In the Rainy Season

As much as I love the phrase Holy Fuck and Goddamn, we’re now In the Rainy Season.  Please update your several and sundry bookmarks.

There’s a post over at (the adorably named) Blog of Rights about Republican supporters of the DADT repeal.  This is what we like to call giving someone a cookie.  Someone overcomes, briefly, their own racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, etc etc etc and expects a pat on the back.  They want credit/praise for being such wonderful people by, uh, displaying basic human decency and empathy.  That shouldn’t be gold star material, that should be the expectation.  And as the NYT article that ACLU points out, the fight over DADT has been going on for seventeen years.  That’s enough time for a queer infant to grow up and ship off to Baghdad. While the ACLU may have an interest in appearing bi- or non- partisan or building support among republicans and independents, they should not be patting these politicians on the back.  Where have they been for the past decade as young queer folks were dying in wars far from home?  Long-time activists and supporters, certainly, deserve some recognition, regardless of party.  But people like Scott Brown of Massachusetts – who represents a gay-marriage blue state, and has inherited Mitt Romney’s flair for pandering – has already received far too much publicity for his calculated hemming and hawing.  The ACLU quotes Sen Burr referring to the repeal as ‘generationally right.’  What the hell does that mean?  To find out, let’s look at a press release from the Senator’s office:

Given the generational transition that has taken place in our nation, I feel that this policy is outdated and repeal is inevitable.  However, I remain convinced that the timing of this change is wrong, and making such a shift in policy at a time when we have troops deployed in active combat areas does not take into consideration the seriousness of the situation on the ground.

Ah, I see.  He recognized that the repeal was inevitable and that homophobia just ain’t what it used to be, and he saw no reason to be on the losing side of the vote.  This is hardly a brave, commendable, or pro-freedom stance.  It is political opportunism, and the ACLU shouldn’t be supporting it.  Folks like Brown and Burr weren’t part of this fight for gay rights, and they won’t be part of the next.

I would like to add, as an addendum, that my own enthusiasm for the repeal is rather tepid.  Limiting the ability of a major sector of the federal government to practice employment discrimination and keep full-citizenship (which really only comes with military service in this country, though that’s a story for another time) from a group of Americans is certainly commendable.  But really I see any policy that makes it harder for the Feds to carry on the these Middle East misadventures that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives as a good thing.  I think IOZ has it summed up best:

Anyway, I am a firm believer in excluding gays from military service. I think we should also exclude blacks, Asian-Americans, women, married people, blonds, citizens, legal residents, and human beings.

But that also is a story for some other time. 

You will, I hope, excuse the alliteration in the title.  There is more to come, but I swear it’s not my fault.

I live and bike in Boston, and am active in the bike scene there.  For a job interview – must have been a year ago now – I had to write a bit about an issue that’s important to me, and propose a way to effect change.  What I came up with is a campaign, with the working title of Bring a Buddy by Bike.  Don’t worry; I’m not married to the title.  It’s a simple enough idea, but the details of turning it into a reality may be a bit tricky.

What we have learned as bicycle advocates in the past 40 or so years is that the most important thing is to get people out on bikes.  Increase the number of bicyclists, increase the number of trips taken by bike.  The more people biking, the safer it is to ride; the safer it is to ride, the more people decide to bike.  Once you get that critical mass (or Critical Mass), there’s a chance for a very powerful bit of snowballing.  This is why we build infrastructure, to make people at least feel safer so they’re comfortable getting on the bike. 

So if local governments are redesigning the road infrastructure, what can your average cyclist do to change the streetscape a bit?  If you ride in the city, you’ve told someone about your pedal pushing ways and they’ve been all, like ‘OMG you’re crazy and the drivers are CRAZY and do you wear a helmet I heard someone was in an accident and and and aren’t you SCARED?’  Friends, let me tell you once and for all, it ain’t that bad.  Now, I’m not saying you don’t need to know your shit before you start joining me on my commute down Mass Ave twice a day, but you’d be surprised how well you (yes, you) can get around the city on two wheels and your own muscles.  I used to work for a company whose entire business model was based on getting tourists – as in, out-of-town, haven’t been on a bike in a decade tourists – on bikes for tours of the city.  And this is where us regular bikers come in: all that needs to happen to change some number of you skeptical friends into occasional, or hardcore, urban cyclists is for you to take ‘em out for a ride.

