Thursday, November 4, 2010
Elizabeth Medez speaking on behalf of Hollaback at city counil
This is an excerpt from the city council hearing led by HollaBack. Elizabeth Mendez, a key player in the HollaBack organization gives her take on sexual harrassment.
The thing about Mendez's testimony is that she does more complaining then suggesting. She starts off by saying that sexual harassment "affects a lot of people". How is this new? How does it give any light on to the semantics of sexual harassment? Shortly after that she says that she is sexually harassed on a daily basis and goes on a tangent about her specific experiences and those of other women. Then she talks about the "obstacles" that are faced when fighting street harassment. These "obstacles" are not surprisingly, largely subjective to fit HollaBack's definition of sexual harassment. Fast forward to 2:17 to view the "obstacles" that are faced. Her solutions, which start around 4:43 of the video are general and already implemented. In fact, the only solution she poses is that of education.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Why You Shouldnt HollaBack
HollaBackNyc is an organization that was founded by Emily May in 2005. Until recently, the site was powered by blogspot. Now the site uses custom blogging software under the domain "iHollaBack.org". The site deals primarily on the premise of sexual harassment, in most cases against women. While the main idea of the site is far from unique, the underlying approach to the issue is unique and controversial. Women are encouraged to take pictures of men who act in a sexually deviant manner, and submit it to the Hollaback site. This process is also called "Hollaback" when being described in a colloquial way. Since its birth in 2005, it has grown by an exorbitant amount and is slowly making its mark in history. While the organization is lively and gradually maturing, there are a few things about it that bother me and probably other people as well.
The first thing I would like to say about the HollaBack organization is that it encourages women to constantly be on the offensive against men. While this may help to restore dignity to a female who was victimized by another man, it in no way helps the offender. The offender will simply find another victim in the same manner that a carnivorous animal will hunt for prey. The issue of sexual harassment will still be there.The practice of posting public pictures of people online, good or bad, can endanger the safety and welfare of said person. Emily May and her administrative colleagues can in no way verify the sources of the narratives of sexual harassment, or the pictures taken. Anybody can make up a story about some random person in the street, submit it, and have an individual labeled as a predator. This statement brings up another question. If the administrators at HollaBack have no way of telling whether a story is real or fake, how legitimate is their entire organization. This issue is expounded upon by the addition of a new iPhone application that allows people to map isolated instances of sexual harassment real-time for other people to see. No system of validity was implemented nor is possible at the moment. Since Emily May constantly drums up support for her organization and sugercoats it's flaws, thousands of women simply believe that the stories they are reading are real when in fact, Emily may could very well be posting imaginative folly.
Another issue with the Hollaback organization is it's stance on feminism. While the subtle overtones present on the site could convince any person that it is a feminist organization, Emily May brazenly and arrogantly declares that the HollaBack organization is not in any way tied with feminism. In defense of her feeble attempt to shield herself from negative press she constantly tells people that HollaBack "empowers women". The ironic part of that statement is that it falls right in line with the definition of feminism. Wikipedia has this to say about Feminism: "Feminism is controversial for challenging traditions in many fields and especially for supporting shifting the political balance toward women." Does not HollaBack fit this description? Emily may seeks to "empower women" and challenge the social situation of sexual harassment to favor women. This means broadening the scope of sexual harassment to things that were not previously considered as such. This directly leads into my next point about the HollaBack organization. If a women dresses in a provacative manner, openly flirts with other guys, stubbornly puts herself in dangerous situations, gets involved in illegal activity and gets sexually harassed because of that, is it not a feminist reaction to paint her as a victim? The hollaBack organization also officially supports legal prostitution. While they never publicly announced this, I was given irrefutable evidence of such, by means of their youtube channel. Out of frustration I left a nasty comment on their channel page. Their response? They contacted a user by the name of comrade man to send me some information on why prostitution should be legal. Evidence is below:
What it says:"
By Roman Shusterman (comraderoman@yahoo.com)
www.nopolicestatecoalition.blogspot.com
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/nopolicestatecoalition
According to several teenage girls who attend Mepham High School in Bellmore New York, a man riding his bicycle has been exposing and touching himself while riding near schools where he could find young girls whose attention he seeks. Stories like this are not uncommon, women regularly complain of being groped on subways and harassed in New York City simply while walking the streets. New York City can fairly be described as the media capital of the world especially when it comes to advertising and commercialization, and specifically of the sexual variety. Even though former Mayor Giuliani cracked down on open exposure to pornographic material by mandating that pornographic stores hide their content by mixing it with 50% of non-pornographic videos as well as his crackdown on peep shows, sex clubs and cheap or affordable prostitution, the market for quick access to cheap sexual pleasures did not simply disintegrate at the stroke of Giulianis pen.
