sexual violence

Don’t Be a Dick

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture has made an array of otherwise lofty topics accessible through the format of personal zines that aim to educate and inform—from bicycle maintenance to vegan cooking. In particular, the strong foothold that DIY culture has in radical politics and feminism has allowed for the creation of some radical, eye-opening work. Paul Brown’s zine, _Don’t Be a Dick, _is an archetypal DIY zine, complete with staples, a gray-washed Xeroxed background, hand-drawn pictures, and a curious layout. It looks as harmless as a playbill, but is unique to the DIY format in that it is a boldly personal account of a heterosexual male’s journey with consent.

Brown tackles a lot in the twenty-something pages that encompass his zine, such as constructions of masculinity, the United States as a rape culture, and definitions and approaches toward healthy consent. But Brown’s ambitious approach is also his major downfall. Don’t Be a Dick’s focus goes far beyond the limits of its pages, and while the topics Brown discusses are important and pertinent to comprehending consent and sexual assault as a whole, nothing more than a basic understanding is ultimately conveyed. This becomes a problem because, if Brown’s intention was to create a zine that is both informative and useful, neither goal is quite executed. He ends one section on the notion that men need to “wake up” and “hold each other accountable” but gives no clear indication as to how to accomplish either of these goals. Based on its ability to educate an array of people, I would be more recommend a zine like Cindy Crabb’s Learning Good Consent than I would this zine.

Brown’s zine is unique because of who he is—a man writing about male-to-female sexual assault. In the first few pages, the impetus for his zine is revealed—he once coerced an ex-partner into a non-consensual sex act and, after reading about consent, learned the true implications of his actions. Unfortunately, he went on to create a zine that is a digest of ideology found more thoroughly explored in zines like Learning Good Consent and Support rather than writing what he knows. My interest was most piqued by his perspective as a cisgendered man exploring the tricky landscape of consensual sex, such as the processing of the abovementioned story, or his deflated feelings towards pornography. I would like to see Brown adding his own voice into the discourse of radical consent instead of mimicking zines that already exist.

It is useful to have a heterosexual male narrative within the sphere of positive, responsible sexuality and refreshing, if not sobering, for a man to admit that he has committed an act of non-consensual sex. Stories like these are needed to aid in the awareness of consent, and Brown does a much better job than one of the only attempts I’ve read of a man taking accountability for his actions: zinester Rick Mackin’s column in Razorcake Magazine and subsequent zine that was far from the self-effacing, courteous, and sincere zine that Brown’s is.

Brown’s path to writing this zine is admirable and humble, and it is this path that I find to have the most potential for change and transformation within conversations about men’s role in consent and sexual assault. By taking the zines that inspired him and building from that, I believe Brown has a powerful jumping-off point for the hard and honest truths that will surface as consent and sexual assault continues to be discussed.

Written by: Krista Ciminera, February 25th 2010

Lumo: One Young Woman's Struggle to Heal in a Nation Beset By War

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:14:00 +0000

Directed by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, Nelson Walker III

Goma Film Project

Lumo is a documentary, named after its central character, of an African woman healing from a rape endured by military men that left her with a medical condition called fistula, a tear in the wall between the vagina and bladder caused by violent rape. It left her incontinent and uncertain of her chances to birth children. Like so many women who bear the heaviest and agonizing brutality in war-torn countries, rape is the most barbaric and common war crime committed against African women. While others think of terror in the form of bombs, missiles, and heavy artillery, Lumo recognizes rape as the most treacherous act of war, which claims the lives of so many women and leaves them in unspeakable suffering.

The film follows Lumo as she travels from her village, where she has been rejected by her fiancé, neglected by her family, and ostracized by her community, to Goma, a region in the Democratic Republic of Congo where she will receive treatment from HEAL Africa, an internationally sponsored hospital that provides services for rape survivors. Lumo will stay at the hospital for an unknown period of time until she physically and psychologically recovers from her trauma.

Although the tempo is slow, the documentary absorbs every painful detail of Lumo’s healing process. As if reflecting the pace of healing itself, the arduous and tedious speed of the film unnerves the viewer as the agony of the fistula is unmasked. Leaking urine, one of the symptoms of the fistula, cast Lumo and these other survivors into a world where they are further violated and isolated because of their condition. The cinematography is gripping. The facial portraits of the women are burned into the viewer's memory.

