Today's blog is going to be a little different. I mostly just use this forum to say what I've been up to, and I generally try not to be too touch-feely, philosophical, or current. I'm leaving my reticence at the door.
I've been in a half-funk lately. Not a true funk, because I feel fine. In fact, I didn't know I was in a funk of any kind until sometime around ... this morning. Then I just kind of had this realization that I haven't really been DOING anything. Writing lessons, teaching, hanging around, and not really anything more. My life as of recent has been lacking intention. Since he's over-quoted, I'll go ahead and leave Plato out of this, but let me just say that I've been failing to examine myself, and I only realized it today. Why today? I'm not sure. It probably had something to do with drinking coffee before bed last night.
So, my resolutions as of this morning:
1. I'm going to get up earlier. I usually wake up between 7:00 and 8:00, any given day but Monday (when I have a 7:00 AM faculty meeting). Well, 7:00 AM is late in Utopia. Students have productive practice (field work) starting at 5:30 AM every day but Sunday (no wonder they're always tired). I'm not aiming for 5:30 everyday, mostly because I'm not even aware of having a body at that hour, but I'm thinking I need to roll back my clock to sometime between 6:00 and 6:30. It's time to get a little more out of my day.
2. But what ever will I do with all this extra time? Stop being a louse and get some exercise. I play micro-football with the students here on occasion, but not enough to qualify it as regular exercise. I can feel my body atrophying from lack of physical exertion. So, push-ups, sit-ups, maybe pull-ups if I can rig something in my room. Some early morning stretching, maybe? It's time to get health care into my routine as something more than a political talking point.
3. Spanish. Talking to people in Spanish, in my mind at least, does not qualify as practicing Spanish. Conversations with students are like competing in a soccer match. That's performance time. Practice happens away from that environment. It involves intentional study of forms and vocabulary, pronunciation and interpretation. I've been studying a bit since I came, but not enough. Hence, I'm dedicating at least 30 minutes, 3x/week to the actual study of Spanish.
And that's that. After all, I have to save some things for New Year's, right?
Now another thing completely out of the ordinary for this blog. I want to touch a little bit on a subject that some may consider sensitive. If I say anything in the following paragraphs that you find offensive, please know that is not my intention. If I say something you find provocative, please feel free to email me or to comment on this post.
I follow a couple of online whitewater forums, just to keep a bead on the industry and to paddle vicariously through other people who have access to boats and rivers, since that isn't part of my life right now. On one of the forums, the issue of how women are treated in our niche community came up. "Balls Deep Productions" (BDP) is a group of young Montana paddlers who are absolutely killing it on the river. They made a kayaking movie, "Pleasure Strokes" that turned out to not only be about kayaking. It included some scenes taken at house parties that glorified potentially dangerous alcohol abuse and, especially, mistreatment of women. Somebody took the time to ask how we all felt about it (as well as some VERY incendiary comments made on facebook by BDP) and the wall blew up. Over 200 replies to the thread, more than 45,000 views, responses from major companies in the industry, including a kayaking/traveling high school, some paddlers maybe losing their sponsors, and the conversation continues. I'm bringing the conversation to my blog because, as I and others pointed out, the issue is bigger than the niche community of paddlers. It's part of our larger culture, and it needs to be addressed. So.
What follows is a post I made on this message board. It refers to the conversation taking place there at the time, but in a way I think is broad enough for readers here to understand without additional context and to apply in the broader culture of the United States. Without further ado...
"What are you guys about to go do?"
(holding a shotgun) "Shoot some b*tches."
-"Pleasure Strokes" by BDP
There seem to be two main defenses of this kind of behavior going around.
The first is that it isn't serious, that it's all a big joke for the sake of entertainment, and that that makes it OK. I have to disagree with this defense for several reasons. First, your entertainment is not worth somebody else's dignity. Statements and actions like those portrayed here are affronts to the humanity of the people on the other end. Their intent is to amuse, but to amuse yourself at the expense of somebody else is to declare your narcissism to the world. Some argue that these things are happening between friends, and that that makes it OK, but when "jokes" like these are published to an international forum, the joke is no longer between friends.
Which brings me to the second defense, that if we don't like it, we don't have to watch it. That's true, of course. We don't have to watch it. The argument forgets, however, that we do have to live in the climate it creates - a climate where violence against women is normalized. Katie Dean posted about being a young woman in the kayaking community, and that because she was strong and knew how to take care of herself the boys knew what line not to cross with her. What I'm asking is, should she have had to? The culture as it stands now puts the onus on the victim to stand up for him/herself, but shouldn't the onus be on the other person not to victimize the people around him? This same culture is the one that believes in the "Did you see what she was wearing? She was asking for it." defense of sexual assault. Degradation is not the fault of the victim, it is the fault of the perpetrator. The boys at BDP might not think of themselves as sexist, but their behavior says otherwise, and the only thing accomplished by publishing such behavior in a public forum is to declare it normal and appropriate.
