Sometimes I Wish I Had Had an Abortion.

The Problems with Simping

“It’s time to retire the very concept of simping and undo the shame that has come to be associated with crushes. ”

When I was around 16, I had my first crush - well, my first real crush. It was all fuzzy feelings and rose-colored glasses. It was like she stole all the light I needed to make my world shine, and I was so happy to let her keep it. I was young(er) and dumb(er) and wholly unprepared to deal with all of these new feelings.

I didn’t know how to process them or act on them - so I didn’t. We were friends, and that was fine. It was good. It made me happy. We went everywhere together and did everything we could together too. We were friends, and for me, that was enough. All I needed was whatever she was willing to give, and if friendship was it, that was more than okay with me.

It wasn’t, however, enough for my friends. It confused them that I wasn’t trying to “go for her” or ask her out or ask more of her and our relationship together. All of a sudden, I was a “simp.”

I have been called many things in my life, and of all the teasing names, I think simp is the most harmful. Not in the way that it’s mean, but in the way it encourages us to understand women and relationships. But before I get into all the reasons I have been called a simp, let’s talk about what it means.

Google says the word originated in the early 20th century as a shortened way of referring to a “simpleton.” Since then, its meaning has mutated into the subtly patriarchal one we know today. Nowadays, simping vaguely describes “liking a girl too much,” though each friend group has their unique usage, this is what they are generally mean.

How we use simp encourages us to feel entitled to female attention and attraction. The implication contained within our use of the word is that we are somehow lesser (simple or stupid) for not demanding more of the objects of our affection. It might not be intended necessarily, but it is implied.

Now I was a young feminist, and while the term made me bristle, I went along with it. I got playfully frustrated and mildly annoyed, but deep down, I could tell there was something wrong with its use. I didn’t say anything because it was just a joke at the time, but now I can fully recognize its problematic nature.

My friends, while well-intentioned, were not immune to the patriarchal overtone.

When they said I was a simp for being just friends with this girl, even though I wanted to be in a relationship, they implied that I was entitled to more. That didn’t sit right with me. Partly because I knew she didn’t owe me romance or some deep love, but also because it felt wrong. I wouldn’t want anyone to expect the same of me.

This is the fundamental problem with “simping” today. We are all too often reducing the people we have a crush on to tools that should perform their function.

How can we possibly aim It removes the real human love and joy that comes with falling hard and fast for someone without knowing their feelings. Suddenly consent and love fall out of sync with one another, and we impose upon each other in this small colloquial way a need for unrequited love to be shunned and consent to be devalued.

Before all of this light roasting and banter, I was not hyperaware of the possibility of unrequited feelings or of the shame that comes with having a crush like this. I was just blissfully into her from a distance. This implantation of expectation and reciprocation tainted all these once pure feelings.

Soon, I couldn’t stop seeing this messaging. Sure, it was all fun and games from my friends, but I couldn’t comfortably watch Netflix or even listen to music without feeling the weight of the patriarchal imposition. There was a cloud of shame that surrounded my thoughts and my actions towards this girl.

That shame over time transitioned into resentment. And it was at that moment that I understood incel culture. All my thoughts came to a screeching halt because I realized only white boys on Reddit should thinking like this. (sorry to anyone fitting the description)

That was something I wasn’t prepared for. With this unexpected feeling of anger that washed over me, I began to harbor this irrational frustration....for nothing.

There was something crudely perverse about how I saw her now. I couldn’t live with that - I didn’t want to. I realized then that my problem wasn’t the act of “simping.” It wasn’t caring for her “too much” or being too good a friend. It was thinking that there is such a thing as “too much.” The fault lay with my conversion of infatuation (or whatever fledgling form of romantic love that comes with crushing) from this pure light feeling into something inundated with responsibility and transaction.

I was lucky enough to recognize all these subtle, harmful messages, but what about those kids my age who aren’t? These are feelings that live in their subconscious and dictate how they view and treat the women (and any other object of their affection) in their lives. We shouldn’t be imbuing anyone with ownership over another’s heart, mind, or body.

It’s time to retire the very concept of simping and undo the shame that has come to be associated with crushes.

Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

Guest Author 4/11/21 Guest Author 4/11/21

They/Them Pronouns and Me

“Whenever someone describes me as or refers to me as “she” or “her” I have to remind myself that the only reason any of us are really here is to live as fully as possible being our authentic selves, and by knowing who I am in some capacity makes me that much closer to being myself. ”

“But that could just be a societally enforced antiquated view of gender, identity, and expression.” I hurriedly tacked onto the end of a statement regarding me possibly wanting to bind my chest to present more gender neutrally. I recently started using they/them pronouns, and even more recently I contemplated suicide, again.

I’d never really thought about my gender or how I expressed it, I just wanted to exist as me and not disrupt the world as much as possible. I wanted to exist quietly, which I later realized wasn’t really possible for me. I went through multiple rebellious phases in my younger teenage years: listening to loud, dark music performed by eyeliner-clad social outcasts; silently flipping off my mother from the safety of my bedroom with shaking hands and red cheeks from tears or otherwise, shyly kissing the blushing cheek of the older neighbor girl which led to my ears getting hot, and painting the walls of my beige room with reckless abandon, smearing streaks of paint into the rented carpet; just to name a few. I’d like to think this is my next rebellious phase, but on a slightly larger scale.

Whenever someone describes me as or refers to me as “she” or “her” I have to remind myself that the only reason any of us are really here is to live as fully as possible being our authentic selves, and by knowing who I am in some capacity makes me that much closer to being myself. I just wish the rest of the world would get the memo. I am not using these pronouns to hopefully get a diagonal line in some twisted and overly competitive game of oppression bingo—- just to be clear. Although that was something I had tried to convince myself I was subconsciously doing because of my desperate need for uniqueness and undeniable main character complex. But I’d realized this was incorrect when a boy used my desired pronouns to refer to me as his partner, and when I tell you the only possible physical manifestation of my utter euphoria At that moment could be described as a shit-eating grin. The boy and our time together wasn’t permanent, but that moment has been etched into my mind. So presenting as I do, a punky androgynous person with boobs, is my lifelong act of rebellion or of authenticity, or just being as much of myself as I can be.

Saya Iki is a student from San Diego, California. They are passionate about reading, writing, activism, and live music. They were selected to attend the Fir Acres Writing Workshop at Lewis and Clark College, where they worked with a team of mentors and peers to craft a portfolio showcasing work that represented them. Next year, they will be attending Lewis and Clark College, and will be majoring in English.

Hayley Headley 4/9/21 Hayley Headley 4/9/21

Whose Labour Matters?

As millions of Indian farmers pour into the streets, threatening the global supply of grains, medicinal herbs, and spices, one question should be on everyone’s mind - whose labor matters?

Every day these protestors push the meaning of dignified work further, but the unsung song in the middle of all the chaos is that of the women. Women are the backbone of most industries, but their role in Indian agriculture has been long overlooked. Now, as photos of the millions of (mostly) men marching for an audience with the Prime Minister flood the internet, it becomes even more apparent that this fight has never included the women who are doing most of the labor.

While they own just 12.8% of all landholdings in the nation, they perform the bulk of the labor. Estimates place female participation in the agricultural sector at 73.2%. The majority of women in that position are working at the behest of their husbands and families. Forced into this uncompensated labor by economics or tradition, these women are largely unseen. This year nothing seems to be changing about that.

Men are the face of farming in the country and the face of the protests today. This isn’t the first time the farmers have shown their great discontent with Prime Minister Modi’s false promises, but it is the first time they have shown up in such high numbers. Risking their marginal profits, health, and future relationship with the government, these farmers are embarking on a journey that threatens to shake how the West in particular views labor in the Global South.

Still, the revolution isn’t about women -it’s about farmers. That distinction is crucial because we fail to address much of the root challenges to development, equality, and human rights when we fail to center women’s issues. At every level and in every industry, the problems faced by women at work are unique and necessary to create meaningful change.

The question pops up again - whose labor matters?

For me, the answer is simple women’s labor, specifically women of color in the West and women in the global south. It is the informal, unseen, and undervalued work that fuels the global economy. Whether it is the women working long hours in the maquiladoras in Latin America or the vast fields of India’s farmlands, this is the work that generates profit. On the backs of these women, fortune 500 companies, silicon valley tech bros, and the wealthiest men in the world have built their empires.

Western media have been notably silent about reporting on the injustice and civil unrest in India. Many people continue to speculate about why but the reasoning is quite apparent to me and many others in the South. Understanding the many intricate ties that bind production processes in the global south and the egregious wealth that lies in the West would probably spark massive protests.

Sure, we all understand that women and young girls make our clothes, and there are suicide nets outside the factories that make our cellphones but knowing those things and understanding the snowball effects of capitalist greed are different. It is easy and comfortable to picture these people in faraway factories benefiting in some way from our oppressive tactics; it’s another thing entirely to see them act on their frustration and rebel.

It is another thing entirely to understand how an avocado bought in LA means that a family in Chile goes without potable water, or how trade deals like NAFTA and USMCA that make goods cheap in the US mean that thousands of women die in Juarez. These are the harsh realities of Western wealth and comfort. These events are inextricably linked.

The foundations of the system that bleeds the South dry for egregious Western profits were laid long before the world we know now came to be. To understand, we need to go back to a time where the West was more explicitly enjoying the fruit of colonial exploitation.

In his book, Black Marxism, Cedric J Robinson explores the origins of African enslavement in the New World. The story he tells is one of a direct correlation between European (particularly Italian) capitalism and new world colonialism.

Before Columbus ever embarked upon his journey, slave labor was already in use within the small empires European nations were building. The colonies of wealthy Spanish and Portuguese nobility extended into the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, sprawled across the Mediterranean, and had just extended into the Atlantic Sea. The aristocrats who made their living by taking part in these colonial expeditions frequently used slavery to supplement in times of high demand. But as Italian capitalists began to conspire with Spanish and Portuguese royalty, slave labor soon became the most widely used get-rich-quick scheme in the freshly colonized island of Madeira in the Atlantic Sea.

Columbus came to the forefront of Spanish politics at a time of great change in the aristocracy. He was perfectly situated to embody this convergence of European powers, the son of an Italian merchant capitalist who married into lesser Portuguese nobility but was employed by the Spanish crown. He arrived in the new world primed for this new form of capitalist oppression. This was the preamble to the Atlantic slave trade.

The slave trade would soon see millions of Africans taken from their homeland, stripped, packed, and shipped to the faraway countries that lay on the other side of the ocean. The actual number of people who were so brutally enslaved is unknown, but estimates place it at over 15 million.

It was by taking indigenous land and enslaving once free peoples that colonial puppet masters enriched themselves and their countries. Soon England, Portugal, and Spain ballooned on the wealth they took from the colonies. England had used the expansion of empire to transform itself into a fully industrial capitalist state. The subjugation of the colonized people was central to the power and development of the new metropolises forming in Western Europe.

That was how things worked for many centuries; free labor in the Global South made for high profit margins in the West.

