Feminism and Occupy Portland

published at Occupy Patriarchy  Nov 6, 2011

I arrived at Jamison Park on a rainy Sunday afternoon with concern that interviewable women might be hiding from the weather in their tents, but there were some milling about.

The first woman I spoke with was part of a man and woman team organizing an open mic poetry session. She didn’t know much but expressed disappointment that it was mostly men doing the speaking while men and women were sharing duties on practical matters like food preparation and providing information.

As if to prove the point, then I came across the info desk being staffed by a woman and we talked. Her perspective is that the inter-gender problems she’s seen have involved people bringing their personal problems to camp. “What used to be kept behind walls comes through tents,” she told me before suggesting I inquire at the med tent.

To get to the med tent I had to cross the street, and on the corner waiting with me for the light to change were two policewomen. I asked if they knew anything about the known sexual assault or other gendered violence, and one of them rather unhelpfully told me to go to the city website for information about “assaults against women and MEN.” The other policewoman repeated the suggestion that I ask at the med tent and pointed it out to me, and just in case I missed it the first time around First Cop reminded me that I can get information there about “crimes against women and MEN.”

At the med tent a man with a long and bushy white beard told me the camp is much calmer now than three weeks ago. Portland’s mild weather and abundance of social services has garnered it a larger than average homeless population, and some of the more mentally ill and alcoholic homeless men were being disruptive. Local soup kitchen Sisters of the Road will not serve noticeably drunk patrons so they were going to Occupy Portland’s kitchen and causing a ruckus. He explained that there are still a fair number of homeless people at the camp but the scary, violent ones had since been ejected.

Someone had donated mace and loud horns that the medical tent handed out to women who said they felt unsafe.

Santa Cause also said there was an incident about a week ago with a pregnant homeless woman getting beaten up by the baby’s father. The abuser was seen kicking the woman in the stomach and her face was scratched up. She is still at the camp but he hasn’t been seen for a week, and word had gotten out that he was a known perpetrator and would be ejected if seen again.

There is a tent designated with a sign as the “Sexual Assault Response Team” but when I inquired about it he didn’t have much information.  All he knew was that the one woman whose effort it seemed to be was barely there. On a small dry erase board was the woman’s name and a request for sexual assault volunteers, but there has been no response to my email four days later. I get the sense that a few people are trying to form an organized response but they haven’t had much support.

Next I headed for the Food Not Bombs tent to drop off the sack of apples I’d brought and to speak with the two women running that show. The talkative one said she stumbled across a meeting of women some days ago and thought they might have been having regular meetings, but didn’t know more than that. By day’s end I couldn’t find any postings or announcements about such a group, and I really, really looked. She also expressed disappointment that while other radical media outlets in Portland had an Occupy presence, local women’s bookstore In Other Words was MIA along with the city’s Radical Women socialist group.

My final noteworthy interviews were with two young women hanging out behind the makeshift kitchen. One of them had been there that early day when the rape was reported, and her impression was that the community response was surprisingly quick. “Dealing with that was prioritized at a chaotic time when a lot of construction was going on,” was her take on it. She had just been in Oakland and said that both there and in Portland far more men are taking the public megaphone than women.

Our interview was interrupted by a young woman who had been cleaning the kitchen for the past ten minutes. She came over and calmly said with an air of exhaustion, “There’s a lot of vegetables over there that need to be turned into something.” The less talkative of the pair reacted with a completely unnecessary and haughty, “I don’t react well to being ordered. It’s oppressive, and personally I just don’t respond well to that. If you want to ask me to do something I’ll consider it, but don’t order me around.”

The weary worker asked in a conciliatory tone, “Did you feel that I was ordering you?”

“Yes I did.”

“Well I’m just saying there’s vegetables over there. I mean, I don’t care because I cleaned and now I’m done but anyway…”

Ah, the familiar smell of horizontal hostility. Awkwardness aside, to their credit the two of them de-comforted from their chairs and we said our goodbyes as they headed to the kitchen.

