Feminist activists are making their presence known in the Occupy movement in many locations, in the U.S. and throughout the world:

Occupying Patriarchy in Rome

The Occupy Albany Women’s Caucus takes on the Department of Social Services

In San Francisco

Creating a safe place in New York

The OccupyDC Gender Equality Committee mic checks the anti-abortion March for Life

This says it all.

The Ukrainian group Femen protests at Davos (warning–nudity)

Wonderful graphic by Liza Cowan

Special note–I thought Liza’s graphics rocked so much I hired her to design a new logo for the Feminist Peace Network website. Also check out her other work here.

According to the dictionary, the word “slut” means:

1. a dirty, slovenly woman.
2. an immoral or dissolute woman; prostitute.

The origin of the word can be traced back to the 1300′s, from the Norwegian word slutte, meaning impure liquid.  A derogatory label to say the least.  Which is why I was extremely uneasy when I first heard about the slutwalks that have been taking place in various cities around the world.

The slutwalks began after Toronto police proclaimed that, “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”.  And that is precisely what this is about.

Time and time again, violence and harassment is blamed on the victim–what they wore, what they said, or simply their lack of penis and courts and police have all to often reinforced this in the way they investigate and prosecute these incidents.  Slutwalk isn’t saying that we like the word slut, it is about saying it doesn’t matter what we are wearing or saying or how we are acting, we have had enough of being harassed because we dared to walk down the street while being female.

So on a hot, humid and at times rainy day, hundreds of women and male allies marched down the streets of of Washington, DC.  Holly Kearl of the DC based Stop Street Harassment put it this way in her remarks to the crowd,

…we are taking back that power with our activism, with our SlutWalks and by refusing to be silent. We are creating power by being here today and walking and speaking out together.

Could this movement be called something like, “Women Against Street Harassment” instead of using the word slut?  Yes, but it would get a lot less attention.  Women have been speaking out against harassment since forever, and yet here we are with the problem continuing, so you know what?  If even the Toronto police are going to call us sluts because of how we dress, then it is time to use the word to turn the tables.  It also opens the door for great visuals and awesome signs, costumes and art were out in abundance at the walk in DC.  In addition to the pictures I’ve included here, there are more on the Feminist Peace Network Facebook page.

Finally, shared with her kind permission, Australian poet Susan Hawthorne recorded this poem about the use of the word slut:

———- Slut but but 2 compact small by Susan Hawthorne

———

Am I still uncomfortable about claiming the word “slut”?  Yes.  But that isn’t the issue here.  The issue is that women should never be blamed for the actions of their abusers and when that blaming continues to be institutionalized by those who are supposed to protect us, then that is what should make us uncomfortable, not the name we chose to give to our response.

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has an amazing show called the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef:  Art, Science, Community, part of a project begun in 2005 by Margaret and Christine Wertheim.  It features the work of over 800 participants and

combines the mathematics of hyperbolic geometry with the delicateness of this traditionally women’s handicraft. The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is a traveling exhibition that not only displays these artworks, but also incorporates an ever-growing social project—teaching others around the world how to crochet hyperbolically and make their own reefs.  By working through this process and viewing the art, one can see the correlation between the crocheted reefs and living corals, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.  The fragility of the coral reefs is echoed by their crocheted counterparts.

The show runs through April 24th and is truly a treat for the eyes and the soul.  Here are a few of the pictures that I took, I’ll post more to the Feminist Peace Network Facebook page as well.

Vacuuming Pop Art by Martha Rosler

Upon hearing of the recent deaths of both Barbara Billingsley and Bob Guccione, my first thought was that between the image of June Cleaver portrayed by Billingsley and the faux-ified images of women hawked by Guccione’s Penthouse, a tremendous amount of damage was perpetrated on our perceptions of female worth and identity.  And while June took off her pearls and heels a long time ago, the skewering of female reality in the media and in entertainment continues unabated.  Consider these examples:

• As the Feminist Peace Network blog pointed out recently, the pornography business is gargantuan and has become so ubiquitous that it becomes a de-facto part of what is normal.
• In a recent piece on the Ms. Magazine Blog,  Carolyn Heldman calls out Disney for their appalling portrayal of sexual slavery, and at that, geared towards very young children,
  

  As many as 4 million people–most of them women and children–are sold into slavery globally each year, according to the United Nations, and 70 percent of those women are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation [PDF]. An estimated 200,000 American children are at risk for sex trafficking each year, and the International Human Rights Law Institute estimates that 30,000 sexual slaves die annually from abuse, torture, neglect and disease.

  So why is Disneyland still asking us to laugh at an overt depiction of sexual slavery in its popular Pirates of the Caribbean ride?