But, like many other capitalist endeavors, it was unsustainable. Revolts and riots forced colonists to cease slavery as a practice. Still, ever since then, white men have followed in their predecessors’ tradition to find new ways to enslave their former colonial conquests.

Today that manifests in the many multinational (that is to say, American or European based) corporations that have robbed governments of their country’s resources in exchange for short-term gain. In some ways, nothing has changed. But one thing that certainly has is the capitalist victimization of women.

While the time of slavery saw many horrible atrocities inflicted on both men and women who worked for European slave masters, women were, for the most part, relegated to domestic work. After many bids for independence and economic freedom, women have become an even more significant part of the visible labor force. Whether formally or informally, female labor is generating massive amounts of wealth in the Global South.

The South is struggling to achieve what the West has in its hundreds of years of colonialism, and it is quickly realizing that the growth the world is demanding requires oppression. It requires human rights abuses; it requires dehumanization and disconnection. At the end of the day, women are being forced to bear the brunt of the struggle.

International organizations are quick to talk of the “rise of the Global South” but slow to acknowledge the failures of implanting capitalist value systems into these countries. Slow to speak on garment factory collapses in Bangladesh or miscarriages in maquiladoras. Slow to address the severe human cost of this “rise” to Western standards. Even less acknowledged is the role of foreign investment in that development.

While foreign investment was once revered as the best way to promote development, but now more people recognize the system’s inherent flaws. It results in mega corps like Chiquita (aka “the United Fruit Company”) buying out small producers and taking the bulk of their profits. These are roundabout ways for well established and privileged people (usually men) to profit from cheap, exploited labor.

The “rise of the Global South” is coming at a cost. One we, here in the South, are not prepared to pay. It looks like women working for no pay in India, and Modi attempting to rob the few farmers who do profit of their money. It looks ugly and disturbing because this “rise” is just another form of colonial violence.

Again, the South is footing the bill for Western enrichment. And again, the question lingers- whose labor matters?

If not these women, who are laboring in the shadows - then who?

Is it the men who sit atop the fortune they are building for them? That seems to be who we value, at least with money.

As the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos is the face of labor that matters today. News media is eager to tell us his story, to sell us another falsehood about our ability to accrue a fortune like his. Yet, at the same time, we see thousands of videos from Amazon employees crying out for better pay and working conditions- to say nothing of those who provide the goods that Amazon ships.

Long hours, few (if any) breaks, constant walking- these are just some complaints pouring out of the over 100 warehouses across the US. Yet, when asked about the importance of a “work-life balance,” Bezos neatly side steps any accusation of rights violations and skips to what might be the most capitalist concept of work ever.

He talks about a “work-life harmony” because “balance” implies a strict trade-off. He goes on to talk about his own experience, saying: “I find that when I am happy at work, I come home more energized, I’m a better husband, a better dad.” The problem is that it implies that your work should either spark joy or bring you the energizing positivity that allows you to be a better person at home. But that isn’t what Amazon’s work culture promotes; a culture which he actively claims he is proud of.

He says this, and yet the work he puts forward for his employees is grueling and repetitive. It doesn’t spark joy or intrigue. It doesn’t promote balance. And it proves what we all know, the work that matters - that builds an empire, isn’t joyous, it doesn’t create harmony.

Much of the work that makes his “work-life harmony” possible takes place on the ground floor in overheating warehouses, places he never has to see. Therein lies the problem, the work that generates wealth is far removed from those that keep it.

Slavery was built on disconnect and the dehumanization that comes with racist, imperial, and ultimately capitalist mindsets. That is what allows us to make choices that directly impoverish and oppress our fellow humans. Bosses are removed from their workers, consumers are removed from the supply chain, and the meaning is removed from those who labor.

Globalization and the nature of this increasingly globalized world have to make us ask - whose labor matters. We have to keep questioning that and questioning how best we can make sure that the money ends with those working. Moreover, we need to keep pushing our governments to ensure that the workers who matter are getting paid like it.

What that looks like for you or your country might be different, but what is essential is that we are all seeking to close the gap between pay and the labor that matters.

Hayley Headley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

Hayley Headley 4/6/21 Hayley Headley 4/6/21

Planned Obsolescence

“Women (especially women of colour) are bearing the burden of this capitalist invasion on human connection and all the subtly negative effects that come with it.”

Content warning: This article briefly touches on the subject of abusive relationships.

The practice of paying a dowry is extremely foreign to Western society today, and yet in every way imaginable women are still products being bought and sold in the implicit market for love and romance. Men are the consumers and the producers of female sexuality, love, and affection. Lessons taught to them by their fathers, learnt from centuries of female oppression.

This realization is hard to come to, but once you see it, you can't unsee it; all these small ways that society has encouraged us to not only internalise the language of the market but to weaponize it for oppression. Women (especially women of colour) are bearing the burden of this capitalist invasion on human connection and all the subtly negative effects that come with it.

When we live in a world that grants men money, power, and respect by virtue of their existence and forces women to earn the most basic tenets of their humanity it is only natural that the woman is the product and the man is the consumer. Men are the profiteers in the market that crowds the feminine form and forces women into their place on the shelf.

That then begs the question - what are they consuming?

In truth, the answer is whatever they may desire. When the market outside is rooted in consuming and discarding, we empower men to view women as assets to buy into and opt out of, not people with the same autonomy as themselves. In turn, women become commodities that gain and lose value based on what they might offer - they are like multipurpose appliances, new phones with different, better specs, with more or less to offer. This reduction of women to tools empowers men to use them as such.

Love, children, kindness all become upgrades that elevate female value, characteristics that maintain the patriarchal society that holds our bodies and minds hostage. Who we are is a question that fades into the background, as we market ourselves based on what we can offer. These aren’t shakable aspects of femininity, we carry the burdens of this constant market into every part of life and in turn men continue to “shop” wherever they can.

The modeling industry is dominated by women managed (primarily) by men, that sell to us “average women” an image of sexual perfection, and show men the best that their capital (social, cultural, or monetary) can buy. When I spoke to Ellie, a university student and part time model, she expressed to me her thoughts on this driving force in the modelling industry;

“They [female models] represent what men are supposed to desire, and what women are meant to become to gain the desire of those men. When you don’t fit the archetype of that desire, you are expected to change yourself, to consume the objects supposedly used by these ideal figures in order to imitate them. In the industry, there is a strong pressure to fit the mold of the ideal model, to embody that natural perfection.”

This idea of the perfect woman is simultaneously accessed and obscured by the artificial. The current state of the industry glorifies an image of white beauty, even when it attempts to be “diverse” it continues to place that “natural perfection” as the standard. The women we are meant to aspire to be come to us prepackaged in glistening shrinkwrap on the highest shelves pushing us a vision of ethereal beauty augmented by photoshop but their beauty isn’t inherently abrasive or oppressive - the commodification of their form is. Women on both sides of shrinkwrap are ultimately suffering from the images we continue to see, but in the professional capacity models are undoubtedly worse off.

The lines between the professional and romantic are so often blurred. Ellie highlighted how flirtation is at times necessary for advancement, that casual touches and coy glances make or break your modelling future. Saying;

“There can be a lot of unnecessary touching to fix how clothing is sitting or moving your hair and sometimes it is necessary and other times it is more an act of advantage. A lot of male photographers get agitated if you reject this kind of behaviour, and in some cases it is a well known ‘secret’ that being friendly and flirty and inviting gets you better images for your portfolio, or makes it more likely for them to refer you to other jobs.”

It has become all too commonplace that accepting these subtle cues of potential romantic entanglement advances your position, but this effect isn’t unique to the modelling industry. Beyond the modelling industry, when we expand our scope into the areas of business, finance, even healthcare - these small advancements, that border on sexual harassment at worst and are wildly inappropriate at best, permeate. This was echoed by another woman I sat down with, Elaine Teo.

As Elaine put it;

“When I look across my corporate experience, especially at the start of my career, there was definitely an undercurrent there. From my observations and experiences in the workplace over 27 years, women get subjected to objectification, appearance-based judgment and unwanted, unsolicited interactions often of a flirtatious or sexual manner - often as 'jokes' which one is 'supposed not to take too seriously', yet they can still be affecting, to a degree far outstripping that of men, who can just 'get on with the job'. Which is what I definitely wanted as a woman too, but which was not always given to me.

When I have withdrawn either implicitly or explicitly from letting myself be seen in a certain objectified way - sending certain signals to say you don’t treat me this way, you don't look at me with that regard, with that intention, or with that desire - I have often noted a cooling off, a distancing and an awkwardness. To make it worse, it’s often conducted underneath the surface so it's quite challenging and you never quite know whether you are reading too much into it. To me this is a kind of gaslighting, because you are led to doubt the truth of your own lived experience and perceptions, and because there is a social and political risk to a woman to 'make a fuss' about such behaviour, so often we are led to suffer terribly in silence, suppressing our own voice because we are afraid no one will believe us if we were to raise it, or we will get ourselves and/or others 'into trouble', make things 'troublesome/embarrassing' and so on. This is especially so in cases when those who have made inappropriate comments or behaved inappropriately are popular or in senior positions. I consider myself fortunate compared to other women I know that I have received unwelcome and inappropriate behaviours relatively mildly. But these experiences still leave their scars on me. No one should have to be subjected to such unwanted and distressing experiences.”

The question here is who gave men the right to feel so entitled, to feel so empowered to look at and touch the women they work with in that way. The pressure of sexual advancement is a flagrant abuse of the power men have by simply existing in the workspace only further marginalizes women who now doubt their own experiences and fear speaking up about them. And yet it is her sudden rejection of this subtle lust and attraction makes her less worthy as a coworker?

Female value is directly related to what romantic prospects women offer. We could be the most drop-dead gorgeous model or the most qualified and diligent employee but none of it matters if you aren’t partaking in the quiet sexual politics at play in the background. Television and media teach us to demonise women who “sleep their way to the top” but praise and deify the men who allow for that to be an option.

Whether men are saying it explicitly or not, in or out of the workplace, the quickest way to earning the jaded form of respect they offer to women is by leaving yourself open as a sexual conquest. The juxtaposition is clear, women can't view men as opportunities but men are free to see them as sex dolls. Love and sex are all things men get to see as gateways to respect. When you, as a woman, have to trade in your romantic attention, love, or sex for the feeble respect men have to offer we internalise an idea of love that is rooted in transaction.

Eventually that value runs out as well.

The problem with the way men are socialised is that society encourages them to take and take until either they have taken all that they need or the unfortunate object of their affection has given all that they can.

There is a lot of discussion of what it means to be in a toxic relationship, when I discussed this with Elaine she commented saying: " It’s toxic because it leaves you feeling uncomfortable to be yourself or to be seen” But what are we unconsciously afraid of men seeing?

The answer is, the truth. The nature of internalising the market, of being sentient objects in the market, is that we are hyper aware of the image we are “selling.” In the back of our minds we are constantly thinking about how we are sticking to the script and reflecting only what we know our partner wants - what they desire.