Samantha Berg is National Coordinator for the feminist organization Stop
Porn Culture and founder of http://www.Genderberg.com, an anti-prostitution
activist community since 2005. Her newest website is www.Johnstompers.com

Three days of radical feminist SCUM

published at SistersUnderground, Oct 25, 2011

“THRILL SEEKING FEMALES UNITE”

The SCUM conference announcement dared me.

Sold and sold! I was ready to go. Then I saw it.

“Perth, Western Australia”

Damn.

So I left a wistful comment wishing them the best of luck then prayed to gods I don’t believe in for the miracle it would take to get me there. The miracle turned out to be feminist sisterhood.

The organizers met my tossed off hope of attending with hundreds of dollars for airfare, a place to stay, and a spot discussing my radical activism. Once these two generous women gave form to my sojourn, women’s donations filled in the gaps and built a matriarchal microcosm of gift-giving economy.

SCUM came on the heels of Amazon Mancrusher  and Allecto’s success organizing a shadow conference to the tragic Feminist Futures conference (details here and worth reading if this is new news to you.)

That ad hoc radical feminist meeting exceeded expectations, and thus began a thirst to see just how far they could take the radfem resurgence they had stoked.

A core of thirty women spent three radfemtastic days in Perth, a city infamous for its relative isolation from civilization. About five of the women were under 35 and at least ten were over 60, making for quite a multi-generational meeting if you disregard that no teens attended. Younger women were prominently dressed in black and the elders were a living homage to varying shades of purple.

The community hall Allecto and Amazon Mancrusher (I could happily type that name a hundred times) selected was perfect beyond expectation. The pink adobe-like venue sat cheerfully among permaculture gardens and hosted environmentalist standards like a solar powered fountain and art made from recycled materials. Inside was a well supplied kitchen, a bathroom with a shower, and a meeting room for fifty people scented with what I’m almost sure was a jasmine tree near the front entrance.

For the three nights of conference I could choose to either sleep in a proper bed back at the house or at the hippie paradise of the Earthwise center with other overnighters, which wasn’t so much a choice as a gift from goddesses I don’t believe in. I would have slept on what turned out to be a very comfortable mat just for the jasmine, but the assembled women were as charming and hilarious a sleepover crew as ever did play Balderdash.

We began the first morning’s business by listening to Nyungah elder Doolan Leisha Eatts speak about Indigenous Australia’s infamous stolen children. Families ripped apart by racism isn’t a new story, but what shook me was how recent and raw the crimes felt when sharing the air with a woman telling breathless truths. Carbon footprint guilt aside, sacrifices were made to bring me to the other side of the planet and I had considered Skype as an alternative, but there really is something magical about women gathering in a space together.

Later, Iranian-born activist Noushin Aref-Adib gave a solemn lecture about women’s especial vulnerabilities in war and in refugee situations. Sadly, Ms. Aref-Adib was crunched for time and skipped out of work to barely attend her own session before bolting back to her responsibilities.

Lyn Ariel dipped into feminism’s plentiful herstory with a recap of the bumper stickers, buttons, and protest signs that consolidated the conscience of the women’s liberation movement. We talked about the original meanings of phrases like “the personal is political” and “sisterhood is powerful” while contemplating how interpretations have changed. Then Betty McLellan upped the ante a few notches by focusing on the biggest one word feminist motto of all, “revolution.” read more

On the Feminists-in-Underwear Walks

Revolution welcomes comments/responses to articles in our newspaper. The following was written by Samantha Berg in response to Sunsara Taylor’s article, “The Thing About Slutwalks…and a World Without Rape” posted at revcom.us Oct 9, 2011

I tried to avoid writing an essay on SlutWalks. I’ve left pieces around the never-ending party that is the internet, but I’d rather be stomping out johns than criticizing essentially well-intentioned women.