Lumo also moves between disparity and the power of faith. It largely focuses on Christianity as a source of strength and hangs the hope of medical miracles on Jesus and images of God as the savior. The survivors are repeatedly told to pray for their healing and ask God for complete recovery.

Central to Lumo’s message is the unflinching commentary on the lives of the women who will return to their homes after months, or sometimes years, of treatment. They will return to the world of rejection and rebel-occupied villages where they will live in danger of being raped again.

The film interacts with other components of gender domination and oppression–state violence and government officials who use victim-blaming language–to expose all facets of the cycle which perpetuate the cycle of violence against and degradation of women. In every society, in every part of the world, sexual violence is a crime against humanity. It will transform its face based on language, environment, and culture, but Lumo points out that violence against women remains the greatest commonality among all social sins, and no nation has taken steps toward absolution.

After witnessing the journey of one woman, viewers will be compelled to search for Lumo in their own community, city, town, or village. Lumo can and is everywhere. She is anywhere and everywhere violence against women persists.

Written by: Lisa Factora-Borchers, July 28th 2009

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:39:00 +0000

By Siddharth Kara

Columbia University Press

Besides weapons and drugs, sex trafficking is the most profitable type of illegal trafficking in the world. In Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, Siddharth Kara takes the reader on a disturbing global tour of Coalition Against Trafficking in Womensex slavery, traveling to India, Italy, Thailand, and several other countries.

An overarching theme that Kara mentions repeatedly is the deep-rooted cultural misogyny in so many of the countries he visited. Although poverty, war and social turmoil create a fertile ground for sex trafficking, the author identifies cultural attitudes toward women as the primary reason that sex trafficking occurs. In his words: “Millions of women lived in a world that overwhelmingly disdained them."

One of the most interesting aspects of Sex Trafficking is the circumstances that led the author to write it. He first became interested in trafficking as a college student, when he spent the summer of 1994 in a Bosnian refugee camp in Slovenia and learned about the trafficking of Bosnian Muslim women. Although he has been interested in sex slavery for many years, he is not an academic, nor does he advocate for anti-trafficking work professionally. Kara is a businessman, and funded his trafficking research trips around the world using personal savings. During his research trips, Kara conducted hundreds of interviews with slaves. In order to find sex for sale, he usually talked to cab drivers, posing as an interested client. In most countries, finding cheap sex was easy, and Kara usually found conditions indicative of sex slavery where he found cheap sex. The book's revelation that legalized prostitution often acts as a cover for sex slavery was very disturbing, especially in the chapter about slavery in Amsterdam.

In one of the most devastating passages of the book, Kara locates sex slavery at a “massage parlor” in Los Angeles. The young woman he meets was trafficked from Thailand with promises of a job as a waitress. Once in the U.S., she was told that she owed $20,000 to the “massage parlor” owner she was sold to, which she would earn by having sex with several men a day. At first she refused, but was beaten and raped into submission. Most of the money she makes goes to the owner, except for a small portion that is sent to her parents. Kara offers to help the woman by calling the police, but she refuses his help because she is afraid the trafficker will hurt her parents in Thailand. The author talks about the anguish he felt about whether or not to contact the police. He ended up not doing so, but still isn’t sure if this was the right choice.

The reader might wonder if the author handles these situations in the most appropriate manner, or whether his presence makes matters worse. Although I am sure that Kara had the best intentions, I have to wonder about the ethical limits of this type of research. At times he puts himself, and possibly the women he interacts with, in dangerous situations. He is essentially powerless to help the women that he comes into contact with, other than giving them educational pamphlets or phone numbers for shelters.

Kara describes the way that the industry operates, explaining that money is the prime motivator for sex trafficking, which is dominated more and more by organized crime rings and networks of corrupt public officials who can be bought off. Using economic theory, he argues that the best way to shut down the industry is to make sex trafficking less profitable.

Sex Trafficking paints a very bleak picture of the status of women globally, particularly for women from poor countries. Urgent action is required to end sex slavery, and my hope is that people who read this book will be moved to action.