This, however, is a two way street. Men are keeping up a veneer, whether it is about how much they make or how kind or caring they are, the lie is implicit. Women keep up a veneer about their values, who they are and how they look. These most basic aspects of themselves must be concealed.

In a world where happiness is so thoroughly intertwined with togetherness and relationships we all are seeking love at the detriment of ourselves and our true values. While men are gaining the most, they are gaining clout and affection, women are taught that men are often the end goal. But women, by virtue of being the ones without the power, are being shorted in this exchange.

Women must cut away at themselves to put on a show, reflect a false image - one that wants 4 kids, a big house, a high power job, and a mildly attentive husband. When we chip away at our own values and ignore our own minds and eyes we can’t live in true freedom. We are constantly stuck in the shrinkwrap, we never truly leave our place on the shelf, we are still products.

Healthy relationships can’t be transactional. As Elaine continued; “[in a healthy relationship] you are safe to be seen, you are safe to be comfortable, safe to be yourself.” Unfortunately, life isn’t filled with healthy relationships.

When I spoke with Shelly, a physicist, she told me of her own experiences with abusive and toxic relationships. She started off saying; “I thought because I was an educated person I would have seen this coming. I didn’t date people who looked up front like what they cared about was me being some sort of status symbol. I thought I would spot that a mile away but it came to bite me in a different way.”

Shelly shared with me her story of dating a relationship coach who turned out to be fundamentally incapable of handling a relationship. She was intrigued by them, they were spiritual and seemed caring and chill. She was in a place where she wanted to seek that out so she did, they dated for a year and half but she realized by the end that “I was just an object, literally I was just an object.”

There were moments where she was being blatantly gaslit in front of other people about things she was seeing and experiencing with others. Yet, the spell was impossible to break. She continued to explore the intricacies of this year and a half, all these tiny moments that upon reflection paint a clear picture of abuse and manipulation.

What resonated most throughout her story was that when she was no longer useful in one way he pivoted to abusing some other facet of her identity. Suddenly her beauty wasn’t enough, then it was her kindness, then it was her presumed maternal instinct, and so on until he crept his way into her life in unreal ways.

This all came to a head when he was physically abusive. After an altercation Shelly quickly came to understand the way her life had transformed. She knew then that all of these little acts that seemed simple at first were just getting his foot in the door for the next thing. These were just his ways of testing the waters, and her options were clear - run or stay.

While abusive and toxic relationships are the most extreme extension of this sick logic, in most long term relationships women are asked more and more until they extricate themselves from the trappings of heteronormative relationships. It’s more than just cooking and cleaning or having children, it is also the maternal gentling and the burdens of sexual performance.

It takes a toll on the women who have to go through that. As Shelly put it “It’s just incredibly demeaning and demoralizing to be treated as an object when I bring so much more than that. This is not who I am, I am a human being, I am not something that can be reduced to a list of attributes.”

The problem is that men have accepted this shopping list mentality that it's nearly impossible to leave behind. Transaction is an inherent part of the neoliberal society that awaits outside of our homes, but when society allows men to feel this undue power, this unwarranted entitlement - we bring neoliberalism home with us. It becomes something that perverts the most comfortable and seemingly incorruptible parts of human existence.

Love, romance, beauty, they all become marketplaces. The women we know become objects. The men we know, the consumers. And the uncontrollable and unsustainable logic of the market reigns, breeding toxicity and abuse wherever it goes. The boom and bust of what “a good woman” is leaves women chasing behind this or that attribute while men laze about in the complacency of a wealthy existence.

Annie Savoy is an American photographer who takes self-portraits and overlays them with text. She explores themes of power, longing, desire and ennui. Her pictures are risky and provocative and they question the viewer’s preconceived ideas around nudity, femininity and sex. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Twitter.

Hayley Headley 3/19/21 Hayley Headley 3/19/21

Under Attack: The Fight For Abortions in Poland

In late October of 2020 protestors descended upon the streets of Poland’s largest cities. An affront to both coronavirus restrictions and the brutal action taken by the police, protestors stood up valiantly in cities like Warsaw and Krakow to fight against the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) party’s latest attempt to erode the rights of Polish citizens. Voting in a new law that threatens to end abortion access for the majority of Polish women.

Since the fall of the USSR Poland has struggled to define its national identity, and as the idea of “Polishness'' becomes more obscure, PiS (Law and Justice) have weaponized notions of tradition and identity to ignite their base and join the many other far-right parties that have risen to power across Europe. Initially PiS began, like their neighbours Fidesz in Hungary did, by fear mongering. Their first target were the many refugees fleeing violence and war in the MENA region, then it was the LGBTQ+ community, and finally women.

Leader and co-founder of the party Jaroslaw Kazcynski has said that refugees are not welcome in Poland, and openly called the LGBTQ+ community “threat” to Polish values, now his sights have turned to the women of Polish society.

Just a year after winning their first election the party attempted to introduce a total ban on abortion, threatening jail time for both women and doctors as well as committing to investigating any miscarraigges. In this time Kazcynski was quoted as saying “We will strive to ensure that even in pregnancies which are very difficult, when a child is sure to die, strongly deformed, [women] end up giving birth so that the child can be baptised, buried, and have a name.”

These comments and the proposal of such a complete ban sparked major protest all the way back in 2016, though the world wasn’t paying as much attention at the time. It was in reaction to all of this that Polish women began the Black Monday Protests. The tradition of Black Protests has endured especially in major cities like Warsaw and Krakow since then, but in October of 2020 something broke in Polish politics that reignited the movement and brought international attention to Polish women.

In their just 5 years of power Law and Justice managed to disturb the balance of the Constitutional Tribunal by appointing judges that they knew would remain loyal to the party. Now, of the 15 judges that sit on this tribunal which is responsible for the judicial review of certain laws 14 are known to be loyal to PiS - a clear affront to the very nature of the tribunal itself. This power is proving to be incredibly dangerous, and it's just one of the reasons there were so many people in attendance at the October 2020 protests.

After spending the last 5 years in power uprooting and decimating Poland’s system of checks and balances their previously tabled restrictions on abortions were now possible - a testament to what they can now achieve. Previously abortion was only accessible under 3 conditions - threat to the life of the mother, sexual assault, or fetal abnormality. The bill which passed late last year said that fetal abnormalities, which account for 98% of Poland’s legal abortions, will no longer be a justification.

This reignited the feminist movement and even amid pandemic restrictions thousands and thousands of Poles poured into the streets to defend women’s rights, abortion rights, and the very future of Polish democracy. With 4 more years of their reign over Poland ahead many feminists across the country fear this won’t be the last attack on their rights to come.

As the movement both for women and against PiS grows, the youth are coming to the forefront. I spoke with one youth activist, Antonina from one of Poland’s more progressive cities in the north, and she told me a bit about her experience.

Amid the chaos, and despite being just 17, she too felt the weight of this moment in time so she took it upon herself to get involved. She and 4 other student leaders got together and organised a protest in her home city of Gdansk. The protest was illegal because of the current COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings and in setting it up she was well aware that it means she now has a criminal record saying: “It was illegal [...] but honestly whatever they [the police] do it was definitely worth it because the cause is way more important to me than actually having something on my record or in my CV”

Their first protest saw a turnout of around 3,000 people and after collaborating with another, larger group their turn out hit about 6,000 protestors. While this was all amazing in the end, Antoninia admits setting all of this up was incredibly hard commenting; “We did a lot of work mostly with other organisations because there are lots of NGOs right now that want to do something good [in Poland] but sometimes the communication was hard [...] I mean, we are kids and we didn’t really know what we were doing. It isn’t something we do every day.”

She, like many young women and young people at large, is occupying political spaces in a way that is new and unfamiliar. For years now the youth across the world have been taking up even more space in activism and local politics, and last fall this sentiment made its way to Poland. We are entering a new era of Polish activism, one where the youth are coming to terms with their role as political actors and the situation they have been born into. As Antonina puts it; “the political situation with PiS is deeply complicated and is rooted in Polish culture. The divisions were here way before I was born - it's the country [rural areas] vs the cities and the old vs the young. It's a similar mechanism that we are seeing in the US and France with Marie Le Pen”

On the 27th of January the government officially made this law, sparking yet again more protest. These moments of massive unrest have to be followed up by further action which the Polish people have clearly committed themselves to doing.* The fight continues to spill over into 2021 and though it began in 2016 there is the same fervour and large scale mobilization. This isn’t PiS’ first attempt to limit women’s rights, it isn’t their first attack on a vulnerable population, and for Antonina and many other young people in her position these are terrifying times.

She says that this moment back in October was a time of realisation. The protests were the “wake up moment for the youth.” She continues, “this was the first time when many of my friends who were never into politics understood that actually they need to be interested in it, because if you are not interested in politics, the politics will get interested in you.”

This moment in time is so important, as she and her peers come into adulthood under this protofascist regime it feels that the political landscape of Poland no longer welcomes her. She opened up about her own fears about the changes she is seeing saying: “They have been in power since I was 13, and my family is very political so I have been aware of what is happening since the beginning. [...] I am pretty scared, I don’t want to stay in Poland for my studies but I hope I will come back.[..] It is home but with the current party, the government, and the current situation I just feel scared especially when it comes to abortion rights, womens rights, and the discrimination. It’s really not safe for many people here which is really scary and sad.”

As these divisions over body politics, reproductive rights, and the nature of human rights as a whole continue to rage on in Poland there are greater questions to be answered about the future of their country. These protests were about preserving women’s rights but they were also about what it means to be Polish today. Will Poland continue, after the next four years, to be a country that calls for conflict and discrimination, or will it be a place where women like Antonina can feel safe?

These are the questions the Polish people will need to answer for themselves, for the women in their lives, and for the future of their nation. With PiS shifting the very foundation of Poland’s two party system, and its judicial review, and even attempting to sever ties with the European Union some have called into question if this will be a choice for the people to make. Antonina, however, feels confident that Poland’s democracy will continue to thrive long after PiS leaves office.

Though the next election is about 4 years away she is excited to be able to fully voice her opinion as she expressed excitedly, “I really look forward to voting for the first time.” For now though, she, like so many other Polish teenagers, has to rely on activism and education to fight off the worst actions of their current government.

In a moment in time where the world seems to be in complete political turmoil, the youth continue to be a saving grace and a guiding light towards hope for a better democracy and even more rights not just for women but everyone.

The Whorticulturalist 3/18/21 The Whorticulturalist 3/18/21

Why Does a Bad Day for a Man Lead to Deadly Days for Women?

I’m still reeling from what happened in Georgia. Like most millennials, I first got inklings of the news from Twitter, and then from an email or two from friends who were asking if I was okay. I was not okay. Nor were the women who were brutally murdered with no better reason than a man saying he was having a bad day.