Unlike the wealthy who can afford to shop around online for the best prostitutes that money can buy, the poor are left to their own devices and although it is not justifiable to break the law especially with regard to the types of activities mentioned above which involve minors, the fact is that by shutting down access to affordable prostitution in New York the government has only exacerbated the problem. Whereas, this type of person who seeks quick pleasures and attention from the opposite sex was able to find a temporary companion in 1970s/80s era New York, today such a person is instead driven to risk breaking the law by putting minors at risk. In most traditional religious societies men are given leeway in this regard, for example, in Islamic countries men can have many women and are able to do with them as they please, no wonder some men especially on the far-right find such regimes appealing.
Not all men seek to hurt women in their attempts for sexual attention, in fact it is quite the opposite in the environment of the city and the country for that matter, sado-masochism being a legal activity as opposed to prostitution which was cracked down on, is embraced by members of all strata including the elites who also fear legal prosecution if caught with a prostitute. So we find a situation in our culture where men are becoming more comfortable with women playing a more dominant sexual role as opposed to the traditional male role of being dominant, this is so because men are more interested in genuine attention from the opposite sex and not necessarily the act of sex or S/M itself.
There must be a recognition and legalization of prostitution which would allow it to become a respectable profession that caters to all economic groups and classes. This would permanently end the sex trade and child sex tourism/trafficking which contribute to slavery around the world. The perception of a religious society is that women are there to have children and procreate. The reality however, is that pro-creation is not the goal, if this were the case then people would not use birth control or condoms, pleasure it a goal in itself and it is about time that society acknowledged this fact. If members of society are denied legal outlets to their pursuit of pleasures/happiness, then they will seek to fulfill their desires illegally, if prevented to pursue their desires illegally then they will lash out against society by committing criminal acts and deviant behaviors against women who they blame for the lack of their ability to fulfill pleasures that have been denied to them by the government for whatever purposes of social engineering our government might have. Religious conservatives have long sought to use the commercialization of sex to make their case for outlawing free speech content which includes pornographic materials, but moving toward a more religious society which prevents such freedoms would only put women at greater risk because they would no longer have the ability to report violent sex crimes and would be continually harassed by their own family members with impunity as is the routine practice in most backwards religious societies.
Recommended: http://hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/"
In conclusion, I think that the HollaBack organization is deficient in so many areas that change based entirely around it's agenda is not only insane, but comparable to the existence of the tooth fairy.
The first thing I would like to say about the HollaBack organization is that it encourages women to constantly be on the offensive against men. While this may help to restore dignity to a female who was victimized by another man, it in no way helps the offender. The offender will simply find another victim in the same manner that a carnivorous animal will hunt for prey. The issue of sexual harassment will still be there.The practice of posting public pictures of people online, good or bad, can endanger the safety and welfare of said person. Emily May and her administrative colleagues can in no way verify the sources of the narratives of sexual harassment, or the pictures taken. Anybody can make up a story about some random person in the street, submit it, and have an individual labeled as a predator. This statement brings up another question. If the administrators at HollaBack have no way of telling whether a story is real or fake, how legitimate is their entire organization. This issue is expounded upon by the addition of a new iPhone application that allows people to map isolated instances of sexual harassment real-time for other people to see. No system of validity was implemented nor is possible at the moment. Since Emily May constantly drums up support for her organization and sugercoats it's flaws, thousands of women simply believe that the stories they are reading are real when in fact, Emily may could very well be posting imaginative folly.
