"Silence Is Violence" at the College of Staten Island

Dear Diary,

What a fun feminist mid-week adventure!  After a train, a ferry, a cab, and a lot of Earl Grey tea, we arrived at the College of Staten Island!  Oh man, is that campus beautiful.  Fall foliage is finally happening!!! 

At 10 am we led our classic poster making workshop with a group of theatre students.  These young thinkers came up with a ton of creative themes for what "pisses them off".  Go figure!  Youth having opinions -- my favorite!  After a lot of brainstorming and collaboration, they came up with some gripping posters addressing issues such as violence against women, animal abuse, corrupt cops, the media's obsession with Ebola, "sexy" Halloween costumes, and a topic that we really loveeeee, FEMINISM!  These students were super smart!  After this workshop, we knew were in for a great audience for our evening show.

On our break, we discovered many things about the College of Staten Island.  For example, there are large water fountains decorating the campus that apparently light up with different colors.  Students are charged 10 cents for cutlery if it's being used for an item not purchased on campus -- what?!  And they really like their hand sanitizer dispensers.  Gotta keep those students healthy!

After sorting out a few sound cues, tech for the show went very smoothly.  It seemed like it was the student volunteer's very first time on stage!  Yay for courage Crystal!!!  After we finished tech, we were treated like stars and enjoyed a delicious dinner in the green room.  Then, we dolled ourselves up, donned our guerrilla masks and prepared to PERFORM.  And, WHAT a performance!  The audience was totally digging it from the get go! They especially loved the "Reclaiming Lesbian, Vagina, Feminist" song and the free bananas!  Most importantly, I felt like we were able to really reach them with our message -- that raising awareness about feminism and violence against women is imperative but, that it can be done in a funny and informative way. 

Riding the ferry back to our home island, we were tuckered out but all smiles.  Thanks for a wonderful day, College of Staten Island!  Keep rocking out and speaking up!  

Love,

Azu(cena) Villaflor

Roofie Bomb

Here’s a great action by feminist Erin L. of UNC Charlotte who has started a campaign against the Wild Wing Café for promoting a drink they call the “Roofie Bomb”. Who’d a thought someone could come up with something so exploitive, offensive and supportive of violence against women? Let’s all join Erin’s cause and write to the the Wild Wing Café at contactus@wildwingcafe.com and ask them to pull the “Roofie Bomb” off the drinks lists. Here is a part of Erin’s letter to Wild Wing Café.

“…I went to the Charlotte University Wild Wing Cafe about a month ago. I had never looked at your drink menu (I usually just drink beer) prior to my last visit, but I was waiting for my food and bored so I flipped through it. I came across a drink offered in your menu that absolutely disgusted me and left me feeling angry and sick to my stomach: a "Roofie Bomb".

I am extremely disgusted at your company's decision to name a drink a "roofie bomb". I'm saddened to no end because rape and violence against women is such a serious issue that we, as a society, should be trying to stop NOT condone. I'm sure you have a sister, a mother, a female friend, or (depending on your sexual preference) a girlfriend. How would you feel if someone tried to take advantage of someone you love by slipping them a roofie and attempting to rape them? I can't imagine how I would feel if I was a rape victim and I read your drink menu. It's the subtle messages, such as naming a drink a "roofie bomb", that make sexual violence a little more accepted in our society. One in every six women will be a victim of rape or sexual assault. I don't know about you, but that's a scary number to me. Even worse, college women are four times more likely to be a victim of sexual assault and your University Area establishment is only a few miles from UNC-Charlotte.

You are knowingly promoting rape and date rape drugs. Is that really the image you want your establishment to have? You are normalizing something that greatly affects our society every day. A "roofie bomb" might sound innocent, but what is it really saying about Wild Wing Cafe's views on rape and date rape? Rape is not a joke, but your drink is making it one and downplaying the seriousness of the issue. Your choice of language, as small as it may be, has HUGE implications for our society.

