Sometimes I Wish I Had Had an Abortion.

The Tinder Swindler and Why We Love to Hate Loving Women

“I think we like to believe that those women are stupid or greedy because to see them as otherwise; loving, caring, and trusting people who simply found the wrong person, would be to admit that the same thing could happen to us. ”

Last weekend, I watched the Tinder Swindler with my boyfriend. The documentary is two hours long, but the discussion we had around it took three hours. It mainly circled around victim blaming, and why as a collective culture we chose to so vehemently hate Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjöholm and Ayleen Charlotte for being conned into giving Shimon Hayut, or “Simon Leviev” all of their money.

What makes this comparison feel all the more stark is that the limited series "Inventing Anna" came out at the same time on Netflix. A show focused on unraveling Anna Sorokin, better known by her fake identity as German heiress, Anna Delvey. Inventing Anna follows journalist Vivian Kent – based on real-life journalist Jessica Pressler, whose 2018 The Cut article about Sorokin’s crimes inspired the series and uncovered the faux-socialites manipulative actions. However, followers of that show had only sympathy for the people that Anna defrauded; seeing them as unfortunate victims and loyal friends who were taken advantage of, rather than the opposite.

The response to both shows has been shocking, in particular because while essentially the situation is the same (master manipulator cons innocent victims out of thousands of dollars through deceit and by abusing their trust) the women that Hayut conned are seen as gold-diggers, shallow and greedy women who got what they deserved, while Anna's victims are seen as poor unsuspecting and overly generous kind-hearted individuals.

What is it about romantic scams that gives us permission to hate the women that fall for them? Why are we so quick to blame the women who are manipulated and abused into giving their life savings to a conman? To quote Cecilie Fjellhøy who gave over 100,000 pounds to Hayut, "if we were gold-diggers, we would be the worst ones in the world."

Historically, women haven't had access to financial independence until very recently. We haven't been able to own property, have our own bank account, and for a long time, we couldn't even control our own money. We were given allowances, or open accounts at certain stores where the men in our lives (our brothers, our fathers, our husbands) could carefully monitor what we spent money on. Futhermore, we weren't allowed to work, and so our value laid in what we could provide for our families, and namely, who we could marry. For a long time, women were a currency in a financial system that only valued (mainly, white) men as active participants. Our value lay in what sort of partner we could attract, and without access to our own money, it only made sense that we, or our parents, would look for a partner that could provide for us financially as much as possible. It's no wonder that we learned to value a man's wealth as a priority.

Hayut's victims were abused and attacked online for being gold-diggers, for only valuing his money over anything else. The documentary cruelly didn't focus on how long these women had been in romantic relationships with Hayut, some of them for over a year, in which he showered them with love and affection, and emotionally manipulated them into thinking he loved and cared for them. While many have said "it would be stupid to give money to a near stranger" wouldn't you think differently if it was your boyfriend who you've been seeing for 14 months? On top of that, the movie didn't do a good job of showing how psychologically challenging it can be to act rationally when you've been put into emergency mode, such as when Hayut told each of these women that he was in trouble, and that bad men were imminently out to get him. As women, we've been raised in this society to be carers, to value community and relationships. To try and turn off this innate responsibility in the midst of a crisis in which you think a loved one is in harm's way is nearly impossible.

I think we like to believe that those women are stupid or greedy because to see them as otherwise; loving, caring, and trusting people who simply found the wrong person, would be to admit that the same thing could happen to us. To punish and decry women for acting the exact way the way we are all supposed to act; to be loving to a romantic partner, to be trusting to someone they are in love with, is to say that we are stupid to trust our loved ones, or try to help them out when they're in need. It's saying that our kindness is a character flaw, and that our trust in people is a weakness.

What's ironic about this is that the men who are financially distrusting of women (assuming the women they are dating are just trying to take advantage of them, are trying to get their money etc.), who see romantic relationships as inherently suspicious and the kindness and cooperation required of relationships as a trap, will turn around and be bitter about women who embody the same characteristics. When a woman enters a relationship and is distrustful or cautious because she doesn't want to get scammed, she gets the #notallmen hashtag thrown in her face.

If a sex worker goes out and expects compensation for her time, her energy, and her body, she gets labeled a selfish, greedy, money-obsessed bitch. If a woman gets into a romantic relationship with someone who says that he loves and cares about her and needs her help, and she gives him money as a result, she's labeled a selfish, greedy, money-obsessed bitch. If she enters a romantic relationship with a man and as a result of her past trauma (or the learned trauma from other women's experiences) is slow to trust or reluctant to share financial responsibilities, she's labeled as a selfish, greedy, money-obsessed bitch. Whichever way, we can't win.