Written by: Liz Simmons, April 21st 2009

She Said, She Said (3/18/2009)

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:07:00 +0000

WorkShop Theater

New York, New York

As a Wellesley alum, I am probably the perfect person to review Kathryn Chetkovich’s She Said, She Said, an intimate portrait of a group of friends who met at a women’s college and are now, years later, forced to contend with many of the sociopolitical issues they faced in the seventies. The triad of feminists, now in varying degrees, is shaken to the core when one of their own, Jamie (Shelley McPherson) reveals that her recent ex-husband Ross (Mark Hofmaier) has raped her. The result is an intense eighty minutes of constantly shifting perceptions and sympathies, with an undercurrent of questions concerning how feminism has changed and what it means today.

Most of these questions revolve around Jamie’s friend Claire (Julianne Carpenter) and the impact the rape has (or doesn’t have) on her relationship with her husband-to-be, Ross’ brother Dan (Tom Berdik). For a play that focuses on such a private, sensitive issue and the subtle ripple effect it has on this network of people, the WorkShop’s black box theater is an appropriately intimate space. Director Peter Sylvester optimizes the relatively small stage by dividing it into smaller spaces for the different scene locations. In a play that runs at almost an hour and a half without intermission, there is not only a space constraint, but also a time constraint, especially considering all the time these characters have known each other. To fully convey this history, Sylvester uses projections of old college photos between scenes.

The scenes that feature Chetkovich’s more everyday, free-flowing conversation play very well, but unfortunately some of the more high-stakes dramatic moments fall flat. As a result, many of the big reveals don’t have as much impact as they could. Still, there are certainly highlights among the performances, like Hofmaier’s Ross, who manages to be quite likeable even though he’s initially set up as the piece’s villain. Ashley Anderson is also wonderful as CoCo, the group’s twenty-something friend who waits tables at the bar they frequent. What could have easily been a one-note, one-dimensional caricature is made very real and sympathetic thanks to Anderson’s intricacy and conviction.

Certainly the biggest draw in this production is Chetkovich’s script, which raises important, timely feminist issues in a refreshing way. The friction between the now almost middle-aged college alums and the young CoCo acts as the perfect embodiment of the generational gap amongst today’s feminists. The group’s shock and concern over CoCo’s sexual liberalism forces us to ask ourselves what it means to be a free woman and how we are expected to live that ideal. More specifically, there is the inner conflict of the women’s college alum readapting to the real world and integrating her feminist views into a traditionally patriarchal institution such as marriage.

In the end, however, She Said, She Said is not so preachy. As the play progresses, Chetkovich makes it more about her characters and their particular issues, unraveling their relationships with an elegant subtlety. Just like us, they are all more complex than they seem, and their problems go far beyond the gender issue.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, March 24th 2009

Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape

admin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:29:00 +0000

Edited by Jaclyn Friedman, Jessica Valenti

Seal Press

The Apostate: My initial reaction when I heard about the Yes Means Yes! anthology was mixed. It seemed that the problem of rape was being used for a catchy slogan's sake (the catchy slogan being a play on the anti-rape "no means no" rule), and not because it made any real sense. I wasn't sure where you could go with that—connecting sexuality with rape culture in a way that was meaningful for actual cultural change and impact on women's lives.

Professor What If: The introduction notes that the book intends to offer “a frank and in-depth conversation about forward-thinking ways to battle-rape culture,” and the book truly does contain many frank, in-depth conversations that formulate ways to rethink not only preventing rape, but also re-shaping the way we approach sex and sexuality. While the reasons behind the book are laudable, I find the claim that valuing female sexual pleasure will stop rape the book puts forward a bit too simplistic. Although the book nods to the complex socio-cultural factors that perpetuate rape culture, it stops short of really grappling with how rape is a by-product of our patriarchal, militarized, commodified world. I do think this is a very important book that makes crucial contributions to re-thinking sexuality, but it is only part of a much needed conversation we need to have—both in books and in blogs—about eradicating rape culture.

The Apostate: I think rape culture should have been expounded upon more. I don't think people understand the difference between rape and rape culture, and that wasn't really addressed, which gave rise to some of the confusion around why anyone thought Yes Means Yes! would stop rape—the writers didn't think it would! They just want to dismantle rape culture, which is a bigger and more amorphous thing than the specific crime of rape, even if rape takes place within the context of rape culture.

