Just Want to Note

that I am so over the U.S. government. This 'democracy' is a joke.

Learning Social Justice Part 1- Being Raised Feminist

For a few weeks, I've been planning a series exploring how I came to my current state of awareness on social issues. So far I have around 8 installments planned, and I intend to add on to that as I continue to learn and grow on new topics.

For me, feminism had no discernible starting point. I was raised by an overwhelmingly female and at least feminist-leaning, if not overtly feminist, family. My maternal grandmother was a doctor at a time when such a thing was still quite rare, and (I get the impression) she raised her son and three daughters in a more egalitarian than usual household. By the time I came around, that son had married a feminist, and the two other daughters remained unmarried until I was a bit older. My parents are also both physicians, and all of those aunts freely pursued their careers of choice, to great success. This meant that my earliest years saw very little gendered discrimination, because no one in my family was inclined to say, "You can't be an astronaut, that's what boys do." The only inequality I noticed in my two-years-younger brother's treatment and mine stemmed from our age differences. It wasn't until my tomboy sister came along that I noticed any sort of gender policing behavior, and the extent of that was really that she was forced to wear dresses to very formal events. While there was plenty of complaining about it, she was regularly allowed to wear only our brother's hand me downs and never mine (unless they went to him first, but she didn't need to know I owned them originally). The majority of our conflicts with our parents stemmed from (our own) violence and tendencies towards mayhem, not the failure to perform gender exactly which I so often hear feminists, particularly those of an older generation, reporting.

I'm not sure how they did it, but my family did manage to instill a bit critical thinking in me from a very young age. I strongly preferred the proactive Ariel to any of the other Disney princesses, until Pocahontas entered the picture, and I remember pondering the fact that every princess has a prince to save her. I genuinely liked pink, but I hated pinkification- I was very upset at my seventh or eighth birthday party, because it was Pocahontas themed, yet every single plate and napkin was pink. That was not how the movie's color scheme went.

Another big influence was the street I grew up on- for the first seven years of my life, my family lived on that idyllic suburban street where all the kids play in the street until dinnertime. Our neighbors were a diverse set of people, and it didn't occur to me until much later in life how problematic some would have found them. While there were a few instances of bigoted perspectives (there was speculation our Mexican neighbor was a drug dealer, our gay neighbors were 'roommates' until years later), we kids were just taught to treat everyone in the neighborhood with respect. I think this is pretty demonstrative of how bigotry becomes reduced through the generations- as one generation learns to only whisper prejudices behind closed doors, their children don't ever learn to even whisper them. Of course, there are plenty of other coded and overt bigotries that are still perpetuated every day, but I like to be optimistic that our country is getting somewhere, however slowly.

Up next: Early Instances of Dissonance

Women and Midnight Ridazz

Following the discussion of the Westside Mosey incident (The FB discussion has been removed), I decided to try and begin to address the issue of sexual harassment and other related inappropriate behaviors on rides and/or between Ridazz. I am now collecting data and ideas to be put forth at the next Ridazz Summit. I'd like as many people as possible to fill out the following form, so that we can a) jumpstart this conversation and b) compile the data to create solutions to this problem. If you'd like, you can email it directly to me at sarah (dot) danya (at) gmail (dot) com. I promise to maintain complete confidentiality for those who request it.
ETA:  I'd like to stress that responding for the sake of being counted, even if you don't want your story quoted or you name used, is a legitimate and useful thing to do. I plan to report the number of respondents I get as well as the number and type of incidents they report. It is possible to post anonymously on this blog, so it's not attached to a user name, or you can email me with from throwaway email account.

Name: (Anon is acceptable)
Name of Harrasser: (Unknown, Anon, and Changed names are all acceptable answers)
Approximate Time and Place of Incident:
Description of Incident:
Did you attempt to confront your harasser? Why or why not?
-If yes, what was your harasser's reaction? How did that reaction affect you?
Did you report this to other Ridazz? What circumstances made that possible, if yes, or would make that possible, if no?
-If yes, how did these Ridazz respond? Did you feel their reactions were sufficient given the circumstances?
Can I quote your responses at the Summit and/or in future writings?
-If you chose to use real names, would you like me to alter them or anonymize them in quotations?