The trauma was repeated today, as I saw people posting on Instagram that this wasn’t a hate crime perpetuating white supremacy, but a crime of passion against sex workers because the perpetrator has a sex addiction. As if that made it any better, as if that would make any woman feel safer or less in danger. We all have bad days. Does that mean that men are just one bad day away from murdering innocent women? And should we feel relieved every time they say they’ve had a bad day, but they’ve somehow found the strength to keep themselves from committing violence, from using women as an outlet?

Patriarchy is a system of oppression and violence that puts white, cis-gendered men at the top of a mountain, and keeps them there through misogyny, cruelty, subjugation and censorship. It harms women (women of color in particular) trans and queer folk, gay men, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the harmful stereotype of a ‘strong man.’ It also harms men by forcing them to conform to the idea that having emotions is a sign of weakness, and that being vulnerable is a terrible thing. It’s taught men to burrow their feelings and leaves them incapable of processing pain, trauma, frustration, love, attraction, and more. But that doesn’t mean they don’t cease to exist, it just means they get bottled up and then projected onto other things or people in the form of violence, aggression, sexual assault, jealousy, verbal abuse, physical rage, and more. Patriarchy means that men don’t process their emotions, it just makes women suffer them.

Growing up in America with a mom from Singapore was a special and tough experience. I internalized so many xenophobic notions; and would aggressively reject any sort of attempt by my mom to share her culture with me. I would ask her to make me American food to bring to lunch, and I would get angry and embarrassed with her when people confused her as my nanny, and not my mom. I would ask her to stay in the car, or I wouldn’t invite friends over. I refused to speak Chinese with her, and threw tantrums when Sunday came around, and she wanted me to go to Chinese language school. I rejected all notions that I was mixed, and mourned my slim, hooded eyes, my dark hair, the nose and mouth that would sometimes give me away. As an adult I’ve had to slowly and painfully undo all the internalized fear I had about being half-asian, while also learning more about the ways my mom had navigated a world that was not always kind to her. She’s been scammed because people exploited the fact that English was her second language, sexualized by people who told her they had yellow fever, questioned when she was angry by people who thought ‘Asian women are supposed to be more demure.’ For a year now, she’s had to endure being spit at, mocked, screamed at, and more by people who blamed her for Covid. I’ve heard her apologize to people for her race, for existing. Last summer when the BLM protests were at their highest, she would march proudly with little care packets of water and hand sanitizer to give away. When I asked her why she was marching, a woman who generally isn’t interested in social or political movements, she said “I know what it’s like to be hated for what you look like.”

My mom and I have been mourning for the 8 victims who were murdered while also trying to hold space for the questions that haven’t been answered, such as how was he able to murder more people over an hour after the first attack? How was he captured without harm, with a gun in his possession, when there have been so many POC who’ve been murdered during traffic stops? Why is it acceptable, and understandable to so many that he killed so many to ‘remove the temptation of sex’ from his life?

I am tired of people giving me excuses for the terrible behavior of men; of putting the blame of their actions onto the tired, hunched shoulders of women. Especially women who have done so much work in establishing themselves in places where they have been made to feel unwelcome. Women who have healed through sex work, through building intimacy and sharing healing touches with men who turn around and repay it with violence. I am tired of men having bad days, and instead of doing the work to heal, process trauma, or learn to engage with their emotions, they hurt and kill women. I am tired of the cultural narrative that being vulnerable, of connecting to your sexuality in safe and consensual spaces is a bad thing, and that somehow it’s more manly to take advantage of women, to extract sex from them instead of building the type of relationship in which it can be freely, and willingly, given. I am tired of men because a single bad day led to eight deaths, while for many of us women, almost every day is bad because of the daily interactions we have with men who grope us, catcall us, follow us home, minimize us at work, talk over us, ignore us, gaslight us, and more. I am tired, and I am sad. I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to find the words to express myself in terms slightly more eloquent than these simple words, but I cannot. I do not have the energy, and I know that my mother, the members of the asian community, and women who’ve experienced violence, hate, or both combined, do not have the energy. We are just trying to make it by, because our bad days are so much worse.

Resources in light of this horrific tragedy:

Stop AAPI Hate

Stop AAPI Hate is responsible for researching and responding to racism and xenophobia. They are tracking the surge in violence and sharing information with the wider world.

Red Canary Song

Red Canary Song is a transnational grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers. They are working against police raids and deportations and believe in mutual aid and labor rights regardless of immigration status.

Gofundme's #StopAsianHate Campaign

Gofundme has created a unified fundraiser that supports multiple organizations leading in the AAPI community, including Mekong NYC, Asian Health Services , Oakland Chinatown Ambassadors Program, AAPI Women Lead, and Khmer Girls in Action. You can also support individual victims of violence through Gofundme, such as Noel Quintana, Yong Zheng, and more.

Hayley Headley 1/22/21 Hayley Headley 1/22/21

Las Pandillas: Women on the Run

In 2018, as an abnormally large number of migrants marched to the US border, they couldn’t have known the hell that would soon befall them. Now, in 2020, the issue has fallen to the background of US politics and out of the public consciousness. Though the so-called “crisis” on the border remains a major challenge to women’s rights on both sides of the line.

The vast majority of migrants on the border are women and minors coming up from the Northern Triangle, a notoriously fraught region. The NTCA refers to the three most tumultuous and low-income countries south of Mexico - El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Two of the most significant challenges to progress and development in these three nations are economic inequality and gang violence. These are harshest on the women in the region. Domestic violence is endemic, and recent years have seen gangs deliberately targeting women and children to extort further the communities they torment.

To get a better picture of the current violence that is so widespread in the region, we need to understand a bit of history. The area has been rife with political, socioeconomic, and colonial conflicts for centuries. Military coups and a series of US interventions have kept the region unstable for decades. Long before the gangs, social and economic inequality manifested in all-out civil wars as the poor attempted to usurp their elitist oppressors. The tale of violent conflict within the region is a long and complex one, but the critical event that most informs the turmoil we are seeing today began in the late 1970s in the streets of El Salvador.

Socioeconomic divides that began brewing long before the nation’s independence spilled over into the 1900s and manifested in an attempted coup in 1930. The failure left the poor and wounded under the toe of a brutal military force controlled by the elite they sought to overthrow. Tensions continued to rise, and a string of attempted coups and assassinations came to a head in 1979 when a leftist military junta seized control of the country. After they failed to fulfill their promises to the working class, the five largest guerillas rose up to fight off their new oppressor. Under the National Liberation Front banner, these guerillas began a conflict that soon plunged the nation into civil war.

The war dragged on until 1992, and by then, the country had been decimated. The blood of 75,000 Salvadorans marred the empty streets as El Salvador attempted to rebuild with a crippled population, no government, and no clear way forward. Hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled during the 12-year long war, many of them leaving their children and seeking out better lives elsewhere. They most commonly arrived on the US border; many of them crossed illegally after failing to claim asylum.

The US had played a significant role in the war itself, providing arms and funds for the authoritarian regime who they chose to legitimize. It was with US sponsored arms and training that the regime would go on to commit 85% of the atrocities against their own people in the war. Though they fueled the most severe human rights violations they felt they owed nothing to the Salvadorans at the border. Their ignorance and ineptitude in dealing with the thousands of people flowing into the country left these refugees destitute. Forced into poor neighborhoods with no papers and no ability to get them, they fended for themselves in inner cities riddled with the kind of organized gang violence that plagues El Salvador today.

These Los Angeles neighborhoods were the birthplace of Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio Deciocho, gangs that now sprawl across the NTCA. They had innocent beginnings. They were a way for the Salvadoran community to defend themselves from the surrounding gangs that frequently harassed them. However, they soon became full-fledged drug trafficking operations, and while they continued to protect their community, the lucrative business was attractive for all these fresh and jobless refugees.

In the early 90s, the Clinton administration pushed for tighter restrictions on refugees arriving to and currently living in the US. This came with a wave of negative attention that soon saw many gang members deported back to a home with no infrastructure. Deportations began in 1993, with just dozens of gang members, but only two years later, the Clinton administration had forcibly removed 780 members from the country.

They arrived to an El Salvador with no ability or will to monitor and control them. Their operations flourished. The wave of migrant parents fleeing and leaving their children behind had created thousands of orphans, and with little else to occupy their time and no family that was fit to provide, the gangs became their refuge. The country was littered with weaponry that soon fell into the hands of the warring gangs that began to carve up the country. In lieu of a formal policing force and a well-established government, with thousands of lost children and abandoned artillery in their midst, Barrio 18 and MS-13 soon became the most notorious gangs in the region, spreading across borders and becoming a powerful economic and societal force.

El Salvador was brought to the brink of disaster in 2015 as its murder rate spiked to 104 per 100,000. That was a wake-up call for the government. After a series of trial and error policies, attempts to control and quell the swell of gang violence are finally yielding success. But as the war on the gangs in the NTCA continues to rage on, and even if the government wins, the seeds of future class struggle have already been sown. Like the nations surrounding it, the country is burdened with the lasting impact of colonial and imperialist oppression.

Economic inequality across the world is rising, but it poses even greater stress on women and girls in the global south. Burdened with all that femininity carries everywhere; caring for children, being economically viable partners, and being good homemakers. The weight of womanhood is extra heavy on women who are attempting to make lives in impoverished neighbourhoods plagued by violent crime.

Gangs are a symbol of fear for every member of society, but women have been uniquely made targets of their brutal acts. Gender-based violence has become just another weapon in the toolbox, and the victimization of women has become imperative to territorial control and power.

Women have been forced into hiding. They barricade themselves in their homes, avoid public life, and are still expected to provide for their children. The obstacles are continuing to mount. Femicide rates in the NTCA, particularly in Honduras and El Salvador, are the worst in the world. In 2018, 6.8 of 100,00 women in El Salvador died - the highest femicide rate in the world at the time. In that same year, Honduras topped out at 5.1, while Guatemala saw 2 per 100,000 women die because of their gender. These crimes are ruthless. The thousands of women who were found to be victims of femicide were mutilated and often found to have experienced some form of sexual violence before their death.

The UN has made many reports that cite gang violence as a key factor in these crimes. Yet, a culture of machismo that glorifies the oppression of women prevents the police and the government from addressing these issues in earnest. As these governments wrestle with gang violence, women’s causes routinely fall between the cracks. Their policies fail to intervene in the places women need community and government support.

Femicide is just the tip of the iceberg. The gangs have taken up a policy of forcibly “recruiting” women by making them “novias de la pandilla (girlfriends of the gang).” These relationships have been referred to as modern slavery, marked by sexual and physical violence. Las pandillas in the NTCA have been known to extort families by threatening to take their daughters. They often kidnap these girls with or without the money, making these young girls bargaining chips in this sick game of chance. In this unique context, women have become more than products; they are a currency that ensures community submission to gang rule.

The options are simple - flee or pay and hope for the best. As the economic situation worsens in the region, and governments remain incapable of containing, punishing, or even rehabilitating gang members, the second is no longer feasible.

