Directive: Challenge Authority

A common theme I've run into with English classes here in college is this idea of challenging authority, disrupting the status quo, subverting the established social order, questioning power and in short: thinking for myself. Postmodernism (poststructuralism, deconstruction, whatever you choose to call the greater majority of contemporary academia and critical theory) is all about shining the light on binary systems and showing how nothing is real. Nothing as we know it, from gender to life and death to sexuality to religion is based in a concrete, objective reality. The very idea of reality is false if we can augment and change it through thought, through will, through technology.

There are some who would say I'm oversimplifying, that this critique misses the nuances of the movement and that none of these things are the same and that using postmodernism as this kind of umbrella term to attack is wrong. I see it as this kind of amorphous octopoidal construction that serves its own purpose as a reaction to its own socio-cultural and historical influences

Paradox: If I challenge authority, I must challenge the original directive (to challenge authority), but in doing so I would be obeying and failing to challenge, risking complacency and blind following.

Feedback Loop.

We then cannot rephrase the directive with the potential implied meaning: Challenge all authority but mine. To take this Directive into the appropriate context, challenge authority is not so much a preconventional notion of "fuck the man, you can't tell me what to do" so much as a postconventional challenge to think critically and reason why something might not be worth doing. Ideally, it has moved beyond that kind of narcissism, that I, me, self that is incapable of thinking about the communal we or even further about the global we.

I'm in part being influenced by my reading of Ken Wilbur's A Theory of Everything, a thoughtful gift from my friend Emerson, and I think it would be irresponsible of me to ignore this contribution to my thoughts. I'm attempting to approach this reading critically, not blindly accepting everything Wilbur says, but I think it's important for my development of these thoughts to use the tools made available to me to critically analyze what I already know and see how it interacts and reacts with these new thoughts.

My biggest understanding so far is the integration of hierarchies. In order to understand how systems work, to understand how to affect them, you cannot ignore hierarchies and hierarchal thinking. Hierarchies may be false, they may be constructs of society that malign and marginalize identities and groups, but on some level they have to exist. They serve a necessary function in the social and psychological evolution of an individual and culture.

In my English class today, someone brought up the socio-evolutionary argument for why binary thinking exists, which is to say that from an evolutionary standpoint, which translates to mean from a biological sense, we are built to think in binary ways. The sooner you can make a snap judgement of friend or foe, the more likely you are to survive. The argument then was made that the power of literature and therefore education is to defamiliarize us to this instinct. Our current cultural climate and industrialized society allows us to train ourselves to overcome this instinctual process. Away from the false core of a self to a we and as we progress further from a humanist (which is egoist on a species level) to a global or what Wilbur would call a holistic level.

So on the holistic level, a hierarchy is part of a greater system of society and culture. A lot of styles of thought focus on this, but I think the difference is in the approach. The holistic approach is about integration, the nested realities that coexist.

New directive: Question authority critically.

I give you FISH!

Feed them and keep them happy for me? kthnxbai

Getting Political on the Fourth of July

“The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plain." - George McGovern

To everyone saying that we need to honor and remember our service members, I challenge that this does not mean we have to simultaneously honor and respect blatantly wrong wars and acts perpetuated by our government. Respect those who have fought for our freedom by using that freedom to tell your government to be a source of justice in the world.

As a starting point, here are some of our basic freedoms as outlined by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

"No law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," means not favoring one over another, means we cannot be a Christian nation any more than we can be a Muslim nation or a Buddhist nation or a Pastafarian nation. Separation of church and state is as much protection FOR the church as it is FROM the church.

"Freedom of speech, or of the press" means we can express ourselves. Not with full impunity because historically there have been court rulings limiting what kind of speech is okay. Things like the fuzzily defined obscenity, and libel, slander, etc are generally not okay.

The freedom to "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" to me is not just a right, it is a call to hold our government responsible. This does not mean immediately go out and protest, but also protest with your vote. Protest with your wallet. Tell the people you voted for that they owe a responsibility to you to work for peace, justice and equality; they need to protect your rights and your interests over some private entity. And if it comes to it, protest. Gather in numbers and let the government know that it has done wrong by its people.

For more information:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/
http://tinyurl.com/3zszy49

Yet another poem post so I can at least say I blog once a month...

This piece has been bouncing around in my head for a few days and now I unleash it on the world. Any and all feedback is welcome.

Social butterfly:
a leaf trapped in the wayward breeze of impartiality
you fleeting flutter to and fro
caught not by the red rose of lovers' trysts
nor the painted daisies of the well-tended garden.
No, the butterfly dips and dodges clasping hands and gilded nets alike.
Do you taste the nectar of every conversation
or merely touch the surface before you're gone again?
Social butterfly, your wandering ways bewilder,
where do you belong?
"In-between! In-between!"
rally the cries of the extrovert elegant.
Then carry on, untouched by the dervishes of many faiths surrounding you.
It must be lonely being a butterfly, sometimes,
always surrounded but never quite there.

Slutwalk: Seattle and Beyond

First off, let me start by saying that this is a difficult post for me to make, because SlutWalk is complicated. If people actually read this, I expect there to be controversy, just remember attack the issues, not people.


So let's start from the beginning. I'm going to copy and paste directly from SlutWalk Seattle since they have more experience telling the history of the event than I do.

On January 24th, 2011, a Toronto police officer gave some advice that is all too common: “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” From an 11-year-old in Texas being blamed for being gang-raped to a teenager in Seattle not being able to file rape charges because witnesses “portrayed the act as consensual,” this line of thought pervades our culture. As long as it seems like the woman might like sex, they’re made to take the blame.

Women of Toronto got angry and showed the establishment that this kind of language and treatment is not okay. And thus was born SlutWalk.


