picked a handful of violets in my name

I just read a paper from the discipline of conversation analysis. It dovetails nicely with what I wrote in Talking Past Each Other, and I’m going to go through some of the findings (I can’t redistribute the paper itself), and talk about some conclusions. Long story short: in conversation, “no” is disfavored, and people try to say no in ways that soften the rejection, often avoiding the word at all. People issue rejections in softened language, and people hear rejections in softened language, and the notion that anything but a clear “no” can’t be understood is just nonsense. First, the notion that rape results from miscommunication is just wrong. Rape results from a refusal to heed, rather than an inability to understand, a rejection. Second, while the authors of the paper say that this makes all rape prevention advice about communicating a clear “no” pointless, I have a different take. Clear communication of “no” isn’t primarily going to avoid miscommunication — rather, it’s a meta-message. Clear communication against the undercurrent that “no” is rude and should be softened is a sign of the willingness to fight, to yell, to report.

sasha_feather

The presenter, whose name I unfortunately do not recall, let the discussion go on for a bit before stopping it. She said, and I paraphrase, "All of the medical details can get confusing and upsetting, so I like to use a metaphor. Imagine you are caring for your elderly grandmother. It's difficult to get her up and down the stairs and into the tub because she is a tall woman. So, to fix this problem, you decide to cut off her legs to make her smaller."

Alt.Share is an unconference on April 3rd, 12:30pm-4:30pm at the Boston University Women’s Resource Center based on the idea that sexuality affects all aspects of life and that anyone with the desire to learn has the right to do so and has something to contribute to this open environment.

Because of the way that sex workers are generally made vulnerable to violence, as well as the ways that prisoners face frequent sexual assault, the most callous part of this practice may be the fact that such large numbers of those forced to register as sex offenders for non-violent offenses are victims of sexual violence themselves. Most of the women and men profiled in these articles talk about having been raped, whether as adults or children, whether by clients or family members, by prison guards or fellow prisoners. They must register as sex offenders, be unable to find employment or residences, face harassment and assault, and bear scarlet letters on their identification while at the same time, probably all of their actual rapists do not have to do the same. They have not only been raped, but been given their rapists’ punishments. They have not only been raped, but told that they are like, or perhaps worse than, their actual rapists.

The truth is, pop culture is not just fun and games, and that’s why “It’s not just a show” is bullshit. Culture – and current culture has always been pop culture, and always will be – is the medium through which the privileged people educate all the other sorts of people on how they are supposed to behave so as to inconvenience the privileged the least they can with their undesirable yet necessary presence. I really am supposed to not only like flowers, but to accept them in lieu of kept promises and fidelity – not because it’s on TV but because that would be ever so convenient for uncaring and cheating men. What the person who criticizes me for diverging from TV portrayals of my gender is really saying is: “Don’t you know this is your responsibility? Even if you don’t like flowers, you still need to like the damn flowers because men need their women to be plug ‘n’ play, easily replaced! Men have nations to conquer and important things to do. They can’t be bogged down with trying to remember what each new current girlfriend likes, which is why it’s so crucial you all like exactly the same shit! Jeez, you selfish bitch!”

As a victim of sexual assault I have had my life turned upside down, my beliefs and hopes decimated and my sense of self devastated. In trying to make sense of what happened to me, I have struggled overwhelmingly with a sense of isolation, fragmentation and dislocation. Despite reporting the assault to the police, despite excellent counselling and support services and despite an extraordinarily patient and supportive family, I have often felt unable to articulate, or be heard on, the devastation and upheaval that sexual assault continues to create for me everyday.

I want to build an online marketplace for gender-variant clothing solutions.

Not a store where I sell to you, but a service like Etsy and Ebay where we sell to each other, in a focused, supportive community. And while we’re at it, we also trade all sorts of tips and inspirations on how best to look the way we want, gender-be-damned.

synecdochic

If you have chronic pain of the muscle/stiffness sort, or suffer from muscle cramps in the middle of the night that wake you, start sleeping with an unwrapped bar of soap in bed with you.

laughingrat

One wonders where Marc Lepine got the idea, in 1989, that he was entitled to go to engineering school regardless of his lack of qualifications, but that women who were qualified to go were not similarly entitled. One wonders where he got his tremendous sense of privilege, his tremendous sense of outrage, and the idea that if he, a man, was sufficiently angry at women, the acceptable answer was to terrorize and murder them.

copperbadge

To sum up: when people ask you for money, be critical. Know who's getting your money, know what they believe, and if you can't get hard facts, be suspicious. Most charities are listed on charitynavigator.org and have a website; they will have mission statements and should have financial information.