latte and have a read.
~~~~~~~~~
By now you've probably seen the video of Emma Watson's compelling UN speech launching the new #HeforShe campaign. It's pretty good. A young woman, using her voice, her fame, and her privilege, to bring light to the oppression of women all over the world, to bring feminism into more of the mainstream conversation. This is all good. There was something missing though... I did share the video on my social media sites and applaud Ms. Watson's efforts, but it wasn't until I read this article from Mia McKenzie of Black Girl Dangerous that I was finally able to put my finger on what that missing piece was. Emma invites men of the world to "to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free from prejudice…", and Mia points out why this is a flawed way of looking at the issues of equality.
~~~~~
As a white, cis-gendered, middle-class feminist woman, I have quite a few innate privileges in my world. And I am not going to lie, when I get told that I am doing feminism wrong, when I hear that I am just another white feminist spouting off from her position of privilege, I sometimes get defensive. My instinct is to scream my ally-ship to the four corners of the world, and say the dreaded words, #notallwhitefeminists!
But I don't.
Because of people like Brittney Cooper and her ability to take a complex topic like the future of feminism, break it down, and make me almost spit out my morning tea while reading her words. Words that somewhat mirror what I have said before about changing the game/playing field, but in a much more succinct and eloquent way. There is a reason her Twitter handle is @ProfessorCrunk, this woman is a capital E educator and I am the white girl geek sitting in the front row, mouth shut, ears wide open!
~~~~~
Ever feel like you have the same conversation with people, over and over and over again? OK, I have a 5 and a 7-year old, so this happens daily in my life, and it is less of a conversation, and more of me reminding them of the basics like socks and teeth brushing and please don't put [insert disgusting thing here] in your mouth or on your sister/brother. In all seriousness though, how would you feel if every day you had to be the one to explain to people the basics of human decency? Anne Thériault of The Belle Jar and Lily Tsui of Scantilly Clad, two Canadian feminists (yes, Toronto Star, they do exist!), have come together to bring you a compelling post looking at the parallels between the oftentimes explanatory conversations about feminism and racism.
~~~~~
That is some pretty heavy material for today, so I will leave you with your thoughts. Or you can share them with me in the comments too.
Have a great weekend!
N~
If you build her....
Where are all the feminists?
~~~~~
What was it that Kevin Costner heard whispered to him in that baseball movie? Oh, right. "If you build it, they will come."*
Well, apparently, according to Heather Mallick at the Toronto Star; Canada needs to get on with building itself a better, more prominent/famous** feminist. Because apparently, there are none, NONE, in this vast country of ours.
Now granted, earlier this week Heather sat in a sold out crowd, watching PROMINENT British humourist and feminist, Cailtin Moran, do her schtick and promote her new book, How to Build a Girl, hot on the heels of the best-selling success of her 2011 book, How to be a Woman. Heather's enthusiasm and desire for a loud, in your face, this is the best time to be a woman, empowerment for all, ra-rah feminist is not surprising, Moran's wit and humour can be very infectious. I myself have had a bad case of Moran-itis in the past and thankfully, so very, very thankfully, have developed an immunity to it. So, I am going to give Heather a bit of a break, due to a possible fever and some delirium post-Moran, so to speak.
Because Canada does indeed have some very effective, and somewhat famous, feminists living and working and doing the hard job of actually BEING a feminist in our country and I have the great honour of being friends with some of them!
We have feminists like Annie from Phd in Parenting being asked to write for the NY Times. We have feminists like Lyndsay Kirkham, with her giant head, and outing of the continued misogynist culture in the tech world, being featured on The View. There is Danielle Paradis, whose a regular contributor at Policy Mic and whose writing has been published, well, pretty much everywhere (but, hmmm... not so much by many Canadian media outlets). We have feminists working to end violence against women, we have feminists working hard to pressure our government into making formal inquiries into missing and murdered indigenous women in our country, we have feminists who are raising the bar for everyone in the fight against street harassment.
What we don't have is a token "rock star" feminist. We don't have a Caitlin Moran telling/yelling at everyone, "If you have a vagina and want to be in charge of it, you are a feminist!" We don't have a Beyoncé with her glowing giant proclamation of FEMINIST behind her at the VMAs, we don't have an distinctively Canadian iconic feminist similar to Gloria Steinem, passing the torch to the younger generation and the next wave of feminism.
The thing is, I don't think we should have just one go-to feminist. That in and of itself is problematic. No one person can encompass all of the differences and intersections and individuals that make up modern day feminism. I can hear the critics now, "But Natasha, why not? Feminism just means equality for all and if we are all on the same team, why can't we have a team captain?" Because. We can't. No one person will experience and practice feminism exactly the same as the next. My white, cis-gendered, middle class feminism, is not the same as that of a person of colour or indigenous woman, it is not the same as a new immigrant's feminism and it is not the same as a LGBTQ person's feminism. It would be selfish, extremely self-centered, and irresponsible of me or any one feminist to claim to speak for or represent all feminists in Canada. What we can do though, is speak of our experiences and create a feminist collective. What I can do is speak about my life experiences, give my opinions within my frame of reference and when I can, amplify the stories of others to the audience I have and on the platforms that I have built for myself.
