Every once in a while I just want to post a bunch of awesome links to articles and resources that relate to consent culture, both very specifically and in the broader sense. It’s like being friends with me on Facebook, except getting all the info in one shot.

-Have people been following Sinfest? Wow, he’s been on a roll with feminist values lately, and often stripper sympathetic! I’m totally loving it. This one is awesome. As is this one. And this one. And this one… even when I don’t agree necessarily with his conclusions (and my feelings are complicated about what is often referred to as “sex positive feminism”), I still am really, really glad he’s discussing feminism with his ENORMOUS audience. And that he took ownership for his previous comics.

-Pervocracy discusses the myth of the Boner Werewolf, otherwise known as “why men should be really pissed off at the idea that they can’t control themselves sexually”:

If someone started telling stories about how my gender was controlled by our genitalia and sexual arousal turns us into rapist automatons, I would be outraged. I would explain in very small, very loud words that I am a person and I can goddamn control myself. I wish more men would speak up to say “actually, even when I can’t turn my erection off, I can sure as hell use the rest of my body to put it somewhere it won’t bother anyone.”

-Stoya, a porn star, writes about her experiences as a woman in the adult industry vs just walking down the fucking street- guess which one gets her more harassment?:

Before you try to tell me that it’s because I take my clothes off for a living, let me tell you that this started way before I was 18. Let me tell you that every single woman I know has at least one truly terrifying story of street harassment and a whole bunch of other stories that are merely insulting or annoying. Let me remind you that in a room of pornography fans, who have actually seen me with a dick in my mouth and who can buy a replica of my vagina in a can or box, I am treated with far more respect than I am walking down the street.

Frustrating to read, but also important, especially as adult performers/sex workers are often given blame for how men treat women in the street.

-I really loved this way of framing privilege and privilege awareness, using George Parker, 1950′s dad from the movie Pleasantville.

So I think it’s worthwhile to spend a minute or two looking at the world from George Parker’s point of view: He’s a good 1950s TV father. He never set out to be the bad guy. He never meant to stifle his wife’s humanity or enforce a dull conformity on his kids. Nobody ever asked him whether the world should be black-and-white; it just was.

George never demanded a privileged role, he just uncritically accepted the role society assigned him and played it to the best of his ability. And now suddenly that society isn’t working for the people he loves, and they’re blaming him.

It seems so unfair. He doesn’t want anybody to be unhappy. He just wants dinner.

Compassionate but also firm, I feel like this might be a great thing to send to people who are unaware of how their privilege is based on oppressing other people, even if they’re not conscious of it.

-Also, in media:

“Their politic, it seems, is just based on spontaneous reaction to any kind of oppression without bothering to analyze it first.”

“Yeah, but that says a lot more about the way we define what constitutes the political, and the inability they have to define themselves- I mean that kind of spontaneous reaction IS their platform. They’re linking their experience of oppression with an image or notion of a women’s army. They would find the kind of dialogue we use as prohibitive or as a substitute for action.”

This conversation is from “Born in Flames”, and is between two (white, middle class) female editors of a socialist paper as they discuss the radical politics of the Women’s Army, a multicultural, working class, queer-embracing movement. I feel like it resonates one hell of a lot with the often white, middle/upper class dominated world of academia vs direct action work that I see raging around activism generally.

“Born in Flames” really is a genius film that Maggie Mayhem suggested to me and I highly, highly recommend.

“We have a right to violence. All oppressed people have a right to violence, and I’m gonna tell you something. It’s like the right to pee. You gotta have the right place, you gotta have the right time, you gotta have the appropriate situation. And I’m absolutely convenced that THIS IS IT!”

Inspiring film. It’s so sad that it’s science fiction because getting so many types of feminist to work together seems too impossible. Go watch it on Netflix.

-”You asked me what my sign is/and I told you it was STOP”

Awesome anti-harassment song via… Nickelodeon? It’s from a show called “Victorious” which seems to be the standard, girl-in-performing-arts-school-wants-to-be-a-star drek that does so well with tweens. But this song is AWESOME, particularly because it teaches said tween girls that if you tell someone to leave you alone and they don’t,  GET ANGRY! And not just angry, but “I will punch you if you touch me again” angry.

I’m delighted that teenage girls are being given catchy songs to tell guys to fuck off with! Valerie Solanas is smiling.