Out come the wolves.

A few days ago I was dutifully skimming through my Facebook feed when I came across what might be the most important thing I've ever seen on the site. It was a post from the much beloved Slingshot Dakota, which is easily one of my favorite bands of all time, and whose LP I listen to regularly.

Slingshot Dakota at a recent show. Sweet photo jacked from Lauren Matulis

Slingshot Dakota's music is beautifully written, and they and their work are, in my humble estimation, radically positive. That's probably why their post shocked and even momentarily confused me: it was about a guy who's been accused of attacking women at shows on multiple occasions.

Source

I couldn't believe what I was looking at when I first saw it. I had to read the post several times before it sank in -- that this guy has hurt people, that he might be a danger, and that this band is doing their part to warn people about him -- and even then, I didn't believe it. For a second, I wondered if it might be some sort of prank, but I'm pretty sure that the members of Slingshot Dakota wouldn't joke about something like this. They've talked about sexual assault and supporting survivors before; I've even written about it.

And yet, I still found myself kind of questioning the post, if not the band. I found myself having all sorts of messed up, Stockholm Syndrome, rape culture reactions. I thought how scary and dangerous it seems to call a guy out like that, especially in such a public forum. I thought how even if Slingshot Dakota meant well, maybe the original poster was misinformed, or lying, and that maybe I shouldn't judge this guy because I don't really know him myself, or anything like that. Unbelievably enough, I found myself worrying about his privacy.

Since I sort of started to go there myself, despite being a sex positive and radical postcolonial queer feminist, I'm sure that some people would see this as 'unfairly targeting' a guy. But if you think about it, you know what seems way more unfair? When rape survivors are called sluts, whores, liars and much worse after they come forward, and then have to put up with people questioning and judging their sexual histories, wardrobes, drinking habits, and other personal choices.

Because they were brave enough to make that post, Slingshot Dakota really got me thinking about assault, rape culture, and how it affects us all, and I feel like I owe them for it. It got me to thinking that I trust them, and that it's actually kind of really important to make sure you know something about a band's politics if you're going to support their work. I can say unequivocally that I trust them, and take their effort to warn their community about a potential danger seriously.

I've trusted them and taken them seriously since that first time I saw them, that first time that I heard drummer Tom Patterson speak at length about the impact that sexual assault has on both individuals and communities. I don't think I'll ever forget hearing him say, "…there are a lot of wolves in sheep's clothing" in our local scene, because when he said it I knew that he was right.

A video of the song SD usually introduces by talking about assault, from the very show where Tom used the expression "wolves in sheeps' clothing"!!! No introduction on this video, but I still can't believe I found this! Huzzah!

When he talked about how there are tons of punk guys parroting progressive beliefs and using them to find and close in on victims (I'm paraphrasing here), it validated a lot of unarticulated and sometimes subconscious fears and discomforts that I've felt at shows. Tom Patterson validated a lot of 'bad vibes' I've gotten from various guys over the years, and made me feel like maybe I wasn't just being a judgmental jerk. So I owe Tom for that too, then.

Slingshot Dakota's post reminded me that I was totally entitled to all those bad vibes I got, both the ones that I forced myself forget about, and also the ones that I've written about on this blog. We are all entitled, if not obligated, to recognize potential or actual wolves in sheep's clothing. We have the power to call them out -- and to protect each other and demand accountability, safety, and better treatment for everyone in our scenes.

Hump Day Treat, Yesterday's Theme This Evening Edition

Thinking and writing about the importance of communication has made me really think about how difficult communication, of any nature, can be. Saying how you feel in a public, hostile space like a show can be scary. But sometimes trying to have a meaningful dialogue with a person you know is even scarier and more difficult than talking to a stranger who's twice your size and drunk.

Sometimes the words 'dialogue' and 'communication' are used interchangeably, but they aren't the same. Dialogue is a type of communication, but communication isn't necessarily dialogue, because dialogue implies a certain reciprocal respect, a certain bilateralism.

To put it another way: a screaming fight with someone isn't dialogue, though it might enable both participants to communicate how they feel. Dialogue, or at least amongst the womens' studies set, is about talking with someone and having both speakers get something out of it. It's supposed to be productive.

Today's video of part of a recent live set by Trophy wife opens with a song about this very topic. Enjoy, and maybe reflect on your communication skills, on this hump...night. I know that's what I'll be doing.

You wanna take it, but you can't have it, revisited: DIY Shows and Safety

I spent this entire weekend thinking about the question I posed to you all last Friday. That is, how do we make ourselves feel safe enough within our communities to speak honestly about show violence? So I tried to figure out what makes me feel safe at a show. I've already written here about the first time I really felt okay at a local show; it's something I'll never forget, and so I went back to that memory.