• For a fascinating look at how women fare in so-called reality television shows, check out Jennifer Pozner’s Reality Bites Back.  Pozner writes that in these shows, women are portrayed as, “golddiggers, bimbos, and bitches, and women of color are violent, “low class” whores”.
• And then there are advertisements like this for Lost Abbey Witch’s Wit beer which makes light of a period of history where women who were labeled as witches suffered unimaginable brutality and were murdered by the millions.
  

The examples are endless, these are merely ones that have crossed my desk during the last few weeks.

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But purposeful misogynist misrepresentation goes beyond media, entertainment and advertising; it is an integral part of our historic narrative as well.  Or more to the point, women’s lives are not shown as an integral part of that tale.  Last week I had the opportunity to contemplate the story that we are given in our daily lives from three rather interesting vantage points, on a tour of the United States Capitol, a lecture by Judy Chicago on the life and art of Frida Kahlo  at the National Museum for Women in the Arts and a visit to the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.

While on a trip to Washington, DC, I accompanied my son on a visit to the Capitol.  As we entered the Visitors’ Center,  we were surrounded with statues and pictures of people who were pivotal in the history of the United States and yes, you guessed it, they were predominantly male images.  The almost complete erasure of women (save a few tokens) from the narrative of our country is inescapable, it is as if we are supposed to believe that men did it all by themselves while women just sat passively by.

The following day, we went to hear artist Judy Chicago give a lecture at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on her new book, Frida Kahlo:  Face to Face,  co-authored with Frances Borzello. Unlike most of the museums in Washington, this one is a privately run museum, necessary because as Chicago noted and the Guerrilla Girls have pointed out so many times, most of the art in traditional museums, even the so called National Gallery of Art mostly contain art by men and represent the male gaze. Before the lecture, I made a quick trip to the restroom and my son waited for me at the reception desk which had several very thick books listing the names of charter members and supporters.  My son, knowing that I was a charter member, started looking for and then found my name, which he showed me when I returned.  For me, seeing my name as one of the many who have supported the museum was a wonderful experience.  I wasn’t just there to see the art.  In my small way, I was part of the her-story that made it possible for that art to be there.  It was a very powerful feeling.

Hearing Judy Chicago was a dream come true for me.  Her work has been enormously important to me, giving me context during the years that I worked as an  artist, allowing me to reclaim women’s artistic history and and sense of rootedness. During her lecture, Chicago made several points about Kahlo’s work that I think are applicable far beyond the discussion of Kahlo’s work:

• Describing women’s work as reactive rather than proactive denies women’s agency.

and,

• It is important to look at women in their own context, not as part of the male context.

And finally, in my tryptych of vantage points, I had the delightful opportunity to visit with the wonderful staff at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University. The Center’s Director, Laura Micham graciously set out a table of some of the treasures that have been given to their care–Robin Morgan’s archives, a copy of the New York Times with a picture of Alix Kates Shulman, papers from the local chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and so much more.  Precious, rarely seen pieces of our her-story, there for me to see, to touch on a table in their beautiful reading room.

I’m not sure that I can adequately describe my reaction to this cornucopia of women’s heritage on which my eyes feasted and my fingers rested.  It was a sharp contrast to the feeling of dis-ease that I experienced at the Capitol where I felt almost physically disenfranchised by the official telling of his-story that is supposed to be our story. One of the first things that popped into my head was what if what I was seeing in this beautiful library was considered a crucial part of our story that must be told as vigorously as that of the founding fathers, what if we listened to the mothers too?  Here, I was surrounded by women and a deep feeling of connection, of foundation, of belonging.

———-

Which brings me to this:  there is a terrible price to be paid for the systemic misogynist  invisibilizing, trivializing and misrepresentation of women’s lives.

We see it in the eyes of our children who will inherit the results of our perpetuated misrepresentations when  fraternity pledges glorify rape,

On Wednesday night, Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges marched through Yale’s Old Campus — where most first-year female students are housed — chanting, “No means yes, yes means anal!” The fraternity pledges were marched blindfolded while barking like soldiers … with marching orders of anal rape. They also threw in, “My name is Jack, I’m a necrophiliac, I fuck dead women.”

We see it when Virginia Thomas asks Anita Hill to apologize to her husband the Supreme Court Justice for calling him out for sexual harassment as if the perpetrator can somehow magically become the victim and the real victim’s extraordinary courage could possibly be considered wrong.  And we see it when candidates like Todd Lally in Kentucky’s 3rd Congressional District can blatantly say that they don’t think women are discriminated against and still be taken seriously as a candidate to represent the people, more than half of whom are female.