Professor What If: I was impressed with the broad coverage of the book and the diversity of voices. I especially appreciated those pieces that emphasized anti-rape activism must include teaching men not to rape and helping men to recognize rape. Jill Filipovic’s piece, for example, was very effective in examining the social-cultural contexts of rape culture and the need to include men in anti-rape activism and education. I also liked the inclusion of queer, male, fat, sex work, and BDSM perspectives.

The Apostate: My favorite essay was Thomas MacAuley Millar’s. It really dismantled the perceptions of sex as something that is done to you, as a woman, rather than something you (enthusiastically) participate in. That is not a concept enough people understand; and although I get it, I have never seen it articulated so well as Millar did. His essay was beautifully written, cogent, with a great metaphor about sex as music. The commodity model of sex is one of the biggest hurdles women face, if they act like they are free to pursue their pleasure. People don't think their pleasure is really part of the picture at all, since women are the object, not the subject. And another thing: I had never realized how "no means no" continues to frame the sex as between a predator and prey, as Julia Serano defined the terms.

Professor What If: Many of the authors argued against the 'power over' dynamic that shapes our thinking about sexuality by emphasizing mutual consent, doing away with the competition model of sex, ensuring certain partners (namely women) are not objectified/dehumanized, etc. I think this re-thinking of the power dynamics in relation to sex/sexuality are crucial. However, they must also be addressed in relation to those politics of domination that shape our society—patriarchy, capitalism, sexism, racism. Also, I wonder about the subtitle “visions of female sexual power.” Do we really want to rethink sexuality in terms of power? Doesn’t this go against the mutual consent/pleasure model the book upholds?

The Apostate: The emphasis on sexual assault—and personal stories of pain and damage around that—got overwhelming in the second half of the book. The joy of enthusiastically consenting sex got lost in there. I think that focusing on how rape and sexual assault affect women's lives is very important, especially as so much of this reality is not captured in statistics or on the news, but perhaps sex as pain should not have predominated quite as much.

Professor What If: I think an analysis of rape in same-sex or non-heterosexual relationships is missing. In keeping with this notion, the book frames women as rape victims, not covering boys and men as also victims/survivors of rape. For example, as rape within systems like the Catholic Church and public schools is prevalent, this seems a key omission. How could the rape culture condoned by religious establishments or the military be addressed via the “yes means yes” paradigm? In ways, the book leaves out the institutionalized aspect of rape and focuses on “individual rape scripts.” In so doing, it doesn’t fully examine those social structures and institutions that shape sexuality and perpetuate rape culture—the family, the church, the law, the military, etc.

The Apostate: The overall feel I got from the book was very "alternative." It was very citified, and very margins-of-society, written by people we don't hear from on a daily basis in mainstream coverage. Those voices are all the more crucial for being so marginalized, and also because it is on the margins of society that the worst abuses happen. That said, I think it lacked a certain degree of balance. I did think it covered a wide range of issues and perspectives—except for married, heterosexual, middle class sexuality and the sexuality of older people. The only reason I would have liked to see that balance is to "normalize" these issues for the mainstream; so much of this sort of thing is hidden, under wraps, and allowing only the margins to speak out about it gives the deceptive impression that the problem of rape culture is not the problem of all women—which it most certainly is.

Professor What If: I love blogs and blogging, but books are not blogs. Rather than trying to make the two mediums the same, I think we should value each medium (print v. online) in its own right. I found the “hyper-link” structure did not translate well into print format. Further, in keeping with the “blog format” of the book, many of the pieces were written in the less formal, talky style of blogs. Javacia Harris, for example, writes “Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not anti-sexy—I’ve been to my fair share of striptease aerobics classes.” This style seems too light for the aims outlined in the introduction and this style allows comments like these to be tossed out with no analysis of the wider cultural contexts that defines normative notions of “sexy” and results in the very existence of striptease aerobics classes in the first place.

Too often the attitude that framed the arguments in the book is that any choice is ok as long as you know why you’re making it. This “sexual empowering choices model” is too simplistic. This is partly due to choosing a “blog style” for the book—a style that makes the book seem a bit too light given the subject matter at hand. While blogs work in a conversational, of-the-minute style, books allow for more thoughtful, hard-hitting, heavily researched writing. Both have their merits, but trying to write a book that functions like a blog makes me wonder about the purpose of going the print publication route; if one is not going to take advantage of a book format (and go into deeper analysis/research), stick to a blog (and indeed, the editors have a blog of the same name now up and running.