So here’s how the campaign works.  We launch a website to promote the idea and point to resources for getting bikes and riding safely.  Local bikers pledge to bring X number of friends out for a ride, preferably one that includes at least some actual riding on streets (though, by all means, choose the calmest, most-bike friendly streets you can find).  After the ride, fill out a survey on the site that asks you questions like how many people went riding, how many were new to urban cycling, where did you ride, how many miles, etc.  We publish stats on the site so people can see how many trips and bicycle-miles-traveled we’re adding to bike’s mode share.  It’s like a pledge drive, but instead of pledging to give money to someone who will do something good with it, you’re pledging miles ridden and new riders, and just by riding your bike, you’re contributing a bit to the cause.

The idea would be to coordinate with other organizations and campaigns.  Bike month in May – when people pledge to ride a certain number of miles and Bike to Work week occurs – would be about the time we’d want the campaign to be hitting its stride.  So, promote in the winter, a few rides in the early spring, really get cooking in May, peak in the summer, and see how many new friends we have on bikes come autumn and winter.

So, some of the challenges/details/issues/logistics/things that gotta happen:

• Need a functional website to explain the concept, host links to other resources as well as the social media parts of the campaign, and provide a place for people to add their information, and begin hearing the stories of other participants through a blog
• Where do new riders find a bike to ride?  This is a big one, but there are options.  The above linked Urban AdvenTours rents bikes, as do some other shops in the area.  MyBike and others rent bikes long term.  The city should be launching bike share this spring (an added benefit to this campaign would be giving a boost to the bike share program, which I’m sure it will need).  Craigslist and Ebay have cheap bikes, as does Bikes Not Bombs.  And of course there are many bikes to be found in basements and garages.
• Coordinating with other rides: a great time to bring new people riding is at an event where there will be lots of other cyclists, and maybe even some professional/volunteer help.  From the city we have Bike Month, Bike Fridays, and of course Hub on Wheels.  Critical Mass last Friday of every month from Copley.  MassBike does a Spin Series, there’s the Charles River Wheelman, Sunday mornings on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, local shop rides, charity events, theme rides like the tweed ride, and on and on.  Or, just get some friends and ride some bikes and suddenly you’re reading a group ride.  AdvenTours, MassBike, and plenty of others have events calendars that list upcoming rides, and Boston Biker announces pretty much everything.
• Where should you ride?  Use the city’s budding infrastructure to your advantage.  Mix in some of our great off-road paths (South West Corridor, Emerald Necklace, both sides of the Charles) with on road lanes and quiet streets.  Again, some of the above mentioned folks will have maps with suggested rides, and the city produces a bike map that rates the bikability of different routes.  While their main map was out of date last I checked, Rubel has a series of small maps for road rides in the city.  Check out MapMyRide, talk to friends, get on chat rooms; people love to talk about their favorite rides.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if you or someone you like likes Boston and likes bikes, you/they should drop me a line.  Ride safe.

I don’t read Jezebel very often, so only have vague notions about the bloggery contained therein: feminist site, some good articles, some lousy articles, maybe actually making somebody some money (or at least a damn living).  But apparently if you are singularly stupid and literate, you can get published there.  I assure you they will be receiving my resume on the morrow.

A quick perusal of the comments on Jezebel will bring you up to speed on all the basic failings of this particular piece of writing: heteronormativity, male writer assuming it would totally be the fucking bees knees to be constantly harassed/groped at bars, consent as a bad thing, the assertion that men always want to bone, women only do sometimes, women therefore have the ‘real’ power because they get to deny men sex by not immediately jumping into bed after having their asses pinched.  We have heard this story before, and there is plenty of commentary elsewhere.

My contribution to this growing pile of criticism will simply be to point out that – Jezebel’s editor-in-chief’s remarks that the piece exhibited a certain ‘degree of thought and articulation’ notwithstanding – there is no argument here.  I’m starting to wonder if we all (myself included) wouldn’t be better off with a bit more formal logic in our schooling when we start thinking of this type of writing as offering up some sort of coherent argument.  While the pseudonymous Edward Pasteck does in fact write in a series of complete sentences about a single subject, using multiple paragraphs, descriptive language (dialogue! bonus points!), while incorporating examples from his own experiences, he does not actually produce an argument for why he ought to be able to fuck people without their consent.  What he says is that, in the context of awesome party-times, a ‘decision’ should suffice, while ‘consent’ presents an undue burden for folks looking to bone.

