Property Rights, Gin and Tacos, October 15, 2014

It’s equal parts intriguing and disturbing how often men treat women with respect – not invading their personal space or shouting things at them that they would prefer not to have shouted at them – not because they think women deserve to be treated with respect but because they are with a man. The inebriated young men didn’t refrain from making suggestive comments because they realized that it’s inappropriate; they refrained because I was next to her. Old creepers and “pickup artists” do not leave accompanied women alone at bars because they recognize that ignoring all the “please stop” signals is behavior that trends toward Rapey. They do it because the has a Sold tag on her and is already the property of some other man. And many men who would happily treat women with the utmost disrespect would recoil at the thought of disrespecting another man by hitting on his Property.

The right’s Lena Dunham delusion: Anger, misogyny and the dangers of business as usual, Katie McDonough, Salon, October 17, 2014

After expressing some outrage about Dunham’s wealth and privilege (who would have guessed that Williamson was such a socialist?), he targets her for writing about Barry, questions whether she is telling the truth, seems to suggest that Dunham should share her medical records as evidence of the incident and then calls the chapter a public lynching. It’s gross, and it’s predictable in its grossness. There is no empathy for Dunham to be found because, to Williamson, the story is all about Barry.

Because all of these stories are always about Barry.

In our current public conversations about affirmative consent and sexual assault, most of which are focused on California’s new legal standard for college campuses rather than the far more essential work of shifting our culture’s (and, more specifically, men’s) attitudes about sex from one of transaction and commodity to consent and mutual pleasure, we are centering the Barrys. We are pretending that most rape is an accident and fretting about the men who could be harmed by women sharing their stories, by women having more room to say, like Dunham, “[A]t no moment did I consent to being handled that way.”

Women, it seems, if they are to speak at all about rape (or the experiences of violation that we do not give that name to), must follow a very narrow set of parameters. Their accounts must be marketable, consumable. Never disruptive. A “good” sexual assault story involves: a stranger, a woman held at knifepoint, immediate action to alert law enforcement, a seamless police response, an emotional but ultimately cathartic courtroom scene, a prison sentence. A “bad” sexual assault story involves: everything else.

7 Ways White People Can Combat Their Privilege, Derrick Clifton, Mic, October 16, 2014

It’s no longer enough to simply be aware of white privilege. The conversation needs to advance past this initial — and important — stage of acceptance and move to a stage of action. Because, in the meantime, whites still benefit from the subjugation of people of color.

Each and every person has the power to overcome prejudicial attitudes. Yes, it is possible, if relatively seldom, for people of color to also harbor biases between cultures and ethnicities. But what people of color don’t have is the overwhelming amount of institutional power enjoyed by their white counterparts, making white privilege not only an interpersonal issue but also a systemic one.