Guest Author 6/14/21 Guest Author 6/14/21

How Sex Work Helped Me Reclaim My Sexuality

Trigger warning: this piece contains mention of stalking, grooming and sexual harassment.

When I first met M. P. at a Writer’s Meetup, I didn’t really notice him. To me, he was just another adult in a room full of them. The Meetup took place in the back room of a restaurant not far from my parents’ house. I was there with my mother, because I was still just a kid. At the time I was seventeen years old, a high school senior, and exceedingly sheltered for my age. My Catholic parents hadn’t given me “the talk” yet, and they’d opted me out of Sex Ed at school. Aside from a brief “relationship” (we only kissed once) with a girl at summer camp, I’d never really dated. My Asperger’s Syndrome made me something of a loner as well. I didn’t know what a serious, adult relationship was supposed to look like. Nor was I interested in one. I was attending Meetups to make platonic friends. Isn’t that what meetups were for?

M. P. began direct messaging me via Meetup. Before long we were messaging each other on a near-nightly basis (he worked the night shift at a local apartment complex, where he manned the front desk and waiting for something - anything - to happen). From the very start he made sexual comments and claimed to be in love with me. I knew that M was 33 - seventeen years my senior. I didn’t mind, despite the large age difference, because I was so glad to have someone to talk to. I thought it wasn’t too bad since my grandparents were sixteen years apart in age. Anyway, M claimed that our relationship was totally normal and I (foolishly) believed him. All kinds of perfectly ordinary situations - from hugging a relative to watching certain movies with the sound on - distressed me, thanks to my autism. So I generally relied on other people - friends, family, teachers, even strangers - to tell me what “normal” looked like.

M. P. soon began stopping by my parents’ house nearly every afternoon, bringing gifts. He also began to grope and touch me, as well as describing his favorite kinds of porn. When I asked him not to, he explained that - as his girlfriend - I owed him. Supposedly, I had to do what he wanted, no matter how uncomfortable it made me. He’d also tell me that my writing was horrible and that I ought to become a prostitute because I was too stupid for anything else (which just proves that M. P. didn’t know what he was talking about, given that sex work actually requires a fair amount of business savvy, emotional labor, and raw intelligence). Of course, I believed him. Many of our visits ended with me in tears. I became increasingly gloomy and miserable as the months went by. Yet I kept everything hidden from my family, fearing they’d hate me if they knew.

Finally, around my 18th birthday in May, I tried to break up with M. P. I did this at one of the Writer’s Meetups so that there would be witnesses. I also confirmed over text. He agreed that we were broken up. Then, the next day, he refused to acknowledge that anything had happened. The next few months were even worse. I felt increasingly hopeless. Finally, I decided to cut him off completely and block all of his accounts. I also blocked all our mutual acquaintances and stopped going out. Though M. P. managed to send a few more harassing emails using new accounts, he eventually gave up. I was free, though still shaken and frightened.

By then it was September. My parents had decided to send me to community college. I’d wanted to take a year or two off, to recover from everything that had happened, but they wouldn’t allow this. Even more frustratingly, my parents had signed me up for a kind of mentorship program. One of the mentors (a man in his 30s) began texting me nonstop, telling me I was sexy and that I should become a stripper. He’d show up everywhere I went at school, probably because (as a mentor) he had access to my schedule. He also kept trying to get me to meet him alone on an isolated part of the campus. This terrified me. When I went to the man in charge of the mentorship program, he was apparently fairly shocked, yet he didn’t seem to know what to do. The campus police weren’t any help either, because the mentor hadn’t actually broken any laws. I ended up dropping out before my first semester ended.

Soon after that, I began taking classes and volunteering at a local public access television station. It was there I met J. M., a handyman in his 50s, who produced a horror hosting show there. He cast me as one of the kooky characters. From the very start, his behavior was vile. He’d barge into the women’s dressing room without knocking, send me explicit sexual messages, and threaten me when I didn’t do what he wanted. When I insisted that I was uninterested in him and probably gay, he responded by becoming aggressive and angry. He’d call me various cruel, sexist names and say that most women would love attention from him.

Eventually, after about a year of this, I gave in to his heckling. I let him kiss me with his horrible mouth, I let him grope me. Though I promised, constantly, that I’d have sex with him someday (usually to get him to stop yelling at me), I never did. He soon became impatient. He claimed that I didn’t have the right to say no, not after “dangling” myself in front of him (I suppose he saw me as a piece of irresistibly delicious candy, rather than a human being). One day, while I was at his house, he convinced me to flash my breasts. I thought that if I did so, he’d leave me alone. Instead, he pinned me to the couch and licked my torso. He tried to take my skinny jeans off as well, though between their tight fit and my struggling he couldn’t, so he eventually gave up. I found this incident exceedingly traumatizing. I had nightmares for many months. Everything startled me. I was terrified of the dark, of sleeping, of strangers who looked like J. M.

