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Clothesline Project

5/20/2011

1 Comment

 
     On Saturday April 30th 2011, W.E.L.L. hosted its first annual Clothesline Project event. It was beautiful. I met with dozens of people-men, women, even kids and teens-who shared their stories, made shirts, and opened a piece of themselves and their past to me. While any of these stories would be powerful and moving to hear about, I chose the story of two sisters to explain in the W.E.L.L. blog. I’m using this story for many reasons. Mostly because it is already public knowledge to those who follow the news. I feel like it may be less invasive to re-tell an already public story than to divulge some of the private stories from the Clothesline. Also, the Cates sisters have given me permission to share their story again. In the public nature of the Clothesline many stories were hung out and told, but going in deeper with any one story would not be fair for me to do without permission. 

     Lisa Cates came to the Clothesline project with her two friends and their dogs in tow. Equipped with her profession around her, Lisa shouldered her camera in its zipper case as she spread her yellow shirt in front of her. Paints and other artists crowded the table, and as I made rounds talking to everyone in attendance, I could hear snippets of Lisa’s questions to her friends: “Should I say, ‘Don’t drop the soap’ or ‘See you at the rodeo’?” I smiled and kept moving, encouraged by how seriously she was taking her message. I assumed then that someone was in prison, or should be, from whatever had happened to Lisa. Still, with several people at the Clothesline during that hour, I kept rotating and meeting new faces. 

   Lisa stayed for over an hour making her shirt, which ended up having messages on both sides. She took some pictures as it hung on the line, and told me she would come by later before we closed down for the day. 

     Around 4:45pm, 15 minutes before we’d planned to officially end the event for the day, I was painting a peace sign with another artist. This 10-year-old girl was asking me how to spell “awareness” when I saw Lisa back with another friend. I moved from the painting table to the line, and came upon Lisa and her older sister Robin, both crying gently at the shirt Lisa had made. They were facing the back which showed two girls holding hands with the words “I think we’ll be alright” painted in blue cursive beside the image. That’s when I heard their story. 

    Robin and Lisa lived in an apartment together a couple years ago. Their land-lady had a son (Avery) who managed the property: repairing things that broke, dealing with the yard work, etc. This man was interested in Robin. A few dates occurred, but there wasn’t a committed, exclusive relationship in place. Things started to go south. Both the Cates sisters used their land-lady as a kind of confidant, and shared the odd things that Avery was doing in the dating relationship. Then Robin was kidnapped, held with a gun, beaten and raped by Avery. After Robin escaped, she went to the police (where she was all but ignored), to the hospital (where SANE nurses were critically important to her care and treatment) and to her land-lady. Her land-lady was told the story, to which she wrote a check for the apartment deposit and told the girls to “disappear”.

     Thankfully for whoever would have been Avery’s next victim, Robin did not disappear. Robin and her sister fought back, went to court, Robin testified through four painful hours.  Avery is now behind bars. It turns out that Robin was number five in Avery’s parade of beaten and raped acquaintances, started when he was only 17 years old.

     Robin and Lisa have prevailed through unimaginable hardships, and because of their bond together, among other reasons, they have made it through. Now, in the very public eye, these women tell their story. Doubtlessly they have been blamed for the whole affair, as many media outlets and people tend to wrongly do to victims. I’m sure they’ve faced questions and statements from many who clearly don’t get it. Still, they stand strong and publically, telling the truth and making the world safer for other women. As a rape victim myself who has filed a complaint, but was terrified to do any more, I admire them. As a woman who has two nieces that are growing up in our world, I thank them. As a person who believes that yes means yes and anything else is no, I pay tribute to them. These women are examples of bravery, courage, and shared strength.

    “Should I wear my hair down like you?” Lisa asked Robin. They smiled, the tears having dried on their cheeks, and stood on either side of Lisa’s t-shirt as I took their picture together. “Am I in red or orange?” Robin asked. I snapped another picture. The wind was picking up again and the volunteers had started to close down the Clothesline. At about 6pm, I said goodbye to Lisa and Robin. I remember walking over to my friend who had come to help tear down the event, and telling her that those women were something special.

    Lisa and Robin will be alright. And so will other women because of their work. We, as women in New Orleans, owe our belief and our gratitude to the Cates sisters. Take inspiration from the strength found between two sisters, and carry that with you today. They’ll be alright. So will we all.