The initial trigger shot off when Sunsara Taylor wrote an essay for Revolution titled, “The Thing About Slutwalks… and a World Without Rape” and requested my opinion. My respect for her diligence has only grown since we got to know each other at the Stop Porn Culture event in July and she deserves a thorough response.

The anecdotes she offers of women gathering and speaking with each other are potent, and I believe when she says it was an overall inspiring occasion for the women involved. What I question is if that’s enough to mitigate all the other stuff. Anti-woman traditions are often ameliorated with “Well at least women are befriending each other.” For example, polyamorists focus on what good friends multiple wives become and women point out the friendships of the Sex & the City gals when confronted with the show’s misogyny. Personal connections are good, but are they good enough to exact necessary political change?

While I accept Sunsara’s recounting of how crucial camaraderie and baby step introductions to feminism are, I have to deny that SlutWalk represents a new surge of feminist energy. In 2004 I reported on the March For Women’s Lives for The Portland Alliance newspaper, and since then I’ve not just participated but planned other public actions. Thanks to Facebook, I know of half a dozen feminist protest marches this summer. A few, like Take Back the Night and Reclaim the Night, are annual events on some campuses around the world. Others dwelling in my Events folder are the Freedom Walk, Walk a Mile in Her Shoes (men walk in women’s shoes), and the Zero Tolerance for Domestic Violence Walk in honor of Maria Aguilar.

None of these, and more I’ll never hear about, will be covered by the mainstream media with a droplet of the fervor given to SlutWalks and we all know why.

Declarations of supposedly watershed moments in women’s liberation are frequent, and they usually revolve around women acting more publicly sexual. How many times have we been told that the public presence of libertines like Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch, Madonna, Lil Kim, Britney Spears, Jenna Jameson, “Samantha Jones” and the entirety of fuckme feminism’s twenty year rule would usher in less sexual oppression for women? The theory has not become reality because men have women where they want them and not Mae nor Marilyn nor Madonna have managed to change that despite delusions of pussy power grandeur.

I have seen the word ‘slut’ so many times in the past few months that despite my overt rejection it has seeped into my brain. When I think and write, the word interjects. I recognize the effect from researching pornography, though porn’s images intrude far more aggressively than news-safe pictures of SlutWalk.

One day the word jumped out of my head deployed as an ‘ironic’ adjective to achieve sarcasm, possibly the purest form of Freudian slip. A linguist, I know something of how language works, and I know people can’t look at a word without reading it and recalling its dense social content instantaneously. I can’t see ‘slut’ frequently put before me without unconsciously referring to everything I’ve learned about it, and neither can you.

When feminists hold signs declaring “sluts say yes” and “call me a slut too”, they are making a public statement for womankind. Unfortunately, men are not taking up the sign-holders’ offers with only the sign-holders. SlutWalkers tell men it’s okay to call me a slut and to call my sisters sluts from now until they bore of it, and men desensitize to desiring harsher words quickly. The explosion of porn-inspired words made to hurt women is a lesson in never underestimating men’s creativity when it comes to destruction, and women had better learn the lesson because Future Sam will not write about why I can’t support CumguzzlerWalks or CocksocketWalks.

In 2008 frat pledges at Yale held signs declaring “We Love Yale Sluts” in front of the campus Women’s Center and in 2010 another frat’s pledges chanted, “No means yes. Yes means anal!” Young pornfed men have been giving women proof long before Slutwalks that positively sexy feminist tactics aren’t working. “Yes Means Yes” is a useless strategy for stopping men who are turned on by the thought of violating a woman’s ‘no’. Such men view women enthusiastically wanting sex as a challenge to find something more degrading than they believe merely poking a woman vaginally already is (in this case anal sex is the next level) and will never be happy with hordes of lovely ladies begging for it. Like the global appeal of sex with virgins, the whole point is to break something irreplaceable.