To illustrate the point of normalcy, try this experiment. In the BDP quote that starts this thread, try replacing "b*tch" with "n*gger." There was a time in history where culture allowed such a statement to be normal, and it was a time when black people were hated for nothing other than their skin color (let's be honest, many people still have this problem). Now is that epoch for women, when hatred for hatred's sake is scapegoated on the excuse of sex. History will shed light on the ignorance of our times, it will honor people like Eve Ensler (Vagina Monologues) the way it already honors Martin Luther King Jr. We don't have to wait for history, though. Culture is the name we give to collective norms, and we can change those collective norms by vocalizing our desire to. Every person has this responsibility personally, and the louder your voice, the greater your responsibility.
BDP, I don't have an online video with more than 7,000 views. You do. Use the power of your voice to make the world better, not to perpetuate the violence and hatred we already have too much of.
(holding a shotgun) "Shoot some b*tches."
-"Pleasure Strokes" by BDP
There seem to be two main defenses of this kind of behavior going around.
The first is that it isn't serious, that it's all a big joke for the sake of entertainment, and that that makes it OK. I have to disagree with this defense for several reasons. First, your entertainment is not worth somebody else's dignity. Statements and actions like those portrayed here are affronts to the humanity of the people on the other end. Their intent is to amuse, but to amuse yourself at the expense of somebody else is to declare your narcissism to the world. Some argue that these things are happening between friends, and that that makes it OK, but when "jokes" like these are published to an international forum, the joke is no longer between friends.
Which brings me to the second defense, that if we don't like it, we don't have to watch it. That's true, of course. We don't have to watch it. The argument forgets, however, that we do have to live in the climate it creates - a climate where violence against women is normalized. Katie Dean posted about being a young woman in the kayaking community, and that because she was strong and knew how to take care of herself the boys knew what line not to cross with her. What I'm asking is, should she have had to? The culture as it stands now puts the onus on the victim to stand up for him/herself, but shouldn't the onus be on the other person not to victimize the people around him? This same culture is the one that believes in the "Did you see what she was wearing? She was asking for it." defense of sexual assault. Degradation is not the fault of the victim, it is the fault of the perpetrator. The boys at BDP might not think of themselves as sexist, but their behavior says otherwise, and the only thing accomplished by publishing such behavior in a public forum is to declare it normal and appropriate.
To illustrate the point of normalcy, try this experiment. In the BDP quote that starts this thread, try replacing "b*tch" with "n*gger." There was a time in history where culture allowed such a statement to be normal, and it was a time when black people were hated for nothing other than their skin color (let's be honest, many people still have this problem). Now is that epoch for women, when hatred for hatred's sake is scapegoated on the excuse of sex. History will shed light on the ignorance of our times, it will honor people like Eve Ensler (Vagina Monologues) the way it already honors Martin Luther King Jr. We don't have to wait for history, though. Culture is the name we give to collective norms, and we can change those collective norms by vocalizing our desire to. Every person has this responsibility personally, and the louder your voice, the greater your responsibility.
BDP, I don't have an online video with more than 7,000 views. You do. Use the power of your voice to make the world better, not to perpetuate the violence and hatred we already have too much of.
And this, highlights from a post I made on my other message board (where I introduced the topic):
... What I'm interested in, the whole reason I brought this up here, is the attitude of the kayaking community toward this kind of behavior.
... this conversation is maybe a way to show people how strongly we feel about the treatment of women, and to let them know that we'll put a stop to this when we see it. If we're lucky, it's also maybe a way to convince a few people to stop and think a moment about their actions and how they affect the community around them, to stop themselves before someone else has to step in.
Hatred toward women isn't limited to the kayaking community, but that doesn't mean we should tolerate it here. (And let me be clear, "tolerate" means "don't say anything" means "leave them alone.")
... When behavior like that is normalized it affects everybody. It takes power away from victims and puts it in the hands of abusers, and it warps the minds of young people growing up in a culture where they can't be sure what's appropriate and what isn't.
I don't think we should give these guys a break. I don't think we should give anybody a break when it comes to the disrespect of others. That doesn't mean we need to call their sponsors and demand they get dropped, but it does mean we need to have conversations with them about what's appropriate and what isn't.
So, if you managed to make it through all that, I applaud and thank you. This post turned out to be pretty long, and very different from what I usually talk about. As always, please feel free to send me an email or post in the comments. I look forward to hearing from you.
Alex
P.S. Since this was a pretty serious post, I'm going to leave you with a picture of cute baby animals (this is actually copied and pasted from the first Google search result of "cute baby animals." I chose the tiger because they're FIERCE!)