The back of Lisa’s shirt.

The front of Lisa’s shirt.

To hear more about the news story relating to Robin’s kidnapping and rape, click here.

To see Lisa’s amazing photography website, click here.

1 Comment

Stalkers

4/14/2011

0 Comments

 
I have been scanning blogs today, and thinking about how I should maybe start one. That’s how much I’d forgotten about the W.E.L.L. blog-shame, shame, shame…with all the efforts on W.E.L.L. activities, I’ve forgotten the written word is where everything with W.E.L.L. started anyway. So, blog I must! 

This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f12gqM5tvvo) commercial is crazy. I want to stick a giant “THIS OFFENDS WOMEN” sticker on every TV that shows it and on the people at Virgin Mobil in general. 

Allow me to preface my following rant with this: I do not own TV. I have a television set, which is hooked up to my PS2, where I play Kingdom Hearts and God of War, filling the in-between-game-time with Netflix rentals. I do not even have basic channels. The basic channel for my TV is “off”. After recently joining a gym, I got to watch TV for the first time in years. Most of the discoveries I made (and am still making) about our mass media culture can be posts of their own, so today I will limit it to this commercial. 

I get that we are using contemporary culture for dark humor, but dark humor is at least funny when you’re drunk. This is not funny at all, and I drank a bottle of wine to check: not funny when drunk either. I think we’re missing a few basic ideas….

Stalking, in general, may be funny coming from a thin white girl who isn’t a threat, can be fucking terrifying when it is taken up by a big, ex-boyfriend who has reason to be angry. That is the number one way I’ve ever heard of people being stalked. Granted, I am not a scientist and do not have a pure sample to take my conclusions from, but really, what guy do you know that has ever been in danger-serious, no-joke danger-from a girl stalking him? Maybe embarrassed, or annoyed, but most likely they are full of shit and conceited, blowing it out of proportion when a girl is just calling to get back something she left at his place.  (I know there are exceptions to this statement, but since the commercial is aimed at the general mass of the public, I am speaking in terms of the general mass as well.)

Let’s examine what type of stalking we are talking about. In the travesty of a commercial linked above, we are talking about both physical and cyber stalking. Let’s look at some numbers provided by people paid to research, and who do not work for Virgin Mobil and have more pure samples than I.  73% of people being cyber-stalked in 2010 were women (http://www.haltabuse.org/resources/stats/Cumulative2000-2010.pdf) and they were usually being stalked by men. Thus, this commercial’s first offense is that it’s a drastic role reversal of reality. Still more insulting, the stats on physical stalking show 78% of the victim to be women, and 90% of the stalkers to be men (http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32457). Not just any men, but usually exes of some variety.

I’ll re-frame the commercial for us as we learn real facts together. Our image should now be an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband who is feeling less than great about his girlfriend ending things as the stalker, and a woman as the stalkee. The question that seems to press for me in this scenario is "so what"? What the big problem with being stalked? Following our wonderful paid research people, fear is a big issue. And not fear that the ex-husband will be checking their recent Tweets, but rather that they can’t leave at night, that they will be physically harmed, afraid to even report this abuse. The commercial does not show any physical or even hypothetical threat to the man in his house.

In our revised commercial, the stalker is not in a tree outside his ex-girlfriend’s house, checking her recent tweets, but is calling and threatening her well-being if she does not meet his demands. He is following her around, asking where she is if she doesn’t attend work or a class as she usually does. He’s sitting outside her house making sure she’s coming home “on time”. He’s making threats that he is capable of following through on. Even if the blonde in the commercial threatened the guy, he looks like he could probably fend her off. Reverse the situation using both of the actors in the commercial. Can she fend him off? It’s less funny now, isn’t it? It’s become more of a situation where you’d advise your friend/sister/mom/co-worker/daughter to call the police, hasn’t it?

Our new commercial might be something like this: Flash in with lightning. A fairly well-build middle class white male in his car, outside a suburban home after dark. Zoom in on his 5 o’clock shadowed face as he starts talking to the camera in a low voice. “Tracey thought she could just break up with me. Like we didn’t mean anything to each other! Don’t worry! Using my 90G phone, I can trace her exact location via her phone. I can monitor all her friends via her facebook account and see if anyone knows if she’s dating someone new. And I can send anonymous emails automatically every three minutes so she knows I still love her. And I will love her again. I will.” Lightning flashes. “Thank goodness my phone can do all this here! Because I won’t be going home again until I make sure she gets home…a phone that fast and multi-tasking! It’s crazy, isn’t it?!” And, scene.