The final incident spurring me to write was encountering a young survivor of prostitution who was not beaten into The Life by a pimp or forced by her impoverished family. The most common of reasons compelled her, the need for money, and she met a woman who told her about the big bucks to be made in pornstitution. She said she was a feminist.

I have heard this tale before, and if you speak with enough prostitution survivors you’ll hear it too. If you’re able to read about porn-caused trauma, I recommend radfem blogger Lost Clown’s testimony:

“Desperate for money (for food) and sold down the river by women I trusted. Now I’m not saying that I am a moron and do whatever someone tells me to do, what I am saying is that women who I respected, who were older then me, more experienced then me, and in every way I could see amazing feminists sold me on the idea that it was an ok thing to do for money.”

Being recruited—maliciously or not—by other women into professional sluthood is how most of the prostituted women I personally know were coaxed in the door.

Tied into SlutWalk is the confusion of sex-focused feminists telling men they can use women as prostitutes in an “I’m rubber and you’re glue” way that bounces off the not-for-saleable proclaimers and, once again, sticks to me and my sisters. They could be telling men about a revolution sweeping the world from Scandinavia since 1999, a woman-centered movement the mainstream media has actually given a huge amount of attention to under the generalized name of trafficking. However, the Nordic feminist revolution has been declared not just unsexy by these sexiest of feminists, but worthy of active resistance and called a menace to sexual freedom.

The organizer-acknowledged truth of SlutWalks is the same tragic “make feminism sexy” edict that has failed us since that ship set sail. I certainly don’t lay all the blame for labiaplasty, ass-to-mouth porn, and the growing use of the phrase “child sex worker” on misguided feminists, not in this male supremacist world. Right now I’m looking at the contemporary phenomena of Slutwalks and taking in the positives of women organizing under a ‘slut’ banner while keeping an eye on relevant negatives.

Feminists who pressure women into accepting themselves as sluts and prostitution as a beneficial form of work have the good intention to lessen the damages these nasty manifestations of sexism inflict. This particular road to Hell is not a paved path but the roof of a tall building with young, questioning girls ringing the edges and Full Frontal Feminists standing behind them. They look over the side scared and wondering if they should take the plunge when from behind a trusted voice chirps, “You can fly, sexy bitch!” So like Lost Clown they try, and they drop, but it’s too far down for the Rosie WeCanDoIts to hear the wet thuds on the street from the center of the roof.

The pornographic pushback of recent years is the expected response of misogynistic men to women hitting their stride. Less expected was liberal feminists accepting men’s abusive insults on faulty premises of reclamation. Radical feminists will continue to have our unsexy marches against sexual violence and they will continue to be mostly ignored. Young women on the edges will still be vulnerable, but if they scream “I’m a slut!” and jump off our roof, we have a rope of bedsheets tied together and a team of radfems ready to pull her up.

Samantha Berg is National Coordinator for the feminist organization Stop Porn Culture and founder of www.Genderberg.com, an anti-prostitution activist community and resource center since 2005.

Scotland: Don’t be like US

published at Scottish Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation, May 2010

The world is debating prostitution. In the past fifteen years, sex trafficking has emerged as a critical human rights issue as the problem has become a planet-wide catastrophe in that time. There’s no need to go into details here about how globalization, armed conflicts, sexism and racism teamed up to create the modern sex slave trade because I want to talk about solutions.

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New coalition challenges the status quo of “Pornland, OR”

published at The Portland Alliance, February 2010

I have been a feminist a long time. First just a feminist, then a liberal feminist, then a sex-positive feminist by my early 20s. To my life-changing joy, I discovered radical feminism and I’m still in that camp, but traipsing through my early 30s brought me to a new way of working for women’s rights. I am now a Soroptimist.

Since last week I have been asking people if they know who the Soroptimists are and what they do. Some folks had vague recollections of community do-gooders, but most externalized the dialogue that ran through my brain upon receiving word of the conference, “Sorop-wha?”

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