And I'll get this started with one of my own, the very first one, and the worst. Believe me, I could report a dozen incidents off the top of my head, and it'd probably be way more (50+) if I had attempted to actually record instances of being made to feel uncomfortable as they happened, instead of just trying to forget about them.


Name: Danya
Name of Harrasser: Anonymous
Approximate Time and Place of Incident: LACM, July 2008
Description of Incident: After drinking on a ride for the first time (it was maybe the 10th ride I'd been on, the first where someone offered my underaged self liquor), I was convinced to accept a ride back to the valley with a few of the other Ridazz I had recently met. The driver of the car was very conveniently the one who had been plying me with alcohol all night. Also conveniently, he dropped the other 3 Ridazz of before taking me home. Except he didn't take me home. He took me to his place, and forced me to come inside, even though I insisted that I could wait in the car for whatever errand his pretext for stopping his place was. He sat me down on his couch, and proceeded to touch and kiss me, ignoring my multiple protestations about having a boyfriend and the dozens of times that I simply and clearly said "No." I was too drunk to be able to move well, and the idea of being able to even lift my arms to push him away was laughable. When he tried to take my shirt off, I was so overwhelmed that I vomited. This instance remains the only time in my life I've vomited without mixing liquors. Luckily for me, he was repulsed by this and agreed to take really take me home at this point. I am convinced that if that had not been the case, he would have completed his attempted rape. I know others of my friends have not been so lucky within MR.
Did you attempt to confront your harasser? Why or why not? No.This was the first time anyone had ever attempted to violate my boundaries in such a way, and I had not been prepared to process, acknowledge, or report such incidents. The closest I came was writing about it as a private post on my LiveJournal the next day, and even then in a joking manner, as I couldn't fully acknowledge how egregious a violation it was.
-If yes, what was your harasser's reaction? How did that reaction affect you? Although I did not confront him, the next time I saw him, he exuded a silence towards me that I interpreted as a warning: we would not discuss the incident, and for my silence, I would be allowed to continue interacting and becoming accepted within that social group. At the time, this was my only option for being included in SFV MR, which was something I desperately wanted.
Did you report this to other Ridazz? What circumstances made that possible, if yes, or would make that possible, if no? I didn't report this incident to any other Ridazz until last year, when I told one person the barest facts in connection to a tangentially related discussion. It's been a long four years, and I have no idea what could have been done to encourage me to report.
-If yes, how did these Ridazz respond? Did you feel their reactions were sufficient given the circumstances? Yeah, I wasn't really trying to have anything done about the incident at that point, just requesting an increased sensitivity.
Can I quote your responses at the Summit and/or in future writings? (Obviously, I can quote myself.)
-If you chose to use real names, would you like me to alter them or anonymize them in quotations? (and again, I chose to anonymize it myself, although choice people can probably parse out who it was.)


The comments thread on this post will be very closely moderated. I reserve the right to alter and/or remove any inappropriate content, particularly anything which I feel diminishes those who chose to post their stories publicly.

Short Stop

The Incident:
A couple of weeks months ago, two of my friends and I went to The Short Stop to dance and celebrate their newly single life. As we danced near the DJ booth, we laughed off the many men repeatedly approaching said friends to 'dance', and we made it very clear that none of us were interested in dancing with strangers or even  being solicited by them. While one of my friends was dancing facing the wall, a strange man approached her from behind and tried to start grinding his crotch into her butt. I pinched the shoulder of the guy's jacket, spinning him around, and told him to stay away from her. He then called me a few names and expressed outrage that I would dare to touch his jacket, before scurrying back to his friends, who happened to be crowding the steps to the DJ booth. His friends immediately lined up and puffed up their chests, and I could tell they were debating whether or not to start a fight. Eventually, they stood down, and their ringleader decided to spend the rest of the evening barraging me with the usual set of misogynist and gender policing slurs, as well as occasionally trying to antagonize me by commenting on my friend's dancing. I was on edge, almost expecting them to follow us out to our car or somehow escalate the incident, for the rest of the night. And no, it didn't occur to me to notify the bouncers. I'm far too well versed in victim blaming to have any faith in the resolution of such events by authority figures.

The Breakdown:
...a strange man approached her from behind and tried to start grinding his crotch into her butt...
As I first noted at this same bar, there's a big difference in how men approach women while dancing and how women approach women while dancing. It's yet another manifestation of mainstream rape culture and the license (most) men feel they have to the bodies of women. As pandoradeloeste responded, "That element of asking for consent is totally missing..." when men approach women this way.