Finally, a little more than a year later, the nightmares stopped. By then I was still living with my parents. Aside from a brief stint as a cashier during the Christmas rush and a number of unpaid internships, I’d never really had a job. My income came primarily from gig editing work and publishing my essays. My autism and shyness made it hard for me to get through job interviews. It was then that I began hearing about sites like OnlyFans and ManyVids. I knew that selling porn or nudes could be a fairly lucrative side-hustle. It was also something I could do from home, without having to see anyone or go anywhere. I also felt that no matter where I went or what I did, I’d be objectified and taken advantage of by someone. Sexual harassment seemed inevitable so, cynically, I figured I might as well find a way to profit from my youthful looks and curvaceous body.

I began filming themed striptease videos and posting them on ManyVids. To my surprise I actually enjoyed the process. For the first time, I felt as if I were in control of my sexuality and sex appeal. I no longer felt as if I had to look or act a certain way to appeal to aggressive, controlling men. Instead, I could wear costumes that made me feel sexy and act out scenarios that I enjoyed. I soon branched out, filming masturbation and fetish clips as well as more themed stripteases. I played a variety of strong, confident characters in my videos - from vampire countesses to drill sergeants. I also “invested” some of the money I earned in props, as well as fabrics which I used to sew more costumes for myself.

For the first time ever, being sexual was about me instead of the men in my life. Plus, since I did everything - from setting up the camera to editing the footage - I was completely in control of the content I produced. If I didn’t like how something looked, I could shoot it again or cut out a few seconds. If someone requested a custom video that made me uncomfortable, I could always say “no”. After years of feeling trapped by the vile men in my life, being able to have complete control over something (even something as simple as the videos I post) has been so helpful in helping me heal and regain some autonomy in my life. Not only that, I’ve been able to make a couple hundred extra dollars every month from my video sales. When I live-cam, I can make that much in only about five to eight hours. This has made me more financially secure, which in turn reduces my anxiety and makes me more confident. The fact that I’ve been able to run my own business and make a profit has also helped me. It’s proved to me that, with enough determination and hard work, I can be legitimately successful at something. I’m not the useless idiot M. P. insisted I was. Quite the contrary.

M. L. Lanzillotta is an AFAB transmasculine freelance writer from the Washington DC metro area. Before his transition, he dabbled in online sex work under a female persona and name. His many hobbies include painting, acting, cooking, and complaining via Twitter.

Hayley Headley 4/13/21 Hayley Headley 4/13/21

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

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.

Hayley Headley 1/18/21 Hayley Headley 1/18/21

Period Poverty

“When we make periods something everyone is learning about, we are doing our part to uproot this stigma. ”

Every month, 500 million women and girls suffer from period poverty globally. This impacts every aspect of their lives. Period poverty is an inability to secure the necessary products to maintain menstrual health. This encompasses both micro and macro challenges to accessing sanitation and menstrual products.

There are a plethora of challenges to maintaining menstrual health, especially in nations already struggling to provide basic access to public health and sanitation. The UN has investigated many individual countries, but period poverty remains a global challenge to gender equality and sustainable development.

Financial barriers like the luxury taxes that remain pervasive in the West force many lower-income families to make hard choices between providing for the women in their lives and meeting more general needs. Globally, around one in ten women and girls cannot afford the products they need. This leads to improvisation, which puts them at risk of the many complications that come with improper menstrual health.

UNICEF reports that 2.1 billion people cannot effectively access sanitation. This extends beyond homes into schools and other public institutions and businesses. In the global south, where so many governments already struggle to provide public sanitation services, women and girls are disproportionately impacted.

Moreover, this inability to access the resources needed for good menstrual hygiene can lead to several different health complications. If you grew up in the Americas, you have already been scared straight about toxic shock, but many of us have the means to escape it. Even scarier, being unable to access proper period care can lead to reproductive tract infections, Hepatitis B, and an increased risk of getting cervical cancer, making period poverty a global health crisis.

But period poverty is about much more than just public health. In many parts of the world, young girls are forced out of their school routines to brave their monthly cycle at home. If we assume that every one of these girls bleeds for just three days a month in a ten-month school year, she will miss a month of class just because she is menstruating, setting her back for reasons entirely beyond her control.

These are the kinds of statistics and facts that confronted Nadya Okamoto when she was just starting as a period activist at 16. She says,” At the time, 40 states in the US had the “tampon tax” — a sales tax on period products considering them luxury goods.” It was at that time she knew she had to do something more.