Again, all eyes turn to the United States. A country whose increasingly limited and nationalistic rhetoric continues to shut the door in their faces. Migrants coming up from the NTCA know this. They are well aware of the politics at play in the US and the many challenges on their long journey. They are conscious that this path is laced with violence and their success (or lack thereof) is up to fate. Still, they leave not out of any genuinely independent will but out of necessity. Economic hardship, widespread gang violence, and the overwhelming sense that change will never have spurred them into action.

The journey northward is long and arduous. Migrants are guided by “coyotes,” people who have made it their life's work to smuggle hundreds of migrants each year from their nations to the US’s southern border. They charge thousands of USD to make you a part of their group and often raise the price at will. Many families save for years for the chance to send just one person to safety.

Millions of migrants make the trek each year from the NTCA to the US’s southern border. In 2019 it was projected that 1% of the population of Guatemala and Honduras would attempt to make it to the US border. Less than half of them will actually get asylum. The US government will repatriate the rest, but commonly migrants don’t get far enough to stake their claim.

Today, women and children are occupying the lion’s share of migrants showing up at the border. This is indicative of the violence they are facing at home and the many challenges they are facing to obtaining legal status in the US.

Under the Trump administration, both Mexico and the US have tightened their border security. As the US becomes more isolationist in its policies, it places increased pressure on its allies to do the same. The crackdowns on the Mexican border with Guatemala have forced refugees into even more perilous routes. In these areas, they face extortion from regional gangs, victimization by human traffickers that kidnap these women and girls for sexual and domestic servitude.

There isn’t enough being done to protect these women, and this isn’t work they can push for alone. This unique trap has been constructed around them for decades, and escaping won’t be easy. Both international and national efforts to protect these women have to be focused on them - not on the gangs, not on money, or immigration. It has to center on the women who are dying and being enslaved because it is only through giving them justice; we can show them that there is hope.

The situation in the NTCA is getting better, but the gangs are also getting smarter, and unlike the general public, they are watching every move the government makes. Whether it be more lax immigration policies or harsher anti-gang patrols - they are preparing for it. And that preparation only puts more stress on these women and their families.

What a woman has to be is constantly changing, but in the NTCA, it is unclear if womanhood will ever not be tied to victimhood. There is so much more to being a woman in a society primed and accepting of the violence it enacts against you. It requires a fortification of self, a bravery that is unfathomable to most. These women’s stories may never be told in full, but their experiences represent what most of us can see so clearly - there is no justice without care for women’s rights.

Guest Author 12/11/20 Guest Author 12/11/20

The Guerrilla Girls

I first discovered Guerrilla Girls in 2005 – I had never heard of the group. Not a whisper or casual comment, an article or a headline, title tattle or gossip - you get my point. I had attended an exhibition called ‘Imagine a World’ at Barge house Gallery in London launched by Amnesty International as part of its global campaign: ‘Stop Violence Against Women’.

An exhibition of contemporary art that aimed to make people stop and think about the impact of violence against females. The exhibition featured paintings, photography, and sculptures. A wonderful interactive experience in which myself and other visitors were asked to "Imagine a World without Violence" and our responses formed part of the exhibition.

The New York Activists Guerrilla Girls first ever appearance caused quite a stir at the Barge house, with their mix of seductive art and feminist politics. As I watched, taking in their greedily, and memorized by the celebrated poster emblazoned with "Do Women have to be Naked to get into the Met Museum,” I had found a new art crush. Crush seems such an infantile word for a moment so powerful so let me explain in another way; My senses felt ignited as if liquid adrenaline had been injected into my blood stream. Around that time, I had connected with third way feminism and had become more and more curious about Protest Art and Intersectional Feminism - A term devised by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw. My eyes had just opened to the fuckery in our social order and I believed and still do that women experience levels of repression caused by gender, color, disability, and class. In the ‘Guilty Feminist, (2019) Deborah Frances-Whites writes:

‘It’s harder to be a black, queer, broke, deaf woman than it is to be a rich straight, non-disabled, middle class, white woman, and if feminism doesn’t address that, then its part of the patriarchy’

“My illustrious lordship, I’ll show you what a woman can do.”

— Artemisia Gentileschi

To me the purpose of art is to make me think, and to make me think is to move me. Therefore, Guerrilla Girls were a much-needed discovery. Women fighting for justice with furry faces, short muzzles, enormous brow ridges and large nostrils. This resonated exactly with my sense of humor, I was never going to forget them in a hurry! After looking into their work, I relished the activist approach that they had adopted and felt I could connect with this attitude. They spoke “truth” to me in a witty and powerful way. ‘The Conscience of the Art World’ (Guerrilla Girls 1995- 2020).

“Speak up. Say something. Your words have the power to change the fucking world.”

— Florence Given: Taken from: ‘Women Don’t Owe You Pretty’ 2020

Guerrilla Girls use facts, humor, and visuals to expose sexism, racism, and corruption in the art world. True art for me is channelled through the heart and mind, guided by emotions that stir the soul and the imagination. Guerrilla Girls have the ability in one poster to express a thousand words in a second, and a hundred different stories.

“Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way
that will lead others to join you.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020)

The GG’s (as I affectionately call them) began in 1985 in New York City. Angered by the lack of recognition for female artists and fed up with being overlooked by leading institutions of art in the United States including MoMA curator Kynaston McShine who publicly said that anyone who failed to be included in an international survey of contemporary paintings should reconsider his career, decided that they should take the task on of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus. The group (Guerrilla Girls’ 1985 – 2020) consists of founding members Frida Kahlo & Kathe Kollwitz and other unidentified artists/art professionals who have assumed the names of deceased female artists. The group wore gorilla masks to maintain anonymity and "to keep the focus on the issues rather than our personalities." (Guerrilla Girls 1985-2020).

Any establishment who did not represent the work of enough women and artists of color in their exhibitions became a target for the social critics. As a source of inspiration to other female artists and artists of color, they began pasting sly posters with meanings and stickers in visible places near art galleries and museums in New York City conveying strong messages. Their first posters, devoid of imagery, relied on text and graphic design, to make sharp social commentary - A statement directed toward the underrepresentation of women in the art world with bullet points supporting evidence of gender discrimination (Naming and shaming). Specific museums, galleries and individuals were a target for their metaphorical bow and arrows, used to shoot truth in the form of words. The arrows of deliverance getting right into the center of the community to speak reality, sending the GG’s in the direction where they needed to be heard.

‘

Over the past thirty-five years Guerrilla Girls have plastered billboards with slogans like "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?" "The Advantages of Being a Woman in the Art World", Male-Female Pay Gap to Gender Inequality at the Oscars; “Unchain the Women”, and “Acts of Police Violence in the US Are Crimes Against Humanity 2020”. They have written a variety of works, including ‘The Guerrilla Girl’s Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art’ and ‘Hysterical Herstory of Hysteria’ and basically said fuck you to the art world where males hold primary power and predominate and have collaborated with Greenpeace, created over 100 street projects, appeared at museums and universities as well as in the broad sheets - including British newspaper The Guardian, The New York Times, NBC News, BBC News as well as many feminist and art writings (Guerrilla Girls 1985-2020). All under the disguise of the great ape masks.

The group attracted a fair share of criticism in the early years. Roberta Smith -Art Critic of the New York Times - was displeased to see her name on a poster that listed 22 critics who wrote about women less than 10 % of the time.

“Hardly any artists had the guts to attack the sacred cows.
We were immediately THE topic at dinner parties, openings, even on the street. Who were these women? How dare they say that? Women artists loved us, almost everyone hated us, and none of them could stop talking about us.”

— Anais Nin (Guerrilla girls 1995-2020)

‘As an art critic, I part company with them on their attitude toward the

notion of quality, which they see as a nonissue’

The GG’s involvement in the conventional and established art world reflects their success in raising attention to racism and sexism. They have influenced the work of artists such as Micol Hebron . In her Gallery Tally Project, Hebron counts the representation of women in international galleries. The GG’s also set the stage for other opinionated feminist groups such as Pussy Riot. A Russian feminist punk rock group who tackle LGBTQ rights amongst other issues. ‘To me, they are art world royalty’: David Kiehl -Whitney American Museum of Art Curator.

There are many more battles to fight but GG’s relentless crusade has played a vital role in edging us closer to true equality and acceptance.

GG’s altered the relationship between art and politics. Activism seems not only acceptable, but vital in the art world. They prompted critics and curators to be more inclusive of women and minorities. The masked crusaders are as valid and needed today, as they were 35 years ago. People need the truth to thrive. Truth is important. Indeed, art and ethics are intimately related, artistic, and ethical values each have unique roles to play in the art world, but neither can operate independently. Art may please; Art can be a pleasure to look at, but extraordinary art can outrage, move, question, or change perception. The disguised group of gals is still going strong and incognito 35 years after they first announced their mission to blow the whistle on an art world dominated by men. They are everywhere but nowhere. Those very women could be the solo artist whose show you just saw in Manhattan. (Not impossible). A curator that gave a talk to you and your friends in a gallery in Soho. (You never know). Your art lecturer at Long Island University (Wouldn’t that be awesome). The woman you just brushed shoulders with in Bed, Bath and Beyond on 6th Avenue. (You kinda wondered why there was a furry mask sticking out of her purse!)

What will the next 35 years hold? Asteroids? Aliens landing? Seriously though, will there be change in global human behavior? World economy? The Class System? Education? Whatever happens I want the Guerrilla Girls fighting my corner.

Justina Jameson is an emerging writer from the UK. When she is not writing at the weekend, she can be found holding down a 9 to 5 as a Senior Administrative. Justina has a Social Welfare and Community Degree which examines the quality of human life in a society in all its dimensions. She feels strongly in female empowerment and believes that women should make personal and professional choices that they want and not let society make them very guilty about those very choices. Justina likes art, dogs, books, laughter and lives with her long tern partner and their dog Cooper-Star.

Guest Author 11/22/20 Guest Author 11/22/20

Unfinished Solidarities

N is a seemingly quiet, perceptive woman in her late 20s whose only caveat before she came in for her first therapy appointment was to ask that she be the last client of the evening. She didn’t fill her intake form which is a preliminary information gathering sheet that helps me get some basic medical and personal history of clients/patients before the appointment in order to better understand them.

A lot of clients either forget or need several reminders to fill it before an appointment. Nothing unusual there. N dropped me an email and asked me if it was ok for her to verbally give an intake when she came to the clinic. I agreed.

We began our session with a cup of tea; she seemed apprehensive, uncomfortable. Again, nothing unusual for first timers in therapy. I assumed it was the sudden exposure to the contemplative silence of a therapeutic setting. Suddenly she burst forth with a single, shaking sentence –“Ma’am, I have to tell you about my job.” My assumption was that she perhaps was unemployed and maybe needed pro bono help or wanted to inquire about sliding scale payments in which clients pay as per financial wherewithal per session. Before I could ask anything, she sighed – “I work as an escort. I am not sure if you counsel people like me. I am sorry if I am wasting your time.”