The Apostate: I also thought the hyperlink theme was a little redundant. I liked the idea to begin with, but I ended up skipping the lists at the end of each essay and just read linearly. I did glance at a few and thought they didn't always make sense; they tended to include a quarter of the book each time, after every essay. A thematic unity among pieces kind of fell into one's head automatically, so I didn't see the necessity of that. As for the authors being mostly bloggers and part of the blogging community, I do think that it was perhaps a little insular and self-referential. For someone outside that community of bloggers, perhaps a lot of this stuff would be very new—some context is missing and some pieces are more bewildering than others. But overall, the hyperlinking style is easily ignored and doesn't detract, even if it doesn't add.

Professor What If: Examining the many factors that contribute to rape culture is helpful in addressing the pervasiveness of sexual violence. However, I still found there was a bit too much emphasis on what females do/do not do. The introduction notes that often what is missing in analyses of rape is the rapist. This book, with its focus on "yes” and on female’s “owning” their sexuality also under-analyzes rapists, instead focusing on women’s need to familiarize themselves with “enthusiastic consent.” In a strange way, the book thus keeps the onus of changing rape culture squarely on women’s shoulders. Many of the solutions seem a bit too individualized—as if becoming sexually empowered and educated will be enough to stop rape (or at least stop it from happening to oneself). While many of the texts offer useful, concrete suggestions to move towards a world without rape, I think more analysis of how the politics of domination upheld within patriarchy, capitalism, and militarism (all which profoundly shape our world) was needed. Also, we need to examine how intertwined violence and sexuality are in contemporary society—violence is so pervasive that it cannot be extracted from sex/sexuality. All of the enthusiastic “yes’s” in the world won’t change this.

The Apostate: A lot of issues being talked about are really not discussed in our society and they need to be. And I was totally won over by the thesis of the book—that a woman's right and enthusiastic consent to sex were central to how sex and sexual violence are perceived. I’m really glad to see a somewhat mainstream book about women's experiences and hopes for a positive, enthusiastic, feminist ideal that also includes women as sexual creatures: horny, lusty, and slutty. Jaclyn Friedman's essay about overt sexuality really spoke to me on that front.

Professor What If: The book is a really good first step towards re-thinking rape culture. Like Valenti’s other books, it will speak to many young feminists. However, being the theory-loving academic that I am, I found myself writing in the margins comments such as, “But where is the theory?” For that reason, I really liked Lee Jacobs Riggs account of our “sex negative” culture and the ways she also addressed the prisons/the criminal legal system and other oppressive systems. I would have liked more hard-hitting pieces like the ones by Coco Fusco and Miriam Zoila Perez (which were my favorites). Too often elsewhere, I came across the word “probably” being used to assess information. In the end, I also found the attack on second-wavers off-putting. Why does this have to be one of the defining characteristics of third wave texts? We need to get over the feminist blame game. No one “wave” has all the answers, and I think sometimes third wave feminism fails to address it’s own shortcomings.

Written by: The Apostate, Professor What If, February 16th 2009

Live Through This

admin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

Interview with Sabrina Chapadjiev

In the late nineties, playwright, singer-songwriter, and spoken word artist Sabrina Chapadjiev was an impassioned student playwright in college when she experienced an intensely creative period that put her on the brink of self-destruction. She had recently learned that a young, fierce playwright she had long admired, Sarah Kane, had committed suicide, and she was worried. Chapadjiev wondered: “Would the same pull that led me towards Sarah Kane lead me down a similar path?”

It ultimately did not – but it did lead her to investigate women artists’ relationship to self-destruction. The result is Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, a standout collection edited by Chapadjiev that features the work of such writers and artists as Nan Goldin, Patricia Smith, bell hooks, Eileen Myles, Diane Dimassa, and Cristy C. Road.

Elevate Difference recently interviewed Chapadjiev about what surprised her most about compiling this anthology, what happens at her current “Rage to Page” workshops, and how editing work on the most dire periods in these artists’ lives led her to see what is most redemptive about self-destruction.