What the hell that is supposed to mean is certainly beyond me.  While ‘consent’ and ‘decision’ are in fact common words with definitions we all know, what Pasteck imagines the difference between the two to be when it comes to fucking is very important.  So, for example, try saying the following three sentences aloud:

• I decided to have sex with [partner, crush, celebrity, proprieter of HF+GD, whatever]
• I consented to having sex with [same]
• I chose to have sex with [same]

So, two questions: 1) how freaked out are your fellow patrons at the coffee-shop or wherever it is you go for wifi, and 2) do any of those sentences feel like they are describing a non-consensual encounter?  In my case, I answer 1) so freaked out, and 2) no.  What does it mean for someone to ‘decide’ to have sex without ‘consenting’ to it?  Besides suggesting it has something to do with being hella crunk, Mr. Pasteck leaves it to your imagination.  I suspect it has something to do with getting a drunk woman back to your apartment and badgering her about sex for an hour until she says ‘ok’ because she really wants to go to sleep.

I am putting words into the author’s mouth, of course, but he never does clarify what ‘decisions’ without consent would look like. Mostly, he lodges complaints about the connotations of the word ‘consent:’

In America, by contrast, the discourse on consent impresses upon us all, men and women alike, that sex is something more important than a decision. A lot more is involved in obtaining or denying consent than making a decision. For one thing, consent has ethical and legal overtones and implies the kind of complete and utter self-mastery that isn’t always on offer while partying.

and,

Here in America, our use of the word “consent” complicates the way we view the relation between sex and pleasure. “Consent” is a weighty term otherwise reserved for elevated, formal, even sanitized contexts.

Essentially, consent is a bummer dude.  None of these criticisms are leveled at the substance of consent as an idea; there is nothing about what it means to consent.  What we get is the vague sense that when Pasteck thinks ‘consent,’ he thinks about contracts, courtrooms, end-of-life decisions, etc, and that shit is not sexy.  There’s reason to believe your man is facing enough obstacles in the gettin’ laid department (see: anecdote about woman in Paris he never got with), the idea that he has to consider – in addition to figuring out how to get women into his bed – whether or not such an act might be ethical or legal is just way too much.

Of course, issues of ethics and the law are not always all that complex, and indeed, we face them on a day to day basis.  Do you stop your car at red lights?  Do you drive under the speed limit?  These are choices (or…decisions) you make quite regularly that have legal and potentially ethical implications.  And while consent can be a complex subject, consenting to sex can (should) actually be quite simple.  Observe:

Informed, Competent, Adult Human A: Hey, do you wanna have sex with me tonight?

Informed, Competent, Adult Human B: Oh wow – totally!

Human A: Awesome! High five!

[Adults A and B exchange high fives and then go bone like crazy]

See?  No legalese, no contracts, no notaries.  Simple questions with simple answers.  The problem, one is forced to assume, is that it is very easy for Human B to answer ‘No’ in a completely unambiguous way. 

He carries on like this for a bit, repeating the truism about how Americans are prudish about sex because we’re all descended from Puritans, hoping you won’t notice how completely irrelevant this familiar chorus is; peppering his final paragraph with feminist buzzwords to make it seem like he’s on your side, even when talking nonsense (‘It would be asinine and anti-feminist to argue that consent doesn’t exist, or that the complete disregard of consent has no repercussions [because it most certainly does].’ Really? There are repercussions to people doing whatever the hell they want to other people’s bodies without getting permission?).  But there’s nothing there.  I first heard this discussion in middle school at an assembly where they explained concepts like abusive relationships and rape.  There always seem to be boys asking how many drinks she has to have before you might get in trouble for having sex with her.

The simple right to sovereignty over one’s own body is quite simply not an unjust barrier to enjoying lots of ‘guilt-free’ sex.  If that’s what you’re looking for, Edward, you should probably be looking at how consent can help you in your quest.  But more on that later.