And that right there is the round about long way of coming by the simple answer to the question that Heather Mallick originally asked. "Why can't Canada build a prominent/famous** feminist?" Because Heather, most of the mainstream media in Canadian, does not really care to bother themselves with us. Canadian feminists for the most part are doing their work, being advocates and activists, and getting the message out via personal blogs and Facebook groups and grass-roots, non-profit, academic and non-academic organizations. They are doing their feminist work by being an example for and influencing, either directly or indirectly, people in their families and in their communities (online and IRL), their groups of friends, their children and their children's friends too. And that kind of feminism is just not that flashy and in-your-face, it is not the firebrand-rock-star-famous-making kind of feminism and therefore not usually deemed worthy of any kind of serious media attention.
Just like there is no one way to be a feminist, even though many will try to tell you otherwise, there is no one Canadian feminist that can lead us to the great land of milk and equality. Collectively though, we are a force, we may not be a nationally or internationally recognized one, we many not have best-selling books and go around telling folks that "I literally couldn't give a shit about it" and have an I'll be as crude and ableist and transphobic as I please attitude about one's feminism, we choose the more polite, inclusive and distinctively Canadian way. We pick ourselves up by our bootstraps (we all have boots) and get to doing the work that needs doing in whatever way we can. Not for the glory and the fame...
Because it is the right thing to do. And because as this GoodReads reviewer puts it in her analysis of How to Be a Woman,
Feminism doesn't need to be rock and roll, it's much better than that.
Cheers,
A not very famous Canadian Feminist doing her part.
(AND who would definitely consider a nationally syndicated column in which I could feature and profile our collective Canadian feminist voices. I'm just saying...)
~~~~~
What do you think?
Who are your favourite Canadian Feminists?
Please share your answers here and on Twitter with the hashtags #canfem and #BraveCanadianFeminist
*The actual quote from Field of Dreams is "If you build it, HE will come."
**The original title of the Toronto Star article was "Why can't Canada build a feminist?" and after much backlash online, the editors changed it to read, "Why can't Canada build a famous feminist?"
Standing on the edge
Does anyone else feel like we are at the point in human history where revolution just seems inevitable? Where the systems and constructs that we've so carefully crafted to have order in our world and our societies just don't seem to be cutting it anymore. How much more can we take of the tired rhetoric of "this is the way the world works" and "this is simply the way it has always been" and all the other variations on the status quo? Are we not supposed to evolve as a species? As a society? Please don't hate me internet, but as the boys in Nickelback are saying these days, "We're standing on the edge of a revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
The shooting of Michael Brown was a tipping point. It has brought the ugly truth of racism in North America right to the front lines of our news feeds, Twitter streams and viral, live-streaming world. It showed us what happens when we question the system. It showed us the levels at which authoritarian governments will go to maintain "the peace"and what happens when you step out of line. How they will try to control the narrative of events and the status-quo of a world where everyone needs to know their place in it.
I've had a few conversations over the past month with people who have said to "wait for all the facts" and "let the courts and those in charge figure this out" and THEN, I can make an "informed" decision about what happened. For me, and for many others too, this line of thinking falls apart when it's the very people in charge who are the ones that are working within a system that fails to recognize it's own ingrained biases. What this says to me, is "Let us figure this out, and then we'll TELL you what to think" and I, for one, am just not down with that.
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her own house last week because of threats made against her and her family on social media. What terrible thing did she do to bring on this level of abuse you ask? She released the most recent of her series of videos on "Tropes vs Women in Video Games." and by pointing out and discussing the way that the rape, maiming and murder of women is uniquely used as background narrative or character development in video games, she was subsequently threatened by members of the gaming community with all of these very things. I am not sure how much more her point needs to be hammered into someone's head when the very thing she is criticizing about video games, ie, violence against women, plays out in real life. That certain individuals (men) believe that this level of violence against women is just a NORMAL part of video games and somehow integral to the gaming experience is a problem people. A BIG one. Sarkeesian says that when these games are critiqued for their levels of violence against women it further perpetuates these beliefs and frames the "misogyny and sexual exploitation as an everlasting fact of life and as something inescapable and unchangeable." It is NOT and we do NOT have to accept these narratives "as some kind of necessary cultural background for our media stories."