“People like me” is a phrase that can carry such translucent contradictions; evident yet indistinct. A person using it either feels mousetrapped, isolated in their identity or very sui generis. The only response that felt suitable in that moment was to sit back and listen rather than assume what was N’s story.

Over a period in time as I have gotten to know her, I reckon she is a rarity among those who use sex work in India as their main source of income. N works on her own, can exert some autonomy and makes choices based on her own discretion when it comes to her clientele. This has not come easy to her. She is a high-school dropout who was slung headfirst in Bombay’s chaotic riddle when she was barely 16. The map to her present has been involute. Over the years as she moved from being a dancer in one of Bombay’s infamous dance bars to her current profile of being what she calls a date-for-pay. She is incredibly smart and she has taken time and effort to educate herself on her rights even though the realistic expression of those rights is usually negligible and compromised in a country that pivots on patriarchal supremacy dehumanizing and delegitimizing the personhood of women.

Accessing mental health help is already a thorny path in most parts of the world. Common cultural stigmas, limited funding, poor practitioner-to-patient ratios, disorganized psychiatric epidemiology and a widespread inclination towards a pathologizing, purely bio-medical model that often doesn’t factor psychosocial causation for mental and emotional wellness all contribute to this quagmire. This is especially flagrant in the Global South where poverty, climate apocalypse and increasing ethno-fascist regimes have impaired an already derelict public health infrastructure, if at all one call it that.

“In South Asia, depressive disorders accounted for 9.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 6.8–13.2 million) or 577.8 (95% UI: 399.9–778.9) per 100,000 population in 2016. Of these, major depressive disorders (MDD) accounted for 7.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 5.3–10.5 million). India generated the largest numbers of DALYs due to depressive disorders and MDD, followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan.”

The burden of depressive disorders in South Asia, 1990–2016: findings from the global burden of disease study (Ogbo, Mathsyaraja, Koti, Perez & Page)

The high prevalence of depression-spectrum conditions cause a massive overall health challenge to physical well being leading to increased co-morbidity for diabetes, coronary diseases, poor infant mortality rates and neo-natal health, increased self-harm and suicidal ideation as well as substance abuse. This complex weave is rendered more inelastic due to prolonged wait time for getting any reliable medical assistance and a general lack of affordability. This is exacerbated when you are positioned at the intersection of caste, gender, class and sexual orientation in such a way that disenfranchisement is means to keep an electoral imbalance for cheap political wins.

Sex work till date carries its own taboos irrespective of how progressive a society claims to be. While studying for a forensic course, I was always appalled by how victims of “serial offenders” especially murderers who started their trajectory by attacking sex workers were referred to as “high risk” as if the nature of their work was solely responsible for the inhumane treatment meted out to them, not the internalised misogyny of the those who committed the violence.

In a no-nonsense essay, “How being a sex worker affected my mental health”, British sex worker and activist who uses the pseudonym Mitzi Poesener wrote -

“However, contrary to popular view of sex work, it is not a one way ticket to a breakdown. The difference between us and workers in other industries is that when we seek help we are asked to look at the ways we’ve kept ourselves out of poverty as shameful.”

N’s hesitation towards revealing her profession became more palpable when she described her attempts at visiting a psychiatrist while in the throes of a heavy depressive spiral brought about by her mother’s death a few years ago. She was both mentally and physically violated in a place designated to be refuge away from judgment. This had put her off from seeking any further help till, wait for it, a regular client of hers convinced her to try therapy again and passed her my details. Apparently, he had a significant social media presence and that’s how he’d chanced upon me. She researched me for days before she called my practice for an appointment.

The National Human Rights Commission of India has recently issued an advisory that now lists sex workers as informal workers in India. This move came in the wake of COVID 19 and also to take cognizance of the fact that a lot of sex workers in India are from marginalised sections of the society. The real-time impact of this declaration is something we can only wait and assess over time. A close friend who works towards providing affordable healthcare to sex workers in remote, often neglected red-light districts in two-tier and three-tier Indian cities is not as jubilant about this new development because they believe that systemic corruption coupled with a pervasive casteist, sexist bent of our society won’t let such proliferation make any real dents. Their pessimism has its own historicity.

There is also the more vicious and embittering side of this coin which involves human trafficking, sex tourism and forced prostitution that often sweeps up the most defenseless amongst us. Young girls, particularly from oppressed communities (e.g. lower castes in India or BIPOC and immigrants elsewhere) are often sold into flesh trade and these rackets stretch across a vast geopolitical radius. Socio-economic disparities are growing as capitalism fails to realise most of its promises. Once again, there is limited community-focused work on rehabilitation for those who have experienced these atrocities.

In a study titled “Burden and correlates of mental health diagnoses among sex workers in an urban setting”, the researchers drew a valid and significant conclusion –

Women in sex work faced disproportionate social and health inequities compared to the general population.
Evidence-informed interventions tailored to sex workers that address intersections between trauma and mental health should be further explored, alongside policies to foster access to safer workspaces and health services.

The key challenges to mental health help for sex workers can be listed as follows –

Compound Stigma– Even trained professionals often show stringent biases stiffened by inflexible echo chambers in which they exist. It is harrowing for someone to wade through all the aforementioned complexities that make mental health care usually unreachable to then face reproach or flippant remarks about the nature of their work or worse, character. Clients of mine have narrated abdominal experiences of dealing with GPs, psychiatrists and psychologists that bordered on uninformed, invasive and prejudiced/small-minded abuse. In a world that often invisibilizes people who engage in consensual sex work or, worse, makes them feel chronically unsafe, trusting a professional is an act of courage. This courage extinguishes itself when the professional is unable to remove themselves from a regressive and essentialist understanding of sex and sexuality. For example, a former sex worker and single mother who visited a local hospital for guidance about what she believed to be PTSD and vaginismus, she was repeatedly chided about her past just because she chose to be honest while providing her medical history.

Affordability & Access – Sex work– for a significant percentage of people who willingly engage in it– is still an unsteady source of regular income. If you are not covered by sufficient insurance which again is hard to access if you are primarily working as a freelancer within an irregular setup, being able to find a reliably inexpensive psychiatric or therapeutic intervention is often a pipe dream.

Individualizing of Harm – The most popular contemporary models for assessing mental health tends to lean heavily towards a biomedical model that has its uses but often doesn’t make enough space for psychosocial factors involved in a person’s suffering. One can’t deny that neurochemical and biological markers are relatively important when discussing mental health and illness but we need to be more receptive to the formulation around social inequities linked to race, class, caste, gender and sexuality based discriminations that dent people’s wellbeing on several levels. The DSM or the Diagnostic Statistic Manual which of often used by mental health practitioners to code and diagnose mental illness is a debated creed and for good reason but still it considers/includes both disorder/disease and distress models of mental health. Yet, there is a disproportionate attention paid to pathology where a person’s wellness or illness is often attributed to faulty wiring on an individual level v/s ecology where a person’s response to acute and persistent exposure to debilitating circumstances is relegated to the back-burner.

Marginalisation – Queer and trans folks are further penalised for engaging in sex work and often experience the most dreadful consequence – an ever looming threat to their lives. Fighting for a dignified acceptance of identity is compounded by limited vocational options that respect the whole human being. In a report published by National Center for Transgender Equality, it was noted that in the US nearly 40% of the respondents were denied shelter when homeless and almost 60% reported that they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives. In India, the presence of caste further stigmatizes a transgender person’s right to safety and acceptance. This often enables hyper-sexualization of transgender identities by cisfolks to devastating consequences. Till date, there is little to no inclusion about trans rights in most mental health syllabi used in colleges in India. Queer theorists and academics are working to change this but it is slow. Most research around their health and wellbeing is often carried under a cis gaze as well.

The sizable role played by law enforcement’s frequent viciousness against those in sex work is also undeniable. Most sex workers report frequently barbaric encounters with members of the police force. There have been various news stories and investigative journalism pieces that refer to collusion by members of such agencies in sex trafficking rings.

Sex work is a complex conversation that can’t take place if we begin viewing its entire existence with a jaundiced eye. It involves precarity for those who participate in it. There are evident dangers to mental health and wellness for sex workers but let us also understand and pay attention to how much of that is caused by social prejudice against sex and sexuality. On the one hand, independent sex workers who engage is mutually consented activities are pathologized, limited rehabilitation is available for those women/persons who have been rescued from illegal sex trade that festers across the landscape of the Global South.

Mental health practitioners need to educate themselves and be open to learning as they go. Accessibility for on-time healthcare is a matter of human rights. Antipathy cloaked in “traditionalism” is an offshoot of social conditioning and it needs to be disassembled. This has to be a process that rests on unconditional compassion, not a one-time event hinged on dubious charity. Challenging our own programming as therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, our implicit scripts built on vague morality and questioning the lack of support for folks merely on account of their profession is only the entry point of this change. Centering the needs of our clients in therapy is the first rule of therapy. This shouldn’t be forgotten or compromised.

Citations:

The burden of depressive disorders in South Asia, 1990–2016: findings from the global burden of disease study (Felix Akpojene Ogbo, Sruthi Mathsyaraja, Rajeendra Kashyap Koti, Janette Perz & Andrew Page) https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-018-1918-1

How being a sex worker affected my mental health (Mitzi Poesener, Dazed Digital)

https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/35938/1/how-being-a-sex-worker-affected-my-mental-health

Criminalisation of clients: reproducing vulnerabilities for violence and poor health among street-based sex workers in Canada—a qualitative study (A Krüsi, K Pacey, L Bird, C Taylor1, J Chettiar, S Allan, D Bennett, J S Montaner, T Kerr, K Shannon)

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/6/e005191.full

Psychiatric morbidity among female commercial sex workers (Marboh Goretti Iaisuklang and Arif Ali) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5806326/

Burden and correlates of mental health diagnoses among sex workers in an urban setting (Nitasha Puri, Kate Shannon, Paul Nguyen & Shira M. Goldenberg) https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-017-0491-y

Scherezade Siobhan is an award-winning psychologist, writer, educator and a community catalyst who founded and runs The Talking Compass — a therapeutic space dedicated to providing mental counseling services and decolonizing mental health care. Her work is published or forthcoming in Medium, Berfrois, Quint, Vice, HuffPost, Feministing, Jubilat, The London Magazine among others. She is the author of “Bone Tongue” (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), “Father, Husband” (Salopress, 2016) and “The Bluest Kali” ( Lithic Press, 2018). Find her @zaharaesque on twitter. Send her chocolate and puppies — nihilistwaffles@gmail.com. Tweet at her @zaharaesque.

Hayley Headley 11/18/20 Hayley Headley 11/18/20

My Sex is For-Profit, Just Not Yours

Our whole lives, women are taught to fear sex, sex work, and sexuality. Whether the message is given directly by our parents or indirectly by the society surrounding us, we learn it. Often, we don’t unlearn it.

