AJ is right — the stuff you read on feminist blogs all day does get depressing. He shares some pieces of good news, so I’m going to follow suit.
Remember this guy? Well, in case it isn’t obvious by now, I’m not planning on publishing his personal info. But some good did come out it: A certain thoughtful person (who has requested I not use his name) talked with me that night, heard I was upset and realized that releasing the guy’s info probably wasn’t going to make me feel all that better about the situation (or make the situation any better). So he spent a day researching women’s rights organizations in Venezuela; however, he doesn’t speak Spanish, and so finding a local organization proved difficult. After looking at the various options, he ended up donating to Human Rights Watch in my name — in his words, “a little FU to that commenter.” Having been an intern at Human Rights Watch, I feel confident that they’ll use the money well. And women will surely benefit from it — moreso than from an angry blog post releasing the guy’s email address.
I’ve re-told this story with his permission. He just wants me to emphasize that he did look for local grassroots organizations, but the language barrier was an issue. He also wants to say that he is “not someone who thinks that throwing money at a problem is a sufficient way to deal with it, especially to the exclusion of personal action/words.”
But I wanted to share that the whole thing ended well — and that a good thing came out of a shitty comment.
What good have you seen or heard about lately?
I have seen some men in the academic/science blogosphere stand up for the right of women to blog freely without being harrassed and to blog pseudonymously if they so choose without being accused of cowardliness or some other bogus bullshit.
Sounds like someone’s hitting on you, Jill.
what an uplifting story. that made me feel better about that whole situation.
Good news I witnessed:
A male college student I know works for Project Safe here in Athens, GA and was wearing a t-shirt that had slogan promoting the cause by displaying an alarming statistic about domestic violence at a party I was at last night. Well, some guy went up to him and made a very offensive, sexist joke about a man beating his wife, and the man in the shirt really told him off, telling him that it wasn’t a laughing matter and making the whole party pay attention. The joker ended up looking like a total jerk and slunk away from the party with his tale between his legs, while a number of us engaged in a stimulating talk about domestic violence, which is an unusual thing at a college drinking party. It was uplifting to see so many people supporting the cause and wanting to talk about it, instead of laughing at it.
I work at the school’s writing center, and I help students in the writing process, basically (I don’t proofread or edit or write for them, I just help them with structural issues and whatnot). Anyway, I had a Poli-Sci student come in with a paper and she had no idea what to write about, so she picked feminism, and it was neato to go through the paper with her; we had a lot to talk about, and she was excited about how much she’d learnt about the history of women’s rights through her research. It felt really gratifying, so I broke one of the policies of work (which is not to discuss content, only structure) and gave her a few pointers of what else she could add in her paper.
I’ve had similar other incidents at work like that; young women coming in discussing gender in their papers, and it’s often really fun going through it with them, because usually, it’s their first time ever thinking about the issue, and it’s warm and fuzzy to see the little *ping* of understanding growing in their faces.
As I’ve been saying lately, the percentage of my students in my women’s studies classes who identify openly as feminist continues to climb. Since I started teachin’ back in the first Clinton Adminstration, I’ve seen much more willingness not only to “claim the name”, but to speak up and push back. Call it the backlash to the backlash, and it’s real.
Can someone please translate any of this website? I took some German in high school, but it’s been a while since then. I found via another website and wasn’t sure whether to laugh or throw up. Thoughts/help would be appreciated.
WUMAV (Willamette University Men Against Violence) is hosting Jason Katz this week. He’s talking about “How we can educate men about sex and gender issues without blaming them for centuries of sexism and gender oppression? How can we encourage men to move beyond defensiveness on the subject of gender violence?”
WUMAV’s also hosting panels on porn, fraternities, and how sexism affects everyone this month. Hopefully we’ll have more people, especially men, getting involved in this.
I was facilitating a workshop on feminism for teenage political activists recently and at the beginning I asked them to raise their hands if they identified themselves as feminists – they all raised their hands (well except for one, but he changed his mind at the end!). I kinda felt like I could just pack up and go home then – we didn’t need a workshop! But in the end, we had some really interesting and thought-provoking discussion….
That was a pretty good thing to see! I had a big Chesire Cat smile after ;)
Don’t want to be too negative, but someone giving some money to an organization doesn’t really make me feel any better about a woman getting beaten and silenced for her views. That story (about the woman getting hit) still makes me sick to my stomach. Even if it’s not true, and is just some jerk’s fantasy, it makes me sick.
“Sounds like someone’s hitting on you, Jill.”
ugh. Sorry, I know it’s just an innocent remark, but I get so sick of the fact that any time people of the opposite sex do nice things for each other out of friendship it has to be sexualized. Maybe he just felt human compassion for Jill.
and to clarify, the reason “sounds like someone’s hitting on you” gets on my nerves so much is that I feel it is based on the idea that the only reason men are ever nice to women is to get sex, because that’s all women are good for anyways. Women are more than sex-objects, men are more than lust-driven primates, and their interactions can actually transcend flirting and fucking.
Why not publish the fucker’s name and address? Why not call out blatant sexism when we see or hear of it? I take your point, and have donated to my own fav feminist organization, but why let them get away with it. Holla Back has the right idea…call them publically on their misogyny. Sooner or later, they find out they can’t get away with it. Just one more tool to build awareness.