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
Now on the "Ladies Master List of Things NOT to do to Avoid Being Violated" you can include taking racy photos of yourself with your smart phone. Add that to, don't get drunk, don't wear short skirts/low cut tops, don't walk alone in a dark back alley/parkade, and don't ever, EVER, leave your drink unattended - unless you have your special nail polish on that is - and it's just becoming a bit (read: A LOT) ridiculous. The level to which rape culture/victim-blaming is alive and well in our world is so insidious that it takes a couple of minutes (days) for people to register that the rape-drug detecting nail polish is actually NOT a great idea/invention or that saying, "Well, in this digital age, people (ei: WOMEN) should know better than to put naked pictures of themselves on their phones." is tantamount to saying that the VICTIMS of this CRIME are somehow partially to blame for said CRIME. In case I am not making myself clear, all of those pictures circulating on the internet are not a LEAK, and this is not a celebrity SCANDAL. This was a planned and deliberate crime, perpetrated by pathetic individuals who violated personal property, STOLE personal images and distributed them to the world for consumption at will. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON who downloaded them and got a nice good look at them is equally at fault for continuing to violate the privacy and personhood of these women. Take a stand people! Tell your friends that Googling the pictures is wrong. Tell Perez Hilton that he is a major ass creep for posting them. Unfriend /Unfollow anyone on FB or Twitter sharing them and let them know WHY. If you need some more info to convince them, Deb Rox at Blogher says it all right here: "We can start by calling this "leak" by its real name: sexual harassment via theft and publication."
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
I watched a documentary the other night called "L Word Mississipi: Hate the Sin" about the lives of lesbians living in the deep south, deeply Christian bible belt of America. It was a tough film to watch as these women tried to navigate living their lives and loving their partners surrounded by family members who openly told them they were going to burn in hell, strangers comparing them to child molesters and living lives denying their true selves for the sake of the church. I cried as I watched these women struggle with coming out to their deeply religious parents and the especially difficult story of the one woman who was "reformed" and trying to reform her gay son. At one point, my husband came in the room and asked me why I was watching such a depressing show? I was crying too much to answer him, but here is why. Because I wanted to bear witness to these women's lives, to their pain and struggle. And while that pain is not mine, I felt a profound allyship with these women. I felt loss when one woman's family left all of her childhood belongings on the doorstep of her house, as if to say, you no longer exist in our lives. If God is Love, then why can't Love be Godly? In all it's forms? Hating the sin is simply HATE folks. And that just has to stop.
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
The thing is, revolution is never pretty. It's not quiet. It is not NOT angry. It is not always orderly and it doesn't happen with all parties coming to the table for a "civilized" conversation and leaving happy. Revolution is by it's very definition an overthrowing of a social order in favour of a new system. Revolutions are emotional, they are fuelled by passion and anger and that stuck in your craw feeling that enough is finally, and absolutely ENOUGH! It takes strength to not back down. To not retreat to the way things have always been and just live out a mediocre existence in a world full of overt or not so overt oppression. You've got to get in some people's faces and keep doing it over and over and over and over again. Revolution happens when someone takes a stand, plants themselves there and refuses to sit down. And then someone else joins them. And then another person. And another. And another. And, well, you get the point right?
I do believe that in a lot of ways our world is indeed on the edge of a revolution. The question is, are we willing to step off that edge?
n~
Nickelback just released the new video for Edge of a Revolution yesterday.
You are welcome/I am sorry.
the list
I've been quiet here lately. But not in my head. In my head it is loud and full. The words and thoughts are bouncing back and forth and I am getting to the point where I can write/type them again.
In the mean time, please watch this. Because Jay Smooth is my Youtube boyfriend and because he speaks TRUTH in ways that I just can't get enough of. (You could just go subscribe to his channel too and see more of what I am talking about).
But seriously folks. Watch, Share, Repeat.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/MlNUIIyDA_w[/youtube]
Be back soon...
n~
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Tonight's post was going to be about respect. Respect for people. Respect for our world. Respect for another person's piece of it.
And yet somehow, going off on a rant about my dumb-ass neighbours who let their giant dogs run willy-nilly all over the neighbourhood, peeing all over everyones shrubs doesn't seem right.
It doesn't seem right when in a small town in America, a man was shot six times and it is not called murder. Where the people of this town are living in a police state with a curfew in place and folks are getting tear-gassed and arrested for peacefully protesting.
My dog issues are nothing compared to the fact that in Gaza tonight, even the animals at the zoo are not safe from the crossfire of the Israel-Hamas conflict and the cease-fire deadline is approaching with no clear resolution in sight.
When a whole country is essentially on lock-down because of an Ebola epidemic, my privileged little first world problems becoming glaringly apparent as such and petty.
So, no, I won't get on my "be a responsible dog owner/neighbour" soap box tonight.
But I will say something about respect.