When I spoke to her, Nadya had this to say about the founding of her non-profit PERIOD;

“I was inspired to learn more about menstrual inequity and period poverty after collecting an anthology of stories of their using toilet paper, socks, brown paper grocery bags, cardboard, and more, to take care of something so natural. Learning about the tampon tax, which I had not known about before age 16, was absolutely a big driver for me wanting to [start PERIOD].”

Today, PERIOD is an international movement, addressing period poverty in dozens of communities all over the world. The organization has three pillars - education, advocacy, and service. It has democratized what it means to be involved in the fight against period poverty. Offering logistical and (more recently) financial support to activists pushing for progress in their hometowns.

Nadya is no longer involved with the organization. She replaced herself as Executive Director earlier this year in January 2020, but she is continuing her period advocacy. She continues to announce new projects and create greater awareness. In fact, her latest venture was announced just last week.

In 2018, Nadya released her book PERIOD POWER. When asked why she wrote the book, she said:

“I wrote PERIOD POWER as a way to spark more conversations about periods, and try to create a resource hub for any reader to find more information about periods and period-health, and learn more about the fight against period poverty and period stigma.”

It certainly has done just that. Thousands of people have awoken to the many challenges facing women and young girls, and it has undoubtedly been the catalyst for their activism.

When I spoke with Nadya, I wanted to know what she saw as the causes of this unique form of poverty. She said, “Lack of access, research, and education are all components that play a role in period poverty. Period stigma is also a huge factor — because our society doesn't currently consider period products a necessity. The tampon tax and the inaccessibility of period products is further proof that our society views them as luxuries. This is a human issue, and it affects us all.”

When we look around the world, men continue to dominate in political spheres creating even more challenges to change in this realm of activism. As of October 2020, women make up just 25% of the world’s parliaments. Men and boys continue to be uneducated on the realities of periods and the challenges women are facing. The stigma our societies perpetuate stops even our politicians and lawmakers from learning more about these issues.

As millions of women and girls suffer through dangerously unhygienic periods and lead childhoods marred by a severe lack of education, one of the most significant challenges to uprooting this issue is the overwhelming lack of information on the problems facing the women and girls that matter.

Education is essential, but the loftier task is normalization. As a society, we need to be challenging ourselves to learn more about periods and period poverty. Talk more openly about your struggles with the people around you, talk with your representatives about it. Bring these issues to the forefront of the political landscape you live in and your social circles. When we make periods something everyone is learning about, we are doing our part to uproot this stigma.

There is so much more to be done at every level to tackle the issue. One of the crucial areas that need to be revolutionized is the corporate sector that profits arbitrarily from the people who menstruate who need the products they make and charge ridiculous prices. Activism needs to move from being just non-profit work and into the spaces, our oppressors are occupying-business. Nadya too feels that this is a big challenge to overcoming period poverty, saying when asked:

“I think that the nonprofit industrial complex is something that we need to deconstruct as it is still very much perpetuating inequity around the world. I absolutely think that business, specifically hybrid models and social enterprises that we’re seeing arise, have incredible potential to make a difference. Something that was very frustrating for me while working in the nonprofit sector was that I felt like I had to go fundraise before actually doing the work, and, at a certain point, I found that all my time was being spent fundraising. The beauty of a business is that if you create a successful model, there will be a point where the business is naturally generating revenue, and you’ll be able to dedicate more of your time to specifically making an impact versus raising money.”

Undoubtedly, the sustainability of both a movement and a non-profit is imperative to progress. And as we go forward in a fight that is so fundamental to so many people, those activists that are working hard to fix the problem must be doing so with everything they have. Nadya has been working in collaboration with her friend Nick Jain to start August. A company that wants to undo the stigma remains a challenge to achieving menstrual equality for all people who menstruate. They are currently focused on building a community that is working towards ending the stigma surrounding periods. In Spring, they will be releasing their very own line of period products.

As period poverty continues to be a challenge to women’s rights, development, and public health, there is hope that more people like Nadya are paying attention and putting in the work to understand its causes and deal with its impacts. There is so much to be done to combat this growing issue in every single country. I encourage you to get involved, get reading, and get educated. Every single voice counts because, for all the change that needs to be made, nothing will happen if we are silent.

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 12/9/20 Guest Author 12/9/20

Lets talk…..Period.

To help keep a healthy body and mind during the second lock down, I have been walking each day. I wrap up warm taking along a flask of coffee. Last week my walk ended abruptly. I felt the familiar wet warmth down below and a cramp crept around my lower stomach - I had an unexpected visit from Aunt Flo, the crimson tide, mother nature’s gift, and any other euphemisms you wish to call it. (Personally, I like to call it the pain in the arse!) Muttering under my breath as I turned back, I grumbled how unfair life was. I know, I know, but in my defense, I am extremely irritable when it is my time of the month.