**In the introduction to Live Through This, you write about your earliest understanding of brilliant and self-destructive women artists. At what point did you decide to explore women artists’ relationship to self-destruction in a full-fledged collection? **

I started exploring my own relationship to self-destruction during my sophomore year in college while writing a play entitled Whatever Happened to Savannah? It was a pretty out-there play, with dueling pianos and dance pieces standing in for actual characters. I had each of these crazy little scenes linked by a psychiatrist, who explained how these scenes formed the mental landscape of a patient named Savannah. I was asked to put it on again when I returned my senior year (I didn’t stay in college for my junior year), but wanted to flesh out the piece into a more accessible play, with a severe plotline and characters. I realized I could write Savannah’s part easily, but I couldn’t get a handle on writing from the psychiatrist’s perspective. So, I started researching by going to the bookstore and reading all these psychiatry books.

Since I came from a world that intuitively understood self-destruction so well, reading about the analytical experience of it floored me. There was a total disconnect; their description of self-destruction didn’t match mine at all, but I could see how, in their diagnosis, it was right. So, you have these doctors diagnosing self-destructive experiences as bad, but then I had my own personal experience, in which [these experiences] honestly felt like the first time I had been in control of my life ever. Since then, I’ve been interested in bridging that gap.

Who is your intended audience for the book?

There are two answers to that: one public and one personal. The public answer is that I wanted this book to reach out to anyone currently struggling with these issues who feels that they don’t have any control or perspective on why this is happening. There are so many books out there that talk about cutting, depression, suicide, and such, but most of them are either damning the tendencies without seeing the power inherent in them, or they make it seem like being a cutter will become your entire identity. None of them talk about the fact that these self-destructive acts are being performed by powerful hands that, if [they] held a different tool, could perhaps shape a different identity.

The personal answer is that I put this book out for myself when I was in college ten years ago.

Many of the contributors have a radical feminist sensibility. How did you seek out and select the writers and artists for Live Through This?

I went to my personal superheroes – the artists and thinkers that I think are the most cutting-edge, brilliant women working today – and asked them if they had a story. It’s definitely a hard question to ask: “Hey, I really admire you. You wouldn’t happen to be self-destructive and want to write about it, would you?” I approached possibly sixty women that I admire and then sent calls out through avenues that I wasn’t getting responses from. Three of the essays came from those calls for submissions, which I sent out to playwright forums, dance forums, and just generally spread around any way I could. However, a majority of the women are ones that I simply asked to be in the book. Of course, some of them said “no” many times. In fact, half of the artists in the book originally said “no” to me, but I was beyond persistent, and they finally came around.

When you compiled the collection, did you receive any contributions from women whose work you’ve long known that completely surprised you?

Yes. The one that I was most surprised about was the submission by Patricia Smith (“A Little Hell Breaks Loose”). I am a huge Patricia Smith fan and only knew her from the spoken word scene. She is undoubtedly the best spoken word poet I’ve ever seen. She’s like a bomb that knows how to explode, word by word.

I had no idea if she had a story that she would want to share for the book. I wrote and asked her, and her response was, “I don’t know if I want to go down that road again,” making it seem like she’d already written about it. I didn’t know what she was talking about, though. I had to ask her about three or four times to write, and each time she was a bit hesitant about writing her piece, but I still had no idea what she was going to write on.

When I received her submission, I was floored. I had no idea that she had been a journalist at one time, and had no idea she had survived a very public controversy. I also could never imagine that someone as strong and brilliant as Patricia Smith would ever think of killing herself. Same for bell hooks. I am honored that these women are giving enough of their personal trials that we can learn from them, especially since they themselves seem so absolutely solid and effortlessly revolutionary now.

How has publishing this collection changed your own understanding of self-destruction?

It’s funny, when I was trying to get submissions, I wasn’t sure if I would get any. I knew what I wanted. I wanted women I thought were so strong to tell me of a time when they weren’t, so that there’d be hope for people currently dealing with these issues. I wanted to hear stories of triumph, survival, and personal enlightenment. But as I worked with the authors, I was very careful to not have the exact same story every time. I made sure that they spoke of their journeys, but also tried to focus it, so that they would speak on different themes: isolation, medication, desire, and creation. In fact, every piece has a different undertone, which started to get me thinking of the different elements that encourage both self-destructive and creative habits.