I ask you as a human and as my sister or brother to remove the drink from your menu. Until that is done, you can guarantee that I will NEVER pay another penny to and Wild Wing Cafe nor will I promote your company ever again. I may be one person, but as a college student I have a huge network and I will not go silently. I will continue to express my disgust to anyone who will listen. Please, make the right choice….” - Erin

Guerrilla Girls On Tour just sent our letter to contactus@wildwingcafe.com
Join us and send one off today.

Go bananas!

Sexual Assaults on Campus

Last week UND student Josh Brorby wrote a horrible op-ed piece for the online Dakota Student in which he described how to rape a woman. It was printed and responses have been extreme. It was horrible and disgusting but what also bothered me is the number of negative responses to the article about equal the positive ones.

There was a great piece by Kristen Lombardi yesterday describing how sexual assaults on campuses are always shrouded in secrecy. She reports on one student’s efforts to pursue her rape complaint via the college judicial system.

Roughly one in five women who attend college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates. A recent study found that more than 95 percent of students who are sexually victimized do not report to police or campus officials.

Rape culture abounds on the UND campus, on college campuses across the US and the world. Rape culture is writing about how to rape a woman, getting it published and applauded.

Guerrilla Girls On Tour’s past three performances have been of our show “Silence Is Violence” that addresses date rape and violence against women. There are women and men on college campuses who realize the need to address a problem they face and bring it to the forefront. Let’s hope UND is next on our tour list.

Link to Sexual Assault on Campus Shrouded in Secrecy by Kristin Lombardi http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/campus_assault/articles/entry/1838/

Link to One-night standing: the Method by Josh Brorby
http://tinyurl.com/UNDrape

-Aphra Behn
December 2, 2009
New York City

When you’re a Jet you’re a rapist?

I saw the revival of “West Side Story” on Broadway last night. Directed by book writer Arthur Laurents who is quoted in interviews stating that his revival would be “…radically different from any other production of West Side Story ever done. The musical theatre and cultural conventions of 1957 made it next to impossible for the characters to have authenticity. Every member of both gangs was always a potential killer even then. Now they actually will be.”

Sitting in the darkened audience I never believed any of the members of either the Jets or the Sharks gang was a “potential killer” while watching the mostly (except for the dancing) mild production. The closest they came to bloodthirsty was the frenetic moves sung to “boy, boy, crazy boy, just keep it cool. But in Act II scene 4 Anita is taunted by the Jets gang when she comes to their hangout to find Tony and give him a message from Maria. In the Broadway revival the scene turned violent as the Jet’s gang threw and pinned Anita to the ground then held her dress up so that actor playing A-rab could unzip his pants and force himself on top of her before being stopped by the entrance of Doc. Well, that’s where the show ended for me. The Jet’s aren’t potential killers they are potential rapists.

Not being able to shake the memory of that scene I went straight to the libretto on my bookshelf when I got home to see how the original scene was written. Here is the stage direction from the published libretto; The taunting breaks out into a wild, savage dance with epithets hurled at Anita who is encircled and driven by the whole pack. At the peak she is shoved so that she falls in a corner. Baby John is lifted up high and dropped on her as Doc enters and yells “Stop it!”. I am not sure how it was played in the original Broadway production but it is clear that assault, not rape, is the direction described in the libretto. The racist epithets Anita experiences make her the victim of a hate crime. Yes the gang picks up one of their own members and drops him on Anita but everyone keeps their pants on.

I next went to youtube and watched this scene in half a dozen amateur productions of “West Side Story”. Each one of them suggested that rape was what the Jets intended (and, by the way, were entitled “West Side Story Rape Scene). Could it be that in the over 50 years since West Side Story first opened nothing has changed in how our culture views rape? I’m not against showing rape scenes in theatre but in West Side Story rape is presented as acceptable, everyday behavior. OK, so maybe in the 50’s things were different. But I’m disappointed that the production didn’t break through any of the old ideologies of our culture or of how this scene has typically been staged. The Jets are an average gang of teens who smoke, smack each other around and rape women. When you’re a Jet you’re “the swingin'est thing, little boy you’re a man, little man you’re a king.” On Broadway when you’re a Jet you’re a rapist and that’s definitely not cool.

-Aphra Behn
Guerrilla Girls On Tour

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© 2009