That’s the commercial I want to see Virgin Mobil make. Show me that reality on my 10-inch HD while I’m on the treadmill, and try to sell me a high-speed phone 15 seconds later. The only selling point I can see is that it’d be a fast connection to the cops, which every stalking victim needs. Of course, that’s assuming the police will arrive, will be able to do something about the situation, that there are laws in place that will help the victim and not blame her, and that she had an upbringing that led her to be a self-assured, confident individual who feels justified in having her own space and protecting it fiercely enough to ask for the help she needs. Yeah…then I’ll buy your phone.

-Brit, 4/13/11

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Bullies

4/14/2011

0 Comments

 
About six months ago, Ellen DeGeneres posted this video to her facebook page: (http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=592846987806). In the recent months that have followed, I’ve (thankfully) seen numerous things meant to help kids who’ve been bullied. I was moved by YouTube’s “It Gets Better” campaign. I am proud to be living in a city where the Forum for Equality is creating and pushing through legislature that will help aid students in this issue. Creative companies like bitchmodeproductions (BMP T-shirts) have designed products like this (http://www.bitchmodeproductions.com/selfaffirmation.html) self-affirmation tee to be a striking visual way to confront the issue. All over people are waking up to this issue, and are working to make it a non-issue.

As a group, W.E.L.L. has started its Y.E.L.L. programming in response to the bullicides in the last year. We are pitching ideas to the Algiers school board about starting a free chess club and book club/writing workshop for jr high students in the public schools. The chess club is important for several reasons, and while I did help start the chess club in my high school, the book club is dearest to my heart in this facet of Y.E.L.L. I believe in the power of literature, just like I believe in the power of “It Gets Better” and BMP T-shirts. Reading about others can help open our own lives to an amazing degree. We have books that highlight LGBT issues, like Totally Joe by James Howe, and After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson. Reading about kids their own age who know someone who is gay or are gay themselves will help our kids see it as a non-issue. Gay happens-it’s not threatening or harmful, it just is. If you’re straight, then no one is going to make you gay. If you are gay, no one is going to make you straight. I want that to be the idea kids grow up with. That they are safe in whoever they are, and no one will force them to be something other than that.

Unfortunately, kids today do not have that piece of mind. Kids believe what their parents believe, and parents can range from open-minded and peaceful to belligerent and violent. I can’t say I understand this chasm of difference, because I do not. What I do believe is that kids today don’t understand the huge spectrum any more than I do; they believe what they’ve grown up believing. Until they can move out on their own, and really see the world without distraction, they won’t be able to decide for themselves. So the problem becomes, what can we do in the meantime, while the kids bulling others are still blind, and the kids being bullied have no hope of it ending before high school ends?

I don’t have a quick-fix answer. I wish I did. All I have are the questions that I think we all have right now. Can we fix it? How? What can we do today-right now-to make it better?

I know one thing we can do: we can talk. We can talk about the kids who are gone now, and why. We can talk about bullies that we had in our school days, and how it didn’t last forever. We can talk about peace and acceptance, and prove that in our own attitudes and lives. We can talk about characters that survive in books, we can talk about role models making stands, we can talk about legislation being written and fought for, and we can wear our shirts and make our video clips. This is all something that any one of us can do, right now, today. You can do it at work-during your lunch break, you can mention the idea. You can do it on the street car, but explaining the LGBT friendly book you’re reading. You can do it silently in line at the grocery by wearing your self-affirmation t-shirt proudly. You can do it by passing this blog on to someone who needs to know they’re not alone. 

People are working to make things change. You can be working to make things change. It doesn’t mean you have to tattoo “LGBT” to your forehead or only wear rainbow colors. It means you open your ears first, and your mouth second. It means you risk being looked at sideways. It means that you make a comment to one possible parent, who in turn opens up to one kid, who is then safer from cruelty. Be a part of the change. Save a child’s life, by opening your own.

For more on the references made, check out the following:

BMP T-shirts: http://www.bitchmodeproductions.com/selfaffirmation.html

Forum for Equality in New Orleans: http://www.forumforequality.com/

Y.E.L.L. Booklist: http://astore.amazon.com/wellwoemanlol-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=5

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    Author

    Write-up soon.

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