For me, though, the most incredible revelation was understanding that the difficult periods these women went through often formed the base root of their strengths today. Seeing how these periods, or these continuing trials, have shaped them in a positive way made me understand how important it is for a woman to survive her own struggle – not only for herself, personally, but because, ultimately, her struggle is tied in with an element of society that has put her there.

Certain critiques of the collection center on its exclusion of male voices, with one reviewer saying that the book perpetuates the idea that “all women’s art is therapy.” How do you respond to this type of critique, and did you ever consider including male voices?

I did consider including male voices for, like, a second. Then I was like, “That would be a completely different book!” Although men certainly have their own ways of self-destructing, women most often internalize their feelings and take it out on their bodies – instead of taking it out on the world. I felt like I wasn’t equipped to handle editing a book about men’s relationships to self-destruction, though I think that’d make a terrific book and that someone should take that concept and run to a publisher with it.

As for the reviewer saying that the book perpetuates the idea that “all women’s art is therapy,” well that reviewer did something that is common with people who review this book: instead of actually writing a book review, she used it as a stepping stone to further her own ideas about women, art, and genius. This has happened a few times with reviewers, mostly because the people interested in reviewing Live Through This often have some personal vested interest in it. Sometimes they forget to review the book at all, and simply use it as a platform to express their own frustrations and theories on this subject. Keeping that in mind, I can’t respond to her comment, as I don’t feel she was actually responding to the book at all, or what I was trying to do with it.

All I can say is that I’m glad that Live Through This may be used in the discussion on women and self-destruction, but I don’t see the book as the tome on “Women’s Mental Health” or even, as this reviewer wanted it to be, a “Theoretical Manifesto on Women’s Artistic Genius.” It is simply a collection of personal stories of triumph and pain, collected in hopes that anyone dealing with self-destruction feels less alone and is able to see the value in their own story. If mental health and art theorists want to use it as a stepping stone for furthering their own personal opinions – fine – as long as it encourages a dialogue and not a diatribe.

You’ve been running “Rage to Page” workshops, where participants explore “themes that surround female self-destruction: shame, power, and control, as well as ways to channel self-destructive behaviors into creative ones.” What’s been most striking to you about connecting with people through these workshops?

I have run these workshops as well as lectured to people of all ages, and I think the most amazing thing I have realized is how the concepts touch people of all ages differently. When doing workshops at a college, where the participants are sometimes seventeen years old, the sense of shame is ridiculous. It’s also strange, because the vehement pride about their self-destructive acts is obvious.

Conversely, one time, a group of four sixty-plus women attended a lecture of mine, and the quiet sweetness they displayed to one another astounded me. There were tears in some of their eyes, with their partners reassuring them, and I realized how they had struggled in absolute silence with this for years when they had only been shamed. They were also able to relate the differences in the mental health community, and how it has changed radically over the years. So, yes, the most striking fact about doing these workshops and lectures is noticing how people of different ages relate to it.

Have you heard from many readers, and are there any reader responses to the collection that have struck you quite deeply?

I have had people write me to say that just the concept of this book has saved their lives. That’s amazing. There have actually been several lovely messages like that, where women write to thank me or to simply say that the book made them feel less alone. One reader took a picture of herself hugging the book and posted it on Flickr. But I will also say that the negative response has been equally amazing, because it has absolutely begun a dialogue about how self-destruction, women, and creation are seen. One reviewer said that “shit happens,” and she didn’t want to hear about these women surviving – that they should get over it. A radio host became very offensive with me when I wouldn’t detail precisely my own experience. She wanted me to show her my deepest scars to compare them with her own. It was strange.

People who want to read this book don’t look at it casually; they look at it guardedly, with their own personal experiences triggered under their sleeves. It often elicits an either love/hate response. And I am totally psyched about that, because, either way, it has begun a dialogue.

What do you want a reader to ultimately take away from Live Through This?

That our “weaknesses” are only signals of the potential of our strength.

Photo Credit: Dave Sanders

Written by: Ellen Papazian, August 21st 2008

Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:14:00 +0000

Edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev

Seven Stories Press

Live Through This is truly a feminist work. It takes the expressed experiences from individuals coming from a wide array of backgrounds, who candidly and publicly share their experiences with issues labelled taboo and private, offering strength and conscience to readers everywhere.