I felt safe there because there were girls on stage, playing hard, fast, loud hardcore punk songs about being tired of feeling powerless and oppressed as women. I felt safe because I knew one of the vocalists from rock camp, and I knew that she was a cool kid and a dedicated feminist activist. I felt safe because there were lots of other volunteers in the other bands that played that night, and in the audience as well.

I didn't really think that anything dramatic would happen to me at the show, but I did feel like even if something unfortunate did happen, it would not go unnoticed. I trusted that those girls I'd volunteered with were not the types who would look the other way while anyone was getting hurt.

Those girls. Those girls who were already speaking up and demanding to be heard. Who were getting up on stage or dancing and pogoing in the crowd no matter how vulnerable it made them. Who were volunteering at rock camp and other places and encouraging other girls to do the same.

Those girls, and their bravery -- their willingness to speak up, to support those bands, hell, to just be feminist punks in a world that hates both -- was what made me feel safe. It was their willingness to act, to resist, to exist, and to do so vocally.

To say, "How we can make spaces feel safe enough so we can say when we don't feel safe?" doesn't make any sense, I get that now, after intense consideration of the issue. I get that it doesn't work that way. I get that you can't sit around waiting to feel safe, because that will never happen, or sit around trying to come up with what will make you feel that way, being silent until you figure it out. Because your silence won't protect you.

"Your silence will not protect you" is one of my favorite quotes from feminist literature of all time, and one that I say to myself frequently. I've been thinking about it a lot lately because Trophy wife sings those very words in their song "Sister Outsider", which I've been listening to on repeat for the past few weeks. Over the weekend, I managed to find the source of that quote, Audre Lorde's "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action", which is from her collection of essays called Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. I read it, and I found an even better, though less pithy quote:

"We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us."

If we want to feel safer, and if we want our friends, male and female, to feel safer at shows, and within the community at large, this is the work that we need to do. We need to learn to speak not when we are unafraid, but when we are afraid. We need to learn to speak in spite of fear, instead of waiting until whatever threat we perceive has passed.

And to whom should we speak, in spite of this fear? Most of the time, this blog is about asking questions that don't have any clear answers. But I try to provide solutions when I can, so here are some suggestions:

1. Tell all your friends. Talk to the people who care about you if you don't feel good at a show, or after a show, or about shows in general. If you have friends you hang out with at shows, tell them how you feel, and ask them if they ever feel that way. It might make you less alone, and you might come up with some strategies for dealing with show violence.

2. Get confrontational. If you're at a show and someone is doing something that bothers or scares you, just say so. If someone is blocking your view, bumping into you, or doing something else that gets in your personal space, say "Excuse me". If they start doing something that puts you and the other people in the crowd at risk -- moshing violently, crowd surfing, etc -- try to tell that person that's just not cool or right to risk injuring other people. This can be really scary, trust me, I know it is. But it's necessary.

Now when THAT fails: take some suggestions inspired by the Beastie Boys (the good stuff is at 1:20) :


via

3. Figure out who's running the show, literally... and talk to them about it. DIY spaces might be DIY, but they're still set up and run by someone, and that someone should be concerned with safety (if for no other reason than their own personal liability). If you don't feel safe at a show, ask the people who run the space to do something about it. If those people seem unmoved or unconcerned, don't go back to that space, and tell the people you know to avoid going to or booking shows in those spaces.

4. Reach out to the bands. I will admit that I regret not confronting the band that was onstage when my arm got bashed into last Thursday night. I saw them, talking and laughing it up together after their set, while those two redheaded girls who also got hurt sat outside, both shaking slightly. I wish I'd said, "Hey dudes, thanks for saying something when those kids started to get violent. Oh wait -- you didn't say anything. Nevermind."

...okay, so you don't have to be snarky or anything, but asking bands to speak on their audience's behalf is a good way to remind them that they do have the power and opportunity to talk about violence while onstage. Some bands will really think about it; I imagine others will dismiss your concerns or shirk their responsibility. If that happens, again, tell your friends and withdraw your support.

None of this is necessarily easy. I don't think it's easy for anyone, and I also know that some of us are introverts, and that a lot of us don't like or feel good at confrontation and public-type speaking. But this isn't about personality traits: this is about all of us learning to verbalize our needs and protect ourselves, regardless of our preferences. It's something we all need to work on, both for ourselves and our own safety, and for that of our communities.

Community and Communication: Reflections on the Consent and Interpersonal Communication panel at The Big She Bang V.