Do you know what I did when I got home? I had a warm soapy bath. Afterwards I grabbed a sanitary pad; a hot water bottle and made a sugary cup of tea. Then as I stretched out on the sofa with cushions popped behind my back, a water bottle on my belly and a hot cup of tea in my hand, I had a reality check. Here was me pissed off that my walk was caught short, yet I can come home and have everything at my fingertips. What do people do who are homeless or on low income? What does a person do when they are on the street or have to decide that milk Is more important for the kid’s cereal?

When thinking of hygiene products for the homeless: soap, razors and toothpaste spring to mind. Why has tampons and pads eluded me? Why did I not think of these essential items? I decided to investigate further and started exploring campaigns and charities that help with distributing hygiene products.

There are many organizations and charities working hard to raise awareness and trying to put an end to period poverty. After an internet search I could see there were many worthwhile causes such as Blossom Project, Dignity-Matters, and Bloody Good Period to name but a few. However, the one that resonated with me was Tricky Period who are based in London.

Tricky Period was set up by Caroline Allouf and a small team of volunteers who were already working to support homeless people on the streets of North London for Street Kitchen. Caroline wanted to address the horror for many women that live on the street and are unable to afford basic period products. At Street Kitchen Caroline and other volunteers were regularly hearing stories from women with no choice but to shoplift, skip meals and use newspaper to provide their monthly protection.

‘None of these things we say are an exaggeration,

I mean in the terms of people literally having nothing.

Coming in stained, having to steal, using leaves in knickers.’

It was then that Caroline realized that something had to be done and the grassroots project was born at the beginning of the year (2020).

Caroline and the gang launched Period Poverty at the Vagina Museum in Camden London in February 2020. The Vagina Museum is about erasing the sigma around the body and spreading awareness of gynecological anatomy. Caroline said, “this felt totally apt”.

The gang distribute pads, tampons with applicators and without, wipes and disposable bags to women’s shelters, refuges, mother and baby units as well as the women on the streets via breakfast outreach. Tricky Period have teamed up with ShowerBox London, a free and secure shower and changing rooms which travel around London providing support for the homeless and this makes for a good partnership. “It’s a great opportunity to start conversations with the women” said Caroline, and notes that throughout outreach she has noticed a rise in homeless women. “Sadly, and this is a non-scientific approach from being out there, but there are noticeably younger women”. Some backdrop of these cases are of domestic violence, leaving home and then having nowhere to go in lock down. Caroline has come across women that will sleep with men just for a bed for the night.

Tricky Period are working with a growing number of council libraries who are acting as product pick up points. They have been collaborating with libraries to provide period products to those experiencing homelessness and poverty. “It’s a model that can be replicated,” explains Caroline. The free supplies to libraries enable the women to come and get what they need under a no questions asked policy. Caroline says “the idea of libraries is that it is one of the few places in the community where everyone is welcome and safe – especially the homeless, people can walk into a library and not be looking over their shoulders or feel self-conscious.” Anyone who needs to use the service can tick off the items on a form and hand it over to a librarian. Caroline adds, “Just like they would go out the back to find a book that wasn’t on the shelf they then come out with the products in a bag”. She is keen to reiterate that this is a no questions asked policy.

With COVID-19 closing libraries Tricky Period have had to adapt in the lockdown and have been able to use family centers with open access. The future of Tricky Period is to focus on a space where women can feel safe, have a coffee, and enjoy the company of others. “Not just between 3pm and 5pm, and we are already connecting people to make that happen.” She is also excited to expand the library model.

I asked Caroline to describe the essence of Tricky Period:

“Tricky Period are just human beings building trust and relationships.

There are other projects, amazing projects out there. What matters to us

is that the people are getting what they need. We want to be able

to develop relationships with the most vulnerable women and support them.”

The realization of the lack of access to sanitary products is shocking. Many low-income and homeless women often don't have access to tampons and pads at all. Women confront the demoralizing task of finding resources to soak up blood and then having to find privacy to change and dispose of used items. Menstruation is not only a physical challenge for vulnerable people, but it’s also a psychological and social issue. I have never had to make the decision on either spending money on food so that I am not hungry or spending it on pads so that I am comfortable and dry. I’ve never had to use napkins from McDonald’s, and I don’t need to rip up a t shirt to line my knickers.

Pads, tampons, and liners are desperately needed. Initiatives, charities, food banks, and shelters distribute them, but they're often in short supply. Even more so in the current climate (COVID-19). Please check out and support your local and regional organizations and if you can please donate.

Resources:

Click here for details of Tricky Period

Follow Tricky Period Facebook

Follow Tricky Period Twitter

Click here for details of Blossom Project

Follow Blossom Project Instagram

Follow Blossom Project Facebook

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.