We see it  when the Washington Post reports that Tim Proffitt may not be arrested for stomping on Lauren Halle’s head at a Rand Paul rally,

It looks as if this may not result in an arrest. Based on the footage of the incident, cops are treating the case for the time being as a fourth degree assault case, which puts this in the realm of domestic violence scuffles and barfights, she tells me. She says they’re treating this as a “misdemeanor, not a felony.”

And yet guys like Lally who sees equality where there is none and guys like Paul who attract hooligans like Proffitt who thinks that the woman whose head he stepped on should apologize to him claim they can represent “the people”.  The very bad news is that they stand a very good chance of getting elected on Tuesday.  And the young men at Yale will likely go on to be leaders in government and industry.

As I was writing this, I happened to see Ann Jones’ piece in The Nation on the use of women soldiers to communicate with Afghan women, the description would be laughable in its absurdity if it weren’t horribly true.  Jones points to the abusive expectations placed on women in the U.S. military and a deeply misogynist arrogance and ignorance systemic in U.S. military policy towards Afghan women.  This too is part of the toxic damage wreaked by his-story on her-story. And somehow that is supposed to be okay, just part of the political process that our national narrative supports.  But it isn’t okay. Rather, it is part of the toxic legacy of misogyny which played out again at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear which styled itself as a meeting at the commons for all  yet all but excluded women from the podium.

Come Wednesday morning, when the electoral ruckus begins to settle, we need to take a deep look at the story we are telling, the plot is long overdue for revision.

–Lucinda Marshall

Via email, Ingrid Quinn shared her reasons for making the film, the message she hopes to convey and how she hopes to further the implementation of 1325.

Q:  What motivated you to make the film?

A:  I think the combination of design and new media offers a multitude of possibilities for the development sector. Working in countries impacted by war and disaster, I wanted to merge design thinking and new media with human rights to create new ways understanding, perceiving and engaging.

UN1325 Engage Understand Act came out of two core motivations; Firstly, I wanted translate UN1325; a technical legal document, into an accessible visual language. My intention with the film is to engage the viewer, provoke thought and stimulate discussion; what does it mean?’ ‘how does it affect me?’ ‘do I have a role?’

Secondly, I wanted to act upon the many stories I’d heard over the years from women who have experienced war and disaster. Their experiences are often marginalized and their rights ignored.

Creating a bridge between women’s experiences at the grassroots and global policy is vitally important to me. I wanted to create an advocacy tool that brings together the experiences of women to inform decisions made by the global architects of policy.  The 10th anniversary of UN1325 provided a great opportunity.

Creating the animation UN1325 Engage Understand Act was very much a collaborative effort with artist Pippo Lionni.

Q:  What are the key points you are trying to get across about UNSCR 1325?

A:  The realities of war are not experienced in a moment, an hour or a day – the impact is life changing.  I wanted to emphasis the strength and critical role of women as decision makers, change agents, survivors.   Women are not asking anymore, we’re doing!

Q:  How do you see this movie as a catalyst for implementation of 1325, do you have specific goals regarding what you hope to achieve with this film?

A:  The film is a first in many ways.  UN1325 is the first UN Security Council Resolution that specifically addresses issues relating to women and war. UN1325 Engage Understand Act is the first animation of UN Security Council Resolution.  It is the first in a series of animation projects that I have planned in collaboration with Pippo Lioni.

I intend to give impetus to action; to go beyond the jargon and the technical language to engage a larger audience with the realities of conflict and to challenge stereotypes and mis-perceptions about women.

A press release for the film’s debut provides additional information:

The animated film UN1325 ENGAGE UNDERSTAND ACT produced by gender specialist and social researcher Ingrid Quinn and French/American artist Pippo Lionni and distributed by Videoseeding.com will go viral/global across social media sites on 20 October 2010 (YouTube, Facebook etc).  It will be screened throughout the upcoming UN Peace Fair in New York, 26-29 October 2010.

The 31st of October 2010 marks the 10th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 Women, Peace and Security (‘UN1325’).  UN1325 was passed unanimously and is the first formal and legally binding instrument from the United Nations Security Council that requires parties at war to: respect women’s rights, protect women and girls in conflict, increase the influence of women in decision making and peace negotiations and involve women post-conflict rebuilding. The resolution underscores the responsibility to protect women and girls from human rights abuses, including gender- based violence. 

UN1325 is among the most effective yet under-utilized tool for both civil leaders and citizens to hold states and individuals accountable to ensure women’s full participation in preventing and resolving conflict, promoting peace and security and protecting women in times of conflict and peace.

The film UN1325 ENGAGE UNDERSTAND ACT is a call to action. The film intends to provoke thought on the disproportionate impact, inequalities and struggles faced by women in war. It calls for the urgent implementation UN1325.