[When I made the exceptionally important decision to bring my unsolicited opinions to these here internets, I thought that I would like to avoid all the easy ‘Look at how stupid this is’ writing you seen on various polito-blaghs.  Already I seem to be breaking this rule.  As penance and in order to contribute something beyond a post pointing out that a stupid idea is stupid, I’ll take this as a starting point for a series on consent.  Please, do try to contain your excitement.]

You have by now seen (National Opt-Out Day is practically over!) the above clip.  I’d like to chit-chat about two of Mr. Tyner’s statements as they relate to state power.  The first, obviously, is

If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.

And the second is:

It would be if you weren’t the government.

The first statement has a certain desperation to it.  This is not how government power works on the frontlines: the police and airport security are on the same side here, ‘checks and balances’ don’t function in real time (I’ve never heard of police being arrested for brutality at the scene of the crime, but if you’ve heard of a case, I’d love to hear about it).  So while it might make sense that the police would help you out if you were, you know, the victim of the crime, we all know that’s not what happens in this case, because of Tyner’s second statement above. 

This second point is very important.  We change the words we use to describe a lot of things – kidnapping, snooping, murder, sexual assault, theft – once the state becomes involved, transforming moral transgressions into legitimate acts.  Watching people react to backscatter machines, and ‘enhanced’ pat-downs, the power of this legitimacy is striking; a lot of folks simply seem to think nothing of the creeping surveillance state, and register mild annoyance at the thought of airports slowing to accommodate greater numbers of people opting-out.  Hegemony functions through both coercion and consent, and all of that.

For those of you facing the misfortune of flying anywhere, anytime soon, what ever are you to do besides submitting to the magical peep show of those new-fangled scanning machines?  Actually, Tyner is on to something with his empty threat.  Unless you’re willing to consider doing away to state power (and, uh, maybe you should consider that?), the best way to limit state power is with…more state power!  Yes, I’m skeptical too, but sometimes the best you can hope for is to play checks and balances against each other until the wheels of one part of the big ol’ government machine grind to a halt.  Or something.  Look, no TSA agent is getting arrested over this, but they might not know it, and this issue will end up in the courts.  Scare them back.  Or, to put it more bullety:

• Ask for names and, if applicable, identifying numbers for all of your, er, ‘handlers.’  Write that shit down in plain view, if you can.
• Do not opt for a private-fondling-suite.  The whole point, I think, is to feel the power of the surveillance state on your body (as opposed to walking through a scanner, which registers as much as having your phone tapped), and let/force others to see it as well.  Speak truth to power etc ad nauseum.  Let that shit see the light of day.
• State (clearly but calmly, do not freak out/start yelling/any of that shit) your opposition to the ‘procedure.’  A little quoting of the 4th amendment couldn’t hurt.
• State that you will file complaints (or lawsuits) if you think you are ‘touched inappropriately,’ or, hell, just cause you feel like it.  Suggest you’ll get the police involved for all I care, say you’ve got an uncle who’s a cop or whatever.
• FILE SOME GODDAMN COMPLAINTS/LAWSUITS.  If the damn protest actually happened today, instead of folks just suggesting it should happen, and if every day became ‘National Opt-Out Day,’ motherfuckers would cave.  This shit is expensive, contributes only dubiously to teh National Securitiez (if you’re into that sort of thing), and ain’t worth losing the damn air-transportation system over.  
• ‘Share’ your ‘experience.’  Around a campfire would be nice, but also on all these intertubes and their various social networking time sinks/data miners.  This shit is creepy, and Americans, not generally noted for a strong commitment to liberty, are decidedly opposed to icky things like getting fondled by the dude at the airport.  Some politician can capitalize on those feelings if they get common enough, and pull the damn plug.
• Enjoy your flight.

It’s worth noting that the above is not legal advice, is not a guide for navigating the airport surveillance apparatus while preserving your dignity, or suggestions on how to begin a family vacation.  It’s a proposed outline for inconveniencing yourself and (hopefully) the state.  It is one step towards having enough of this bullshit.  You are the machine and the monkey wrench, or whatever it is the kids are saying these days.

How was that?  Too rambly, incoherent, awesome?  I’m new to this tumbl[e]r shit, ok?  Christ.