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

La Violencia Simbólica: Undoing the Myth of Passion Killings

The brutal murder of Chiara Páez by her boyfriend sparked the beginning of the feminist movement of “Ni Una Menos” in Argentina. Her body was found buried outside of her boyfriend’s home; Chiara was just 14, she was pregnant and scared, and she was murder by the father of her would-be child.

That was just the surface; as the trial unfolded, the details of her suffering rapted the country with intrigue. Only twenty hours into the investigation, her 16 year old boyfriend confessed. He told his father everything, how he forced her to take an abortion pill, how he killed her, and how he buried her and misled detectives by tampering with her phone. He confessed to all of it, and he told the police the same thing when his father brought him to the station later that day.

Yet, armed with all of this knowledge, the judge sentenced this boy to just 21 years. The penal code in Argentina would have allowed the judge to pursue a life sentence, to threaten him with the same loss of life, but instead, he gave him another chance. A clear path to freedom. The judge said that he based his ruling on the perpetrator’s demonstrated guilt and remorse.

The murder of Chiara began the movement, which soon spread across the whole continent. “Ni Una Menos” has been one of the most well-known forms of resistance against femicide. While it started in Argentina, it has inspired many other feminists in the region to begin their fight. Her death was a wake-up call for the nation, a big red flag that called into question much more than femicide but the state of women’s rights all over the country.

There was something special about her death, something that shook the core of Argentina. Maybe it was the fear that laid dormant in every mother that their sons could be so cruel or the shock at someone so young following in the footsteps of the hundreds of men that had the same thing. Maybe they realized they had let these sentiments fester for far too long, and this was just the manifestation of that. No one can be sure, but feminists all over Argentina were happy to be supported, and that June, the first march for the “Ni Una Menos” movement was held.

What the people didn't know - what they couldn’t until now was that they built around their sons, a society that breeds male violence. Moreover, one that entices us to accept it and be complicit in the actions of patriarchal and structural violence. Piere Bordieu first theorized of la violencia simbolica, or symbolic violence, and it describes perfectly the way patriarchal oppression is built into our language, customs, and worldviews.

For this article, I had the chance to talk with Ornela. She works with the NGO FENA in Argentina to combat the narratives that symbolic violence creates. She described symbolic violence as:

“[La violencia simbólica] básicamente son un montón de prácticas sociales, culturales, psicológicas que lo que hacen sentar las bases para que las otras formas de violencia sean posibles. La violencia simbólica es la primera de todas las violencias en tanto es la que permite construir la creencia de que alguien vale menos que las otras personas. ”
“Symbolic violence is a bunch of social, cultural, and psychological practices that lay the groundwork for other forms of violence to be possible. Symbolic violence is the first of all the acts of violence as it allows someone to think that they are worth less than others.”

It is about the small ways we, as a society, not just allow for violence against women but also incite and normalize that violence. It is the understanding that men have unearned ownership over women’s bodies. It is embedded in the very fabric of so many societies globally.

It is the reason that a young man felt he could unilaterally decide that his young girlfriend should have an abortion. It is the reason that he could ever envision murdering her. The same reason the judge’s ruling on this case came years later spat in the face of all of the goodness that sprouted from this tragedy—another notch on the belt of female oppression.

To say so boldly that you know what was done and you understand its wrongfulness has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and yet find it within yourself to give this boy mercy. It makes a mockery of her suffering, and it fuels a global narrative that seeks to normalize and legitimize male violence.

Symbolic violence is vital to understanding the whole iceberg of violence against women, as Ornela said: “El feminicidio es la más terrible de todas las formas de violencia que pueden haber contra una mujer: significa matarla por su condición de mujer”

“Femicide is the most terrible of all the forms of violence against women: killing her just for being a woman.”

A big part of FENA, and by extension, the work of all feminist collectives in the country, is making women aware of this. Symbolic violence is insidious, and it is that embedded nature that makes it so corrosive. It encourages women to internalize and accept their oppression.

Ornela summed this up perfectly, saying;

“Si en un lado tengo a una persona que no creo que sea superior a mí, y yo, al mismo tiempo, no me creo inferior a esa otra persona es bastante difícil que esa persona me oprima”
“If, on one side, I have a person that I don’t think is superior to me, and I don’t think I am inferior to this other person, it is very difficult for that person to oppress me.”

The problem is that there are messages everywhere in the patriarchal system that holds dominion over much of Argentinian society. At every turn, whether it is in your classroom, at home, or on TV, women are encouraged to be complicit in their oppression. Ornela puts this into context, with particular reference to the jokes that are prevalent in Latinx society:

“Todo lo que tiene que ver con la creación de los chistes, de las normas, de los lugares comunes, de las imágenes que nos vemos, de los mensajes que consumimos.”
“Everything that has to do with the creation of jokes, norms, common places, the images that we see, and the messages we consume.”