Another issue with the Hollaback organization is it's stance on feminism. While the subtle overtones present on the site could convince any person that it is a feminist organization, Emily May brazenly and arrogantly declares that the HollaBack organization is not in any way tied with feminism. In defense of her feeble attempt to shield herself from negative press she constantly tells people that HollaBack "empowers women". The ironic part of that statement is that it falls right in line with the definition of feminism. Wikipedia has this to say about Feminism: "Feminism is controversial for challenging traditions in many fields and especially for supporting shifting the political balance toward women." Does not HollaBack fit this description? Emily may seeks to "empower women" and challenge the social situation of sexual harassment to favor women. This means broadening the scope of sexual harassment to things that were not previously considered as such. This directly leads into my next point about the HollaBack organization. If a women dresses in a provacative manner, openly flirts with other guys, stubbornly puts herself in dangerous situations, gets involved in illegal activity and gets sexually harassed because of that, is it not a feminist reaction to paint her as a victim? The hollaBack organization also officially supports legal prostitution. While they never publicly announced this, I was given irrefutable evidence of such, by means of their youtube channel. Out of frustration I left a nasty comment on their channel page. Their response? They contacted a user by the name of comrade man to send me some information on why prostitution should be legal. Evidence is below:
How the government pits men against women
Commercialization of sex takes turn for the worseBy Roman Shusterman (comraderoman@yahoo.com)
www.nopolicestatecoalition.blogspot.com
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/nopolicestatecoalition
According to several teenage girls who attend Mepham High School in Bellmore New York, a man riding his bicycle has been exposing and touching himself while riding near schools where he could find young girls whose attention he seeks. Stories like this are not uncommon, women regularly complain of being groped on subways and harassed in New York City simply while walking the streets. New York City can fairly be described as the media capital of the world especially when it comes to advertising and commercialization, and specifically of the sexual variety. Even though former Mayor Giuliani cracked down on open exposure to pornographic material by mandating that pornographic stores hide their content by mixing it with 50% of non-pornographic videos as well as his crackdown on peep shows, sex clubs and cheap or affordable prostitution, the market for quick access to cheap sexual pleasures did not simply disintegrate at the stroke of Giulianis pen.
Unlike the wealthy who can afford to shop around online for the best prostitutes that money can buy, the poor are left to their own devices and although it is not justifiable to break the law especially with regard to the types of activities mentioned above which involve minors, the fact is that by shutting down access to affordable prostitution in New York the government has only exacerbated the problem. Whereas, this type of person who seeks quick pleasures and attention from the opposite sex was able to find a temporary companion in 1970s/80s era New York, today such a person is instead driven to risk breaking the law by putting minors at risk. In most traditional religious societies men are given leeway in this regard, for example, in Islamic countries men can have many women and are able to do with them as they please, no wonder some men especially on the far-right find such regimes appealing.
Not all men seek to hurt women in their attempts for sexual attention, in fact it is quite the opposite in the environment of the city and the country for that matter, sado-masochism being a legal activity as opposed to prostitution which was cracked down on, is embraced by members of all strata including the elites who also fear legal prosecution if caught with a prostitute. So we find a situation in our culture where men are becoming more comfortable with women playing a more dominant sexual role as opposed to the traditional male role of being dominant, this is so because men are more interested in genuine attention from the opposite sex and not necessarily the act of sex or S/M itself.
There must be a recognition and legalization of prostitution which would allow it to become a respectable profession that caters to all economic groups and classes. This would permanently end the sex trade and child sex tourism/trafficking which contribute to slavery around the world. The perception of a religious society is that women are there to have children and procreate. The reality however, is that pro-creation is not the goal, if this were the case then people would not use birth control or condoms, pleasure it a goal in itself and it is about time that society acknowledged this fact. If members of society are denied legal outlets to their pursuit of pleasures/happiness, then they will seek to fulfill their desires illegally, if prevented to pursue their desires illegally then they will lash out against society by committing criminal acts and deviant behaviors against women who they blame for the lack of their ability to fulfill pleasures that have been denied to them by the government for whatever purposes of social engineering our government might have. Religious conservatives have long sought to use the commercialization of sex to make their case for outlawing free speech content which includes pornographic materials, but moving toward a more religious society which prevents such freedoms would only put women at greater risk because they would no longer have the ability to report violent sex crimes and would be continually harassed by their own family members with impunity as is the routine practice in most backwards religious societies.
Recommended: http://hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/"
In conclusion, I think that the HollaBack organization is deficient in so many areas that change based entirely around it's agenda is not only insane, but comparable to the existence of the tooth fairy.
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