The SlutWalk Seattle FAQ page goes on to explain that SlutWalk as they interpret it is reframing the discourse on rape culture, specifically with regards to victim blaming and slut shaming. Again, I'll quote the page since they did a good job defining those terms.

Victim blaming is when the victims of sexual assault are explicitly or implicitly blamed for their own assault (for example, saying that a woman should have expected to be raped if she wore a short skirt). This wrongfully shifts the burden of prevention from the perpetrator onto the victim.


Slut shaming is when people, especially women, are made to feel shamed and guilty because of their actual or imagined sexual proclivities. Labels like “slut” stigmatize and dehumanize women, making it easier for society and the legal system to turn a blind eye to victims, make excuses for violence, and deny them justice.

Now I'm fairly frustrated with the discourse surrounding SlutWalk. Up until I started doing research into the critiques of the movement, all I (thought I) knew about the event was that it was held to reclaim "slut." Which I'm uncomfortable with, but I also recognize that as with any reclaimed (or as some would argue in this instance claimed) terminology it's a matter of personal choice. The event is not meant to promote a "slutty" lifestyle. It's a position that states that within a sex-positive culture, slut should not be assumed as a pejorative.


Reclaiming "slut" should be secondary to addressing the deep-seated institutional bias that exists when it comes to rape culture. But slut gets all the press and attention in the media. And from what I can tell, it's pissing everyone off. This is unavoidable and was unavoidable from the moment the first SlutWalk organizers named it SlutWalk.


So naturally I started digging. I've found multiple posts by radical feminists addressing the racial polarization around SlutWalk. And it would be a lie for me to deny the historical and cultural differences between many of the supporters of SlutWalk and women of color. In America the sexualization and objectification of women's bodies, especially along racial divides, has created a space where "slut" and the outrage around it is very much a matter of privilege. White women can be outraged because they aren't inculcated to a culture that devalues and sexualizes their bodies from birth. As one blogger put it:

It goes without saying that Black women have always been understood to be lascivious, hypersexed, and always ready and willing. When I think of the daily assaults I hear in the form of copious incantations of “bitch” and “ho” in Hip Hop music directed at Black women, it’s hard to not feel a bit incensed at the “how-dare-you-quality” of the SlutWalk protests, which feel very much like the protests of privileged white girls who still have an expectation that the world will treat them with dignity and respect.

In these instances, SlutWalk is not an appropriate venue through which to stage this conversation. The rhetoric and conversation around "slut" cannot and should not be used as a universal for women. It is culturally specific and should be treated as such. However, that doesn't mean SlutWalk should discontinue its efforts at inclusivity. If people of color want to participate, either in solidarity with a white movement, or because they want to reclaim "slut," that's their choice.


To ignore any of this would be racist and show the kind of privileged feminist views that erase or marginalize people of color. Further, a universalizing treatment of "slut" as a descriptor for women is colonialist based on Western ideas of sexuality that silence the experiences of people of color in countries and locales from a different social background. However, given the grassfire expansion of the SlutWalk movement, I think this assumes a unified agreement on what SlutWalk is. That is to say, it assumes there is a central SlutWalk organization coordinating the plethora of walks across the globe. To my knowledge, while the original SlutWalk Toronto initially sought to advise satellite walks, that line of treatment has all but gone out the door.


SlutWalks as they exist currently are the indicative only of the backgrounds and discourses engaged in by the individual organizers of each event.


Which is not to say that the people most likely to want to organize such an event aren't entrenched in hegemonic, white backgrounds, but ultimately the shape each individual walk takes will be determined by the people walking.


As Meghan Murphy writes, "‘slut’, is gendered." It is a term implicitly feminized by the patriarchy and used as a pejorative against men to imply femininity and thus weakness. I stopped referring to women pretty early on in this writing, because it is a matter of fact that more than just women-identified folk are involved in SlutWalk. As a queer male and self-identified feminist, I see value in the SlutWalk movement. In its potential to disrupt the dominant patriarchal discourse through a subversive reclamation of terms, SlutWalk can benefit anyone marginalized by patriarchal society. Does this mean it will do this? No, but it can if we as activists use it so.

Before I go further, I feel I must address the fact that I am male. Regardless of my sexual orientation or political affiliations, I stand to benefit from the kind of institutionalized patriarchy that privileges males. But I'm carefully straddling a line between accepting and celebrating the movement and between rejecting it for the kinds of issues inherent in a field ripe with potential for classist and racist discourse that further excludes and erases the experiences of people affected by this in ways not accounted for by the dominant language. I recognize the danger in my involvement and I care deeply about how my presence impacts the conversation.


I'm leery of "slut" but as I see it, the potential within SlutWalk lies in addressing those first tenets, that it bring attention to the culture that allows victim blaming and slut-shaming. To teach society not to blame the victim helps redefine our culture. It changes the attitudes around rape and hopefully will help spread the idea that we should be teaching people not to rape rather than "don't get raped."


SlutWalk hasn't even been around for half a year, as a cohesive movement, it's in its infancy, and I for one want to be part of its formation. I want to see SlutWalk (or whatever SlutWalk becomes) move past the valid criticisms leveled at it and I think more than criticizing SlutWalk, this means engaging in and participating in the organization of such events. There's a lot of contradictions and disagreements on both sides of the SlutWalk debate and no one will have a perfect answer, so I take these criticisms with me as I look forward to the fight yet to come.


As a last side note, I would like to thank friends and activists Ben C and Samuel S for involving me in this dialog. I would like to thank Laura G for giving me opportunities to speak out in solidarity with marginalized groups (though I'm still learning to find strength in that voice) and all the women in my life for whom this affects. You are my sisters, my mothers, my aunts and cousins. I hope this inspires and educates you as to why SlutWalk is important and how it can make a difference.