sigelphoenix

A proposed Arizona bill would ban race-based student organizations and any courses that supposedly "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization."

The results of this bill would be simple, and devastating. Ethnic student associations like MEChA, which provide students with a place to learn about and share their cultural heritage, would be lost. Courses that (dared to) criticize the violent colonialist history of the United States, or the continuing racist patterns that persist today, would be silenced.

These results aren't the unintended consequences of well-meaning legislation. Read the article, and you'll see that this is exactly what the legislators mean to do.

Read more and send an email to Arizona legislators.

1. Yesterday's geeky morning was followed by today's geeky morning, wherein ratzeo and I spent the bus ride theorizing about Warmakers. 8D

2. The Open Source Boob WTFuckery has been countered with the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program, joined by the Gentlemen's Auxiliary.

3. I'm wearing "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" today. The reviews promised a floral scent with a sharp, cold edge. What I'm getting is a pretty floral that's definitely not gentle, but, alas, not the edge I was looking for. Still, it's quite lovely, so I like it a lot. But this means that my search continues for a perfect BPAL scent for Sae. 8D

4. This. Yeah.

5. Progress on The Macho Paradox goes slowly, but steadily. (Rather than beat myself up on the low number of pages I've read, I will focus on the good: that I've been making consistent progress on a theory - however light - book for the first time in months.) My next NWSA research book, Black Sexual Politics, arrived at my house this morning, and The Cult of True Victimhood shipped out today.

From the front-page article of today's campus newspaper, "UWPD to train students in rape defense":

"One in six women is a victim of rape or attempted rape during her lifetime in Washington state. In order to combat these statistics, the University of Washington Police Department is holding a women’s self-defense class."

Uh, no. In order to combat rape, you teach people not to rape. Within the sexism-fueled rape culture that we live in, that means, first and foremost, teaching men to respect women's sexual and bodily autonomy. Providing women self-defense education so that they can keep themselves from being victimized is a stopgap solution. It can be useful, yes, but is not to be mistaken for the primary method of sexual violence prevention.

Ironic that this article comes along just as I'm reading The Macho Paradox, which describes how we mistakenly place our attention and scrutiny upon (female) victims of sexual violence, rather than looking at men, who commit the overwhelming majority of sexual violence and actually have it in their power to prevent it. Notice how the article is comfortable naming women as the primary/only targets of sexual violence - which is true - but fails to note that men are the primary perpetrators of it. Notice how it makes men, and men's responsibility to prevent themselves and their peers from committing sexual violence, disappear.

To get a sense of how ridiculous this one-sided attention is, check out misia's Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (a satirical response to the Open Source Boob Project). Does it seem absurd that the proposed project puts the onus on men to prevent unwanted/violent attention perpetrated upon their own bodies? How absurd is it that we do expect women to do this for themselves, every damn day?