He then called me a few names and expressed outrage that I would dare to touch his jacket...
Of course, speaking on behalf of my friend makes me a totally evil bitch. How dare I get between a man and the women whose body he's clearly entitled to? And there's no contradiction whatsoever in his affront at the grave violation of his body that my grabbing his jacket entailed, and his entitlement to grope my friend without her preceding knowledge or consent. Also, I couldn't possibly be operating on the knowledge of a conversation I had with my friend immediately preceding our the night out about how unpleasant it is to be grabbed by strange guys, and how awful it makes an evening.

His friends immediately lined up and puffed up their chests, and I could tell they were debating whether or not to start a fight.
At this point, it was quite clear (and amusing to me) that these men were flabbergasted at the idea of a woman standing up to them. There is no doubt in my mind, at the time or now, that if I had been male, we would have been fighting in an instant. Of course, if I had been male, my friend would have been seen as my "property", and the original perpetrator would never have approached her. But watching them all bungle about, unsure of whether their male dominance routines should be enacted against a female acting in an aggressive ("male") manner immediately tickled my patriarchy-transgressing feminist sensibilities. It also kind of terrified me, of course, because physical violence, but I can take a punch.

...barraging me with the usual set of misogynist and gender policing slurs...
These were exactly the sorts of things we hear directed all the time at those who dare to blog while female. This man seemed to think that his opinions on my niceness, attractiveness, and general fuckability to the male population mattered to me, a common theme among many internet trolls. I realized at this point that I had to write this article, because there it was, all that ugliness I've read about, out IRL, actually being spoken instead of being hidden behind the (often anonymous) written word. Thankfully I've been engaged with the social justice community for long enough to know how worthless such hateful screeds are, instead of questioning myself and becoming overwhelmed by insecurity, as such tactics are designed to do.

...trying to antagonize me by commenting on my friend's dancing.
This was just dumb. He seemed to think that positioning my friend's attractiveness and amazing dancing talent against my ebil-hairy-feminist self would upset me; when all I really set out to do was make sure that she enjoyed herself, particularly by not being molested by random men.

A bit about boundaries

Ever had writing truly resonate with you? Like, the feeling that the author was writing about your exact situation? That's how I felt reading author Jim C. Hines's post on Boundaries. In it, he discusses how absolute boundaries should be, and how our culture reinforces the belief that boundaries can be completely disregarded, particularly when set by women. I wish more people had a clear grasp of this concept, the world would be a much better place for it.

Another article that got me thinking today was Womanist Musing's "What If Sasha and Malia Obama Arn't Straight?" It addresses some of the finer points about how harmful a heteronormative upbringing can be to LGBTQ children, even in the absence of overt bigotry towards non-hetero/sexual/cis persons. Of course, this is just what stood out to me in particular in an article packed with social justice themes, including race, gatekeeping female sexuality, and the difficulties of life in the public eye.

Both of these articles gave me ideas for longer posts of my own, but as those will probably take me weeks to write (or I'll never post them, like an article I wrote in March, and decided was too personal to actually publish), I figured I'd throw up the links while they're still current.

Awesome Day is Awesome

Reading lots of really good stuff out there on the interwebz today.

Let's start with a quotation from Fannie, because she's awesome:

Like, you know that if we take our eye off the ball for 2 seconds, they'd institute the fundamentalist Christian version of Sharia law in the US if they could.

From her post two days ago, "Muslims Are Worse".  This is pretty much why I've always felt an obligation to at least care about what's going on in the realm of social issues and politics. Give an inch on abortion, and suddenly equal pay is under attack.


Next we have a fantastic description of the lived experience of many queers:

I imagine a lot of us grew up internalizing homophobia to hell and back. I imagine a lot of us didn’t even know we were in the closet, because it’s easy to believe you are straight when everyone is straight and tells you it’s the normal thing to be.

From yesterday's post on Requires Only That You Hate, which is definitely going on my reading list. SF/F and feminism? Plus a big dose of fuck-the-haters attitude? Count me in.

And last, the Best Thing You Are Going To Read All Day. Seriously, this is fantastic. No quotation, just read the whole article.

And now, back to angsting over long posts about rape culture and the ugly things in this world.