Cautionary anecdotes tell us that a woman who enjoys sex as a form of liberation is nasty or somehow lesser. While folktales remind us that a woman who relegates sex and family life to mere duties is virtuous and reverent. These stories are told to indoctrinate us into a world that would rather use female sexuality for profit without compensation. The problem is whether we are getting paid or not; women are constantly partaking in sex work. Not because we voluntarily entered into that field or even consciously chose to be sex workers, but because businesses and individual men alike continue to profit from the female form. It is a part of the unmonitored “market for sex and affection.”

Our society doesn’t value female work; this goes beyond equal pay and touches on every aspect of women’s rights. The labor that goes into being beautiful, or even just presentable, goes uncompensated but not unutilized. This is the same with the work that goes into housekeeping and motherhood and speaks to why our society isn’t eager to pay for those tasks. They are a woman’s place - it is a duty, not a job.

In a capitalist society, women are like nature; we hold no value unless we are broken down for profit. This manifests in the unconscious competition that plagues the female psyche. On top of that, the lingering knowledge that men are free to consume and discard women at will pours fuel onto the fire of female insecurity.

Whether it is using women in advertising, free to enter clubs, or inviting us out to a party - the idea that women are products or currency is everywhere. This keeps us vying for attention and value at the expense of not just ourselves but for all women. In the eyes of the capitalist world that surrounds us, we are no better than a tree in essence. The only difference is that we can partake in the market, in so far as we can change ourselves to be more appealing - ripe for the taking.

Ashley Mears, a prominent sociologist, and former model, thought of bodily capital when writing her first book and developed it even further in her second book, Very Important People. It is the sum of all the potential value we have to offer to this market. In an interview with Tyler from the Mercatus Center, Mears makes it clear that we can only access that value with the help (manipulation) of a third party - usually a man. She writes about how this plays out in the context of the high-end party scene where promoters recruit young, broke models from the streets of New York to be pretty near rich men. But this concept of needing a third party to manage or reap the (minor) benefits available to pretty women spills over into every other part of life.

“Women can be gorgeous, but our society reinforces and maintains that beauty is worthless when she controls it. ”

We all need a “promoter,” someone who manages our beauty for us in some way, someone that unlocks its monetary value. If a woman is beautiful, she must pretend to be ugly or not comprehend her beauty. That way, a third party (a man, generally speaking) can explain to her the depth of her attractiveness. Not only does this put the man in control of her capital, but it distances her from understanding the underlying labor and value therein contained.

When we are merely submissive participants, lame objects in this market, we forget how much value there is in that bodily capital, which we do have.

That doesn’t mean we can’t reject this structure, but it does reframe how we can view sex and sexual relationships. Even if we can recognize all the micro and macro impacts of this invasion of capitalist logic on interpersonal, sexual, and friendly relationships, can our partners?

Understanding the subtleties of a market system should make us question what it means to have respectful and healthy sexual relationships.

Ornela, who works with the feminist organization FENA in Argentina, argues that we can’t be having good sexual relationships. Saying, when I spoke with her: “La relaciones sexo afectivas se han convertido en transacciones, sean capitalizado. Sean vuelto capitalistas”

“Sexual and emotional relationships have become transactions; they have been taken advantage of. They have become capitalist currency.”

Both in the sense that sex with powerful men gains women clout and in the sense that being seen with hot women gives men access, leverage, and power. The problem is that this power is not evenly distributed. Women don’t gain enough from these interactions for them to be fair, but oppression is built into the capitalist superstructure.

This extends beyond consensual sex. Part of the alluring nature of the superstructure is that it imbues the undeserving with power. When men hold all the tools to unlock the intrinsic value that is trapped within the female form, they are inclined to feel that they own it. That female sex, sexuality, and to an extent, labor is theirs for the taking. This leaves a gap in the system that turns sexual violence in all its forms into another malignant transaction. Yet another way that men can exert their unearned superiority.

In a way, capitalism has come to pervert the act of sex on a whole. Making it a perpetual form of structural violence that forces women into a subservient role. The unpaid laborers upon which this market is built. Much like the arbitrary use of a fair trade label, “consensual” sex is a rubber stamp that negates the oppression that is embedded in this market.

She goes on to say: “No estamos en relaciones sexo afectivas responsables y libres sino que las mujeres somos objetos de un mercado de consumo. Hablamos de un mercado sexo-afectivo donde los hombres son los que compran, los hombres son los que tienen poder, los que tienen la plata, son los que tienen mejores trabajos, [etc].”

“We are not in affectionate/sexual relations, responsible and free; instead, women are objects of a consumer market. We are talking about the market for sex and affection where the men are the ones who buy, the men are the ones that have the power, that have the money, that have better jobs, [etc.].”

There is an undeniable truth to what she says. Men have access to better salaries, better jobs, more money, all of these things from which women are deliberately excluded. Everything about our various cultural understandings of the role of bodily capital in society predicates on a system in which men are the profiteers in this market. They hold all the power.

When you apply this logic to relationships, as we have come to do, we can never have equal partnerships. Moreover, women are continually partaking in this unspoken sexual commerce - unwitting participants in this nuanced form of sex work.

Ultimately, your sex is always for profit because someone is gaining something from your implicit oppression.

Guest Author 11/17/20 Guest Author 11/17/20

Good Men and the Women They Haven’t Me Too’ed

“I know that there are monsters amongst us, lurking behind the grins manufactured by the same small town orthodontist we all share. ”

A few months ago, I was having a beer with an old friend. We were both in from our respective big cities, fleeing COVID and quarantine to visit our tiny, hometown tucked away in a forgotten mountain valley. We were reminiscing, rehashing old jokes and memories, and providing each other highlights of the years past and future plans. As old friends are always bound to do, we landed on relationships: past, present, and hopeful.

Since the kickoff of #MeToo, I’ve noticed that progressive men are very quick to bring it up. Constantly making sure I know they understand “Me Too.” Not harassment, or misuse of power in the workplace, sexist microaggressions, abuse, or rape. No, these good men always call it “Me Too,” like it’s a verb bored high school students conjugate in French class, “Je ne Me Too jamais les femmes,” or a noun, synonymous with an ancient curse or alien abduction, “Did you hear? Me Too came for him.” Every date. Every male co-worker. Every platonic friend. What do you want? A slow clap for not being the biggest prick in my life today? God forbid you men do the bare minimum in life and not assault women.

Photo by Marcus Herzberg from Pexels — *Photo by* ***Marcus Herzberg*** *from* ***Pexels***

So, this friend was like every other good man I know right now. He pulled out his rolodex of booty and let me know, to the best of his ability, that he has never Me Too’d a woman.

I asked, “How do you know?”

His answer was simple and respectful, “I asked.”

The night moved on. Other friends came and went around us, sitting down for awhile, dishing out quick one liners, than continuing on with the musical chairs of a small town bar scene, where everyone does know your name, as well as your address, your parents’ landline number, who your junior high school crush was, the color of your braces, how many kids your junior high crush has now, the number of MIPs you racked up, how many times your junior high crush has been to jail, who punched your v-card, oh and your junior high crush’s cell number, let’s text him and see if he’ll come out!

During this, someone sat down at our table that I didn’t recognize. He had the bland face of someone considered generally good looking, but not striking enough to be anything other than a long forgotten heart-scribble in a thrown away yearbook.

I leaned over to my friend and asked him, “Who is that?”

“John Doe” he said. “Oh. The rapist?” I asked.

My friend’s face immediately changed. Thunder struck his eyes. “Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t know. Everyone just knows.”

“Well I know you have a big mouth. So you better know what you’re talking about before you say shit about one of my best friends.”

I was confused to say the least. If the situation had been reversed, my reaction wouldn’t have been disbelief. Hurt maybe, but not disbelief. But then, as a woman, I know better. I know that there are monsters amongst us, lurking behind the grins manufactured by the same small town orthodontist we all share. But why was it that my friend, this good man, who I think so highly of and has always shown everyone profound respect, who not an hour before told me he understands what women go through and is self-conscious of his own actions, why is it that instead of approaching what I had said from a place of empathy, or curiosity at the very least, instead met it with incredulous anger?

I know that my comment probably came off as flip and I know that it was shocking news for my friend to hear. And he was right. I didn’t have all the answers. I didn’t know the full story. I didn’t know who was involved. But I knew enough. I knew through the women’s whisper network to stay away from him. I can’t even pinpoint for how long I’ve known. I did my best to explain this to my friend. And while I didn’t know every factoid of the situation, I attempted to convey that this is what women in town said about John and what they said wasn’t gossip, but a warning. This is what women whisper in your ear in the bathroom if they saw him flirting with you at the bar. This is what women whisper in your ear when they see him walking down Main Street hand-in-hand with a young girl you hope will be okay.

I don’t think I did a good job of explaining this. I was mad, he was mad, and we were both about seven beers in. At one point, he wasn’t sitting next to me anymore, and I can’t even remember if we said goodbye to each other that night.

This night continues to bother me and scratch at my bone marrow. I talked with other girlfriends about my outrage at the hypocrisy of the good men in our lives and feeling powerless at my inability to find the words to convey how I felt in the moment. Then the other day, during my morning shit scroll, I saw it. A photo of a woman with a sign at a protest was going viral and it summed up everything I was unable to verbalize that night. “Why does every woman know another woman that has been raped but no man knows a rapist?” Doesn’t add up, does it? I

don’t think my friend is a bad man. I think he’s actually pretty great. I just need the men in my life to start doing the math.

Originally from Wyoming, Emma is a former Democratic political operative turned writer. Since leaving politics, she can be found mouthing off, watching baseball, and reading Stephen King. Follow her at @enlaurent on Twitter.

Hayley Headley 11/6/20 Hayley Headley 11/6/20

The Colonization of Porn

As millions of people flock to OnlyFans to enjoy local sex work, there is a sense of nostalgia for those 90s kids who can remember a time before free porn. OnlyFans represented a reprisal of that golden era of video sex work where women and their producers were getting wealthy from their content creation. For a long time, there was a sense that the golden era of pornography was long gone.

In the 90s, porn was something you bought. Different producers had websites and hard copy videotapes that people bought and paid for with real money. It was nearly impossible to come across sexual content like that without paying. But even then, life was finding a way. In chatrooms on obscure websites, men and teen boys alike were exchanging passwords and subscriptions so that they could access a world of online content for free.

This idea of subverting and circumventing the traditions of buying and selling pornographic content was novel in the 90s, that was all about to change. One unique kid in these chatrooms was concocting a business model that would radicalize porn, sex work, and the world at large. This man’s name is Fabian.

Where casual consumers saw the porn industry of the 90s as a treasure trove of content locked behind a series of paywalls, Fabian saw an opportunity. He was looking at the bigger picture, and that led him to create a site that is so ubiquitous with theft and abuse that producers and actors alike fear it.

The German “entrepreneur’,’ entered the industry by buying up existing sites and bringing them in as subsidiaries. This was the first in a long line of changes that would soon rapidly transform how we produce and consume porn.

He bought a company called Mansef and another called InterHub, the latter of which created what Fabian described as “the youtube of porn.” It was with this naivety that he began the colonization of the porn industry.