The format of this work is an anthology of pieces from some of the most groundbreaking American cultural producers. The magnificent list of contributors includes photographer Nan Goldin, academic and feminist bell hooks, trans activist and writer Kate Bornstein, porn star and perfomance artist Annie Sprinkle, and DIY artist Cristy C. Road. Live Through This is a collection of expressions and artworks from powerful women and transgender activists expressing their survival from a multitude of issues ranging from depression, sexualized violence, abuse, and self-destruction. It is successful at invoking both outrage and sympathies, leaving one galvanized. Each selection is unique and powerful in its own way, and takes a wide form of presentations. There are essays, photographs, poems, comics, and more - truly something for everyone - and I found myself digesting each work separately from the other. It's that good: all of the short selections stand out with their own message.

Perhaps what I got most out of Live Through This was a curiosity about the presentation that some of the strongest, most beautiful, and talented individuals suffer through unthinkably trying tribulations, that what doesn't kill us certainly makes us stronger and experiencing some of life's most unwanted traumas is by no means correlated with failure. Easier said than done, but the public vocalizing of pain and suffering from these amazing figureheads offer hope and validation for a diversity of individuals everywhere.

In a society inundated with oppressions stemming from difference (in gender, race, sexuality, class, ability, etc.), it is a remarkable thing to have survived the unliveable, as these contributors so bravely put forth. Captivating, concise, and humbling, Live Through This is easy to put down between pieces and become just as immersed upon picking it up again.

Written by: Yujean Park, August 20th 2008

Lust, Caution

admin — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:16:00 +0000

Directed by Ang Lee

Focus Features

Ang Lee seems to have a thing for short story adaptations and violent sexual encounters. While I respect much of Lee’s previous work and believe he often possesses masterful vision, Lust, Caution is a sadistic, repulsive disaster.

Lee takes great liberties with this pseudo-drama portraying an amateur conspiracy against a prominent Japanese collaborator in 1940s occupied China. Stylistically mirroring acclaimed director Wong Kar-Wai (and featuring one of Kar-Wai’s notorious leads, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), Lee sets his so-called period piece in a generic bustling, dirty city that has no more resemblance to Shanghai than Paris. Tang Wei plays Tang Chia Chi, also known as Mrs. Mak, the lure for Chiu-Wai’s Mr. Yee. At first, her role is simply to act as a distraction while her deeply nationalistic fellow acting students find a way to assassinate this top-ranking Japanese official. But quickly, the twisted affair becomes serious, leading Chia Chi into dangerous territory. Unlike the female spies before her, her ruse goes undetected by her lover, and against all reason and rational emotion, Chia Chi finds herself falling for her brooding, dictator-like companion.

In addition to disturbingly graphic sexual escapades, the relationship is grounded in Yee’s abusive violence against Chia Chi. After being brutally raped during their first secret liaison, Chia Chi must fulfill her duty as a spy and go back for more. A range of interpretations might explain Yee’s behavior (testing the liability of potential mates in an unstable wartime environment, a hardcore S&M fetish), but I find no excuse for it all the same. While acknowledging a spectrum of eroticism and sexual desire, that we are to believe that any young woman would fall for this violently perverse man—let alone Chia Chi’s educated and otherwise fearless character—is insulting. While the lines between Chia Chi’s mission and personal feelings do blur, director Lee’s perpetuation of the rape culture myth that women will fall in love with their sexual assailants is revolting.

Maybe I should find it redeeming that Chia Chi’s armpits remain unshaven, much like my own. Perhaps I’m supposed to sympathize with high-ranking public figures who find it nearly impossible to retain love in the midst of being power-hungry sociopaths. Conceivably, I could be satisfied with the idea that love and sex are deeply complex. Yee is a distressingly sympathetic character at times, and that complexity is one of the movie’s few strengths. But I have no reassurance that this is a freak accident of a film, as Ang Lee is once again with the writing and production team that brought us Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon _and _Brokeback Mountain. This isn’t a random bad writer who roped a talented director into a project. This is a complete devastation of art and integrity.

This film should come with a trauma advisory in addition to its NC-17 rating. At a tedious two and a half hours, _Lust, Caution _ended my relationship with Ang Lee, whose previous work I found beautiful and reflective. But there is nothing appealing or even civil about violent rape, or the pretense that sexual violence is a prelude to love.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, October 28th 2007