The implicit message women are seeing is that their bodies are not their own. This creates problems that stretch far beyond the realm of the crimes themselves.

Often femicides are reported as “crimes of passion,” a label that coddles and insulates the men involved from the real horror of their crimes. Initially, Páez’s case was referred to in the same way. A young boy overwhelmed and overcome by anger. This is just another way we are creating distance between men and their socially indoctrinated violence.

Ornela had this to say about the misreporting of these sensitive cases: “Antes hablábamos de crímenes de pasión, ‘La mató por celos’ o ‘No soportó que lo dejara’. Eso también es una manera de violencia simbólica. En los medios por ejemplo, banalizan lo que son los feminicidios, dicen que son crímenes pasionales, que son problemas domésticos, que son temas familiares, que no son problemas estructurales. [...] Tratan de correr la de idea de que te matan por ser mujer, y que te mataron porque tu marido se enojó o ‘es un loco’. Así se normaliza la violencia masculina.”

“Before we talked about crimes of passion, “He killed her because he was jealous” or “He couldn’t stand her leaving him’. That is also a form of symbolic violence. In the media, for example, they trivialize femicides. They say that they are crimes of passion, that they are domestic problems, that these are things you see in a family, and they aren’t structural problems. [...] They try to give you this idea that they didn’t kill her for being a woman; she was murdered because her husband was angry or he was crazy. This normalizes male violence.”

Argentinian society is imploring its women to rationalize and accept male violence. In an eerie way, it asks them to simply sit with the idea that the men they live with and love might one day snap and murder them for whatever profoundly personal reason. It is a despicable thing to ask the women of a nation to do, and more and more of them are waking up to it. “Ni Una Menos” is just one reflection of all the many important and prominent ways women are doing away with the idea that they should; “romanticize a myriad of oppressions.”

As Ornela put it, the country has hit a turning point, or at least a lot of the women have. Women have come to understand that

“No es un loco, no es un enfermo, es un hijo sano del patriarcado.”
“He is not crazy; he is not sick; he is a healthy son of the patriarchy.”

That hasn’t meant as much as many hoped in the way of actual changes. It has been five years since the “Ni Una Menos” movement began and things have yet to pivot. Femicide rates have reached a ten year high since quarantine restrictions were set within the already fraught nation. This year is set to the worst for violence against women since the nation first began to count femicides in 2012.

One of the greatest challenges faced by the movement is trying to change the heart of the nation. These narratives - the ones that encourage to accept this violence or that attempt to diminish it in hopes of ignoring their true origins are seductive. They entice us to see the world with rose coloured glasses that blind us to the realities of the violence we are seeing. But we must do away with those ideas if we hope to make any real meaningful change.

That is what FENA works so hard to do. It is about deconstructing the narratives that surround us, and giving women the power to create new ones. A lot of that is rooted grassroots activism, for and by women, but there needs to be more. Argentina is finally understanding what needs to be done, and after this horrific year there are genuine hopes that real systemic changes are on the horizon.

Art by Manu Ka, Photo by Alejandra Ruiz — *Art by* *Manu Ka, Photo by* *Alejandra Ruiz*

In early 2020, the Argentinian government unveiled the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity. The first issue the Ministry is meant to tackle is identifying the root causes of gender based violence, and devising a plan for that the government might use to prevent the issue from growing. What this ministry hopes to do, in truth, is to undo this myth of passion and fervour and identify the true cause of anti-woman violence. Their true mission, however, is to give women the confidence and freedom they need to be “juntxs y sin miedo,” “together and without fear.”

As the ministry begins its work in earnest, feminists across the country are looking on with rapt interest - eager to see what happens.

Thank you for reading! This is the latest article in a series on femicide, but we here at the Whorticulturalist encourage you to get involved in these issues. If you would like to learn more and/or donate to any of the movements mentioned here are their donation and website links:

FENA, the organisation that Ornela works for, originally began as a photography project. It has since expanded and they conduct workshops, develop and produce resources, and do the grassroots organising that helps to liberate women from the toxic notions of masculinity and violence that trap them. You can donate to them here.

NiUnaMenos is much more than just a movement, and the organisation offers lots of resources and opportunities to learn more about the situation in Argentina. They monitor femicide and lobby the government for a host of other women’s rights issues.

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 11/13/20 Hayley Headley 11/13/20

Avocados are Murder

“Meat is murder” has been a pro-animal rights slogan since the 80s. When the Smiths first released their iconic slogan, they couldn’t have envisioned the life the term would take on. Since then, PETA and many other rights groups have taken it as a crusade against mainstream meat-eating. While many (not all) vegans make the switch to support animal rights or the environment, few consider the human cost of their eating habits. Produce like avocados and quinoa have become staples of the vegan diet.

