picked a handful of violets in my name

Warning: this post and links from it discuss both harassment and violence, imagined and real.

Am I against hitting a harasser in all situations? No. Am I advocating against it in all situations? No.

However, here’s a lengthy and incomplete list of reasons why victims may not be able or may choose not to hit a harasser and why it is definitely not a general solution for the problem of harassment. I even have a special buzzer on hand that will sound when the reasons are related to gender discrimination. Listen for it, it goes like this: BZZZT! Got it? BZZZT!

It's good to like your body, but you know, your body isn't the biggest deal about you. (Or rather, your beauty isn't the biggest deal, since few people insulting your body can be dissuaded by hearing how many pounds you can lift or how quickly you recover from injuries.) It's a heartbreaking waste to take a human being, a person rich in history and abilities and relationships and ideas, and judge them on how nice a decoration they make. Maybe that's inevitable when it comes to strangers, but you damn well know better when it comes to yourself. When you're judging your appearance, you're only judging one tiny part of your self.

glass_icarus

Potluck is intended to be a carnival for multicultural and intersectional discussions of food. There are no real limits on theme; however, the focus of the carnival is on thoughts and experiences around food through various topics that you might see around the social justice blogosphere, including but not limited to food discussions intersecting with disability, gender, sexuality, fat, animal rights and of course cultural and racial issues. We welcome you to share your recipes as well as your thoughts and experiences, but we ask that you do not submit posts with recipes only.

Then I came to a small yellowed clipping that featured a photograph of the five young women nominated in 1971 ... and the young man, Everett Nau, who had been crowned the Winter Carnival Queen of 1970. The brief caption to the photograph read (in part)

NAU GOOD LUCK GIRLS ... Everett Nau, last year's Winter Carnival Queen, bestows his best wishes upon this year's recently selected finalists (all girls if you'll notice). ... In this year's campaign, the judges ruled it mandatory that the contestants be of the female gender.