This post was inspired by a rather heated (40 or so comments) discussion on Facebook about whether misogyny within the ranks is holding back the Occupy movement. Make no mistake: it is. If you chart the flamewars on FB alone, the male individuals against female individuals flamewars are running about double the rate of the male on male flamewars, and this is AFTER the most sensitive women left the group altogether. This came as a huge, and saddening, surprise to me; I was raised in the era of Equality, when fighting for the rights of women was as accepted as fighting for the rights of black people or the handicapped. Apparently, when we were resting on our laurels and telling ourselves we’d come a long way, baby, things slipped backwards.
But silence is a form of collusion, as this image from AnonCircle points out, and it’s time to speak out.
One of the most telling signs of the backsliding: despite that thread being prominently featured in my friends’ news feeds and in various Occupy Vancouver Facebook groups and pages, I was the only woman who commented on it publicly. In a depressing version of “the lurkers are with me” I received many private messages of hearty support from women.
I, naturally, challenged them.
“If you think that, why do you not post it? Why are you telling ME that women deserve equal respect? I already know this.”
“Because I wanted you to know I support you.”
“Then support me. Take my left flank. POST.”
Result: one comment. One is an infinite times greater than zero, so I’m counting this as progress. Courage and support are not courage or support if they melt away like a vampire in daylight.
The most revolutionary part of this picture? The absence of pink. I’m not kidding here: go to any children’s wear store and look around: PINKPINKPINKPINKPINK as far as the eye can see, right up to the boy’s department, which has every colour except pink. Why? Seriously, why? Is it in fact essential that total strangers be able to tell our children’s sex from three furlongs away? Or is it, come to think of it, kinda freaky, not to mention tacky?
Wonder Woman kicks ass, takes names, brings home the bacon, and fries it up in a pan. And no you can't have any.
Now THIS is an avatar of feminine power we can all support. Sure, she may have taken jobs away from the odd dashing prince or fairy godmother, but now they can find new, rewarding careers as ghost writers for her autobiography, fan club presidents, or personal assistants. Win/win/win!
Besides, it’s not like those off-the-shelf Disney Princesses turned out so goddam well.
Hipster Ariel will self-harm if she doesn't get a goddam beer already
Which brings me to a slight rant, not for the first and surely not for the last time.
Have you been to the GA lately? No? Been to any populist movement of any kind recently? Even a City Council meeting? And seen? These girls? (and they’re always girls, you know?) Who really, really want to make the world, like, a better place, and, huh, oh, just want everyone to FEEL oKAY about it, okay? Okay?
“In case you hadn’t realized, it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you’re talking about? Or believe strongly in what you’re, like, saying? Invisible question marks and parenthetical ‘you know’s and ‘you know what I’m saying’s have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences? Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? Declarative sentences, so called because they used to, you know, like, declare things to be true, as opposed to other things that are, like, totally… not?” - Taylor Mali
Yes, our movement is a tentative one. It is conditional. It is not sure it should be out so late on a school night, and it doesn’t want to run into its boss at the GA. “If there ever was a time it would be now,” says Third Eye Blind in their Occupy anthem, and that’s as conditional a statement as was ever shoehorned into a revolutionary theme. Ambivalence is the precondition of all Occupiers, but we needn’t let it paralyze us. Let’s get okay with uncertainty, with backlash.
Kids, girls, poke your heads out of your scarves for a moment, unturtle thyselves, and listen to me:
If everyone feels safe and supported and comfortable about what we are doing then
WE ARE DOING IT WRONG.
Hipster guys for whatever reason don’t seem to insist that everyone feel okay about things, so I’m leaving them out of this rant although I’m sure to rant on them sometime or other, if only for their choice of novelty facial hair. It’s the girls (and yes, only some of them but enough that it’s led me to conclude this is a problem with the hipster worldview per se and not just two or three girls who bug me) who really want to change the world, who realize that to do it you need to step up into a position of action and power and who, once there, turtle themselves into their scarves, stare at their pigeon toes and hold up the GA while everybody gets “okay” with things.
Girls, you’ve got halfway there. Once the spotlight is on you, remind yourself this isn’t a photoshoot for Tumblr. This isn’t an audition for Suicide Girls (think about that name).
This is your chance to change the world, our REAL chance to change the world, and it requires more courage than anything any of us have ever done before. It is okay to fear. There is plenty to fear. But fuck “fierce.” Become fearsome.
Hold your heads high when you facilitate a GA. Shut down the randos; empower the change artists. When you’re stacking, own your power, because the power of the GA flows through you; you are a vessel of democracy at that point. Feel it. Live and breathe it.
I can’t really add anything to this; it is a perfect comment, from a hero who prefers not to use his real name, for obvious reasons. This man has my total respect, and I’m very, very glad that Canada hasn’t had such a nefarious policy as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:
I spent twenty years in the military and every day I feared being found out. Yet, every time I had the opportunity to get out, I did not until I completed enough time to retire. It sounds like bullshit, I know, but I really felt the need and desire to serve our country. My civilian gay friends always kidded me about being in the service (trust me in my case anyways being at sea was no sexual picnic – think 2 months without leaving your office and co-workers). They chided me as well for being in an environment that didn’t want me. But I truly felt the need to stay and serve as a good example for others. I survived at least three investigations that I knew of along as a couple of security clearance checks, including one for top secret clearance.
I like to think that I survived because I was a good trooper, a patriot. But I also survived because I was surrounded by officers and non-coms who believed in me. One day when I was a junior petty officer on Governors Island, my boss, a lieutenant commander pulled me aside and said, Look, you are probably gay, but my advice to you is this: don’t eat where you sh*t. We both laughed, but I took his point to heart. In or out of the military, gay or straight, you don’t fool around at work, period, and I carried this with me until the end of my career.
I had numerous gay friends throughout my military career. I wish I had been able to connect with others to commiserate, but the fear of being seen with any of those guys… I couldn’t get over it. And now, on the eve of the end of DADT, I don’t know what became of so many of those guys. Several are dead, dying from AIDS in 80s and 90. The others, I hope they are like me tonight, thinking of the groundwork we laid all those years.
Right now, a friend of mine in the Army is celebrating his engagement to his partner of many years – a partner who had to keep his relationship secret while my friend was in Afghanistan and Iraq on multiple tours. This day is a great victory for them and for all of us who love our country and want to serve in its defense.