Mansef soon became Manwin, which later came to be known as MindGeek. The adult film conglomerate that consumers know and love. When Fabian bought them out, Interhub had just developed Pornhub and Redtube, and they had no idea how huge (and profitable) it would soon become. But much like most other capitalist inventions, it will come to oppress more than it benefits.

Manwin and their subsidiary Pornhub was forging a new path. The idea wasn’t unique, and neither was the infrastructure, but having the finances and confidence to make the site what it is today was something wholly unique to Fabian.

At a time when many sex workers were unable to access banking, the supreme irony of Fabian’s ability to obtain a loan that would soon erode their incomes cannot be lost on us. All the same, he got the loan and began to expand his platform. Soon he was the prince of free to access porn, and everyone else was just the benefactors. At least, that’s what he thought.

That was a half-truth; the problem is that saying Pornhub, Redtube, Youporn and all the other MindGeek properties are “ the youtube of porn” is that their business models are different. Youtube encourages users to create independent content, and there are heavy regulations on copyright infringement. Pornhub, however, actively incentivizes theft. The business is built on screen recording, downloading, and reposting content that someone paid to create and view elsewhere.

Moreover, the company has only expanded on that model since its inception. Jon Ronson spent a year following the effects of the flood of free porn on the internet, and what he found was unsurprising yet thoroughly unnerving. From custom porn to virginal sex offenders, the take away was obvious- free porn isn’t good for us.

Fabian was the first colonizer of the porn industry. He entered, wielded his privilege, money, and power to overhaul every step of the porn production and consumption process. He built on a long history of white men changing industries for the worst. Much like Bezos has co-opted the delivery market, Fabian robbed pornstars and producers of their power and gave it to consumers and the Montreal tech bros.

This is another reason why the Youtube comparison falls through because porn is shameful.

We live in a society that is obsessed with sex but shames sexual commerce. In the 90s, when production companies hid porn behind paywalls, porn was something you could do more casually. It was a thing you could leave behind, do until you are 20 and get a “regular” job. People couldn’t recognize you, and if they did, they were too embarrassed to mention. Now, we have become more and more comfortable with sex, but only if we aren’t paying. Fabian found a way to capitalize on that and profit from the sense of shame and discomfort that comes from a society that feels female bodies should be free for the taking.

He has made being a pornstar so much harder. Quality has been thrown out the window in favor of volume. Women (and men) in the industry have to film more and more videos to get less money. All the while, they were becoming more and more replaceable. The sex industry has always been a space for high turnover, but the introduction of pornhub also stole the art and creativity that used to dominate the industry. It’s all prepackaged cookie-cutter content that demands the women seem younger and younger and the sex to be more violent. Regardless, many porn actors have attempted to persevere in the face of adversity to no avail. At the end of the day, their hard work is stolen, reposted, and they realize they can do nothing to fix any of it. DMCA takedowns are too time-consuming and futile, only for the same person or a different one to post the same video to a site that remains apathetic to the creator’s plight. Even worse, you couldn’t leave. Or at least, it wasn’t as easy as it once could have been.

But, that was just how things were; that was the new normal for the porn industry. For years, the women (and men) behind and in front of the camera found ways around it. Whether it was making custom porn for high-income men with particular tastes or other kinds of sex work, they were still making a living doing what they loved, and in many ways, that was all that mattered. For a long time, it felt that the power would never be given back to the women (and men) who enjoy creating this content.

That was until OnlyFans popped up. Initially invented for social media influencers, Only Fans soon broke the sex work industry in the best way possible. Suddenly, women (and men) in the sector could make absurd amounts of money safely and consistently by posting content that ranged from not-safe for Instagram booty pics to kink and nudity. The important part was that the power was once again in the hands of the sex workers.

Only Fans was like custom porn meets Instagram and Patreon. You subscribed (or followed) your favorite creators for a monthly fee; once you could view their page, you could request personalized videos at an extra cost. The prices were all set by the performers. This was radical. OnlyFans was branded as a safe haven for sexual commerce, a renaissance. Just like that, we were back to paid-for local porn.

The site has yet to succumb to the colonial forces of pornhub, but there is a more immediate threat to the space. A side effect of having such a low barrier to entry was yet again, rich white celebrities (in this case) could co-opt the space. At first, it started with lightly disruptive content. People posting mildly sexier photos and get paid - sure.

But all hell broke loose in late August this year when Bella Thorne destroyed the “economy of Only Fans.”

After she entered the platform in mid-August, she made 2 million dollars in her first week. To make matters worse, posts began to circulate claiming that Thorne had posted a single nude which sat behind a hefty paywall of $200. As hundreds flocked to pay to see this elusive photo, they quickly realized these were all lies. As requests for refunds mounted, the team behind the site was forced to find a solution.

OnlyFans had to push for monthly, not weekly, payouts. Moreover, they began to limit their monthly fees and tip amounts. All this, for one white woman drunk on her privilege and ability. Thorne came under fire for her actions and claims that all these changes are being made for her documentary. She essentially claims that she accidentally destroyed the site’s pro-sex work infrastructure for an experiment.

If more and more celebrities begin to flock to OnlyFans and dip their toes in the water of sex commerce, it is uncertain what more changed the site will have to make to keep up. There is an overwhelming fear amongst sex workers that this is just the first in a long line of changes that ultimately ends in their renewed oppression.

Porn is still stigmatized, and as comfortable as we are watching it, we still don’t seem quite as okay with paying for it. The reasons for that are wholly patriarchal, and they speak to a desire for female sexuality. Fabian came to colonize sexuality, not necessarily with patriarchal intent, but with a capitalist one. He is a perfect example of how female and sex worker oppression is rooted in capitalist ideals. OnlyFans is just one rejection of that model, and even it falls under threat.

As a world, we need to question where our porn comes from and if we like that place. Our options are simple, go local, or contribute to yet another system of oppression.

Hayley Headley 10/23/20 Hayley Headley 10/23/20

Is This Really Feminism?

Though today many self-identified feminists would rather bicker about semantics, feminism has a long history of fully embracing all women and all people. There are debates over when “feminism” as we know it today truly started. Most, however, accept that any movement that sought out the advancement of women’s place in society can be considered feminist regardless of how the movement itself identified. These are generally called “proto-feminist movements”.

The feminism we are acquainted with today was born at some point in the 18th century when women in the West were facing violations of their most fundamental rights. They couldn’t work, vote, or be independent in any meaningful way. White feminism was based on the principles of gaining access to the labor force and voting rights, but it was an exclusive group. Picture the suffragettes, dozens of women meeting in secret putting together their fight, asserting themselves through civil disobedience, entering local government, and starting their own publications. Or Rosie the Riveter, the image of wartime womanhood, giving women a surprising entry into the workforce. Feminist organizations were fighting for women’s most basic rights but the fruits of that labour were only accessible for a particular group of women.

Intersectionality wasn’t introduced as a feminist issue until the 80s. Intersectionality expanded feminism’s purpose and intent - made it accessible to more women (and men). Since the black feminist theorist, Crenshaw, first introduced the idea of intersectionality, feminism has changed and expanded. It came to include trans rights, queer rights, and more women than ever before. Suddenly, feminism was for all women.

This radically changed who and what feminism stood for. Now it became more than just a bid for rights or access, it became a mission to uproot the patriarchy on all fronts. It made feminism for men; trying to extricate themselves from the toxic notions of masculinity that trap them. It made feminism for trans and genderqueer people; understanding that the gender binary exists only to exacerbate patriarchal oppression. It made feminism for black and brown women a world over; feminist principles had been wrapped up in the ideals of Western white women, but intersectionality pushed that envelope.

Intersectional feminism is an ever-expanding discipline because feminism is ever-evolving. Everyday women (and men) are identifying new facets of patriarchal oppression and finding new ways to tackle and approach them.

However, the expansive nature of this constantly changing school of thought is getting harder and harder for the average person to fully grasp. It makes answering the question: “who is a good feminist?” nearly impossible. There is an indispensable value to asking that question though because being a good feminist has meant a lot of things over the years. Today, while feminism has become a fully-fledged discipline with many academic papers, it is also easier than ever to learn about. With the advent of social media and free search engines, comes a wave of educational material that is readily available for a generation of budding feminists.

That being said, it is also easier to derail than ever. Feminism has become a more diverse movement since the introduction of intersectionality. It has a myriad of branches that offer a different perspective and reading of principle feminist texts. Moreover, in a turn of events that seems ripped from the 1960s, many feminists have taken to arguing over who feminism supports. Now, some would say there is no answer but to me, the answer is undeniable - feminism is for everyone.

It must be working towards the dismantlement of the patriarchy, and the simple fact is that the patriarchy oppresses everyone - including those who support it. There is no sense or basis to the question because exclusionary feminism isn’t feminism.

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF), isn’t feminism (contrary to the beliefs of the famous author, JK Rowling). Trans men and women were crying out for their rights long before modern feminists accepted them. Their fight isn’t dependent on feminist support but it is emboldened and aided by it. Their oppression under a patriarchal system is undeniable, and we cannot claim to be feminists if we don’t support those who fall victim to this transnational system of oppression. Moreover, we cannot claim to be in opposition to the patriarchy if we uphold it in our organization. The gates of feminism should be open to everyone with feminist values and that includes trans women and men more than it does any TERF with a Twitter account.

‘Feminism’ that fails to stand with our black, Latinx, Asian, and indigenous brothers and sisters, doesn’t deserve the label. Women of color, both where they are a minority and when they are a majority in the world, face oppression for their gender and color. The fight that black indigenous people of color are facing is the greatest aim of feminist liberation. It is the all-encompassing condemnation of every form of colonial, capitalist, patriarchal oppression. There is no feminism without BIPOC individuals, just as there is no feminism without women.

Finally, while we think that the patriarchy doesn’t oppress white men (especially wealthy ones), it does. Machismo (or toxic masculinity), cages men in a prison of emotional seclusion and incites violence in them. It is easy to see this as benefits because undoubtedly white men are the biggest beneficiaries of patriarchal oppression, but they are also losing their own autonomy to identify themselves outside of this image. Feminism has to include men because feminism has to liberate everyone - not just a few.

“Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism” is a hoax in the same way that feminism that centers only on white femininity is a hoax. Feminists need to fight for more than the liberation of all women but for the liberation of all people. We need to show up for every protest because where there are rights being violated, there is almost certainly a patriarchal system violating them.

Centering whiteness or heteronormativity prioritizes palatability over people.

We are living in a time where feminist activism is supremely important to creating real and long-lasting change.

Evil is so loud right now, we can’t afford to be fighting each other when there is so much to oppose. We are living under governments that are benefiting from the inability of activists to unify and call out for their goals. Letting a few loud fake feminists derail the entire movement, at a time so close to revolutionary change, will be our greatest failure. We need to leave those “fake feminists” behind and keep seeking out the goals of feminism that isn’t palatable, that supersedes and goes beyond the demands we had before, that seeks justice for everyone, not just a few.