The problem is that while the mass production of meat is labor-intensive and environmentally harmful, the mass production of these vegetables is no different. This is especially an issue in the cultivation, shipping, and mass consumption of the avocado.

Avocados are labor and water-intensive fruits. Recently, as the popularity of Latinx food and avocado-based cuisine has erupted in the West, the pressure on farmers has become overwhelming. Green gold - as it has come to be known, is slowly destroying the ecological equilibrium of Latin America’s once vibrant and diverse farmlands.

According to UNFAO stats, avocado is officially grown in 71 countries for export, trade, and mass consumption. Its top ten producers are almost entirely located in the Americas, but none has suffered more than the world’s third largest exporter of the fruit - Chile.

For the past ten years, central Chile has been experiencing a megadrought. The worst of its kind in 1,000 years. Rainfall has severely decreased, particularly in the areas that surround the metropolitan city of Santiago. In 2019, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that over 50 municipalities are official “agricultural emergencies.” To add to this new state of emergency, El Yeso, a major water reserve that serves Santiago and the surrounding areas, is experiencing an unforeseen strain. All of this comes as Chile is emerging as a global agricultural powerhouse.

In Petorca, a city just three hours outside of the capital sits the “gold mine” that is Chile’s avocado farms. One would think that these farmers should be reaping at least some of the profits of their lucrative cultivation. But the opposite is happening.

The boom in demand for the fruit has sucked the region dry - both figuratively and literally. All the water from the quickly drying water source is spent on growing avocados that the Chilean people almost certainly will not consume. This is the result of just a decade of big avocado companies descending on the Valiproso region.

The companies swarmed in and have not only taken much of the labor that small and more environmentally conscious local farmers but their very life source. The water crisis has been the leading cause of migration in the region. More and more families have been forced out of their homes, communities, and cities because there is no water. The town of Petorca and its surrounding area have become uninhabitable.

At the core of the issue is water rights. This crisis actually began back in the 80s when huge avocado plantations began to crop up on the foothills of the Andes on the fringes of smaller farms in the valleys of Petorca. Under the Pinochet dictatorship, in a time when neoliberalism was sweeping over much of the continent of Latin America, water rights were privatized. These firms came in at just the right time and they bought the water rights when they bought the land.

Since then the overwhelming abuse of the once ample river has caused many farmers to give up their land to these huge plantations and move out of the area. The rivers now run dry, water is more expensive than ever, and the locals are suffering.

The people of Petorca, have been crying out for the government to cease the exportation of these avocados. Many view their exportation is the theft of the little water that is still available. These concerns have been in the background of Chilean politics for years, but the issue cannot possibly be ignored any longer.

The avocado market has exasperated the drought. While civilians are forced to drink water from tanks that make regular deliveries to the most affected regions, big mono-crop farms get to abuse the safer water sources even further. The issue has already created hundreds of internally displaced climate refugees, and as the strain on the water supply continues, this number will only grow.

Small farmers have two options; continue to suffer from the harshest effects of the drought, impending widespread poverty, and dwindling government support, or move. Many are making their choice, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of the nation. As more people have to flood metropolitan areas like Santiago, the strain on basins like El Yeso will only increase.

Avocado production needs to be heavily regulated, but there is still a more significant global food production problem. This drought is being caused, at least in part, by a natural cycle that would take place with or without the Chilean people. Still, it would have never been this dramatic or destructive if it weren’t for the agricultural industry’s large-scale monocropping agrarian firms that have come to coopt food production in much of the global south.

The issue expands far beyond Chilean avocados or even avocado production. The fact that a trend in a country over 4 km away can result in the worst drought in 1,000 years is terrifying. That should make us rethink how we consume.

A culture of year-round seasonal fruit and exotic cuisine is killing entire ecosystems and industries.

Many people are vegan or vegetarian with the best intentions and with great concern for the environment, climate change, and the farmers on the other end of the production chain. But if we genuinely want to help farmers in the global south, we need to pivot away from our current consumption habits.

Avocados are murderous, not because they are born of any animal’s flesh, but because their mass production erodes the very ecological system that made their production possible. All over the world, small farmers are being pushed out of their usual farmlands; some are even forced to give up the trade entirely because of big agricultural firms. Ones that have little if any concern for the environments they destroy.

The unspoken cost of our comfort is all too real to the people of Chile - to farmers all over the global south.

As the people in towns like Petorca and the rural areas of Valiproso continue to wrestle with the erosion of their way of life, the onus is on us to make a change. We need to do more than simply be vegan or vegetarian; we need to eat local and consider more seriously the food miles that accompany our favorite dishes.