I'm just going to say it: I've had a hard time writing lately, and for a while, I was wondering what to do with this blog. For a while, sitting down at my computer and working on posts as if nothing had happened felt wrong to me. My life doesn't exactly feel real lately, and I've had trouble focusing on any one thing for too long since the funeral.

So I've been trying to keep busy in other ways. I've been trying to go out a lot, and I've been doing things that force me to be around people, like going to shows and volunteering. I've been spending time with my family and visiting old friends. I've put a lot of effort into distracting myself.

On Saturday, August 14 I gleefully distracted myself by attending The Big She Bang, where I got to spend time with many fellow rock camp volunteers, talk with some of the organizers of the event, and see some great bands and performers. I also spent a big chunk of that afternoon outside the church where the She Bang was happening, because New York City had some gorgeous weather that day.

But I wasn't outside acting like a high schooler cutting class to go smoke and talk under the bleachers the whole time. I did attend the panel on Consent and Interpersonal Communication, which featured representatives of Support New York and Fuckin' (A).

Having attended one too many sex positive workshops that didn't even start to talk about reproductive and sexual justice or rights in college, I went in to the panel a bit skeptical. But Support New York and Fuckin' (A) presented a truly positive, informative, thought-provoking, and dare I say it mature panel on physically and emotionally safer sex. Panel members shared personal stories, statistical data, and various strategies for engaging with and promoting safer sex, good health, and negotiation of responsibility with sexual partners. In the process, the panel touched on issues like normalizing consent and communication in a decidedly non-consensual and capitalist culture, and reframing personal sexual choices as political choices.

One panelist told a story that I'll never forget, because it made me think about my post-funeral behavior, thought it wasn't a story about grief. A Bay Area native, the panelist told us about his mentor, who was a young queer activist in San Francisco in the '80s. The panelist told us that one day, he asked his mentor what it was like to be be a gay health activist in that time and place. The panelist said that his mentor sighed, "Your community was literally dying around you."

The comment required no explanation; it's a reference to the AIDS crisis that shook the world in the '80s, and had a particular and devastating impact on gay communities in the US. But the panelist told us that after hearing that story, he started to think of his personal choices and his insistence on safer sex and effective communication with his partners as a matter of responsibility to his community.

The story made me think. What about effective communication regarding other issues, issues besides sexual health? What about mental health? If a failure to communicate, and a lack of critical information regarding disease can lead to massive casualties within a community, what would be the result of a failure to communicate feelings, and a lack of information about how to support people and deal with their emotional traumas?

Because of that panelist's story, I faced what I'd been doing all summer: I'd been hanging out with people and going to different stuff, but I hadn't been communicating, at all. I haven't been telling people, people who are friends, about what's been going on with me. I've been hiding, and I've been using going out to keep from having to really deal with my grief. I've been going out and pretending that everything is normal when it isn't.

I've been avoiding my feelings and keeping secrets from the people in my life. I've been self-absorbed, thinking more about my comfort level than anything else. At the same time, I've been needlessly self-sacrificing, justifying not talking about painful things by telling myself "I don't want to bum anyone else out with this, I don't want to be a downer." I've totally neglected my emotional needs, and the impact that my repressed grief could have on the other people in my community. This strikes me as the complete opposite of radical and positive, which is what I'd ideally like both myself and my community to be.

To be clear, I don't think of myself as some sort of scene fixture who has all this influence on everything around her. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'm away at school most of the year, and I don't get to spend a lot of time in the actual vicinity of my community. But it doesn't matter how popular or active you are in your neighborhood and at your local events, because every single one of us has an effect on the world around us. Every single one of us is connected to everyone and everything, and we affect each other even when we don't mean to. For that reason we have to communicate with each other. Community requires communication. This might seem obvious, but I need to say it here, if only to be sure that it has been said somewhere.

Since the She Bang, I've gone out of my way to be more open about what I'm going through. I've made a point of telling people that someone I cared about deeply died last month, rather than hoping that they've read about here. I've started asking for help, both in my personal life and with work, including this blog. I am eternally grateful for the personal and professional support I've received.

Because the communication that communities require isn't just the interpersonal sort; mass communication via journalism, music, and other art forms is required as well. Blogs in particular play a specific and important role in the realm of young feminist and queer activism, and especially in the emerging international girl gang underground. As a writer and musician, I have a professional responsibility to my community, in addition to my personal responsibility to my friends and acquaintances, which I take seriously.

So, in other words: the single girl is back in the proverbial office. No more hiding, no more secrets, no more avoidance. From now on, just communication.