It's a common conversation in and around our house right now (and always). Respect for ourselves and how we talk about ourselves, respect for our possessions and the home that we have built for our family, and respect for others, in how we speak to them and about them and how we want to be spoken to as well. We talk about how we can be more respectful to Mother Earth and my kids are big into recycling, not wasting energy or water and thanks to the Kratt brothers, are all up to date on animal conservation as well. The concept and application of respect is truly a daily topic in our house. As it should be.
I came across this quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower and it seems to fit tonight.
"This world of ours...
must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead,
a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect."
The problem as I see it right now, is that in this world of ours, the pendulum has swung so far over to the fear and hate side of things, that we can't figure out how to get back to the mutual trust and respect side.
I don't know how exactly to swing that pendulum back, but I'll start small. At home, and in my neighbourhood, and in my communities both online and off. I will listen, I will speak with respect, I will not let hate into my mind or my heart and I will teach and model this behaviour for my children. Maybe if we all started small, we would eventually overpower all of that fear and drown out the hate.
Maybe...
n~
Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #28
Today's post is not really that feminist in nature, but nonetheless, every piece here has touched me immensely this week. This very hard, very difficult, very sad, very frustrating, very angry week. I have cried, I have cry-laughed, I have felt bubbles of rage in my belly and I have been tired, so, so very tired. Yes, this week was a doozy, and we are all still here, despite it all... Because of it all? Either way, here we go...
{Trigger warning bells on all of it! Suicide, depression, racism, sexism.}
~~~~~~~~~~
Robin Williams
1951-2014
Not very often do I hear of a celebrity death and immediately fall on my bed in a puddle of tears, but that is exactly what happened on Monday when I heard the news of Robin Williams' passing. This man, this funny, funny man, whose work has peppered my life with so many memories, was gone. Suffering from depression (and in the early stages of Parkinson's Disease), he took his own life and left this world. I don't want to comment on why he did it, how he did it, why he needed more help with his depression, or anything of the sort. He is gone and the world mourns and we start talking about depression again and this post from Logan Fisher at A Muddled Mother, was probably one of the most powerful things I read that day...
~~~~~
Last Saturday, another tragedy occurred in America. An 18-year-old, unarmed black man was shot dead by a police officer in the town of Ferguson, Missouri. His name was Michael Brown. His life cut short for no other apparent reason than the fact that he was a black man, walking on the street with his friends. What happened next seemed like something from a movie of a war-torn village in the Middle East, but it was not. The following post from Greg Howard outlines so much of what has been happening not only in Ferguson this week, but across the country, where it really does seem that...
The impact of all of this is being felt the world over and by people whom I care about and respect very, very, deeply. Please read their words, examine how this is affecting you too, and if it isn't, ask yourself why that is?
Karen Walrond at Chookooloonks is very Affected by all of this. And Vicki Reich at VillageQ, who is from Kansas City, gives us some cultural context for what is happening in Ferguson and amplifies the voices that need to be heard right now.
And finally, one of the most powerful things I read this week comes from a Canadian writer. Sarah Bessey lays it all out in black and white and left me raw with emotion after I read her post, In which I have a few things to tell you about #Ferguson.
In all of this, I only have one more thing to say. Silence is not an option. Sit with the uncomfortableness of these hard conversations and issues of race and justice and oppression, and really listen, and then stand up. Stand with the people of #Ferguson and those across America fighting for justice and more often than they should be, for their very lives.
~~~~~
Social media is how we communicate. This is the truth of our time. BUT... within these constructs, these massive platforms of code and algorithms and formulas and insidious marketing campaigns, how do we make it work for us. How do we "buck the system", especially when the system is constantly changing, not to suit our needs, but those of the people who make boatloads of money off of us. BUT, but, Facebook is FREE, right? Well yes, it is free, as in, you do not have to pay a fee to use the site, but you do pay with something far more valuable than money these days... you pay with your "LIKES". In the span of a week two people wrote about two similar yet completely opposite experiments they conducted with their Facebook usage. Mat Honan from Wired decided to LIKE everything he saw on his Facebook feed for 48 hours and Elan Morgan from Schmutzie.com decided to NOT like anything on her Facebook feed for two weeks. The results of these two experiments are somewhat fascinating.
And for the record, I too have sworn off the "LIKE" button myself to see if and how it changes my Facebook experience.
~~~~~
I have posted things from Robot Hugs before, and this comic strip ranks up there as one of my all time faves. It's the kind of thing you should keep bookmarked on your phone so you can pull it up at a moment's notice, whenever someone starts going off about how "they just don't see all this sexual harassment you ladies are talking about".
One of the challenging things about talking to men about violence, harassment, and sexism against women and femmetype folk is that it so often seems invisible.
Dude: I certainly never see it! Are you sure you’re not just being sensitive?
~~~~~
OK, I know that was a lot to take in. Just breathe.
Take some time for you this weekend.
Know that no matter what, love wins, compassion is hard (but worth it) and we are all in this together.
XO,
n~